Knowing a Talent is only part of knowing yourself.
Wisdom of the Ancients, book 3.
The storm clouds were slightly dispersed, yet despite the officially mild winters of the center of Independence State, the deep cold was setting in. Frosted snow was everywhere in the streets.
“Pack your stuff,” Wexler announced that very morning. “We’re going to take the opportunity and return to Vernon while the weather is decent enough. We’ve been there for far too long.”
Johanna did not need to be told twice. She and Tom bolted immediately to the upper floor and their guest bedroom, and they packed quickly, a habit borne of so many trips across the entire continent.
When they stepped out, she wished again she had one of the cold-immunity Talents. But Steam Breath, despite being partially associated with the Water sorcery specializations, did not carry that advantage. She did not have proof, but she suspected it was about having more breath capacity, which would actually help with the active aspect of the Talent.
The wind across Nashville Lake was biting, and she shivered under her heavy vest. None of the others were much more comfortable, and as they moved out toward the distant train station, she did note that the foot traffic was almost non-existent.
When they reached the train station, they found one of Wexler’s guards had been preceding them there and held up the train. Being the Executive Officer of the State had its privileges after all, or the train might have left already, taking advantage of the winds that were still going good.
Like the first trip, they stacked into a carriage dedicated to them, and the train finally unfurled its sails, the brakes disengaged, and it started moving. The railway was snaking slightly around the hills, trying to get as slight a rise as possible. But soon, they were at their cruising speed, moving probably fifty percent faster than the average walking speed and, of course, sustaining that speed without tiring.
“If that stays up, we’re in Vernon in three days,” the conductor informed the Executive, who nodded approvingly.
“Good. Just in time for Christmas, then,” Wexler announced, satisfied.
“So, now what?” Johanna asked.
“Back to work, of course. General?”
“I got a few dispatches while we were there. There will be a big chunk of books waiting for you four once we’re back. They’ve also spent the time using that set you made to gauge the troopers, although it’s stopped now.”
“Stopped; why?”
“Some no-gooder decided he could use those to get Talents early. He consumed one. So, we now have an Explorer without a Talent… and no Agility-Explorer parchment for calibration on that scale. They stopped doing the measuring rather than trying to improvise something.”
“Well, now that Moore knows about the problem, he’ll fix this. Besides, he doesn’t need the measuring set.”
“Well, we were using it to pre-slot potential Talented into complete teams. That will make a mess of things if we have to pick at random. And meanwhile, the private will still get his Talents. Along with every shit duty we can find.”
“Why?”
“Can’t let people think that if they just consume the measurement set, they get out of the upcoming war. They signed for duty, and they will do their duty.”
Well, it’s not conscripts, at least.
She would have totally understood a drafted conscript trying to get out. And some people, like that wagon driver this summer, definitively did not want the added responsibility that came with accepting Talents.
If we had known, would we have gone into Moore’s room?
If she was honest, knowing what came after they outed themselves… maybe. The draft had been coming, after all, and they might have escaped the first wave by still being residents of Anasta rather than the main city, but the extension this year would have struck any “non-essential”.
And she would rather be a Fire Master than a camp helper or whatever most women drafted ended up being affected.
At last, Moore thought.
The trip to Nashville – which was absolutely bizarre, considering the fact that the Nashville he’d expected had been erased – had been bad for the four’s progression. No books to convert for personal XP, and most of them had slacked in the use of their Skills. But back there, there would be books waiting. Books to be made into skills and specializations.
Books to be rendered into XP.
And hopefully there would be not too many training sessions where they lost XP.
“Milton! You’re there for the Christmas gifts?” Sergeant Golden said as she came into the admin building.
The Sergeant had been the main organizer for the preliminary force, even if he had been skipped over for Talents so far. While the general staff still showed up regularly to check, he was to one to help them “process” the new Talented soldiers.
“It’s only in two days. Although if you have gifts for us, I’m sure we can make gifts for you.”
“I hope so, I hope so. But first, we have to fix that measurement set.”
“You’ve got books?”
“Close to five hundred.”
She gasped.
“That many?”
“A bunch of crates arrived yesterday. We should be good for the 19th Battalion to officially form up with two full companies. We’ve even had admin creating arms.”
