It was some time before Saul got the chance to try out his new potion crafting. Several weeks had passed since the skirmish at the Holdfast, and things had returned to a semblance of normality, but there was an underlying tension that colored everything.

No one felt completely safe, not even Saul and his friends, and he had been reluctant to leave the village.

Though many villagers had fought bravely in the battle, and casualties had been limited, they were not happy. The magic that had paralyzed the soldiers had understandably unsettled everyone, and they were constantly on the lookout for threats.

At first, the presence of the guards, and of Saul and his magical abilities, had been enough to reassure them. But as time passed, they became less and less reassured.

“They’ll come again, and in stronger numbers,” the villagers said. “And when they do, what will become of us? We wish to defend our homes, but we do not wish to die in a hopeless battle.”

They had rebuilt the breaches in the wall and had set to making arrows, but there was a steady increase of unpleasant atmosphere.

One afternoon, as the leaves were beginning to turn and the days shortened, Saul took his friends out into the forest. He wanted the trip partly as an escape from the building tension in the village, partly to give him the chance to talk in private with his friends, and partly as an opportunity to test out his new spells. He’d not left the village for a long time after the battle, as he felt that his presence was comforting to the villagers, but he chafed against the inactivity, and he decided that today was the day to get away.

He had his new ingredient detection spell, and Zorea had a knowledge of northern Xornian plants that was detailed and wide-ranging. Brand had neither, but the young man was keen to learn and was happy to come along for the ride.

It was the first time Saul and his friends had been out of the village for any length of time since the battle. Saul had been frustrated by the delay in testing out his new potion spells, but it was important for him to be around and show the villagers he was there with them and committed to the defense.

In the weeks following the fight, it would not have been good for him to be absent for any length of time since he’d played such a key role in the battle.

So, at last, he’d taken his friends out into the forest to search for potion ingredients.

As soon as Brand and Zorea got Saul on his own, they demanded he tell them his full story.

“You did promise,” Zorea reminded him. And, of course, he had.

So, he had spent the first part of the day telling them. He laid the fantastic tale out as plainly and as simply as possible, doing his best not to overemphasize the sheer power and prestige he had owned as the supreme general of Emperor Karak’s conquering army.

But he told them the truth: who he had been, and the general outline of the future he’d come from, and that had been sent back in time to a time before his own birth, the entering a new body, and that he’d been challenged to regain his powers by the end of nine years at the latest.

The two young people sat open-mouthed and wide-eyed. When he stopped speaking, they continued to stare at him for a long time.

Eventually, Brand spoke, “If I didn’t know all the things you’d said in your sleep, I’d never believe you!”

Zorea colored slightly as Saul raised an eyebrow at her.

“You told him?” he asked.

“Well, you were being so cagey, and we didn’t know you so well then,” she said. “I guess it was a bit personal.”

“And rather against your vows as a healer, too, I imagine,” Saul said.

Zorea gave him a strange look, as if she didn’t quite know what to say to that. Saul had only been teasing. He didn’t really mind that she’d told Brand, but he sensed he’d touched a sore spot for her, so he didn’t press the point.

“Anyway,” he continued. “Now you know the story.”

“Hardly,” Brand scoffed. “Oh, you’ve told us who and what you really are, but you’ve not told us how you got your awesome magic. You told us that you were sent back, but you have not said who sent you back to this time. I don’t get it. If you were so powerful, only the gods themselves could have done such a thing.”

Saul said nothing.

Brand stared at him in astonishment. “The gods themselves did do it,” he breathed. “You’re…an enemy of the gods?”

Brand’s shrewd guesses were a little disconcerting. The young man had sense and perception, and Saul’s training had nurtured these native qualities.

Saul could not deny the guess. He would be honest with him.

After all, if you need to, you can always kill him, he thought coldly.

Saul opened his mouth and closed it again. Where had that thought come from?

He did not like that idea one bit, but it was true that, in his former life, he’d been a true pragmatist. Not unnecessarily cruel, perhaps, but he had killed with impunity to get his way, to move himself out of danger and to eliminate threats.

That thought would have made total sense in his old life. In his new one, it made him deeply uncomfortable.

Have you changed so much, Saul? he asked himself.

Brand’s young, eager face was gazing up at him with frank admiration, and Saul realized he had changed. He had greater enemies now, and a bigger purpose.

