Mario stood before us, holding the cloth in his hand. We waited eagerly for him to drop it so we could pursue our quarries. My thoughts were in a whirl—working with Lauren, a chance to talk with her, know her, impress her even. But darker thoughts also crept in. What if I disappointed her? What if I got her ejected from the Choosing as well?

Mario yelled, "Under no circumstance can any team interfere with the hunt or quarry of another team. We care not how you procure the head of your quarry, just that the last team to do so is ejected."

I stood there, trying to feel familiar in the half Griidsuit. The suit was heavy, cumbersome, yet filled with potential. I tried to adjust my stance, hoping to find some measure of comfort and readiness.

Then the voice was in my ear. "Oh, another chance to see how you do at gaining attributes."

I muttered under my breath, "I don't think Beam is going to be much use for most of this. Finding the thing is going to be the challenge, waddling around fast enough to get to it is going to be the problem."

The voice replied, "Oh, I know, but you rose to the challenge before. I'm sure you'll impress again. Have you decided what attributes you will focus on now?"

"Walking... I guess," I said, frustration evident in my tone.

The voice cackled. "Oh, that's very funny. What about a more specific skill?"

I snapped at the voice, quietly so Lauren wouldn't hear me. "Will Cut help me chase after it faster? What the hell are you talking about?"

The voice chortled more. "I thought you were trained, you silly fop. You've only been looking at the combat skills. You know there are more, don't you?"

I screwed my eyes shut, trying to recall my training. My tutors had focused so much on finding ways to gain skill with the suit, to grow into it, but my head swam with the details.

The voice said, "Ask for the attribute tree."

I sighed. Mario was still blathering, so I thought, "Attribute tree."

A menu appeared on my HUD with subheadings:

Combat

Passive

Unique

Fields

My eyes widened as I stared at the options, realizing just how much more there was to the suit than I had considered.

The voice giggled in my ear, "Check out the passive menu."

I sighed, watching Mario. He was ranting, building to a crescendo. I didn't want to be caught distracted when he dropped the cloth and set us after the beasts. I thought "passive," and a new menu appeared:

Sight 0.0

Scent 0.0

Hearing 0.0

Spectra 0.0

Strength 0.0

The voice picked at me. "Scent might be key to this endeavor... of course, you still need to get better at actually moving about. You look like a walking abortion most of the time. We need to do something about that as well."

My attention returned to the world as I dismissed the HUD and watched Mario drop the cloth, freeing us to act.

"Come on," Lauren snapped at me and strode away from the clearing toward where our beast had disappeared into the undergrowth.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

She attempted to pace up to a jog, not doing badly but becoming less stable as she did so. I tried to follow, increasing my pace, turning me into a drunken child, staggering.

I muttered to the voice, "I would have thought all the time I spent fighting yesterday would have given me at least some Agility attribute..."

The voice replied, "No, silly. Agility has nothing to do with being able to walk like you didn't have ale for blood. The cure to your walking woes is just exposure, practice, attunement. It will come. All you did yesterday was shuffle backward the whole time. Today will be much better for that."

I followed Lauren as she stepped into the obscurity of the foliage. I whispered to the voice, "Okay then, how do I get better at the scent attribute?"

The voice giggled, "How do you think?"

"What, do I just smell a lot?" I asked, frustrated.

The voice was silent.

"Seriously?" I pressed.

"Yes," it finally replied, "but you need to concentrate on it, ignoring your other senses, really opening yourself to scent, inviting the suit to feed you with information."

I tried to focus on moving swiftly behind Lauren, my feet constantly threatening to tangle themselves. Acknowledging to myself for the first time that this voice was truly real, I asked, "Who are you? What are you?"

Stumbling but keeping my feet as I entered the tangle of the undergrowth behind Lauren, the voice replied, "It took you until now to wonder about that? Silly, silly, silly. We won't worry about that for now."

Suddenly, I bumped into Lauren's back where she had stopped, nearly knocking both of us over. She turned to me, frustrated but hopeful, and said, "We need to follow the fiend."

"I know," I replied, "but it's long gone."

She gave me a steady look. "You know there's a scent attribute."

I felt stupid. I should have known there was a scent attribute. Had my tutors not told me, or had I just failed to retain the knowledge? I stuttered, trying to be natural with her, unable to stop thinking about how glorious she was, how beautiful, admiring her steadiness, her commitment to the task at hand. "Yeah, I know there's a scent attribute."

She just stared at me. After a moment, I asked, "What?"

"You gained the beam in a day," she said, sincere and admiring. "That's a hard skill to master."

At first, I didn’t understand, then I realized. "What, you think I can just master scent as well?"

Her next words were sincere, admiring even. "You mastered the beam in a day. You have a special way with the attributes, maybe."

I snorted. "I gained one point in something. I don't know if that means I'm particularly good at gaining attributes. If that's true, then I'll pass everyone in a week and win the suit easily."

She continued to look at me, seeming to consider. My mind flashed back to the smile she gave me as she entered her carriage the day before. "What, you think I'm going to win this thing?"

"Tiberius," she said, "I intend to win the suit. Technically, I'm at the top of the table. I won three matches yesterday. But Lance and Gideon are going to be hard to get past. And you... yesterday you did something really amazing. You're behind now, but I can't help but wonder if that's going to change. I'd rather see you win than Lance."

I was taken aback, my head swimming at these words of interest and encouragement. "Even though I'm just a shopkeep?"

She smiled, a little bitter, a little apologetic. "If you win, you'll found your own house. You'll be a lord and the heir to the greatest fortune in Boston. Everyone will have to respect you."

I tried to process her words and chuckled. "But you're going to win."

She smiled back. "Damn straight, but today I think you might be able to help us both get through. Try to scent."

"Why don't you try?" I asked.

"I am trying," she said. Then, sadly, "Nothing's happening."

I absorbed her admission, paused. "Give me a minute."

"Try to be fast," she said, her lower face exposed. She pursed her beautiful lips, and my cheeks grew hot at her expectation.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a moment, and tried to focus on the scent attribute. Ignoring my other senses, I invited the suit to feed me with information, hoping it would guide me to our quarry.

I tried to open myself to the scent attribute, taking a deep breath and focusing all my attention on my sense of smell. At first, there was a flicker of hope, a momentary feeling that I might actually succeed. But that hope quickly faded as thoughts of pressure and expectation crept in. Lauren stood there, waiting, impatient and intent on me. I could feel her eyes on me, the weight of her expectations pressing down on my shoulders.

I tried again, but my thoughts drifted further from the task of scenting. Instead, I imagined the consequences of failure—her disappointment, her waning interest. Worse, our ejection from the Choosing, her crushing sadness, my father's loss, and the implications of something like poverty. These thoughts clouded my mind, making it impossible to focus.

After a time, Lauren seemed to grow uneasy. "Okay, never mind, it was a dumb idea. It's not like I should have expected anything." She turned, peering into the undergrowth, touching a broken branch of a bush. "We can try to follow the trail. I... I don't know anything about trails, but we can't just stand around."

She took a few steps from me, her voice urging, "Come on, forget it, let's go."

But I didn't move. Absently, I said, "Wait."