Wish upon the Stars (Original Superhero cultivation sci fi litrpg)

[Malcolm Tent]

Baronies. On Stratholme, the undisputed ruler was the Earl. Vanden Nevius was a peak C-ranker that was stuck at the threshold of B-rank after pissing of the Emperor somehow. Even Anna wasn't sure how, apparently asking was considered a taboo, and pissing off the strongest man in the world was a pretty obvious no go. Beneath Nevius the twelve Viscounts stood supreme, D-rankers of varying strengths, each of them having carved out a decent chunk of the planet.

Viscounts, however, didn't micromanage. They were there to collect taxes and be left alone. The real movers and shakers on Stratholme were the E-rankers. The Barons. There were dozens of them, and dozens of Baronies that they ruled, though more than a few had several territories under their sway. As long as you paid up on time, the Viscounts didn't care what you did, so there was quite a bit of social mobility among Barons.

The Robber Barons were the E-rankers who didn't report or owe allegiance directly to a Viscount, and traditionally squabbled over poorer territories like Saltzberg, which was the whole reason we came here. That did NOT, however, mean that Saltzberg didn't already belong to a Baron, which was where Anna came in.

Baron Alexander Clairdon was first on the list. The Baron whose family had possessed this land for the last five hundred years or so was well known for his trade acumen, and until recently his rule had been fairly stable. At least until about a century ago when the neighboring Baron suffered and accident and his son took over. Chancey Highgrave was young, vicious, and had something to prove, and he'd declared open war on Clairdon almost immediately.

Unfortunately for Highgrave, Clairdon, while not particularly talented as a commander, was still much wealthier than the younger man, and had been throwing money at his forces for decades now, slowly whittling down both his own fortune and the Highgrave military. Due to this struggle, an opening in the local power structure was being created, and Camden had come to exploit it.

Because of the way politics was handled on Stratholme, none of the local forces had any wiggle room to try to break Clairdon or Highgrave's hold on their territories, lest they expose their own flanks, since the surrounding Baronies were all fairly weak ones, which made this a uniquely suitable place for someone like Camden, who was hoping to avoid his family politics by establishing himself as an independent.

Since we were here to help him, that meant we needed to be up to date on the information for Clairdon, Highgrave, and the closest neighbors who might risk exposing themselves to attack if the power imbalance got too extreme.

First up was Clairdon. Anna had asked me for a copy of his trading ledger, and had gotten it, but unfortunately for her the man wrote in code, and the decryption was too expensive for me to afford with my stats. She also figured out, after some perusal, that Clairdon didn't keep all his accounting in one place, he actually had four ledgers, and each of them made up a part of the decryption, with the code being written line by line across all four books.

How she knew this I had no idea, but she apparently had a Skill for cracking codes, and while she couldn't just breeze through whatever he'd done, she was able to get enough out of the books to figure out the basics.

Clairdon, as I was told in payment for the first book, was particularly adept trader, specializing in quick ship travel. He had an entire shipping industry setup along the river that ran through his territory. Because of this trade flexibility, his gear was better than most, and he put all those resources into heavy infantry. Every man a Might focused Job called a Cavalier and decked out in absurd amounts of heavy armor.

Highgrave, on the other hand, focused more on mounted warriors, and fielded mainly cavalry units called Hussars, a form of light cavalry known for their speed and mobility. The absurd overgearing Clairdon had done to his Cavaliers made them a nightmare for the Hussars, since harrying them didn't really do shit when you couldn't hurt them, though Highgrave continued to put pressure on the older Baron by using his forces to attack shipyards and other land based supply lines.

This had been happening for decades now, and both sides were bleeding men and resources at this point, hence Camden's presence.

After she explained the main players, Anna filled us in on the two closest Barons most likely to make a play if opportunity presented itself. Simon Prentiss and Albert Carrey. Prentiss was an entrenched Baron with centuries of time watching over a lucrative F-ranked iron mine, and his specialty was heavy cavalry. Slower than the Hussars but much harder to stop, his lack of mobility meant he was unlikely to exploit any small openings, and would only be a problem if everything went to shit.

Carrey, however, was much more likely to interfere at the slightest hint of weakness. The Carrey family possessed a force of powerful Dragoons. A type of mounted infantry that they used to devastating effect, riding to battle for mobility and then dismounting to fight on foot.

I wondered if Camden knew all of this, and when I asked her about it Anna just laughed me off. "Camden Tolbert is a scion of one of the great houses of the Empire. His information resources far outstrip my own, and even if he tried to keep things low key there's no chance he doesn't have detailed dossiers on every Barony in this area. His main weakness is that since he's making a patchwork militia, he can't field any specialized units like the others. The Tolbert family specializes in training Hoplites, but there's no way he's going to be able to specialize a bunch of random mercs into a new Job quickly enough for it to be helpful. I hope he brought a good general, because putting together a battle plan with a force like that will be a nightmare."

I had no clue how the Job system worked, though knowing you could change Jobs didn't surprise me. I knew all of them would have also been born with native abilities, though they would be Skills now that they had Jobs. "Alright, so...how does this work then?" I asked her after she'd given me the run down on all the players. "I know we'll be training, though I'm shocked Camden was able to buy property here when it's so obvious he's going to try to take the territory."

"Clairdon had no choice." Anna said with a snicker. "Until Tolbert actually declares, he's a visiting noble, and one from a powerful family. Not to mention Clairdon needs the money to keep Highgrave at bay. Tolbert would have still showed up to try to take the territory even if he'd said no, he'd have just been harder to pin down. Worst case he could have set up in the woods or something and Clairdon would have had no idea where the attacks were coming from."

That sounded stupid as hell to me, but politics usually did. "Isn't he worried about the defenses on that place though? Like if he digs in and builds it up it'll be impossible to get him out." We'd seen some of the defensive measured Camden was taking, and they would be hell to get past.

"Nobles rarely assault each others homes." She said with a shake of the head. "Any core dwelling will be heavily defended, and it's considered bad form. The only exception is the final push to take a territory, but it takes years to reach that point."

I groaned. "This is all such nonsense. It's more like a game than an actual war. We WILL be having actual battles right?"
"They call them skirmishes, but yes." She chuckled. "For quick and easily struck targets, raids are common, but in order to negotiate for border areas that could be contested by either, skirmishes are held. Basically both sides bring a whole bunch of soldiers and line up on either side of a field and then beat the hell out of each other for hours until one side is routed or surrenders."

That was more like what I'd expected, though it ALSO sounded stupid when phrased like that. It would be good enough though, at least for our purposes. "Alright." I said with a sigh. "Two more wishes. Payment for the first will be a map of the area complete with territorial markings and up to date affiliation. Second will be a geas from you binding you not to mention my presence here to anyone without my explicit permission, nor to allude to it through less direct means in any way you suspect may result in my discovery."

Her lips split in a wide grin. "Well someone knows all the tricks doesn't he? That's a tightly worded geas. Fine. For my fifth wish I want a new room for my inn. An underground space no one will be aware of, where I can conduct business of a...less than savory nature."

Wish detected. Grant wish?

Moving some dirt around wasn't exactly a stretch for me, though the Impact this planet had made it quite a bit tougher than it might otherwise have been. Still I could manage, and I told her so. Once that was confirmed she went ahead and had me create the room under the storage area we were already in. I walked to the back corner and discharged the building static into the ground, and the area in front of me glowed purple for a moment before the energy faded.

Reaching down according to what my power had told me as it was working, I pressed hard on the floor in a specific spot near the wall, and the stone dropped away to reveal a small wooden ladder. We all climbed down, and a switch near the wall lit up the whole area, exposing the new room.

It was...empty. She'd asked for a room and it was a room, with wooden posts supporting a ceiling structure that held up the stone and nearby earth. I whistled at the sight. I'd never used my power like that before, but realistically it wasn't a stretch. I could easily vanish dirt with Pit of Despair already, and a few wooden beams wasn't too much more effort. Seeing it all together like this just drove home the absurdity that my wish power was capable of though.

Anna grinned widely, then held up a finger, vanishing for a few minutes and coming back with a rolled up paper. She passed it to me. Unrolling it slightly I checked it over, and sure enough it was a map of the area with plenty of notations. "Last one." She said eagerly. "For now at least. I wish this room was tied into the rest of my wards. Not too many runes since there's not much in here. Should be doable, especially with permission. In exchange you get me under that geas."

Wish detected. Grant wish?

I confirmed, repeating the earlier geas to make sure there was no tricks. As the static built, she glanced around the room happily. "This shouldn't be hard to manage." She repeated. "My place is under recursive thaumaturgy wards. Each individual piece of the building is tied to a wardstone which in turn is tied to the building as a whole. You hit any part of the inn, and it gets redirected to the wardstone and back to the building in its totality, so you can't break any single piece of the building without demolishing the whole thing, and there are a LOT of pieces."

As I took her hands, discharging the static, my symbol appeared on her forehead for a second before fading, and runes began to appear on the beams and the tiles in the ceiling. They flashed once before fading, and the wish completed, my last for the day, confirming our safety here and concluding our business. I had to admit it had given me a lot to think about. I needed to talk to Callie about everything I'd learned. But first, I should spend some time with my sister.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next day we did another information swap with Anna (Callie had more questions), but the day after we'd already gotten what we needed, so it was back to the normal point swap. I got forty two Fantasy from Chelsea, swapping for forty two Might to fill out her physical stats a bit before training. With everyone having done their own thing for a few days, it was officially time to sign up with Camden.

When we arrived back at the manor, it looked a lot less empty. They'd carried in a ton of furniture and the place had transformed so thoroughly you'd have thought everything had been here for years. I whistled as we entered. "Do you think somebody here has an Interior Decoration Skill? I have to assume that's a thing somewhere, everything else is. I wonder what that would look like."

"Expensive." Came a familiar voice as Camden stepped into view. "It would look expensive, which is why no, no one here has it. Do you know how much experience it takes to rank up a Skill like that? The sheer number of houses and buildings you'd have to decorate even to make it to a point where you could apply it to other things?"

I didn't, though to be fair, I was biased. DS Mastery alone was something almost no one else would have been able to rank up. Forgetting the experience needed to start, just the sheer number of Skills I'd had to accrue to fold them in before my intermediate rank up was absurd for any non candidate. Focusing on our host though, I nodded solemnly. "Baron Tolbert."

He waved a hand. "Camden, when we're not in an official setting. Nobody has time for that Baron Tolbert nonsense. So, which one of you is my new healer? I assume you're here to take my offer?"

Jessie stepped forward, holding out a hand, and Camden grinned, stepping forward to take it, though he pulled back slightly as a miniature Randall poked his head over her shoulder and growled. Jessie shushed her bear. "Sorry about that Camden. Randall is a bit protective, especially in his small form. He prefers to guard me at a full size though, so when I start healing I'll need a sizeable tent."

The bear grumbled and settled back down, but the E-ranker was barely bothered. "Of course. I'll also be assigning you a guard. You can pick anyone you like. It's important to make sure you're well defended. No Baron would attack a healer in service to another noble, but anyone at the Lord rank will be free to try to kidnap or eliminate you. Better safe than sorry."

"Bethy." She said bluntly, pointing to the tiny vampire. "I'm positive no one at the...Lord rank, will be able to overpower her." She didn't mention the strong likelihood that our eccentric friend would be incapable of obeying any sort of military directions and would probably start some kind of camp riot after she got bored of trying on new uniforms. That actually solved a lot of problems I'd been worried about.

The vampire pouted. "Awww, I wanted to strike fear into the hearts of my enemies as I crushed them under my snazzy platform heel." She glanced down at her shoes, which were platform (though I wasn't really qualified to comment on their snazziness) then shrugged. "Oh well, I'm sure me and Jessie will have so much fun together. And I can let Luggage out to play! He's been so cramped in my Domain. He doesn't like to snooze as much as Poptarts and Donuts."

She waved a hand and a hulking black dog with glowing red eyes appeared in the middle of the room, shocking everyone who wasn't us as Luggage growled menacingly at the newcomers. Camden just closed his eyes and sighed. "Why do I get the impression that you all are going to be even more of a headache than having a healer will be a benefit?"

"Because you're a smart guy?" Said Benny with a snicker. "But you'll sign with us anyway, because we're a hell of an asset. Now, where are the contracts we'll be signing. Shane, Celine, and I are all going to need to go over them. Shouldn't take long, not with Focus like ours."

We'd decided to try to get the best possible terms out of signing up, so Benny's Haggle Skill, Celine's negotiation experience and political savvy, and my contract knowledge would all be put to good use here. Snapping his finger, Camden summoned a tall rail thin man with slicked back white hair and a well sculpted mustache, who handed him several sheets of paper.

"We had these made up. If you'll follow me I can have my lawyer walk you through them." He led us into a study, where a massive dark wood desk sat on plush carpet amid walls lined with bookshelves. A woman with red hair in a ponytail wearing an expensive looking suit sat at the desk, seemingly waiting. "This." He said as we entered. "Is Patricia Smallbrook. The Smallbrook family are some of the best lawyers in the system, and are known for skill and discretion."

Lawyer was apparently a job on the Empire's roles, from what I gathered. "So, you'll all be joining our little operation?" Said Patricia with a smile. "Glad yo have you aboard." Her green eyes twinkled as she gestured to the three chairs on the other side of the desk. I had to wonder if those had been there the whole time or if she set them out before we arrived. Either way it was impressive.

I sat at the far end, followed by Benny and then Celine. The contracts were laid out in front of us in stacks. "These are all the same right? Except Jessie's, which I imagine is more detailed given her particular status here. So we can just each read one and then adjust them as we go?"

"By all means." She said cordially. "You can each go over the healer contract one at a time if you like. We have nothing to hide."

That was a nice sentiment, but it didn't change what we needed to do. I picked up the contract closest to me and started parsing the language. It was mostly pretty clear cut, with a clearly stated term of employment, mention of the benefits we'd be giving up in exchange for our armor, and a few target goals for us to hit in terms of training and battles won. I had to stop a few times to clarify certain terms native to the local legal statutes, but for the most part they'd been pretty fair to us.

Benny, on the other hand, was having a field day, changing terms and altering certain stipulations when it came to our armor. Increasing the material threshold, potential enchantments, and he caught a tricky piece limit on our armor sets that probably would have screwed us. Between Inventing and Haggling he knew exactly what we should aim for, even if he wasn't really in a position to get it.

Once he found those, Celine took over, her noble negotiation skills making for quite a challenge to the smiling lawyer, whose grin became less smug and more acknowledging by the second as our resident elf worked to get us the best deal. It was probably closer to what Patricia was used to, given the Fairyland also used the Job system (alongside the Domain system we'd seen in the tournament).

Apparently the legal terms were more familiar to Celine, because she and the lawyer were bartering back and forth without pausing for breath, changing materials, enchantments, and even equipment types rapidfire as they negotiated. I grabbed Jessie's contract as they bartered, finished it (after making notes) then passed it to Benny who did the same before handing to a just finishing up Celine, and back into the negotiation they went.

Even with my Focus it was hard to follow, though I did hear her bring up Randall's armor, which brought them into an entirely new phase of bargaining. As we'd talked about, Callen had given up his right to new equipment for Randall, since he was already pretty well geared. Camden had to be consulted on a few of the changes, given the huge size difference between the bear and the swordsman, but eventually we came to an accord.

After a second time going over everything for each of us, just to make sure we hadn't missed anything, we finalized the contracts and each signed our own. Six months with an option to re-up for another two, as well as possible command training for any of us who reached E-rank.

We'd agreed to leave four months for travel to the conclave, given how long the trip here had taken. Once we finished all of our negotiating, Camden poured us each a snifter of brandy to toast our new partnership, and filled us in on exactly what we could expect.

"Well, first thing is you'll be staying in the barracks." He clarified as we all retired to a library with a whole host of overstuffed chairs. "Male and female barracks are sepeaate to prevent fraternization. It can be a distraction. You'll get weekends as time off, though we recommend you don't stay up too late because you'll be expected to be awake and ready to start your day at Reveille each morning."

Callie's expression darkened at BOTH of those things, we'd gotten used to bunking together, and she hated being woken up early. We'd expected them though, so she didn't say anything. "Any rules about healing?" I asked cautiously. "We used to have a trainer who insisted we go without. Said it was better for muscle memory."

"It is." Admitted Camden. "But most of the people here have had physical training already. Formations are more of a mental thing. There will be combat drills to train you with your standard issue weapons, but for the most part we'll be working on formations, since we don't have time to get people into the Jobs we would normally prefer. Healing should be fine. Be warned though, I can't guarantee you constant access to the healer's tent, even if you are friends."

I knew we'd have to work around injuries, both training and battlefield, but luckily for us I could act as an intermediary because of my stored heal bursts. As long as heals were allowed we'd be fine. I was pretty sure we would need them too, this planet's Impact was going to make the whole experience here hell.

The excitement I'd been feeling had only grown. This was going to be such a good environment to correct some of the bad habits and weaknesses I had from growing up a mortal. Maybe not erase them completely, but it would be more than enough to improve my foundations as an Ascendant and a combatant. Even if we hadn't been planning to hit E-rank within a month or two and then get bumped up to command, I'd still have signed up.

Of course, at nine thousand plus, Callie and I could do it easily, and I was sure the others would be at E well before we left the planet. My goal was to have us all there by the time we hit the conclave, because I hoped it would help them take us more seriously. Plus we didn't know where it would be held, and if it was a B-rank planet F-rankers like us wouldn't even be able to stand up there let alone function.

With all the negotiations finished and our brandy sipped (apparently it wasn't a chugging alcohol) we thanked Camden and split up, Patricia offering to escort the girls to the womens barracks. I gave Callie a quick kiss before she left, hugged Jessie and my sister, and then followed Camden himself to the mens barracks to set up my space, a much easier feat with a spatial ring. Then I got in bed and went to sleep. I had to get to bed early, tomorrow was my first day of basic training.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

In my life, I'd been through plenty of unique and often unpleasant experiences. I'd had ribs broken, been stabbed in the gut, been beaten, and a host of other torments. All of these things had sort of crowded my memory, and made it difficult to remember EARLIER pain and hardship, which paled in comparison. Yet, despite the scale of it being dramatically different, there was one pre-ascendant hell that I still remembered with absolute clarity. Alarms.

I HATED waking up to alarms. It was the one guaranteed way to completely ruin the quality of my sleep and destroy any sense of wellbeing I gained from slumber. I looked back on the few times I'd found it necessary to awaken to an alarm with disdain and irritation.

The first morning in the training camp cleansed me of all those memories. I no longer looked back on alarms with loathing or disdain. My entire concept of an unpleasant wakeup was washed clean by the absolute HELL that was "Reivelle'.

Once could be forgiven for not understanding how awful it was from the word itself. Reveille sounded light and airy, almost charming. It did NOT sound, just from hearing it, like a wall of screeching sound that pounded your eardrums like a drop hammer as you writhed in impotent agony on your bed, clawed from slumber by the shrieking wail of a sound that reminded you of nothing so much as a flock of geese being run through a rusty trash compactor.

I rolled clear out of my bed, hitting the floor with a surprising amount of force and grunting as I dragged myself up off the floor, disoriented and in legitimate pain from what was basically a sonic attack. I looked around, finding my friends for the most part just as disoriented, though Abel and Callen both seemed only minorly annoyed as they calmly got up and started changing into our new uniforms.

Armor would be waiting until the end of the first week, as per the contract, at least our personal sets. We'd have an assigned set of gear for battles so we would be a cohesive part of the unit and those would be passed out fairly soon.

Once we finished changing we were called outside, and we all stumbled out the door, blinking sleepily in the far too bright morning sun, the far too cold air like razor blades on our skin as we puffed out small clouds of steam. Camden was there, as were the girls, on the other side, and a series of stern looking figures I didn't recognize but pretty much already hated just from context.

"Good morning." Called Camden sadistically (he may have just been speaking normally, I'll admit I might have been projecting). "Welcome to your first day of training. Beside me are your instructors. Each of them is an experienced warrior proficient in a certain skill, and they'll be passing those skills on to you. Weapons training, formations, conditioning, and any number of other important and useful skillsets will be yours to acquire in this camp."

He gestured to the tall, dark skinned man beside him with a close cropped dark beard and piercing green eyes. "This is Commander Hamill. He will be in charge of your physical conditioning drills. While most of you are already familiar with combat, the ability to function and push through pain on a C-ranked planet is one that must be honed. It will be unpleasant, but it will probably save your lives in the field."

I grimaced at the thought, but he wasn't wrong. Being able to get tired again was a big change, and learning to work through it would be integral to being able to function in combat. Most of us were so far from human on lower ranked planets we barely even remembered what getting tired was. I'd already experienced some of that when we got here, but I had a feeling I'd be gaining a new appreciation for it before the day was done.

Camden continued, introducing the other trainers, then turned and nodded to Hamill, who stepped forward, glaring coldly at us. He gestured behind him. "Between those two buildings, one of which is the mess hall and the other being the healer's quarters, you will find a freshly dragged dirt path. At the beginning of that path you will find a rack, and on that rack are weighted vests. You will each take a vest and begin running laps. You will not stop until given permission."

Forcing myself to start moving, I wondered why in the name of the Revenant I had been excited about this? My head hurt, my eyes hurt, my fucking skin hurt, and that was just from the abrupt wakeup. Benny, who was stumbling along next to me, looked almost as bad. Despite having much lower stats, his might was four hundred points higher than mine because he was so specialized. Lucky bastard.

The rest of the company looked even worse, and I was deeply thankful for the extra Impact we'd picked up in the Glade, which was clearly blunting our reaction to the pressure more than I had realized. Of course, once we reached the rack and took down the vests, I quickly realized that wasn't going to be as helpful as I'd have liked.

Strapping the thing on, I started running, almost staggering under the weight at first before I forced myself to push through it. Callie fell into step next to me, dark circles under her eyes. Even in agony of my own, I had to shoot her a teasing grin. "So...how's your morning going?"

"Jump in a hole." She growled, her irritated gaze locked on the distant horizon as we ran. "A deep one. Full of spikes."

Laughter really was the best medicine, because my cackle of glee made me feel infinitely better as I picked up my pace a bit. "Love you too honey." Taking pity on my girlfriend, I left her to wallow as I turned to talk to Benny. "So, what do you think they'll serve for breakfast. I'm fucking starving."

My best friend's face took on a greenish tinge. "Don't bring up food right now. Imagining eating is making me motion sick. I'm glad they didn't feed us before this. We'd be puking our guts out."

The mental imagine made me cringe. He was right, but I wish he'd phrased it different. As we ran, I was reminded of all the terrible sensations I'd felt as a normal human being. My knees were throbbing, my lungs were burning, and I had a stitch in my side. Even my Vitality wasn't enough to offset the pain.

I desperately wanted to heal myself, but part of the contracts had been amended for this exact situation. We WERE allowed to heal, but only after the entire day's training was done. I now thoroughly understood why Camden hadn't been worried about it. We were still getting the full effect of the training this way.

In fact, knowing I could have healed myself at any time and been full of energy was making the pain WORSE, because it all felt so damned pointless. I just had to push through it, watching the blue leaved trees as they slowly crept by, trying not to focus on the agony that was my entire body and losing myself in the staccato rhythm of feet pounding dirt.
We ran. And ran. And ran some more. Did I mentioned the running? Finally, Hamill stepped out into the path in front of us, signifying it was time to stop.

Rather than coming to a halt, most of us just dropped to the dirt where we were, caked in sweat and panting as we twitched on the ground. The impassive looking Commander nodded. "Good. That was exactly what we needed." He looked down at the path, a circular track we'd run dozens of times, and tapped it with his boot. "You packed the dirt down. Now the track is ready for use. All of you hit the mess hall. Once you eat we can start that actual training."

We all stared at him, horrified, before glancing down at the dirt path which, as he'd said, had been packed down hard by our boots as we ran.

I almost wanted to say something, but I was saved by the fact that my lungs were in too much agony to easily speak. So just like everyone else I watched in silence as he turned and strode off. Crawling over to Benny, I used him as a handhold to lift myself up, climbing to my feet painfully. I considered taking off the vest, but decided against it since no one else was.

Benny glared at me from the ground, and I almost offered a hand, but I didn't think I had the strength to actually lift him, especially in his vest. Instead, I walked over and offered my hand to Callie, who was much smaller and weighed less IN the vest then Benny did without one.

The vests were weighted with more than physical weight too. They were F-ranked materials themselves, which added to the strain. My best friend flipped me off but crawled over to help Celine, and then we all headed for the mess hall as a group. I debated finding the others, but I was pretty sure they could track us down, and I was too sore to delay. It felt like it took an hour to drag myself to the building indicated, but apparently it was only a few minutes, because there was still plenty of food when we arrived.

I'd expected shitty food, but they'd kind of gone all out. Eggs, bacon, sausage, a full breakfast including fresh squeezed juice from some native fruit called a gwunch (disgusting name, but a pretty decent taste, kind of like a mix between a guava and a pineapple) that I had four glasses of.

Mentally, I knew I shouldn't fill up. I knew that it would make working out worse, but between the hunger of having recently woken up and the hunger of my body trying to repair itself, I had no choice but to pig out. It. Tasted. Amazing. I didn't know if that was due to the cooking or my hunger and I didn't care. I just devoured the stuff.

Once I finished eating, I shoved the plate forward and let my head thunk onto the table, groaning in relief at the sheer ecstasy of not moving. I heard a chuckle and had to lever my head up to see a lanky, olive skinned blonde woman and a short, powerfully built tan man with red hair. They both looked... better than I did. The woman grinned at me. "First time doing an adjustment drill?" She asked with a chuckle.

I meant to respond, but all that came out was something like. "Urgh." Which just made both of them laugh harder.
"It gets easier." She promised. Once you acclimate to the pressure. The thing they don't tell you is the drills don't just help you push through the pain, they also teach you how to properly leverage your muscles. Might is what decides your output, but just because you're strong doesn't mean you know how to engage your strength. It's an important skill, and not one that many people bother with."

I hadn't really thought of it that way, but it did make sense. "Thanks." I grunted, managing speech this time. "Solomon." I jerked my head in either direction to indicate Benny and Callie. "Clockwork, Nightstrike." Then nodded to our fourth party member, who also seemed surprisingly unbothered. "Celine."

The woman laughed again. "Loretta. And this is Owen. We've been mercs for a few decades, though we're new to the planet. Tell you what, stick with us an we'll help you navigate the ins and outs of the first few days." I nodded gratefully and forced my hand up, holding it out slowly to shake. Which they both did. Two new friends on the first day wasn't bad. I just wished I wasn't so sure my day was going to get much worse from here on out.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Hamill's comment about us not having even started yet was sadly not an exaggeration. If anything, it was probably an understatement. Pain from running was quickly replaced by pain from squats, push-ups, pull-ups, crunches, burpees, and a dozen other exercises designed to hit every single muscle we had.

I expected my body to give out, but Hamill seemed to have an almost mystical ability to see when we were about to give up and give us the exact least amount of rest necessary for our Vitality to get us functional again.

We spent HOURS working out. Nothing but exercise all day. I forgot what it felt like not to be in pain, and when the day finally ended and we were allowed to crawl back to our barracks, the first thing I did was heal burst myself, Benny, Callie, and Celine. Since they were the ones actually with me at the end, I used some charges, but the others all just went to see Jessie, since I could only hold ten charges at a time.

"That is SO much better." I groaned as I felt energy and life fill me. I wasn't wired like I normally would be, since all the energy was taken up healing, so the life force inside me just felt like a soothing warm bath. It was absolutely amazing and just what I needed after such a hard day.

Callie, curled against me, groaned weakly. "That was hell. Why would anyone do that to themselves. We're going to have to do that every single day?"

"It gets easier." Said Abel from a cot where Jessie was finishing up pumping power into him. "It's all a matter of discipline. Plus you two are close to E-rank anyway. Once you rank up you'll just be doing your command training. You have what? A few months of this tops?"

The thought of repeating this for months or even weeks was horrifying, but at the same time I couldn't wait to rank up. "So, does anyone feel...stronger?" I asked vaguely. "Like we didn't get any Might from that, but they said it would help, so...did it?"

"I think so." Said Benny from his own cot. Jessie had cleared out the building when we showed up, not that there had been anyone there but staff. Her healing abilities were absurd, and she hadn't had any long term patients because of it. We were all meeting in here to catch up. Benny seemed to be the most enthusiastic. "I feel more in control of myself. Might gives us the raw power, but I haven't been engaging it well. Hell, I couldn't even move some of those muscles before."

That I could understand. I'd had more than a few muscles that I didn't remember ever straining before, and those workouts had damned sure hit all of them. I was already thinking over some of the movements in my staff forms and trying to make small improvements, as well as building a framework for my next form.

Nat, who had been quiet up to this point, spoke up as Jessie got to her. "I feel...better. Not good, but better. This was a good distraction, and I feel stronger and more confident. There's something freeing about learning to use your body better. But is this really all we're going to do here? Just train until we can't stand? Because I have to admit that sounds
pretty pointless over such a long period of time."

"Of course not." I said with a shake of my head. "We're going to be in actual battles too. Plus we get weekends off. Hell, we could probably take nights too. There was nothing in the contract requiring us to stick around here, as long as we're up and ready to work at Reivelle. They probably assumed we'd be too exhausted. Maybe they underestimated what Jessie could do."

She shook her head. "They didn't, but you're right about the loophole. In fact, I got a message from Camden earlier, inviting all of us to dinner at the manor. I think he might have dug up more about who you two are. He seemed interested in talking to Nat and Shane in particular."

I grimaced. That was the downside to becoming better known. We weren't a household name or anything, but enough people knew about us that a concentrated search effort should turn up something. Camden had access to Tolbert sources, or at least something like them, so figuring out who I was probably wasn't too tough. I wasn't exactly subtle. Chelsea should be safe enough though, with mom covering her tracks. Luckily we'd brought a ton of people so she was likely to just blend in.

"I could eat." Said Callie, to the surprise of exactly no one. She and Abel were our biggest foodies. "Is everyone ok to go though? When is it?"

"An hour and a half." Said Jessie with a nod. "And yeah, they'll be fine by then. Your workout finished at six, and the dinner is at eight. As thorough as the damage is, it's not actually too harmful. Your natural Vitality was allowed to patch you up periodically throughout the day. I've been reading some of the healer books on my downtime, and the way Vitality interacts with Impact on planets like this is fascinating."

I smiled at her. "Glad to hear you're learning a lot. The contract mentioned a mentor, did he already have a healer around to teach you?"

"Nah, there's a part timer he pays like a mercenary. She works with a dozen other local nobles too, and is only available one week out of the month. They have some expensive stasis bandages that can hold someone together if they get hurt badly, but if something doesn't kill you immediately as an Ascendant it usually won't kill you at all. Everyone with less severe wounds either waits for the healer or just walks it off."

Despite knowing how hardy Ascendants were, that still sounded awful to me. "Did we bring anything to wear to a fancy dinner?" I asked Callie. "I don't pay attention to that stuff. I guess we could just go in costume though."
She nodded. "I doubt he'd put us through all that and then expect us dressed to the nines. That said, it may not be necessary." Flashing a grin at the bored looking vampire fake snoozing in the corner, she called loudly. "Hey Bethy, do you want to dress everybody up?"

Bethy's eyes snapped open, glowing an ominous red and shining with a (much less literal) intensity that scared me more than her bloodlust did. "I can...dress you all?" She said, her voice faint and kind of dreamy. "Are you sure?"

"No!" I said quickly. "She's not sure. None of us are sure. Go back to sleep. This has all been a dream!"

Bethy's lips slowly spread in the most unsettling grin I'd ever seen, exposing fangs that I was almost sure weren't usually that long or sharp. "Nope!" She crowed as she blurred to her feet. "Not a dream! A dream come true! Oh, I have so many ideas. Does Shane need to wear that creepy mask?" She asked Callie, ignoring my presence entirely.

"Yes." I said firmly, positive it wouldn't matter. Luckily my girlfriend also said yes, and Bethy pouted as she started circling around me.

"Oh, fine." She said as she pulled a tape measure from...somewhere. "Earth tones then." She started measuring me, shoving my arms up, twisting my head, and basically tying me up like a pretzel to get a proper idea of my measurements. Snapping her fingers, she whipped out a black button up with obsidian buttons, shoving it into my hands alongside a pair of brown leather pants, a long brown leather coat, and a pair of knee length black boots with a pirate cuff on them.
Without asking my opinion of them, she turned me and shoved me toward the other side of the room where there were curtains around some of the unoccupied beds. I gave Callie a panicked look but she just shrugged apologetically.

Bethy, as we all knew, absolutely adored fashion. She was constantly wearing new gowns and dresses, and coming up with designs. I was pretty sure she actually had a tailoring Skill, though she'd never confirmed it. I knew Aida and Tracey, her thralls, both had fashion and design related Skills, though they weren't their primaries. But Bethy hadn't brought them along because she didn't think they would let her have any fun.

As I changed into the clothes, I could hear grunts and squeaks as she contorted and bullied all the others with her measuring tape. I think she'd been planning this for a while, actually, because she somehow had something sized for everyone, though she did make a few adjustments apparently (and I was grateful not to have needed those, given the yelps of pain from needle prodding) before sending each person off to their own curtained area to change.

I admit I hid back there for a few minutes after I finished, afraid to get her attention again, but eventually she barked out. "Present!" And all of us shuffled out into the main room again.

