When Amber woke up, Sam was already getting dressed.

“I’m going to run drills, want to tag along?”

“How long have you been up?”

“Not long. Catch up to me if you want.”

She was out of the tent before Amber was ready, making her miss that she didn’t have her golem armor or shifting suit anymore.

When she got to the track, Harlan was running laps already, and Sam was clearly pissed that he was lapping her and had already started running when she got there.

“You’re going to get a cramp if you don’t stretch first.”

With near comedic timing, Sam fell down, and when Harlan passed by he tapped her with a healing spell.

“If you are going to do this, do it right.”

Amber got done with her stretches and then started to run, the three of them matched pace.

“Why are you up so early?”

Sam looked at Harlan with scorn.

“Harlan, what did you do to my cadet?”

“I gave her honest advice.”

“You’ve been a real prick since you got here.”

“I’ve been training them in accordance with military principles. Just because you are my sister doesn’t mean I’m not going to follow my orders. Sam, speed up if you intend to graduate.”

“Are you using her against me?”

“She came to me wanting to win, you’re training a loser.”

“Fuck you.”

“Sam, do you believe you would’ve graduated at the rate you were going?”

“SIR NO SIR.”

“See?”

“Sam, don’t listen to him.”

“SIR NO SIR.”

“What?”

“SIR FOMORIA OUTRANKS YOU ARE INSTRUCTOR, THEREFORE I MAY LISTEN TO HIS ORDERS OVER YOURS WITHOUT RISK OF COURT MARTIAL.”

“Harlan, what the hell did you say to her?”

He just kept running, and at some point he lapped them and then vanished into the morning mist.

An hour passed, the girls were resting, they knew the day would start soon enough, but everyone else in the camp woke up to a loud bellowing sound.

Barely seen was a large shape swimming through the deep fog.

Over the announcement system, Enten told the cadets to gather.

Once 10 minutes passed, the high commander spoke, but he also took note of those who failed to arrive.

“Today is monster subjugation. Sir Fomoria will be the monster, in this case, a sky whale, fog variant.

If any of you have sailors in the family who’ve been near the veil, then you’ve heard of these things.

Your goal is to find it, and then kill or capture it.”

He looked over the crowd.

“I can see some of you are confused. Even if you did manage to kill him, he wouldn’t die, so go all out, hold nothing back. Within military regulations that is. You have two hours, you will be judged by your ability to track, damage, and accurately report it. When a soldier reports a wolf the size of a bear, we assume it to be dire, and when we find what is only an abnormally large wolf far smaller than a bear, that means we’ve wasted resources that should’ve done something else. You will not fail if you cannot capture or kill him, but that would be an automatic pass.”

Amber and her team were making their way through the fog, towards the sounds and the swirling mist.

“Harlan and I used to play with this, it’s something our uncle told us how to do. We are going to feel the mist with magic, find out where movement based distortions originate.”

“It seems unfair that he would do a test that you both have experience in.”

“Shit.”

“What?”

“He knows that I know, which means there is a trick.”

“Great.”

“I’m going to use warmagic, you three divine for other people, I don’t want to kill somebody with this.”

When the triplets all divined, they got different readings.

“Really?”

“Yes sir.”

“All of you, cast north finding magic.”

Each spell pointed in a different direction.

“He’s got to be infusing the mist with magic to interfere with our divinations.”

“Follow his sounds then?”

“Is that a question?”

“Sir yes sir.”

“We will go with that for now unless someone else thinks of a better idea.”

Sam had kept quiet, but it did bug her, so eventually she spoke up.

“Do you think that this should be a team effort?”

“What do you mean?”

“We are following their orders right now, and you lacked confidence when you went along with it.”

“I’m trying to teach like Harlan does. I’ve seen what he did at the academy and I’m trying not to be so prickly towards people.”

“I take it people often call you a bitch behind your back?”

“Oh, so you can hold back?”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“I don’t think you are a cunt, even if everyone else does.”

Amber was trying very hard to do what she just said she was doing, but she had a feeling that Sam knew exactly that fact and was using it against her.

Harlan sat in a tree under a veil, maintaining the illusion of a sky whale moving through the mist along with other spells to make him hard to find.

“Do you think anyone is going to figure it out?”

She was practicing speaking out loud. It wasn’t like she had slipped up before, but Harlan pushed her to remember to watch her thoughts along with her speech.

“Unlikely. They don’t know about sky whales and most people fall for illusions because they don’t look for them.”

“Am I going too hard on them? I don’t really want to break everyone's spirits by making each test too hard to pass.”

“If you had done this when I was training I’d love to see you leave so I could go back to the normal stuff.

I hated how boring it was because I was a prodigy, but at the same time I hated losing so much that this would drive me up a wall.”

Harlan just sat there and tipped his tea.

“You are weirded out because I’m using first person when talking about Eliza, aren’t you?”

“A little.”

“Do you think I could meet Elise next?”

“Once you are used to your body, and if you still think it’s a good idea after a week, then yes, of course you should meet her.”

“Sepul?”

“I’d give a 50/50 of seeing him cry or go red in the face with anger.”

“Guessing both. But why a week after I get used to my body?”

“Remember how Balor sends the men to the brothel after I enhance them?”

“Yeah, blow off steam.”

“Technically yes, but rather it’s because of how I made recovery faster, I’m rushing your body through a lot of processes. For a week you are going to want to do certain things with your body that-”

“Oh, so I’ll fuck like a-”

“I know we had a talk about your breasts when making your body, but I don’t want to hear about what you use it for.”

She just laughed.

Amber had lost everyone over an hour ago, when she tried to call out to someone, anyone really, they’d answer only to not be where their voice was coming from.

She was just sitting there, waiting to find someone.

“Hey.”

Amber jumped up.

