Martha left soon after that on whatever business she had to attend to. I turned to Liz, “What the hells Liz?! Seriously, what in the fuck was that?”

“That was me helping your ass out, you’re welcome,” she said a smug smile on her face.

I took a minute to center myself, “You shouldn’t work for Martha. Also, what did she mean she knew she recognized you? Also, when did you fight scibeds?”

Liz stood up and walked to the fridge, “Don’t act like you don’t have secrets, I know there are plenty of details about you working for Martha you purposefully avoid.”

She had me there. “Fine. I won’t dig,” I said, but I was extremely concerned about what Liz could be doing that had Martha’s attention. It couldn’t be anything good. Knowing Liz, it wasn’t anything heinous either.

I decided for now I’d let sleeping dogs lay. Besides, being upset at Liz was exhausting, and arguing with her was even more so.

“We never actually found out what that big job is by the way,” she decided to mention.

“...Fuck. Fuckkkk,” I groaned. I had no idea what type of preparations I would need and usually if Martha had a big job it was big. I never actually did one of her large jobs before, but I did help with first aid for some people who did before. At least the ones who made it back in a state where basic first aid would help. I was fucked. I remembered Liz was joining in. We were fucked.

I was really starting to doubt my long-term planning at this point if I didn’t see this coming. I looked over at Liz. The fact I didn’t see that coming also had me doubting myself. I’ve been acting pretty fucking stupid since the explosion it probably shook me more than I initially thought.

I paused.

I had suffered a pretty bad concussion, and while the symptoms would be reduced, they would still be there.

“Liz, am I suffering from impaired judgment?”

“Since when haven’t you been?” she laughed.

“No I mean from my concussion,” I said and she paused.

“Probably. You’ve been pretty worked up lately as well, that probably doesn’t help either.”

She was right, I haven’t had a chance to unwinded there was so much to do. I had to secure a place to stay, figure out what the hell was going on with Martha’s plan and prepare for that, and probably train physically while I start working on training my inscription as well. That was only the half of it.

“Liz you said you’ve fought scribeds before right?”

“I already told you-” she started before I interrupted her.

“I’m not here to interrogate you, but I need to figure out training for my inscription.”

“Oh. I can probably help with that. We still don’t know your active manifestation but your passive one we can work on. It’ll probably cause a channel widening as well if you use it enough.”

“What about the active one? We should figure that out shouldn’t we?”

“Yeah, obviously. But you figure out how to channel actively yet? If not there’s fuck-all to be done about that.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“Either way, ignoring Martha’s deal you still need training. You were switching to combat track tertiary right?” I nodded. She continued, “Northridge still has a competitive combat track and you’re competing with every prodigy and nepo-baby that can pick up a stick. Actually, have you started your mana control training? Or using any mana techniques?”

I glanced away.

“For fucks sake Trey. You need to know this dude.”

“I’ve never been good at it,” I started to argue but Liz put a finger up, telling me to stop.

“Trey, you took that fact it wasn’t something that deeply interested you and something you didn’t pick up as quickly as breathing as an issue. Trey you put in the work everywhere else, put that energy here. Maybe you wouldn’t have gone catatonic when your inscription first activated if you could have controlled your mana better.”

I wanted to argue, but I swallowed it as a part of me knew she was right. Mana control exercises aren’t easy or interesting. Fighting is hard but fascinating. Artifice is the same thing. People working was something I found easier, find the grooves in habits and goodwill and exploit them. Mana work was mentally draining and exhausting. It was boring.

I took a deep breath, “Fine, I’ll work on it,” I said. Liz smiled.

“Good, start now. You should work on body channeling, it would work well with your particular inscription and if you’re lucky maybe you’ll have a natural alignment for it.”

“Ah, speaking of which you said you have a kinetic alignment?”

Liz glanced at me wearily, “Yeah, for some reasons I got tested a while back. Apparently, I have a pretty strong kinetic alignment, not enough to be considered a Conduit though.”

I recognized Liz’s signal to not dig into the why from her statement, “Be nice if I had aligned-mana, not gonna get my hopes up though.”

She shrugged as she moved to grab some food from the kitchen, “Sure, but most people have at least extremely weak alignments. It’s just not enough to actually cause any difference for manifestation, I think I heard through the grapevine you can force it a bit without an inscription but it requires straining the soul pretty badly or someone to go inside and playing god.”

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I cringed at the idea of someone mutilating my soul, “Yeah… no thanks.”

“That’s how most people react,” She said, walking back with a bowl of cereal in hand.

I watched her for a second, feeling some of the unasked questions gnawing at me for a few moments before I managed to force them down.

Liz stared at me, “Are you starting or what? Mana control training. Go. Shoo. I’ll check in after I eat.

I sighed and shot her a glare that was glanced off of her. She continued eating her food in silence, deciding to ignore my presence until I started practicing. There was no use in putting it off, so I moved to the floor and focused.

When practicing mana control many people would think that you’re meditating or asleep. It required a lot of focus, if it didn’t you needed to practice something more challenging. It was somewhat like weight lifting in that way, a constant progression where you’re pushing against greater strain and failure.

I stopped my wandering thoughts and focused on moving my mana. My mana awareness was poor; I struggled to feel it, it felt like trying to grab mist. What little mana within me I was able to bear the weight of my will down on fought me. It was like trying to manipulate molasses through a maze as I guided it through my body.

I sat there forcing it to slowly circulate my body.

…

Fuck this is boring.

