Talent makes for Talent.

Wisdom of the Ancients, Book 3.

“The first thing you need to know is that you’ve got limits,” Johanna started.

They’d spent the next hour reorganizing one of the training fields that were next to the army compound, outside of the city walls. Most notably, she’d ordered a few targets set at regular intervals, mainly to figure out the exact range of the squad’s Talents. Gomez had been supposed to work on figuring out the formulas for those, but after a short peek at Moore’s view during the Exchange, she had a pretty good idea of how those could be calculated, even if she did not know all of the formulas’ details.

“Each of you has got a pool of energies that fuel the Talents you just got. It replenishes over time,” she added.

She could see at least two plumes of mana coming in for the Metal Shaper and Combat Fixer. They probably wouldn’t fill in their mana pools until later. The other three were all Heroes, and she couldn’t perceive stamina.

“That’s crucial. If you empty that pool, you’re losing access to your Talents. You keep any passive aspects, but anything active is unavailable. You do not want to run on empty. Besides, you feel it — a kind of tiredness that’s slightly different but still tired.

“You’ve just gained Talents, so you started with empty pools, and they haven’t had time to refill fully. So we are going to run you against your limit. We’ll do that once, so you know how that feels, but after that, always try to pace yourself.”

She kept expecting questions, but she guessed soldiers wouldn’t dare ask questions unless prompted.

“The next thing is that each of you has received different Talents. All of these, I roughly know what they actually do, save for one, Hard Target. Which of you is that?”

One of the five raised his hand.

“You’re a Ranger, right. It is going to be something that helps… well, targeting someone. Or something. How good are you with bows?”

The soldier hesitated.

“I’m not taking offense. Back in New Sandusky, I had one guard who got Ranger who actually had never fired a bow before.”

“All of us are spear infantry, actually,” he confessed.

“Well, for three of you, that will no longer be the case. Ranger is a specialization that works best with the bow. And Metal Shaper Philips has a mix of defensive Talents and offensive ones…”

She looked up, gauging the cloud ceiling. It wasn’t very high. The clouds did not look like they were announcing rain, but they were still heavy and low. She smiled.

“Corporal Philips can do that at will?” the general asked.

“It’s extremely consuming in terms of mana, especially if the clouds are high. I wasn’t sure if he could pull it out, actually. And you can’t use it without clouds around. But when the circumstances are right…”

The rest of the squad alternated between looking at their fellow soldier and the smoking and burning target. The bolt of lightning plunging into the wood mannequin had ignited the hard oak almost instantly, ejecting pieces of the target around. She started toward the wood figure, beckoning the squad. Once she arrived next to it, she grabbed a burning branch, ensuring she didn’t expose her jacket.

“Come here, Philips.”

The Metal Shaper looked at the burning stick.

“You’re not…”

“Take it.”

“What?”

“Just take it.”

She grabbed his hand and before he could snatch it back, shoved the branch in it. The soldier reflexively forced her hand open, dropping the branch.

“Pick it back. You have Heat Wave, which makes you immune, at least partially, to heat and fire.”

The soldier looked at her dubiously but then slowly bent down and reached for the burning ember.

“Did it feel burning when I put it in your hands?”

“No…” he said as he gingerly picked the branch.

Philips frowned, turning the crackling wood in his hand.

“See. If it were a campfire, it would probably start to feel hot after a while. But you’re now mostly immune to fire. And cold, thanks to Chill Metal. You can get outside under snow with your bare back, and feel nothing, and no frostburn. It will take real cold to affect you. I wish at times I had that immunity.”

“That’s specific to Philips?” an officer asked.

“Yes. As I told you, each Talent set does different things. If Philips didn’t have Heat Wave, he wouldn’t get the heat immunity that he has.”

“I’ve never seen the like.”

She laughed. Because besides Miles, she could guess where this very Talent had already been used.

“When I was in New Benton, we’d learned how the Warden lost his hand to a tribal sorcerer chieftain, who called ‘divine wrath’ on him. He managed, by pure luck, to dodge, and his hand was merely burned to a near crisp instead of all of him. Well, that was that one instance.”

Things got slowly in place. Johanna focused on the squad’s Metal Shaper, while Laura had started to demonstrate healing abilities for the Combat Fixer.

The first time Combat Fixer Roald teleported across thirty feet to where Tom had nicked his hand, everyone fell silent.

“That’s why this Talent is important,” Laura explained. “When you have one in your squad that is wounded, not only will he know – you felt it, right? – but he can be there instantaneously.”

“That’s insane,” one general muttered.

“Now you see why fighting with Talented differs from anything anyone’s ever done. And why each squad will be different, because some Fixer specializations may have that Talent, but not at the same magnitude as a Combat or Fast Fixer. There is a range for every Talent, and not everyone has the same one. In theory, even with the same specialization,” Johanna said.

