“Without focus, you will die, and this world will be doomed. Now try again, and succeed.” Terathon told Rusty.

“I’m sorry,” Rusty murmured, fighting to keep from blinking. “This is very hard.”

“The Dark Lord will not care about apologies,” Terathon said, folding his arms. “He will simply end you. He will not hesitate, he will not give you that extra second of time. And if you close your eyes in front of him, you shall never open them again.”

“I attend, teacher,” Rusty recited.

Terathon nodded. “Sit down. Practice until you are ready once more.”

Each of the wizards had a room in the tower, that was dedicated to teaching the prospective Chosen. Terathon’s was the coziest, with two fireplaces to either side, rugs that were multiple stitched pelts of some sort of bearlike creature with dull red fur, and lanterns that covered the corners where the fireplaces didn’t reach. There was actual wood paneling on the walls, that helped hold heat better than the rest of Lasthold, and the windows had wooden shutters. Taxidermied animals stared down from mountings along the walls, judging the students with blank glass gazes. There was a balcony on the far wall, and through the warped glass of it, Rusty could see water sluicing down onto the stones of it from above. There had to be a downspout or channel, given how much was pouring when the rain was even and gentle.

In most cases, it would have been a good place to sleep. And given an easier class, or a more boring or uninvolved teacher, Rusty might have been tempted. Their days started early, filled with exercise and learning. The classes were uneven, without set times or any measured length. Often they worked until the stars were out, practicing and training and doing their best to absorb the lessons. They were graded as a class, and the failure of one was the failure of all.

For Rusty, who’d regularly had to wake up hours earlier back when he was still going to school, and hike with his siblings over to the Dyson farm to hitch a ride into town in Barry Dyson’s truck, this wasn’t so bad. And his total recall made remembering the lessons earlier. It was cheating, just a little bit, but he had been doing his best to help the others get through stuff.

That said, this didn’t work too well with Terathon’s class.

In the last week they’d had five different classes. In survival class, Terathon had taught them about the plants and animals to avoid in Elythia. In composure class, Zarkimorr had painstakingly taken them through what Ken called etiquette and protocol. Exercise hadn’t required memory, and Jadar’s assensing class was easy enough to follow. For the first two, they could study together and pool their knowledge, make sure that everyone was on the same page when they were called up to answer the questions that the teachers had them memorize. It was hard to tell if this pleased the wizards, but overall, it seemed to be working.

But the problem with the focusing class was that when a student demonstrated that they could master a technique, Terathon taught them the next technique, and set them to practicing THAT one. So there was no chance to pool their knowledge, and to be honest, Rusty could kind of understand how that might not be too helpful anyway. You couldn’t really show people what was going on in your head.

“You kind of could, but then they’d probably Janice you,” Roz told him, from his position on one of the empty seats.

Shhh… Rusty thought, and went back to trying to get the words to appear with his eyes open.

It was difficult. It was ludicrously difficult, especially with the rain rattling on the window, and the motion catching his eyes every time he tried to focus on the words.

“I can’t get them to come out right,” Ken said, from the back of the room, where he had been tasked to turn in circles with his eyes closed while spellcasting. “I get three words in, and then I go for the fourth one, and the first one or two go away. I don’t know if I can do this, teacher.”

Terathon leaned back in his horn-and-antler chair, and considered Ken. Rusty couldn’t help but listen to the unfolding drama, though he didn’t dare look back and risk drawing the wizard’s ire.

But there was no anger in Terathon’s voice, just a mild, measured calmness. “It is a difficult thing that you are attempting. And you are attempting to master it quickly. I was apprenticed for ten years, before I managed to get four words. But I persevered. My master decreed to me that I must be able to picture at least six words, before he gave me the chance to win my first rune. And after the first four, the next two were much easier.

“However, you are not training to be a wizard,” he told Ken. “You are training to be the Chosen One. And if you admit defeat here, then you shall not be the Chosen One. But you shall aid the cause of goodness, regardless. Do you wish to give up?”

Rusty couldn’t see Ken, but he heard the guy start turning around again.

Terathon nodded in satisfaction.

There was something to Ken. He’d fast become Rusty’s best friend, in the last week. And he had a lot of cool stories about Los Angeles. Now he wanted to see it someday.

“Well, we’ll both have to survive this to do that,” Roz pointed out. “Hey! If he’s having trouble remembering stuff, you could fix that! Uh… wait, no. That might get us Janiced. Or is it Beeled? I like Beeled better, that sounds like peeled, which is what I bet they did to her.”

Not helping, Rusty thought, as he tried to ignore Terathon, and the smell of pipe smoke, and the flickering of the fire light, and the pattering of rain drops. The words would form, then scatter. He’d managed the five earlier exercises without trouble, but this was hard.

SHRIP! Rusty whipped his head around, to see Gunther grinning like a fool, and wisps of parchment drifting to the floor. “I did it!” he told Terathon proudly.

“Good,” Terathon said, rising and handing him a new sheet of parchment. “Now do it again in half the time or less.”

The smug look on the German boy’s face made Rusty’s hackles rise up a bit. And a thought occurred to him. “Teacher, I have a question,” he asked, as Terathon moved back towards his seat.

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“Do you?” Terathon turned, cupping the bowl of his long pipe with three fingers. “Then speak, child.”

“Can we cheat to make this easier? Like, could I make a hole in the way I keep getting distracted, so that it isn’t as strong of a problem?” Except he wouldn’t exactly be doing that, he’d be using the Memory rune to fix his brain a bit more. And help Ken and the others with it, too. Even Gunther. Well, if he asked nicely. Maybe.

Terathon considered the question, puffed on the pipe, and blew smoke as his eyes held Rusty’s. For a second he was afraid that Terathon knew what he was planning, knew he wasn’t telling the whole of the truth.