She'd pulled a mirror from her ring, and when I saw my own image I had to admit I didn't look bad. The clothes went with my mask, and the whole thing gave me a mysterious and dashing image. Callie was wearing a pitch black off the shoulder ballgown, the bodice of which was studded with some kind of shiny little scales like an onyx fish. Benny was in a copper colored outfit that looked like a cross between a tux and the leathers gunslingers wore in old movies, while she'd dressed Gabriel in a gunmetal grey smoking jacket and black pants over a grey silk shirt.

Abel was wearing a silver and black long coat over a grey shirt and black pants, while Chelsea had a black and white dress that matched her hair and Mel was in a crimson gown that went with her mask. Celine and Jessie both had hunter green dresses, while Nat's was black, and Callen, Cark, and Valk were in black suits. All the clothes were matched to our masks (for those that had them), since Bethy had taken my insistence on wearing mine as something standard. I wondered how many outfits she'd made for each of us to have such a wide selection.

"You all look so COOL!" She squealed happily. "I new that silver thread would set off Andy's mask, and Gabe you look so handsome in grey."

The uncomfortable look crusader grimaced at his clothes. "Why do they all get suits and I have to wear this. I look like a lothario."

I snickered at his old fashioned word choice, but shut up when Bethy's eyes snapped to me, narrowing in annoyance. I'm not ashamed to admit I stood up straight and avoided eye contact. She was even scarier like this than in combat. "You look very nice." She said in a tone that threatened imminent and dramatic violence to anyone who disagreed. "Doesn't he everyone?"

We all chorused 'yes' at the same time, and she gave a vindicated 'hmph' and a nod as she slipped behind another curtain to change into a blue velvet gown with black lace along the arms. Callie, pleased we were all finished getting dressed and completely indifferent to the terror we'd just been through somehow gestured to Jessie. "Now, how about you hand me the invitation, and we can go over a bit of noble etiquette with Celine before we go.

Our healer passed my girlfriend the envelope, which she opened and read over, apparently gleaning some information from what was written there. Then she passed it to Celine, who bit her lip in thought, then gestured us into the center of the room. "I'm not sure how necessary it'll be." Said the elf with a determined expression. "But I'll do my best." Somehow, I suspected this would be worse than the training.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After getting dressed, we made our way up to the manor, mostly mentally exhausted from the ordeal of being dress up dolls for Bethy. When we reached the house (which looked much more imposing at night) the door opened without any prompting, revealing Alister Morgan, in all his seneschal-y glory. "Ah, Master Solomon and Lady Nightstrike, welcome back. Might I take your coats?"

He stepped back, ushering us in, and said nothing to anyone else. It took a minute for me to realize that he didn't KNOW anyone else, and I needed to introduce them. I gave introductions across the party, not mentioning my relation to Chelsea just in case. When I finished (we didn't hand over our coats and he didn't press) , he bowed formally with an aristocratic flourish of his arm. "It is lovely to meet you all. I am Alister Morgan, Baron Tolbert's seneschal. Welcome to the Baron's home."

We were escorted to the dining room, where a massive white clothed table was bedecked with all sorts of china plates full of food and crystal glasses next to bottles of wine, whiskey, juice, soda, and a few drinks I didn't actually recognize. Camden sat at the head of the table, eating a truly massive steak next to a heaping pile of mashed potatoes. When he spotted us, he swallowed and grinned. "Sorry I started early. I'm not particularly patient. Come on in and take a seat."

We did, and as we sat down, a flurry of servants came out to put napkins on our laps and pour the drinks for us. The bottles were all sealed and were opened fresh in front of us, presumably to demonstrate that they weren't poisoned. I wondered how cutthroat politics got here if they needed to make a big show of that, but shut the thought down as I picked out a nice grape soda for my meal.

Jessie, who had been the invitee (though Callie and I were namechecked) beamed at Camden. "Thank you so much for the invite. The food looks lovely. I was surprised to get this invitation on the first day here."

"Lot of surprises today." He said with a smirk. "But I wanted to reach out and talk about a few things. Contracts are done, of course, but I needed to speak with you all about some of the information I'd managed to dig up. I'm sure you know what I mean. Still, no need to be rude, lets get everyone's plates sorted before we start the shop talk. My chefs outdid themselves. I even had them set a place for your ursine companion."

He gestured to a pillow next to the table with a large metal platter set on top. Jessie grinned and placed Randall, who she was still carrying, on the ground. "Do you mind it he makes himself a bit more comfortable?" She asked innocently. "He's normally bigger than this, and he likes to spread out when he eats."

"By all means." He said with a wave. "Plenty of room." And there was, this dining room was absolutely huge. Jessie pulled out her necklace focused it on the bear, and spun the star. Randall shifted in size, expanding to become a larger, though still not full sized, version of himself. Camden whistled. "I see what you mean. I assume he'd prefer meat?" He gestured to the table. "Feel free to select whatever you'd like, the servants will plate it for him."

She did, and I reached out, starting to load my own plate up. Camden didn't seem to mind, so clearly we were fine to make our own food. I grabbed some of everything I could reach. Potatoes, beef, vegetables, a kind of savory bread pudding dish I'd never seen before, and I even ladled some soup into a small bowl to eat with my meal.

"So." I said after a few bites. "What exactly have you heard about us? Given your resources, I'm not shocked you dug up a bit. Solomon isn't a unique name, but Nightstrike isn't too common, and in conjunction we gave you quite a bit to go on. I don't want to give anything away you didn't find on your own."

He grinned, tipping his head in acknowledgment. "The basics. Lady Nightstrike is a godslayer, which is not a title many people have, obviously." Callie started to clarify, but he held up a hand. "There were extenuating circumstances, I know. If not the tale would be in the mouth of every information broker and storyteller in the five factions. But still, it made enough waves for me to get wind of it with some digging."

"You planning to advertise?" I said dryly. "Telling people you have a godslayer in your army would be good press. Even moreso when we rank up, which as I'm sure you guessed, won't take long."

Shrugging, he made an uncertain noise. "Well...I considered it. If it were just Nightstrike I probably would have. But Solomon was part of that story too. Solomon, who is a descendant of the Wishmaster, and a candidate to inherit his office. A godslayer's reputation is a powerful thing, but I think access to wishes would be more useful for me at the moment. After all, not all the notoriety from releasing your feats would be good."

"Enemies would be bound to be as common as friends." I said stoically. "So you're interested in access to wishes, I can understand that. You do know, of course, that payment has to be rendered for things like that? I seem to remember you being a bit light on cash."

He grimaced, looking around. "You're not wrong. But there are other potential avenues of compensation. I have this army here, and I'm planning to use it to make a place for myself here. You'll be ranking up soon, and there are multiple territories on offer. Perhaps we might come to an...arrangement. Would becoming landed Barons be of interest to you?"

I blinked at that. "Can we...even do that? We're not citizens, can we claim territory?" We weren't going to be staying, but we had more than enough people that we might be able to leave someone to run things. Having our own territory wasn't exactly something I wanted to turn down out of hand.

"You can, though without a noble Job you couldn't be added to the Empire's roles." He said contemplatively. "There are substitutions that can be made to handle renown distribution to people within your territory, but without access to the roles you would be stuck taking physical taxes. It would be a substantial loss of functionality compared to what a normal noble might have."

I glanced at Celine curiously. We DID have a noble in the group. We could theoretically have her act as an intermediary. It would help speed up her growth too. "Would the noble in question need to be present? Or could we leave someone to watch the territory in their place?"

He paused, mulling it over. "Possibly. I know Alister can act in my stead when I'm gone, and provided the noble had a means of distributing the renown as necessary, I don't see why it wouldn't work. I take it that means you're interested in my proposition?"

Callie was incredibly interested in having roots somewhere after hearing about my discussion with Anna. Wishes provided a method of upgrading territory (albeit slowly at my level) that other people wouldn't have access to. I had plenty of spare wishes to use, and Callie had enough points coming in to use them as payment without worrying too much about slowing down her growth.

The point was, we were building a faction. A small one, but a faction nonetheless, and we needed a base. Callus wasn't going to work given it was only psuedo D-rank, but a real C-ranked planet like Stratholme would be able to hold our people and even allow them to rank up for quite a while. Not to mention having Camden as an ally would give us access to his training methods and might help us build an ACTUAL army. There was a lot of pro's to this. I'd have to discuss with Celine to see if she was willing, but given her wish to improve alongside Benny it didn't sound like a stretch.

"So, you promise me future territory in exchange for wishes to what...help you win the war?" I wasn't sure exactly how he would be structuring this deal, but I wanted to know what was on the table in the best case scenario.

Taking a bite, he nodded as he chewed, swallowing before responding. "I have some ideas about possible applications, if you agree, we'll hash out the size of the territory in question, my duties as your ally, and any other guarantees you need. You can contract future wishes for a lump sum, yes?"

"I can..." I hedged. "But it'll be a geas, not a contract. You'll be bound to uphold your end of things. If you don't...well, I haven't exactly seen what happens to defaulters, but I gather it's unpleasant. I'd advise against making promises you can't keep."

Camden just waved the point away. "I wouldn't have come here without assurances, and with your resources I'm not worried. I'll get the job done. I don't exactly have another choice. I leveraged every asset I had to get here without accruing a debt to any of my relatives, and if this doesn't work I'm probably dead. In for a gold piece, in for a chit, as they say. The question at hand is, exactly what is our end goal. I assume you know the political situation around here?"

"I know you're here for Clairdon." I admitted. "I assume you're offering my Highgrave's territory? I'm not sure what his assets are aside from a robust horse trade. Are you considering trying to bait Prentiss or Carrey into getting involved? I'm not sure of the logistics but do you have enough people for that? Even wishes have limits."

"Carrey is a hotheaded moron." He said frankly. "I suspect with the proper motivation we could enlist Prentiss to put pressure on him at the right moment and fracture his hold on his territory. We could split it in thirds and it would increase our own territorial gains by at least forty percent. Carrey's lands aren't bountiful or resource rich, but his ability to dispatch his Dragoons at speed lets him control a large swathe of territory. If we let Prentiss know we have access to wishes it should be more than enough to motivate him."

Glancing at Gabe, I cocked my head. None of us were soldiers, but he and Callen were the closest. They were the closest to tactical advisors that I could find at the moment. He gave me a considering frown and then tilted his head uncertainly. "We're interested." I finally said. "But we'd need to hash out exactly how much territory is on offer, under what conditions you'd hand it over, and some redundancy payments in case we don't hit the targets we want."

I didn't care about penalties for geasa, or I did, but more in that I didn't want to see anyone suffer them. That didn't benefit me and it would be actively harmful to potential allies. Putting in redundancies and severance fees was something I'd been playing with just in case, and this seemed like a good time to institute that policy, because I'd be taking quite a bit on faith here.

He agreed without any hesitation, and we got down to the business of haggling. As we settled in, I couldn't help but feel a thrill of excitement run through me. Having my own territory, even if I had Celine put her name on it, would be fantastic. I was excited to find out how Callie was planning to develop things. She'd been close with Stella, and would have a good idea how to run a territory like this, or better than me at least. With my wishes, the sky was the limit, and I couldn't wait to see how high we could go.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We worked on the contract for the territory well into the night. This time the whole group sat in, chiming in with suggestions or addenda. I was damned grateful for Jessie's ability, because we were definitely going to need energy boosts when we got to training. I doubted any of us were going to sleep at all. The charge should carry us through the early portions of the day, though later on it was going to be hell.

"So, all told we're talking a hundred square miles for each party total, or fifty for both of us if Prentiss doesn't take the deal." I said tiredly. "A three century alliance, including a defensive pact, offers of military training, aid for my seneschal and lessons for my chosen noble liege. In exchange you want five wishes per day for the next four months."

Camden nodded. "Six hundred wishes, with a default payment of sixty D-rank chits if I can't hold up my end within the time of your contract. I have some assets I can sell off in case of emergency, since I'd essentially be a dead man walking anyway I don't mind liquidating everything. We can start the noble training early, if you like, I'll help you make inroads with the local nobility."

"The...the ones we're going to be invading?" Callie asked incredulously. "You want, what? Go to parties and schmooze with them?"

He chuckled. "Of course. First rule of territory ownership. You have to treat everyone as both a potential ally and a potential enemy. Relationships between lords change like the wind. One day you might be attending someone's birthday gala, and the next day you might be burning down the mansion you had dinner in the previous evening. Be approachable, but not vulnerable, and affable but not trusting."

Benny groaned. "This sounds like the kind of stuff my parents used to tell me about mixing with upper class businessmen and their kids. I HATED those lessons."

Patting him on the shoulder, Celine smiled sweetly. "It's nice to know you're well informed, but
I'll be doing the bulk of the interaction. If I'm to be the public face of this Barony, I'll be required to attend parties and social events when I'm on the planet, but you need not concern yourself."

"The fuck you say." Said my best friend instantly. "I'm not leaving you to be harassed by greasy nobles." He shot Camden an apologetic smile. "No offense."

The Baron shrugged. "None taken, I despise most of these people. Hate the players not the game, and trust me, I do. That said, as the actual owner of the territory Solomon will need to have an understanding of how everything works. Celine's name might be on the roles, but she doesn't have the backing to remain unaccosted, especially not if she won't even be present."

Nat laughed at that. "So you're saying that Solomon will own the territory, but it'll officially belong to Celine, probably through contract or geas, and that she in turn will need to pick someone to manage it. Not only that, but all three of them will need to know all this political nonsense so we pretty much all have to learn to schmooze with high society since we have no idea who that will be?"

"Essentially." He said with a shrug. "If it helps, you won't only be interacting with our targets or potential allies. Some of these events will be with more distant neighbors who won't affect our day to day, but could come in handy as trading partners down the line. Not to mention we'll need to pick a Viscount to affiliate ourselves with."

I groaned. "I thought we didn't need to do that. We're Robber Barons right?" Half the point of that was not having to deal with higher ranking nobles and their nonsense.

"We still have to obey the Viscounts." Said Camden in irritation. "It's a less involved relationship, but they run the planet. Same way they all have to pay lip service to the Earl, despite not actually being on his side. Different Viscounts have different levels of involvement though. It's something of a tradeoff, increased freedom means little to no protection. We could go with the Viscount who governs this section of the planet, which is why we can even do this much in terms of invasion planning, but we could also sign up with someone more distant for greater benefits."

Celine seemed to have expected that, because she explained to the rest of us. "A foothold inside another noble's territory is always beneficial. It gets complicated, however, because due to territorial constraints certain formalities have to be observed in the form of taxes, while secondary allegiances are usually touted as alliances or trade contracts, at least as a formality."

"This was supposed to be simple!" I whined. "Not easy, maybe, but we just needed to get our asses kicked on the regular and become better warriors. How did it turn into this?" I turned to Callie. "Are you sure we need to do this?"

She gave me a sympathetic smile. "Yes." She said mercilessly. "You saw how one wish was able to alter a building." She was vague by necessity since Anna didn't want her secret room to be well known. "Applied over time imagine what we could get done in a whole territory. Anything too resource intensive would be expensive, granted, but materials aren't the only thing that slows down development."

I knew she was right. You could hire an architect, or someone to shape the ground, or a stonemason, or any number of other professions. But wishes let us do any of those things as well as an expert in the field. Not only that, it let us do ALL of them at once, at least for small projects. Whole rooms like Anna's were just the beginning. We could do entire houses with my stats most likely. And if we couldn't we could do them in stages.

Affecting large amounts higher level materials was out, so we couldn't make like, E-rank fortresses, at least not in a timely manner. But we could make F-rank versions of them and upgrade the materials later. And our ability to raise F-rank buildings would be unparalleled.

I was imagining whole towns, smithies, alchemist shops, all the best F-rank could offer to draw in skilled craftsmen and to provide places for our friends to do their thing. A library for Chelsea, a lab for Benny, a greenhouse for Jessie. Training buildings for our troops. The sky was the limit, and even that was more of a suggestion, we could actually probably build stuff in the sky.

It was worth the extra bullshit for a chance at that. The possibility of having a real place to hang my hat, where my friends could come to be safe, was too good to pass up.

"What happens if we finish before the six months are up?" I asked as I perused the contract. "With five wishes a day, chances are good you'll be more effective than you expect. Even if the majority of those go towards stat advancement for your higher ranking officers you should have more than enough extras to turn the tables. To clarify, Prentiss's wishes will be coming out of your total, yes?"

That had been nonnegotiable. One wish a day was a big hit, but it was something. I wasn't going without for months, I'd get left way behind. Callie was closing in on E-rank, and while I didn't mind if she beat me, I DID mind if she was ahead of me long term. If she built up momentum it would be hard to catch up, even for me, and we were partners.

Nodding grudgingly, Camden just sighed. "A hundred. I won't go further. I'm willing to give a bit on that, but not too much." That had been part of the negotiations when he'd wrangled his six hundred wishes. Even with a hundred square miles of territory and a three hundred year alliance, the price had been steep. The lessons and the help with building out army traditions helped, but the assumption that he would be footing the bill for Prentiss was what drove it up. Four hundred wishes had been where we'd started, but he'd negotiated another two hundred on the assumption that he'd pay.

"Then I believe we have an accord." He said formally, reading back over the contract quickly before signing his name. He passed me the pen and I did the same, scrawling out a neat and orderly signature next to his.

As I signed, I saw a shock of purple static leap from the pen to the ink, and the ink itself glowed briefly before fading back to black. I looked around but as usual no one saw anything out of the ordinary except Nat, who winked at me conspiratorially.

This was kind of a new thing for me. I'd done contracts like this before, getting paid in advance, but that had been for more concrete goals. A lot of this was up in the air, and whole 60 D-rank chits was an absurd amount of money to me (especially since chits were more valuable at D-rank and above) I didn't want that to come into play.

From our negotiations, I'd developed an appreciation for Camden. He was a straight shooter, at least with me, and he seemed passionate about his cause. If things went bad and he died I'd be poorer for it, money or no.

Which was why we were going to train our hardest to help, as well as do our best to rank up quickly so we'd be more useful. This territory thing might not have been my idea originally but I was going to fight for it. Even if Callie hadn't had her heart set on it I'd have given it my all.

Once the contracts were signed, Camden insisted we have a celebratory cognac, and while I wasn't a drinker, the glasses weren't exactly overflowing, and a sip of liquor wouldn't kill me. He poured us each a splash into large round bottomed glasses and took the time to run a lighter under the curve before passing it over, and then we toasted. It was...not great. I didn't like alcohol, but this was sweeter than most, which helped.

"To a harmonious cooperation." Camden said with a smile. I happily toasted back. I was much more comfortable working with him now that I had a contract in place. I was sure he wouldn't double cross me in any case, since getting help from a candidate wasn't exactly something that happened to everyone, but a bit of insurance never hurt. Not after what had happened with Travis.

I felt a flash of anger as I remembered the traitor, and a phantom pain in my gut from the knife. Trust was important, but it wasn't something I could afford to give away lightly anymore. I felt a hand on mine and looked over to see Callie giving me a soft smile. I let my shoulders slump, nodding gratefully to her.

Being careful and being jaded weren't the same. I wasn't going to be a sucker, but I also didn't want to become my dad. Needing contracts for everything and never taking anyone at their word didn't sound like much of a life. I couldn't lose who I was.

As we finished our drinks, we bid our goodbyes to Camden as we all headed back to the barracks, Jessie taking the time to charge us up. We had more training the next day, as well as our first meeting with Camden for nobility tutoring. We'd even given up weekends for events and the like.

The next four to six months were going to be some of the most challenging of my life, I had no doubt. It was nice that challenge wasn't going to be in the form of murderous assassins, but it would still be difficult to overcome. Whatever happened though, I still had my friends, and we would face it together. I just wished that thought was enough to get me through the rest of today's training.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I was so tired after the next day's workout that I wanted to scream. Jessie's energy had been burned off pretty quickly. It was pushing our contract to even use it, since it might theoretically give us an unfair advantage by healing us while we worked. Only the fact that exhaustion soaked most of it before we even started made it just within bounds. Of course, by the time we finished exercising, it was completely gone, and we were all left even more tired than we started.

There were, in my experience, levels of tiredness. There was basic tired, where you were about to nod off. There was extremely tired, where you were somehow TOO tired to sleep, despite needing it badly. And then, there was PAIN tired.
Pain tired was what happened when you were so tired that your body was basically trying to shut down. Where your skin was one big bruise, and touching anything felt like sandpaper.

Mixing pain tired with exercise was a one way trip to hell, and we had already been on our way there yesterday. Now we were on the express route, and I was really missing all the pleasant stops from before as I hurtled headlong into the burning abyss of misery that was military training.

"Now." Said Hamill as he escorted us to a particularly large section of training ground covered with large equipment.
"Yesterday, we took things easy. Since it was your first day, you were only expected to do basic calisthenics and conditioning exercises. Now that you've had a night to acclimatize we can move onto actual training. To that effect we have...this."

He gestured at that stacked high mess of wood and ropes and any number of other equipment. His pride in the...thing, was obvious, and at our blank looks, he puffed up further. "This." He said patronizingly. "Is the century course. It's a devlishly complex and useful device. In essence, it's a multi person obstacle course. You begin at the bottom, doing challenges and physical obstacles to reach the top. However, you'll enter it in groups of ten, and should one of you get further ahead by too large a margin, the obstacles behind will become more difficult."

One of the other cadets, a tall harsh featured man named Crallus, raised a hand. Nodding to him, Hamill accepted his question, something he did regularly and one of the things I liked about him best. Crallus cleared his throat. "Sir, does that mean that it's a pass fail exercise? That all of us have to make it through or none do?"

"Exactly so." Beamed the instructor. "Battle as a soldier, whether formation or pitched, depends entirely on the person next to you. Learning to adopt the pace of your weakest link, to remain cohesive and stable, is invaluable. We're not training warriors here. Being the best and getting ahead won't serve you well on the battlefield, it'll just make you an easier target. One soldier, no matter their talent, can't make a difference against an army of the same rank."

That was...kind of a good point. Even Abel, monster that he was, couldn't fight ten thousand F-rankers. Quantity had a quality all its own. The philosophy was interesting enough that it almost helped me focus past the agony I was in. Almost.

And so the training began. Ten at a time. I'd hoped that we would all be together, but we were clearly expected to reach this level of cohesion with any of the others, not just our friends. I did get lucky enough to get paired up with Benny, who nodded to me tiredly as we each climbed up onto the huge contraption that was the century course.

Stepping into the wooden...hallway, I guess was the best word, I followed it down the course to the first room. There were ten entrance corridors made of slatted wood with gaps between, and once I got into room one, I could see the others through the walls, able to spot flashes of them as I looked at the first obstacle. I couldn't see them well, but it was enough to pace myself a bit.

The obstacle itself was...weird. A large wall covered in multi colored protrusions, with a huge series of buckets at the top. Periodically, the buckets would tip, spilling scalding water down over the handholds. The sequence wasn't random, not after taking a few minutes to map it, but it was complicated.

I wanted to wait longer and figure out how to do it safely, but through the slats I saw some of the others already partway up. Grinding my teeth, I bolted to the wall, hopping up to grab some of the handholds and begin climbing. It wasn't so bad to start, a bit hard to pull myself up, but not terrible. At about the quarter way mark, I realized I was going to be under a bucket. I scrambled sideways, straining hard to get out of the way, and just barely managing to get to the next segment before the water poured down the face of the wall.

Flecks and droplets of hot water splatted onto me, my current armor not covering enough to prevent it from burning my skin. It wasn't enough to blister or anything, but it was fucking HOT. I gritted my teeth, climbing faster to try to avoid having to do that again.

Scaling sideways to avoid the buckets was about ten times more exhausting than climbing up. I didn't know why, but it was. Finally, after getting burned and almost letting go twice, I managed to reach the top, slumping onto the ground and panting in pain. Looking around, I saw a few others through the slats. "Hey!" I shouted. "Can you guys see if the people on either side of you made it up?"

There was a pause, before the guy on my right bellowed back. "Looks like mine is there. He was about to start on the next leg. He says the girl on his other side had already made it to the third section he thinks, he didn't get a response." I groaned. That meant the next section would be harder for us.

Letting myself rest for a minute, I called out to the others to check if they were ready. After a particularly irritating back and forth between everyone, we got nine of us on board, and timed it so we'd all be going at once. Counting down, we all launched ourselves forward at the next obstacle at once. This one was a slightly different exercise, though in a similar vein.

The tilted wall we were climbing was lined with ropes and holes. We climbed the ropes, and every so often blades would pop out of the holes at random to cut the ropes (or us) and force us to fall. The only saving grace was the slight click before the blade popped out, enabling us to avoid getting pincushioned. Unfortunately, the blades did NOT pop one at a time, and the mad scramble to get up was frantic.

Avoiding the stabs was only part of it, if a blade popped and severed the rope above us we had to grab one of the nearby lines. The blades seemed to follow us at least, so all the ropes didn't get severed up top and make the trial unpassable, but they did pop like a foot or two above us. I had the sneaking suspicion this was the "making things harder" part that Hamill had mentioned, and I mentally cursed whoever went ahead.

Finally, after reaching the top with minimal holes poked in me (three, two on my arm and one in my calf) I called the others to check that they'd arrived. Everyone had made it, though several of us were injured. A small stab wasn't the end of the world for an F-ranker, and I assumed there was some scanning ability or something because none of us got stabbed in the eye or face. Still, damage was damage, and we all needed a minute.

"Anyone manage to get in contact with the one in the lead?" I called to the guy next to me. "Maybe we can convince them to slow down."

I didn't know how you could be stupid enough to ignore that big long speech Hamill gave, but nobody ever got rich betting on the limits of human stupidity. As Mad Scientists were fond of saying, there was no point in trying to idiot proof an item, because even if you managed, the universe would just Invent a bigger idiot.

His response was surprisingly positive. "Aye. Apparently the climber three down from me managed to catch her before she got past this section. He convinced her to wait at the top for us. He apparently said to pass a message along to 'that dipshit Solomon' not to ruin his hard work by going ahead like a big wooden faced showoff. Is that you?" His attempt not to burst out laughing was obvious in his voice.

"Yes." I said through gritted teeth. "And the moron in question was my best friend Clockwork. I, however, am far more mature and self possessed, and of course need not pass a message on to him through other people like a five year old. We should take a few minutes to heal up before the next section then. I'm Solomon, like he said, what's your name?"

"I'm Bill." He said simply. I waited for some kind of addendum or title but nothing came. Apparently some people just used normal names here. Weird.

After a second, I finally responded. "Hey Bill." I said uncertainly. "Nice to meet you. You get stabbed on the way up?"

There was a second of contemplation. "Aye. I was stabbed." He said as if he was talking about the weather. "Once in the meat of my thigh and once in the ankle."

"Ouch." I said sympathetically. "You going to be good for the next section? We'll wait at the top for you if you want." I was pretty sure we were losing points waiting. There was no reason to train cohesion if there was no way to improve. Chances were good there was a timed aspect as well, so cohesion could be refined by improving on your score.

His response was cut off by a call from the other side, where the other guy had apparently gotten the message to go and was passing it on. I shouted it ahead to Bill and got back at it.

The next section was harder. No stabbing or anything, this one we had to jump from beam to beam, using wooden perches that stuck a few feet out of the wall to leap further up. At random intervals they would be yanked back in, and I'd miss my footing, usually smashing ribs first into the next one down and having to scramble back up.

Jumping like that WAS possible for someone like me at high F-rank, or even for the others at mid, but it was an exhausting full body workout that was made even more difficult by our tiredness and all the exercises we'd been doing.

It took about thirty minutes for me to finish that one, and when I called around, several people hadn't made it yet. Those not all the way up could still hear us calling, as with those who had embarked on the next level, though past that it seemed to isolate our voices somehow. Either through magic or just distance, we could only communicate with each other when we were one ahead or behind.

And so it went, test after test, section after section, until we finally got to the top. Once we reached the peak, we were all in the same room, and Benny and I were too exhausted to even rag on each other. We all just silently dragged our battered bodies into a small wooden room in the middle that appeared to be some kind of elevator. I dreaded doing this again, but I was sure we would. Hamill hadn't been joking. Yesterday was the easy part. The real pain was just beginning.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The rest of the day crawled by. Like, at glacial speeds, over glass. We had more exercises, a few drills they wanted us to practice, but mostly they were just killing time while all the other cadets went through the course. By the time the day ended I wanted to sleep so badly I almost burst into tears, but I had a training session with Camden and Celine, so I had to stay awake.

I burned another heal burst to repair the damage of the day and a second to energize me as best I could get, because I still had to grant today's wishes. I decided to just do all six for Camden and bank the extra, that way I would have a decent stockpile for when we actually got our territory.

Callie caught up with me as I was leaving, coming with me up to the manor for moral support (which is to say, to catch me if I passed out) and to my surprise, we were quickly joined by my sister.

"I'd have thought you'd avoid this like the plague." I said to Chelsea with a chuckle. "It's going to be insanely boring. Jessie is patching everyone up and then they're all going to sleep." I sighed in pure jealousy. "I'd give anything to go to sleep right now."

Even with the charge of heal burst I was so exhausted I felt like I was underwater. My sister just smiled though. "I came to get to know my brother, not just to have adventures. Which, by the way, I don't think I would categorize this as. So far this vacation is sucking pretty hard."

I shrugged. "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Should have asked around about all the nonsense we get into. This was bound to be somehow horifically annoying or possibly fatal." I softened the joke with a smile. "But really, I'm glad you came with us. I want to get to know you too. It's just so...weird, thinking about having a twin. There's so much we never got to learn about each other."

"There's so much I never got to learn at all." She said sadly. "I mean, even about myself and the things I can do. I've just been so...limited. I don't even know what happens if I use both my abilities at once. I've never been allowed to try."

Wincing, I shook my head. "Actually that one was probably a good idea. I've seen what that looks like. It explodes. Don't."

"Oh." She said in a let down sort of tone. "Ok. But still, my point stands. I've been pretty much kept in box my whole life. I know a lot of random shit from books but not much else. Seems like you at least got to interact with other people. I want to learn all about you for sure, but I hope you can teach me to be a normal person too. The way you learned."

Callie snickered from the other side of me. At my glare she shrugged. "Sorry, honey, but calling you normal is a stretch. You were basically a shut in before we met. The only person you talked to was Benny." My feeling of dismay must have rolled through the bond, because she backpedaled. "Not that my childhood was any better. Running away at sixteen to live in an underground criminal dystopia is hardly the best way to hone your people skills."

Chelsea giggled at the interplay. "It's sweet how close you two are. I can't imagine knowing someone that well. My brother was lucky to find you."

"Yup." I agreed unashamedly. "Best thing that ever happened to me. Sadly, I think we have to cut the heart to heart short though. We're here." I pointed up at the manor, and at the door where Celine was waiting for us. We'd split up to get changed into our more formal clothes. Chelsea, having joined us on the walk, was still in her armor, but she wasn't taking lessons so it didn't matter.

Alister was standing beside Celine, and when we approached, he bowed formally. "Greetings, Lord and Ladies. Be welcome in the home of his grace, Baron Camden Toldert. Declare your allegiance."

I just looked at him, unsure what the hell he was talking about. Celine, smiling slightly, stepped past him to stand beside us, dropping into a low curtsy as she said primly. "Greetings, honored seneschal, from my liege Shane, of house Wyndham. Son of Elijah and slayer of Suvaya."

That wasn't what I expected her to say, but she knew what was what so I just let it go. As they both rose, she turned to me with a laugh. "For future reference, declaration of allegiance will include your house, as well as the house and provenance of your liege. Technically speaking, despite you being in attendance, declaring myself for you is a bit of a loophole, but you would normally declare yourself for Baron Tolbert, at least until you rank up."

I shrugged. "You guys didn't mention that to me. Isn't that what the lessons are supposed to be for?"

"I believe it was a test." Said my elven friend. "Though perhaps an ill timed one on Alister's part, given your current frazzled state."

The seneschal sniffed reproachfully. "Nonsense. Good manners are to be observed at all times. One is not granted dispensation for mere tiredness. Your response was...technically passable. You may enter. We've arranged a small repast while you speak with his grace on the content of his wishes."

Excited by the idea of food after working out most of the day, I followed him in, but was stopped by Celine. "Be careful when we go in." She said in a low voice. "Watch how I eat, and follow my lead. If Alister is already testing you, a meal isn't relief, it's a trial." She nodded to the others, who presumably could eat however the fuck they wanted, and then swept inside.

Grumbling, I followed her inside, ignoring Chelsea and Callie snickering at my downcast expression. I was annoyed, I admit. I'd been wearing myself out all day and I was tired and hungry. I just wanted to eat a normal meal, not some fancy nonsense test dinner.

Camden was waiting for us in the dining room, the table overflowing with meat and pasta and several kinds of vegetable, some of which I didn't recognize. He grinned and waved me over as I arrived. "Solomon, or should I say Shane, I suppose? Come in, come sit down. Your guests are welcome as well."

Chelsea and Callie introduced themselves with real names, though Chelsea didn't mention being my sister. Anders wasn't as well known a name as Wyndham, since the Radiant Pope rarely went by his given name. In a huge universe it was unlikely someone would make the connection. They sat down, Callie in her nice dress and Chelsea in her armor, which was surprisingly clean despite a day of exhausting training. Purification flames have many uses.

"So." i said as we all sat down. "How do we do...this?" I gestured at the food. "And why, more accurately. This doesn't seem like the best timing. Alister's whole 'always be ready' motto aside, I'm exhausted and starving. If we could do the food portion of these lessons...not today, that would be great."