He pointed to the wall, where there was a banner hung featuring a flaming sword and an icy spear crossed over a skull. The words “Fight With Talent” were drawn in a circular fashion around the skull, in a blue lettering reminiscent of a parchment’s circular triple.
“A skull?”
“In reference to the Ancient guardian.”
“Oh.”
“Ready to start?” Golden asked.
She looked at the other three.
“Bring them in.”
Johanna was sorting the books, or rather the remains. They’d done fifty people before the sergeant called it a day.
“We don’t need to rush this.”
In the previous sessions, she’d found out that sometimes, you ended up with a book that had leftovers. Usually, Laura went at it. All it took was 60 pages or so to make a parchment with qualities or levels. While Moore was making tight builds, you could sometimes squeeze an additional quality – rarely a level – after a few days or weeks, so they now had a stack of things to squeeze more performances. A foot of range here, an additional five minutes of mana use there, everything might end up being useful.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
She was stacking the handful of unused books for the session when she got caught by surprise. When she grabbed one book, she got her hand locked in the usual manner, and lights poured out.
What?
She waited the twelve seconds or so that were needed for the conversion to finish, then grabbed the parchment that had dropped. And blinked.
The parchment was definitively not the usual. FireHandling, barred, and FireSpray. That was it. But more surprising was that the parchment immediately lit over her hand as it fell on her.
She squinted at the square of paper, confused. Some of the quality parchments would light up after Laura made them, but given the rules she knew, that was easily explained. Usually she made the ones with Talents and sometimes specializations, and those never light up.
Oh.
The parchment had turned off. Right then.
She blinked again in confusion, then remembered the first day in the Library of Congress, when she’d first made Fire Master. It had lit up, then stopped, and her Talents had been briefly interrupted. That was when most of her Talents jumped up. So, that meant Moore was warning her.
And, she remembered that one parchment used to remind her of when he’d removed Earth Grasp and replaced it with Fireball. So, he’d removed Fire Handling this time.
Wait, what’s Fire Spray?
The Gomez list was mute on the topic. Fire Spray was nowhere to be seen. She set down her manuscript copy and pondered the fact.
She realized that the list of Talents that the Ancient had provided for Gomez had stopped at level 9. Except for a handful of Talents over it, which she now recognized as Talents Moore had intended to use if he ever needed to swap with her and thus warned them about their existence in advance.
She also remembered the dream sequence in the Library, where she’d seen the carrousel of Talents and specializations whose names were also conspicuously missing from the list. Things like Fire Sovereign. Investiture of Fire – a counterpart to the level 13 Investiture of Ice Moore had used when he took over her body?
Of course, there are many Talents beyond level 9. Moore just limited himself to what we could use easily then, she realized.
Then she stood up abruptly because it implied something.
“Yes, you’re somewhat… stronger than when you left,” Private Manuel Silveira said, frowning.
She’d barged into the barracks where the various Talented were billeted and found out their first Deadeye, who had Gauge Endurance. There were plenty of soldiers with Gauge now since Moore tended to use it on a handful of specializations, but Silveira was more used to that Talent. You needed to learn to translate the impression from the Talent into strict numerical values.
“So, I’m now level 10,” she muttered.
“Well, you’re above the previous level. Did you just use… ah, of course, the Exemplars don’t need one.”
“No. Although the Ancient gave me a warning, he was adjusting things.”
The private looked at her in wonder. Despite the familiarity brought by regular training, the rank and file seemed to hold the four of them on some kind of supernatural pedestal. The name of Exemplars, the half-joke from the original scavenging team, had spread like, well, fire. The idea that they were under the constant supervision of some protecting angel from before the Fall made them into more than they actually were.
And, she realized, she was probably going to add to the mystique. Because she needed to test something.
The usual Talented training grounds were almost deserted in the late afternoon. People could only train so far, after all, and today’s new intake would start in earnest after Christmas. But the entire barracks had followed her once she’d blurted she needed to “test things”, and they wanted to see what new tricks she could have come up with.
Finding that the range was unused was good.
She steeled herself. If her old Talent was gone…
She raised her hand, as she would do for a Fireball, but instead, reached to where her old flame would be… would it work? It usually did.
The spray of fire reached dozens of feet in front of her, taking her by surprise and making her jerk a bit. The flow of flame followed her near-uncontrolled move, and she steadied herself to avoid putting the entire range to fire. It was not uncommon these days, and Army beancounters grumbled at the cost of almost rebuilding the entire range periodically.
