“Y’all finished yet?” Maggie asked as she walked back to our group.

  Mika, along with Nora, jumped a little at her voice. His cheeks colored slightly, and Nora shot me a mock offended glare when they saw the smile I’d tried to suppress.

  “We’re going to do the Dustreach campaign first, but we want to do another in the Great Spines within the next year.” Nora said.

  “That’s easy enough to arrange.” Maggie said as she took her seat on one of the plain stone benches. “I’ve still got some logistical stuff to go over before I let you go.”

  Maggie took a small notebook out from her pocket and flipped through the pages until she landed on one near the end of the book. As the pages flipped by, I was curious to note that a not insubstantial number of pages were filled with drawings of maps and animals.

  “I assume all of you have the standard adventuring gear; tent, sleeping bag, flint and steel, rations, rope?” Maggie asked.

  “I can’t speak for Bran, but we all do.” Nora said.

  “I’ve got everything but the tent and sleeping bag.”

  “Easy enough, I’ll send you to the [Hall Quartermaster] when we’re done.” Maggie looked back down at her notes. “Next up, equipment. I’m not worried about the quality of y’all’s gear, but I have to ask. None of you plan to wear rotten leather into battle, right?”

  In return, Maggie got a round of bemused head shakes.

  In the early Tiers, before enlightened beings gained enough endurance and constitution to shrug off otherwise lethal blows, it was common knowledge that armor would save your life. Which made me doubt that there was anyone dumb enough to enter actual combat with bad gear. Then again, there was that girl who wore the molded armor during the youth program. So maybe it wasn’t as common knowledge as I thought.

  “Great. Finally, do any of you have any health or mana potions?”

  Nora, Mika, and I all shook our heads, but Ellen looked pensive.

  “I think I might be able to borrow around five of each from the treasury.”

  “Five’s great, but only grab two of each. I will not have y’all grow dependent on the stuff.” Maggie said with the first true air of command I’d seen from her.

  Health and mana potions were potent tools for any traveler, but they were also dangerous. With health potions, you had to be careful never to take potions above your Tier, or too many for your Constitution to handle. If you indulged, you risked developing healing sickness. I’d only ever seen it happen once. When I was thirteen and on my first campaign with the Black Hands in the depths of the Weeping Forest.

  A wild equarrel matriarch gored one of my classmates. He panicked and downed three of the potions at once. Mercifully, Eric put him down before the sickness could develop too much. Yet, the sight of Zeke as he rolled in the dirt, shrieking that inhuman sound from too many mouths, would stick with me forever.

  When we passed the site of his death on the way home. No animal had been stupid enough to touch his corpse. Even then, all that remained of his body was a contorted mass of extra limbs, maws, tumors, and bone spurs. Decay unable to touch the still healing corpse.

  Mana sickness was similar, but rather than mutate your body, your core grows until your body can no longer support the spiritual weight. Once that happens, your soul mutates to accommodate the pressure. I’d never seen it in person, but my mom had while she’d travelled with a group of mercenaries from the Dominion to the Kingdom of Latell.

  By the end of the mutation period, the [Sorceress’] soul split into three. Each piece as aware and mad as the others. Each piece as ravenous to be whole again. According to my mom, they’d tied her to a tree to stop her from doing anything. But when they found her in the morning, she’d eaten into her own stomach to get at her core and soul.

  “Understood.” I said, trying to shake off the image of tumors bursting then healing within seconds on Zeke’s corpse.

  “That works.” Ellen said casually. “Two will be easier to get anyway.”

  “Oh, one last thing. You guys are too far down the ladder to warrant a [Bard], so for your first few campaigns, or until you deserve one, I’ll be coming with you.” Maggie said. She smiled at us, a challenging look in her eyes. As if she expected us to protest.

  “I’m not against it. May I ask why we need a [Bard] in the first place? We’re going on campaign, not a tavern crawl.” I asked.

  “That should be obvious. Who’s going to spread word of your legend if you don’t have a [Bard]?”

  “Our deeds will spread word of our deeds.” Nora said, quoting something.

  “Ideally yes.” Maggie conceded. “The world isn’t ideal though. And in a non-ideal world, parties need a [Bard] to take down the details of their quests so they can be properly appreciated.”

  “But what’s the point of starting this early? It’s not like we’re going to be slaying dragons anytime soon.” Mika said.

  “You won’t be.” Maggie agreed. “But consider that all good adventurers are as much myth as they are person. Getting started on your myths early helps later on when you’re bidding for the big contracts. Besides, you’re all already set up for excellent origin myths.”

  “What do you mean?” Nora asked excitedly.

