“So, the captain has gone?” Saul asked Zorea one day in early summer when she had come to check on him.

She looked up at him sharply. “How did you know?”

Saul smiled as disarmingly as he could. “I’m bored, I keep an eye on what’s happening in the village,” he explained with a shrug. “I couldn’t help but notice he had ridden out with some of the Raptor Riders and not come back.”

She seemed satisfied with that. They were standing outside the hut, Saul leaning on a long, straight staff that he had procured one day. Recently, he’d found that the watch on his movements had relaxed, and he was allowed a bit more freedom to roam. He suspected it was largely because despite orders, the villagers and the guards had grown used to him and had begun to not notice him anymore.

This was all to the good. He’d been able not only to find this straight wooden staff, but to take it back to his hut and begin practicing with it as if it were a longsword. The old sword drills came back to his mind easily.

They did not come back to the new body as easily, but with time and diligent practice he found that he was becoming limber and quick again. He was putting on muscle, too, and he felt good from day to day.

Sometimes, there was a shudder that ran through him, an echo, he thought, of the terrible circumstances that this body’s previous owner had been through. For the most part, however, he was able to work to his own satisfaction, quietly training and building his strength back.

“The captain is away,” Zorea said in reply to his original question. “And we wish he was not. There is something out there, something in the woods.”

She gestured out vaguely, north and east at the imposing shadow of the forest that loomed always over the little village.

“Something…some kind of monster?”

She nodded. “There are things out there. They sleep in the winter, but when the weather warms, they come out and begin to look for food again. We dare not go far, or in groups of less than five at a time, and the soldiers refuse to go out hunting for whatever it is. Their orders are to stay in the village and guard against… Well, I’ve said too much,” she finished hurriedly.

She flashed him a quick smile, then hurried off before he could ask any more questions.

Zorea clearly was troubled, and her feelings reflected those of the whole village, but Saul could not get much out of any of them. Over the following weeks, he tried to make conversation with several people in the village. The first person he tried was the blacksmith. His name was Rork, and he was a big man, unusually tall and broad, even for a man of his profession. Rork was at least seven feet tall, and as Saul looked at him he wondered about the legends of giants who used to populate the mountainous lands in the north.

Rork had a wiry black beard and dark, gleaming eyes. He was polite and friendly, but it quickly became clear that he did not know anything about the threat in the forest, or if he did know, he didn’t want to talk about it.

Saul went on to try his luck with the other villagers. He spoke to the couple who did most of the carpenter work in town, to three of the goat herder families, and an old woman who seemed to spend her days sitting outside her little house gossiping with the soldiers. Even this last villager—who had seemed like the most hopeful prospect—was reserved when Saul attempted to learn more about whatever was in the woods.

No one wanted to speak to him about the mysterious threat.

Eventually, after gaining nothing but a polite rebuff from one of the soldiers, Saul gave it up. He returned to his hut to eat, exercise, and watch.

The days passed, warm and fair and, despite the threat, the village was a busy, active place. He had almost begun to think that the danger in the forest might be gone when his opportunity for action arrived in an unexpected way.

One morning, a little after midsummer, a group of eight villagers had gone up into the woods to the north on a mission to hunt for one of the wild boar that ranged about in the dense trees. They had only been gone an hour when they came back, running down the narrow path between the cliff and the palisade wall.

One of their number—a young, hardy man—had a gash in his upper arm, and another suffered from a bad burn to his torso. His clothing was ripped and scorched.

“Some kind of demon is in the woods!” shouted one of the villagers as they came dashing in. “It nearly killed us. We were lucky to get away!”

The wounded men were helped away to a house not far from Saul’s little hut. Zorea, who seemed to be the main healer in the village, hurried off to tend to them.

Saul watched, standing quietly nearby with his staff in his hand as an argument developed among the villagers and the sergeant in charge of the soldiers.

“I tell you,” the sergeant said, “we have our orders. We cannot leave the village and go off hunting monsters!”

