PART I - BRUISES, BONFIRES AND BEST FRIENDS
“Goodnight, everyone,” Callie said to her housemates with a yawn.
“G-G-Goodnight,” Pixyl responded, giving Callie a soft smile. “Hope you g-g-get it in the morning.”
“I better,” Callie snarled at nobody, still irritated even now by the missing two points.
Vanis lowered the cover on a magically lit lantern, plunging the room into darkness. “Goodnight, Little One,” Vanis whispered to Callie, lightly touching her head. “You’ll get it in the morning, I’m sure.”
“Thanks, Vanis.”
Now, the only light in the room was the waxing glow of Roka, hanging in the sky overhead, as she peeked through the open window. Callie stared at the ceiling, her Darkvision easily able to see everything in the minimal light, at least in its false-light haze. Beside her, Lena was nearly asleep; she could tell because the patterned whistling of her nose was starting. Tazrok had already long fallen asleep, exhausted from the day doing rapid shapeshift work.
It had been a long day for Callie, too, beginning with her fellow Rangers giving her a friendly hard time for missing Bronze by such a small amount. Just as Jesca had suggested might happen, Reynard spent much of the morning working directly with Callie, while the others worked on their Bronze shooting rotations and practiced replicating arrows or summoning components.
Trainer Reynard could think of only two things that led to her coming up short on points. The first was how much Callie was struggling with Wilderness Stealth, which she fully acknowledged to him had been an ongoing issue. The Foxkin's second thought was that Callie’s bow didn’t use real arrows, so somehow not needing to draw from a quiver was a missing element of her overall training.
To address this, together Reynard and Callie worked on making a few arrows, this time shortening the shaft to be a Gnome-manageable length appropriate for Thorn’s toy bow. Reynard then replicated several dozen of the new projectiles, while Callie filled the bottom of a quiver with sand to put the arrows at the right height to grab. She did more shooting rotations, this time drawing an arrow out of the oversized quiver on her back each time, before dropping it to the ground and completing the shooting action on Thorn’s magic bow. It was inelegant, but helpful, and Callie worked to perfect the movements into muscle memory.
As for Stealth, Callie was absolutely sure that every twig, leaf and log purposely threw themselves under her feet. She felt like a rampaging Rhinokin plowing with reckless abandon through the woods, and could see poor Reynard’s ears twitch in irritation every time she accidentally announced her presence, usually scaring away the animals they had been tracking as practice. She was certainly better than a few days ago, but still not very good. To Reynard’s credit, he mostly kept his snarls and grumbling in check, making only a couple of offhanded negative comments, and none aimed at the fact she was a Gnome. Come noon, Callie felt she had improved, or at least learned a few things, and Reynard gave her a barely-passing five out of ten, admonishing her gruffly to work on it in her spare time. She had a long way to go.
After lunch, the rest of the training day had largely been a blur, with the last half of the afternoon being devoted to swords with the other dual-wielders. Callie and Pixyl were again paired, this time working more with the twelve-count sparring routine, but now with a ‘dodge’ move added into it as a random substitute for any number, instructing the person to step backwards or to the sides to avoid the blow, or duck if neither was an option.
As their swords rhythmically crashed off each other, sparks flying from Pixyl’s energy blades, Callie was momentarily distracted by the arrival of Vonn as she slithered towards Reynard. This momentary loss of concentration resulted in a critical missed parry, and a hard smack to the side of her head. Pixyl had tried to pull her swing when she saw Callie was out of position, but it wasn’t enough. Despite the leather helm she wore, the little Gnome had gone sprawling, seeing shining stars and tweeting birds.
Almost before anyone could even call for a Healer, Xin had rushed onto the field, trailed closely by one of her trainers, Cheena. Xin had been on Healer duty, and with Cheena observing her, the Shaman quickly removed Callie’s soft helmet and assessed her wounds. Beyond the bruise and lump forming on the side of her head, the Lizardkin was concerned about the hard landing Callie had taken, as she had yet again used her face to cushion the fall. She didn’t have a broken nose this time, but she had several bleeding scrapes on her cheek and temple, and her head had certainly been rattled.
With a polite reminder from Cheena, Xin remembered to drop her Totem, calling on the Element of Life to send out a pulse of healing energy to ease the pain, as well as both counter the growing lump and stem the light bleeding. Next, Xin applied a directed healing spell to Callie’s face and a second to the side of her head, which healed whatever was still needing repair. Unlike the nearly-instantaneous results of Ambria’s Combat Healer spell, Xin’s seemed to take several seconds to complete, but felt far more exacting. As Cheena examined Xin’s work, she didn’t think anything had been seriously injured, but ordered Callie to rest on the sidelines for a bit until her head stopped ringing.
Poor Pixyl was beside herself with grief for having hit her friend so hard, almost bursting into tears at one point while Callie was being treated. Xin and Cheena finally managed to assure her enough times that there was no lasting damage done, but she was still worried. Eventually, after clearly demonstrating no serious harm, Callie managed to calm Pixyl’s panic and ease her concerns.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Callie’s injuries now healed and with her resting, the trainers seized on the teaching moment, disassembling what had happened for the rest of the recruits. Callie accepted full responsibility, much to Pixyl’s repeated protestations, explaining she had become distracted by Vonn’s arrival. This, in turn, resulted in a good lesson for everyone on the importance of not getting distracted by irrelevant things.