“I never liked it, you know,” Brand said when Saul stayed quiet. “The idea that the gods were somehow higher than all of us and that we need to do as they say and not challenge them. It never seemed right. What have the gods ever done for me, I ask you?”

“They give magic to humans,” Saul said, watching Brand’s reaction. He felt he was walking on delicate ground here.

“They never gave me magic,” Brand replied. “And the only magic I’ve ever seen—apart from yours, of course—has been warlock magic turned against me and those I love.”

“And I feel the same,” Zorea said quietly. “I’ve seen some of the world, Saul, and I want to see more, but I never saw a place where the gods were more than a tool in the hands of those who wished to oppress others. Healing, that has been my craft. Some people think it’s magic, but it’s not. It’s just recipes—it’s no more magic than the brewing of beer and the baking of bread.”

“Not if you’re Saul, of course,” Brand added. “He has a magic spell to do potion making.”

“And don’t think we’re going to let you away with it that easily either!” Zorea said. “As Brand said, you’ve told us who and what you are, and a bit about how you came to be here, but you’ve not told us how your magic works, or how it is that you came to have such a way of dealing with magic, or who sent you here on this mission. You still have many secrets we’d like to know.”

“I have a feeling,” Saul said, standing up and stretching, “that you two will wheedle them all out of me in time. And I will tell you all about it, I think. But let’s keep walking and searching for ingredients. I’m not sure I want to share everything about it just now.”

Brand rolled his eyes theatrically and smiled at Zorea. “Very well,” he said with a histrionic sigh. “We’ll wait, won’t we, Zorea? The great General Saul will reveal all his secrets, in time.”

Saul glared at them. “Be thankful I’ve shared anything with you two at all,” he grumbled. “I’ve taken you two into my confidence. I don’t know for sure what would happen if the Elemental Gods worked out that I was here, but I don’t think it would be good for me, or my friends. I will share more with you, in time, but please, give me that time. I need to be sure of what I’m doing.”

“The fate of the world rests with you,” Zorea said, completely seriously. “You need to be sure of what you’re doing.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon collecting plants. Saul’s Detect Ingredients spell drew Saul’s attention to all kinds of strange things that Zorea had very little confidence would make anything valuable, but she was interested to see how the magic worked, so she persevered.

When Saul’s spell showed him plants that he should collect as a potion ingredients, she would tell him the common names for the plants here in the Xornian northlands and would tell Saul what they were used for—if anything—in her healing lore.

“Here’s one of the things you’re looking for,” Zorea said, holding up a tiny, glowing red mushroom. “See, I don’t need a magic spell to find them!”

Brand laughed, and Saul rolled his eyes but smiled. Zorea dropped the tiny mushroom into the basket Brand was carrying as Saul crouched to pick a handful of humble-looking green leaves from a low-growing plant.

To his eyes, with the Search for Ingredients spell active, the leaves had a bright white outline to them, clearly picking them out to his eyes against the tapestry of dying undergrowth.

Brand’s knowledge of herbs and plants seemed to extend no further than the common edible herbs and mushrooms one could find in the forest this time of year. He had found and collected a good number of mushrooms, some seasoning herbs, and some wild garlic root that he said would go well together.

“The plants your spell has pointed out do seem very strange to me,” Zorea said, as they were making their way back in the evening. She was eyeing the basket of herbs, roots, mushrooms, and tree barks that Saul’s magic had guided them to.

“The making of healing potions that I was taught focuses on the drawing out of poisons and infections, the calming of fevers and agues, and the creation of cooling or warming poultices to aid in wound healing. But the things you’ve collected seem to bear little relevance to any of these branches of knowledge.”

“Well, it’s all new to me, too,” Saul said. “When we get back to the village, I’ll use my potion creation spell, and we’ll see what we get from the plants we’ve collected.”

Back at Harkin’s Holdfast, the atmosphere was still tense. Brand, cheerful after the day outdoors and looking forward to cooking his mushrooms, did not seem to notice, but the tension got through to Saul, and he could see that Zorea felt it, too.

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Saul moved slowly through the village, catching hurried glances from the villagers and even from some of the soldiers. It wasn’t until he saw Captain Jerryl’s concerned expression that he thought there really might be something seriously wrong.