“Then, must we stay here, in fear, until the captain comes back and gives you new orders?” a young, dark-haired man demanded angrily. “We have to hunt, we have to gather firewood. Summer is passing. What’s the point of having a garrison of soldiers in our village if all you do is stand about and watch while our people are menaced by demons in the woods?”

The sergeant shrugged helplessly. His men shifted their feet uncomfortably.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I have to stick to the orders given to me by my captain.”

“Pah,” the young man spat and turned on his heel.

The villagers’ solution to the problem was a simple one. By the next morning, they had resolved to gather a large mob and go out to hunt the monsters themselves.

“If the soldiers won’t protect us, then we must protect ourselves,” the young man—whose name, Saul gathered, was Brand—said to a crowd of angry folk.

The villagers cheered.

Sergeant Dryan frowned with disapproval, but his orders clearly did not extend to stopping the villagers from doing what they wanted to do.

When no one was looking, Saul slipped up and spoke to Brand.

“I can fight,” he said quietly. “Take me with you.”

“You’re the man who came from the forest,” Brand said, looking him up and down. “Yes, I’ve seen you going through sword drills with that stick of yours outside your hut every morning. Strange, those drills seem to me. Not the way I would use a sword, but all right, I’ll take you with me.”

Sergeant Dryan clearly had his doubts about Saul going with the posse of villagers but decided on balance that it would be better not to stand in the way. The villagers were angry, and Dryan did not want to have any more conflict if he could avoid it.

So, Saul found himself shortly afterward heading out into the woods with a party of fifteen villagers, mostly young men with one or two women, under the leadership of Brand. The older folks had declined to leave, and some had disapprovingly admonished the young folk for taking risks, but Brand’s desire to do something about the problem was infectious. Most of the young folk of the village had armed themselves and gone with him.

Saul had only his staff but could always tap into his magic. He felt that he could access his System and have his combat spells of the School of Fire and Stone at his fingertips in seconds if needed.

How, exactly, he would use the spells without terrifying the villagers, he did not know yet. For now, he was content to be out of the confines of the village and to have the opportunity to take some action.

Brand seemed to have lost some of his spark now that they were actually out of the village. From his stance and the way he held his old, blunt-looking sword, Saul guessed he had little to no actual experience of fighting.

“What’s your name, outlander?” Brand asked him as they made their way up the steep path toward the forest.

“Saul,” Saul replied, not bothering to dissimulate. Saul Kramitz, companion and high commander of the imperial army of Baraz Karak, had not even been born yet.

Stolen story; please report.

He had no need or desire to hide his name.

“Funny name,” Brand replied. “Saul what?”

“Kramitz.”

“What is that, southern? You from the seacoast?”

Saul realized belatedly that he had neither come up with a backstory for himself, nor considered that anyone might be interested in hearing one for him.

“Yeah,” he said. “From the seacoast.” That much was true, at least. In his old life, he had grown up as an orphan in one of the smaller coastal cities, though, back then, he’d been as dark-haired and dark-eyed as any Xornian.

“But I don’t know how I got here to Xorn,” Saul continued. “I just woke up in the woods in a mess and was lucky enough to find your village. I would have died but for the care you’ve given me.”

“Sounds like one hell of a hangover!” one of the younger men shouted to a chorus of loud laughter.

Saul joined in the laughter, pleased that his appearance in the woods could be so easily explained away.

They asked no more questions, and when they’d gone about a half-mile into the woods, Brand held up a hand for silence.

“The place where Caleb and Elmer were attacked is just over there,” he said. “Have your weapons ready, you lot, and fight them when you see them!”

Not the best battle plan Saul had ever heard, but he was not about to impose his opinion on them. He had no desire to reveal just yet that he was, in fact, a seasoned general. He wanted to keep as unobtrusive as possible for the moment and see how things played out.

He moved off to the left of the party as they advanced. A young fellow near him was carrying a razor-sharp halberd as if it had been a truncheon, and Saul did not want to be too near this lad if he got scared and started swinging. He put a bit of space between himself and the others and moved ahead, enjoying the limber feeling of his newly trained body and being out of the village at last.

The others were slowing down a bit, the tension getting to them.