“It looks like a flamethrower,” one of the soldiers behind her breathed.
Fire Spray (tier 20)
Requires: Authority 22/Dexterity 19/Level 10
Effective: N × Authority + Level (adds mana)
Passive: Grant bodily immunity to heat up to (300 + 10×Eff) °F, and your aim is (Eff)% better.
Active: Projects a straight line of flame from a palm up to (Eff / 3) feet.
Active cost: 1 mana per (Eff) seconds.
Fire Sovereign
AUT 28/DEX 22/Lvl 16
N=5
Fire Ruler
AUT 25/DEX 20/Lvl 13
N=4
Fire Master
AUT 20/DEX 18/Lvl 8
N=3
Fire Shaper
AUT 17/DEX 16/Lvl 5
N=2
Shaper
AUT 16/Lvl 1
N=1
“Is it what happens when you gain that experience you talk about? Our Talents improve like that?”
“No, it is a different Talent.”
She noticed the Deadeye, looking at the flames that were slowly going out now that she’d turned the spray off.
“When I was telling you the Ancient had warned me… this is what he warned me about.”
She looked at her palm as if she could see the difference. But, of course, there was nothing.
“I was complaining it was getting impossible to cook with my old flame… well, I’m definitively not cooking anymore.”
“You can get that Talent?” one soldier asked.
She tried to recognize him and thought he was a Fire Shaper. That would account for his interest.
“Level 10, I think. You’re far from that. Wait, you got Fire Handling?”
“Yes, ma’am, I mean…”
She pulled out the parchment used to notify her. It was inactive now, but if someone had the Talent… and the requirements.
“Then you have something to look forward to,” she said, showing it to him.
“Really? You can change Talents?”
“You or whichever Fire Shaper beats to you to 10. I suppose.”
Johanna Marcia Milton
Female human, 20 years, 7 months
Fire Master
Level: 10 (89000 XP needed)
411/486 mana (+18 per hour)
0 unallocated skill point
XP: 48 + 20196
STR: 18 (6960 XP needed)
Blazing Orb (46)
AUT: 22 (12952 XP needed)
Fire Spray (98)
AGI: 18 (4752 XP needed)
Cinder Circle (46)
PER: 18 (3665 XP needed)
Mana Sight (64)
Domain of the Ash (46)
DEX: 20 (8000 XP needed)
Flaming Blade (70)
Fireball (70)
EMP: 18 (4190 XP needed)
Desiccate (46)
Bodily immunity to fire, up to 1280°F (693°C)
Detect mana flows & pools of 15.7 size or greater
46% better sight
Sweatless
98% better aim
Bodily immunity to cold, down to -130°F (-90°C)
Water needs lowered by 46%
Domain of the Ash (tier 22)
Requires: Authority 22/Dexterity 18/Perception 18/Level 10
Effective: N × Perception + Level (adds mana)
Passive: Grant bodily immunity to heat, up to (300 + 10×Eff) °F and bodily immunity to cold, down to (100-5×Eff) °F.
Active: You are surrounded by a light cloud of ash, up to (Eff / 2) radius. All fires within the radius behave as if they are (Eff×4)°F colder.
Active cost: 1 mana per (Eff) seconds.
Fire Master
AUT 20/DEX 18/ Lvl 8
N=2
Wood Master
AUT 20/PER 18/ Lvl 8
N=2
Wood Shaper
AUT 17/PER 16/Lvl 5
N=2
Fire Shaper
AUT 17/DEX 16/Lvl 5
N=1
Shaper
AUT 16/Lvl 1
N=1
Desiccate (tier 21)
Requires: Authority 22/Dexterity 18/Empathy 17/Level 9
Effective: N × Perception + Level (adds mana)
Passive: Your water needs are lowered by (Eff)%.
Active: Water in a volume of (Eff)% cubic feet evaporates as if it was subjected to a temperature of (7.5×Eff)°F.
Active cost: 1 mana per (Eff) seconds.
Fire Master
AUT 20/DEX 18/Lvl 8
N=2
Water Master
AUT 20/EMP 18/Lvl 8
N=2
Fire Shaper
AUT 17/DEX 16/Lvl 5
N=1
Water Shaper
AUT 17/EMP 16/Lvl 5
N=1
Shaper
AUT 16/Lvl 1
N=1