  “Nora, let’s take you, for example. ‘self-taught local girl becomes [Arch-Magus]!’ or ‘local [Mage] aces entrance exam into Hymeri’s most prodigious academy!’ Then there’s Ellen. ‘Ba-‘” Maggie cut off before she finished the word and shot Ellen an apologetic glance. “’Daughter of local nobility follows in legendary father’s footsteps.’

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  “Then there’s Mika. ‘Scion of the famous Hillhome family invents a new way to animate golems!’ and finally we have Bran. ‘Golden eyed giant from the depths of the Emerald Ocean makes his debut into civilized society!’

  “Each of you has the foundation for an excellent legend. We just need to make sure it continues that way. Which is why I’ll be joining you till you warrant an actual [Bard].” Maggie finished.

  “Do steward usually join their parties?” Ellen asked.

  “Depends I guess.” Maggie said. She’d relaxed some because no one was fighting her on joining us. “Really, it’s a matter of how much the steward values the party. Consider it another perk of being a flagship party. Not many fleet parties are going to have their steward join them on their first campaigns.”

  Maggie spent a few more minutes extolling the benefits of having her along with us, but no one was fighting her, so she kept rehashing the same points. Once she realized what she was doing, she switched topics

  “I want to have us on the road as soon as possible. Is everyone okay with leaving tomorrow, two hours after dawn?”

  Ellen, Mika, and I all agreed.

  “Is it alright if we leave at noon instead?” Nora asked. “My family is going to want to have some kind of going away party.”

  “It’ll add another day of travel but I’m okay with it if your party mates are.” Maggie said.

  All of us agreed easily, to which she looked like a great weight lifted from her shoulders. Who was I to try and stop someone from saying goodbye to their family?

  “That’s all I had for you guys. I’m going to finish some paperwork. I’ll see you all at the east gate tomorrow.”

  We all said our goodbyes and quickly left the Guild Hall. Ten minutes later, I was up in my room at the Widow’s Mark. I’d stopped to pay for my meals tonight and tomorrow morning before going upstairs. Widow looked annoyed at being paid, but I put it up as an eccentricity or her hamming up her role as an urban legend.

  Comfortable in bed, I activated Beginner’s Shield Art and forced myself to ignore the feeling of having my gut torn from me as the System forcibly took my mana. Back in my soul space. I watched as the familiar stream of mana danced about in the sky, slowly lowering to just above the clearing. I frowned when, for the first time, the stream split in two. Once stream floated towards where the Trainer always manifested while the other drifted towards me.

  With tender movements, I reached up and touched the stream of mana. There was no physical sensation; and yet, it felt like reading a book with my mom under the shelter of a willow tree, like hard marches through a downpour, like culling weakness, like the reverberations as mallet struck chisel, like Helena’s hair. It felt like metal wires squeezed around my neck, hands, and –

  I tore my hand from the stream like it was a raging inferno and ran across the clearing. Never once did I turn my back on the mana as it materialized into the form of a crystalline person. Curled up in a ball, their jagged diamond hands shook as it feebly protected the back of their neck.

  My breath echoed ragged in my ears, my vision tunneled in on where the person hunched. A powerful hand clasped my shoulder. I lashed out behind me on instinct. The blocky hand of the Trainer caught my fist. Punching its hand should’ve felt like punching brick, but there was nothing. No pain, no softness, no resistance. All my momentum stopped dead as soon as I hit the palm of its hand.

  The Trainer’s featureless face looked down at me for a long, drawn-out moment. Constellations flashed across its face as it held my hand. Slowly, it raised its other hand. I braced for it to discipline me for my graceless outburst. The hand slowly rose and fell to match the movement of the Trainer’s chest as it mimicked slow breaths. I matched its breathing and slowly felt the panic of a few moments prior fall away.

  During the breathing exercise, I closed my eyes. When another hand landed on my shoulder, I didn’t lash out. I opened my eyes to the Trainer gazing down at me, its face somehow kindly. It led me back to the cowering form with care and softly pressed me down into the basic ready position. A shield materialized in my hand as I crouched.

  Once I got settled, I realized I stood protectively over the cowering form and understood the point of the session. The Trainer kept its hand on me for the entire fifteen minutes we practiced the stance. When it returned to its usual spot in the clearing, it raised its fists in a [Pugilist’s] stance and stalked towards me.

  Rather than come at me directly, like it had in previous sessions, the Trainer tried to get around me. To strike down at the being protected by my shield. The Trainer’s crystal fist gleamed in the perfect light of my soul space as it landed punches that numbed my arm and drove me back a step.

  Out of position, my instinct was to use Willow’s Wrath, but I used some of the footwork taught to me in this skill and repositioned just in time to deflect the Trainer’s next punch into a blow that clipped my charge’s shoulder rather than shatter its crystal skull. I followed up with a shove that had me ducking low and pushing up with my shield. The Trainer let itself be lifted and pushed backwards. While the Trainer ‘recovered’ its balance, I stepped back over my charge and settled back down into the proper stance.