“Lying about the Hole truth, in this case,” Roz quipped.

“Before I tell you why you could do that, let me tell you of the risks that you would undergo by doing that,” Terathon said. “Then you may decide.”

Rusty heard Ken stop turning. Gunther and Alice shifted in their seats.

“This is a lesson you were not due to gain for a few more classes,” Terathon said, pacing back and forth, seeming to gather his thoughts. “Reevian will be upset that I am telling you this early. He was the one to teach it, but he can teach you of charms, instead, I think. Yes, this will work. Put your practice aside for now and attend, and we shall speak of committed chakra and enchantments.”

Rusty started to pipe up and say that he knew what those were, but he shut up the second he realized that Terathon might ask just what enchantments he had going already.

Terathon’s eyes locked on his, and Rusty froze, but the wizard merely smiled and nodded. “And now your familiars are trying to tell you, in their chaotic and confused way—”

“Hey!” Roz shouted, inaudibly to everyone save Rusty.

“—about just what those are. They do not speak of such things unless they are mentioned or needed. Probably because they are complex, and dangerous,” Terathon continued.

Wait, they’re dangerous? Rusty thought furiously at Roz.

“Yeah, and so are hydra things eating our face. Besides, the stuff I told you about was useful, right?”

So far…

Terathon continued, oblivious. “Enchantments are spells that are meant to continue on until you remove them. The chakra you use to cast these spells remains used, to fuel the spell, until you cancel it or you overextend yourself.”

“What happens then?” Gunther asked, and Rusty held his breath. The wizards generally didn’t like being interrupted. All the same, he was glad that SOMEONE had asked it before he did.

“When you overextend yourself? When your chakra pool reaches its lowest point?” Terathon smiled, grimly. “Then you pull from the chakra that your body uses to sustain itself, and keep you healthy. You pull chakra from your soul itself, and you wither. And if you reach too far, you die.”

The room was silent. Rusty heard Alice whimper, just a bit. Or maybe it was Ken. Probably not Gunther, but he couldn’t rule that out, either.

“Have…” Rusty’s voice broke, but he wanted to know so very badly. “Have you ever done that?”

“Every wizard has, a bit. But the pain discourages one from pushing too far deep into one’s very last reserves. You lose something when you persist. It takes an immense effort of will to gain significant power from destroying the lightning your body needs to live, to work your brain, to make your limbs respond to your desires. To feel…” Terathon looked down at his left hand, flexed the fingers. His pinky finger didn’t move in synch with the others. “Of us, only Zarkimorr has significantly done this. He is actually much, much younger than he appears. But he dug deep, and lost literally years of his future.”

Another horrified silence.

“But, this is only one reason why enchantments are dangerous,” Terathon said, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers together, folding the rogue pinky in with his other digits. “They occupy chakra that stands between you and the well crumbling, it is true. But also, when you dig too deep, they fail. When you pull the chakra that is sustaining them away, they desert you. So any mental trick you might devise to aid your concentration, any… cheating… as you put it, that would go away. Probably when you are in the most dangerous situation in your lives. And you would lose the trick that made things easier. What happens then, when you must return to doing things the hard way and you never learned to do it properly?”

Vigorous nodding, all around, and Terathon’s grim smile relaxed. He rose, and walked around the room, peering at each of the trophy heads of the animals, touching them as he went, trailing his fingers across their preserved hides. “And then there is the third reason. If you did find a way to use your runes to alter your mind, it is quite possible that it would change many, many things you did not intend to change. Do you know that I have made a study of the innards of every creature I have found, in this world?”

They all shook their heads in unison.

“For all they are different, for all that the colors and substances of the organs within their skulls are like nothing I’ve seen from—” Terathon cut himself off. “They work the same way as ours do. The gentle streams of chakra flow within, and there are a million million million strands of memories woven and connected by the nerves. Chemicals from different parts keep it whole and functional. Everything we feel, everything we perceive, all of this filters from our brain to our soul. And the runes do not often take their delicacy into account. The runes, in fact, do what you ask them to do, and damn the consequences. And if the consequences are that they have to pinch off a few parts of the memories, and this causes some other part of your brain to make extra chemicals because it thinks that something is very, very wrong, then it could possibly change the way you think entirely. And you might not know. Not until it is too late to repair.”

Terathon rapped the skull of something like a stag with its horns around its head like a lion’s mane, and walked slowly to the front of the room, gazing at each of them in turn. Meeting their eyes, and seemingly satisfied by what he saw there.

And Rusty knew it was a risk, but he had to know. “But what about Janice? Her rune, it affected the grach’s mind, right? Was that why she had to be taken away?”

“Janice?” Terathon blinked. “Who is Janice?”

“She was the other girl,” Alice whispered. “Don’t you remember her name, sir?”

“Ah. That one.” Terathon bowed his head. “I see. She was not taken away because her rune was one that affected the mind. But it was one that opened her up to corruption from the dark lord. It has been removed from her, and she has been returned home.”

That comforted Rusty a little. Up until his eidetic memory brought back his discussion with Terathon about how Terathon had put his best rune in his neck, to make it harder to remove. Now while he was relieved to hear that she was alive, he wondered what part of her they’d cut off. And the idea of her crying, holding herself while blood streamed down, flashed before his eyes.

“No, no I don’t think we’ll tell him about our first rune any time soon,” Roz said. “You seem to like your arms. Be a shame to lose one of them.”

“Now you know why you should avoid… cheating, in this matter,” Terathon said, and clapped his hands. “Does anyone wish to do so?”

They bent to the task with new willpower, and somehow it was easier to focus, now.

This went on up until Reevian burst through the door, panicking.