The ceremony lasted until everyone had formed their contracts which meant a lot of waiting around for Finlay. The group he was in was the second to finish and there was an area set up for people to gather while the others completed the formations. Most of the people there already knew at least one other person so they had gathered into their own groups. There was an excited buzz in the air but many of the candidates also seemed exhausted from multiple attempts at forming their contracts.

When Keira’s group finished and she was free to leave, she immediately came to Finlay. The glaive had reshaped back into the simple, short spear but it was the look on her face that worried him. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to the nearest wall, away from the others in the waiting space.

“I have a problem,” she whispered once they were clear from the others.

“What’s going on?”

“Okay look, we had to pick a core right, well the one thing that kept coming back to me was that day.”

“At the station?”

“Yes, and I kept thinking about how close I was to giving up, that I felt so weak, like I couldn’t take it any longer and just wanted to accept it.”

“Okay, but you didn’t.”

“You don’t get how close I was to doing just that. Anyway—the thing I had on my mind was that no matter what, I wanted to be able to fight, to keep going, to endure whatever was thrown at me because at least then I’d have a chance.”

“That sounds reasonable, Faye would probably have told you off for being too abstract but I certainly can't criticise that.”

She hesitated, it seemed she never got the same speech he had. “The spirit answered, in fact, it almost felt happy.”

“I’m not seeing where the problem is.”

“I had this understanding, I guess. I don’t know. It sort of came to me as an answer—it was telling me how it would work without actually talking to me. But I knew what it wanted to say.”

“From what I've been told, that's what it's supposed to feel like.”

“It wanted me to know that no matter how injured I was, as long as I kept fighting, kept killing so it could take on the spirits of those we fought; I’d be healed, and be stronger.”

“I get that the idea of killing things is difficult but we’re talking about demons here, that doesn’t sound like a bad thing to me.”

“That part was fine, except afterwards, I felt an urge, a desire right there and then, right in the middle of that group to attack them, any of them, all of them. It didn’t matter, it wanted me to kill them.”

He hesitated, this was a more distressing thought and it was clear from her face that she was struggling to even look at him as she spoke. She kept looking around as though someone was going to catch what she said and tell the guild who’d punish her in some way. But this wasn’t her fault, it was the intention of the spirit and he knew very well how strong that pull could be.

“It’ll be okay Keira,” he decided to go with the reassuring approach. “You’re going to experience urges and intentions for a while, and because it’s all new it’s going to be hard to understand and even control. But you’ll get the hang of it, and soon enough those feelings won’t be there any more. The spirit probably just needs to learn boundaries.”

“You think it’ll stop? You said when you held the axe it had to be forcefully taken from you. What if it’s like that?”

“If you’re worried we could talk to the guild, I mean, they must have to deal with this sort of thing all the time.”

“But I’ve already formed the contract, it’s different than it was then, I don’t think we can just separate it now.”

“I don’t know, maybe if Sara was here,” he looked over at Faye—she wasn’t unreasonable and she seemed deceptively capable. “Faye was the one who brought me back from the station, she seems close with Ronan and Sara, maybe we could ask her?”

“If you think she might be able to help.”

Faye was talking with one of the other guild members who had been helping a group that had finished. They were laughing which reassured him he wasn’t interrupting anything serious so he asked if she would come to speak with him and Keira for a moment. She gave him a suspicious look but agreed and followed him back to the same place he had been talking with her.

“Who was in charge of your group, you should have asked them straight away,” said Faye after they explained the situation.

“Sorry, he seemed frustrated with some of the other candidates and I didn’t really want to bother him any more than I already had.”

“It’s not a bother, that's why we're here, listen—I understand that you’re feeling scared but it’s going to be okay. The lost boy here wasn’t wrong in what he said. The contract formation is a confusing experience at first because you have to feel what another thing feels as though those feelings were your own emotions. But you’ll get used to it and you’ll learn to control it.”

“Control it, so you’re saying that I’ll still feel this way, I’ll just have to learn to deal with it?”