“How do we know, then?”

“You practice. That’s why we have those targets with distances. So that you know, and your team knows.”

She moved to the edge of the firing range. The targets were pretty much the same as a bow range. Once the quartermaster had explained the options, they’d mixed the classic circular targets with strawmen with vital areas painted.

A Burning Orb materialized two feet in front of one of the targets.

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“That’s my range for this Talent. I can make that orb anywhere between there and where I am, as long as there is a foot and a half of distance from anything. And for some reason, four and a half over the ground. However…”

She started walking back.

“I can leave it there and move anywhere. And it will burn as long as I have mana to fuel it. Handy as an obstacle or trap, notably if your enemy is trying to charge you. It’s also fairly high level, so none of you have it, but later, maybe…”

“How long?” Corporal Philips asked, having moved to see the range.

“A bit under 6 hours. I can make a second, but it cuts the time in two because, remember, you’re expending mana sustaining your Talents. Twice the Talents, half the endurance.”

She relaxed her mental muscle, and the orb vanished.

“However, that’s the range for a Burning Orb. Now…”

She raised her hand and flexed. A ball of fire appeared next to her palm and ran straight. Just before it reached the end of the range, it suddenly puffed, leaving a brief flash of light, then nothing, not even a burst of smoke.

She’d deliberately avoided to aim for a target. There was no sense in blowing them all on the first day. And besides…

“That’s the edge of my range for Fireball. As you see, it is a lot longer. The Talent dissipated at that range. But if I aim at something, it will blow up when it reaches that. It's not as destructive as Philips, but then, I can fire a hundred of those in quick succession if needed. A Metal Shaper can get between a couple and half a dozen, depending on the cloud cover, and that’s it.”

“And after a hundred, you’re out of mana,” the Ranger said.

“And I only have my fire immunity passive and the fact that I can hold my breath a lot better than anyone else. You’ve been listening.”

“Do I have mana too?”

“No. Your Talents are linked to a different… energy. Called stamina. But otherwise, it’s the same thing. You expend stamina when you use your Talents, and when you’re out, they don’t work for a short while, then intermittently. It takes a full night to recover.”

“Meaning I need to sleep longer?”

She noted the eager stare of the five newly Talented and laughed.

“No. You just have not to use anything for, probably eight or ten hours in your case. You can cook, do chores, walk ten miles, read books, or, yes, sleep. It’s just resting your Talents. It’s way worse at my level; I can pump more, but I need almost an entire day of ‘rest’ to fully restore my reserves.”

“It seems you’re used to that training thing,” General Sharpe commented. The officers had come to listen to her instruction, highly interested in learning even if they were not themselves directly concerned.

“We had been spending almost two months in New Sandusky designing some form of training for newly Talented, starting with the guard there.”

“Ah.”

“But the goal was mainly to train people to fight Changed beasts. The next part, now…”

There were lines to delimitate the edges of the battlefield. She’d insisted that anyone going outside would immediately stop and be considered “having retreated”, to avoid risk to the number of people that were watching. Although some soldiers had tried to come, having seen from a distance the weirdness that accompanied some Talents – a lightning bolt plunging out of a cloud in the middle of the Army compounds was definitively not standard – they’d been rebuffed. But there were the rest of the original squad selection, plus half a dozen various officers and the general staff.

Since there were five soldiers on one side, she’d turned toward Ulrich and Kartmann. Who had both repeatedly downplayed the worth of their presence in the exercise.

“They’re not going to face basic Talented like we are. The Warden has no way to make consistent builds, so they will face all sorts of different specializations. Besides, five against five.”

The two old scavengers looked at each other. Unsaid words were exchanged before the minotaur abruptly threw his hands up.

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

Johanna remembered somewhat how odd the Contender specialization worked, and notably which Talents the minotaur had picked quite unknowingly, without the Gomez list. Defensive and offensive and disruptive. Interrupt, he knew, disabled Talents for a brief while. He would be relatively immune to the two melee soldiers with the help of Block and Deflect…

The minotaur, of course, picked a training axe.

“Take a real one,” she told him.

“What?”

“Unless you cut limbs with it, Laura can fix that after the fight. Everyone, real weapons, please.”

The looks of dismay from everyone, including the spectators, were evident.

“It’s not going to last long; even with the break, the army side won’t have much resources. Laura will have enough to deal with whatever Private… Roald? Private Roald can’t deal with.”

It took a little while, but the mockup combat was finally set. Before they started, Johanna had a final word.

“Everyone is going to make mistakes. If you’re hit and think this is bad, just play dead. Until Roald heals you, if he does, or until the end. Now… on my mark…”

A fraction of a second after go, she realized that military training did work. The five immediately charged toward them without the slightest hesitation. She realized none of them had yet realized that Peter was nowhere to be seen – even by her – and was probably positioning himself for maximum surprise. He didn’t have his Swordcutter because that was far too much for training, but he would probably cause chaos.