But Jerryl did not speak to him. He met Saul’s eyes for a moment and looked away, shaking his head slightly before hurrying off.

Saul, Brand, and Zorea went back to Saul’s hut, and Saul—not worried anymore about his friends seeing his magic—knelt and kindled the fire. Brand let out a whoosh of air between his lips as he saw the magic, and then sighed.

“So much easier than using a flint and tinder,” he sighed. “I wish I could do that.”

“Just cook the mushrooms,” Saul said. “You’re good at cooking, and that’s something you can do that I can’t.”

“Very true!” Brand said, more brightly and set about making the dinner.

Zorea and Saul laid out the potion ingredients on the little table and sorted them into piles. They had six different ingredients: the bark from a hazel tree, a kind of red mushroom that Zorea called a Coldcap, another kind of greenish mushroom that Zorea said was called Slimestem, and three herbs; Deadman’s Mint, Dryad’s Ear, and Creeping Corpselight.

Now, she looked at him expectantly. “Aren’t you going to do something? Some magic to make a potion?”

Saul raised an eyebrow at her. “I still need to wait a few minutes,” he said. “My cooldown timer was activated by the fire lighting spell.”

She stifled a chuckle. “Your cooldown timer. Of all the strange things you’ve told us, that has to be the strangest. I think it’s even more odd than the idea that you’ve somehow traveled back in time. Who ever heard of such a thing?”

“I think,” Saul said heavily, “that it’s something of a designed limitation on my magic System.”

“Your magic…System?” she asked.

There was something in the way he had said it that alerted her quick ear to the fact that it was more than just a word. It was a title.

Cooldown Timer Complete:

Spellcasting: Five Available

“Look at that, saved by the bell,” Saul said. “My timer’s complete. We can get to work.”

Zorea looked hard at him. She was torn between pursuing the point about the System and seeing him do his magic of the potion creation.

“Oh, fine,” she said after a moment. “But there’s more going on here than you’re letting on.”

“I’ve already told you there is,” Saul said with a grin. “And, for now, you and Brand are just going to have to put up with it. Come on, let’s see what potions I can create.”

Potion Creation: Ingredients detected

Select: Examine Available Ingredients

Select: Examine Potion Crafting Options

Select: Examine Known Recipes (None)

Saul selected Examine Potion Crafting Options first. There was a strange moment where he was aware of the System working behind the scenes. As had sometimes happened in the Workshop, he felt a sense that there was machinery working somewhere deep within him, great gears and levers and mighty engines churning and clanking somewhere just out of the range of his hearing, or deep within his body or soul.

Then, he saw flashes of white and green light flickering across all the different ingredients on the table in front of him, and Zorea gasped. She could see the lights, too, though she could not see the text that Saul’s system used to present him with the magical options that he picked from.

“The ingredients are moving!” Zorea exclaimed.

She was right. They were organizing themselves on the little table into a neat straight line, all side by side and arranged as if by some deliberate order. Afterward, a range of options appeared in Saul’s vision.

He felt Zorea’s eyes on him, and he ran through the list.

Crafting options available:

Craft: Basic Healing Potion x2

Craft: Basic Strength Potion x2

Craft: Basic Courage Potion x2

Craft: Basic Soul Poison x3

“Interesting!” Saul said aloud.

“I’ve got it!” Zorea said suddenly, snapping her fingers. “You’re reading! I’ve been watching you, and when you do magic, our eyes move as if you’re reading words that only you can see, as if you had an invisible scroll in front of you!”

Brand had come up to watch, and Zorea turned on him suddenly.

“Brand, you’re burning the mushrooms!” she snapped.

Brand scurried away back to the hearth at her words and quickly stirred the pot, adding a little more water to the sizzling concoction. As he worked, he kept a close eye on what was happening at the little table not far away.

Zorea was glaring at Saul, every line of her body demanding an explanation. He sighed, annoyed at himself for letting her guess, and wondering how he could explain it so she would understand.

As he pondered the question, he selected Craft: Basic Healing Potion x2 from his list of options. A gleaming, silvery mist rose over the ingredients, collecting over the Dryad’s Ear leaf and the Coldcap mushroom.