He just chuckled. "Sorry Shane, but it is a necessity. We're going to be attending a banquet this weekend, to try to get your names and faces out among the nobility before the big takeover. TECHNICALLY as an unlanded Baron I shouldn't be invited, but my name does come with some small perks, and anyone in the Empire would want a Tolbert at their party, distanced from the house as I may be."

I blinked. That was...efficient. I'd been expecting a long wait for our big introduction. "Guess we'll have to pick who will be staying behind to manage the territory." I said slowly. I didn't know who I would leave, or even if I was willing to do it. It was a hard decision. "For now, why don't you fill me in on the particulars of fancy eating, and we can get started on your wishes. Did Alister tell you I wanted to do six today?"

"Of course, that's fine." He said with a wave. "We put provisions in the contract for that. You said you'd done similar things in previous contractual arrangements?"

"Back on my home planet." I agreed. "So what will your wishes be. You going with stat gains to start? Or do you have other ideas." As we waited, Alister began pointing out forks, bowls, and various smaller utensils. The array of rules and affectations were dizzying, but with my Focus it wasn't tough to remember it all.

Camden took a bite, mulling it over. "I think I'm more interested in doing a bit of...territorial shifting." He grinned at me. "This area is well known to the locals, but if things were to change... well, that would make matters more complicated, especially if I knew about the changes and they didn't." Withdrawing a map, he started pointing out sections of it to me.

Despite my stats being more than enough to move some ground, the more of it that needed moving the more it cost. Even wishes couldn't just magically make a fifty mile tunnel underground on a C-rank planet without a trace. At least not my wishes and not all at once. After some trial and error, we managed to carve out about a mile of tunnel per wish, under the condition that no trace of the formation would be detectable.

He didn't set it up below the manor, choosing to make it in the middle of a contested area he pointed out on the map. Six miles of tunnel, following a very specific route he marked out for me. With my already exhausted body, the drain of the wishes hit me like a punch to the gut, but I got through it, then followed the ridiculous directions to eat my overly complicated meal.

By the time we finished it was about eight P.M and I could barely stand. The food and the crash from the wishing had mixed together into a roiling cauldron of exhaustion that had me ready to pass out. Callie and Chelsea helped prop me up as we said out goodbyes, making sure to take down the time we'd need to leave for the banquet and telling Camden who would be coming along.

Then they walked me back to the barracks, and I stumbled inside, staggering to my bed and slamming into my mattress without even taking off my clothes. Benny, who was bunked near me, saw me come in and helped me push my legs over the side of the bed so I wasn't hanging over the edge.

"You look wiped, man." He said tiredly. "I wanted to stay up to make sure you got back ok. Everything go alright with Camden?"

I groaned, pulling my mask off and dropping it on an endtable near the single twin bed. We had privacy curtains, though mine was open in the direction of Benny's bed and the same for his. I was glad it was taken care of, since I didn't want to sleep in a wooden mask. "Yeah, we have a banquet this weekend. Your girlfriend can tell the details, I need to sleep."
Chuckling my friend laid back in his own bed, closing his eyes. "I'm right there with you man. I'm exhausted myself. See you in the morning Shane."

"Night Benny." I muttered as my eyes forced themselves shut. The day was over, thank the gods, and tomorrow wouldn't be nearly as bad, since we'd be well rested. We had a few days of this until the weekend, where we'd have a whole day off before that banquet in the evening. I just hoped things didn't get any more complicated from here.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The rest of the week flew by. Three days of training should have been terrible, but I was so desensitized to the pain from the second day that it almost seemed easy in comparison. I also stockpiled more wishes, granting six a day for Camden, bringing my total of usable extra wishes to four. When Saturday rolled around we all gathered at the tent where Bethy dressed us in new clothes (we didn't want to keep wearing the same fancy outfits) and went over the details before meeting Camden.

"Alright." I said, looking around. "Benny, Celine, Callie, Chelsea, and Nat." I counted off, just making sure I had everyone. "You're all coming along, everyone else is heading back to Saltzburg to visit Zeke and Cass. We'll meet up with you after the banquet."

We'd all been outfitted in matching black and silver color schemes, albeit in differing shapes, because they were apparently neutral colors. Some houses had specific hues associated with them, so we'd had Bethy set us up in something that wouldn't state any allegiance. We were representing Camden, but only as mercenaries, and that gave us a bit of leeway, where signing on with a Viscount as an actual vassal would be picking a side.

Everyone agreed, and those of us going to the banquet filed out, meeting up with a transport heading to the Clairdon estate. Clairdon's eldest son, Sutton, was being 'honored' for his most recent win against Highgrave's forces. In reality, Sutton hadn't done much, and it was a badly disguised fund raiser for Clairdon to hit people up for 'gifts'. People would give Sutton money, and Clairdon would pocket the donations, keeping a ledger of who to pay back once he beat Highgrave.

Because of the underhanded nature of the exchange though, Clairdon needed to invite everyone nearby, claiming to be hosting a formal event. It allowed all the sharks to circle, making notes of clandestine alliances in order to exploit the support later if things fell through. Sometimes overtly or sometimes just as leverage to blackmail their own 'donations' in case of emergency.

I, of course, had figured NONE of this out, and had it spelled out for me by Callie and Celine. I think what really bothered me most about politics was all the unspoken arrangements. So much of it was based on 'trust' which was just a devious way of saying conflicting and coinciding interests and your knack for reading them, as well as your information sources and their ability to keep you in the know so you could read the nonsense a bit better than the other guy.

Not that I couldn't DO those things if given the chance, but my nature was more transactional. I liked my relationships codified into hard terms. Contracts were one aspect, but even wishes were like that. I give someone A and get back B. Simple and straightforward.

In fact, I suspected recursion was partially to blame for my political blindness. The perception of Wishmasters as being direct and to the point was ingrained in our image. We could and would give you whatever you wanted if you asked and could pay. We were seen as above the petty bullshit, at least at the higher end of the spectrum. Of course, the candidate's competition gave lie to that pretty overtly, but recursion was based on perception, not reality.

That particular realization had mostly been brought about by some careful reviewing of my own thought processes.
Whenever politics came up, something in my head told me 'you're not good at this'. It was something I'd repeated to myself so often it was almost a mantra, and something about that behavior didn't seem natural.

I'd tried to ferret out any other mental ticks I had that were similar, but nothing came to mind. It only drove home how insidious recursion could be, and how even the smallest bit of perception could worm its way into my worldview and shift it just enough to be a problem. I was pushing back against it with these political lessons, and I hoped to try to counteract more of the harmful effects as I noticed them.

The transport to the banquet was an odd thing. It was a magical vehicle, obviously, but it had clearly gone through quite a bit of refinement. It reminded me of a mixture between a fancy carriage and an old fashioned car. It was dark metal with gold filigree along the panels on the sides, and the engine was some sort of magical alchemical creation (I'd convinced the driver to show it to me while we waited for everyone to get aboard). It was strange to see a machine swirling bubbling blue glowing liquid through what looked like steam chambers, but it was interesting to look at.

Camden was waiting inside for us, the interior being larger than the outside, obviously, and he poured us each drinks and chatted until we arrived at the Clairdon estate and we all disembarked. When we came to a stop, he addressed us.
"Alright. My last advice to you is this. Do not agree to anything. Do not disagree with anything. Speak often and say little. Flattery is useful, but don't overdo it, or they'll sense weakness, don't be insulting or they'll take offense."

I blinked at him in confusion. "So...what the hell are we supposed to actually TALK about? Aren't we here to make friends."

"Friends?" He said with a laugh. "You are here to be NOTICED. Do not make friends. Friends come with obligation, and establishing those limits your options. Don't express too much interest in anything anyone says, or too little. Don't ASK for anything or offer any gifts. Taking a favor implies a debt, and granting one suggests an alliance. I'll feel out Prentiss while we're there and you can leave that bargaining to me. Any questions?"

I had a dozen, but none of them seemed important, so I just shook my head, taking Callie's arm as we stepped down from the transport.

The night air nipped at my skin as I took in the entrance to the massive mansion. Where Camden's manor was luxurious, it was also defensible, with plenty of hidden (and not so hidden) defenses. Clairdon's mansion, however, was a sprawling study in largesse. A series of real gold hedges highlighted the open style of the estate, showcasing a series of high rank statues made from precious gems of multiple colors.

I assume they were going for fancy and impressive, but honestly it mostly just came off tacky and badly designed. My eyes hurt just from looking at the terrible decorating. "Well, this is...unique."

Camden snickered from beside me. "Yes, Clairdon is well known for his eclectic tastes. It's my first time here, but I've heard stories. It's just as interesting as described." I made a mental note of all the ways he'd just politely stated that Clairdon was a dumb asshole with bad taste, because it was pretty impressive and then we advance to the open doors where a pair of hulking guards in thick metal helmets were standing stock still holding giant spears.

From behind them stepped a small, weaselly man with a thin mustache and overly large spectacles that made his eyes look huge. "Names?" He drawled in a snooty voice.

Camden stepped forward, doing his whole formal announcement thing. To my relief, he did ours too, introducing us as his vassals and letting me skip the rigamarole. The weaselly man checked a list (a scroll he unfurled about three feet as he ignored us) until apparently locating Camden's name.

"You may enter." He said officiously. "Be welcome in the home of his grace, Baron Alexander Clairdon, on this, a day of celebration of his lordship Sutton Clairdon, hero of the realm."

Camden smiled tightly at him, nodding before escorting us past the guards. Once we were inside, he scoffed loudly.
"Hero of the realm. As if this pissant backwater counts as a realm. In civilized parts of the Empire they have men hung up and beaten for making claims like that. I hate frontier showmanship. We're inside now, so just remember my advice. Be friendly but superficial, and don't commit to anything."

We nodded, then headed off to mingle, though we stuck together in groups of two. Nat and Chelsea stayed together, my sister clearly being more comfortable around family than on her own.

Callie and I ended up in a small gathering of E-rankers, all conversing quietly about the local economy. When they saw us, they smiled politely, and a tall woman with dark skin and plaited green hair smiled kindly at us. "Ah, newcomers. Greetings, my name is Baroness Natalia Danvers. Who might you be?"

A short man with an olive complexion and neatly trimmed red hair beside her snorted. "You know who they are Talia. They're the Tolbert brats new retainers. Introduced with use names, as I heard it. Solomon and Nightstrike?" Part of the reason Camden had introduced us was so we could keep my name a secret until we actually hit E-rank and came out as Barons. We didn't want the other nobles figuring out his plan too early.

Natalia glared at him. "I was being friendly, Lucas. You should try it. Perhaps if you adjust your bahvior your next wife won't leave you like the last six."

The pompous man stiffened. "Those marriages were mutually dissolved." He gritted out. "We'd grown apart."

"A bit of advice." She said patronizingly. "When you 'grow apart' from six different women in a row, many of whom went on to have happy successful marriages with other people, it might perhaps be time to address the common denominator in all of those failed nuptial arrangements." She gave him a sweet smile, and he turned and stalked off, trailed by a pair of younger nobles with similar features I suspected were his kids.

Natalia, now one of the only two remaining people in the small crowd, smiled apologetically at us. "My sincerest apologies for Baron Myers. He's unhappy about the Tolbert boy's insertion into our little slice of heaven. He fancies himself a bit of a spymaster and he's been gathering information to leverage the mess between Clairdon and Highgrave for a few years. Tolbert's entrance shook up the hornets nest and rendered his work up to this point moot."

I wondered if he knew Anna, but it didn't seem relevant at the moment. I offered a hand. "Solomon, as he said. This is my girlfriend Nightstrike." She took our hands one after the other, shaking firmly as she gestured to the last remaining noble from the original group.

"I already introduced myself, and this is Lady Marcella Winfries. My personal attendant." I'd been so wrapped up in what was going on that I'd missed that the pale girl with metallic neon orange hair was F-rank like we were. Her bright orange eyes lit up as she smiled at us, dropping into the same sort of curtsy I'd seen from Celine.

"Milord." She said formally. "Milady. Greetings from the nobility of Stratholme. Be welcome to our home. I hope your stay is most pleasant."

I nodded back, because that was apparently the protocol for curtsies. Happy with the pleasantries, we started making conversation, following Camden's instructions as best we could. It turned out that talking alot and not saying anything was actually really hard. I was impressed so many politicians throughout history were so good at it. Making meaningless conversation and committing to nothing at all took serious concentration.

Luckily Natalia seemed to know how the game was played, and she was able to guide us through an entire discussion where no one said anything relevant or meaningful at all. After about ten minutes we were out of nonsense to chatter about, and we were about to say our goodbyes.

I was just settling in for hours of unmitigated boredom when the music and chattering stopped. With only that split second of warning, the lights went out, and the entire banquet was consumed by darkness. As the screaming started, I just sighed. Of course even the boring parties had to go wrong.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

To my utter and complete shock, we did NOT get immediately attacked when the lights went out. The screaming had me setting my stance for a fight, but apparently nobles were just weirdly jumpy. Reaching out a hand, I clasped Callie's fingers in mine. "So...can you see in this?" I asked calmly, completely unable to spot literally anything in this oppressive darkness. "Because I'm planning to use an...alternative means of sight, and I don't want to blind you."

"I can." She responded succinctly. From her tone she was incredibly focused, probably trying to process a large amount of data at the same time via her shadow sense. "Go ahead and exclude me."

With a nod, I reached for my Moonlit Night ability, filling the area around us with fog. Now, one might be curious how further occluding the sight of everyone nearby would make it easier for me to see, but Moonlit Night manifested the fog as a translucent cloud of light to mark its boundaries. Once the fog spread, everything was suddenly perfectly well lit, easily visible even in pitch black.

To me. Easily visible, to me. The people weaving through the crowds slipping hands into pockets suddenly found themselves just as blind as the people they'd been robbing, and shouts of their dismay joined the shrieks of panicked nobles.

I was frankly shocked that had worked. Whatever this was, it was clearly enough to block off E-rankers from being able to see at all, barring unique abilities like Callie's. The only reason besides my slightly higher Impact I could attribute the quirk to was that I might not be ACTUALLY seeing anything. Maybe the cloud was acting as a kind of sonar? Or whatever the physical version of that concept was.

Thinking through the possibilities, I casually reached into my coat and slipped out my staff, releasing Callie's hand as I hauled back and smashed the E-ranked stick into the masked face of one of the thieves as he got a bit too close to Callie for my liking. He fell over with a shout, and I spent a minute beating him violently about the head and body with the weapon, just to really drive home the message.

He was an F-ranker, like me, but I had three extra Impact and was beating him with an E-ranked stick, so there wasn't much he could do, especially without the ability to see, except curl up in a ball and take his punishment. After confirming he was down, I kicked him once for good measure glaring down at him for a minute before moving on. Putting his creepy thief hands on my girlfriend in the dark wasn't going to fly.

Leaving the whimpering thief in a puddle of his own blood, I pulled Callie with me out of the way of the main force of thieves and up onto the steps, just to get us some room. The fog wasn't effecting her, since I hadn't brought her into the skill other than to exempt her from the stealth aspects, so her ability to merge with shadows let her process everything that was going on with extremely high precision.

Finally, after about a minute and a half of darkness, a voice shouted. "ENOUGH!" A loud thud of something hard striking floor came down, before a wave of bright energy blasted across the hall, dissipating the choking darkness and leaving everyone confused as to what was going on.

A tall, stately man with far too many rings on was standing in a circle of dark figures, glaring at them in rage as he held a brightly glowing staff. For a second I thought they were attacking, but after a moment I realized that they were all completely paralyzed. One of the rings, a green stone thing in a gaudy gold setting, glowed sedately on his hand as his blue eyes blazed.

"Shadow Troupe." He spat. "To think you would be so brazen as to assault an event where I am in attendance." He slammed the staff, a tall dark rod of wood with the end wrapping a glowing crystalline stone, once on the ground, and an eruption of plants exploded from the ground, reaching up and wrapping around all of the dark figures.

Looking closely, I could see the faces of the men hidden behind beaten masks of matte black metal. They were creepy and featureless, though they gave the impression of amusement. These weren't great masks, Zeke would have been appalled, but they definitely lent their wearers an air of competence and mystery. One of the ones being restrained, choked out. "Magister Weston." As the plants started to grip him harder.

A magic user. I'd heard of them, the owner of the Wizard's Tower where we found the ritual information we used to defeat Suvaya was one of those. It was a job dedicated to learning and practicing spells. When a person took a Job, their ability became a Skill, albeit a main Skill. Skills could be taught and learned, and certain Skills with narrow usage but impressive and interesting results were considered spells.

I had no idea what made something a spell, but I knew magic users could learn a lot of them, and from a variety of useful disciplines. Technically anyone could, but the Job system made learning and advancing Skills easier in some ways. Especially Skills related to your job, which made magic users complicated but sometimes very effective combatants.

Several of my DS Mastery subskills were probably considered spells, but I now had that as an ability, which meant they would automatically rise when I ranked up, a useful part of heroic cultivation Job system cultivators had to give up in exchange for protection from recursion and some other useful tricks. I was pretty happy with the direction I'd gone, all things considered, but it was damned impressive seeing what a magic user could do.

Weston turned, blue eyes searching the crowd until they fell on a sallow man with dark hair and a waxed mustache.
"Clairdon." He intoned coldly. "Might you wish for assistance disposing of these...interlopers?" He technically asked a question, but his tone made it clear that 'no' wasn't an answer that was on the table for the Baron.

Clairdon's face was getting even paler, but I didn't have time to react to that before I was tapped on the arm. "Excuse me." Said a familiar voice. "Might I trouble you for a moment of your time." Turning around, I froze in shock as I looked into the eyes of a formally dressed Anna, who smiled patiently as she took both my arm and Callie's and led us further up the stairs, pulling us into an alcove at the top. "What are you doing here?" She hissed when we were alone.

I raised a brow at her, before remembering she couldn't see my eyebrow behind my mask. "What are YOU doing here?" I chuckled as I gestured to our outfits. "We were invited. You didn't exactly seem friendly with Clairdon when you mentioned him."

"Because I'm not." She spat. "But I do know most of his private business dealings now. I was able to suss out where he keeps one of his emergency stockpiles of chits by crossreferencing information I had on his movements with the dates and times in the ledgers. I sent the Shadow Troupe to distract everyone while I lifted the money, but I had to pull out last minute because Weston is here. Clairdon is a nobody, but fighting the Magister would be a death sentence for me."

Which implied that guy was at least D-rank. Why the hell was he HERE? Anna couldn't see my face, but she obviously picked up my curiosity from my body language. I could feel the telltale stuffiness in the air of a stealth Skill in use, and I was pretty sure Anna was doing it. So at the very least we didn't need to worry about being overheard. Still, she looked around furtively and lowered her voice.

"I don't know why Weston is here." She said worriedly. "He shouldn't be anywhere this backwater. He's not a Viscount, but he works closely with the Earl at times. He's something of a stabilizing influence on Stratholme." She cursed quietly.
"This was supposed to be an effortless job. I'd probably have still tried it, given my skillset, but you're the goose that laid the golden egg. Can't let you get caught up in this nonsense. Which is part of why I pulled you away. Weston CANNOT find out you're a Wyndham."

That sounded ominous. "Why, does he have a problem with the WCP?" He was D-rank, so Zeke wouldn't let him act against me personally, but still, that only lasted until I hit E-rank myself. While he wasn't as restricted as he had pretended at the start (Zeke had let me believe 'protection from anyone two ranks higher' didn't include the rank I was at when I was starting out so I'd be more careful) once I hit E-rank, people like Weston would be able to do whatever they wanted to me.

Once I hit D-rank, the protection would end completely, but I wasn't ready to think about what that might mean. Anna brought my thoughts back to her with a rapid head shake. "No, but you're a strategic resource. He can and would use you. More than that...his being here seems odd, like I said." She glanced down the steps worriedly. "You're here with Tolbert right? How tied up are you with his settlement attempt so far."

"Very." I said firmly. "You think Weston is here for Camden? Why would he even bother with that?"

She shrugged. "Lots of reasons. Could be doing a favor for one of Tolberts off world enemies, hell, the Earl could be involved. Just be careful, if Weston is here, someone big is making moves, and there's no way he's their only card. Something else is happening and I somehow doubt it's going to be pleasant for Tolbert or anyone involved with him."

Which was really something I could have used information on before I signed a binding contract with him and got heavily invested in his business. While it was nice not to be the active TARGET of the insidious plot this time, being sucked into it by accident was almost as annoying. worse really because this time it was entirely my damned fault, and I just knew my fucking fate sense had influenced this nonsense.

Anna sighed and shook her head. "Anyway, I need to go. I'm going to try to spring my people before Weston gets them back to his estate. He's an unpleasant bastard, and chances are good he'll take them home for experiments. I can't take him in a fight, but my skillset is suited to prison breaks and disappearing into the forest. Be careful." She nodded and then turned and strolled casually down the steps, before LITERALLY vanishing into the crowd. One second she was there the next she was gone.

I looked at Callie worriedly, but without Anna's stealth we couldn't really talk too openly. Callie's own Skill wasn't anything to scoff at, but with a D-ranker here the chances of us being overheard were too high by far.
Offering her my arm, I gestured back down to the party, and she nodded solemnly. We needed to blend. Once this night was over we could talk to Camden about all this. Hopefully he'd have some idea what was going on and what to do about it, because I was thoroughly out of my depth.

We rejoined the milling throngs of nobles, smiling and flattering and being noncommital about everything as we killed time. As we did I considered how Camden might get out of this. Someone was clearly acting against him in a less than straightforward way, based on what Anna said, and that might give us a chance. After all, they didn't know about me or the wishes I'd signed over to Camden. Part of me was looking forward to seeing how that would tip the scales. After all, my other enemies had mostly known about my powers and been prepared for them. This time, THEY would be the ones in the dark.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I was mentally exhausted by the time the banquet ended. Political maneuvering wasn't just complicated, it was tedious. How many times could you say the same ridiculous bullshit before someone actually commented on how inane it was. Telling people their clothes were nice, talking about bullshit tourist nonsense from their territories, listening to THEM regale you with pointless stories.

Despite the conversation, I had to watch every word so I didn't give anything away, and more than once Callie caught me before I said something genuinely personal instead of just fake bullshit personal, like talking about my likes or dislikes. It was tiring, annoying, and by the time we left I was ten seconds from slugging the next person who smiled at me.

We filed into the carriage, and Callie sighed as she slumped onto the seat. "That was...awful. Most of those people were terrible human beings. I almost stabbed Baron Langdon. His creepy stories about all the women he takes to his lake house were gross. If Shane hadn't been with me I think he might have tried inviting me back there."

"He looked like he was considering it anyway." I growled. "I was about ten seconds from taking my staff to his wrinkled old face. How is it possible that he's THAT old physically at that rank? He looked like, ninety. I thought Vitality kept people in their peak health for their age?" The unpleasant E-ranker had been a nauseating conversationalist, and I was still shaking with rage at how he'd been looking at Callie.

Camden grimaced. "I looked into him. He didn't manage to reach any notable rank until late in life. He was passed over by his family for his position, and fell into it by default when the previous Baron of his territory died. The Imperial Roles supplied enough renown to reach his current rank, but his advanced age had a profound effect on the stats he gained. He has almost no Vitality."

I hadn't know that could happen, but it couldn't have been done to a nicer guy. I hoped he was miserable. Forcing myself to calm down, I took a deep breath, counting to ten as I forced myself to regain my calm. "Well, don't expect us to talk to him ever again. If he ever looks at Callie again I'm going to kill him in his sleep."

My girlfriend arched an eyebrow, holding up one of her daggers and slashing out, the darkness of her Abyssal path severing the air in front of her with a hiss. "That's sweet honey, but I can take care of myself. If anyone is going to kill that creepy old fuck in his sleep it'll be me. Leave the nighttime executions to the experts." Despite her tone, I could feel the warmth through our bond. She loved how protective I was, even if we both knew she didn't need it.

"Yes, you're adorable." Drawled Benny. "But maybe we can focus on that whole...shadow...thief thing. What the fuck was that? Where did those guys get taken? And who was the guy with the staff?"

Sighing, Camden shook his head. "Weston. A D-ranked Magister who works with the Earl on occasion. I'm not sure why he was there. I'd been briefed on him along with the other power players on the planet during my research, but I wasn't informed he frequented the area."

"Because he doesn't." I said bluntly. Looking around, I studied the walls. "Can we talk safely in here? Without being overheard? We have...sensitive information."

He raised a hand. Reaching up to one of the rings he was wearing, he twisted it and there was a flash of blue light. The walls of the carriage flashed in response, and a series of runes began to glow. He nodded. "We should be safe to speak. We're in a pocket space, and the isolation enchantment will prevent any sound from being picked up by anyone outside the vehicle."

Once he confirmed that, we told them all everything. We left out Anna's name, only calling her a friend, but everything else we laid out directly. Once I'd told him all about what had happened, I shot him a searching look. "Do you know who might be pulling strings? Because we didn't exactly sign up to fight the Tolbert family. This was supposed to be a low level conflict we could use for training."

Pinching his nose, he sighed. "I'm sorry. I didn't think anyone would bother following me here. I recused myself from family politics, and this place isn't worth the effort to come into conflict with me." He trailed off. "But if someone is here, I know who it is. My cousin Spencer. He and I have had conflicts over the years. If anyone in the family would pursue me it would be him."

"Well what will he do?" I demanded. "What's his M.O? We have a contract and I'm not buying it out, so we're with you, but we need to know more about this guy. He won't know about my powers right? That at least could be useful."

Camden nodded. "I doubt he does. I only dug into you after learning your names, and I doubt Spencer even bothered. He's an arrogant bastard, and it wouldn't occur to him to waste resources digging into his lessers. He'll consider you nuisances at best. Mercenaries from a backwater nowhere planet just like any of the others. Since you came with me to the banquet he might have his interest piqued, but I can make sure he doesn't find what I did."

I wasn't sure HOW he could do that, but it was a relief to hear. "So what do you think his plan is? Will he try to take the territory from you? Get involved in the regional battles? Because if he tries to gather mercs like you did I imagine it'll be tough with you having snapped them all up. Could be an advantage."

His expression became pinched, worry creasing his brow. "I pray that his plan is something so mundane, but I fear the opposite. Spencer is a vindictive and cold person. He'd burn the whole territory before he saw me get it. I worry that we may be in for far more than a simple battle."

Cursing, I glanced around at my friends. "Well, there are ways to work around him. We know he's here, and he doesn't know we know. My friend being at the banquet was a freak accident caused by a few wishes she made. No one would have expected it."

"That is quite the advantage." He admitted. "I'll reach out to my information contacts and feel them out. Don't worry, I won't tip our hand, but checking what Spencer is doing won't raise any suspicion given our antagonism."

Standing, he nodded to all of us. I'm going to consult Alister up front. You can talk amongst yourselves. Thank you for this warning. I'll do my best to make the most of it." With that, he turned and strode into front of the carriage where the driver was situated, closing the door behind him.

Turning to the others, I cocked my head inquisitively. "Alright, now we're alone." I gestured to the still glowing symbols on the walls. "So...what does everyone think?"

"We help." Said Benny firmly. "That much is obvious. Even without the contract we can't afford to lose out on a potential territory on such a massive planet. Plus I like Camden. He seems like a good guy. Though I have to say, it feels pretty good to have a choice. Not being the targets of the secretive assassins isn't a bad turn of events."

I snickered. "Yeah I had that thought. But this is a dangerous thing to get involved in. There are outs in the contract. And I do have a bunch of wishes stockpiled outside the arrangement for the territory. We could have Anna buy us out if we really need it."

To a D-ranker, the amount of money we'd set up for the buyout wouldn't be nearly as big of a problem. Realistically I could get a lot more bang for my buck if I worked with higher rankers all the time, but they had less need for lower rank wishes, and the circumstances were far less controllable. Still, in this case it was an option, and one I felt compelled to offer even if I didn't want to take it.

Callie took my hand, beaming at me. "I know you don't want to abandon him, or the possible home we might be able to make here. I love you for offering us an out, but no one here wants to take it. We came to this decision together, signing up with Camden after everyone agreed." She winked. "Plus we haven't gotten our new costumes yet. Nobody wants to miss that."

Sighing, I shook my head. "Alright. We'll need to find a way to tell the others without anyone noticing, just in case they want to abandon ship, but otherwise I'll proceed as normal." I grimaced. "So more training...yay." The others all laughed, though I could hear plenty of sympathy in their tones. Once everyone agreed, I pulled my sister aside to check in. "Hey." I said as we reached the wall, using Callie's stealth Skill to avoid anyone overhearing. "You sure you're ok with this?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes Shane. I'm fine. Just because I may have spent a bit more time working on cross referencing than crossing swords doesn't mean I'm a coward." Her tone was bitter and a little confrontational, and I was kind of blindsided.

"Whoa!" I said in surprise, hands going up defensively. "Pull it back, that's not what I meant. This isn't your problem, and it was my bad luck...or fate sense, that dragged us into it. You have no skin in this game, and I don't want you in danger for something I did." I didn't want any of them in danger, but my friends had earned the right to make that call themselves. Not that Chelsea didn't have that right but...she was my sister. I felt compelled to try to protect her.

The hard look on her face softened. "And that's sweet, but I knew when we did this things weren't going to be safe. I have Callen with me, and uncle Zeke will step in if someone too strong tries to hurt us. For threats closer to our own level...I trust you. And the others too. I'm with you, Shane. All the way."

"Well then," I said with a smile. "I suppose we should buckle down on our training. I can't tell you waht's coming, but I can tell you it's probably going to be a nightmare. These things rarely blow up small. The curse of being an Ascendant." Or just of being me. It always made me wonder if the Wish ability was special somehow. Like maybe being the focal point of so many changes in reality had some impact on the world and invited disaster.

Then again Nat didn't seem to have the same nonsense luck I did. Maybe it was some factor of being descended from three different gods. Chelsea got a second ability and I got crazy luck. Whatever the case, I had enough pattern recognition to see it for what it was. Inevitable.

Chelsea laughed like I was making a joke, and it was all I could do not to sigh. She'd figure it out. Until then, I needed to talk to Anna again. If she had information we could use I'd be willing to trade wishes for it in a heartbeat. Anything to level the playing field a bit. Lucky for us, we were already on the way to visit Zeke and Cass at the inn. We could discuss things there, in her new secret room. In the meantime, I was going to get a snack. Food hadn't been served at the banquet aside from canapes on account of the emergency with the thieves, and I was starving.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After eating, I went to see Zeke. After telling him what had happened, I then spent about fifteen minutes waiting for him to stop laughing at me. "Are you done?" I finally snapped. "I know that fate sense steers us to the interesting, but what are the chances of this happening? Should I be expecting someone from the cult to show up? Be the icing on this extremely unpleasant cake?"

"Sorry." he wheezed. "I shouldn't laugh. But your face is priceless. What did I tell you about rolling with the punches kid? You couldn't be doing that any less right now."

I threw my hands up. "Well sorry if I don't want to get straight up murdered by random nobles! This on top of the normal nonsense that is my life would be enough to kill us all. So please tell me that we only have to deal with one crisis at a time, or do I need to buy a bomb shelter and reinforce it with A-rank metal."

"First of all." He told me with a roll of his eyes. "You could sell every planet you've ever heard of and you wouldn't be able to afford that. Don't let the Necromedes fool you. The Zayne clan are absurdly rich. Secondly, I'm laughing because I just realized you missed one of the basic points of being an Ascendant, and it's probably been causing you to suffer for months now."

I sighed, knowing whatever he was about to say was going to piss me off. He was only this gleeful when he was taunting me, so whatever I missed must have been obvious. "What, exactly, did I miss?"

"Fate sense steers you toward interesting things. Ascendants are drawn toward dramatic and life changing events." He said in a bored tone. "Some people think it's a sort of conceptual gravity and that it's more based on Impact, while Fantasy just attunes you to the draw. Some people are more affected, people with strong lineage tend to be tossed about on the winds of fate quite a bit, but the main point is, crazy shit happens to Ascendants."

I let out an annoyed growl. "I KNOW! I literally said that to you earlier. That's not something I'm missing, it's the cause of my whole issue. Am I going to make even more of a mess by being here."

"That's why I'm laughing, kid. I just told you Ascendants need to be in the middle of craziness. Mostly you can find that anywhere there are lots of us, big populated planets, that kind of thing." I nodded, waving my hand for him to get to the point. "So, my stupid little nephew, what makes you think that fate sense, or conceptual gravity, would pull you toward an adventure, if you're already in one? If it stacked like that you'd have been buried in danger until you died from it."

I shrugged. "So what, I mean, that's good but I don't see what I miss..." I froze, my eyes closing as I let out a long miserable sigh. "Please tell me you aren't saying what I think you're saying."

"There's an old Ascendant proverb." He said, his grin showing far too many teeth. "Great Ascendants don't stay at home and wait for things to happen. They go out and happen to things."

I buried my hands in my face. "You're telling me I could have avoided almost all of the terrible shit that's happened to me by STAYING BUSY!?"

"I mean, not ALL of it." He cackled. "But probably some. Think about it, did anything bad happen during your big trip back to Valen to visit Callie's mom?" He shook his head in disgust. "Honestly I wasn't even messing with you on this one, I just assumed you knew. This whole trip seemed like you trying to head off as much deadly insanity as possible by putting yourself somewhere interesting."

Sighing again, I slumped back in my chair. "I guess subconsciously I probably was. Well at least it worked. What about the rest of it? You can still guard us against D-ranks right?"

