In an official meeting room on the first floor of the Silas Building, Saul sat at the head of a long purpleheart table. To his right was an administrator for House Ficial, while Bart Eastfisher and a relative of his sat to the left. Unsurprisingly, the form of the single payment that the Eastfisher family had requested was an icon, which had just been handed over.
“Now, are you satisfied that House Ficial has fulfilled all conditions and requests pertinent to the peonage contract?” the administrator woman asked.
“We are,” the relative replied.
“Very good. Now, Mister Bart, as you know, Lord Saul Ficial graciously provided you with one icon fragment outside of the peonage contract. That leaves your debt for two icons, one round icon fragment, and three icon fragments at nine hundred and thirty rings.”
Bart’s face drained of color and the man next to him tried to hide his shock, while Saul smirked at their reaction. It was a large amount of money, sure, but the element icon his Uncle had given him alone was worth almost twice as much.
“Of course, House Ficial acknowledges the value of your labor. You will be able to renegotiate your contract at the conclusion of the debt in seventy seven years and five months from the date of signature. Until that time, you will be expected to perform any task required of you by Lord Saul Ficial up to and including placing his life before your own. If you are given instructions by other members of House Ficial that do not conflict with Lord Saul’s, you will follow such orders as well, but should not put your own life at risk. Are you in agreement?”
Bart nodded slowly, and signed each page of the contract as the administrator slid them to him. Once he finished and his relative signed a few himself, the administrator took the documents and gave a slight nodding bow to Saul. He picked up the Ficial Mark and poured all his focus into it, directing his title to prime the Mark. He personally pictured his title as a slight glow that suffused his body, so this involved focusing the light in his palm.
He was dimly aware of the administrator directing Bart to roll up the sleeve of his dominant hand. When the forearm was presented to him, Saul placed the Mark against it. At first, the light stopped dead against the arm, but then someone said something, and slowly a tendril began to push through. Eventually, the tendril caught something and pulled taught, and he sagged back in his chair. Massaging the bridge of his nose, the room reentered his awareness.
“…taxing,” the administrator was saying, “Lord Saul has not yet completed his soul, so his ability to place the mark at all is to be respected. Ah, tea, my lord?”
Saul nodded, and a small tray was placed before him. He sipped from a teacup and looked at the metallic symbol now visible on Bart’s forearm. It was the Ficial crest, a green face in profile, accented in white, on a black and purple shield. The administrator was reiterating what the mark represented, but it was straightforward enough on Saul’s end. He could find Bart anywhere on the continent, call Bart to his own location, or cause pain. That last effect would weaken the mark and wasn’t to be used lightly.
When the explanation was finished, there were pleasantries and bowing, and then only Saul and Bart were left in the meeting room. Bart was bouncing his leg under the table and kept flexing his fingers for some reason, which Saul found disproportionately irritating. Managing to keep in mind all the noise about positive impressions, he decided to delay ability testing a bit.
“I have a terrible focus headache and I’m getting hungry,” Saul said, breaking the uncomfortable silence, “go find your room and eat, then meet me at the training complex in two hours.”
“Yes, my lord,” Bart quickly replied, standing and bowing before leaving.
Saul kept nursing his tea in the silent room. After a few minutes, he fed a quarter to his tattoo and turned off the lights, leaving him in the calm gloom of evening that filtered through the horn windows.
His mother was almost finished with dinner when he arrived, but she chose to sit with him while he ate quietly. His headache wasn’t as bad, but it wasn’t going away. It was the same feeling that came with pushing oneself when using cantrips, or abilities apparently, but Saul had made a point of pushing his boundaries and thought himself used to the pain. He had put the Mark in his coin pouch and intended to practice priming it, even if it wouldn’t be as difficult as using it had been.
When he was almost finished with his duck, he told his mom about how he was feeling.
“That sounds like how I feel nowadays when I have to use my capstone several times in quick succession,” she said, “It seems like a consequence of using power greater than the environment. Having to really force it to work.”
“That’s probably not why I’m feeling this, but what do you do to get over it?”
“Well, peppermint tea and rest help,” she gestured to the waiter, “but for me it doesn’t really go away until morning training.”
“I guess I’ll see then.”
They had a cup of peppermint tea together, then Saul headed for the training complex. Bart was waiting for him already, so they went to a sparring courtyard with stone walls and a sandy floor.