Saul had seen this before in raw recruits. Bluster and rage will get a man so far, but one needs more than courage to keep his head in a dangerous situation. One needed training, and that was something these young people lacked.

What was it in the woods? Saul hoped he would at least be able to stop these youngsters from getting killed, if nothing else.

“There!” someone called in a frightened voice. “By all the gods! What is it?”

The whole party stopped suddenly. They couldn’t have come more than a quarter mile from the cliff edge, but they were already in thick, ancient forest. Before them, the ruins of a building lay, half-buried in centuries of moss and undergrowth.

“It’s the old watchtower of Heth,” someone said in a whisper.

Saul moved forward for a better look.

“Gods,” another voice cried. “I’m not going near that, Brand! We’d best get out of here!”

Saul peered through the trees and saw the monster. It crouched in the ruins of the building, half-obscured by a section of mossy wall. It was the size of a man, but thick and stubby—half-finished, Saul thought, like a clay sculpture abandoned part-way through.

It had a big, misshapen head, greenish scales for skin, and two huge, slab-like hands on the ends of its thick arms.

Flames and shadows flickered around the creature, and as the youngsters cried out in alarm to each other, it lifted its head and regarded them with small, evil eyes.

“We’d best go back,” someone muttered. “Wait for Jerryl.”

Before anyone could reply, someone else shouted out, “There’s another one! There’s two of them!”

The noise agitated the monsters, and the bigger of the two suddenly rose to its full height and turned to face them. Its eyes blazed with anger and suspicion, and its flat, hideous face was twisted into a ferocious expression. It opened its mouth, showing twin rows of sharp, yellow teeth, and let out a long, warning growl.

That was too much for the party.

They broke, and as soon as one of them ran, the rest followed.

Only Brand the leader hesitated, glaring at the monsters. Saul could see that Brand was torn. He was too scared (or too sensible) to tackle the monsters head on, but he was furious with himself for not daring to. He bared his teeth, glancing from his fleeing friends to the monsters, then to Saul, who stood his ground.

“Hey,” Brand said, “you better come with us, Saul. We’re no match for them alone.”

“I don’t know about that,” Saul said quietly.

In his field of vision, invisible to all but himself, he was looking at his list of combat spells.

School of Fire:

Select: Fireball (Combat: Ranged Attack)

Select: Burning Hand (Combat: Melee Attack)

Select: Firestorm (Combat: Area of Effect Attack)

School of Stone:

Select: Rock Troll (Combat: Summoned Creature)

Select: Catapult (Combat: Ranged Attack)

Select: Rockfall (Combat: Area of Effect Attack)

He had his eye particularly on Fireball and Rock Troll. He figured the monsters he was facing were likely trolls of some kind themselves, though they seemed to have some fire magic.

Saul knew enough about Old World magic to know that monsters with fire spells generally had high resistances to fire also, and that trolls in general had a high resistance to earth and rock spells. Still, he wanted the chance to test these spells out, and he knew enough also about trolls to know that they were generally slow and stupid.

More often than not, it’s not numbers that win the battle but tactics and trickery, he thought, remembering an old lesson.

“What you really want for trolls,” he said, thinking aloud, “is Glade and Metal magic.”

“I’ll take your word for it, outlander,” Brand said, looking at Saul as if he were cracked. “But I’m out of here. You’d better come, too.”

Brand made to leave, but Saul had to hide a smile because Brand did not actually leave. He moved away a little, but then stopped.

He couldn’t resist waiting to see what Saul was going to do.

“Oh, so be it,” Saul said resignedly. He fixed Brand with his eye. “If you’re going to stay and watch, be sure you keep yourself well back.”

Brand stared at him, wide-eyed. Saul’s tone had changed, as had his stance. He was no longer the self-effacing outlander.

Now, he was Saul Kramitz, an experienced fighter about to enter combat.

He turned to face the trolls and selected Fireball.

The spell glowed brightly in his vision for a moment, and then came the immensely satisfying sensation of magic—pure, raw, magical power—tingling through his hands. Just like old times, he thought.

The trolls had not paid him that much attention since he did not seem to be a threat. The one that had risen still glared in the direction where the villagers had fled, and the other was sitting on the ground.