He nodded. "Yeah, as usual. Once you hit E-rank though the only person on this planet who won't be able to touch you will be the Earl. Which won't be an issue, obviously. But the Empire is...messy. If I fight an Earl I'm picking a fight with his Marquis, and that'll piss off a Duke. The chances of a King deciding to fight me are minimal, not that I would CALL that a fight so much as a brief moment of resistance before my inevitable demise. My basic point is, try not to piss off the Earl."

"I mean, I'm not trying to piss off anyone. That Magister does WORK for the Earl though. If he tries to kill me and you kill him I can't make any promises." I paused. "What about Chelsea? Aren't you chaperoning? Ranks aside, you're supposed to protect her no matter what, right? Does that mean I might get some rollover protection?"

It was his turn to sigh. "I wish, but the geas won't let me. Plus I don't need to. I have a significant amount of control. I could kill anyone on this planet without implicating anyone else in any way. if someone attacks Chelsea they'll die, assuming the blow would be lethal, and I can tell. Otherwise I'm supposed to let her take the hit. Healing is a wonderful thing, and she asked your mother for the full experience."

Despite knowing he couldn't help, I found myself putting a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry." I said softly. At his raised eyebrow, I clarified. "I know how much it has to suck to want to help and be bound by your geas not to. I'm not going to blame you for it, but I DO feel bad for twisting the knife. So I'm sorry, for the position my dad put you in by being an asshole."

He gave me a sad smile. "Shane, I appreciate that. But I don't resent Eli for the things he does. He can be a cold and calculative bastard, but he does what he thinks is best. He loves you, and Chelsea, and your mother, and even me. He's just...bad at showing it now. Devils are naturally inclined to manipulation and deception, and his bent towards contracts makes him extremely granular in his approach. I hope someday you learn why he does what he does, and that you can forgive him. As absurd as that might sound now."

"How can you defend him?" I snapped, standing up and stalking away, only to turn and pace back. "After everything he's done. After all the pain he's caused."

His expression was calm. "Because he's my best friend. Because as much as he's changed, he's done more for me than anyone in the universe. Because without him, I wouldn't have you in my life. Take your pick, kid. And partly because I see things at a wider scale. In the grand scheme of things, a couple decades under a geas isn't such a big deal. And someday you'll feel the same."

I wasn't sure that was true. I wasn't sure I WANTED it to be true even if it was. Which, of course, made me assume it probably was. "I can't take this on faith." I said with a sigh. "I can't get past the bullshit. Mom is back, and she's trying, and I'm trying, but dad...he's not. I need to blame someone. Someone needs to be the asshole that put me through all this, and at this point he's all I've got."

"I know." He said simply. "Hell, he probably knows. But just because you feel it doesn't mean its right. I understand, but I'm just telling you my perspective." He tapped his forehead. "Kind of wish I could tell you better. But this damned geas makes that impossible."

I snickered. "I thought you didn't mind it." I raised a taunting eyebrow, relishing the chance to poke him a bit over something he didn't seem to care much about.

"I said in the grand scheme of things it isn't a big deal." He said flatly. "And neither is being punched in the throat. Which I am DEFINITELY doing to your father the next time I see him. We may be best friends, but I live by the motto 'play stupid games, win stupid prizes'. Even if I signed the damned geas in the first place. This has been FAR more irritating than I expected."

My grin widened. "I have to say, it's refreshing to hear you say that. The whole forgiving saintly friend routine was touching, but it's just not YOU."

"I'll have you know that I'm very forgiving." He said piously. "And I'll kill anyone who says otherwise. No second chances."
We both laughed at that, and it was nice to just be back with my uncle, hanging out and talking shit. Sure this was a serious situation, but for once it wasn't my serious situation. This felt more like discussing the weather, if the weather was a terrifying hurricane about to suck up the house we were currently standing in.

Which brought me to another point. I shot him a sly look. "How are things with Anna by the way. She seemed interested. You and Stella weren't dating last I checked. You thinking of starting something up here?"

My uncle just rolled his eyes. "I don't understand where I went wrong that you're basically married at eighteen, but some of us don't feel the need to make lifetime commitments to everyone we date. I swear, your parents splitting up gave you serious attachment issues."

"That's..." I trailed off. "Probably true, honestly. But if it did I think Callie has them too, so it works out." I'd kind of just assumed a lot of what pushed us together was recursion. I loved her and I didn't mind, but thinking about things, our respective family situations probably made us both a bit more ready for a commitment than not. However it happened, I was glad to have her, so I just stuck out my tongue at Zeke.

He snorted. "Eloquent as always. Anyway, Anna and I are spending some time together. I doubt she's interested in travelling the universe with me or anything, but she's fun to be around."

"She's not going to be new auntie?" I asked, widening my eyes innocently and batting my lashes. His unamused expression was enough to break through my teasing and set me off in a cackling laugh. "Jokes aside, it's nice you found someone to talk to. I worry about how isolated you are when we're not around."

His face softened and he chuckled, clapping me on the shoulder. "You don't need to worry about me, kid. A bit of solitude isn't likely to cause much of an issue. I've had time to work on my craft, as well as prepare for my final ascension to A-rank. I hit my stat limit a while ago, to be honest, I'm just preparing for the...other, requirements. I still need something big and flashy to..." He trailed off as his geas flashed. "Huh, guess I can't talk about that even casually, probably for the best."

I knew better than to push, since it would only hurt him, but I was overcome with curiosity. I knew there were other requirements as you got stronger, things beyond just stats. I'd met them up to C-rank and a half step into B, but beyond that was a mystery. I'd been told looking too far ahead could stunt my growth at this level and to just focus on my current trajectory.

Which was quickly approaching E-rank. In fact, I decided to prioritize that. With everything coming, I needed to be as strong as possible. No matter what that everything was, being at the same level as Camden was bound to be a help. I had some stockpiled wishes I'd been planning to use for working on the territory, but also...I realized I still had my alchemy allotment. Elixirs were an option for quick and steady growth at this point. Tomorrow was another day off, and I believed it was time to go shopping.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next morning I gathered everyone coming along for our alchemy shopping trip. Jessie, Bethy, Benny, Callie, Celine, and Gabe all filed out into the inn to have breakfast before leaving. The others decided to sleep in, so it was just us. "Anna." I said as we approached the bar. She was behind it, cleaning glasses. "We were hoping to wrangle breakfast, and maybe talk to you about some of the local shops. You have some time to sit and eat with us?"

Smiling, she set her glass down, before calling over her shoulder. "Mattie! Tell Cheswick to make a round of bacon and eggs. Then get Lionel out here to man the bar. I'm going to be eating with guests."

An annoyed voice bellowed back. "Gods! I'm doing inventory! Can't you do it yourself?" From the back of the inn, and Anna gritted her teeth, holding up a finger for us to wait as she stalked into the back. After an extremely uncomfortable few minutes listening to Mattie get torn a new one, Anna came back out, pasting a happy smile on her face.

"Sorry about that." She said brightly, I've got a table for you over here." She gestured to the far end of the room. "So, what exactly are you looking for. I won't even charge you for this, because direction to local amenities is more than covered under your room tab. You should take advantage of my wisdom, not many people are entitled to free access." She winked at us. "You're lucky I like you kids."

Looking around at the others, I gestured to Callie and I. "We need elixirs. Neither of us has used our allotment, and we're within a thousand points of E-rank." Honestly I wasn't happy about needing to rank up so fast. As miserable as training was, I felt like it was benefitting me. Once we hit E-rank we'd be on the officer track as per our contract, learning command. We'd miss out on basic training.

"How much will you need?" She said consideringly. "Are the rest of them going to be ranking up with you?" She studied our friends. "Because honestly, that might be a problem. Elixirs are tightly controlled. Getting two thousand points worth might be doable if you look in the right place, but the empire doesn't like people achieving mass rank ups through means outside the imperial roles. Alchemy has a...negative connotation here."

I cocked my head. "They can't. They're not close enough to the next rank. We have alternative means for them to reach E-rank." Nat was working with the two of them. They were only twenty five hundred points away give or take, and between Celine's resources and Jessie doing a bit of off the books healing, they could cover that in only a few months. But I was more focused on the possible ramifications of that news. "How negative exactly? Will we be arrested for using elixirs?" I hadn't considered that alchemists would be something they might not like in such a carefully controlled place.

"Nothing so extreme." She said with a wave. "Don't forget that elixirs are expensive. Nobles are the only ones who can really afford them, so they've taken steps to make sure there are ways to acquire the materials. It's just that those ways tend to be less out in the open. I know a place nearby where you can get your hands on some elixirs, but they're going to cost a premium."

I wasn't worried. I had plenty of money after our trip out here. I wasn't excited to burn it all, but I would if I needed to. Our timetable had moved up now. Luckily, we had four months to before the battle to take over the territories was set to begin. That was enough time for Jessie and Benny to hit E-rank with Nat's help, and hopefully some of the others too. It was also enough time for Callie and I to learn to command troops. I just hoped whatever Spencer Tolbert (if it was him) had planned wasn't going to come to fruition early.

I glanced at Callie, who had picked up my mood from the bond. She couldn't read my mind, but she could feel my impatience, regret, determination, and all the other minute emotions mixed into my current mood. Callie and I knew each other better than almost anyone, and given the circumstances, it wasn't hard for her to extrapolate my thoughts from what I was feeling. She gave my hand a squeeze and smiled encouragingly, and I could feel the love and support through the bond.

"We're interested." I said finally. "I assume this place accepts chits?" Anna smiled and nodded pleasantly. "Alright, then we'll have breakfast before we go. Can you guide us there? Or give us a map?"

She pulled out a beautiful silver hand mirror. "Of course. Do you have your mirror on you?" I blinked dumbly at the thing, and she groaned. "You really need to get one of these. Without access to the scan network here, you'll need mirrors to function. Even if your rings can still make calls to each other, not being able to interface with the locals will be a problem."

"Can we get them wherever you're sending us?" I asked. "Because I can shell out for fifteen of them as long as they aren't too crazy. Given everyone has one, I doubt they're going for too much."

Nodding, she put hers away. "There are different models, but you can get a barebones mirror for five F-ranked chits. I'd recommend investing. They should have some at the thieves quarter."

Benny perked up. "Thieves quarter huh? That sounds pretty cool. Is that where we're going? Are there people with thief jobs in the empire? How does that even work? There's no way they could be on the imperial roles, how do they rank up?" He seemed fascinated by the inner workings of the empire, and I didn't blame him.

"That's...complicated." She said hesitantly. "Theoretically, the dark professions shouldn't be imperially sanctioned. More realistically though, theft and assassination are bound to happen, even without support. Most thieves guilds have arrangements with the local noble. Nobles apportion the renown for an area, and once it reaches them, it's theirs to do with as they please. Often they support the darker guilds and businesses in exchange for a greater say in how they operate."

I frowned. "They can do anything with it? What's to stop them from keeping it all? If they skimmed a bunch off the top they could make themselves much stronger, couldn't they?" The idea that people could control something like renown and actually portion it out like currency was staggering to me. How did it even work? I knew that the Emperor's power had a lot to do with it, but it still blew my mind.

"The Emperor stops them." She said simply. "The Empire is a machine. An esoteric one to be sure, but a machine nonetheless. Every person plays a role, and in order for that to continue they need to be supported. There are ways to increase the net gain enough to have a bit of extra renown to funnel toward other pursuits, such as thieves guilds and the like, but the nobles still have to pay their citizens. If you don't pay the baker, no bread gets baked, the workers don't eat, and eventually, someone comes to investigate. Nobles who try things like that die in public and horrifying ways. The Emperor IS the Empire. To participate and fail to do your duty is to spit in his face. No one is that stupid."

I wondered if the renown generated by people like me, who weren't on the roles, was one of the ways to increase net gain like she said. Honestly the whole thing was so weirdly abstruse I had no idea how anyone could track it. Probably why there was a literal god running the show.

"So the thieves had a deal with Clairdon?" I asked, considering who was probably in charge of the roles in this are. "Will they get involved in the battles?"

She waved my concern away. "Viscount Creck. Barons aren't stable enough to make a long term deal with. Thieves, assassins, and the like, tend to work with more static authorities. Viscounts usually. Their territories don't change hands nearly as often. As I'm sure you know, Mastery is a watershed. Picking a fight with a Master at anything less is a difficult prospect, and it's a rare Baron who can manage."

Which made sense. My Solid Path made me a dangerous opponent at F-rank, but even an Illusionary Path like Callie's Path of the Abyss made a huge difference in combat. All Masters had Paths, and with both stat and Path advantages, it was bound to be a nightmare to try to beat one. Not an issue I'd have if I was punching up ranks, though I'd still have all the other obvious problems with fighting someone stronger.

"So we're supposed to visit this thieves quarter? What's to stop us from thieving US?" I asked cautiously. My group was pretty tough, but here, where we were so badly suppressed, multiple E-rankers could easily roll us for our stuff.

Anna rolled her eyes. "Stealing things to sell only works if you can sell them. Do you think anyone would go to the thieves quarter to buy things if they were just going to get robbed. Thieves that let other thieves steal in their territory don't last long. The quarter is the safest place in the city. Though most of Saltzberg is pretty safe. The guard doesn't allow street crime. Arrangements with the viscount or not, they still serve their purposes. Most robberies are burglaries, and they tend to avoid violent confrontation."

I'd wondered how the guard played into that whole thing, given she'd said people still had to serve their purposes. My thoughts were cut off as Mattie stalked out of the kitchen in the back, carrying a pair of trays laden with bacon and scrambled eggs with cheese. She slammed them down in front of us one after another, turning to glare at her aunt when she finished. "Please enjoy your meal." She hissed through gritted teeth. Then she spun and stormed out of the room.

"Wow, she really hates being polite." Said Benny through a mouth full of eggs. Celine glared at him and he swallowed. "I mean...why's she so upset?" He said weakly. I held back my snicker at the irony, not wanting to draw her ire myself. She was formal and polite most of the time, but Celine could do a pretty good withering stare when annoyed. That would really mess up my meal.

Anna sighed. "She's been out of sorts lately. Lionel too, but his anger is more of a quiet seethe. Mattie takes after my brother Marcus, when she's upset, EVERYONE knows it. Their parents sent them to work here against their will. They were worried about them getting in trouble in the capital. Lionel offended the heir of a Viscount and they packaged him off to Saltzberg to keep him out of sight. Mattie in particular feels caught up in things that weren't her problem."

I winced. "That does sound rough. It's nice of you to look out for them though. I'm assuming you can't just warn the Viscount off?"

"Soft power is more my style." She said with a shrug. "I protect my own, however. I was able to get my friends from the other night out of trouble. Though one of them was beaten in a particularly merciless fashion by someone carrying a big stick." She gave me a pointed look.

I took a sip of the glass of juice that had somehow appeared with my meal. Guava. It was pretty good. She rolled her eyes, turning back to her food when she realized I wouldn't apologize. He'd deserved it. We all enjoyed the food (the bacon was a deliciously crispy maple and brown sugar cured treat) but soon enough it was time to go. Anna sighed and stood up herself. "Well, I suppose with no mirror I'll have to just show you the way. Come along, children. I'll teach you all about honor among thieves."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I'd expected the thieves quarter to be underground. I know, I'm biased because of the WCP, but still, I'd figured it would be somewhere hidden and secure, where no one would be able to find it. Understanding or not, the guards had to guard stuff, so keeping a bunch of stolen shit out in the open would be ridiculous. There was no way they would have the whole thing in an obvious easily locatable spot.

The street signs directing us to the 'Merchant's Quarter' were the first and most obvious indication of how wrong I was. Benny couldn't stop cackling at the fact that merchants were so synonymous with being stingy pricks that thieves would use the designation as an all but open proclamation of their profession, though I was a bit confused.

"What about the actual merchants?" I asked as we walked. "They can't all be thieves in disguise." At that point, even Anna cracked up, and I sulked for five minutes as we walked through the streets, the whole group of them laughing at my word choice.

"Sorry." Anna gasped. "It's just not often someone sets up a straight line like that. I honestly think there were so many possible jokes that it prevented me from being able to tell one. There are merchants, but they tend to mix with the thieves pretty seamlessly. Similar mindset."

Entering the 'merchant's quarter', I was surprised once again. The place was picturesque, like a little shopping district. Cobblestone streets and thatched rooves. "Alright." I said as we approached. "We're looking for Might and Vitality focused elixirs. Where would we go to find that?"

Callie and I had discussed our needs, and while I preferred to more evenly disperse my stats, and Callie had her big concentrations in Perception and Fantasy, we both figured Might would play a solid role in the battles to come, and Vitality would help us maintain our stamina. Ranking up would offset a huge amount of the pressure from the planet and help us return to our more powerful forms (partially at least) but having a physical edge couldn't hurt.

Anna made a considering sound. "I'm not sure. There aren't a wealth of alchemists around. I checked my mirror before we left, and Burton Stovall seems to be the top pick for most accomplished alchemist in Saltzburg. At least according to my sources." She pointed down the street, gesturing to a small, picturesque building with a tiny fence around its bucolic yard. "It might be a bit pricey though, I hope you brought enough money."

We had. In fact, that had been a large portion of the reason we'd decided not to fill out Jessie and Benny's elixir allotment too. We weren't sure we'd have enough. A thousand points of stats was nothing to scoff at. Even for an F-rank assortment of pills it would most likely break the bank to get enough for the two of us. I was hoping the thirty plus D-rank chits I had on me would be enough.

Nodding to her instead of answering, I gestured to Benny. His haggling Skill had hit Lesser after our negotiations with Camden, though he hadn't mentioned it until later. That still wasn't anything impressive here, but it was better than nothing. He, Callie, and I all stepped through the gate, making our way down the idyllic path of flat stones interspersed through the path up to the door.

I pushed it open, going first, and there was a bell-chime as we entered. I braced myself for some kind of lab or concoction room, but once again this place failed to live up to expectations. The inside of the room was open and clean, unsurprisingly bigger on the inside, but besides that it wasn't anything like I'd expected. Glass tubes filled the walls, coming down from the ceilings and each filled with a certain kind of pill.

Solid colors, stripes, swirling patterns that danced across the surface, there were so many it made my head spin, all lined up next to each other in a dizzying display. At the base of each tube was a metal plate with a slot for a coin, and below it there was a small metal hatch that would let out one of the pills. Each metal plate had a small, neatly written label on it.

Behind us, above the door, lay a sign. 'Help yourself, to buy in bulk, approach the counter.' A red carpet ran the length of the store, coming to a stop in front of a small wooden counter, behind which sat a fidgety, neurotic looking man with square glasses, flipping through a massive leatherbound book.

Glancing at Benny and Callie, we heard the others come in behind us, but ignored them for the moment, walking down the carpet side by side. I tried not to look at the pills, because the variety was hurting my head. Some of these were higher rank than I was, but even the F-ranked stuff was in high concentrations and it seemed to be straining the world around it. The glass they were behind glittered strangely, and I realized that as light hit, if I looked VERY closely (something I couldn't do for long) there were runes in the striations in the glass.

"Don't look at those." The man said boredly, catching my attention. "They're warded. The glass is a propreitary cast from a small company on Reigel. Good security is irreplaceable. I assume, having read the sign, you're interested in a bulk purchase." He squinted at us behind the glasses, then his eyes strayed to Anna. "You brought a D-ranker. That's certainly enough to engender my interest."

Not for the first time, I wondered who the hell Anna was. Why was a D-ranker on this planet but not one of the nobility? Why did no one seem to know she existed? Where had she come from? How did this guy know what rank she was, when we couldn't tell and I hadn't seen any sign the Magister noticed her either?

Stepping up to the counter, Benny smiled at him confidently. "Hello, we' re looking for a certain combination of elixirs. One thousand, eight hundred and eight points of Might and Vitality elixir at F-rank. What will that cost us?" Callie was at ninety one hundred points and I was at nine thousand ninety two, so we didn't need a full two thousand.

"First of all." He said flatly. "You can't. Making an F-rank elixir with more than a hundred points in a stat is prohibitive. You'll see high dosage pills like that at lower ranks, because the Impact values are so close it doesn't matter, but past F it becomes prohibitive. I can tell you came from somewhere with extremely low alchemy standards to even ask that question."

Benny faltered, clearly put off by the response. Clearing his throat, he stood for a moment, not speaking. Finally he sighed. "Alright, can you tell us how this works then? We need that value in pills, can you give it to us? In whatever combination?"

He sighed, removing his glasses and slipping a thin cloth from his pocket to clean them. "Basically, your average high end F-rank stat elixir will give you fifty points. In order to make a higher concentration of stats you need rare F-rank materials, which is prohibitive. It's more cost effective to take an E-rank stat elixir aimed at F-rankers. They're tempered specifically to dilute the Impact, and the more powerful base ingredients allow you to more easily hit the values needed."

Knowing how Ascendant values worked, I nodded. "The E-rank pills go up to five hundred points, I take it. The tempering prevents the problems you can normally get from ingesting pills of too high a rank? I thought one rank higher was safe?"

"The higher you go, the bigger the Impact difference rank to rank." He said matter of factly. "An E-ranker has sixty two Impact to an F-ranker's thirty two. You CAN take E-ranked pills made normally, but it's a massive strain. The large difference is why you can get so many more stats out of them. It's an advanced alchemy technique called conversion. At lower levels, taking a higher ranked medicine will give you the same amount of stats. Once you get into the higher ranks conversion pills become more commonplace."

I sighed. "Forget the eight points then." I was going to have to grant a wish to get those. I was reasonably sure I could do eight at once when I finished taking the pills, I was already able to trade seven. "Eighteen hundred points then. How mach for those?"

He pulled out a small jewelers loop, looking through it at the both of us and frowning. "Two top grade E-rank conversion Might pills, two middle high Vitality." He said after a moment. "Five hundred and four hundred points respectively." He glanced over at Anna. "I'm willing to price for post conversion, assuming I can count on seeing your benefactor again in the future?" She nodded.

"Twenty E-rank chits." He said finally. Benny opened his mouth, but the alchemist just glared at him. "If you try to haggle the price doubles. If you don't like it you can go buy from the OTHER alchemist who can reliably source E-ranked pill ingredients in enough numbers to have extras beyond what the nobles reserve. Spoiler alert, there aren't any. You MIGHT be able to find enough pills to heap together the points you want, but they'll gouge you worse than I did."

Benny shot me an apologetic look, but I just shrugged. Plans didn't always work out. I passed the twenty E-ranked chits over, grimacing in nearly physical pain. That was months of work. Elixirs got expensive at higher rarities. Still, I couldn't help but glance around. "These can't all be for stats." I said cautiously. "What other kinds of products do you sell?"

Rolling his eyes, the man muttered. "Civilians." Under his breath before gesturing out at the shop. "Alchemy is not exclusively the creation of stat elixirs, despite what the uneducated might think. There are pills for stealth, pills to allow you to see certain kinds of energy, pills to resist cold, or fire, or lightning. Pills that let you protect your mind from intrusion or temporarily harden your flesh to the consistency of stone. Almost any ability a person can have can be distilled into a tincture. There are endless uses for alchemy."

His tone was proud and excited, and it was easy to tell that Burton Stovall LOVED what he did. I even considered buying some more pills, they sounded like they could be damned useful, but I only had ten E-ranked chits left. I was pretty sure he'd given the pills to us almost as cost in consideration for Anna shopping here in the future, too, and I doubted he'd be so nice again.

I indicated we were finished and he bustled away, coming back with four pills, two dark red and two emerald green. Callie and I took one of each color, then bid our goodbyes and turned to leave. As we walked out, I studied the pills again with new eyes, trying to discern what each one did beyond the name on the labels, many of which were abstruse and unhelpful in determining the purpose of a pill.

Alchemy was an interesting field, even more than I'd considered before. It was clear to me that I hadn't gotten a good idea of its depths back home, where techniques like 'conversion' didn't exist. A method of converting higher Impact to more stats. It reminded me a bit of the way my wishes worked, where Impact could act as a substitute for other requirements. Was the alchemist who created the technique on the same level as the original Wishmaster in terms of talent? Was it another god? Maybe one that wasn't around anymore?

I had plenty of questions, but in the end they'd have to wait. We had our pills now, which meant I was only giving Camden the agreed upon five wishes today. My last would be used to gather the eight points I'd need to finish reaching E-rank along with Callie. It was finally time to step into the same level of power as the strongest on our home planet. I for one, couldn't wait to see what it was like.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"So." I said, holding the pair of pills. "This is going to fucking suck, isn't it?" We were back at the inn, Callie and I sitting across from each other. Chelsea was sitting in too, having volunteered to be the one wishing for the eight points I'd need to rank up after I took the elixirs. "Our souls are pretty sturdy, but nine hundred points is a decent chunk of our current values. Especially in the stats we have. Almost a quarter of each for me."

Callie grimaced. "The Might won't be a problem, percentage wise five hundred is much less for me than it is for you. Four hundred Vitality is literally more than a hundred percent increase for me, though. It's going to be agony, especially since I don't even have an Azure Soul Body like you do to blunt the pain."

I reached out and took her hand, squeezing it gently. "I'll take as much of it as I can handle. We can go one at a time, so it'll be more like both of us are doing the upgrades together. Do you want to go first?"

"Oh sure." She said shakily. "Soulrending pain is my favorite thing ever. I guess I'd better do Vitality first then. We can deal with it when we're both in peak condition. You sure you want to help me ride this one out? You can't do much more than take some of the pain. It might not be worth it. It's not like it's going to kill me."

Rolling my eyes, I pushed the emerald pill in the box closer to her, and she sighed, nodding as she used the hand I wasn't holding to pick it up. Popping the clear crystal box open, she picked up the shimmering green pill. "Wish me luck." She said as she tossed the thing back like a shot. She sat there for a second, waiting, and then her back arched and her body slammed back against the wooden floor.

Life energy blazed through her, manifesting like a tidal wave of pure Vitality rolling through her whole body. Her hand clamped down around mine like a vise, and my eyes widened as several of my bones cracked. I hissed in pain, but I didn't pull away, letting her grind them together as she choked down screams of pain. It honestly helped me focus as I tried to withstand the flood of agony coming through the bond.

I was taking as much of her pain as I could, this was a weight on my soul sure, and on hers, but more than that, this was her body and state of being adjusting to suddenly being more than twice as strong. I was regretting picking Vitality as the stat we used the elixir for, and I could feel she was too.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was probably more like thirty seconds, the pain faded. Callie slumped back, panting in pain and releasing my hand. I triggered a heal burst immediately, using my other hand to try to shift the bones into the right positions to make the healing easier. "That..." Panted Callie. "Was the worst idea we've ever had. Why would I possibly have considered doing that? On the upside I got a full fourteen percent to my soul strength for weathering that shitstorm."

I flexed my hand with a grimace. "Yeah, probably would have been smarter to let Vitality drag up naturally as you ranked and pumped the points into Perception or something else that could have taken it better. On the upside Might should be a cakewalk after that."

She shrugged. "Our logic was solid. It would have been stupid not to fortify my Vitality. Even with the extra Impact from the rank up, the extra stamina and regeneration will be vital. Let's get this moving. Might time." She grabbed the second box, popping it open and tossing it back like she had the first.

This time, there was some strain as she adjusted, but it didn't really HURT. Callie was heavily invested in Might, and the five hundred points she was gaining was far less of a shock. There was still a bit of difficulty as she withstood the E-ranked pill as it converted to an abundance of F-ranked Might, but between the two of us withstanding it was easy.

She completed the stat acquisition simply enough, and after allowing herself to rank up, she ascended smoothly to E-rank. It was almost anti-climactic after everything else. But her soul was strong, and she was able to handle the growing Impact easily enough. In fact, it was stronger than mine now. As she ranked up, it made the shift from green to blue officially sublimating into a form that prevented any further breakage of shackles. Not that she would have a problem with that.

I felt the weight of her beat on the air as she Ascended, breaking through to a rank that I knew she'd been dreaming of since she was a little girl. She was officially an E-ranker like her father, and with a Path already to boot. She was already ready to take the step into D-rank that he could never take on Callus. She opened her eyes, tears spilling down her cheeks as she stared at me in wonder. I could feel the emotion crashing through the bond like a tsunami, her new and weightier sense of self almost overpowering to my weaker being. Almost. She grabbed a piece of paper, writing out her new status and handing it over to me.

Calliope Reynolds. E-rank. Ability: Expert Abyssal Infiltration- Enter the shadows and emerge where you will within range, shape the darkness to your call, moving it as if it were part of your body, and even extend your senses through the shadows to spy on your enemies.

Might-3350
Impact-65
Vitality-742
Fantasy-2105
Focus-908
Perception-2375
Creation-485
Progress to next rank: 10030/100000

Soul strength- Blue-64%
Pet-Wolf named Rellia

Skills: Minor Tracking, Minor Dual Dagger Mastery, Beginner Stealth, Beginner Trap Mastery, Beginner Disguise, Lesser Balam Mastery, Intermediate Shadow Manipulation Mastery. Intermediate Paired Dueling.
Path of the Abyss-Illusory

"I...I can't believe it." She said quietly. Staring at the paper. "I'm finally here. Finally as strong as he is. Maybe not as far along, but I have my Path, and that has to count for something. Plus my soul is definitely way stronger than his. I bet I could kick his ass."

I laughed. "Maybe hold off until we hit D-rank. Might as well make a big spectacle when you prove to him what a dumb asshole he is."

She lunged forward, throwing her arms around me. "Shane...you don't know what this means to me. Or maybe you do, but still...I love you. Thank you so much." She giggled. "Apparently helping me achieve my lifelong dream was at least worth a Skill rank. Paired duelling ranked up. I should be able to help you withstand your own stats way easier with a blue soul." She puffed out her chest as she pulled back, proud to be able to help and of how far she'd come.

Blue. The soul of a Master. It was a heady thing. My own upgrade would bring me to the next soul rank, and I was curious what that would be. What was the complete sublimation state after Azure Soul Body? A halfway step into Indigo, I was sure, but what would it be called? Deciding I was going to find out, I grabbed my own pills. One and then the other, I took them, tossing them back and then waiting.

It wasn't...pleasant, but it didn't hurt, not really. Just some pressure, and the small amount of discomfort Callie helped with easily through our new and improved bond. She seemed almost annoyed she couldn't do more, and it was hard not to smirk at her pouting for not being needed during this.

Chelsea, who had been watching the byplay with an amused smile, smiled at me. "Alright, you ready for this? I wish for eight points of Might, and I'll pay with eight points of Fantasy." She enunciated clearly.

Wish detected. Grant wish?

I agreed without hesitation, holding out a hand and grabbing hers, letting the rising static of my power carry the last eight points I needed. I was glad I'd been right about the bump being enough to get me to eight points per wish. It would have been hellish getting stuck at one point away from E-rank. As soon as it settled, I felt the weight of my incoming shift in self.

Impact. The conceptual weight of a being. Thirty points of Impact was nearly double what I had now. But I wasn't worried. Impact weighed on the soul. Stats affected the body, especially ones like Vitality, so there was bound to be difficulties in a big jump, but Impact? The soul weight settled onto my Azure Soul like a warm blanket.

I was uplifted. Ascended. I became more than I had ever been before. My Path of the Doom Sovereign, an ability I'd clawed and scraped together and worked to refine, seamlessly rose alongside my wish power. I couldn't wait to see what kind of changes that brought about. New subskills, sure, but changes to the ones I had I was sure. The changes were gradual to that one. It would take time to settle from its first rank upgrade. I'd check those later, for now I was more focused on the earlier portions of my status and how it had changed.

Wishmaster candidate status. E-rank.
Ability: Expert Wish- Seven times a day grant an Expert wish in return for proper compensation. Wish must be feasibly achievable by the candidate's own efforts within a three day period with current statistics.
Expert Path of the Doom Sovereign- A Solid Path toward a great destiny.
Might-2975
Impact-65
Fantasy-950
Vitality-2162
Focus-1120
Perception-1204
Creation-1554
Progress to next rank:10030/100000
Soul strength- Sapphire Soul Body

Stored:7 shadow attacks, 10 shadow jump (seven in reserve), 10 Stealth charges, 0 fire attacks, 10 triple strenth tranq blows (ten in reserve), 10 triple strength density shifted attacks (ten in reserve). 10 spider leg attacks (ten in reserve), 9 heal bursts (4 reserve), 3 gravity attacks, 10 shadow clone (2 in reserve), 19 scan heals (I-rank ability so Shane can hold more)
Pet- Wolf named Jin

Financial resources:10 E-rank chits


Skills: Expert Path of the Doom Sovereign, Lesser Valtek Mastery, Lesser Cooking Mastery, Lesser Inventing Mastery, Beginner Balam Mastery, Minor Piano Mastery, Minor Guitar Mastery, Minor First Aid Mastery, Intermediate Paired Dueling

There was a lot to unpack there. Seeing Expert instead of intermediate thrilled me, obviously. Seven wishes would come in handy and let me stockpile more for the territory while fulfilling my contract with Camden still, and I could feel my body shaking off the bonds of the pressure it had been under. Not completely, obviously, but some of my old strength and speed were returning.

Then there was my soul. Sapphire Soul Body. Each rank of the soul had its own peak sublimation. The Azure Soul Body was the first, but each rank up would reveal another. I'd never bothered to ask what the peak of blue was, and seeing it, I wasn't sure how to feel. I didn't feel different really, though I suppose I wouldn't. The new clarity I'd gained in the temple had been a result of same rank soul changes. Ascending was the natural method of growing the soul, and it wasn't really supposed to alter the way I felt.

