Tulland moved up to the man’s stand, keeping his shoulders slouched in a defeated, sad-sack sort of way as he closed in. The man watched Tulland with a mostly bored curiosity as he came to a stop in front of his stand. Licht had been exaggerating when he said that the man’s oranges were moldy, but barely. In addition to not being that much like oranges, they were obviously withered and bruised.

“An orange,” Tulland said, as quietly as he could. Quieter, in fact, then he thought the man could probably hear. “Please.”

“What? Speak up, weakling.” The man pounded his big fist down on the table, fast enough and with a loud enough sound that he almost startled Tulland in earnest. “What do you want?”

“My mistress desires fruit. I need to buy some,” Tulland said, a little louder, before looking doubtful and raising his voice to a level of almost shouting. “I’d like to buy an orange!”

“Good elephantine god, boy. Quiet down before people think I’m killing you.” The man glanced towards Necia, who was leaning on someone else’s house with a spoiled, disinterested look on her face. “Is she as bad as they say? I heard she was giving you a hard time in the bar.”

Tulland looked at Necia in mock panic, then back to the man, replying in a whisper. “Yes. Worse. They sent five people in to accompany the young miss and I’m the only one who made it through.”

“Well, it’s not like you have to obey her now. No going back, you know.”

“Maybe.” Tulland looked doubtful. “I took some oaths, before we left. Those aren’t just words, back home. Don’t know what happens if I break them here. And given what I swore to… don’t want to risk it. Do you have the oranges, or not?”

“I do.” The man nodded. “What do you have to trade?”

“This.” Tulland pulled out a small sack of rice, about the size of both his fists bunched together. “Good enough, I think?”

The man’s eyes were wide and attentive. “Where’d you get this, boy?”

“There’s enough there to pay you for not asking that. Doesn’t matter, anyway. The last five floors are behind us. You’ll take it?”

“Of course. But…” The man looked down at his gross fruits, doubtfully. “These aren’t much good at this point. Sure she’ll want them? I wouldn’t want to get you in more trouble.”

“If her idea doesn’t work out, that’s one thing. If I fail…”

“It’s another. I understand.” The man tossed Tulland one of the fruits and scooped up the rice. “Thanks for this. I’ll remember it.”

Tulland walked away from the stand with the orange in hand, unable to put it in his dimensional storage and not wanting to reveal the fact that he had such a thing to anyone who might be watching. As Necia made a big show of being unsatisfied with the fruit her idiot servant had brought her, they made their way back to camp.

“Oh, the place doesn’t smell as bad now.” Necia wrinkled her nose. “It still stinks, though.”

“I think about half of that fertilizer is already sopped up, by now. The plants had a lot of my magic in them when we left. They need the fuel to grow.” Tulland opened the door to a whole lot of new green growing on top of soil that looked more or less dried and normal now. “And as soon as I plant the other side and get it going, it should be pretty much cleaned up.”

It took him about an hour to arrange everything just the way he wanted. The three new tree seeds each had their own little section of farm, and he filled in the gap between all of his preexisting plants with food seeds. Then, he added the grasses and grass seeds he had picked up. Where there was space left, and there was plenty, he went around planting every useless little weed and shrub he had picked up during his journeys, emptying out his entire seed pouch in one big go. In the end, he was growing every single plant he could be, and was draining his magic power into getting them healthy and tall every time it refilled.

“That’s already green.” Necia nodded approvingly at the sprouting grasses. “Think this will do it?”

“It’s everything I can do, besides the orange, some mosses that need trees to grow, and those yellow flowers you like. It’s every plant I’ve ever encountered, besides some things I found on the first level. I wish I hadn’t left some of those behind now,” Tulland said.

“So we wait,” Necia concluded.

“Yeah. Not much more than that. I’ll get on cooking food, if you just want to sit outside.”

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“Tulland, you’re speaking my language. That will do fine.”

—

Tulland held his pitchfork down at his side, while standing a big, suitably empty space to practice in.

“The first step here, Tulland, is to actually understand what you do. I understand you aren’t a melee combat focused class, but I have no idea how bad you are.”

“Gee, thanks. Good old Licht, always making a guy feel good.”

“Don’t take it personally. You reacted to my arrow like no one ever taught you how to dodge. Basically everyone I’ve ever met who got into combat situations had combat training. Even magician classes learn how to do staffwork. Every little bit helps, so people take classes.” Licht pantomimed swinging a staff awkwardly in front of him, as if keeping a horde of beasts at bay. “But you haven’t at all, right? I can tell.”