My concentration broke and my mana control flowed and slowed like magma cooling off. I forced my focus to focus again on my mana, trying to continue the control.

That was until I was kicked in my chest.

I felt the mana flowing through my body burst, dissipating into the air and leaving my reserves considerably lower than they were before.

The kick wasn’t hard, it was light and mostly pushed me. But it was extremely startling.

I opened my eyes to see Liz standing there, with a chocolate bar in hand.

“Why the hells did you do that,” I asked exasperated.

“Give me a percentage of how much mana you lost there,” she said continuing to munch.

“I dunno, at least half of what I was circulating.”

“Hmm,” was all she said as her eyes started looking through me more than at me.

“Focus on moving your mana with retention in mind when doing a body circuit. You want movement and loss of concentration to cause as little mana loss as possible. I’ll randomly come around and poke and prod at you, try to keep as much of your mana from leaking out of your body as possible, and don’t stop circulating.”

I grunted, trying to get back into the rhythm I found before. I visualized my body as a seal, like a body holding the currents of mana inside of it.

I ended up falling into a trance-like state, as my entire mind focused on my mana manipulation.

A fast-moving projectile bounced off my head and clattered to the ground. I felt some of my mana leak as my concentration fell, but I managed to reassert my will over it, and far less leaked.

“Dang, I wanted to see if I could get it to stay in your hair.” I heard Liz say as I tried to continue concentrating.

The tests continued until I felt my mana stores nearing empty.

“I’m tapped,” I said, slumping over.

“That was fast,” Liz said as I saw she was playing a rhythm game on her phone.

“It felt like hours that’s for damned sure,” I moaned, as I got up and started stretching. My body didn’t feel as stiff as I thought it would. All the physical activity lately must be paying off.

“One and a half to be exact,” Liz responded.

“Wait really? I was exaggerating,” I answered a bit surprised. I thought about how often I may end up having to do this and my mood soured.

“Liz, I don’t have an hour and a half each day to practice this, we’ll have to start prepping for Martha’s job soon and get you up to snuff in a few random skills I think you should pick up.”

“You definitely do,” she said, “I can cut back on your physical training a bit. I don’t think you realize how important this is. I don’t understand how you have this gap with how much research we’ve both done for our inscription ceremonies. Hells, you ended up getting yours and had a seizure because you couldn’t regulate your mana the first time it activated.”

“Activation incidents are common, happening in one out of every ten or so scribeds upon first activation and about one in a hundred every month. I was just unlucky,” I shot back.

Liz sighed, “You’re so bullheaded sometimes. It happens to all those people because their mana control is dogshit. Their inscription draws too much and they can’t reign it in due to poor control.”

Liz and I stared at each other. Well, I looked through her as I focused inward considering what she was saying. It made a sort of sense; my inscription only cut out after I didn’t have any more mana to supply.

“Fine, I’ll work on it.”

“You better, it might save your life. I’m serious if your inscription draws too deep it could kill you outright assuming it doesn’t incidentally do so.” I gave a non-committal grunt, though I understood her concerns.

“Also, what did you mean by skills you want me to work on?” She asked.

“Lockpicking and some basic social engineering I think. They’re useful skills.”

“Trey you know I’m-” Liz started to say before I cut her off.

“Nope, not negotiable. These skills are useful if you’re going to go on jobs with me. Hells, they’ll be useful even if you didn’t do so.”

Before she got a word in I continued, “That’s to say we won’t be doing any work together If you don’t. I’m not trying to get our asses killed cuz you don’t know when you need to blend.”

“Yeah yeah, I gotchu. We can practice or whatever. We’ll have to schedule all our training out. Do you think Martha can give us something with less stakes first? You can ask her for jobs right?”

I thought about it for a moment and asking Martha if she could give us a job couldn’t hurt. We also needed more details on the large job that she said she was going to give us. I didn’t like being in the dark about things like this—with Martha a large job often was less about how much it would bring back to her and more about the massive risks that were involved.

So Liz and I started working things out for something a bit more long-term. We started creating a training schedule each day with time slots blocked out for sleep, my Northridge project, errands, and chores. Everything else was some type of training. A few hours for physical training, and an hour or so each day for mana control for me (which we planned on later decreasing as I was able to practice it while doing other tasks). And then some social engineering theory and bits of practice for that during the day inside of low-stakes situations.

I felt good having a game plan again, it felt like everything was readjusting, and I was finding my rhythm again—a new normal.

I sent Martha a text asking about some low-stakes jobs Liz and I could go on then we spent the rest of the day starting the rest of our new routine. I had already done mana control today, and we were both a bit tired, not getting much sleep last night so our exercises were far lighter than usual, Liz also went out and stocked up on food for the week, I guess she had some money left over in her bank account or something along those lines.

After that, we spent the rest of the day chilling and shooting the shit. We watched videos and then went to bed. I felt a bit more relaxed. This was probably the most relaxed I felt since the man broke into my house so many weeks ago. Things felt like they were coming back under my control.

There was still a thin thread, an undercurrent of tension that constantly buzzed in the recesses of my mind. But it was quieter. More manageable.

I rolled in my bed, letting the tension drain away. Things did suck, sure, but I was adapting. I could see the light over the horizon even if it was only a dim sparkle. I only needed to preserve a bit more and I’d make it through.

A few deep breaths later and I found my thoughts scattering, as my concerns began to drift away. My consciousness drifted alongside it as I was lulled to sleep.