“Mike, get in here!” Instructor Stethyr hissed.

“Okay guys, I’ve gotta go. Good luck.” I told the two. “Bron, I need to talk to you about crafts sometime. All the dwarves are trying to work something out.”

“Hey, no fair excluding the ogres.” Conan protested.

“Do you have a craft?” I asked, eyebrows raised.

“Well… no.” He said sullenly.

“Then you’re not really eligible to trade anything with us, now are you?” I shrugged.

“Dude, it sucks being excluded.” The ogre told me.

“Sorry.” I told him as I walked into Instructor Stethyr’s office.

“Have a sseat.” He waved to the chaise style lounges in front of his desk. He lay on one himself, which let his tail fall freely. A normal chair might not have done that. “Crysstal pleasse.” He held out a three fingered scaled hand. I put the green crystal into it.

“Okay, ass you probably know, our purposse here iss to analyze your usse of sskillss and figure out wayss to improve it.” He told me, sounding like he’d said it a million times. His long fingers slid the crystal into the tablet on his desk.

The little 3D version of me appeared, like it had twice before. Unlike the other two, Stethyr concentrated on the in between combat segments. “Itss hard to get a read on your use of sskillss becausse your agility iss sso low.” The midniss shook his head. As he watched the video, his long, purple tongue occasionally flickered out between his fangs.

He drummed a taloned finger on the desk. “Okay, I can ssee what you’re trying to do. You are trying to usse Move and Hide to allow you to take the offenssive. It issn’t working at the moment becausse of your agility but itss a good plan. Do you know what tower you will choosse?”

“Not 100%. I’m thinking either Lunar or Ember.” I told him.

“Okay, sso not ssolar. You’ll usse lighter armor then. The sstealth sskillss make ssensse ass you’ll have to deal with a chance of sspell failure if you go with heavier armor, anyway.” He nodded. A nod from a midniss was a funny thing. Their necks were so long that the triangular cobra head bobbed a good foot up and down. This instructor was kind of scary though, so I didn’t laugh out loud. I might tease Elyse about it, but not Stethyr.

“Iss there a plan for increassing your agility?” The instructor asked.

“Yes, sir.” I assured him. “From what I understand, with each priority point comes two attribute points, right?” He nodded. “Okay, so I’ll put one point into intelligence and use the other on my remaining attributes. Probably most will get split up between Agility and Perception. I think my Brawn is high enough.”

“Hmm, okay.” He kept tapping that talon on his desk. The repetitive noise drove me a little crazy, but I didn’t say anything. “Pretty ssoon you’ll run into the problem all high intelligence, low sskillss priority players have. Your available points will exceed the places you have to put them.”

I nodded. That made a certain amount of sense. “What do you advise?”

“In general, I tell low priority to sskillss playerss to concentrate. You’ll be the oppossite. You dwarvess are too heavy to ride a horsse and you won’t be able to afford a ssnail for ssome time.” Stethyr told me.

“I’m sorry. Did you just say that I wouldn’t be able to afford a snail? Like the little bug with the shell that lives in the garden?” I furrowed my brow at the non sequiter.

He let out a steam whistle sound. I recognized it from joking around with Elyse. That was the sound of a midniss laughing.

“No, you ridiculous world walker. Coursing snails and war snails are dwarves’ preferred mounts. In your native underground environment, they can travel up the wallss and you’ve bred them up. They are big enough and ssolid enough to handle your weight.” He let out that steam whistle sound again.

“From what I undersstand, and I’m no expert, your people have cut ssaddless into their sshellss, sso you have an armored place to ssit.” He still chuckled a bit.

“Back to your sskillss.” He waved away the laughter. “I wouldn’t put any pointss into ride or sswim. Both are difficult becausse of your weight. Handle Animal iss a wasste of time ass well.” He paused, studying the video.

“Did you take a profession?” Stethyr asked me.

“I did. Runecaster.” I answered quickly.

“That’ss probably the one I would have told you to take. You’ll get ssomething ssilly like 40 pointss at first level by the time you’re through, if you don’t increasse your sskillss priority. Ass you can only put two pointss in each one that givess you pretty much all of them. What you’ll need to figure out are which skills you’ll advance once you go beyond first level.” The reptile shrugged. “You have time to make thosse choicess.”

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“Let’ss talk about your Lore. You took Arcana, I pressume?” He asked me.

“I did. It hasn’t been a lot of help so far.” I answered.

“It wouldn’t be. You’ll mainly usse it when you level or when you sstretch a sspell.” The midniss leaned forward, tongue tasting the air.

“Instructor Falaise mentioned stretching spells. What does that mean, exactly?” I asked him.

“You take the spells you know right now, that’s what, Candleflame and Snowball?” His head raised up. I recognized that as an interrogative gesture. Maybe that’s what they do since they don’t have eyebrows? Either way, the question needed an answer.

“Yes sir, as well as Summon Lesser Beast.” I responded. “And Discern Magic. I’ve never memorized it, though. The others seem more effective in combat, and I need that edge to survive.”

“Okay, let’ss ssay you want an area effect sspell. You usse your Lore to combine Candleflame and Ssnowball to make a ssteam cloud sspell. That would either be a higher order spell or possibly higher tier.” He told me.

“How do I make it higher tier?” I asked.