“Have you ever seen a Sigilite Scanner?” he asked suddenly, remembering how Captain Jerryl’s Scanner’s results had so closely resembled the way Saul’s System interacted.

“Yes, actually I have,” Zorea said. “The captain has one. I saw him use it to try and get information about a prisoner once.”

The mist over the table gathered together into a central point and then cleared away, leaving in its place two small, elegant bottles of pale blue glass. Each one contained blue liquid and was stoppered with blue wax.

“Nicely done!” Zorea said, impressed. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. Brand, stir the mushrooms.”

The young man had lost all focus on his cooking and was now standing staring at the two little bottles with his jaw nearly on the floor.

Saul chuckled and selected the next option on the list, Craft: Basic Strength Potion x2. Again, a mist rose over some of the ingredients, this time the Coldcap Mushroom and the Hazel Bark.

“What about the Sigilite Scanner, anyway, or are you just trying to change the subject?” Zorea demanded.

“My magic is like that,” Saul said. “It’s like those strange, disembodied words that rise from the scanner. You know what I mean? You’ve seen the words from the scanner?”

Zorea nodded.

Two little silver flasks appeared on the table as the mist drifted away. Zorea nodded silently, and Saul picked Craft: Basic Courage Potion x2 from his list. Mist grew up over the Slimestem Mushroom and the Dryad’s Ear.

“When I use magic,” Saul continued, “I see the options available to me in disembodied silver letters, like with the Sigilite Scanner. I can pick an option with my mind, just by focusing my intention, or I can say it out loud, and it works the same.”

Two green pots appeared on the table, apparently carved from some richly tinted crystal. They were very small, so small that they could have balanced on Saul’s finger. He picked one up and opened it.

Inside was dark green powder, ground so fine it almost seemed lighter than the air itself. As soon as he opened it, the powder drifted upward into the air. Quickly, he snapped the pot closed.

He picked the last option on the list, Craft: Basic Soul Poison x3.

“So that means,” Zorea said, frowning and scratching her head, “that you are working magic that’s based around Sigils.”

“Well, yes,” Saul said, “that’s true.”

He was not about to explain the whole Workshop to her. He wanted to take it one thing at a time, but it was true, of course. In fact, it was so obvious he had never really thought about it before.

His entire System was based on Sigils.

“And Sigils,” Zorea went on, “are a way of using magic that doesn’t rely on an anchor or a channeler. Sigils are a way of bypassing that requirement. Mages craft them and put parts of their own power into them, enchanting devices like Captain Jerryl’s scanner, or enhancing weapons or crafting tools to make them better versions of themselves.”

Saul watched the mists play over the Creeping Corspelight herb, the Slimestem Mushroom, and the Hazel Tree Bark. Through the wreaths of magic crafting mist, he watched Zorea’s thoughtful, intelligent face frowning as she figured it out.

“So, your magic must be a more complex version of a Sigilite machine,” she said. “In theory, one could use Sigils to create a way for a person to interact with magic in such a way as you do, Saul. One could create an entire magic system, in fact, with Sigils as the power source, the means of interaction, and the container for the spells themselves——everything, a whole, self-contained magic casting and progression system entirely made from magic. Brand! You’re burning the…”

“No, I’m not burning the mushrooms!” Brand protested before she could finish. “I’m serving them! Dinner is ready.”

The mushroom stew was scrumptious. The broth was rich, strongly seasoned, and heavy with the meaty flavor of the wild forest mushrooms Brand had collected.

They moved away from the table, which was now covered in outlandish potion containers and the remaining ingredients and went to sit outside in the last of the sun.

Little was spoken as they ate, soaking up the broth with some good fruit bread that had come up from a rare trading caravan who had visited the week before. The traders had stayed a few nights, but Harkin’s Holdfast was the last village on the road, and the trading caravan had soon headed south again.

They finished their meal quickly. Everyone was hungry, but they were also keen to continue their work. Back in the house, they all sat round the table together, Brand and Zorea gazing at the little potion containers, Saul thinking back to that terrible moment when the System had been melded to his soul.

He’d never thought such pain possible. There was the pain of the body, he knew about that, and there was the pain of the heart, which every man finds in his time. But when Sarkur had melded the System with Saul, that had been an agony of the soul.

It had only lasted for a moment, but the memory of it still troubled his sleep. There was a part of his mind he thought would probably never stop hearing the echo of his own scream.