She threw a Burning Orb just in front of the charging Swordbringer – who had picked a spear despite his specialization name – and immediately moved closer, offering herself as bait.

To his credit, the soldier dodged the sudden obstacle. She noted that Philips had a frown. No doubt the Metal Shaper had tried Call Lightning, but he didn’t have quite enough mana for another one, as he was just realizing. The clouds had cleared some, and the cost of using that Talent was rising fast.

The Ranger, who looked awkward with his bow, was the first to get tricked. Peter didn’t bother with a weapon; he simply hit with his fist on the would-be bowman’s face. The soldier, to his credit, barely flinched. He dropped his bow and reached for the sword at his side.

The sword wasn’t there anymore. It was in Peter’s hand, or rather fist. The soldier didn’t have time to do anything beyond reacting before Peter hit him again, knocking him up as his Talents ensured his aim was true.

Then Johanna had to focus back on the front as the soldiers were reaching her. She didn’t hesitate, and a Cinder Circle rose, heat waves rising. Just in front of them.

They didn’t have much time to try to react and try to jump over the burning ash. A blur made it for the rightmost soldier, and Tom hit him in the face, just like Peter. He hadn’t picked a real weapon – this was way too dangerous. Unlike mundane, lower-case ‘t’, talents, it was extremely hard to reduce the magnitude of a Talent. She was unable to modulate her flaming hand or reduce the diameter of the cinder circle or the size of the orbs. Everything went from zero to maximum.

In the case of Tom, as soon as he mentally decided someone was an enemy, and thus he could rush him, he was also going to hit him with whatever multiplier his Talent brought. He had to make sure he was barely hitting not to break skulls.

His target was thrown to the ground, and she didn’t wait to see as she threw another Orb in the path of the incoming soldier, dismissing the old one. She saw him dodge weirdly and realized he was the Swordbringer, and he had a Talent to avoid such “attacks”.

But before the man could re-aim, he found himself tackling an axe. In Julian Kartmann’s hand, it looked smaller than it actually was, but the Contender deflected the spear, making the soldier frown as he realized the minotaur shouldn’t have been able to deflect the spear the way he’d moved. He pulled and speared against the tall enemy, and Kartmann put his axe in front of the incoming move, its flat side abruptly blocking the spear move and only slightly backing.

The soldier was already trying to hit again when Kartmann sliced. The Swordbringer dodged again, but the axe’s edge threw him.

He was trying to spear again when he got kneed from behind. He tried to look behind and was surprised at Laura’s presence as she backed up. He was trying to react when the minotaur’s axe swept again, just twisting at the last moment to avoid cutting out his arm. But the spear was thrown out.

The man hesitated for something like half a second, then let himself drop. Johanna looked back and realized the battlefield was almost wound down. Corporal Philips had tried to use his Metal Skin, she noted, but it was only partial protection, and Peter had managed to cut him, letting very red blood flow over the silvery skin.

The Ranger was on the ground, his eyes rolled up in what looked like disgust rather than shock, and the Combat Fixer was trying to dodge Tom. The man hadn’t realized he could instantly teleport out of the path, with multiple people wounded on the field.

To be fair, that took a different mindset. They’d discussed it during their journey, but Laura using it when the Adjutant’s goon had come for her and Peter was… edifying, in terms of potential.

She crossed her arms, which she knew was supposed to be the sign of stopping everything, and had to shout immediately to attract attention.

“We’re done.”

“That was terrifying,” the first officer to reach the battlefield said. “And also, pathetic.”

“Honestly, I think it was good. For people who barely got their Talents. You didn’t get the briefing at the Executive House, but essentially, the only way we got away with 5-on-2 advantage by the Adjutant’s agents was that they were barely better than this brand new team. And a direct intervention by the Ancient.”

The soldiers were picking themselves up as the two Combat Fixers were starting to fix the wounds, which were mostly “surface”. If you could count bruised bones as surface wounds. Private Roald couldn’t do anything about that, but Laura could.

“I apologize. I didn’t think it would be that way. But tomorrow…” she paused for effect. “Tomorrow, you will have more resources available. And some time to reflect on what happened.”

“Wait, we’re doing this again tomorrow?”

She looked at the general next to her, who nodded.

“I think we have. But think about it. When we make additional Talented, it will be you who molest them that way.”

She heard laughs and realized the rest of the original squad, who were presumably the next ones to get Talents, had been there to watch… and learn.

General Sharpe was not looking amused, although she caught an approving nod.

“If that’s how Talented armies face each other, it’s against every military tenet.”

“The idea is that we are like them, not like our soldiers right now”, another added, waving at the four.

Sharpe looked at his colleague and sighed.

“And it is Talented against Talented. I can’t imagine how an army that can’t match Talents will fare.”