Badger rapidly organized people according to numbers and colors illuminated in the air above everyone, with each instructor taking a color. When a person’s number was up, they went forward to speak to their designated instructor.

Surprisingly, Mark did not speak to Charms, Badger, Nifty, or Medley.

Mark got a silver color and a 1; the only one of its kind on the field.

He stepped up the stairs to the side of the arena, up to where the healers had sat the whole time. The healers were gone; done with their own Healing Club for the day, but their instructor remained.

Grand Healer Badaira sat upon the arena seating, her silver cloak resting around her like a gossamer glitter. Her skin was brown and just starting to show wrinkles, but she felt vaguely old, though how old Mark could not say. Maybe 60s? Same age as Lola? Mark wasn’t sure. Mark had thought that Lola had been in her 40s, but she was older than that by a decade, at least.

Badaira said, “Greetings, Mark Careed.”

Mark bowed to her, as was appropriate. He rose, saying, “Greetings, Grand Healer Badaira.”

Badaira looked at Mark’s chest, where his airy veins had retreated mostly. “That is an interesting coloration and projection of Union. I would like to speak of it with you. Are you interested in joining the Healing Club?”

Mark easily said, “I am interested in Healing Club, ma’am, but I will have to decline until I’m kicked all the way out of the arena. I greatly enjoy sparring. I understand that’s a 2 week time frame before the F’s get kicked out?”

“Some manage to stay for a while longer beyond that, and you might be one of them. At some point, though, the effort spent in healing and protecting the F ranks will become too great to allow them to remain on the field.” Grand Healer Badaira tapped the seating next to her, saying, “Please sit and speak with me of your use of Union.”

Mark sat down about a meter away from her and held out an arm, turning his palm up so that he showed her the blackening of his veins, under his skin. They weren’t exiting his skin right now, but the veins over his chest were still threading into the air, somewhat. He said, “They’re not actually veins. They run alongside my veins, though. Is it my astral body? My mana veins?”

Badaira gently took Mark’s hand, her fingers a light touch, and flipped his palm back and forth a few times, allowing her to look at what was going on there. She let go and said, “Those would be your mana veins; yes. It’s a shadow system that lives in your astral body. You can let go of Union if you wish, unless you can keep it up all the time? I imagine Inquisitor Lola is training you in that direction.”

Mark let go of Union and felt more relaxed.

So the vein-like structures truly were his astral body, eh? Well that made a good amount of sense. His astral body felt a lot bigger than what it actually looked like, though. The veins near his body were tiny, but his influence felt massive, like with those threads back in the meditation room with Lola, yesterday. Were those threads like the astral control that Orissa had shown in Introduction? Where she made bubbles of light fill up the entire room? Seemed highly possible. Maybe that’s exactly what it was.

Mark said, “It’s kinda easy to keep it going at a low level, but it feels better to not have it ‘on’ full time.”

“Were you putting out that much miasma on purpose?”

“… Er?” Mark looked at himself, at where the black veins no longer were. “Not really? Er… Uh. Is that… uh. Not normal?”

“It indicates that you would be a good Inquisitor, or offensive Union user. Some people veer one way or the other, and you seem set more toward the offensive nature of this particular magic. Have you tried to do that yet?”

Mark shook his head vehemently. “No. A woman on the battlefield asked me, but I refused. I blew up some plants by accident yesterday.”

Badaira smiled gently. “You could probably lay down any brawny if you focused hard enough, but you won’t kill them unless you focus on specific ways to hurt them. Simply giving them all of your ‘bad’ will not kill them. Simply giving anyone all of your ‘bad’ won’t kill them, except in truly strange cases.”

Mark said, “I would rather not accidentally encounter any strange cases, if I could help it. I haven’t even learned how to heal anyone else yet.”

“An honorable line to draw, and a rather normal one.” Badaira asked, “Have you tried healing anyone else? If not, then I would like to attempt as much with you right now.”

Mark paused.

Badaira said, “You don’t have to, but you are clearly capable of it. At the very least I would ask you to be here when you are pushed out of Sparring 101. Every one of the students here at the club are fulfilling healing obligations using the normal Union granted to them by Freyala, and it helps them, yes, but such training would benefit you greatly.”

Mark politely said, “I appreciate the offer, and I will take you up on it, but not until I am pushed out of Sparring, as you say.”

Badaira nodded. “This is fine. Would you like to try healing someone else now? You should get the hang of it quite readily.”

Mark… made a decision. “Yes. I would appreciate your instruction on this.”

The Grand Healer took out a little silver knife from beneath her silver cloak and pressed it into her own palm. With a quick slice, blood welled up. She turned her palm sideways and let the blood drip, as she said, “I am open to you; give it a try.”