“There was a…person,” Saul said quietly, into the thoughtful silence. “A person who I think wanted to help me, though with his own motives as well. I’d been banished from this world by the Seven Elemental Gods, and they were going to exile me to oblivion forever, but this person caught me and saved me from that fate. He had a machine, like a silver and crystal model of a man, covered in magic. He…implanted that machine into me. I think he merged it with the very fabric of my being in some way I do not understand. But that machine he called the System is, I think, as you describe, Zorea. It’s a machine based on the mechanic of using Sigils to create an entirely self-contained framework for magic utilization and exploration. A machine based on his design. A…a prototype.”

“Who…?” Brand began, and Zorea kicked him under the table.

“Another god,” Saul said. “Sarkur. The one they call the trickster.”

He’d never said the deity’s name out loud since he’d begun his new life. The word came oddly from his mouth.

“He gave you this System?” Brand said.

Saul nodded. “I suppose I should be grateful. I am grateful,” he continued, thinking about it. “But it’s a hard thing. I was about to reach the absolute climax of my power, and it would also have been the culmination of decades of work and a final victory for the empire I’d worked most of my life to craft. But it was all snatched away from me at a stroke, and I have found myself here, at the beginning. I don’t even have my old body anymore.”

“How old were you?” Zorea asked quietly.

“Forty-five or so,” Saul said. “I’m not sure exactly. I was an orphan, you see. I grew up in Delwan, one of the smaller port cities by the sea, running wild with the thieves and vagabonds. I never knew my parents, but I was good at two things: fighting and thinking. I was quick, cunning, and able to be ruthless, and I was picked up by a guild of thieves who trained me to be better at all three. I broke with them when I was a teenager and took to the road, living by my wits.

“Those were lawless days, when many little kingdoms and petty warlords held sway over the different cities and principalities of the seacoast and the Riverlands behind. Eventually, I linked up with the emperor’s army, while he was still in the early stages of the war. We got on…well, we got on like I’ve never gotten on with anyone in my life before. Him either, I think.”

“What did you look like?” Brand asked. “You say you had a different body?”

Saul looked at his hand now. It was long and thin, with delicate, dexterous fingers, fine blond hair on the backs of the fingers, and a strange pattern of scars on the thumb and forefinger he would never know the origin of.

“I was short, broad, thick-necked, and strong-armed. I had hands like shovels, and I was as strong as a bull. I had short, black hair and very dark eyes, and my beard grew out thick and wiry when I let it. Very different from now.”

“It must be very hard for you,” Zorea said gently, “but there’s something I’m not sure you are fully aware of. You have something that many people wish for: another chance. You have the mind, the soul, the learning, and the experience of a man of forty-five, but in the body of a man half that age. I’ve never met anyone who had passed the age of forty who did not wish to have the chance to return to a younger age with the benefit of the knowledge they’d gained in later life.”

Saul raised his head and looked her in the eye.

“Those people,” he said slowly, “were not on the cusp of achieving all they’d ever dreamed of. I regretted nothing. I would not have chosen this life over that one for anything. If I’m telling you two the truth, and it seems that I am, it’s not the desire to save the world from the timeline clash that motivates me, not really. What motivates me is the desire to get back on those who wronged me. My friends, I’m out for revenge. I want to get my power back, and I want to use it to kill the Seven Elemental Gods. And Sarkur’s magic System gives me the power to do that.”

He looked slowly from one to the other.

“That’s the truth. That’s who you’re signing up with when you ask to be my friend and companion; a god-killer. So, now you have the whole truth, at last. What do you say?”

Brand and Zorea looked at each other, then back at Saul. Brand nodded slowly, and a slow smile spread across his face. Zorea looked more serious.

“Zorea?” Saul prompted her after a moment.

“I’m Xornian,” she replied slowly. “We believe in justice. What’s been done to you…I’ve never heard anything so unfair in my life. If I can help you on your path to getting the justice you deserve, then I’m with you, heart and soul.”

“And you, Brand?”

“What do I say?” he asked, sounding a little incredulous. “I say I’m with you all the way. I’ve never heard anything so awesome in my life! Count me in, Saul. Let’s get your revenge and save the world while we’re at it. This is going to be the best!”