Turning to Callie, I scribbled out my own status, passing it to her, and let her read over it. I could feel her pride and excitement against my soul, the combination of new bond and new us making me feel even closer to her. She finished reading it and threw herself at me again, and I held her as bright, shimmering laughter spilled out of her, pure exultation at we had accomplished together. I started laughing alongside her, and I didn't even care that Chelsea was looking at us like we were lunatics. It was good to be alive.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I'd like to claim that I immediately went through my DS Mastery to see what I got. This rank wouldn't have been a death blow since I'd gotten Marked for Death last time, but I still had to check what new subskills popped up, not to mention see if the ones I had upgraded. My Path wasn't something that could be found in the game anymore, it was unique because of the additions I'd made.

That's what I SHOULD have done. But...I was just so giddy. Being suppressed by the world around us was so tiring. I'd been clocking MAYBE a pound per point of Might in terms of raw strength. Still freakishly powerful for a normal human, but nothing like what I'd had even as an H ranker back on Callus. As a planet of not even D-rank, my old home put almost no pressure on Ascendants, though at the cost of limiting their advancement.

Stratholme, meanwhile, turned F-rankers into veritable mortals. Even at E-rank, I was at maybe a tenth of the strength as I'd be were I completely unencumbered. That said, a tenth of the full output of my body was a hundred pounds of lifting strength per point of Might, of which I had nearly THREE THOUSAND. the lessening of the pressure putting me FIRMLY back into the realm of the superhuman.

I crowed in joy as I hit the street outside the inn at a dead sprint, Callie speeding along at my side. The feeling of freedom, of sheer unrestrained POWER, was intoxicating, and as we approached the walls, we bent our knees and hurled ourselves into the air, slipping the bonds of gravity through main force.

Of course, I wasn't a moron. State of Grace triggered as I soared up, if only to lighten the impact of my eventual landing, and it was the easiest thing in the world to reach through the new and improved bond, allowing it to extend to Callie as she joined me in the sky.

The guards below watched us with bored expressions, and in a shocking twist, I heard Callie's voice in my head. "I'm surprised they don't try to stop us."

My eyes snapped to hers, and she looked surprised. I reached out experimentally, pushing a thought through the bond with the strength of my Sapphire soul. "Can we...talk telepathically now?" I said cautiously. "Wait, is this a deliberate thing or are we reading each other's minds. Because I'm definitely NOT ok with that."

As we reached the apex of our parabolic arc out over the forest outside town, I kicked off the air with Ripple Running, changing direction to send me drifting down toward the trees in a spot where I could see an opening. Callie tapped into the skill effortlessly, doing the same, and we sailed down among the trees like leaves on the wind. "I don't think so." Her voice rang in my mind. "I don't think this is a brain thing. I think we're sending messages with our souls."

We hit the trees, separating as we kicked off a branch each, shooting forward as we sped from branch to branch, weaving through the forest in a blur, losing each other behind the giant boughs of blue leafed giants, but never worrying about not finding each other again.

She was right. I could feel it. These weren't words exactly. They were a sharpening of the empathic impressions we'd had before. A more controlled form of communication through our souls. Whether we gained that control from our massively improved soul power or the new rank of the Skill was anyone's guess. As holders of souls of a Master level, we were bound to be discovering new tricks. Whatever it was, I didn't dislike it.

I could still feel a constant trickle of Callie's emotions across the bond, a comforting low hum in the background of my mind like white noise to fall asleep too. I got clearer impressions along with the words when she spoke, though I knew from my own responses she could have shut that off. She didn't though. Our bond was stronger than ever, and with it came a sense of absolute trust built on living in a world where we were each other's guiding light even in the deepest dark.

The thought and the emotion that went with it clearly carried across, because I felt a tide of adoration and love roll over, me, turning to panic and shock as I missed the branch and went pinwheeling into the brush.

I was so shocked by her fear that I didn't even bother to kick off a Ripple Running platform, just smashed into the leafy expanse of bushes with a crash. Callie was at my side in an instant, worry writ large on her face, but I just brust out laughing as I pulled myself out of the branches, picking leaves from my hair as I straightened my jacket.

"Well." I said breathlessly. "We're going to have to get used to that again. Bit more intense than before. With our current soul power I doubt we'll have trouble controlling it. We'll just need to be a bit more mindful to use a lighter touch."

She wrapped her arms around me, resting her head on my chest as she laughed along with me. "Yeah. Intense. Good word for it. That was...wow. When I focused I got your emotions way more clearly than before. I felt you thinking about me and wanted to know what was going on and...I think I created a feedback loop for a second. You feeling me feeling you feeling me." She giggled almost drunkenly. "There was so much love. It was nice."

"It was." I agreed, a stupid grin on my face. "But maybe not the safest thing to have going on around enemies."
She sized me up. "Or shrubbery, apparently." We both burst into giggles again at that, and I had to even out my breathing as I clamped down with my soul. I'd been wrong about the difference not being noticeable, it had just taken a bit to him me.

"Ok." I said, exhaling slowly. "We'll need to work on that. Good thing we have the day off. Is it me or does it feel like..."
She nodded. "Our souls are way too strong. We should do some kind of big Skill or something, tire them out a bit so we can feel this out gradually. Anything come to mind?"

"Yeah, I need to check out the details of my Path of the Doom Sovereign." I said with a shrug. "Might as well try some of the new tricks out. What about you? Do you have anything that'll strain your soul? Most of your tricks are part of your ability and that doesn't carry much soul weight. Normally I'd say do something complicated, but your shadow manipulation makes that and active part of your ability itself, which prevents too much soul strain."

She winked at me, and then she...SHIFTED. Dark jagged stone coated her body, green magma striations spitting with toxic flame covering her. I felt her tapping into my strength through the bond, not just my Skills, but into my Path itself, through its solid connection to my nature. She was using Belial.

For about a second. Then it blinked out, crumbling off her as she staggered, catching herself on the tree. "Wow." She groaned. "That was rough. I don't think Path stuff is meant to be used through the bond. That felt like deadlifting a small moon. My soul didn't crack or anything though, just got really strained really fast." She blinked a few times like she was clearing spots from her eyes. "We were right though. This feels much less...extreme."

The soul was the basis of the self, and while after the rank up we hadn't really felt too different, it had quickly become clear that even the slightest flex of our soul strength MASSIVELY overshot the mark. The bond was the most obvious place to see it, but far from the only one. With Callie having confirmed the guess, my next move was checking out my Doom Sovereign abilities. Holding up a hand I let the familiar purple flames roll across my vision, this time finally focusing on the part of my status I'd been ignoring.

DS Subskills. Monk: Stone Limb, Moonlit Night, Consecration of Flame, Ripple Running, State of Grace, Steam Arrow, Afterburner, Pit of Despair, Mountain Stance.

Rogue: Mercy Kill, Double Trouble, Touch of Tears, Flurry of Blows, Heavy hands, Marked for Death, False Fatality

Diviner: Overlay, Song of the Soil, Rhythm of the Wild, Eye of Revelation, Danger Sense, Piece of Mind



Goetia Staff Art: First form- Belial. Touch of Tears, Stone Limb, Consecration of Flames
Second Form- Mephistopheles. Consecration of Flame, Afterburner, Mercy Kill, Marked for Death.

First were the obvious additions. Piece of Mind and False Fatality. Both far more useful than they sounded. Piece of Mind allowed me to fragment part of my consciousness and create a second self basically. It allowed for divination on the fly, but combined with the shadow clones I had stored would essentially allow me to be do two things at once in a way that even high Focus couldn't. Normally impossible tasks would be achievable once I got the hang of it.

The second, my new rogue ability, was even better. Rather than a fake death skill, False Fatality allowed you to offload a powerful attack onto a specified target. Specifically it worked in synergy with Marked for Death, taking a strong hit directed at me and redirecting it to someone with the Mark. It was a huge lifesaving trump card, even if it required special conditions to set up.

I excitedly explained the new abilities to Callie, possibly geeking out slightly at seeing some of my more powerful DS skills finally starting to come through. I didn't have a monk skill this time, but Mountain Stance was still incredibly powerful so that was fine.

Then I paid more attention to my unique DS abilities and how they had changed. The ones I used most often seemed to have been altered at some level, though some less obviously than others. State of Grace now actively enhanced my speed when in use, Moonlit Night allowed me to apply the stealth damage bonus to others, as well as more easily allow them to see in the fog, and Heavy Hands went from ten percent armor penetration passively to fifteen.

All in all, the utility of each one had increased. It also showed that combining my subskills allowed them to evolve along with my rank ups, though for some reason only the ones I used often seemed to have changed measurably. I was sure that would mean something to me later, but for now I just wanted to try something out.

I used Piece of Mind. In a blink, my consciousness split in two. It was a strange sensation, I was looking at everything twice through the same set of eyes. A sort of constant deja vu assaulted my senses, but I ignored it. Dedication one parallel of my thoughts entirely to using Song of the Soil, I triggered Rhythm of the Wild and staggered at the information overload as I sensed everything within range both on and beneath the ground.

Herbs, plants, stones, I gained a nearly perfect understanding of the environment around us, able to percieve both of them in a way that shouldn't be possible without rendering me completely immobile from information overload. Turning to Callie, I grinned. "Ok, this is actually a strain, but you were right, that helps. I wonder though, can you use this one?"

My girlfriend closed her eyes, reaching through the bond to try to tap into the new skill, and beamed at me as she was able to split her mind like I did. "I can." She said in wonder. "It can only be used for a single instance, but...with my shadow clones, this could let me be in two places at once, or I could devote it to my shadow infiltration so I can use it without having to be immobilized." She cracked her neck, limbering up to try the new trick. "Use those senses to find us something to fight. I want to try this out." So I did. I had to admit I was just as excited.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

One of the first things I'd learned about combat under Abel was the somewhat paradoxical fact that, barring specialized training, having more people with you in a fight was a hindrance more than a help. That had seemed a bit ass backwards to me at the time, numbers are a good thing, but after I'd learned to actually fight with a partner via my paired duelling skill, I understood.

Humans, even Ascendants, are monocentric creatures. We have to be. We're born in one body, see through one pair of eyes, and experience the universe from a single point of view for our whole lives. We may use empathy and communication to try to understand others, but there are more than just five senses. Even if we know what a person tastes, hears, or smells, we don't know how those inputs affect them. We never really understand anyone else.

This leads to discord in combat that needs to be overcome. When you fight with a partner, you're not just both attacking one target. Even if there's only a single enemy, you have to be aware of the attacks your ally makes, aware of their positioning so YOU don't attack THEM. Then you get into overlapping attack patterns and how they can affect each other, and that only multiplies the more people you add to the equation.

Paired duelling, as it happened, was the way to combat that. Feeling the emotions, intentions, and reactions of your partner let you internalize all of the various aspects of combat like they were your own thoughts, allowing true and reasonable cooperation between partners, making paired combat the asset it should be.

Or at least, that had been what it USED to do. Now...now it was so much more. I could feel not just vague impressions of what Callie planned, but detailed ideas she was about to execute. With our souls both as strong as they were, processing and responding was a matter of instants, and I was able to track her progress in battle with the same speed I could my own.

Focus played no role, nor did Perception. We were a single unified force, thoughts flitting from my head to hers as I thought them, and then back just as fast. We weren't just operating seamlessly in conjunction, we were operating BETTER. It was like having two brains, which would have probably been confusing and distracting in any other circumstances, but with the bond, it just felt...right.

We didn't even need Piece of Mind to fight properly, since all this was done through the soul. I had no idea where Abel had learned this Skill, but it was amazing and incredibly complex. I wondered if it had been changed at all by our use, or if Abel and Mel thought like this all the time. It was no wonder they were so in sync.

The opponents I'd found were a pack of strange dog headed lizard things. They had huge hind legs, small, sharp clawed arms, and oversized heads on long sinuous bodies that could build up absurd speed when they leaned forward and charge, and apparently could see heat signatures.

They charged us from all angles, needle like teeth snapping and tearing to get at us, but it felt like...like we were walking on air. Not State of Grace. I didn't use it here. I didn't use any skills at all. This was good practice for learning to fight properly. I still planned to get some training, and I'd still need to learn the formations I'd be using as a commander. I had to get used to the limits of my new and improved physical capabilities, and that meant FINDING those limits.

I reached back, leaving my hand hanging in the air behind me without looking, and feeling Callie's palm slap into mine with the calm certainty I'd have felt if I'd been clapping. Closing my fingers, I pulled, and her feet came off the ground, an enemy rushing past where she'd just been. The monster bisected itself on a hanging slash of darkness from her path even as she landed in a spin, her leg lashing out and smashing into the bend of another of their legs.

The monsters were angry, enraged by the casual slaughter of one of their own, and I pulled my staff, whirling it around my neck to slap into Callie's palm, and then pulling her toward me in a twirl like we were dancing. When she came out the other side the staff came with her, her grip loosening and allowing the staff to slide down its length, extending as it swung.

Callie didn't have the skills to use a staff like that, but I did. My Valtek Mastery was easy for her to tap into. We continued like that for what seemed like an hour. It was beautiful. I felt so close to her, so...complete, and I knew she felt the same.
By the time we were done, there were dozens of the monsters dead around us. It wasn't a particularly hard fight, they were all F-rank, albeit relatively high up in that rank. If there had been E-rank monster packs wondering around this planet would have been much less safe for F-rankers like we had been.

"I think we might have gone a bit overboard." I said wryly as I cleaned green blood off my staff. "We killed a whole bunch of them."

Callie smiled fondly at me. "You don't need to feel bad. They were predators, and they wanted to eat us. Though I think if it wasn't for my stealth they would have run. No way they survived long enough to form a pack by being stupid enough to attack higher ranked Ascendants."

"Not what I meant." I said with a laugh. "I saw several of them tear apart one of the wounded ones. They were vicious bastards and I don't think I'm bothered by that. I just kind of feel like a bully. Being stronger and starting a fight. I don't hate the idea of being this strong though. It'll keep us safer in the future." I grinned at her. "We can finally learn to command troops."

She smiled back at me, and I could feel the comforting bubble of her excitement as it percolated through the bond. The time fighting had helped us both learn exactly how to moderate the bond. We could clamp down or ease up on the connection at will from either side, and we were both comfortable with the basic empathy that stretched between us. Being without it was like missing one of our senses.

Offering her my arm, we started our walk back to the city. "Kind of glad we waited on the armor stuff." She said as we walked. "The new costumes being tailored to our post breakthrough bodies should make them a better fit. Plus being at E-rank ourselves will make using them easier. The Stygian Branch was much easier to handle. Even with the bond it used to be hard for me to move it much. Now it just feels like a stick."

"I noticed that too." I said with a nod. "I can't wait to integrate this into my future forms. I've been working on a new defensive stance. Might be tough to do it before Benny breaks through to E-rank though. I was planning to include a stored attack when I created it. First time trying that, but with my soul as strong as it is I should be able to hold things stable while I form the structure of the new form."

She gave a thoughtful hum. "Can you just use ten of them? There's a ten times difference between ranks, so you might be able to make it work."

I nodded slowly. "That...that might work. I'll give it a shot when I have a minute free. How about you? Any big plans now that you've managed to hit E-rank? In terms of your capabilities I mean? I know you'll be training tactics too, will you focus on that exclusively? Or maybe join my political lessons?"

"Those both sound like fun, and I might sit in, but mostly I'm going to focus on my Path." She said decisively. "Seeing what yours can do, I'm excited to reach the Solid Path state, and to integrate that path into my ability. To truly wield the powers of the abyss." She sounded almost gleeful at the idea of wielding such a dangerous power, and I couldn't blame her. It was pretty cool.

Reaching Saltzburg, we entered without a problem and headed for Camden's estate. I wanted to check in with our patron, plus I still owed him five more wishes. Speaking of which, I saw a familiar form stomp up to me. "What the hell?" My sister said in exasperation, throwing up her hands. "You guys just took off. I spent like twenty minutes sitting there like an asshole waiting for you to come back."

I froze, blinking at her in slight confusion. "Oh...Chelsea. Hey..." I was at a loss for words. I'd been so overwhelmed with all the changes I'd just...forgotten she was there.

"You completely forgot about me, didn't you." She said with a sigh. "It's fine. I know that rank ups can be intense. You're back now, so I can come with you to...wherever. Actually, where are you going?" She looked a bit embarrassed to have only just ask, since we'd started walking again and she was strolling along beside us.

I gestured into the distance. "We're going to hit up Camden's manor." I said in explanation. "I want to let him know we're going to be moving up in the training camp. So sad for you guys that you're going to be stuck with the torment for a while longer, but honestly you should be coming up on a breakthrough right? You and Callen were both pretty close to E-rank last I checked."

"That's true." She said with a nod. "I'll catch up with you two soon. Does your contract cover me for command training too? Because I've always been fascinated by books about tactics."

That was a good question, actually. I glanced at Callie, who shrugged. "I...don't remember." I admitted. "I think so, and if not we can tweak things. Wishes aside, he owes us for sticking around. We could find someone to buy the contract out easily, and honestly there are a couple of hazard pay provisions and political specificity clauses I could use to break the damned thing if I really wanted to."

We arrived at Camden's manor to be greeted by Alister, who stared at us in shock as he escorted us into the manor. We didn't bother to hold back our auras or use stealth this time. We were here to show off, and being low profile would be counter productive.

When Camden saw us, he whistled. "Damn, you guys made quick work of that. I have to say I'm impressed. I knew you had enough of your elixir allotment left to get the bump, but those can be hard to find here. Congratulations are in order I suppose. Welcome the the E-ranks. If you were locals I'd welcome you to Barony, but I suppose that will have to wait until you get some land and appoint your regent."

He gestured for us to sit down, and I brought up Chelsea's question. He seemed a bit uncertain as well, so we busted out the contracts and pored over them, finding out that yes, Chelsea was entitled to command training as well under the final version I'd drafted. I commended my past self on excellent wording. Once we sorted out the details of our promotions, we got Camden's wishes out of the way and then we headed back to the inn. Tommorow we would return to camp, and be upgraded to our new barracks. Until then, we were just going to enjoy the rest of our day off.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Callie and I woke up refreshed and energized. We'd been sleeping under the equivalent of a lead blanket for the last week, and just the sheer bliss of being able to breathe freely and easily was almost intoxicating as we greeted the day. We had to be back to the camp for the command tent meeting, which was thankfully after Revielle, so we didn't need to go back a night early and could have breakfast with Cass and Zeke, something we both enjoyed immensely.

"These parfaits are amazing." I told Callie as I dug into the cup of smooth, sweet yogurt, covered with granola, fresh fruit, and drizzled with delicious honey. "So the command tent meeting is at ten, right?" She paid more attention to that kind of thing than I did.

She let out a blissful sigh as she took her last bite. "The blackberries are so fresh it's crazy. This is so much better than the eggs and bacon from the mess hall. It's not bad, but it gets so old after a while. I wonder if we can have breakfast here every morning."

Zeke took a long sip of his coffee as Cass ravaged a plate of pancakes with strawberry syrup. "You totally should." She said through a stuffed gullet. "We could eat breakfast and hang out and and it would be so much fun."

"Cassidy." My uncle chided without looking over at her. "What did I say about talking with your mouth full?"

She paused, thinking it over. "To make sure I'm eating something that was pretty colors so people have something to look at? I am though, look my pancakes are red." She stuck out her tongue, exposing her chewed food, and I grimaced and looked away from the poor display of table manners.

Raising an eyebrow as he read the paper (I hadn't known Saltzberg even HAD a paper) he scoffed without looking. "And how many colors, might I ask, is red?"

Slumping, the ten year old swallowed her food with a pout. "Just one." Somehow that logic seemed unassailable to her, and she sulkily started gorging on her food again as Callie looked at her in confusion. I just chuckled, because I remembered similar conversations with Zeke as a kid. My uncle was surprisingly good with children, to the point that I wondered if he'd ever had any of his own.

That was one question I had never asked. If Zeke had kids, he didn't see them anymore, and I'd never heard him mention them. It was clearly either a non issue or a painful subject, and I'd never been cruel enough to bring it up in case it was the latter.

"I don't think every morning will be possible." I said apologetically. "It's too far from camp. We're already here, so we can make it since the trip is one way. If we had to COME here and then go back we'd be too late getting to the meetings, and we have to sleep in our new dorms except on weekends. Even officers aren't exempt from that."

Callie sighed as she stared longingly at her no finished parfait, but eventually pushed out her chair. "We should probably get going then." She smirked at me gleefully. "We can make it to the camp with plenty of time given how quick we are, but showing up to our first command meeting at the last second won't exactly make the best impression. If we're going to be working with these people for the next four months it'll be best to make a good impression."

"I'm kind of worried about commanding a century of soldiers." I admitted as I stood up and shrugged on my coat. "Even with Camden's formations I'm scared I might get someone killed."

Zeke gave me a comforting smile. "Oh, don't worry about that." I waited for him to continue, but he just sat there smiling.
"Because..." I prompted. "I have a natural gift for command and will excel at being in charge of an army so they'll all be fine?"

"No." He said casually. "Because it's probably inevitable you'll get SOMEBODY killed, so there's no real point in psyching yourself up about it." At my glare, he just shrugged. "What? Do you know how many people manage zero casualties in command of their first battle?" After a pause, he prompted. "Well, do you? Because I have no idea, but I'm assuming the number is low."

I briefly considered flipping him off, but we had SOMEHOW managed to keep Cass from picking up the gesture despite the frankly gratuitous use it saw in the house, and she was sitting right here, so I just glared. "You are the literal opposite of helpful, do you know that?"

"Nah." He said in a dismissive tone. "I'm super helpful. You just can't recognize it yet. My amazing and flawless teaching style flies right over your immature heads. You'll look back on this time in your life for centuries, mining my every word for nuggets of priceless wisdom. Appreciate your elders, foolish children, for they will be gone too soon, and you will have no more wells of experience and practical advice to mine."

I pointed at his face. "You've got whipped cream on your chin."

"I know." He said spitefully as he wiped it off. "I was using it to underline my point. You're too easily distracted by the superficial. It'll spell your doom."

Callie sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Zeke, even Cass can tell you just made that nonsense up, and she's TEN. Can we get going please? Because we have important places to be, and I can feel myself getting dumbed just sitting here listening to you two bicker about this."

"Good thing you don't need to worry about that happening to Shane." My uncle said snarkily. "I don't think he can get much dumber without his head literally imploding."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Cass, sweetie. Cover your ears for a minute. I have a few things to say to-"

"Nope." Callie grabbed me, dragging me away physically. "Not letting you get sucked in. He's trying to bait you because he's bored. It's obvious. How are you BOTH children when one of you is centuries old?" I couldn't help it, I started laughing as she dragged me away.

Zeke and I hadn't really teased each other much since this whole trip started. Not like we had when I was a kid. Talking about my dad the other day had been rough, but it seemed to have eased a tension with my uncle I hadn't even realized was there. Zeke was one of the most important people in my life, and since I found out about the geas, part of me had always felt like he'd been forced to be there for me.

Knowing he didn't hate my dad, despite my own anger at the man, it was a weight off my shoulders. If he didn't hate dad for putting him under the geas, then that meant he didn't feel burdened by it. Maybe I was reading too much into things, but it felt like I was right to feel like that. Like we were back to our old selves. Judging by the gleam of amusement in his eyes, Zeke felt that too, and I caught him shooting me a fond smile as I looked back.

Gripping my hand, I turned to see Callie smiling at me. "I'm glad you're happy." She said softly. "I hadn't even realized things were strained between you."

I shook my head. "They weren't really. It was just me being stupid. I pulled away from Zeke because I didn't want to burden him more than I had to. But it was a stupid way to look at things. He used to tell me 'Shane, family means never having to say thank you. It also means being able to say 'you're welcome' in a really passive aggressive voice when the other person doesn't.' I guess I forgot that."

She dissolved into giggles, and I cocked my head. "Sorry." She snorted between laughs. "It's just, that sounds SO MUCH like Zeke. You too, now that I think about it. I think you and Benny are a good example of that concept in action."

"I guess we are." I said with a laugh. "I can think of worse people to be like. Zeke might not always be in the right, but he cares about the people in his life." I trailed off, leaving any mention of my dad unsaid, and the hand around mine squeezed a bit tighter in comfort.

We walked in silence for the next five minutes or so, finally arriving at the camp. I wanted to drop our stuff in our new barracks, but I didn't know where it was, so we just headed for the building where the command meeting would be. I wondered if Hamill would be there, or if he was exempted for his training duties. Probably the latter given we'd seen him every day last week.

"Halt." Said a crisp voice. We both slid to a stop, turning to look at the towering figure of a man who stepped from the shadows. I'd noticed him, actually, but he'd been standing so still in full plate armor I thought he was a statue. I wondered if that was an unusual stealth application, of if he was just that easily overlooked. "Who goes there?"

Normally I'd have given a sarcastic response, but we WERE new, so saying it once didn't seem like it would be too out there. "Solomon and Nightstrike." I said plainly. "Newly minted century commanders. Our promotions just went through."

Reaching up, the man removed his helmet, a cascade of crimson hair flowing down his shoulders. There was a scar splitting his lip, neatly bisecting the left side of his well kept goatee, and it made him look like he had a permanent sneer. "Ah, the new bloods." He said in a dead sounding voice. I couldn't tell if he approved of us or wanted to roast us over an open flame with apples in our mouths.

"That's us." I agreed. "So can we...like, go in?" I gestured past him at the door he was blocking. "Don't want to be late for the meeting, do we?"

He blinked at me, cold blue eyes showing no emotion. "Lateness..." He trailed off. "Is unpleasant."

I waited for him to continue talking, but he seemed to have finished, stepping back to let us pass. "Right." I said slowly.
"Big fan of punctuality. Good to know. You have a name, big guy?"

"Charles." He said succinctly. Real chatterbox, this one. Nodding to him, we stepped past him as he replaced his helmet and resumed his perfectly unmoving stance. I could see how we missed him before. He really did seem to just vanish into stillness. Looking at him was like seeing a statue. It was deeply unnerving now that I knew the person in that armor could move and interact.

We entered the command building, and everyone already there turned to look at us. I saw Camden and Alister standing over a map table covered in small models, and a group of E-rankers surrounding them. The other commanders, from what Camden had said, were all non-noble Jobs, mostly combat oriented. Barons didn't often work under other Barons, but other E-rankers were available for hire.

Camden looked up. "Ah, Solomon, Nightstrike. Lovely that you could join us. We were just about to start." He gestured for us to step up to the table, and we crowded around, staring down at...the tunnel he'd had me make. He shot us a wink as he began filling the others in on his secret digging crew and the months of work that went into its construction, and I had a hard time not snickering as everyone started complimenting his foresight. Finally, he finished up his explanation, and our first meeting as commanders started in earnest.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

With the preamble out of the way, Camden had us all take a seat around a truly gargantuan wooden table packed with chairs. Callie and I sat close to the head where Camden was, just so we could be involved, but we didn't plan on talking too much. Listening was the best way to learn, and these meetings had been going on for ages without us attending. They had their own trajectory that we needed to pick up. At least that was the plan, sadly Camden didn't get the memo.

"Welcome everyone." Said Camden as we all sat down. "As you've noted we have newcomers among our number. Nightstrike and Solomon have recently reached E-rank, and due to special considerations in their contracts, will be assuming command of a century." I knew not every E-ranker in the army was in command. There were several squad leaders and trainers who were higher ranked, though his words led me to believe I hadn't seen all or even most of them.

A dark skinned man nearby with a placid expression and amber eyes nodded at us. "Lovely to meet you both." He said in a light, slightly melodic voice. "As newcomers, I suppose we should introduce ourselves to you. My name is Marco Powell, and I'm the captain of the first regiment of Baron Tolbert's military. The other commanders report to me when his grace is indisposed, so we'll be working closely together."

"That's IT?" Spat a sickly looking blonde man, slamming his hands on the table. His eyes were an odd golden color, and his dark hair was shaved on the sides and bleached on the top. His face was sunken and he was tall but unusually thin.
"They show up and hit the next rank and we hand over an entire century? We all broke our backs to be here, signed contracts that last for decades. I heard these bastards won't be sticking around for more than half a year? What the hell?"

Camden's eyes narrowed. "Sigmund." He said softly. "I don't recall where in your contract you were given the authority to question my decisions? Are you secretly the general of this army? Why was I not informed of something so important? Nightstrike and Solomon paid for their positions and more. Their contributions to our endeavors are substantial, and do NOT need to be enumerated at your request."

The other eighty plus people looked similarly upset. We had, from what Camden said, five regiments, totalling eight thousand people. Each of the five had two companies of eight hundred, each broken down further into eight centuries.
There were another two thousand elite troops under the command of Hamill, who were considered core forces most likely to become high ranking officers once the territory was settled. As century commanders we would be educated in field maneuvers, formations, training techniques, and various other base level instruction styles.

There had been talk, back when we were drawing up the contract, of just promoting us to company commanders, pulling soldiers from the core forces for us. In the end we decided to start small and earn our way up. It was less likely to cause problems, and most of what we needed to know for our territory we could pick up here.

Marco, smiling disarmingly, held up both hands. "Your grace, we don't question your decisions. If you say they've earned their place we're of course happy to welcome them into the fold. I think Sigmund is just voicing the concerns he feels may impede their integrations, so we might disarm a potential distraction before it becomes problematic. It is YOUR decision whether they're allowed to remain, of course, but we'll be working with them. Perhaps a bit of information on our new colleagues might put us all at ease."

Camden looked annoyed, but I could see that Marco's method of doing things was harder to just crush. Not to mention Marco was a regiment commander, one of only five in the main force, which meant he was probably pretty strong and had a lot of authority. "Fine." The Baron said with a sigh. "The two of them are the team leaders of Agria, the new healer we recently acquired. I trust you've all made use of her talents?"

To my surprise, that seemed to settle them all down a bit. Sigmund looked pensive. "She's been instrumental in keeping me on schedule." He admitted grudgingly. "Team leaders huh?" He glanced at us, then sighed. "Not used to how the other factions do things, but assuming that means she's like a vassal, I could understand the credit. Healers are invaluable. Especially one so useful."

Marco nodded with a wide smile. "Agreed. Lady Agria has been a great boon to the camp. She's saved us time, energy, and prevented not a few deaths. At this rate, she'll put us far ahead of our expected progress. Which century will they be taking command of."

Seemingly pleased with the return to matters at hand, Camden smiled back at the regiment commander. "I'm giving them Olena and Stern's centuries. Those two have been causing problems, and I've had them reassigned to Weber's unit in the core force for...disciplinary training." Every person at the table shuddered visibly as the seemingly innocuous words, and I made the brilliant deduction that I didn't want to ever find out why.

"The thirty third and the nineteenth?" Sigmund burst out with a laugh. "Why didn't you just say that? No reason to be jealous of them getting THOSE units. Laziest and most difficult centuries in the entire main force." He shot us a pitying look. "I actually feel bad for you all now. Olena and Stern were problems from the start, and they were given the most recalcitrant recruits. Thugs and morons mostly."

I grimaced. That wasn't ideal, but we had ways to handle things. I glanced at Camden, who was grinning at me mischievously, and rolled my eyes internally. "Is that so?" I said lightly. I should have known he'd find a way to screw me at least a little. If I brought it up he'd probably feed me some bullshit about learning more with a more difficult task, but I was pretty sure he was just passing the buck on a problem. "Then I want to request a few transfers. Two specifically. Gabriel Brightlaw and Abel Castleton. One for each of us."

Camden made a noise of amusement. I'd been polite about asking, knowing more about how far to push after my lessons on diplomacy, brief though they had been. Eventually, he held out a hand to Alister, who stood behind his chair. The seneschal passed a scroll, and the Baron opened it, skimming the names. "Mercy and Desmond. Those two are outliers in terms of productivity. They'll take your friends places in the tenth and forty third centuries. Acceptable?"

Since I didn't know who those people were, I just nodded. If these assholes were so obnoxious the other commanders were pitying us, we'd need all the help we could get. Sure, as E-rankers we could kick the shit out of all of them, but if we had to keep crippling and healing our people to get them in line it would look bad. Letting Abel and Gabe do it would be MUCH more reasonable.

"Well that's the easy part taken care of." Said Marco cheerfully. "Now we need to figure out who is going to be instructing them on training methods. It'll need to be someone running one of the more disciplined centuries, since they'll have to be away for a while helping these two adapt. Any volunteers?" He scanned the room, and a pair of hands went up. A small, olive skinned girl with aquamarine hair and kind blue eyes, and a tall tanned man with dark, intense eyes and long straight hair.

Camden reconsulted his list before nodding. "Demia and Niles, is it? The fifty seventh and sixth centuries?" At their agreement he glanced at me. "Very well, the two of you should be suitable. Make sure to help your new comrades to the best of your ability. This isn't a punishment detail. I have faith that Nightstrike and Solomon can whip those units into shape, and anyone found derailing that goal will be penalized. Understood?" He cast his glance across the table, and everyone nodded solemnly.

I was glad he'd said that. His little joke aside, if the other commanders got the impression we were intended to fail, they could make things difficult for us in plenty of ways. Making sure that we weren't the victims of hazing was the least he could do, and made me wonder if he really HAD given us problem units to make us better commanders.

The rest of the meeting was much less tense, and much less focused on us. Camden checked up on troop movements, assigned field exercises, patrol routes and just did general upkeep stuff I hadn't even known was going to come up, and once he was done, we were all dismissed. He asked Demia and Niles to wait for us outside and called for us to stay back to talk to him.