“Sort of, but the way you’re phrasing it makes it sound like this is going to be something that plagues you for the rest of your life. You control your current urges and emotions naturally in an unconscious manner, and you’ll learn to do the same with these. In time they won’t bother you at all because you’ll be able to separate those feelings, the spirit's feelings from your own and learn to ignore those that you don’t want to deal with.”

“I guess that’s a little reassuring.”

She patted Keira on the shoulder. “You’re going to be fine—just try and focus on what’s going on around you and remind yourself those aren’t your emotions so you can put them to the side.”

“Thanks. I’ll try,” she said in a rather unconvincing manner.

“And don’t feel scared to talk to us, the guild is here to support you through this. You’re not going to be rejected or cast aside because a spirit’s messing with your head. We’ve all been there, trust me.”

That thought helped Keira out more as she seemed to visibly relax and smiled at Faye who in turn turned back to Finlay. “Now how are you doing?”

“I’m fine.”

“No conversations with the amulet? No spirits trying to devour your soul?”

“Actually it’s been really quiet,” he touched the amulet and smiled. “It seems to be quite content.”

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“Content—never heard anyone describe their spirit in that way before. You're a strange one. Well as long as there’s no problems.”

She turned back to Keira again to pat her arm with a final reassuring nod before walking away to return to her previous, happier conversation. Keira was leaning over the spear, unlike the others in the room who were treating their artefacts as though precious objects, she seemed quite content to use it as a walking stick.

“Thanks, that was actually quite helpful,” she said looking up at Finlay.

“I can’t get a read on her at all, but she seems reliable.”

“She likes you. I guess you impressed her when she brought you back.”

“I’m not sure that’s it, she was pretty convinced I had been devoured by the spirit and was trying to fool everyone. Even today she said she still wasn’t convinced.”

“She called you a devoured in front of everyone?”

“Sort of, she said a lot of things actually.”

He explained how his contract formation went and she seemed quite pleased with Faye when he mentioned her defending his amulet. He was starting to think Keira had found a new idol in the guild and he wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not.

“I wish my formation went so smoothly.”

“I get that you’re feeling uncomfortable now, but the contract seemed to go okay. Well, other than you looking like you were on fire and attracting the attention of everyone in the room.”

“Wait, really, that’s how it looked?”

“You didn’t notice? Everyone stopped what they were doing to watch you and find out what was going on.”

“Oh god, I didn’t know, I was too busy in my head dealing with the spirit to register what anyone else was doing.”

“You definitely caused a stir, I’m honestly surprised no one has come to ask you to form a party with them already.”

“I hope I didn’t scare everyone off.”

“No way, you looked very in control throughout. I was only concerned because I saw your face afterwards.”

They talked for a while longer as another group finished so there was only one left. It was the section on the opposite side of the room from him with the couple of people who were loud during their interview process. There were many very frustrated faces in that group and he couldn’t tell if it was towards each other or if they had struggled a lot in forming their contracts.

Some of the established groups started to break up as people met with one another and he felt they should try and do the same. Keira agreed and so they walked over to a group of three nearby, one of which was in his section and introduced themselves.

“Um, how do you know Ms Liscaria?” The girl in the group who was in his section asked him.

“Who?”

“Faye,” she swallowed hard and looked down as she said her name.

“Oh, I don’t really know her, she helped me out a while back that’s all.”

“She seemed very friendly with you.”

He shrugged assuming it wasn't that important. “How do you know her? I didn’t even know her last name.”

She tilted her head with a confused expression and one of the guys interrupted. “Faye Liscaria, are you serious—you don’t know who she is?”

“I mean, I know her obviously, we’ve met but if you’re telling me she’s famous in some way then no, I have no idea.”

“He’s clueless about most things and people, don’t mind the ignorance,” Keira interjected.

He scowled at her knowing full well she had no idea who Faye was either but she just grinned back at him.

“She’s one of the famous five; she’s in the top party in the guild, the strongest group there is,” the boy continued.

“Well, I guess that explains a few things.”

“You’re lucky to have had her in your section, we had some nobody from the guild.”

