“This isn’t fair at all, you must be cheating!” Calavia stood up practically shouting at Arthur who had a smug grin on his face. For the last several games of checkers Arthur had won around ninety percent of the time, his photographic memory allowing him to memorise the strategies Calavia used and how to counter them. With each mistake he made he was becoming better and better, unfortunately there was no skill on the HUD for checkers.

“All I can say is I am a fast learner, and you are a very predictable checkers player. I think this leaves the score at 37/19 with myself being the 37.”

“You are such an ass, just like my brother can be at times. Like the time he accidently shot the neighbor's dog and buried it in a shallow grave where it was found by the second dog.”

“It sounds like you have a lot of good and interesting memories about your brother, you must have been quite close with him when you were both kids.” Arthur commented while thinking about himself, wondering if he at one point had something like that in his own childhood.

“Oh yes, and we still are quite close even though he usually is gone with the rest of his squad. Though I am a little worried about this upcoming spring and what is going on with the empire over at the border.” Calavia quieted down and began avoiding eye contact as she mentioned the Yolan empire. “There are some rumors going around that once spring comes around and the snow is all melted there is going to be another war. If that happens my brother will be on the front lines and he might even be killed in battle.”

The room went quiet as what Calavia said sunk in, Arthur recalled what his one friend Cassia said about the last war with the empire. She talked about how her hometown which was right near the border was destroyed, she didn’t even know how many people survived but she knew her family didn’t.

As he thought about what she said he also thought back to everyone within that mercenary group, if war was to break out they too likely would get involved especially since the young wood elf leading them by the name of Lyra was nobility. She would definitely be fighting for her own noble family given her attitude and noble related expectations.

“I sort of understand how you feel.” Calavia looked up to Arthur with a bit of confusion in her eyes and waited for Arthur to continue. “I know some people who, if war were to break out, would take part in the fighting. I met them when I woke up in the underground dwarven city. I spent around a month with them before we eventually left and came here to Antium. While I wasn’t really super close with any of them I would say I was on good terms with a small handful of them, three people in particular. A human woman named Cassia, a human man named Citro, and an elven woman named Lyra.”

“It makes you feel like the whole world is going crazy doesn’t it. I haven’t really been a religious person, but I sometimes wonder what the gods are doing and why they allow such horrible things to happen all the time.” Calavia wiped a small tear from her eye as she continued. “Do you think they actually care about us? Do you think that they have our best interests in mind when they intervene and send their followers?”

“I don’t really know, but I guess that Solarius really doesn’t like vampires since he sent several of his priests and paladins to root out that group of them several months ago.”

“Maybe, but I honestly doubt a priest could tell us with complete certainty if their god does or does not care about the common people. The only thing that could really tell us if one god cares is probably another god, but what is stopping that one from lying to us as well. It is one big paradox that can’t really be answered by the gods while they are the only ones that can.”

Suddenly the front door opened up and Gaelin walked inside the house covered with snow. “It is getting really bad out there. The snow is blowing around so much that just about everyone at the market was leaving after a few minutes of it, eventually there wasn’t anyone left and I had to leave early as well.” Gaelin said as he quickly shut the door behind himself blocking the blowing snow and shaking off what was stuck to him like paint.

Once he had his jacket, hat, and boots off he walked over the small fire in Arthur’s fireplace to warm up, unfortunately he hasn't learned anything about pyromancy yet from Arthur as it was quite dangerous for a beginner to learn outside of a safe environment like the underground mages guild. Instead Arthur reached into his bag and pulled out a warmth potion and handed it to Gaelin who upon reading the label drank it completely.

Gaelin shuttered as he felt the warmth of the potion flow from his stomach into his bloodstream and to each of his limbs, it was a strange sensation, almost like his body war burning from the rapid change in temperature. After a minute of this his body managed to average out at a nice warm temperature where he wasn’t shivering.

“Thank you sir, that was very helpful.” Gaelin said as he walked away from the fireplace. “What type of potion was that sir? I think I would like to learn how to make those as soon as possible if it isn’t a problem.”

“I’m sorry, but until you learn how to cast tier one spells and learn some basic pyromancy that will not be possible.” Arthur immediately responded in a blunt tone. “Since the guild can teach you how to properly cast tiered spells you will need to go to them for that, the pyromancy on the other hand I will definitely take care of once you have decent foundations. In fact, now is actually a good time for some hydromancy lessons. I have a few things I would like to try with you and see if they help with your learning.”

“But what about the game, I was going to beat you this time!” Calavia protested, expecting at least one more game to prove she was better than he was.

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“Sorry, but Gaelin is my apprentice. If instead I played another game of checkers with you and you predictably lost again and you demanded another when would I have a chance to give him more lessons.” Arthur didn’t even wait for her response and just stood up and walked over to the middle of the open room where Gaelin was waiting.

Gaelin was carrying the cup he was given earlier and held it out for Arthur to extract the moisture from the air into the cup until it was three quarters the way full.