Mark wasn’t expecting this to proceed that fast, but Badaira was already wounded so Mark made a go of it—

It was the easiest thing in the world to connect to Badaira.

His heart beat in time to her own before he could even match her breath, but then he matched her breathing and Mark began to breathe in the good and expel the bad. With his heart-Union, Mark also worked along the same ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and Badaira’s wound rapidly closed. In five short breaths and maybe double that many beats, her hand was healed. Not even a scar remained.

Badaira smiled. “Freyala be praised; look at that. You are going to make a fantastic healer, Mark. I’m glad to see the black veins are gone, too, when you’re healing.”

— Mark looked down at himself and sure enough, though Union was still active, the astral veins were gone…

And then the stress of keeping Union active triggered Mark into falling back into expelling weakness and bringing in astral body strength to keep himself active. His black veins returned a little, though they were not nearly as prominent as before.

Badaira told Mark, “It is said that when Freyala confronted the dragon Partanatrax over Moscow she became a void-dark heart, beating with the pain that the dragon had caused the world. She gave the dragon all the evil that he had ever given this world, or Daihoon, killing the dragon in one beat of her demigod heart.”

Mark felt a thrum, and he wasn’t sure what it was.

His heart? His skin? The world itself? Or perhaps the stone under his ass had merely moved in a small earthquake. Or, more likely, nothing had happened at all. And then he noticed his astral veins had briefly turned thick and pulsing.

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“Ah,” Mark said, as the pulsing slowed down, and then quieted down. Soon, the veins were back below his skin; invisible to most onlookers. “That’s good to know. That Union can kill dragons.”

“Not normally, but in that case? Yes.” Badaira said.

Mark thought for a long moment.

Badaira brought him back to the present, “If you want to heal your sparring partners, you should do so.”

Mark was glad of the change in subject, which he supposed was why she had changed the subject. “Should I have healed that one guy… I forget his name. The big one. You’re all watching, right?”

Badaira said, “Escobar, and you could have, though it would have been an experimental use of power and therefore it would have been wrong to do so. But Union works very well between people. The only reason some plants explode under the touch of Union is because they are truly mindless and humans are so much different than them in a lot of ways. Tomorrow, you should offer healing to your partners after your bouts, and especially if you cave in their ribs like that one poor girl.”

Mark felt a spike of shame. “Ah. Yeah. I kinda... hit her too hard.”

“That will happen less and less when the brawnies develop a higher Power Level. When you can no longer punch one, it is time to work on other methods of fighting.” Badaira said, “It was nice to meet you, Mark. I look forward to you joining Healing Club soon enough, and to seeing how you advance with True Union.”

Mark took the dismissal, standing up and bowing, canceling Union, and saying, “Thank you for the instruction, Grand Healer Badaira.”

- - - -

As Mark rode the tram to the residential district again, he felt the wind in his hair and across his body, fluttering his clothes. People spoke of this or that all around him, from grandmothers talking to grandchildren on their knees, to boyfriends whispering to girlfriends who blushed under those quiet words. The servitor standing at the wheel of the tram at the front kinda floated there, in his glass box, a facsimile of the old-timey conductors that used to drive these things. He was the same servitor that was stationed in every single tram in Citadel, which were all connected to COFR, and even Freyala, if she wished to connect to them.

Mark was kinda connected to it all right now, too, but in a small, personal sort of way. Union was active and though he wasn’t connecting to the people directly, for that would be a violation, he certainly connected to the world.

He imagined connecting to the tram itself, which then connected to the countless other trams out there, each of them rolling along on their tracks through Citadel, carrying their own passengers to other destinations. People on those trams were on their phones, which connected them to other parts of the world, and those other parts of the world had their own movements of people.

Mark wondered what other sorts of ‘dances’ of back and forth were out there that he could connect to, which he could be a part of, to experience, to flow within...

Everything was sort of a dance, wasn’t it.

Mark had imagined that word for what he was doing on a whim, but yeah. That word made a lot of sense. Mark was most familiar with the dance of battle, like he had participated in back there, in the arena. He was headed to another dance right now; the dance of politics and social interaction. But a tamer version of the real dance. A primer, really.

The real dance of politics and powers were dances that ended up with archmages ascending to true powers as High Dragons, and thousands dead in selfish selflessness.

Mark stepped off of the tram in front of the Clubhouse, and he kinda wondered if they had actual dancing clubs here in Citadel— Or maybe a class would be better. Mark had never danced at all in his life, but he certainly liked the ‘dance’ of battle. Maybe he would actually like dancing, too… to like, music? Dancing to music?

Mark snorted at that thought, and he had no idea why.