Eventually, Callie managed to scramble back to her feet, ready to spar some more. Taking up the two practice swords, this time she was paired off against the dark-green Tigerkin Bladeweaver, Rakona, as Vonn had actually come to the field wanting to get a better sense of the Gnome’s fighting style against a larger opponent again. This was to help with the final design for the swords she was making the Little One.
Unfortunately, Rakona, who was easily twice as tall as Callie, had no real sense of her differences in reach, height and strength, and simply overpowered the Gnome. The fight ended abruptly, with Callie thrown gracelessly to the ground, the wind knocked out of her. The little Ranger snarled in pain between gasps, having landed solidly on her rear, a horrified look on Rakona’s furry face.
Once again, since any injury was valuable practice, Xin was quickly called, this time to address Callie’s bruised tailbone, despite the training armor absorbing most of her fall. After first dropping a Totem to ease the pain again, the Shaman helped Callie remove her training-armor leggings. Groaning and laughing in embarrassment, Callie lay on her stomach as Xin’s scaly hands reached down the back of her pants, the Lizardkin’s touch healing Callie’s bruised butt with her directed Shaman magics. Rakona repeatedly apologized for sending her sprawling, almost bursting into sobs as Pixyl had done. Like with Pixyl, everyone pointed out numerous times that Callie would be fine, and Callie even made jokes about Xin fixing her ‘broken ass’ to try to ease Rakona’s worry. Eventually, with enough assurances, the Tigerkin calmed, but by that point, the momentum to continue training had evaporated, and the trainers simply called it a day thirty minutes early.
The remainder of the evening had passed equally fast, everyone excited that it was the eve of the first Homeday of the term, and looking forward to the next day off. At some point after the evening meal, word got out there was a bonfire, and most everyone gravitated back towards the training field to enjoy. There was wine and ale, a lot of bawdy singing, and a great deal of cheer among everyone. Callie sat watching the flames, Pixyl sitting close, leaning against her and holding her arm tightly; the absolute best pseudo-sister she could ever ask for. While Callie recognized none of the songs, the relaxing camaraderie was no different than it would have been on Earth. This time, Callie avoided getting hammered like at the party, instead hovering in that ‘happy drunk’ state that made her forget things like accidentally flashing her chest at her fellow recruits the day before, and falling so spectacularly on her face. Twice this week, in fact.
Vanis took up his lute, playing a few songs along with the singing, and adding his own voice to the masses. He seemed to enjoy being an entertainer, wearing a huge grin as he did so. A few times, when she was alone or just with Pixyl, Callie had fiddled around with the lute, too, trying to learn how to approximate what she was used to back home. She had no intention of playing for people, but the challenge of learning new chords helped to exercise her brain and finger dexterity. Pixyl apparently enjoyed a few of the songs she managed to find the right sounds for as well, seeming to hang on even the badly-played notes.
Friends flitted in and out of Callie’s conversations as the evening wore on, really the whole affair becoming a remarkably perfect bookend to the first week of training. Homeday would be busy, though, as she needed to meet with Pama and Fizzlebek for a mid-morning second-breakfast, then with Thorn for a chat about Earth. Finally, she was to see Yulayla, who had been allowed to keep her memories of Callie’s secret, for a full Scryer examination. The exam would, unfortunately, include the painful Deep Scry, but Master Healer Tasi had offered to put a short-duration sleep spell on her, which Callie was seriously considering.
At Pixyl’s suggestion, for the rest of the afternoon Callie would be joining her, Jesca and Ambria to visit a huge rock overlooking the forest that Tazrok had told them about. Originally, Pixyl had intended it to be just her and Callie alone, and seemed a little sour about Callie inviting others. To get the Pixie’s mood to lighten, Callie had to promise they’d go exploring another time, just the two of them. As a way to further make it up to her friend, Callie talked Pama into making a delicious late-afternoon snack they could take with them on their hike. The prospect of Culinar delicacies seemed to smooth things over with Pixyl, who grudgingly admitted, with a sly smile in her eyes, that she was easily bribed by good food.
Now almost midnight, with so many events from the last week swimming chaotically in her head, coupled with the repeat promise of hitting Bronze the next morning, Callie was having difficulty sleeping. A passing thought about her mother had pressed at her, and she intentionally put it aside for now. It wasn’t that she wanted to ignore it, but if she thought too much about home, Callie knew she’d break into sobs soon after, which would certainly wake her housemates. They’d put up with so much regarding her all week, it wasn’t fair to make any of them deal with yet another breakdown.
Callie lay there, randomly flicking her Darkvision on and off in boredom, a part of her missing having a cellphone to scroll through. With nothing to occupy her brain, her mind drifted to her future in this world. In broad strokes, the plan wasn't all that complex. She would complete the Curse, repay Vanis by helping him retake his throne, look for worms, get rich, and eventually settle down, hopefully with someone, somewhere. Unless she found a way home, of course. An odd thought crept into her head, though. Did she really want to go back home? All she really had there was her mother. She had no friends, no decent job prospects, and not a lot of future. But here, it was different. She was still finding her place in this world, but Callie knew even after only a week there was one here for her. One with people that she could care for and would care for her in return.
The thin sliver of moonlight had slowly moved through the sky, now flashing randomly in intensity as it filtered between the tree branches waving in the light breeze. Roka’s crescent-shaped smile beamed down on Callie’s face, looking very much like Earth’s own moon, yet with shadows that were unfamiliar all the same. She sat up one last time, looking around the room, seeing everyone else fast asleep. Her friends; her family. Smiling, she lay down again, feeling content and calm enough to eventually drift into her own deep sleep.