“Are you feeling better, my lord?” Bart asked hesitantly.
“Somewhat.” Saul said tersely, “Now, we’re here to figure out the specifics of your new abilities. My father informed me that he changed some of the fragments that we discussed. I assume you were aware?”
“Uh, yes, my lord, but I was also specifically instructed not to tell you what they gave me instead.”
“That’s fine. I’ll figure it out myself,” Saul pulled out a notebook and blacksalt quill, “first, I assume you awakened Undying from your death icon?”
“Right, yes, I did,” Bart said, “thank you for your generosity for that, the death piece, I mean, my lord. Lucas told me that it was very important to have. Could you tell me why please? If it isn’t too much trouble?”
“Simple,” Saul replied, cutting the quill’s point, “what icon does everyone have?”
“Death?”
“Yes, and what did you get when you used a death fragment with the death icon?”
“This ‘Undying’ ability, my lord? I’m not sure I understand.”
“Everyone has it, so you need to have it. It's quite a simple ability, heal faster and everything hurts you a bit less. I suppose it also makes you resistant to disease and poison.”
“That does seem useful, my lord,” Bart said, “I can see why everyone would want it.”
“Yes, it’s so very practical. Who doesn’t want a simple, practical power,” Saul grumbled.
“Do you not like it, my lord?”
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“We only get sixteen abilities, twenty if you count ancestral traits, which I don’t. I don’t want to waste any of them on simple practicality.”
“Oh. Well, twenty’s still a lot, couldn’t you have half of them be practical powers and make the other half fancy? My lord?”
“Enough. I’ve had this conversation before, and I have no interest in rehashing it. Don’t bring it up again.” Saul said harshly, “Every one of my abilities is going to be unique and versatile. You know, your sister gave me an interesting book about a woman who could steal powers from other people. If I do need simple, practical powers, I’ll just take yours.”
There was an uncomfortable pause, Bart shifting from foot to foot in the sand awkwardly.
“Anyway, let’s just figure out the rest.” Saul looked back at his notebook, “did the bone fragment give you a durability power?”
“I think so, my lord, it made me feel a bit stiff all over, but it’s mostly better now.”
“The idea was that it would focus on your skin like fish scales. Get a knife from over there and let's test it. You’ll heal from flesh wounds quick enough now.”
Bart's skin proved quite difficult to pierce with the small knife, while his muscle only offered some resistance. When they were finished, a small, deep cut was left on his upper arm, though it had already stopped bleeding.
“It’ll heal in an hour or two,” Saul commented while writing, “Your bones should also be much harder to break, but we don’t want to test that right now. This ability pairs well with Undying’s regeneration, which is faster with skin and muscle. Now, what did you get from the rounded catfish fragment? You did use it for the perceptual part of your soul idol, yes?”
“I did, my lord,” Bart replied, started to say something, then stopped.
“How did it improve your perception? I was looking for some sort of 360-degree sensing.”
“I can sort of feel everything around me, my lord, but it’s hard to interpret. It’s like I can taste everything?”
“Perfect. Catfish have taste buds all over their bodies, I hoped it would translate into something like that. Is the perception based on traces from the air, a fixed range, or something else?”
Bart stood there for a moment before asking, “how can I tell?”
They tried a few tests of putting objects into bags or pockets and tossing items various distances. The ability wasn’t quite as strong as Saul had hoped, but also didn’t have some of the weaknesses he had feared. Bart could ‘taste’ anything in a fixed range, regardless of if it was giving off a smell or moving, but couldn’t sense things that were inside of containers very well, if at all.
“Ok, now for the last two,” Saul said when he’d finished making notes, “just show me what you can do, I guess?”
After a moment of consideration, Bart did a cartwheel, jogged around the sparring ring at a blistering pace, then asked Saul to throw a knife at him. It was already obvious what the ability was, but Saul obliged. Bart noticeably accelerated as he stepped into the path of the knife.
“That’ll be a speed fragment with the death icon, for the guard or tank ability Into Harm’s Way,” Saul rattled off as he wrote it down, “I should have guessed. Is the last one Harden? Or maybe Block?”
“No, my lord, Lucas said he didn’t recognize the last one.”
Bart jumped into the air a bit, seeming to hang there for a moment before drifting down.
“A slow fall ability? I doubt that’s what they were going for,” Saul observed.