“Now I want you to take some of that water and keep it levitating above your hands, don’t take more than you can handle, just enough where it becomes a challenge and you can keep it without losing it in a minute.” Following Arthur’s instructions he took a blob of water around the size of half an apple and kept it around an inch above his hand.

“Now I am going to try and take control of that ball of water, I want you to keep me from doing that. Don’t worry, I won’t be going all that hard on you.” Gaelin kept his emotions hidden but somehow Arthur still managed to know he was a little nervous about this training exercise. Little did he know it was because Arthur was when he first did it with Henry.

A few moments later Gaelin could feel a foreign mana within his water ball, it was slowly trying to force his own mana out of it so he pushed back. Despite not being a physical action it was comparable to pushing a bull into a pen, something he had the unfortunate time of doing as a young child.

Unlike this traumatic event in his childhood he did manage to push the foreign mana towards the corner on the ball and away from the center where it could more easily spread, though this did cost some of his mana as some was lost in this tug of war.

Arthur continued moving his mana around and trying to take over while adding a bit more when it was lost by Gaelin’s attempts to force him out of the water ball. This went on for around fifteen minutes when suddenly the water dropped from its hovering position and splattered into Gaelin’s hands before dripping onto the floor where Arthur was forced to collect it with his own hydromancy.

Gaelin nearly fell to the floor from mana exhaustion but managed to keep himself upright by leaning on the nearby wall. “Hey, are you alright?” Arthur quickly rushed to Gaelin’s side while he collected the water from the floor. Arthur immediately recognized the symptoms of mana exhaustion and had Gaelin sit down on the floor and gave him the cup of water to drink. After a few minutes of sitting and drinking Gaelin managed to recover some of the color in his face and his mana reserves were no longer so dangerously low.

“I probably should have taught you about this sooner, but what you just experienced was called mana exhaustion. This happens when you use up all of the mana within your body and continue trying to use more that isn’t there. Now I assume based on this one experience you know that this isn't something you should even do, even if you are in a dangerous situation you would be better off running away than trying to use mana that isn’t there.”

“Do you have any potions that might help with it?”

“Unfortunately no, to my knowledge there are no potions that are capable of stimulating mana recovery. But I think we are going to need to deal with your issue of such a small mana capacity soon. When the weather clears up I will call in a favor or two and find a way to help you reach level three or four and boost that mana capacity up.”

Gaelin was a little confused by what Arthur said to him, but since he was so exhausted by the lack of mana he didn’t pay much attention and simply allowed Arthur to help him over to the table where he took what before was Arthur’s own seat.

“I assume you now have some time for a game or two of checkers Mr. champion?” Calavia said as she slid the prepared checkers board over the table so Arthur could reach it.

“I do have time, but I think it would be better if you tried playing against Gaelin instead.” Both Gaelin and Calavia looked to Arthur with a bit of confusion and shock on their respective faces. Calavia was confused because she knew that Gaelin wasn’t really that good of a player, and Gaelin was shocked because he didn’t really understand what playing a game would even be useful for. It didn’t train his magic skill and it definitely didn’t help with his alchemy, the only things that could do that was practice and study.

“Since for the time being you won't be able to cast any type of magic you might as well do something to pass the time, that and Calavia isn’t that good at the game.”

“Hey! I was the one who won the first several games we played! You didn’t start winning until around the fifth game, and that was only due to luck!”

********

Two days later on the third of Moonstone the snow finally slowed down enough for the common folk to begin going out once again, whether that be for the market or to see family and friends it didn’t really matter to either Arthur or Gaelin who were walking down the streets towards the southern district barracks.

Inside the building the secretary told the duo they would need to wait for twenty minutes for Captain Tasius to be done with whatever he was doing at the moment, most likely a meeting of some sort based on the phrasing but never outright said for some reason.

Soon those twenty minutes passed and Arthur was starting to get a little worried that they might be there for quite some time, thankfully the inside of the barracks was warm enough that they didn't need to keep their winter jackets on and hung them on a nearby coat hanger.

After another ten minutes of waiting a familiar face showed up in full uniform, it was a certain private Lar of the southern city guard. “Good morning sir, I am here to escort you to the captain. If you would please follow me.” Arthur could tell that Lar was being very serious, even though they almost always met when he was in uniform Lar had a sort of casual demeanor around himself. Right now he was being serious and didn’t say anything past what was necessary, likely by the orders of Captain Tasius.

Gaelin looked a little worried but Arthur quickly reassured him and began following the young guardsman with his apprentice behind him. The two filled Lar into what appeared to be an underground portion of the barracks that was not in any way connected to the dungeon that he was a bit more familiar with. This location was clearly more of an underground hiding place rather than a prison and the much smaller space with some basic quarters and meeting room confirmed it when they found the Captain standing above a table.

Lar alerted the Captain to their presence with a stomp of his iron boots and with a salute. Captain Tasius simply gave him a nod and he returned the way he came and closed the hidden door behind himself keeping the room a secret.

“It is good to see you again Arthur, unfortunately I must once again ask for your help in a delicate matter I am dealing with at the moment. I am specifically interested in your alchemy skills this time around.”