Three days later, Leland was having trouble against a quick-moving gnat. The monster being the size of a tree wasn’t the issue, it was the fact it moved with the alacrity and flourish of a sparrow. Darting around trees and swooping to attack, the bug chased Leland despite lightning pulsing from his feet with every step.

“So!” Isobel yelled from the side. “You are countered by flying enemies! How are you going to kill it if your steps can’t hit it!?”

Leland wasn’t allowed to think through the question. Having to constantly move while focusing on the power and angle of his steps made problem solving a second priority. Luckily for him, the gnat was less than stellar at actually attacking. It had freshly long feeler-arms, but they were thin and straggly, easily allowing Leland to free himself from its clutches.

So while he wasn’t truly in danger, Leland still felt the pressure. Defeating the monster was a top priority, unless he wanted to constantly be mocked for failing the trial.

The Huntress had apologized, yes, but she was still far away from being an authority figure to look up to… at least to Leland. She had all but stopped criticizing and toying with Sybil and instead adopted a hesitant guilt.

Sybil didn’t know which she liked better if she was being honest.

“This would be easier if I was allowed to use my actual magic!” Leland yelled, somehow finding a moment of clarity to think.

He didn’t see it, but Isobel gave a weak shrug. “Then use your magic!”

That was all he needed to hear, stepping abruptly to the side. Staying low, Leland slid across the loose dirt, blue lightning following in his wake with a muted clap of thunder. Mana and lifeforce quickly came together, forming at the tip of his fingers.

“Fracture,” he sneered before quickly adding, “fracture, fracture, fracture!”

Each curse was punctuated by the snap of his fingers and the snap of bone. Or, well, in this case, exoskeleton. The gnat buckled, the location where its wing connected to its body suddenly becoming mangled.

“Kneel before me!” Leland then screeched, his eyes now burning with a purple heatless fire.

Around the monster flumes of a likewise flame appeared, each sprouting from the very ground birthing a soul of the Damned. Within moments, the gnat was dead and a freshly harvested lost soul was in Leland’s hands.

“Time for the true test now,” Isobel said, stalking closer with Sybil by her side.

Leland shuddered a sigh, staring into the soul like it was a lifeline for the future. Which, in a way, it was. Ethereal winds only he could feel started blowing once Lodestar was fully summoned. They pushed his back, urging him to claim his fate with the very weapon he held. His path was simple, toward the eternal storm that somehow still seemed to grow no closer.

“Twenty nine paces that way,” Isobel said, pointing parallel to the storm.

Leland grunted, springing off while mentally estimating how much time the Lord of Erupting Skies’ contract would last for. The gnat took much longer than it should have, giving him, what he guessed to be, only a few minutes left of speed.

Twenty nine paces in terms of Erupting Steps easily carried him triple the distance he expected. Distance sprinting was not yet a thing he had practiced with his new contract.

Still, he didn’t have time to waste, so he got to work. After a brief inspection of the monster he now faced, Leland sprung into action. His goal wasn’t to kill it as fast as possible, but to see how Lodestar’s pathway acted in combat.

This was not his first attempt at this – not even his tenth attempt – but he still felt he needed the practice. In fact, Leland felt as though his previous attempts were moot. From tripping over his feet to failing to move in the correct direction, reading his pathway when it was in combat mode was akin to bashing his head into a wall over and over again.

He was doing something wrong, he knew. Yet that wasn’t the frustrating part, nor was Isobel’s thoughts on the matter. No, what truly pushed Leland to rush ahead of his only protector and guard was the chance of solving his problem.

Gah, he felt as though he was dealing with the unknown aspect of Soul Fire again.

The monster this time was a four armed humanoid creature that looked as if its extra appendages were sewn on with seashells. It foamed at its mouth, a salty brine draining from far within its body and into its extremely puffed-out cheeks.

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The winds of the pathway veered to the side, Leland doing the same. The monster unleashed the stored brine like the blast of a cannon. The attack missed by a hair, sundering six trees deep into the woods.

Leland gaped, realizing he may be outmatched this time around.

The monster let out a horrid squawk, each seashell on its body opening and closing like a bundle of children laughing.

And just like that Leland suddenly found himself utterly devoted to seeing this thing’s demise. In the back of his mind, he knew and understood that the monster had just activated a magical ability of some kind, artificially angering him. But with Jude as a friend, Leland knew just how valuable rage could be.

The effect didn’t undermine his wish to better understand his pathway, however… at least partially.