And then he walked up the steps of the Clubhouse. He smiled at the old guy standing out front; he was the same guy as last time.

Mark asked, “Pardon me. Is the Etiquette Club meeting in Orange Hall again?”

“Quite right, Mister Careed.”

Mark said, “Thank you,” and then he walked inside of the Clubhouse.

Sure, he was still wearing basic browns, and people still gave him weird looks, but he didn’t feel out of place this time. He made his way to Orange Hall. Soon, Mark stood to the side of the room with several other people, just minutes before class was to start. The class looked smaller today, though Mark could not be wholly sure of that, though he did notice that ‘Mister Gardens’ was missing from yesterday, along with a few other people whom Mark didn’t rightly recall.

Instructor Wavecrash stood near the door, tapping away on his tablet, until the bell struck 11:00 and class started right on time. Not early, not late, but exactly when Xerkona Honor demanded it to start; exactly when it was slated to start.

Wavecrash walked down the center aisle of the room, saying, “Welcome to day 2 of the weekly-repeating Etiquette 101. Yesterday, I told you that I have no way to instill honor among agreements, since all we are doing here is playing honor games with a program on our phones. This is a truth, and it is also something of a lie.

“Yesterday, you all enacted the defense of the Empire of Foodstuffs. Working together, your agreements would have secured the Empire for a month. But some of the people who were here yesterday have decided not to come into class today. Two people are running late, and they will rejoin us when they can, and with appropriate penalties to their starting stations today, but 5 people are simply missing and have decided to forgo class, for whatever reason.

“And so, the agreements those people worked on yesterday have fallen through.

“Most notably, Mister Gardens, who was responsible for organizing much of the eastern front, has now left the eastern front undefended. All agreements he made fell through. Monsters got in and killed five towns. 10,000 dead. A beachhead for the goblin horde has been established in that area, and now the realm is truly in danger due to goblin infections running rampant. The goblins have even turned more of you to their sides, using crafted words and heavy threats. Those of you infected with the goblin curse will either overcome it, or fall in the worst possible ways, and it is up to everyone else to suss out those people.

“Merely giving up if you are a goblin is grounds for dismissal from the class.

“In lesser ways, the dragon to the south is seeking to become the dragon in the east, and join with the goblin horde.

“Two noble houses, one in the north and one in the west, headed by two now-missing people, have fallen to infighting and assassination from other houses, leaving many supply lines in danger of full collapse.

“This is the state of affairs now visited upon the Empire of Foodstuffs this month, on this day, and it is up to you all to solve these greater issues, and with fewer people. You may begin.”

So, like, the idea of failing alliances was nothing new to Mark. Nations fell based on unexpected voids of personnel and broken promises and lack of resources. Completely expected. But Mark did not expect to find that happening here, in this class that taught Xerkona culture. He was surprised. A few other people in the class were similarly surprised, but many of the people here wore unimpressed expressions. It seemed like most people expected this.

Aside from the nature of the class, which was intriguing, Mark mostly found himself… well.

Having fun, actually.

Over the course of the next 3 hours —with lunch included— Mark found himself talking of recruitment drives in imaginary lands with imaginary lords, resource management with imaginary warriors, and beseeching the imaginary king for aid in this and that scenario. The ‘king’ was played by the instructor who stood tall when he was acting and who crumpled a bit when he was back to being the instructor, in order to tell a person that they were not standing correctly, or that their choice of words was off and to ‘try it like this’ with examples given based on the situation.

It was amazing.

Mark loved it.

Of course it was all fake (and many times Mark overheard someone saying that ‘this situation wouldn’t work out like this at all!’).

But some people were nobodies who had never been to a high-class anything in their whole lives and who had a whole lot of issues to work through, so Mark loved it, even if most of the class was actually focused on how people interacted with each other, instead of ‘solving the problems of the Empire of Foodstuffs’.

The food was great, too.

At the end of the class, Wavecrash told everyone, “You have managed to stall the aggression of the south-now-east dragon and his army of goblins. You have eliminated the assassins hunting in the Houses of the empire. You have met the king, and each other, and the Empire of Foodstuffs will survive another month. But the empire will fall in a year. This is unsustainable. And so, each of you must find a companion to come with you to tomorrow’s class. They will join the efforts, and if nothing else then they will have a good meal. I will not be handing out invitations to this week’s Social Club today. You are dismissed.”

Some people in the class grumbled at that, but Mark and several others bowed and then left without a word, like they were supposed to.

For 30 minutes after the class, Mark thought that his new ‘homework’ was pretty reasonable.

And then he realized he would need to go out and talk to people and tell them about the class and then get them on board with it…

He made a decision to recruit someone at Brawny Sparring tomorrow.