“For fucks sake, you can’t sneak up on me like that.”

“I can. I’m gonna call the test here in another few minutes, figure I should talk with you a bit.”

“Here to call me a failure again.”

“I hate seeing you like this, weak. Where is all that fire you had?”

“I’m trying to keep a cool head because that is what a good commander should do. That fire, a lot of it just sorta went out when you got back. I spent years guilty and pissed off that I screwed up, and I dealt with that like you did by talking to Mary.”

“I didn’t just give up my anger though, I kept it separate from myself so I didn’t burn up.”

Harlan let out a sigh and ran his fingers through his hair.

“I’m breaking my word by telling you this. Pull some of that fire back out, kick the shit out of those fuck ups, and graduate.”

“Wow, it took you a day to do that, I’m shocked you held back at all.”

“Don’t give me shit, you’re the one who fucked up to the point where I feel like I need to step in.”

She punched him in the jaw as hard as she could, fracturing his fingers.

“Fuck, you need to enhance me so I can kick your ass again for being such a little shit.”

“Week to recover, but I’ve set back materials for you already. If you graduate, you’ll have a bit of time off and I can do it then.”

“When I graduate.”

Harlan didn’t say anything else, he just walked back into the mist, she knew enough healing to handle herself.

Enten looked over the group of tired and dirty cadets, between the fog and the various arrays and the hour less of sleep they got, most of them ended up tripping and falling more than once.

“I HAVE NEVER SEEN SUCH A SORRY EXCUSE FOR AN EXERCISE. I HAVE RECEIVED NOT A SINGLE ACCURATE REPORT, HALF OF YOU WERE LATE, AND ALMOST ALL OF THOSE WHO SHOWED DID SO IN AN STATE OF UNREST. ALL OF YOU WILL BE RECIVING A REPORT ON HOW EXACTLY YOU FUCKED UP. SIR FOMORIA, DO YOU HAVE ANY COMMENTS?”

“There was never any skywhale. All of you were chasing shadows, but there were correct answers on how you could’ve dealt with the illusions that kept you all from finding your way.

The first would be to blow away the fog, it would’ve bought you a few seconds where divinations actually worked.

Secondly, you could’ve removed the arrays hidden around the forest and camp that were actually making the mist.

Thirdly, you believed the test, part of this is to remember that sometimes you will get bad intel, and you must be able to recognize this as an officer.

Your lives are not yours now, they belong to the state, and they belong to the men under you. Each squad here is made up to cover five important factors.

A warder, a scout, a warmage, a combat mage, and then a jack of all trades. If you cannot use those you have, to get around my test, then you have failed to train your men properly.

You are given a great deal of free reign here, because as you are being trained, you must also learn how to train. I am not yelling at you now because this test was designed by me to make sure you all failed, so I am not disappointed as the high commander. You are dismissed.”

Enten invited Harlan to his tent.

“I thought you didn’t want to share a meal?”

“What was the point of your exercise today? Other than telling the cadets that you believe them incompetent.”

“Footsoldiers follow orders, officers give them, and when the officers are too rigid in their thinking, the footsoldiers die. You gave them a task, and they assumed they knew everything they needed to know.

Bad information kills everyone.”

“I half expected you to say there was another meaning on top of what you actually said.”

“My god is the god of lies, deception, misdirection, and a hundred other ways to say that you can’t trust word she says, but I’m better about it. I’ll lie to a lot of people, but when I am trying to help, then I can be trusted at my word.”

“But if you were lying, then that is what you would say.”

“Enough preamble, what do you actually want?”

“Youth, power, everything else that someone who has served his country for his entire life desires.”

“Now, how would I give you that?”

“Flesh sculpting, you gave the king back his strength, short lived as it was, so I believe you can do the same for me, and many others.”

“I’ll call Rosewell, I’m not doing anything for anyone without her say so. What I can do is dangerous for me, because people who are desperate for a handful of years to live will do anything, so I expect you keep quiet about what you think you know about what I can do.”

Harlan got up and walked away.

He sat in his tent, looking over cadet files, seeking out the ones who he thought he could actually help.

Meanwhile he had his amulet on, waiting for Rosewell to have time to pick up between meetings and whatever else she did as queen.

After an hour she finally answered.

“Harlan, I hope this wasn’t an emergency.”

“The high commander asked that I use flesh sculpting to return his youth.”

“And what does this have to do with me?”

“I declined, saying that I’d speak to you. What I would like is to offer this service only with your approval, as I think you are going to be able to find the people least likely to fuck over both of us when I do it.”

She went silent for a time.

“It could be a good way to ensure loyalty, people know that if they stick around, they are in the running to retire with the body of a 20 year old.”

“Exactly, but there is something else. I want you to pull Redmond from service, I don’t care how, and I don’t care if he knows that I am behind it. Once it gets out what I can do, people will do anything they can to convince me to do it for them.”

“Then I will increase security for the rest of your family as well. I could always have Enten killed instead if he causes trouble.”

“If he threatens me, I will mention it.”

“Very well.”

“You know, you reminded me of your father there for a moment.”

“I don’t have time for personal calls.”

“Sorry, I have nothing else to say. Thank you for your time, and have someone contact me to schedule the appointments once you’ve had your people find the ones worth sculpting.”

“I will, but I likely won’t give you a call for weeks. Those fortresses must have dozens of gate mages and they are constantly sending out raids.”

“Has Sepul said anything? Surely he could work on spatial locks.”

“He said that Cecht told him to stay out of the war, this is the fight of mortals, and you.”

“Sorry I can’t be more help.”

“We might be able to pull back some of the traitors if we offer youth. Many of them are old guard left over from the 14th Yggdra.”

“I could also plant remote destruction spells when I remake their bodies, just in case.”

“I will keep you updated on that end then.”