He exchanged a look with Keira that told him they were both thinking the same thing. That wasn’t a good way to look at things and this was definitely not someone they wanted to share a party with.

“So what weapon do you even have, I don’t see one?” The boy said, looking Finlay up and down.

“He has a necklace,” the girl replied.

“What? A necklace, I’ve never heard anything like that,” he couldn’t even hold his laughter as he spoke.

“I’m inclined to think of it more as an amulet than a necklace but sure,” he pulled the amulet out from beneath his shirt. He had tucked it under before going to the group for no real reason other than it felt comfortable.

“I don’t get it, what does it do?”

“I don’t know if it does anything in particular beyond what other artefacts and spirits do.”

The boy continued to look at the amulet for a moment but soon lost interest and with that realisation, seemed to lose all interest in Finlay. He turned to Keira instead who was leaning on her spear again.

“We all saw what happened to you. I’m guessing you’re pretty strong, how about we form a party? I have a sword myself.”

“No thanks.”

The sharp and simple response disarmed him completely and he seemed unable to respond but the other girl who had been talking spoke instead. “You must have high Anam levels to put out such a strong aura during the contract formation.”

“I guess, I don’t really know much about all that though.”

She had become dismissive, it seemed she had decided the entire group was no longer worth their time from the boy’s responses alone. He wasn’t so sure if that was true though so decided to try and continue the conversation.

“She’s exceptional, she’s going to be one of the top members of the guild, I’m sure of it.”

“I guess you two know each other well then?” The girl asked.

“We’ve been together since we were children,” Keira confirmed.

“We live near one another and basically grew up together,” said Finlay.

“I’ve been training with the sword since I was young, I knew I’d get a sword,” the boy interrupted deciding his attempts to recruit a powerful ally was more important than their backstory together.

“I’m sure you’re very skilled,” said Keira.

He hesitated again, unsure how to take her dismissive nature. “I’ve been looking for strong people, I want to form the strongest party in our cohort.”

“Well, I wish you good luck with that.”

Finlay was trying not to laugh but struggled so decided it was a better decision to leave this group and seek out another. He grabbed Keira’s arm and pulled her away, thanking them for the introductions and wishing them all the best. He did want to meet other people after all and this was one of the better opportunities to do that.

“Ignorant people,” Keira huffed as they walked away.

“You might need to relax a little on that front, I suspect most will judge my artefact poorly at first.”

“They don’t know anything about it, or what it can do, they’re all new at this—who are they to judge?”

“We don’t know anything about it or what it can do either.”

“And she called it a necklace, that was definitely a dig, a passive-aggressive little dig.”

“You’re overthinking things, I don't think there's much difference between a necklace and an amulet.”

They milled around a few other groups and had similar responses in each. Some were curious about his Amulet at first but soon lost interest when he told them that there was no secret magical wonder to it. They all, as expected, wanted to party up with Keira.

“I told you this was how it was going to go, everyone wants a piece of the flashy fire girl.”

“You were supposed to be the fireball-flinging one, how did I end up with that title?”

“I wonder what would happen if they found out you nearly set the shrine on fire with that sword.”

“Don’t even joke about telling people that.”

“It seems like our Anam level is important to these people and I guess that big aura of yours made everyone convinced you were super high level.”

“It’s annoying, I want to know about the people, know if we’d get on working together, if they are trustworthy and thoughtful, not just how much Anam they possess. Everyone’s obsessed with it.”

“If you’re looking for people to go into dangerous areas with, you want them to be strong, preferably stronger than you. It makes sense, even if it comes over a little shallow.”

They continued on their quest to find people who had more to say than their level and skill with the weapon they’d selected but it was proving difficult. But after the last section finished their contracts, a new area opened up for them to socialise further. Tables lined the walls which held food and drinks and everyone immediately rushed to grab plates.

Finlay noticed that one boy was alone, he had been in the last section and it seemed as though everyone was avoiding him. He suspected the boy might have held up the group from finishing, perhaps struggling with his contract formation causing the others to become frustrated, but there was something about him that felt familiar.

“Let’s go talk to him.”