Life is about new experiences, and for the first time in his new one, Rhode got into an argument. Not a snippy quip, or a tense exchange, or even a heated dispute; but a real, knock down, drag out shouting match.

Scholar Tarrop was pacing furiously by that point, and he tore at the remaining sides of his hair. “This is preposterous, Rhode. Nothing works like that. In the best possible case you’re going to get yourself killed, and in the worst, I’ll get fired all over again!”

Rhode had given up on standing, it was exhausting to display anger so performatively, and he was aware of how easily little things like ‘furniture’ or ‘load bearing walls’ could break if he allowed himself to throw a tantrum. “Well, I don’t know! What if we do electricity?” he snapped.

Tarrop whipped around and stomped back to the table, his plain, chubby face contorted with anger. “What the FUCK use is lightning? What does that have to do with anything?”

“To stun people!” Rhode rasped. He tried to keep his own voice low: he matched Tarrop’s intensity but wouldn’t escalate either. “Where I come from, we did it all the time!”

Tarrop’s head bobbed back like a cat tasting vegetables. “What? Snakemilk, that’s nonsense. You used lightning magic – one of the most deadly and unpredictable forms of battle-magic there is – and you used it to stop from killing people?”

“Well, yea.”

“No you didn’t!” Tarrop barked, looking completely uncertain.

“Yes! I mean sort of. It’s still kinda dangerous, but it mostly works! You take these little harpoon things and they go pop and fly over, and then they apply a shock.”

“Ridiculous,” the scholar spat, stroking at his chin.

Rhode spread his arms wide, then clapped his hands down on his thighs for emphasis. “And then they lock up, because I dunno, it does something to your muscles. They can’t move.”

“Even if that did work, it would only affect one enemy at a time!” Tarrop threw open his notebook, and flipped destructively through pages until he found a blank space, and then he began scratching notes down hard enough to tear the paper. “First of all, it would be dangerous to store so much lightning energy. We would have to build you a massive [Battery], obviously.”

Rhode blinked. “Obviously!” he growled.

“But that would be inconvenient to carry around! You might as well expect us to evolve your [Iron Bones] to store the charge!”

“Could we do that?” Rhode bellowed, his face flushed with pique and a vein protruding along his neck.

“Here, this is Vormopritt’s Compendium of the War Practices of Foreign Savagery. This is the kind of irresponsible scholarship where you’d find something like… aha! [Transmutation: Internal Capacitor]. It’s terrible, absolutely a trash level,” Tarrop snarled, transcribing a description from the book into his notes. “And you’d never have enough power! You’d have to boost it with something useless like [Over-Charge].”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“And we can’t do that, can we?” Rhode retorted, starting to sound confused.

“Only if we fed you something like high-grade [Electrolytic] serum. And how would you even get your lightning to flow where you wanted it? Only a fool or a hydromancer would learn [Power-Word: Stream]. Even then! You’d kill someone unless you could regulate your output, that’s a [Throughput] [Daemon]!”

“Actually, I don’t understand what daemons are, or what they do?” Rhode interjected thoughtfully.

“Of course not! We’d have to teach you! And then you’d still need some kind of chaining technique to spread the effect out over groups.”

“And that’s not possible?” Rhode asked.

Tarrop slammed his books shut with a huff. “It’s absolutely possible, and I’ll research it tonight!”

“Sounds like it might work,” the homunculus whispered.

Tarrop wiped his face and forehead with his handkerchief. “Maybe. Er, probably. I suppose I’ll have a plan ready for you in a few days,” the scholar harrumphed. He coughed into his fist and then looked away in embarrassment.

Rhode folded his hands together, but his fingers blazed with pain and he moved them apart on the surface of the table.

“Hey, man. Can someone teach me how to read?” the homunculus quietly asked.

“You want to –”

“Yea.”

Scholar Tarrop cleared his throat and adjusted his colorful neck-tie. “I am sure we could ask if there are reading materials about. Would you feel insulted if we started you off with children’s primers?”

Rhode shook his head. “I’m pretty far past being embarrassed right now. I just want to learn.”

“We’ll have something sent to your room later.”

An uncomfortable silence hung over the two men until they were saved by a pattering of urgent knocks at the door. The voice on the other side wasn’t reaching through, so the goblin magician slowly dragged himself to the entry to let her in.

Lady Jern Eintirp-Wan had been a page in service of the respected Adjutant Fidelity Brand. Now, with the man somewhat deposed, there was a great deal of unanswered questions about what her responsibilities were. So, under the circumstances: whatsoever could be the harm if she still might run an errand or two for him? Surely, someone somewhere was going to remember to officially assign her to a new role. Until then, wouldn’t it be fun to help out a real live Hero?

The girl wore her uniform proudly, even though she stood approximately chin-level to the door handle, and no taller. She hesitated, raising one hand to salute, but stopped. Eintirp tugged at her braid and scratched her head, then nodded firmly, and chose to curtsy.

“Lord Ser Dreadlung,” the little page trumpeted, “your bigness! You did a good fight versus Yun-Yun, everybody says so.”

“Oh, uh, hey,” Rhode waved. “I remember you. What’s a Yun-Yun?”

The girl’s face fell. “My cousin. She’s real strong and pretty, and she beat you up good even though everybody says you’re a Hero.”

“Oh, really?” Rhode rumbled. He was astonished to think that this young woman was related to someone so ferocious as Ser Hakkat-Yune. Then a smile creaked unbidden across his face. “And you said you call her Yun-Yun? Oh man, I bet she hates that. What's your name, Goode… miss?”

“I’m Eintirp-Wan of the most homorable house Jern, and I’m an official Lady on account of how Yun-Yun fights so good,” the page nodded emphatically. “The boss-man said I gotta get you. Do you wanna go punch on people now?”