A satisfied smile spread across Saul’s face as he raised his hand and a fireball three feet across exploded from his hand.

The fireball hit the big one in the face. Flames exploded with a sudden boom that rocked the air with a shockwave and caused a flock of birds to rise, cawing from the nearby trees.

The troll bellowed in pain, holding its hands up to its face, and the second troll leaped clumsily away.

Saul followed up his fireball with Rock Troll, aiming the spell to land in the midst of the two enemies.

This was new. In his years with Emperor Baraz Karak, summoning magic was one branch he had not pursued to any great extent. It was a magic that was troublesome on a number of levels.

It took a great deal of skill, for one, and it required a huge draw of power from the channel that the Prism Academy directed. One or two mages drawing off that kind of power was fine, but once you had a whole army of mages trying to summon high-level creatures, it became unsustainable.

Now, however, Saul was very pleased to find that summoning a rock troll to fight on his behalf took no more effort or power than hurling the fireball had done.

Casting magic without drawing on an external power source was going to take a bit of getting used to.

The rock troll appeared where Saul sent it, right next to the troll who had just been hit in the face with the fireball.

The summoned troll took the initiative and clobbered the already-wounded troll over the head with its huge, lumpy stone hands. Saul’s summoned creature was different from the forest trolls. It was made of gray stone, looking like a pile of rock that had been animated by magic. It was shorter than the forest trolls but stronger and quicker.

Brand’s face was a picture of amazement and fear when Saul cast a glance over his shoulder to look at the younger man. He couldn’t resist a grin at Brand’s expression.

It was nice to be appreciated.

The second forest troll took a swing at Saul’s summoned creature, but the rock troll ducked, faster and more agile than any pile of rocks had the right to be.

Good spell, Saul thought, impressed. If that’s the kind of summoned creature I can conjure at level 3, I can’t wait to see what the higher levels of this System are going to look like!

From the amount of damage the forest troll had taken from the impact of the fireball, Saul guessed their fire resistance was okay, but their stone resistance was not so good.

As he considered his next spell, his summoned rock troll whacked the wounded forest troll over the head again, and the forest troll crumpled to the ground and lay still.

But the second forest troll was not yet injured. In the space of time it took Saul’s summoned creature to finish the first troll, it had stepped away. Now, it leaned forward and blasted the summoned troll with orange flames from its hand.

So, this one at least has a fire spell, Saul thought. Time to follow up with more stone magic, then.

He glanced at his options and chose Rockfall. Strictly speaking, this was an area of effect attack, and one that would be better against multiple enemies rather than just one, but Saul felt it might be able to hinder the enemy troll’s movement as well as cause damage, and he knew his cooldown timer was about to be activated. Anything that slowed the enemy down for that next ten minutes would be a good thing.

“We’re going to have to back off for a bit after this next spell,” he told Brand.

“Uh, right…” Brand said, sounding as if he could barely speak for amazement. “Ready?” Saul asked him.

“Yeah,” Brand gasped.

Rockfall

Saul activated the spell and raised a hand. Above the battlefield, an image of a large group of rocks appeared. They moved as he moved his hand, and he realized he could easily control where they would fall.

Aiming them above and a little in front of the enemy troll, he let them drop.

The rocks were devastatingly effective. They thundered down, nine massive boulders crushing the enemy troll under their weight. The creature crumpled at impact. Saul’s troll seized the opportunity and smacked the enemy troll in the face.

There was a flash of fire, and then all that was left of the forest troll lay still.

Saul’s summoned troll shuddered, and then collapsed to the ground. Nothing remained of it but a heap of stones.

Everything went very quiet.

Saul’s system notified him that the cooldown timer was now in place, but there didn’t seem to be any problem with that as there were no more trolls.

Suddenly, Brand’s voice burst out, ringing with enthusiasm.

“You’re a mage!” he cried. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life! You have to teach me magic. Oh, I can’t wait to tell them back at the village! Come on, we need to let everybody know that the outlander mage has destroyed the trolls. This is going to be great!”