The winds spiked, pulling Leland up into the air. Leland didn’t hesitate, following the upstream into the air with a leap. Lightning burst from his toes, propelling him far higher than he might usually jump. He felt no fear during this, the wind collapsing into him from overhead before spinning abruptly. Leland did exactly that, landing hard and fast before pivoting and sprinting off in the opposite direction.

The monster’s beam of water followed him into the air, chasing him just a moment too late. When he landed, the beam cut into the ground, the monster overcompensating,tearing up the mulch at the same time. Then, Leland was suddenly in its face, and the monster scrambled to puff its cheeks once again.

But Leland didn’t attack. Not yet. He still had time, and his instincts told him to keep going. So, the game of cat and mouse restarted, and all the while the winds of fate blew him to the best possible pathway.

At some point Leland struck, shearing a harsh line through the creature’s torso with the curved blade of the scythe. While the blow didn’t so much as draw blood, the monster’s soul was unequivocally sheared. Again the seashells along its body laughed, this time with a pain befitting fearful cheer.

The wind went crazy.

Leland couldn’t follow, not fast enough. From his front, from his back. To the left and right. The wind was everywhere, mixing together away from the monster with the gall of an explosion. He went to run away, but his steps only took him a few feet away. From his side, his grimoire spun around, solidifying his fears.

The contract had expired.

Then he saw it, the pathway forward. In between certain death and visions of his mangled body, there was a single route out of the hellstorm that was chaos.

In the moments directly after the monster’s self-explosion, Leland had to replay the situation multiple times over in his mind, each time slower than the last. There was no plan, no analytical weighing of the best course of action, not even a lame thought of “what do I do?”

No, Leland, fueled by enough artificial rage to turn the head of a berserker, followed his instinct through the chaos.

He started with slamming his palm into his grimoire, enacting the contract with the Lord of Water. The shield made of swirling water formed within heartbeats, rushing to his aid as he fell into a kneel. He braced himself, leveraging the shield at such an angle that most of the explosion would roll off rather than directly bash into.

The monster detonated, sending a crash of salt water into Leland. The winds urged him to lurch with the explosion, not that he had the arm strength to flat out resist.

Thrown back, Leland landed with a rain of liquid. Most of it was water, but there was plenty of blood mixed in as well. The force had dug into the little real estate of his body that was left unprotected by his shield, flaying his pants and sheering into his skin.

With a groan, Leland then pressed into his grimoire once again, this time for the Lord of Nature. His hand glowed with regenerative virtue, and soon, the smallest of his wounds closed.

“Can’t say I’ve seen many exploding monsters,” Isobel said, suddenly appearing next to him.

“Instinct,” Leland muttered back, his breath ragged.

“What’s that?”

“I would have died, if— if I didn’t trust in my pathway.”

Isobel made a thoughtful noise. She turned, finding Lodestar blasted away. As she went to retrieve it, the scythe bled into the ground like a soul of the Damned, disappearing from her sight. She spun, finding the weapon now rising from the ground directly into Leland’s hand.

“I might actually hate you,” she muttered. “You have no idea how powerful of a weapon that scythe is. And that was even before the Lord of Pathways blessed it.”

Leland sat up. “Oh trust me, I’m starting to see how crucial it will be for my future.”

Isobel scoffed, turning to find Sybil still jogging over. She had to hand it to the girl, she was nothing if not tenacious. Any other prince or princess would have pouted about the situation, but not Sybil. With some luck, the girl would end up like her mother and not her aunt.

“Melee isn’t your thing, kid. Why’d you go in for the hit?”

Leland scowled at that. “You told me to use Erupting Steps and my physical prowess for the time being.”

“’Physical prowess,’ eh?” Isobel forced herself to stifle a giggle. “While it is true, you’ve gotten faster and stuff. You are not cut out to fight head to head. Your non-contract spells all work around that Circle of Souls spell. They buy time for you to rip out a soul. Breaking bones, slowing, crows to distract. You get the point. And it’s time you progress in that department.”

“A-are you saying I’ve grown proficient enough at Erupting Steps to start phase two of your training regiment, O’ wise teacher?”

Isobel smirked at that. “We’ll start with those crows of yours—”

“No.”

“’No?’”

“I need to rank up all of my spells. Starting with just one is inefficient.”

“You’ll lose a lot of nuance to your abilities. Subtle details like how to best utilize individual aspects. No doubt you aren’t using each of your spells to their fullest.”

Leland agreed with that, giving her a deep head nod. “But that can come later. For now I just need raw power if I’m going to have any semblance of hope where we are going. And progressing as many spells as quickly as possible is the way to do that.”

Isobel turned to look at the storm. “You may be right about that.”