“Nillss really sshould have gone over thiss with you.” The midniss sighed. “You can usse more expenssive or exotic components to lower the effective order of the spell. For example, with that ssteam sspell I wass talking about. If cassting it requires,” He flailed around for a moment. “Fangss from both a water dragon and a flame dragon, then it could lower the order of the sspell.”

“Wow, does it have to be something like dragon fangs?” I asked, my eyebrows climbing up onto my forehead.

The instructor shook his head. “No, that wass jusst the firsst example I thought of. It could be an expendable ssomething of minor value or a permanent ssomething of great value.” He shrugged. “You get the idea, I think.”

“Yes sir, I think I do.” I nodded thoughtfully. “Is that why I can cast the Summon Lesser Beasts spell?”

“It iss. That’s a higher tier magic but ssince you have a relatively valuable, permanent component it allowss you to casst it at zeroth level.” He told me.

I pulled the rabbit horn from my bandolier. “This is a valuable permanent component?”

The lizardman chuckled. “Value iss relative. Compared to the water you usse for Ssnowball, yess it iss.”

“Right, right. That makes sense.” I responded.

“That generally covers Arcanum Lore. What is your craft?” The lizardman leaned forward, putting his chin on a fist.

“Alchemy.” I answered.

“and of coursse you’ve done nothing with it becausse we haven’t sscheduled you time to do sso.” Stethyr ran a hand over the crest of his skull.

“That’s correct, sir.” I told the clearly irritated instructor.

“You’re familiar with what alchemy iss, right?” He asked.

I thought about it, and knowledge bloomed in my mind. I winced from the pain of it, but that soon passed. “Its taking natural or magical ingredients and combing them into elixirs, oils, salves or vapors. It also allows great application of magical ingredients if I attempt to create magical recipes.”

The midniss chuckled again. “You didn’t know any of that before I assked the question, did you?”

“I did not.” I pursed my lips.

“Itss sso bizarre the way you world walkerss can do that. Anyway, yes. That is correct. You’ll probably sstart off making elixirss. They musst be ingessted to be effective.” The instructor said.

“When will I be able to make surface applications?” I asked. “Weird. I know those are oils.”

“They are more difficult, but whenever you can.” Stethyr shrugged. “I’ll work on sscheduling you ssome lab time. If you advance the way you are currently planning, you’ll have either ten or twelve sskill pointss per level. Think about how you will sspend them.” He waved me off. “Now begone and tell the next sstudent to come in.”

I stood a bit awkwardly. The lounges used in this room weren’t really intended for dwarves, and walked out of the room. Elyse was sitting on a bench beside Niobe. “Hello ladies. Who is next for our esteemed skills instructor?”

“That’ss me. Wissh me luck.” The female midniss, and it was impossible to tell the difference, got up and strode into the room.

I sat down by Niobe. “How’s the instructor breakout sessions working for you?”

“The one with Stethyr was brutal.” The cat woman shook her head. I fought back a smile at the way that made her ears waggle. She was being serious, and I didn’t need to laugh in her face. “He analyzed my escape attempt and corrected all the failings. Ugh, it sucked.”

“That sounds rough.” I paused and looked at her. She was slightly hunched over and looked generally withdrawn. “How are you doing? You know, overall.”

The felinoid looked up at me. It was the first time I’d noticed her eyes were hazel, changing slightly in the light. Her irises were slitted, like the cat she so much resembled. “Why do you care?”

I grinned at that. “We’re roommates. We’re squad mates. We’re guild mates. In this damned place, I think we’re all we have to hold on to.”

Niobe grunted a hmm, sound. “Not great. I could be doing better. Lots of the guys are holding what happened against me.” She shrugged, a surprisingly fluid motion. “I get it, ya know. I tried to escape and got everyone beaten.”

She let out a long sigh and paused for a moment. “When folks are walking by me in the hallway, they’ll bump into me. If it’s one of the ogres or dwarves it’ll knock me into the wall. They’ll act all apologetic, but it’s obvious they do it on purpose.” The cat woman was wearing boiled leather armor and one of her hands kept messing with one of the leather ties.

“I think the worst part,” she stared at me again, “Is that when I come into a room everyone goes quiet and just stares at me. They aren’t even doing it on purpose, but it’s obvious I’m not one of them.” Her big hazel eyes blinked slowly. “But I can take it, you know. I can take anything. I didn’t have nothing handed to me in my life, so I can handle this.” Her jaw worked as said this last bit.

I thought for a moment. “How is the squad treating you?”

“Pretty cool, for the most part.” Niobe nodded slowly. “Except for Marko. He’s a dick.”

“Yeah, he is.” I smiled. Our ogre was 100%. If he didn’t like you, then you’d know it, but if he did like you, he was totally loyal. “Any problems with the roommates?”

“No, none. Jackson has even gotten into a fight demanding a human who ran into me apologize.” She shook her head. “That freaks me out, too. It’s like I owe him.”

“I don’t think he sees it that way.” I said gently.

“That just makes it worse.” Her whiskers straightened out angrily. “I ain’t no charity case. No damsel in distress for him to rescue.”

“Mike, come in here.” Instructor Falaise called out.

I stood and put a hand on Niobe’s shoulder. “You’ll make it.” I told her.

“I know.” She nodded to me.