“It’s not just that, my lord, it’s like I’m moving through water,” Bart explained, slowly waving his hand in front of him.
Saul stepped closer, and when he was a few feet from the man, his movements slowed as though he were pushing through something. He tried sweeping his arms downward, but it didn’t generate any upward momentum.
“Can you stop it from affecting you while still working on other people?”
“I’m not sure, my lord, it’s the only ability I can really control, and just turning it on and off feels strange.”
“How are you visualizing your abilities?” Saul asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What are you imagining when you activate the slowing field?”
“Oh, it’s like pulling on a fishing line, my lord. When I let go, it stops.”
“You’ll need to work on more complex visualization then, a simple on and off isn’t flexible enough. Even if that’s all that this ability can do, if you get another ability that is more modular, you need to be able to use it properly.”
“Another ability, my lord?” Bart repeated, “I thought that I was only getting the four, plus the one you generously provided.”
“If you perform well in my service, I might be inclined to awaken more of your abilities. Fragments are mostly used as political gifts, so you would need to demonstrate considerable value,” Saul said, then started noting down the final ability, “I assume that was a water fragment with the sturgeon icon?”
“No, my lord.”
“Oh.” Saul paused, and marked out the word, “what, then? It must be from the sturgeon icon with the obvious water influence, but which of the uncommon icons would produce a pseudo-domain? The speed fragment was rare though…did they give you a common fragment to compensate?”
“I’m not sure which icons are common or rare, my lord.”
Saul sighed and rolled his eyes, “there’s only one common icon, and you have it. The common icon, the simple icon, the basic icon, the not-a-real-icon icon, you know, that one?”
“Oh, well, it wasn’t that one either, my lord.”
“Fine, I’ll just list the most common uncommon icons alphabetically, tell me when I get to it: acid, blunt, blood, bone, cold, cloud, earth, dark, flesh, fire, fur, hot—”
“Sorry, my lord,” Bart interrupted, “but you skipped it.”
“What? I seriously doubt they gave you two rare fragments. A less common uncommon fragment then? Eye? Ear? Just tell me. No wait, tell me the first letter.”
“H.”
“I suppose hot could work, but I already said that. Hunger? No, that’s rare,” Saul paused, before smacking his hand into his face, “he called the blunt icon hammer, didn’t he?”
“That was it, my lord.”
“Ok, look, for future reference, let’s have a little lesson about icons. I study them, so let's just clear up the basics to avoid confusion.”
“Um, begging your pardon, my lord,” Bart said hesitantly, and Saul gestured for him to continue, “I was confused earlier as well. You said something about having twenty abilities? I thought we got thirteen, that’s why it's a holy number, same as the months in the year.”
“Eh, it depends on how you count them. I’ve read arguments for thirteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and twenty.”
Bart did not look less confused.
“By the most rigorous magical definition, we have, or can have, twenty abilities,” Saul explained, “they fall into three-ish categories: icon, idol, and ancestry. You get thirteen from your icons themselves: five from the primary or cornerstone icon, four from each of the other two. Your soul idol gives you three specific abilities, one of perception, one domain, and one capstone. Your ancestry gives you the last four.
“We are human, so we are born with a death affinity, physical persistence, and social healing. You should pay attention to your body over the next few months to see what your fourth one is as it develops now that your soul is complete. Think of it like soul puberty.”
“I’m not sure that I’m looking forward to that, my lord,” Bart said, wrinkling his nose.
“Yeah, you’ll probably grow gills or something. At least it’ll be an itch you can scratch, internal changes are often even more unpleasant.”
While Bart dwelt on that, Saul cleaned up his notes on the man’s abilities.
“That’s enough for today,” he said finally, “for tomorrow, find out what the usual training schedule for the other guards is. As I mentioned yesterday, I’m getting ready for a trip soon, so you need to familiarize yourself with your abilities quickly. I don’t need you to guard me in the city, at least not yet, so you’ll spend most of your day training. Be available sometime tomorrow in the late afternoon, one of my cousins will be coming with me, and I want the two of you to train together as well. Do you understand?”
“Yes my lord,” Bart said with a bow.
“Oh, and inform my cousin Toby about the afternoon training as well. That is all.”
Bart paused uncertainly for a moment before bowing again and leaving the courtyard. Saul passed him talking quietly to another servant on his way out.