“He hasn’t. Agreed.” Necia didn’t give Tulland a chance to answer before reaching down and lifting up his pitchfork. “Now, Tulland, to start, weapons come in several classes, but broadly you are looking at swords, spears, axes, and clubs of various lengths. I use a medium length sword, and Licht uses a shorter length when he’s not using his crossbow.”

“I would have called it a dagger.”

“So would anybody. It doesn’t change its classification as a very short sword. And its implication on how it’s used. Licht, could you hold your dagger out?”

Licht complied, extending his dagger out slightly above his waist level with the point aimed upwards.

“Now, look at his hand. See how his thumb sits? He’s not just grasping it in a fist, and that gives him a bit more flexibility. He can pivot it further, and it reaches a bit farther. Now, look at me.” Necia held her sword out in about the same way Licht had. “See how the grip is really similar? I can tell Licht learned from a slightly different school of thought, but what it works in the same general way. Now, hold your own weapon out. Like you were going to stab Licht with it.”

Licht turned to face Tulland aggressively, or at least in an aggressive stance. Tulland brought up his weapon, for the first time aware that he was doing it almost exactly wrong. As the tines leveled out, he found that he was white-knuckling the shaft of the weapon, each hand wrapped in a tight fist around the handle. He looked up apologetically at Necia, who seemed content to let him figure it out.

Tulland tried to remember their actual grip, which was significantly more handshake-like than how he normally held his weapon. He adjusted his grip to match theirs as best he could, then gave a few experimental stabs.

“OK, that’s closer.” Necia walked forward and made some subtle adjustment’s to Tulland’s grip. These were less obvious compared to the big, drastic change he had already covered, but he had to think she knew what she was doing. “Okay. Now fight with me and Licht for a while. And don’t focus on performance. It doesn’t matter how well you think you are doing. I just want you to focus on trying to hit us while maintaining that exact grip.”

“You really want me to hit you?”

Necia looked over at Licht, who smirked. “I think we’ll be fine, Tulland. Give it your best shot.”

The sarcasm was not unwarranted. For the next two hours, both Necia and Licht danced around Tulland’s strikes, effortlessly avoiding even the appearance of danger. Worse, there were two of them, both of whom could and did hit him at will. Tulland chased after them uselessly, only stopping when Necia would knock him over, correct his grip on the pitchfork, then tell him to start again.

After a few hours, though, the grip was kind of permanent. Something about getting pounded with the pommel of his girlfriend’s sword beat the practice into him in a way mere repetition never could have. He was bruised and broken by the time Necia called a stop to it.

“Good. Two hours to get the grip isn’t great, but you have it.”

“Give me a second,” Tulland said. “Just a few minutes. And I’ll be able to hunt.”

“Hunt? Oh, no.” Licht snickered in the background. “Now that you have grip, it’s time to work on stance.”

Two more hours of bone-bruising work came and went as Tulland fought, fell, tripped and got trounced by two entirely superior warriors. And then, finally, he stopped falling. He could still be tripped and shoved, but his footwork had finally caught up with his dexterity stat, and he could hold his own body up and in place as he got bounced between the two warriors.

“And that’s that. Congratulations,” Necia said after failing to trip Tulland after three consecutive attempts.

“Not that I’m not glad to be done, but that’s really that? Four hours of practice on grip and stance is all there is to know about fighting?” Tulland asked.

Necia’s thumb and forefinger closed around the bridge of her nose as she sighed.

“No, of course not. But neither Licht nor I fight with spears, much less a pitchfork. We taught you very general things. They are probably still wrong for a spear, at least in parts. They’re better than whatever you were doing before, but anything else we might grind into you had a good chance of being wrong.”

“She’s right. The rest of what you learn, you can learn while fighting. Besides,” Licht said, “I think it’s about time we let you fight for real. Because you aren’t melee, right? Show us some of those tricks Necia says you have.”

Tulland smiled through his soreness as he brought his crackling, bone-weary back up into a semi-decent posture. If they were asking for his best, he’d give it to them.

That best ended up being nowhere near good enough. Tulland got out his vines first thing, letting two of them take up residence on his arms as passive offense and defense against the incoming threat of both Necia and Licht. It did have an effect, but it was all Tulland could do to keep them from chopping the vines to pieces immediately. Even that took every ounce of newfound pitchfork skill he could muster.

In the meantime, he was being pushed back constantly. The few real aimed strikes he was able to get off were either effortlessly dodged by Licht or deflected by Necia, and even sacrificing a few of his vines as launched, pointy distractions was nearly useless. Again, Necia was able to cower away from the worst of their effects using her shield, and the hunter stayed frustratingly out of range.

Finally, Tulland had enough.

If I’m going to give this a shot, let’s give it a real shot. My garden should be growing to maturity by now. Get going, little plants. That’s right. All of you.