  When it came at me next, it incorporated its entire body. Which forced me to use everything I’d learned in this skill. The Trainer sent a viper quick jab, then whipped its leg out to sweep my feet out under me. I half deflected the jab, then punched down to block its kick with the rim of my shield. Every time it attacked, it did so with more skill than the last time; and each time it forced me to chain together different parts of what I had learned in this skill.

  None of it was new to me. I’d had all the movements, blocks, deflections, and attacks drilled into me since I was a child, but that wasn’t the hard part of the session.

  The Trainer stepped forward and launched a jab, which I parried away. It followed the strike with an elbow from the same arm, and on instinct I lashed out with a rim punch to the Trainer’s groin. Like it was made of water, the Trainer dodged the attack and punished the slip by breezing past me and destroying the crystal figure beneath me.

  It shattered into a cloud of mana and reformed back into the cowering form within a second. The Trainer gave me a second to reset before it came back at me. The entire session had been like this. Every time I slipped away from the things taught in Beginner’s Shield Art, the Trainer would punish the lapse by breezing past me and destroying my charge or casually slapping me around for a moment.

  It was a reminder that while I was good, that wasn’t the point. I wasn’t here to win; I was here to learn, to reinforce my foundations. The Trainer forced me to remember my purpose in the skill seven times before the session ended.

  Back in my body, I got up and went through my stretching routine, mainly focusing on my hips and back, did the new stretches Maggie had assigned to me. Once finished, I settled back into the bed and activated the skill again.

  My crystal charge formed again, but this time I took a step away from the mana stream and allowed it to form naturally. Once the mana stream fully coalesced into the figure, I settled into the proper stance and looked up. The Trainer, who’d already formed, had been moving towards me, but paused when it saw me settle in. It considered me for a moment, but backed off and settled in to watch me from across the field.

  It charged at me. There was no subtle escalation in this session. The Trainer began with the same skill level it had ended at. This time I focused entirely on reacting with only what it had taught me. My commitment meant being caught out of position, and occasionally being slightly too slow to fully block something, but I focused fully on following the art being taught to me.

  It beat me twice this session, and both times rather than reset right away, the Trainer stopped. It let the figure form beneath me again and then moved me back to where I had been when I failed. Once I was back, I position it gently worked me through what I had done wrong, and where I’d gotten out of position.

  When my skill session ended this time, I had to mediate for half an hour before I regained enough mana to enter it again. This session followed the same pattern as the last two, except when the Trainer came forward, it did so with a longsword held in both hands.

  It moved with incredible grace; each movement flowed beautifully. Slash transitioned to thrust, to pommel strike seamlessly. It moved with an elegance I attributed to those within the higher ranks of the Military Orders, yet no matter what it did, the Trainer never exceeded a level I couldn’t stop with the right response.

  Its consideration didn’t stop me from making mistakes and by the time the session ended, it’d reached my charge eight times. Unlike the other session, every single strike it landed caused the figure beneath me to burst into a cloud of mana and reform, which I took to mean the System considered those strikes fatal; while some blows the Tainer landed with its fists had been non-lethal.

  I entered a fourth session right away, the sun just now setting after three hours of being within my skill. It’d felt like I’d been training for far longer than just the three hours I had been, however. Each of the session stretched for hours at a time, but no matter how I perceived time, the System only allowed me to remain within my soul space for an hour at a time.

  I went back into my skill two more times, each time the Trainer used a variety of weapons to attack. It cycled through short and longswords, axes, spears, hammers, and daggers. I made mistakes against every weapon that allowed it to reach my charge.

  I weaved around a stab of the Trainer’s dagger while I wrested with it over my shield. We struggled back and forth, but I stopped the Trainer from getting past me by moving with it, forcing it to focus on me rather than on my charge.

  Once I finally had it pinned down, the Trainer broke away and retreated to where it always formed at the start of these sessions. With a flick of its wrists, it dematerialized the dagger, my shield, and the figure behind me.

  In the empty silence of the moment, I squinted up at the sky. The artificial sun seemed brighter; and the reflections the Trainer’s crystalline body always cast flashed brighter than ever before, then faded to dimness.

  The Trainer bowed at the waist; its rigid form perfectly fluid. When the being stood back to its full height, I could swear it looked proud.

  “Congratulations Student.” It said in its chorus of a voice, unknowable voices and accents combining into an eldritch harmony. “May your Path be fruitful.”

  The Trainer nodded a last time in respect before it dematerialized back into a stream of mana that fanned out evenly across the forest of my soul space rather than return to the sky and presumably my core.