Once everyone was gone, he slumped a bit in his chair. "I hate doing these." He groaned. "Sitting all still like that is terrible for my back. Alister, get a back pillow made for my chair." The seneschal made a noise of confirmation and jotted down a not, and the Baron turned back to us. "That went pretty well, all things considered. Do you have any questions?"

"You mean like why you screwed us over on unit selection?" I said dryly. "I assumed its some nonsense about adversity building skill."

He barked out a laugh. "Nope. Politics. As you noted, once I mentioned your assigned units the dissatisfaction abated quite a bit. I can't babysit you two, and if the other commanders have a problem with you it'll make things much harder around here. Olena and Stern were bastards, no one liked them. If I'd given you a proper unit, I'd have had to take it from a more respected commander, and it would have turned everyone else here against you."

"This way we can prove ourselves." Said Callie in understanding. "If we can straighten up the problem children, we'll get a reputation for being competent, and without depriving some well liked commanders of their posts. But are you sure we can actually DO this? Olena and Stern were E-rank too, I assume."

He shrugged. "Barely, and they didn't really try much. They weren't exactly command material. Olena's brother Matthias is a particularly competent bastard who runs one of the units in the core force. I put them in charge as a favor to him, but once they proved they couldn't hack it he had no issues with me pulling their command. THEY had plenty of issues, but attacking fellow soldiers in the camp is taboo. They might challenge to a duel though, so I'd watch out for that."

I nodded solemnly. A duel wasn't too bad. We were newly minted E-rankers, but we had our own advantages. If these two were beginners we could definitely take them. "Demia and Niles." I said leadingly. "They're talented?"

"Two of my best." He said with a laugh. "I know all my top recruits, checking the list was just to make it look like I wasn't playing favorites. I had Marco approach them before the meeting to volunteer. The first thing you need to learn about command is to make sure you don't leave anything up to chance. That was all scripted, Marco, Sigmund, all of it. Now everyone knows what I want them to know about you, and nothing more. I've given you a good position, what you do with it from here is on you."

With that, he dismissed us, and Callie and I headed out to meet our new teachers. Demia and Niles were waiting for us at the entrance to the tent and once we joined them, they escorted us to meet our new units while Abel and Gabe were summoned for their new duty. Time to meet our personal armies.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Demia and Niles split us up, Demia coming with me and Niles escorting Callie. When I arrived at my section of the camp, I found Gabe standing at attention in full armor, waiting for us to arrive. "Commander." He said with a serious salute, thought I noticed a slight twitch of his lips that made me sure he was fighting a smirk.

I paused to think about everything I'd heard of military etiquette, and returned his salute with an. "At ease." I glanced at Demia, who nodded encouragingly, and Gabe finally let his grin show. "I can't believe you and Callie hit E-rank already. I'd already used up my elixir allotment, or I'd have asked her Ladyship to help me achieve those heights so I might better protect her."

"Hitting her up for money huh?" I said teasingly, avoiding mentioning Chelsea was my sister only with effort. "You sure Bethy won't get jealous?"

He chuckled. "Of which of us? She and Chelsea have been getting pretty close. I think it's been confusing her. She doesn't seem to know how to act around us anymore. At least not alone. I don't suppose you have any..." He trailed off. "Advice? The situation has been confusing me as well."

"I'm not getting involved in either of their love lives. Chelsea for obvious reasons and Bethy because she terrifies me." I said with a snort. "Figure it out yourself. Now isn't the time for that though. Demia here is going to help me whip my century into shape, and I asked for you specifically to aid us in the task. It seems like it would be frowned on for me to kick them around at E-rank, so I need someone to act as my fist." I glanced at Demia. "Or is that a bad idea?"

She smiled back at me placidly. "Not at all. Most commanders have an intermediary to establish discipline and order. Being forced to personally punish your recruits is considered a sign of weak management." Her tone was gentle and incredibly hard to parse for emotion. Not monotone, exactly, but she sounded the same whenever she spoke, and it made reading her impossible.

I'd been right. Politics. It pervaded every aspect of the Empire, including the more militant parts of the culture. Not to mention as Ascendants we were all somewhat impressionable, and prioritized reputation.

Recursion DID happen in the Empire. While the Job system protected people from individual recursion much better than heroic cultivation, it had its own effect on its users. Jobs themselves caused recursion, pushing their users to fit better into the mold. It was less extreme since a Job didn't define your personality, but the perception of what a thing SHOULD be definitely affected what it WAS. Given the political leanings of most of the imperial heirarchy, it was no shock that even lower ranking Jobs would be swept up in their games, just by virtue of the assumption that they always did.

These had been some of the things included in my political lessons, which had been substantially more complex and nuanced than what I expected.

"Well, either way, he's here now." I said, straightening up. "I think its about time I met my century. I'm curious why they have their own territory though? Shouldn't they be training with Hamill like we were?" The differing command structures was odd. Hamill must be high up in the heirarchy, so why was he teaching random grunts.

She smirked, the least peaceful expression I'd seen on her face so far. "The General likes to take a hand in the first two weeks of conditioning. He says it establishes the proper baseline of fear and resentment in the soldiers, even those not directly under his command. Once those two weeks are up, they get cycled out to normal commanders. There are eighty centuries, surely you didn't think you'd seen them all in your training class?"

That was a good point. I supposed when he mentioned 'training starting' back during our initial meeting, Camden meant this particular training cycle. "Ok. So...before I introduce myself, what am I going to be doing today?"

"That depends on your management style." She said with a shrug. "I've known commanders who invite every soldier to attack at once and crush them under their boots. But that strategy is unlikely to bear much fruit unless you have subordinates at the same rank, for reasons already enumerated. You can go with a softer approach, offer rewards for certain milestones, or even just ignore them like Olena did. I'm hear to give you the tools you need to train them, not to train them for you."

I stroked my chin. She wasn't wrong. But I had a few ideas that might work. Ideas that utilized elements from all of those styles.

Marching into the cordoned off area in front of the thirty third barracks (apparently each century had their own after they got through the basic training cycle) I found a group of ninety nine people in the standard armor Camden had given us to use in training. Some of them were grouped up into cliques, some of them lounged by the barracks, and a few of them were just hanging out individually sleeping or reading.

"Officer on the field." Snapped Demia, in the harshest voice I'd heard her use. "Attention!" The shout split the air around us and I jumped slightly, staring down at the unusually loud for her size woman. They all got up, lazily assuming loose rows, though most of them didn't seem too motivated. "This." She said gesturing to me. "Is your new commander. Solomon."

I nodded to her, and stepped up next to her as I surveyed the various faces. "My name, as she mentioned, is Solomon. I'll be assuming command of this unit. I hear some of you are problematic. I'm sure you resent my presence here, and if you don't you probably will once you dig into me a bit. I don't actually give a shit." Demia looked surprised by the tone change, though not disapproving.

"I'm supposed to train you." I continued. "To guide you. And to learn by doing so. The skills I'm going to pick up from this are important for my future, and I'm not going to let some whimpering devil may care assholes fuck up my plans. If you have intentions to fuck around, abandon them, if you're expecting this to be easy, don't." I nodded to Gabe. "This is Gabriel. He's a friend, and he's also my second in command. As an E-ranker, it's unseemly for me to discipline you personally, so he's going to do it for me. Which one of you is the strongest here?"

Everyone turned to look at an unassuming girl standing near the back. Her hair was ivory, her eyes a virulent toxic green, and her pale face delicate in a way that reminded me a bit of Callie. Her eyes met mine, and she smiled. "I guess that's me. My name is Alanna Sunwell. It's nice to meet you...sir. I take it you want me to face your friend there in combat? Establish his chops in front of us all to show it how its done?" Her tone was sarcastic and snide.

"Sure, but you can say no." I said with a shrug. "I'm sure someone else would be interested in the five E-rank chits I'm going to pay the winner."

Every eye in the place snapped to me, and I grinned internally. These people had signed up here as mercenaries. They respected money, wanted money, and would demonstrably FIGHT for money. I had officially begun speaking their language.

Alanna stared at me suspiciously. "That's...a lot of money. Are you really going to pay up if your boy loses?"

"I want you guys to fall in line." I said with a shrug. "That only happens if you're incentivized. Not only will I put up five E-rank coins on the outcome, but I'll be setting up a little tournament. Once Gabe proved his mettle, he'll be withdrawn, and I'll let the top ten percent of you fight it out once a month for an E-ranked chit."

An E-ranked chit was ten F-ranked chits and a hundred G-ranked. G-ranked chits were usually base currency. Acting as a single unit in most markets, which made the prize pool a decent chunk of change. Especially with Gabe being counted out.

I had to do that, because as an Adamant with a path he was almost definitely going to crush the competition, and if they decided I was fleecing them it would have the opposite effect.

It was two birds and one stone. I would earn some goodwill and establish my lieutenants superiority, thereby preventing future challenges.

As Alanna accepted and followed Gabe to a training field in the center of our designated area, Demia stepped up next to me. "You sure he's going to win this?" She asked casually. "It's going to bite you on the ass if she puts him down, and Sunwell is a nasty fighter."

I just smiled knowingly. "Gabe can handle it. Just watch." I pointed at the training ring. I was looking forward to this myself.

Alanna strode out into the ring, hands in the air like a returning champion, and several of the other unit members hooted and hollered encouragement. Seemed like she had a rep among my people. Good. That would make this so much more effective.

Gabriel flipped his wrist, and the massive lance he used for his charges appeared in his hand. I saw him adjust his grip as the pressure and his current near mortal state made it a trial to hold it up, but hold it he did.

"Wow, compensating for something?" Taunted Alanna gleefully. "Not that I can complain, I tend to work with a lot of hardware myself." She waved a hand, and a fan of gleaming spears made of ice arrayed itself behind her, shifting in the air to point straight at Gabe.

Demia nodded. "Lancer Job. Ice based main Skill. She uses it to deadly effect. Like I said, she's going to be a tougher opponent than you might think."

Of course, Gabe didn't seem phased. He stomped his foot, a starlight charger manifesting beneath him as the crusader took his stance, preparing to charge. "You may wish to defend." He said politely. "It would be a shame to kill such a promising recruit by mistake."

From anyone else that would be arrogant, or at least mocking, but Gabe wasn't like that. He wasn't arrogant, he was just certain. The charge of an Adamant wasn't something just anyone could withstand.

Alanna sneered, about to respond with some kind of scathing remark, but before she could Gabe began his charge. I'll give her this, she wasn't stupid. She could sense the momentum, the sheer POWER behind his assault, even as his roar of 'RUBRUM GLORIA' split the air and his body was endowed with the power of his Path. Adamant. Unyielding. Nothing could stop him.

The hooves of the charger thundered across the hard packed dirt as his lance flashed toward her, and Alanna panicked. Her hands went up, grasping two more ice spears from the air as the others overlapped in front of her, positioned in front of the incoming holy lance. Gabe hit her makeshift shield like the fist of an angry god, his lance punching through the ice and smashing into her defending spears as she crossed them to tank the attack.

There was an explosion of light and force and Alanna was sent sliding back, desperately trying to stop herself. It wasn't to be though. Her feet left divots in the ground as she was driven backwards until her spine hit the barracks building.

Her eyes were wide with terror as she stared down at the lance, the tip of which was pressed flush against her windpipe, having pushed just past the skin and drawn a trickle of blood. Following the lance up, I could see that Gabe's arm wasn't fully extended. He'd stopped on a dime before spearing her through the throat. He retracted his lance, and she fell to the ground, shuddering. Damned if that man didn't know how to make an impression.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"Alright." I said as everyone got back in line. There was a palpable air of fear overlaying the camp as they all stared at Gabe and I. Alanna was in the back, glaring at me, and everyone else seemed to afraid to even speak. "Now that we have that out of the way, we can move onto our real first day activities. Don't be so uptight, I already said Gabe won't be involved in any of the upcoming monthly tournaments. Alanna is the one to beat next time." I gestured to the silver haired girl.

That seemed to perk them up. Having Gabe fight the girl had been effective on multiple fronts. Establishing his rep was one, but it also diminished hers. She's had too much authority outside my command structure, and now she didn't. This had the added benefit of increasing the confidence of all the other recruits because she wasn't quit so unassailable anymore. Gabe hadn't just beaten her, he'd CRUSHED her. One blow to end the whole thing.

Bringing up the future prize pool seemed to shake her out of her funk too. She squinted at me in suspicion, but eventually her face smoothed into a determined expression. Demia looked pleased, and I was with her there. Step one of my plan was finished, now for step two.

"For your next exercise." I said with a grin. "We're going to be doing a bit of teambuilding. The winners of this exercise will receive points. That's how I'll keep track of the top ten percent and figure out who can participate in the monthly tournaments. If you all do well, I'm open to increasing the prize pool for the tournaments. Possibly including stronger gear or materials."

Carrot and stick. I'd never been a commander obviously, but I'd run raids in DS before. Managing a large group required a few special considerations.

One, give them a reason to do what you want. Two, give them a reason to be afraid to screw up. And three, give them a reason to ignore the second reason when it's not relevant. Now I just needed a better idea of what everyone could do so I could figure out where to focus my attention.

Once everyone had calmed down, I sent them out unto the training field. Alanna raised an eyebrow. "Ok...we're going to stand around in a big crowd? You gonna start shooting and see who ducks behind a rando?"

Snapping my fingers, I withdrew a series of brushes, passing them all out. "Nope. Your job is easy. You're going to pick teams. Ten people. Each team will get a color of paint, then I'm going to put you all under a stealth effect to prevent you from seeing. I want to see what Hamill's training taught you. Winning team gets a point each."

They took the brushes and I went ahead and got out some paint. I'd been considering a similar exercise for a while in the abstract so I had the stuff on me. Once that was done. I grinned and waved a hand. "Well, looks like we're good to go. Now...begin." I triggered Moonlit Night. After that, I triggered Piece of Mind.

While the stealth fog blanketed them, the secondary mental process tweaked the skill, splitting my focus so each team could see their own members but nothing else. The soul weight was minimal of course, given my current soul strength, so the mental component was all I needed to worry about.

Piece of Mind was weird every time I experienced it. I'd tried it out already, though not on anything big, and it was such a strange sensation.

In DS they obviously couldn't beam a second concurrent mental process into your head. It was closer to picture in a picture. A small image in your eyeline that let you keep track of more than one thing at once. In reality though, Piece of Mind actually let me focus on two things at once.

The biggest thing I had to get used to was that both minds were using my eyes and ears, but since they were focused on different things, it split my focus in a fascinating fashion. It was like trying to look at things individually with both of my eyes. My focus was split but it was still MY focus. I looked forward to seeing how the ability would advance, because I could already see so many uses for it.

My recruits, meanwhile, were shocked and alarmed. The whole area had been consumed with fog that muffled the senses, and aside from teammates they couldn't see a thing.

Gabe had stayed out of it, so I let Alannas team stick with nine. She'd get an extra point if she won, which I hoped would somewhat temper her frustration at being used as an example. Once their sight vanished, I expected them all to freak put, but to my surprise, everyone kept a level head.

They were all seasoned mercenaries and had gone through Hamills training, so maybe I shouldn't have been so shocked. Immediately, I smiled, triggering a shadow clone to slip out into the fog.

My shadow clone was a stored F-rank ability, so it wouldn't be too unfair, aside from the obvious visibility advantage. I had it slip among the recruits, tagging legs and shoulders with its staff, drawing attention to the proper directions to get things started.

"An interesting exercise." Admitted Demia. "I'm not familiar with any like it. Where did you get the idea?"

I shrugged. "Various tests and fights I've been in. You run into things like this enough and you learn to twist your brain into that shape. My own mentor loved doing stuff like this. My way is a bit more humane I think, but then, I'm not aiming to get them a paired combat skill." I paused. "My girlfriend and I have a Skill called paired duelling, that allows us to synchronize in battle, is there a large scale version of that?"

"There is."She said bluntly. "But it takes years in the same unit to build the cohesion necessary to get it. No newborn mercenary unit is going to manage. Especially on their first day."

I briefly entertained the fantasy of having them all wish for it, but that was untenable for multiple reasons. Firstly there was no way I'd be able to scrape together enough wishes on top of my contract, second I wanted them to get it and had a vested interest, which would make fair compensation nearly impossible, and thirdly I wasn't sure if it would be more expensive because it was such a rare Skill. Theoretically it could be cheaper because it required so many components, but that was unlikely.

As I watched a recruit get pinned to the ground by a swarm of ice spears that somehow didn't turn him into a lifeless slab of meat, I made a considering sound. "What is this Skill called if I might ask?"

"Legio Unius." She answered in a reverential tone. "It takes decades of training for units, even small ones, to achieve that level of synergy. Of the imperial armies I've heard of, only the Emperor's royal guard has managed, and every single one of them is at the Marquise level. Working in concert they're capable of holding off threats in the low King level. A full legion of five thousand soldiers all specializing in the same Path and able to synergize flawlessly. If they someday reach the Duke or even King level, they'd be unmatched."

I was...boggled. Five thousand B-rankers taking on an S-ranker was nuts. Even a weak one, it was staggering. The differences between ranks became more pronounced as you went up. For instance, the next rank up I'd get was D-rank, which would not only MASSIVELY increase my stat cap, it would also push my Impact up over one hundred points. At B-rank, two ranks up was more than a hundred points of Impact just for advancing.

Of course, I imagined their souls were all the full two ranks ahead and polished. Strung together with the kind of bond I had with Callie, it was no wonder they were terrifying. I hadn't considered the outliers that must be roaming the universe really. Like I knew the Vampire could fight a god at S-rank, but it was clear there were many other roads to power. What kind of monstrous aces did the Church and the Cult have up their sleeves that I just hadn't heard about? I'd have to ask Chelsea.

To my surprise though, I wasn't worried...I was excited. I had my own army now, and even if they didn't jump ship to my territory when I got it (I was sure I could buy out their contracts from Camden for a bit of extra wish priority) I was going to learn to make my own force like the one she was talking about. Maybe Nat could help me and the others all get that Skill if they ended up working for me. I was imagining a vanguard of attackers channeling Mephistopheles, cavalry with Belial.

Interpreting my silence correctly, Demia burst out laughing. "Learn to walk before you run, Solomon. And yes, I know what you're thinking. Every commander thinks the same thing when they hear about the royal guard. Usually as children, but still, it's a common thought process." I was pretty sure she was wrong, or at least only partially right, but I saw her point.

"Yeah, I might've gotten carried away." I chuckled wryly. "This is going faster than expected." I noted as Alanna demolished yet another team. "I have no clue how she's penetrating the fog, but she's perceiving something. Think she has some kind of truesight?"

The blue haired woman nodded. "Probably. Lancer's a precision Job. They're best served with extreme accuracy and a heavy perception focus. Might plays a role, but knowing where to strike is as important as how hard. You should have a roster waiting for you back at your barracks when the day ends, with a list of your recruits and their Jobs and specialties. That'll help with the formation training we're going to do."

We watched in silence for the next ten minutes as her team of nine finished sweeping up the competition. I allowed the fog to dissipate, nodding to the last of the team members, smirking around at the sprawled bodies covered with markings of orange paint.

"Impressive." I told her diplomatically. "I'm going to be learning more about formations for us to use, but assuming we need squad leaders you'll definitely get the job. As MVP you'll be receiving two points instead of just the one that the rest of your team will get."

The others didn't even look mad, but Alanna beamed. The points were nonsense, of course, though I was considering making them a kind of currency tradeable for better gear or something once I had my funds in order. I needed to talk to Anna about monetizing some wishes. I looked around at the others, all getting to their feet and resuming their neat rows at attention.

"Excellent work. I saw plenty of promising recruits, and I have a good idea of how you all operate." That was true. my second thought process had been keeping track of them via Piece of Mind, and I marveled again at how convenient that skill was. "Now that I understand how you fight, I need to know what your limits are." I saw faces fall, and I tried not to smirk as they all realized what I meant and collectively gulped.

Of course, that didn't save them. As someone who had spent the last week or two grinding myself into meat paste with shitty conditioning exercises, I had plenty of ideas for what to put them through and what kind of limits to place on the training. As they all dropped to the ground to start their burpees, I smirked behind the privacy of my mask. Misery loved company. And I didn't want them thinking I was TOO reasonable.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next few days flew by. Demia was a patient and understanding teacher, shockingly so given the environment. The carrot and stick combination worked well with my unit, and they continued to improve over time. That comfort and relaxation obviously couldn't last. I was sitting with Camden for my nobility lessons with Celine, Chelsea, and Callie, when Alister hurried in to announce a new guest.

"Your grace." He blurted in an uncharacteristic tizzy. "You have a guest. I'm not familiar with them but they're...powerful. Viscount level, though I've never seen her before. She said to ask Solomon to vouch for her."

My eyes narrowed. Anna was here. Anna had never interacted with Camden that I was aware of. Her showing up to speak to both of us was...bad. I didn't know how but I knew it was. Camden glanced at me, raising an eyebrow. "One of my associates. She shouldn't be a threat." At D-rank, Zeke couldn't protect me from Anna anymore, but not only did Anna not know that, he could still protect Chelsea, who was in the room.

I had a bunch of stockpiled wishes to act as payment, in case she needed them, though my preference was to avoid using them. If she was here though, it meant something had gone very wrong. 'This seems like it might be a problem'. I heard
Callie's voice in my head. I didn't even jump at the sound, I was so connected to her I'd felt her intention to speak.
'Anna tries to stay under the radar. I'm not sure why she would interact with Camden directly unless it had something to do with the person targeting him. But why would she get involved?' I could only think of one real reason, and I didn't like it. Anna wouldn't have done something like this unless whoever was threatening Camden was going to be a problem for the planet at large. More specifically for Saltzberg and her own interests.

Hearing my tone, Camden nodded to Alister, and the seneschal fled to get Anna, clearly terrified to keep a D-ranker waiting. Which I got. They were terrifying.

Anna strode into the room a moment later, Alister on her heels. "Baron Tolbert." She said with a nod. "Thank you for seeing me. I'm glad our mutual friend saw fit to lend his support. I've been looking into your...situation. I expected our friend might charge me to find out more about what was going on. I've come across some disturbing news. Disturbing enough that I won't charge for the initial tip off, because I need your input to make sense of what I found."

Camden nodded slowly. "Understood, I appreciate your efforts and your willingness to share whatever you know. I assume this news concerns my cousin Spencer?"

"Possibly." She said with a shrug. "Do you have an isolation formation on this room? I'm not certain I trust my stealth Skills with this level of information. I don't know of anyone with spatial spying abilities on Stratholme, so the formation should be safe enough."

Nodding to Alister, Camden stood and walked over to close the door. The seneschal hurried away and came back with a large wooden box. Opening it, Camden withdrew an ornate bronze globe. Opening it, he lit a candle, then closed the small bronze hatch and spun the globe forcefully. The light from the candle surged and then expanded outward in a bubble of golden light that hit the walls and stuck to them like flypaper. "We're safe to talk for the moment." He said solemnly.

"Good. Now, I heard from my sources you came to Stratholme for the sole reason that you wish to distance yourself from family affairs. Is this accurate?" This really must be serious if Anna was being so formal. She never struck me as the type.

"It is." Camden admitted. "I prefer being alive and obscure to being famous and dead. Spencer is a particularly bitter enemy, or I doubt he'd have followed me. I take it he has some sort of plan that you think will cause widespread destruction? I'm afraid to say that's not out of character."

She shook her head. "You misunderstand. Spencer didn't follow you here to hurt you. In fact, Spencer didn't follow you here at all. According to my sources, Spencer was here before you were. Months before. He's been doing...something. Something involving the cave systems that run under most of the planet. I don't know WHAT exactly, but several of the people he sent down there didn't come back."

"That's not possible." Protested Camden. "I didn't tell anyone about my decision to come here. Hell, I didn't MAKE the decision to come here until a few months ago. Shortly before I arrived."

Anna raised an eyebrow. "Really. And it was entirely your own idea to choose Stratholme as your location? It wasn't suggested to you? Because the only way I can see this being a possible outcome is if he steered you to the planet in some way."

"No." he said firmly. "I picked the planet out of a carefully curated list of..." He froze. "Sara." He said in a daze. "She made the list for me. It wouldn't have been hard for her to surround this planet in particular with ones I wouldn't pick for other reasons. Thinking back the other options all had minor flaws that would have made them untenable to me. One was a desert, one had a strong magnetic field that eroded spellwork." He slumped back. "She aimed me here. Into a trap. I thought we were friends. She was my main source of intel after I left the family."

Sighing, Anna pulled out a chair and sat down. I saw Alister twitch and had to fight a smile, though Callie frowned at my amusement. I just shrugged, and she rolled her eyes. "Betrayal is never pleasant. But I'm sure you understand the implications of this information?"

"I was herded here. Spencer arrived before me and is doing something dangerous in a poorly explored part of the planet's crust." He said succinctly. "This is a trap, and the fact that he picked this planet specifically means it probably involves some deeply buried secret of Stratholme. Are you aware of any such dangers? And what of the Earl, will he step in? His mind appeared to be running full bore, sifting data and trying to figure out a next move.

Anna grimaced. "Your cousin is involved with the Magister, who is the Earl's right hand. I suspect he's made arrangements for the Earl to play a minimal role. Not ignore whatever is coming, that wouldn't fly, but minimize his footprint by occupying himself with some small part of whatever attack or event he has planned. As for the issue of lore, I'm no history student. I concern myself with the now, and not the before. At least not at that scale. I do have a friend we might consult. If you decide to involve me in this."

"Ah." He said with a smirk. "I was waiting for you to hit me in the purse. I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint. I don't have much in the way of liquid funds."

As she panned her glance to me, I crossed my arms. "He has an allotment, he can pay out of that. I'm not tossing you freebies because of this. I'm already severely limited in the wishes I can use for my friends, putting myself further into debt is a no go." I paused. "Actually, I do have a question Camden. I thought this guy was your arch nemesis. How did you not notice him vanishing for months before you left?"

For the first time in these lessons, his composure cracked as he threw his hands up in irritation. "We don't have sleepovers every night in matching twin beds, he tries to kill me sometimes. Usually by proxy. It isn't unusual for me not to see Spencer for years at a time. Houses like the Tolbert family span multiple galaxies, possessing influence wherever the Empire exists. We're one of the strongest Ducal houses. Keeping track of what everyone does is something only the head of the family or his direct subordinates can manage."

That was fair. It was like asking me to quote you the location of one of the Wyndhams. I didn't know who everyone in the family even was, how was I supposed to know where they went. Anna smiled placidly. "I can tell you this much. Given the number of people who have vanished into those caverns since he arrived, whatever he's planning is big. If you know what it is you can prepare ahead of time, if not you might die here."

"What about us?" I asked him, suddenly remembering something he'd said. "You used someone specific for the information on us, is it possible your cousin will figure out who we are if he has that person on his payroll?" My wish power was one of our biggest aces in the hole against anyone who didn't know about it. It was also one of the main reasons I'd decided to stay here. Although now that I knew if I ran I'd be increasing my chances of running into trouble of a more personal nature I had another reason to stick it out.

He hesitated, but shook his head. "I used a different one of my sources to dig into you. But there are plenty of other secrets Sara knows about that might be a problem. I just..." His face twisted in hurt. "I can't believe she would do this. Spencer wants to kill me. She knows that. Herding me here is all but signing my death warrant."

I winced, but as much as I felt for him, I also knew we needed to stay focused. "I get it man, I really do, but it's not the time. Can you work something out with Anna to help us? Her abilities would be a huge boon to us. She managed to rescue a bunch of her people from the Magister after that mess at the banquet. She's good." I glanced sideways at her. "I assume you have potential measures to take to aid us should you be brought onboard?"

"Of course." She scoffed. "A few of my boys are standing by at some of the entrances Spencer sent his people through. They'll infiltrate the cave systems and do some scouting. Unlike his random mercs, my people are masters of stealth. They're never seen unless they want to be."

I nodded wisely. "Ah, of course. Like they never get beaten about the head and body with a magic stick. That must have been another group of shadowy thieves."

"Have we discussed medical expenses for that?" She asked sweetly. "Because that fucking stick did some serious damage."
I smiled. "Consider it the cost of doing business. Maybe next time he won't try to put his grubby hands on my girlfriend. She didn't exactly have pockets, and I can't think of any acceptable place he would have been able to check for valuables in that dress. He's lucky I didn't smash his fucking kneecaps and let them heal wrong."

Callie stiffened at that, clearly not having considered that aspect of things. Anna herself looked pensive, and I suspected her pickpocket friend was going to be answering some pointed questions. Good.

Finally, Camden seemed to finish processing and rejoined the conversation. "I agree to your involvement. I'll require a more detailed contract, but I see no reason for Shane, Callie, Chelsea, and Celine to stay for this part. We can end lessons early tonight, I'm sure you'll all be happy to get to sleep early."

"Don't have to tell me twice." I said, popping to my feet. "Let us know how this all works out. And Anna, set us up to talk with your friend who has a handle on the local lore. Best to know the possibilities in case your boys don't find anything." Planets were big, no reason to put all our eggs in one basket. With that we all waved our goodbyes and headed out. I really was happy to be leaving. I was tired, and had a lot to think about.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next day was pretty standard. Tactics practice, training, some formation drills. We had a mock battle against the fifty third on friday to test our formation drilling, and I wasn't entirely worried we'd lose. Granted, the fifty third were a total joke, but we had been too until recently. Once I finished that, did the wishes for Camden (I was up to nine stockpiled) and then retired to my barracks.

Unlike the barracks for Hamill's training crew, or the barracks for the centuries, the officer barracks were, if not nice, at least more private. The rooms were about fifty by fifty feet inside, though they were built as five by five, and barely more than closets from outside.

I was in my room alone, but after an hour of my training there was a knock. I didn't bother getting up, just sending a silent 'come in' to Callie. She stepped inside, raising an eyebrow at me sitting on the floor in the middle of the room with a pile of rocks. She raised an eyebrow at my position on the floor, looking at the pile of stones trying to see how there were special.

They weren't of course. They were rocks. Not even particularly sturdy ones. G-rank rocks.

"What a flattering use of your alone time." She said wryly. "When you said you wanted to enjoy your solitude I assumed you had some sort of training to do. But I see now that your interests are wide and varied and I shouldn't have made assumptions. If I'd known I was driving you to play with loose rocks I'd have given you space ages ago."

I rolled my eyes. "Your rapier wit is as sharp as ever. Now if only you would stop clubbing people over the head with it, you might actually be funny."

She smirked, flipping me off as she strolled across the room to slump into my bed. "You love it. Now, explain your thought process here? I can tell emotions and hear things you send me on purpose, but you really do just seem to be playing with rocks like a moron."

I held up a hand, rock in my palm, and focused on it, flexing my soul. The rock dissolved into a pile of fine dust. I waited a second, then focused again, and it reformed into stone, though still in the shape of a pile of dust.

"Damn." She said with a whistle. "You've got that much control over Pit of Despair?"

I grumbled and tossed the pile shaped rock behind me into a pile of the vaguely cone shaped stones. "Yes, but that's not what I'm trying to do. Turning it to dust is fine, but when I turn them back I'm trying to restore them to a the shape they took as stones."

She seemed confused until she caught on. "Ah, you're trying to create a tangential Skill. Something like my shadow manipulation."

"Or like my staff forms." I agreed. "We can create Skills that effect other Skills. Even though Pit of Despair is a subskill, I should be able to make a Skill that can act on the things it does. It can dissolve and reform rock. With enough effort I SHOULD be able to alter the rock while its in its dust state. The first step to that is figuring out how to return the dust to its original shape. Once I can do that I can figure out how to assume more control over what the dust does as dust."

It was going to be a massive boon in combat, but more than that, I was pretty sure I could learn to make it into a crafting Skill. Seeing what my wishes had done with that room amazed me. If I could establish foundations, I could probably exploit that even more, or rather, Callie could. Plus the idea of being able to make things out of stone was cool.

"Is your Sapphire Soul Body really that strong?" Flexing skills was hard work, or it had been. Doing something like this...it was taxing, even for me. I was packing a massive skill effect into a small area, then I was reversing it early, and I was doing it on repeat. It was hard. My soul was strong now, like a powerful leg. That didn't make picking up grains of rice with my toes any easier.

I shrugged. "It gives me more stamina with skill alterations for sure. As for the effect..." I blew out a breath. "Probably? The thing is, this isn't doing one thing. Making my skill take a shape and tweaking a parameter is easy enough. This is fine control over time. It's difficult and draining. If you liken changing a skill to drawing a picture of what you want, this is more like trying to draw a picture while holding the pen with chopsticks. It's hard to put into words."

"This is your first time making a skill like this. She pondered. "Unique Skills are hard to make, and I imagine this will make it even tougher. You soul should help, but I bet this'll be a challenge." She perked up, the bond telling me she had an idea. "Wait a second. Here I want to try something." Sitting down in front of me, she took my hands in hers, placing a rock on my cupped palms. "Alright, now turn it to dust but don't turn it back."

I did as she told me to, and the rock dissolved into fine powder. Before I could ask what next she focused, and a wave of shadows climbed up onto my palm. I felt through the bond as she SHOVED the shadows into the sand, hard, using her own soul and an ability I hadn't seen her use in a while. The power to imbue darkness into objects. It was temporary and inefficient on most materials, but her blue soul made it possible in this instance.

As my eyes widened in shock, I felt her reach out with Shadow Manipulation Mastery, guiding me along our bond as she showed me what it looked like to alter and shape the dust. It wasn't going to give me a dust shaping Skill, but it showed me...how. Little mental constructs and tricks for how to move something like what she was working with, supplied by her baseline Shadow Manipulation Skill and refined through practice.

Finally, panting and sweating, she let the shadows flee the dust, slumping back to catch herself on her hands. I shot her a concerned frown. "That too much?"

She shook her head. "Not even a headache. Not yet at least. You were right. It's not the same as taxing your soul through brute force. Less like muscle fatigue and more like a hand cramp from making lots of tiny motions. Unpleasant but bearable. How was that though? Did it help?"

Focusing on the pile of dust again, I pushed with my skill. Pit of Despair wanted to return the dust to stone in its current shape, but Callie had shown me what to do, even if I had to do it with a whole different Skill. I focused on the feeling of the shifting shadow sand that I'd felt before through the bond, then enforced that feeling on the dust and SHOVED with my whole soul.

The dust smashed back together into a spherical stone shape, but did so with such force that the stone exploded into a puff of smoke. I winced. Little too much english on that one. I focused the same way, but instead of shoving my soul against the concept, I pushed it slowly. Raising the amount of soul strength I used as I went. The dissolved rock in palm began to slowly float up into a small cloud of stone dust, before putting itself back together into an ovoid rock.

I was panting by the time I finished. Callie had been right. It felt like a muscle cramp in my soul. Fine manipulation was harder than brute force in some ways. No possible breakage or massive headache, but the dull throb wasn't that much better.

Callie was bouncing in excitement. "That's amazing! Did you get a Skill?" She was fascinated by the rock, taking it from me and studying it carefully.

"No, but I didn't expect I would." I said with a chuckle. "Not from that. I made the rock its original shape, but that's just reversing the course of the Pit of Despair. Now I need to take it further. I put it back to 'rock' shape. Now I need to change that rock shape. I think a perfect sphere would work best."

I turned the stone to dust, then focused again the same way. This time, as I pushed with my aching soul, I had to split off a second consciousness with Piece of Mind to alter the shape, since this was taking all my focus. As I watched, the stone began to reform again, slowly taking its old shape, but my other mind pushed and prodded, altering the flow of the dust with some of the mental constructs we'd just learned from Callie.

Rather than an irregular stone, the dust reformed into a completely perfect spherical shape. When it finished, I slumped forward, the strain on my soul having magnified exponentially when I had my other self working with it. That was a good way to train with it, and I filed away the information for not only myself, but Callie, who still needed to reach Sapphire.

I spent the next hour working on some serious soul strain. I hadn't had a chance to put my new soul through its paces, especially since the rank up, but the dull throb turned into the usual soul strain headache eventually with my flagrant use of Piece of Mind. Still, I was able to learn quickly and advance my new training method, learning to shape the stones as they reformed.

Pyramids, diamonds, and as I went on, even more variable shapes. I made an hourglass, and what might, if one squinted, be considered a duck. By the time I finished going through my paces my head was in agony, but I had a bright grin on my face as I checked my stat sheet and found a new Skill.

Minor Dust Construction Mastery. An odd Skill name, but it WAS a Skill. I felt the click in my head as it became one, and I felt the soul strain decrease exponentially when it did. I wasn't twisting Pit of Despair into knots anymore, I was using a unique Skill I'd made. On PURPOSE. It was a great feeling. I would have practiced with it, but Callie forced me to stop.
"I'm not letting you give yourself an aneurysm because you want to play with your new toy." She said firmly. "You have training tomorrow anyway, you can deal with it after."

Sighing, I nodded grudgingly and got up, dumping the rocks on the floor as I climbed up onto my bed and wrapped myself around her. She snuggled up against me. I could feel her pride and happiness for me over the bond, chased by some worry about the soul strain. She was able to stay in here because apparently the gender specific dorms weren't enforced for officers. Sleeping next to her again was easily the best part of my rank up. I'd missed her terribly, and I found I couldn't sleep right without her in my arms.

"I think this is going to be the beginning of an amazing power." I told her as I started to drift off. "I can't wait to see what I can do with it." This unique Skill was completely different to any earth shaping Skill I'd seen or heard of and I was going to test it thoroughly. With my Perception letting me see the specifics, I could create incredibly dense and sturdy stones. I bet I could even focus Pit of Despair to make the dust even finer. Tomorrow after training I would start testing. I had so many ideas.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Waking up in the morning was surprisingly relaxing because I realized up doing so that Callie had been wrong. We didn't have training, we'd both gotten so wrapped up in working with our centuries we'd forgotten weekends were free time, even for commanders. Callie had to force me to promise not to strain my soul today, since I was still raw from creating my Dust Construction Mastery.

So we headed for Anna's place after stopping to pay, Camden and banking a tenth wish. When we arrived, we didn't even have a chance to go in. Anna met us at the door. "Oh good." She said, stepping out and pulling a shawl around her shoulders. "You're both here. I arranged a meeting with my historian friend, but we need to go now." It was surprisingly cold today, not that I really felt it in my costume. Our meeting with Camden's artisan had been pushed back, and would be tomorrow, having been delayed when he found out about the plot against him.

I glanced at Callie, shrugging. "I kind of wanted breakfast, but if it's time sensitive I'm fine waiting." I smirked at Anna.
"But it's going to be on the house." We were supposed to meet everyone, but Zeke would have heard this conversation even if Anna hadn't told him, and my uncle wasn't going to leave everyone hanging.

"You're a petty little thing for someone from one of the richest families in the universe." She complained as we set off. "Shouldn't you be inured to the trappings of wealth?" She was talking in her formal businesslike tone, which kind of clued me in to the nature of her friend.

I burst out laughing at that. "First of all, I'm a candidate. I grew up on a backwater psuedo D-rank planet in the ass end of Conglomerate space. No one on my planet has even MET a D-ranker, much less become 'inured to their wealth' second of all, have you met scions of wealthy houses? They're the most particular people I can imagine. In case you missed the overarching theme here, I'm cheap, and I want you to give me free food."

She threw her hands up. "Don't you have any pride as a Wyndham?" She said in disbelief. "The other people I've met with your ability carry themselves with a bit more...decorum. I doubt they would be impressed with your demeanor." Despite the words, I could see a twinkle in her eye, like this was some kind of test, not that I cared.

"Fuck em." I said bluntly. "I'm not overly impressed with them either. This whole cuckoo bird child rearing strategy is bullshit. I love my dad, and my cousin, but I don't know anyone else in my family. I'll act however I want to, and if they have a problem with it they can kiss my ass."

Part of my big soul realization in the temple was that I wasn't doing what I was doing for my family. Not really. I wanted to change them to make things better, but I didn't need their approval for that. All I needed was my own peace of mind, and I was going to prioritize that. It was the biggest part of what Abel had said that resonated with me. I wasn't like him, I cared what other people thought, but only to a certain extent.

Honestly, it almost felt hypocritical to make a declaration like that while trying to learn politics, but it made sense to me. I was here to make my own faction, to draw people in and convince them to support me. To do that I needed to know how to act in political situations, even if I made the choice to act counter to that information. Knowledge was power, and being stubborn wasn't the same thing as being stupid.

She laughed aloud at that. "Well look at you. How bold. How about you? You going to support your man as he tells his whole clan to go to hell?" She aimed that question at Callie, but I wasn't worried.

I felt a torrent of love and support rush through the bond, enough to stagger even me. Callie took my hand and held it tightly as she stared down the D-ranker. "Without a second of hesitation. You might not know this, but Shane supported me when I went against my family back home. It's the least I can do to offer my own support. He wants to win the competition, and I support that dream, however he decides to pursue it."

"You know." Said Anna thoughtfully. "Seeing you two looking all devoted and steadfast, I'd ALMOST believe he might pull it off. Almost. It's almost sad you kids have no clue of the depths of the waters you're wading in. But hey, I've been surprised before. Even if you don't go the distance, I think you'll make it far." Her tone was firm, like she'd just made a decision, and part of me realized this HAD been a test. She wanted to see if we were worth following. I didn't know what she'd decided, but I wouldn't have changed my answer even if it had been a negative.

Finally, we arrived outside a large stone building, columns holding up a massive stone roof. "Welcome to the Saltzberg Archives of Imperial Knowledge, the largest library in a thousand miles. It's not under the control of the nobles, but is an extension of the imperial power. All citizens are entitled to basic knowledge about possible jobs and career paths. It's what makes the empire function. Though some, like nobles, require certain conditions like birth or bestowal to gain."

"That's actually kind of cool." I said with interest. "Shame we don't have time to hang around. Maybe we should mention this place to m-" I caught myself. " To my friend Chelsea, she loves books." My sister had moved away from the Holy Dominion to experience life, but that didn't mean she automatically hated reading now. I was sure she'd be excited about such a big expansive library.

I was also hoping that Anna hadn't caught my slight slip up, though even if she had it would be covered by our contract. Gesturing us inside, she steered us through the stacks and to the back of the library. In a far corner, surrounded by walls of books, we found an overburdened table stacked with piles of tomes. I could hear someone moving around. "Syl." Called Anna loudly. "I brought guests, come say hi."

There was a thump, and a curse, and then an incredibly tiny woman crawled out from under the table between a few book stacks. "I'm here." Said the small blonde. She had huge glasses that made her eyes look massive, and was only about halfway past four feet tall. Her face was serious and focused, and she didn't give the feeling of being young so much as just very small. "What do you want?"

Anna had explained on the way, after our heart to heart that her boys had gone down into the tunnels. They hadn't found any easy answers, but had found a few clues. That was why we were having this meeting now. She wanted to get Sylvie's opinion on what they'd uncovered so we had a direction to focus on.

Snapping her fingers, Anna pulled out a stack of papers, passing them over to Sylvie. I'd expected some plesantries, but the small historian was apparently not one for niceties. She snatched the papers, scanning them over. She paused, raising an eyebrow. "Someone is mucking around with the Undertrek? Terrible idea. All sorts of nasty things down there. In the deepest parts there are things even the Earl wouldn't want to disturb. Planets don't reach C-rank overnight, after all. This one has been here for quite a while."

She flipped through the papers, held up a hand, and then climbed back under the table. There were a series of bangs and grunts as the table was battered from beneath, book piles wobbling as she knocked into them. Finally she came back out holding a pair of books. "Those will help us?" Anna said hopefully.

"A bit generalist." She admitted. "But yes. One moment." She flipped through the books. And I mean that literally, she riffled the pages, barely glancing at them as she 'read'. "Ah." She stopped on a page. "That might be it." She switched books, did it again, and then switched back. She pulled a pen from behind her ear, somehow woven into the braid and then started scribbling things down.

Callie raised an eyebrow. "Don't you need any more details? I mean they only went down and scouted around. Unless they found some kind of big neon sign that said 'CLUE' I don't see how any of their accounts will help."

Sylvie snorted, looking up over her glasses, which had fallen down her nose. It was a very disdainful look. "The Undertrek is made up of millennia of sunken architecture, natural cave systems, and various other oddities. I've made a career of studying this planet's history. I know when certain civilizations fell, how they interacted with others, and where those interactions took place."

"So...this planet predates the empire?" I asked in amazement. "I thought most planets people lived on were seeded by the five factions? To grow the population."

She rolled her eyes. "One!" She said sharply, holding up a finger. "Seeded by the five factions doesn't mean terraformed. Several powerful planets had native inhabitants. Second, most is an accurate qualifier, but you have to understand that there are hundreds if not thousands of lower ranked planets for every one that manages to Ascend. Low ranked planets are the strong majority, and the ones the factions seeded trended strongly toward those. Makes it easier to raise a new population."

"People like Sylvie aren't exactly uncommon." Anna said with a nod. "Archivists and historians that study the ancient ruins of previous civilizations on inhabited planets. They share and cross reference their findings between factions freely, using their knowledge to enrich us all. The Vikram family heads the History Hunters, and they're an S-rank clan. There are also a few other major subfactions under the banner."

I got the gist. "Ok, so Sylvie has all sorts of reference material and has been crossreferencing the various societies and cultures here. How does that help us?"

"Idiots." Sylvie muttered as she went back to rifling through books. "The cave systems are made up of sunken ruins as well as normal stone. The qualities and design of those ruins heavily informs what might be lurking there, as do the locations, the depth, the type of stone in the tunnels, and about a dozen other factors. These caverns were relatively close to the surface, so the problem shouldn't be too difficult to discern. The issue is as I said, C-rank planets take a long time to form. Close to the surface not only doesn't mean recent, but can be a variety of possible cultures."

I gestured to the list she'd been making as she came back out, and she passed it to me. I scanned it. "Mykean, Radikt, Vessar. Ground dragon nest? Bubonic hate rats. Toxic spores, Stone Lion Prides, Necromantic Armies, Tomb Guardians, Mummies, Lantern Fiends." I scanned the variety of possible suggestions, some monsters some just vague references to civilizations. "What the fuck is a Spine Burrower Horde?"

"What does it sound like?" She said sweetly. Obviously done with us, she shoved several books into my arms, which I slipped into my ring immediately. "That's everything you should need. There are detection methods and tests you can run. Now I've taken too much time from my latest paper. I'm researching the trace stat elements in the soil and how they've leached in. Some of it is from the planet, but I think I can conclusively prove the effect of groundwater on specific stat proliferation."

Anna cut her off. "That was all we needed Syl. No need to bother with us plebian morons. Just get back to work." From her hasty words, I gathered Sylvie would have talked our ear off. With a shrug the small woman slipped back under the table. I glanced down at the list. Seemed like we had a place to start.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"This is not a present." My annoyed sister informed me. "This is grunt work. Just because I like to read doesn't mean you can force me to do research and pretend you're doing me a favor." She gestured to the small pile of books on the table. "That said, I did look through the list, because I agree it's important, and I skimmed the volumes she gave you. My final determination is...I don't know."

I blinked at her. "That's not a determination." I said flatly. "That's the opposite of a determination. Also it wasn't like I just dumped it on you and expected you to get it done. I offered to help, you just sent me away after a few minutes."

"Because you wouldn't stop HUMMING!" She snapped. "And you were tapping your toes nonstop. I couldn't focus. "

I threw up my hands in a 'there you go' sort of gesture, and she snorted in annoyance, turning back to her books.
"Anyway, point is, no, I found nothing. Or rather, I found too much. There are at least five possible options for what
Spencer might be doing in those tunnels, even after factoring in all the possible eliminating features. This isn't some video game where the scouts use their identify spell to figure out the special dirt at the base of the walls and use that to puzzle out the answer. I'll need to go down there and look around. And I'll need access to someone with scouting capabilities. I think we should bring Bethy."

Smirking at her, I made sure she could hear the smile in my voice. "Oh really? You sure you don't just want some alone time with the pretty vampire? I have better things to do than chaperone your first date."

"I don't...I...that's...what are you even...shut up!" My sister's face had gone bright red, and it was hard not to crack up at the panic on her face. "Bethy is a valuable and useful member of this team, and I need her services so we can find evidence. Her cats and even her new dog will be invaluable for searching underground in dark tunnels. I wouldn't say we should bring her just because she's pretty." Her eyes went wide. "I mean not pretty. Well, not not pretty but-"

I held up a hand. "Please stop. I promise to stop teasing you if you promise to stop stammering and blushing. This is going from amusing to awkward at absurd speeds. I'm down to go exploring with you and Bethy, but I'm not sure how safe that would be. People are disappearing down there. Even though Anna's people made it out, that doesn't mean we can go down there without any worries."

"I know." She said with a sigh. "Even with Gabriel and Callen alongside us, we wouldn't be safe from most of the beasts that might trouble us. We need someone in the D-ranks at least. Higher would be better, but as long as we don't go too deep we should be fine. Which is why I think we should bring Anna."

Snorting, I shook my head. "You planning to pay her? Because I'm fresh out of accessible wishes."

"I could." She admitted freely. "Though it would put a big dent in my walking around money. But I don't think I need to. Try asking her. No offers of payment, just one friend requesting help from another."

My sister's naivete was kind of charming, so I decided to humor her, tracking down Anna and asking her outright. "Hey, we were heading down to do some recon on the tunnels but it's not safe to go alone. Will you come with us?" I expected her to just blow me off, so I didn't bother trying to wheedle or phrase it in some enticing way.
"Sure." She said with a smile.

"Ok, no problem." I nodded. "I figured you'd be bus-wait what'd you say now?" I blinked, my brain crashing to a halt at the weird about face.

"Traditionally." She said kindly. "When someone says yes you shouldn't question them about it. Not only does it make you seem unconfident, it makes them reassess helping you. But I'll let it slide this time since your shocked face is so funny to look at."

I gestured to my blank wooden mask. "You couldn't see my face. You had no idea it looked shocked."

"I have a good imagination." She laughed. "Plus you just confirmed it. Anyway, go get the others. You bringing your lady love on this recon trip?"

Shaking my head, I explained. "Callie has some training to do today. Plus she can feel what happens through our bond." It was also a good chance to spend time with my sister, though obviously I couldn't say that. Chelsea and I hadn't really hung out, and a big nerdy research trip seemed like a fun getting to know you exercise.

Bethy would be along too, but in my experience she spent half her time vanishing when you weren't looking and reappearing being chased by monsters. Chances were good we would have time to talk, even if we couldn't let on about our family situation with Anna nearby. She shrugged, sending me off to get the others, and I strolled off to find our resident vampire fashionista.

To my surprise, I found her out front of the inn. Gabe was sitting and reading a book and Bethy had her head in his lap, a small dark umbrella held between his thighs casting shade on her face as she napped.

"Hey." I said as I stepped outside. "Sorry to interrupt reading time, but I was hoping to talk to Bethy."

She sat up excitedly. "Are you finally going to let me fix your hair? I'm so excited, I thought you were never going to figure out how bad it looks!"

"No it's-" I froze. "Wait, what's wrong with my hair?" I self consciously ran my fingers through my sandy blonde locks. "I guess it's getting a little long, but it doesn't look that bad, does it?" I glanced at Gabe who just shrugged, and made a mental note to ask Callie.

Bethy shook her head. "Of course it is, you look like a wheat field after a tornado, but that's not important right now. What did you want to talk to me about?"

"What?" I said, having been checking the camera on my scan ring to try and figure out what she meant. "Oh, we have a recon mission I wanted help with. Poptarts and Donuts would be perfect to run scouting for it, and Luggage would be good to watch our backs down there." I shook off the hair stuff, cursing myself for getting sucked into Bethy's pace. First rule of talking to Bethy was not to let her lead the conversation. That way lay madness.

I'd gotten distracted, and when I turned around, I saw Bethy staring back at me seriously, wearing a big yellow hardhat with a light on it and holding an actual pickaxe. "Sergeant Bethy of the tunnel expedition team reporting for duty, SIR!" She saluted with the pickaxe, and Gabe had to roll out of the way so he didn't get caught in the face. Bethy glanced back and giggled. "Oops, sorry. This is an E-ranked pick, I underestimated the weight a bit."

"Where did you get..." I sighed, waving it away. "Never mind. I'm glad to have you along. But you know you aren't a sergeant of anything right?" She'd already walked away, humming excitedly, the pick over her shoulders as she strode inside. "Bethy?" I called after her. "Bethy I need you to tell me you don't think you're a sergeant! You're in the military, this is kind of a big deal!"

She didn't respond and I sighed, putting my hand on my mask. "It's fine." Said Gabe with a laugh. "Jessie keeps her from interacting with anyone in an official capacity. Healers get a lot of leeway, and she keeps Randall and Luggage around looking scary just in case. She's not going to walk into some random barracks and assume command." He paused. "Probably." He got up and headed for the door. "Actually it might be a good idea to clarify things."

After we clarified with Bethy that she wasn't an officer, and informed her that the phrase 'you are what you eat' did NOT mean that she could snack on an officer and get an official rank, we filled her in on the details of our fact finding mission.

"Of course I'll come with you guys!" She squealed excitedly, once we gave her all the context. "Donuts and Poptarts have been dying to get out and stretch their legs. Plus I love hanging out with Chelsea." She shot my sister a grin. "We're going to find all sorts of terrible monsters, right bestie?"

I grimaced. "No, Bethy we don't WANT to find any monsters. Like there's probably something, but best case scenario we find nothing."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't be a baby, Shane. Monsters will give us something cool to fight. Plus if I'm lucky there might be a new kind of kitty down there. Wouldn't it be so cool if I could get an underground kitty? Oh! I could get one for Chelsea too! She doesn't have any pets."

I debated telling her not to bring home any tamed monsters...but she never listened to me, so it would be wasted breath. "Alright then, lets go. Anyone know where the entrance to these tunnels are?"

Chelsea raised her hand. "According to the books, there's a bunch of them. Closest one is the wishing well on the south side of town. Apparently the thing is so deep it intersects one of the tunnels. They've never bothered to plug it because monsters don't go into that part of the Undertrek."

"Can we stop to make a wish?" Asked Bethy excitedly. "I've always wanted to make a wish and have it come true!" We all stopped, turning to stare at her in complete bewilderment. "What?" She said innocently.

I was...ninety percent sure she was fucking with me right now, but she had such a good poker face it was impossible to tell. "Right." I said slowly. "Let's go." Chelsea, Bethy, Anna and I all set out, heading for the south side of town where this wishing well was located.

Anna was talking to Bethy, laughing her ass off at the younger girl's antics, and I briefly wondered if it was a good idea to introduce them, but I doubted Bethy could influence a D-ranker, and I doubted ANYTHING could influence Bethy. Although, I still needed to talk to her about her bloodlust. We'd talked about helping her but things had been so damned hectic we hadn't had a chance.

When we arrived at the wishing well, I gestured for Anna to go first. "I'll follow you down." I said to the information broker. "I'm at E-rank, so I can catch the other two if either of them stumbles."

She agreed, and with a quick casual step she vanished into the hole in the ground. I followed behind her, stepping off the edge and activating State of Grace. I drifted pleasantly to the ground, touch down soundlessly and then having to scramble out of the way as a horde of bat winged cats carried my sister down through the hole, depositing her on the ground in a gigging mess.

"That tickled!" Said Chelsea with a laugh as Bethy reformed, grinning at us. "Why didn't you just let Shane catch me?"
Bethy gave her a solemn look. "Cats always land you on your feet." She said seriously. Before winking and skipping off into the dark a ways. When she was a bit apart from us, two dark shapes rose from the ground. As Donuts and Poptarts appeared, the world around her shimmered, her domain opening and a massive black dog with red eyes stepped out. I looked around slowly. The hound was here. Time to hunt.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The Undertrek was a whole different world from the surface. I'd expected it to be dark and gloomy, but the biggest difference for me was the silence. Even with my Focus to block most of it out, the surface was teeming with life and sound. Wind, small animals, distant people. The million little sounds of life that had become like a background symphony to which we all lived.

In the Undertrek there was none of that. No wind, no animals that I could hear, just complete and utter stillness. Silence and dark that made the atmosphere almost oppressive.

"Well." Said my sister sarcastically. "This is nice. It's what I always imagined under my bed to look like when I woke up from nightmares as a child."

Bethy sighed wistfully. "I never looked under my bed as a kid. My daddy used to rent the spaces under all our beds to some of his monster friends. It always felt like an invasion of privacy." At our collective horrified looks she giggled and held her hands as if to ward off misunderstandings. "Oh don't worry. They paid rent."

"This silence doesn't seem natural." I said, shaking off the Bethy shock more quickly after multiple rounds of exposure. "There should be like...worms and shit down here right? Insects and burrowing creatures. We didn't fall into the center of the planet, that was like two hundred feet. It wasn't nearly far enough for us to be in some kind of alternate exosystem or some shit."

Anna shook her head. "You're thinking like a mortal. Consider the difference in the nature of the renown for above and below ground, especially with the added dangers from past civilizations. There's probably a bunch of undead fortresses at the core of this planet or something. Whatever is down there, it's best avoided. We aren't going too deep, and if bats in the belfry over there lives up to her end of this we won't even have to do that."

"Hey." Snapped Chelsea. "That's not necessary. Bethy is down here helping us out of the goodness of her heart. You don't have to be a bitch about everything."

Smirking, the D-ranker raised an eyebrow at her. "Well if it isn't the princess coming to the rescue. You sure you want to pick a fight with me little miss prim and proper?" She gestured to the walls. "We just discussed the lack of sound. No insects or animals means nothing down here to hear you scream."

"If you think Zeke wouldn't notice us down here you're cracked." I said calmly. "Not to mention if you attack her you'd have to kill me, which even if you managed it means no more wishes. Not that it's a problem either way. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop pushing buttons to find out what we're about. If you have questions just fucking ask them."

She grinned. "You got me. I was testing." She smiled at Bethy. "Sorry about that little one. Just checking some things about your fearless leader. I didn't mean to scare you."

Bethy smiled sweetly at her, but she pulled back her lips, exposing razor sharp fangs. Her eyes began to glow a lambent red, lighting the darkness around us somehow far further than they should have and too dimly to see more than dancing shadows. "It's ok. There's no need to be sorry if you didn't mean it. I know you wouldn't really threaten my friend down here alone in the dark with me. That would be...unwise."

Anna's face went pale, and she stepped back slightly, swallowing hard. It was easy to forget that manic wacky Bethy was a Vampire, and the favored youngest child of a man who fought fucking GODS at the S-rank. I didn't think Bethy was E-rank yet, but even if she wasn't I wasn't totally sure she wasn't capable of hurting a D-ranker if she felt so inclined. The pitch black form of Luggage towering over her from behind probably didn't help.

There was also the fact that there was only one family in the universe who had fangs and red eyes like that. Even if Bethy didn't manage to hurt her, Morgan would not take well to someone touching his baby girl. Finding out you're sharing a dark tunnel with a teen apex predator would shake anyone's nerve. The most impressive part was how fucking scary she still managed to look wearing a big yellow hard hat paired with her puffy blacc gothix dress.

"Now that we've finished discussing Anna's gruesome horrible death and the variety of painful ways it might occur, I think we should get back to the mission at hand." I said casually. "She doesn't seem likely to stir up any more trouble." I chuckled. "I think we can just count that as a preemptive pass for any further tests you had in store for all of us, don't you Anna?"

She grinned at me. "You're a mean little bastard when you want to be, aren't you Shane? Yeah, tests passed. Didn't expect to get bullied by a bunch of brats, but hey, if you want to watch the gods laugh, predict the future." I'd never heard that saying before, but I kind of liked it.

"Anyway." Said Bethy cheerfully. "Poptarts and Donuts are back. They did a quick grid pattern sweep of everything within about five miles. They found lots of rocks and dirt, and not much else. But they said some of the rocks had carvings on them. We can check those out if you want?" I hadn't even seen the night pride return. Fucking shadow cats. Squinting, I could vaguely make them out.

Bethy pointed randomly down a tunnel. We had some light from the well above us, and with our Perception we could easily pick it up, but the direction she pointed was pitch black. "They said the symbols are that way."

"Do they know what the symbols are?' I asked hopefully. Maybe we wouldn't have to go down there at all. Rude or not Anna wasn't wrong about avoiding the depths being preferable.

Bethy just shot me a pitying look. "No Shane. They're cats. Cats can't read. Did you not know that?"

I suddenly felt a lot more sympathetic of Abel and his endless torment (even if I knew he played along). Sighing, I nodded and just followed them down the tunnel forlornly, stoically ignoring the muffled sounds of laughter from Anna and my sister. I was pretty sure even the fucking cats were laughing.

As we moved further into the tunnels, Chelsea held up a hand and conjured a fistful of white fire. The purifying flames cast a bright and sanctified glow on the walls of the tunnels, and somehow I felt the silence recede a bit. There were no noticeable sounds once it appeared, but the quiet just seemed...less.

Our footsteps seemed to echo further on the hard packed dirt and occasional stone we walked over as we traveled down the tunnel. When we arrived at the symbols, Chelsea held up her flame and I crouched down. I peered solemnly at the carvings for a few minutes before nodding sagely and saying. "I was afraid of this." They all looked at me questioningly. I pointed to the symbols."I can't understand a word of what this says."

My sister smacked her forehead with her palm. "Move you idiot." She said waspishly. I snickered as I backed up, having successfully gotten my revenge for their unfair mockery earlier by making them sit around and stare at nothing for five minutes.

She squinted through the light at the tiny etched letters on the stone, reading over them for about fifteen minutes. We all got a bit bored, and Bethy started shifting from foot to foot like she was resisting the urge to start a fire. "You ok?" I asked her quietly. Bethy was energetic and enthusiastic, but she wasn't one to freak out over nothing.

"I don't know." She said slowly. "I feel...like we're being watched. Anna would have noticed though I'm sure. I'm probably just imagining things."

I groaned. "On the list of things you should never say out loud, that's probably third, right after 'I'm sure nothing bad will happen' and 'it's probably just a power outage, I'll go check the fuse box in the basement'. Now I'm SURE something is watching. Can you send the cats to scout for it?"

"I did." She said with a frown. "They didn't find anything. I can't SEE anything either. I just...feel it." I'd never seen her this serious, it kind of worried me.

Anna stepped up next to her, peering out into the dark. "I'm a stealth focused D-ranker. If there's something there I should be able to pick it up. You Perception is well below mine I'm sure. That said, no one with a brain between their ears dismisses the instincts of a Vampire. I had no idea Shane had one of you with him." She narrowed her eyes at the darkness. "I feel something. The dark itself seems to be...alert. Not alive exactly. How did I miss that?"

My eyes widened and I swung them to Chelsea. "Hey, take a break from that and come here." Her flame cleansed whatever was making the air stifled, maybe that was an effect of offsetting whatever was watching.

She grumbled, but stood up and walked over to stand next to me. "Why are we staring into the dark?" She asked as she tried to peer through the gloom. As she stretched out her hand to see better, the dark receded, but even outside the light of the flame it seemed to thin slightly. "Oh." She said in interest. "That's fascinating. Let me try something." She reached into a pocket and pulled out a red metal symbol. Brandishing it in front of her, she bellowed. "RUBRUM GLORIA!"

As she shouted, she channeled flame into her hand, and it was sucked into the symbol, which began to blaze with an incandescent light. The expanded range of the light smashed into the dark around us, and I heard a high pitched scream, overlapping disharmoized voices hurting my ears.

Once it was done, I looked around, able to see the entire cavern we stood in thanks to the still blazing light. "So..." I said conversationally. "Did anyone ELSE notice the big black doors twenty feet from us?"

Anna whistled. "Sneaky. Some kind of stacked Perception overload. A woven charm of overlapping discordant voices pulled together into a spell. Whoever did it stitched it through the darkness around us seamlessly. My Focus pushed it away as useless noise. D-rank work. Probably the Magister. That's not...ideal."

"How did Chelsea break it?" I said in confusion. "If it was D-rank...she hasn't even hit E."

Chelsea shook her head. "I didn't. This is a D-ranked focus. Grandpa gave me the crimson icon to focus my powers of purification. It's basically useless ninety percent of the time, but curses, poisons, and dark based spells and Skills don't hold up well."

Nodding, I made my way forward, moving slow. "Alright folks, we just go in, check on the threat if it's in there, and then leave. Nothing else." I glared at Bethy. "No monster taming."

She pouted but agreed and we stepped up, leveraging the heavy dark metal doors open as we stepped inside. The cavern inside was also pretty dark, but the crimson icon was still lit. Looking out over the larger cavern mostly sunk below the huge ledge we were standing on, my eyes widened in fear.

I thought back to the list, picking through the half remembered possibilities until I found the obvious culprit. Blow us, stretching out into the endless distance, lines upon lines of large, leonine forms carved of dark grey rock. I stepped back, covering Chelsea's hand and pushing my sister out of the room as quietly as I could. We'd found the threat. Stone Lions. A LOT of them.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Chelsea and I headed back to the inn directly from the site of our…discovery. Anna split off to take care of her own affairs (which is to say, figure out how the hell we could survive this) and my sister wanted to dive into research immediately, but I called her back. I could understand wanting to learn more after such a terrifying sight, but I had other plans for the moment.

Seeing those stone lions down there, thousands, hundreds of thousands, all at least F-rank and many higher, had terrified me, sure. But it had also driven home a point that I felt the need to raise with my friends. This wasn't what they had signed up for. I needed to give them a chance to back out of this. Even if they didn't accept, even if they decided to do it anyway, this might be a suicide mission and they needed to decide for themselves.

Bethy had sent her flying squirrels ahead to gather everyone before slipping away herself to do who knew what.
When we finally arrived, everyone was gathered in the downstairs of the inn. Anna must have ordered Mattie and her brother to clear everyone out, because it was only my people down there, and I said a silent thanks to the spy mistress, for making that at least easier.

"So, thank you for coming." I said with a weak smile. "I have some bad news, and I hope you can all think over what I have to say." I filled them in on what we'd found, our trip down to the tunnels and the army of stone lions we'd seen below the earth.

Callie listened, and then smiled at me softly. "You want to offer us an out again." She said simply.

"Well it's not like you signed up for THIS." I said hotly. "Sure, we agreed to stay before, but that was mainly my lead, and it was predicated on the situation being manageable. We could all die here. I can't make this call alone. Everyone needs to get a vote. So…what do you all think?"

To my complete lack of surprise, it was Benny who responded. My best friend lacked any of his trademark levity or wit, his face solemn as he asked me earnestly. "What do YOU think Shane? I'm not saying I'll do whatever you say, not with this, but I still want to know where your head is at."

"I think we should stay." I admitted. "Not just because of our contract with Camden, but because we came here for exactly this. To train with an army. To experience war. This is going to be war, and sure, we can run from that since it's not exactly what we thought, but what will that accomplish?"

"It'll save our lives." He pointed out. But not like he was disagreeing, more like he was prompting me to elaborate. He got like this sometimes when he was considering.

I nodded. "It might. But then what? War is coming. Not just to the planet, but to the entire universe. And we're going to be involved, we played too big a role in uncovering things to be ignored. Sure, we can run now if we want, but then what? What about next time when we can't run?"

Abel laughed. "I mean, you don't have to threaten me with a good time, kid. I want to get my hands dirty here. I wouldn't miss a fight like this for the world. Can you imagine how many enemies will be here?" He glanced at Callie, who was glaring at him. "What? Are you pouting because I don't care about all the dead randos? You should try not to be so judgy."

"I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people." She snapped in exasperated fury.
He shrugged. "Then you should stop trying. You already made the sale kid, talking me OUT of helping isn't in your best interests. I'll do my thing and you do yours." He glanced back to me. "I'm in, obviously. Even if your girlfriend wants to throw a fit about why."

Mel scoffed, smacking him upside the head. "Ignore him." She said flatly. "Of course we'll help. And we care about SOME of the people here. We won't let you two down."

It occurred to me from that interaction that I'd missed so much subtext between those two it wasn't even funny. It explained so much about them, the way they talked, bickered, the way she'd moved past his switching sides in the temple. They were like Callie and I, as we were now, only they'd been like that for much longer. I wondered if that was our future.
Shaking that off, I turned to the others. "So? Abel and Mel aren't a surprise. What about the rest of you. What do you think?"
Benny nodded, sighing. "You and Cel have been doing tons of work here to prep for this territory. And you're right that if we run it probably won't solve much long term. Based on what Zeke told you fate sense would probably crash us into a pirate fortress or something. At least here we have time and resources to prepare. I'm in."

Celine nodded, showing her solidarity. Cark looked unsure, but when he glanced at Zeke who was playing with Cass, he sighed and accepted. "Agreed." He said in a sad voice. "Cass is taken care of, and I joined this army for better or worse."
Chelsea followed suit, and Gabe and Callen followed her lead. But when I got to the next person I'd expected to agree…Jessie remained silent.

As if she felt my confusion without seeing my face, she looked down, eyes swimming with tears. "I don't…I don't know if I can, Shane. I'm really scared. Fighting is one thing, I can do that fine. But I'm the healer. If this is going to get as bad as you said it is, I'm the one who's going to have to patch up all the victims and…I won't be able to save them all."
I winced, because I couldn't argue that. I considered just telling her to go, that we didn't need her. But we did.

Callie walked over and knelt down in front of our blonde friend. "I get it." She said softly. "I get how much it sucks to lose somebody. To watch another person die and know it's your fault. But we need you here, Jess. It's selfish, and shitty, but it's just true. People might die, but if we don't want any of OUR people to die, we need our healer."

She flinched back like she'd been slapped, looking around at everyone in fear. Nat spoke up, shocking everyone. "She's right. I know it's scary, that seeing so many people die sounds unbearable, but if you run, and any of them die, imagine how you would feel." She gestured to the three of us. "Could you handle that?"

It was nasty, and manipulative, but…it was true. And Jessie knew it. She nodded. "You're right. I can't lose any of you. Can't lose any more family. I wouldn't be able to take it."

Her eyes fixed on me, and I suddenly gained a spark of understanding through the bond as Callie took in her expression. Jessie had worshipped her big brother. He was her hero, her best friend, her parent. Since he died, she's been lost, until I told her I would help her get him back. Once that happened she had a place in the world. Had a family. Now she saw ME as her big brother, and I wasn't sure I could handle that kind of pressure.

Forcing my mind away from that complicated issue, or how I felt about getting ANOTHER sister when I just found my first, I looked at Callie. "I take it that means you're in as well."

"Idiot." She scoffed. "Like I'd let you fight an army of angry rock cats on your own. You're hopeless without me. Besides…I want to help. Not just Camden and other people we know, but our recruits, and the rest of the army, and the people here in Saltzburg. I can't just leave all these people to die."

Benny raised a hand. "Speaking of which, what about the actual ruler of this fucking planet? Shouldn't the Earl be read in on this?"

"He knows." I said grimly. "The stone lions resting place was under a spell to disguise it left by the Magister. He's the Earl's right hand man, so we can assume he's aware. Spencer probably paid him off."

He looked appalled. "Can he even do that? Ignore his planet? I thought the Empire enforced duties on the rulers. Won't he be punished if he doesn't protect this place?"

"Unfortunately no." Said Chelsea with a grimace. "Anne filled us in on the way back. The Earl IS the ruler of this planet, but he's an administrator. There are guards for martial protection. None of them will be able to help too much. The Earl would look bad if he did nothing, but there were some higher ranked stone lions, I imagine he's making preparations to immobilize them and take them out so he can claim he did his best."

Callie's expression was disgusted. "But there are millions of people on this planet. They're his citizens, how can he just let them die? And how can Spencer unleash an army on this planet and not care what happens?"

"Because he doesn't see them as humans." Said Celine, breaking her silence. "I've met nobles like him before. Generations of exposure only to sycophants and powerful relatives breeds out all compassion. Humans are either powerful family members or expendable tools. To him, this is just washing away a hill of ants."

That kind of casual apathy chilled me. The concept of just not caring as millions, maybe billions of people died was disgusting to me. What kind of monster was that divorced from their humanity. Turning your back was one thing, but wiping out a planet to kill one person, and a family member at that, it was despicable.

Nat spoke up. "I think you're right Shane. We need to do this. I need to get stronger, to go further. And you'll need my wishes to pull this off. We ARE allies." She smiled, the barest shadow of my effervescent snarky cousin showing through the grief and the anger.

One by one, they all agreed, every one of my friends had my back, and I felt my chest tighten at the show of loyalty and trust. "Alright." I said with a nod. "We need to tell Camden about this. I was going to do it anyway of course, but I waited to see if I'd need to break our contract as I informed him. Since that's not the case, we should go find him."

Everyone nodded, and we stood up, ready to head for the manor together. There would be lots of planning to do, lots of prep work. But deep down, I felt like this was the right call. Not just because of all the work we'd already done, but because of who we were. Leaving, running away and letting these people die, that wasn't us.

I felt Callie slide her fingers between mine and looked down to see her shooting me an adoring smile. Our bond was flooded with love and pride, and I shared my own feelings with her as I gazed in awe at the amazing woman I was sharing my life with.

I should have been afraid, should have been sick with terror, but looking down into those bright blue eyes, I couldn't find it in me to fear. We would get through this, we would win, like we always did, because we were together, all of us, and there was nothing we couldn't do if we set our minds to it. Because that was what heroes did.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Camden was, as we expected, furious. The normally composed noble grabbed the table we usually sat at under the end an without blinking, hurled it sideways, smashing the end into the fireplace in the dining room and shattering the brickwork so thoroughly we could see the next room through the hole.

"Fucking SPENCER!" He bellowed. "A whole planet? Are you fucking KIDDING me? I know he's a fucking monster but this is beyond the pale. And Sara? How could she be part of this?" He slumped into a chair, burying his face in his hands. "What the fuck do I do?"

I hesitated. "Can't we just deal with it later? We don't even have a time table. It might not be too urgent."

He laughed hollowly. "No. We know exactly when it'll happen. The day of the final showdown with Clairdon. Spencer wants me to die, and he wants it to be as painful as possible. Snatching defeat from the jaws of my victory is just his style, not to mention if we're already mid battle our defenses will be nonexistent."

"Shit." I cursed. "Ok…well, that might not be as bad as it sounds. We still have my wishes. We can rope in some of the other nobles and lock them into geasa to prevent news from leaking."

His head snapped up, confusion crossing his face. "You're not…leaving?" He asked in disbelief. "I mean, I appreciate that, but…are you fucking insane? This whole planet is going to be overrun by stone lions.You should leave. Hell, I want to leave, and I probably would if I wasn't sure my asshole cousin had at least one contingency for that, probably something involving a bomb on a ship. He likes doing that. He killed two of my siblings that way. And one of his."

"That's not a bad idea." I said slowly. "Why don't we evac the planet? If we announce whats going to happen-"

He shook his head. "If the Earl is in on it that won't work. Causing a public panic is illegal. He'd send the planetary guard to arrest you. That's a valid use of his power. I'm also guessing he issued a blockade on the mirror world. That's going to draw attention eventually, but inter-planetary calls are expensive, they don't happen too often at lower levels of society."

"And the nobles are all scared shitless of the Earl." I guessed with a sigh. The worst part was that while the Earl couldn't do shit to me, if the planetary guard showed up I'd be screwed. Those guys were all D-rank or lower. I cursed under my breath. "So what the hell do we do? How do we stop this?"

He shrugged. "We fight. If we take the battle to Clairdon early when he's unprepared, we can scoop up the territory. Once Saltzberg is under our control, we can start building up defenses and moving the citizens out of the way." He glanced at my sister, who had been unusually quiet since we arrived. "They'll come up out of the well, I take it?"

She started, needing a second to catch up. "Ah, yes. There are other entrances to the surface but they're further out. It's unnecessary to delay. They'll probably tear their way out though, and that hole will get wider. Any chance we can start on the defenses early? Some of the buildings near there are for sale."

Making a curious sound, he grabbed a map, rolling it out before realizing he'd thrown our table across the room and pinning it to the wall with a few throwing knives he pulled from thing air. "South side? Let's see." He ran a finger over the area. "Coulomb Bakery shut down a few months ago, and Art's Dirt Depot has been hemorrhaging money for years…damn, the Altamont Smithy."

He pointed at a specific spot and I leaned in to squint at the image. To my surprise, as I did, the map fucking zoomed in. Neat. "How popular is the Altamont Smithy?" I asked hopefully.

"Very." He said with a grimace. "They're also OLD. Place has been there since Saltzberg was founded. They won't sell."

I cursed. "Do we need them? Two buildings should be enough. We expand them into one large compound surrounding the well and then start reinforcing the ground there. When the big showdown happens, the lions will be held at the walls and so will Clairdons people. We hit them and then draw them out. Drip feed the lions and maybe even use them against Clairdon."

"Won't work." Said Chelsea with a shake of her head. "The higher ranked ones will punch right through. What we need is to make another exit point, something that leads somewhere we're less worried about them ending up. When the big boys come out the high rankers can take care of them."

I wished Callie was here. She'd have some ideas, but Chelsea and I had come alone, because my girlfriend wanted to check in with her recruits. Gabe was handling mine, but Abel was much less trustworthy when unsupervised.

Camden seemed intrigued by the possibilities, and I left them to argue particulars, turning to the one out of place person in this room. "Demia." I said cautiously. "Can you teach me a formation I can drill into my people that will help dealing with the lions?" I had some ideas for possible weaponry, but their use would be critical.

She looked surprised to be acknowledged. She'd come along because Camden had thought this was some kind of debriefing about my century, and he said he trusted her implicitly.

"I may have some ideas." She admitted. "I'd prefer to see the creatures, study their vulnerabilities, but barring that, there are several defensive formations that allow for spear work. I assume you did want to corral them and stab them to death and aren't stupid enough to fight an army of animals head on?"

I nodded. "We do need more information about their physiology, but most likely." I turned to call out to Camden. "We were supposed to meet up with your armorer, though that kept getting pushed back. I trust they can do weapons too? Or know someone who can?"

Callie had mentioned plans to wish for a detailed description of the Stone Lions, so I'd only be doing the base five today for Camden. Since it was Saturday we'd be free to get in touch with the armorer all day, and should have plenty of time to squeeze in some quick research. Callie checking in on her century was more formality than anything so it shouldn't take long. They were off for the weekend too, she just wanted to stay available. That was part of why I hadn't worried about sending Gabe to deal with things.

"Of course." He said with a smile. "Though I've seen your staff, and it's better quality than anything my smith is likely to have the materials for."

I waved him off. "Not for me. I had another idea. Anyway, let me go get Callie and the others. We should probably bring Bethy too, since I know she'll throw a fit if she doesn't get creative input. Where is your armorer anyway?"

He chuckled. "Sonia works in the basement. She says the sound of idiocy throws off the crafting process. I brought her with me when I came here. She's a distant relative, though not close enough to the main family line to be a potential threat. She's got an…interesting personality."

"I'm sure she and Bethy will get on like a house on fire then." I laughed, imagining the damage our fashionista vampire could do with access to a skilled armorer. We'd never wear the same clothes more than once ever again.

He shuddered. "Please don't joke about that. We had to pay triple for D-rank fire suppression on the basement. They weren't happy about tying the higher ranked spells into the general ward schema. Sonia is…enthusiastic, when crafting, and she isn't particularly worried about fire because of her inborn Skill."

I wondered exactly what that Skill might be, but I didn't have time to ask. Instead of going to find her, I flexed my soul and shot a message off to Callie to bring everyone here. It was an odd sensation, because while the bond worked over distances, this particular feature felt less intense when we were separated.

The message seemed to wing off into the ether, at least until I got a quick affirmative response from my girlfriend. "They're on their way, and I told Callie where to find us." I informed our host. "Why don't you take us down to meet your armorer, and I can ask my questions before anyone arrives to start work on their armor."

Shrugging, he gestured for us to follow. "A few rules before we go down there. First of all, don't speak to Sonia until she acknowledges you, if you interrupt a crafting session and something goes wrong she WILL try to kill you. Second rule, don't touch anything, even innocuous looking stuff, because it might be enchanted or possibly cursed."

We both nodded, and he led us to an innocuous door in the corner of an alcove off one of the main hallways. It didn't look too sturdy…but the bulky metal door covered in bars and locks behind it looked nearly impenetrable. Camden led us into the room between the two doors, closed the one to the hall, then stepped up and started yanking bars and turning knobs.

The metal door began to glow with a roiling blue green light, and the light brightened after each undone lock. Once he finished with the bars, he pulled out a ring of keys and started unlocking locks.

"This opens much easier from the inside." He said as the door finally swung back, opening onto a stone staircase leading down. "We're more worried about people getting in than anything getting out." He paused. "Except during Sonia's golem phase. But that was before we got to this planet, and she grew out of it after the…er, incident, at Lichtenbright."

Leading us down, he ceased all talking, and remembering his earlier warning I did the same. As we got deeper I could hear a rhythmic ringing sound echoing along the stairway. Clang. Clang. Clang. It was pretty obviously metal on metal. When we reached the bottom of the steps, Camden held up his finger to his lips and slowly eased open the door, waving us in.

We emerged into a massive stone room. Along the walls were dozens of devices and objects I had no knowledge of and couldn't begin to guess the purpose of. In the center of that room, standing over a flat cube of dark matte material glowing with blue runes, was a tall, willowy woman with scarlet hair.

She had on an apron over light clothes to protect from sparks presumably, but her heavily muscled arms were scarred and bare down to the forearm where her gloves covered her vulnerable fingers. Said fingers were currently gripping a huge square headed hammer set with glowing blue stones.

As she slammed down her hammer on the unidentifiable shape on the cube, I focused harder, triggering eye of revelation to try to see what she was staring at, since it wasn't her anvil.

I gasped as I saw the air around her manifesting a huge blue holographic image. As she brought down the hammer, a big chunk of it lit up, changing shape as the blow landed, and she used her non hammer hand to shift the pair of tongs holding the object. This time the image lit up in a different spot.

Inhaling sharply, I realized what this was. That anvil thing created a giant representation of the magic and material in that item she was making, allowing her to adjust her control and forging to address minute, normally imperceptible issues. Even if Perception could let you see fine details, that was only external. The internal stuff wasn't visible. I grinned to myself. Yeah, THIS was who I wanted making my armor. I couldn't wait to see what she could do.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Despite being in a forge and looking at the handling of glowing metal, it was surprisingly cool down in the basement. I could see the air warping closer to the cube, but I suspected some of those glowing runes trapped the heat.

As I watched, the glowing shape I could see with Eye of Revelation, slowly transformed, being compacted and refined until it went from a relatively oblong structure to a massive holographic representation of what I could see would eventually be a breastplate. It was fascinating to watch the metal warp and buckle under the hammer blows, sometimes being completely deformed only to be hammered out again into the same shape without a small defect I could only see in hindsight.

Finally, after about twenty minutes, the smith picked up the new breastplate with her tongs, lifting the still glowing metal and carrying it over to a peaceful basin filled with a dark blue liquid.

Dropping it in, I watched the substance swallow the metal slowly, like it was being submerged in pudding or something, and once it had vanished the blue liquid resumed its flat and undisturbed state.

Sighing contentedly, Sonia turned, noticing the three of us, and sighed. "Oh, Camden." She said dully. "Here to make more requests? I'm in the middle of my research on alloy compositions, so unless it's important can we do this another time? This new quenching bath I had the alchemists whip up SHOULD increase tensile strength by forty percent."

"So…like increasing the Impact?" I asked, curious despite myself. I knew there were differences between different materials even at the same Impact, but forty percent seemed pretty high.

She scoffed. "Obviously not. Investing Impact raising materials in equipment is not only prohibitively expensive, it's also wasteful. No, this treatment improves the base durability of the metal, creating a minor percentage boost PER point of Impact. It's less than a single percent per point, but cumulatively it's a groundbreaking enhancement." Pausing mid sentence, she blinked at me. "Wait…why am I talking to you? Who even are you?"

I laughed at that. "I'm Solomon. This is Chelsea. We came down here to talk to you about a few projects."

I'd been planning to wait until later to get the Stone Lion details, but when I'd found out I was coming down here I'd mentioned it to Callie and she had a better idea. She'd made the wish with Nat when she went to pick her up, and would be bringing the data with her.

"Projects?" She said archly. "And what gives you the right to ask me to undertake any 'projects' for you?"

I shrugged. "It's not for us. It's for Camden, though you could say it's for you too. I'll leave how much to tell you up to him." Raising my head, I grinned up in the direction of the doors. "Perfect timing, actually. Camden, Callie is here with Nat and the others. Can you let her in?"

Sighing, he headed back out of the room, though since the door opened easily from the outside he only took a minute before he came back with everyone.

I wasn't planning to stick around after designing my new costume, because this was going to take ages. There were so many people to get to. Callie grinned at me, holding up a small booklet, which she'd just closed. Chelsea snatched it up triumphantly, beginning to flip through it, and my girlfriend gave me a quick mental summary.

As I suspected, my plans would work fine. "So, the project we were hoping for was a special weapon made to kill a certain kind of creature. A spear that can pierce through stone easily, even when it's covering flesh."

Demia had stayed silent, but I made sure to meet her eyes and nod as I spoke, so she knew exactly what kind of formation we needed.

Chelsea finished flipping through the booklet and then passed it over to Sonia. "Something that could kill a creature like this?"

The redheaded smith opened the booklet and perused it, going much slower than my sister and girlfriend, clearly taking her time to sift through the facts. "This…is comprehensive. Magical structure, composition, vulnerabilities? I could make a weapon optimized for killing a creature like this easily."

Before I could get excited though, Chelsea cut in. "Would it be reusable?"

"Well, no." Said Sonia with a shrug. "Bane weapons are almost never multi-use. There's no point. You sacrifice longevity for efficiency. The more specifically the weapon is designed to counter a beast the less effective it is at anything else. Optimizing it for single use output means you get the most bang for your chit."

I turned to Camden, who sighed and nodded, and then I launched into an abbreviated explanation of what had happened. She waited for me to finish, then frowned, consulting the book again. "I suppose I could make something more durable. It won't be cheap, and it would be best if I could get a sample. This information will have to do though. Snatching one of them might set off the horde."

Walking over to the cube, she pulled out some paper and a pen and started scribbling. Not a picture, but a few vague outlines surrounded by large blocks of text. I stepped up next to her before she could get too into it. "Not just the weapons, though we need about ten thousand of those, we're also here for special custom armor we purchased from Camden."
I wasn't letting any of my people go into this fight without their best possible gear, and I wasn't sure how long it would take to make our armor.

Sonia nodded thoughtfully. "He did mention a possible slew of custom orders. More of you than expected, but He has enough jobs booked from me to cover it. Fine, I don't like being distracted and I want to work on this project, so go lets get that out of the way." She turned and strode off, calling behind her. "Follow me, we need to scout for your materials."
I glanced over at Camden. "Um…what does she mean scout? She's the smith, shouldn't she KNOW what materials to use?"

Sonia made a disgusted sound without turning. "This is CUSTOM gear, plebian. I'm a proper smith, not some mass production machine. You'll be interacting with the materials I have on hand, seeing what synergizes well with your soul and Skills. Utilizing gear as foci is one of the major benefits of custom work?"

I cocked my head as she stopped in front of a blank section of wall and tapped out a quick rhythm on the stone, only for it to life, revealing a massive carved in set of shelves, each filled with a different type of metal, stone, wood, or hide. "What do you mean gear as foci?"

She sighed, turning to my with a pitying look. "You have gear right? Magical items?" I nodded. "And these items, they DO things?" I nodded again. "Perfect. Now, you also have Skills. So what, pray tell, do you think happens if you channel a Skill through an item with a built in enchantment or Skill that MATCHES the Skill you're using?"

I blinked. "I…don't know?" I said slowly. "I'd never considered doing that. Does it make the Skill stronger?"

She waggled a hand. "It can. Though that's not exactly the best use of armor. For weapons that's a useful addition, but armor is more useful as means of lightening the load of certain Skills that might otherwise be taxing. Defensive abilities are particularly good choices. It'll depend on the materials that resonate with you."

"Ok, what do you mean resonate?" I asked as I stepped up next to her in front of the shelves.

She reached into her apron, pulling out a small metal object. It took me a second to recognize it as a tuning fork. She reached up and tapped it against my head, allowing it to begin ringing, and causing the metal to glow.

Stepping up to the shelves, she began running the tuning fork in front of the materials, walking up and down the rows as she stared intently at the device. I noticed the glow of the tuning fork brighten or dim regularly, until she came to a specific shelf. On it, I saw a black roll of leathery material.

Bringing the fork up to the material, she tapped it against the leather, and the glow was sucked out of the fork, causing it to blaze up with its own glow. She repeated this four times, finding a few objects, a purple gemstone, a bar of silvery metal, and what looked like a pile of black bones.

Nodding with interest, she grabbed them all then gestured me back over to the cube. She unloaded all the items on the cube, then began to explain what they are.

"These materials each resonate with something about you." She pointed to the leather. "Abyssal Wraithskin. Came from a demonic creature native to the devilish parts of the Fairyland." Next the metal. "Phantasmal Platinum is a Fantasy heavy metal with deep connections to dreams. The gem is a Venomblood Sapphire. A congealed drop of blood from a very venomous Wyveryn."

I nodded as she filled me in. I could see how those things might resonate with me for different reasons. Dreams and wishes were similar, I used poison often, and my dad was a devil. "What about those?" I said, pointing to the bones.

"Bones from a Stareater Thrall." She said somberly. She sounded almost reverent as she spoke of it. "There are many strange creatures in the universe. Some eat animals. Some eat plants. Some eat planets, or even the stars they orbit. However, as is the case with all predators, sometimes they fall victim to predation themselves. More commonly, they bring thralls to aid their assaults. These bones came from a thrall consumed by a black star."

Black flame. Much like Mephistopheles. I understood the connection. "Ok…so this stuff will all be turned into armor that will suit me and amplify my abilities? How are you going to do those enchantments, do I have to teach you my Skills?"

I couldn't and wouldn't do that. If she said yes I'd take some generic gear, it was better than nothing. She smirked. "Maybe if I was an amateur with amateur equipment. This, however, is a lifestone cube. It allows me to map the magical matrices of a material. I'm going to have you channel your Skills through these materials and then study the patterns caused by the effects. Then I'll forge your new equipment with those patterns inlaid naturally."

Blinking in shock, I gaped at her. "You can DO that? Is that something any blacksmith can do?"

"Blacksmith?" She chuckled. "I'm not a blacksmith. I can do blacksmithing, but I'm an Arcane Armorer. It's a specialized high level Job that involves a combination of enchanter and blacksmith Skills at a high rank. I also have multiple supplementary Skills. Point is, no, not many could do this. You're lucky you met me."

She sounded so proud of herself I had to smile. Her pride deflated when Camden coughed, gesturing to the rest of the group. "That's great, Sonia, but you still have another thirteen or so customers. Plus this bear." He gestured to Randall, who reared back on his stubby legs with a quiet roar, throwing his hands up threateningly.

Sonia turned to glare at him. "A bear? You want me to outfit a bear? Not just a bear either. A little cub. He's basically a stuffed an-" Her voice cut off as ANOTHER roar split the air. A much louder one, from a much bigger animal.

Turning, she saw Randall,in his full sized glory, towering over her, eyes fixed on her face in a narrowed glare. Camden smirked slightly at her obvious shock. "I'm sorry." He said in a tone that showed he was anything but. "You were saying?" I was lucky I was able to keep from laughing. Pissing off the woman making my gear seemed unwise. The look on her face was hilarious though.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After resonating everyone and giving us a basic sketch of the spears we were kicked out of the forge. Apparently finding out about the time crunch and seeing just hot many items she was going to have to make sent Sonia into fits of rage (not that those were uncommon for her according to Camden) and we were all banished, told to return only when individually summoned.

Since today had been long and exhausting, we all said our goodnights and headed for bed. The library in the morning, then the Undertrek, our big meeting, then the meeting with Camden followed by our introduction to Sonia, the whole day was packed with excitement and we were all relieved to get some sleep.

Which meant in the morning I was nice and rested and ready to get started on a bit of crafting, with Callie standing by to act as a secondary source of soul strength in case I needed it. I was going to make the training weapons for both my century and hers since she was going to help me out with training. Since it was Sunday and we were still off we had the training yard mostly to ourselves, except a few training nuts supervised by Gabe.

"Alright." I said excitedly. "You sure you're willing to help with this? Now that I have the Skill it'll be a lot less exhausting to craft. If you help me offset the soul weight I can make your century some training weapons too!"

She grinned at me, leaning back against a wall as she watched me send a bunch of my people out to collect rocks.
"Someone's excited about doing more crafting. If you love it so much, why haven't you been focusing on it more? I know you used to do Enchanting. Why did you end up getting rid of that?"

I shrugged. "At the early ranks we moved up too fast for my own Enchanting to keep up. Using it as a part of my DS Mastery made more sense. Plus our life isn't exactly conducive to sitting around working on making things."

"Well, we've got nothing but time now." She giggled. "So you can sit around making stuff all you want." She gestured to the nearest rock one of the recruits had brought back. "I take it you're going to make some of the training weapons with your Dust Construction? Do you have the precision to do that?"

I shrugged. "If I don't I'll get it. I have the Skill now, so it'll be way easier. I just need to practice." I walked over, picked up the rock, and used my Dust Construction Mastery. It dissolved into grains of sand, then reconstituted as I shoved at it with my soul. I pushed as hard as I could, trying my hardest to impose the image of the spear onto the dust.

There was a bang as the air cracked from a rapid change in the volume of the dust, and a small dark item dropped into my hand.

I squinted down as I picked the object up between two fingers. It looked like a toothpick at first glance, but on closer examination… I groaned, and Callie burst out laughing at the sight of what I was holding. "Oh, you've got this down." She cackled. "Tooth decay doesn't stand a chance against you. None of our soldiers will ever get corn stuck in their teeth again."

"You're not funny." I glowered. "It doesn't look BAD." I held up the tiny sharpened dark object. It was a spear. Well, more of a javelin really. Or it would have been, if it hadn't been about the length of my fucking pinky.

She chuckled, taking it from me. "Guessing you can't exactly take shortcuts here. Using your soul to impose the image of the weapon?" When I nodded, she smiled softly, handing it back. "Your soul was way too strong for random rock dust. It crushed it down into that shape, but condensed the dust into something much stronger."

I pinched the tiny tooth spear, and it took me a slight bit of effort to break it. Not MUCH, it was F-rank, but more effort than it would have taken to crush a normal F-ranked rock. If I'd had to guess, this was metal levels of effort.

My next attempt I tried to go lighter, pressing infinitesimally with my Sapphire soul, trying to avoid crushing the rock down too small. Callie snorted in amusement at the result. "Well." She said with a smirk. "At least it's pointy…kind of." The misshapen and only vaguely sticklike object was pretty much the opposite of what I wanted, so I decided to try something new.

"Alright." I said pensively, ignoring the potential embarrassment in favor of excitement at learning to use my new skill better. "Here, pile a bunch of them up in this circle." I told my recruits as I traced out a ten foot shape on the ground. My people were just coming back, so they carried the rocks over and stacked them up.

A huge pile of stone quickly filled the circle, and I had everyone stand back. I triggered Pit of Despair to turn them all to a fine dust, then using my Dust Construction, I grabbed hold of it, and CRUSHED it into shape. I triggered Piece of Mind as I did it, allowing my second parallel of thought to address the fine details.

The compression blew a wave of air that kicked uip a ton of dust, but when I finished, I was holding an intricate dark stone javelin. I spun it effortlessly between my fingers, then tossed it to Callie, who curled it a few times. She gave me a flat look. "You realize no one here is going to be able to lift this except us right?"

She tossed it back and I gave it a few swings. It was hard to gauge the weight given my current strength. I could easily lift tons, but considering the relative weight of the normal stuff I could carry around…shit. "I mean, I'm sure SOMEONE can? It's a few tons, and at F-rank any given Might specialist should have enough strength to lift that, albeit barely."

"Lift, yes." She agreed. "Wield, no. These are training weapons, we need people to be able to use them all day."

I nodded, grimacing. I'd taken a shortcut so I didn't have to learn to moderate the pressure from my soul and it hadn't worked out. I needed something lighter, which meant less material, which meant I'd have to do this slow and steady."
Still, I took a second to flex the spear with both hands until it broke, noting that it had required a bit more effort. This spear was definitely as difficult to break as a piece of F-ranked steel. Because of how much dust there was, I'd created a super dense stone that could stand up to most F-rank damage if I didn't miss my guess.

It was a fascinating bit of information, and one I would definitely put to use later if I had a chance. Sighing, I tossed aside the broken spear ends, walking over to where my century had continued stacking rocks. A hundred F-rankers carting stones from the nearby forest meant basically a revolving door of stones. I picked up a few decently weighty ones. I actually spotted a few E-rank rocks in the pile, but even if I made something of them no one here could use it. I shot Callie a message to put them aside.

Placing the stones in the circle, I checked to made sure I had enough. Rather than the massive pile I'd had my recruits set up before, this was a few hundred pounds of rock tops.

Triggering Pit of Despair and Piece of Mind, I began. The description Sonia had made was a sketch with a lot of detail, but it was all external stuff. I had to make the shape, but internal construction was just regular materials, no fancy smithing tricks or whatever. Since this was just a training weapon, it had to be quick to make.

Piece of Mind allowed me to carefully work on the task at hand, with one parallel handling the task of creating a mold, and one handling the task of filling it with dust.

Unlike the last time, I had to pay way more attention. Because I didn't want it to small or heavy, I couldn't fully condense the dust into its densest state, but I needed it to be denser than the normal rock at least, so it would hold up in combat.
After I shaped it, I triggered Eye of Revelation, scanning the spear to make sure I'd properly configured the material and hadn't left any weak spots in the construction before I allowed it to resume its stone composition, using Dust Construction to return it to solid form.

It took longer than expected, but I had my second parallel recording every instant, engraving it into my memory so I'd have a perfect recollection of how to repeat this trick.

Letting the spear drop out of the air, I snatched it up, spinning it at high speed in a whirling staff form Willow had taught me back in the Glade. Grinning, I whipped the spear around at top speed and hurled it behind me, right at the space next to Gabe's head.

I didn't aim AT his head, obviously, and I whistled as I did it, so my second in command had no problem snatching it from the air as it went by. As a lance used, the big guy also had no problem putting it through a quick spear form of his own, then tossing it up in a whirling display and catching it seamlessly on its way down.

"So?" I called over. "How does it handle? I need to know if it's too heavy to use for long term training."

He frowned, spinning it a few more times, passing it hand over hand and snapping it out in a fest test jabs. "It's…not light." He admitted. "Short term it's simple to use long term…possible. Difficult but possible. I'd say it's an excellent training weapon. The balance is superb."

I nodded. I could feel the density of the weapon, and see the composition with my Eye of Revelation, it made balancing child's play, especially with such a detailed design to work from.

Eyeballing how much rock had been in it, I walked over and picked up another four hundred pounds or so of stone. It was nearly weightless with my E-ranked Might. It occurred to me that having slightly higher Impact might make my effective Might slightly higher point for point, given the suppression.

That was a big advantage if it was true, and definitely something to leverage when I could. Setting the stones down, I cracked my neck and triggered my Skills again. The next spear was too light. The one after was top heavy. The one after THAT was brittle because I'd solidified the stone unevenly.

It took another ten of them before I managed a second perfect spear. Once I ironed out the difficulty though, the process became smoother and smoother. Not just faster and easier, but I was able to focus less per spear, which mean my second parallel could be set to the task of creating a second spear.

Two at a time, it only took me a few hours to finish, Callie lending a hand so I didn't overload my soul with all the work. By the time I finished, a field of dark stone spears were planted point first into the dirt of the training ring.

Callie stepped up next to me, beaming at the massive pile of weapons. "This…" She said with a grin. "This is amazing. I can't wait to get started on training. Demia said she had something that would work for tomorrow? She sounded almost as excited as I did, which I knew was probably because her own mentor and Demia were friends and she'd be learning the same thing. With a tired smile, I put an arm around her shoulder, answering in her head. Maybe getting ready for this war wasn't impossible after all.