Hugh was peeling a potato-like thing as the sky faded, gazing off at the distant mountains where the sun had just ducked behind a peak. He seemed to be lost in thought, totally unaware of the sword swinging at his head. At the last possible second he reached up and blocked not with his knife but with the potato, casually deflecting Errod's sword so that it narrowly missed his shoulder. He then turned in a flash and stepped on the blade as it continued downwards, causing it to twist and pull out of Errod's hands - now standing on the sword, Hugh slowly pointed the knife at his opponent's neck.

"I told you to choose your time wisely. You had all night to pick your time of attack, and you come at me while I am armed and alert?"

"You! But!" Errod sputtered, "You didn't even use the knife, you... if you can do that with a root then you always count as armed."

"Yes! Excellent, a good lesson for you, yes? Your enemy is always armed. But you had not learned this lesson, and still attacked me while I held a knife."

Errod collapsed to the ground and threw up his hands. "You were distracted, watching the sunset."

Hugh shrugged. "You had all night. I would be even more distracted while I sleep, no? That is when Calliope plans on attacking me."

He was completely correct on that one. I had decided right away that the best way to succeed in Hugh's challenge was to just sneak up while he was asleep and kick him as hard as I could. The potato move had me reconsidering - it must have been force magic, but it was a reminder that he could do things I wouldn't be able to plan for.

Errod looked despondent. "I can't attack someone in their sleep. I'm destined to be a knight of Brinkmar."

"I am a... partially retired... member of the royal guard of the kingdom of Erathik," Hugh said, handing Errod's sword back. "It is a very important, very honorable position. But there is no honor in killing people. The honor is in protecting. So you protect people however you can, and if that means stabbing the other man to death in his sleep then that is what you do. If you are so busy treating your enemies with respect that they are able to take advantage of you and murder the people you were trying to save, then you have lost. It is as simple as that, yes?"

Errod shrugged, clearly unconvinced, though he hadn't seemed bothered by attacking someone from behind. I wasn't sure what specific rules of chivalry he was trying to follow.

"What do you mean, you're destined to be a knight of Brinkmar?" Who had written the Jake Ross books? The name on the cover was Marjorie West - had she been here? Did she know the real Jake Ross? It wasn't exactly an urgent mystery, since whatever had gone down had happened a long time ago, but it did imply there was a way to get back to Earth and that others might have made the trip before. Not that I particularly wanted to go back.

Errod finally replied, while gazing wistfully off into the distance, "I mean that I've seen a vision of the future where I am wearing the mystic armor of a knight of Brinkmar, and am the greatest swordsman the land has ever known."

Katrin snorted. "He had a dream a month ago and has been insufferable ever since."

"It wasn't just a dream! And look, here we are traveling with a member of Erathik's royal guard who has volunteered to teach me to fight!"

Hugh snorted too, as he went back to peeling the potato thing. I was tempted to attack him right away, on the theory that he wouldn't think I would be dumb enough to do that, but I decided to wait.

I had until we started riding again to injure him - he didn't want any shenanigans that might hurt our mounts. Those anvil-headed dinos were amazing, apparently due to having a lump of crystalized mana in their crops that fueled some natural magical super-endurance. We were already past Ulthus - we hadn't stopped there, which was a disappointment. We'd seen it in the distance for just a moment at one point, a dark blob on a hill with one ridiculously tall tower sticking up. I was eager to get another shot at exploring a city in this new world, but that would have to wait for Handoleren.

Errod excused himself and wandered off to practice his sword forms, something he always did away from Hugh so that he didn't have to listen to the snickering. Hugh was training us, a little each day, but he said he wouldn't teach Errod anything about using the sword until he had more of the fundamentals down. We practiced standing right, so that we couldn't easily be knocked down. We practiced dodging, and standing up quickly, and falling down - I'd never thought about the right and wrong way to fall when someone knocks you over. Hugh said that I had a lot of natural talent but also a lot of bad habits, and warned me that it would be a long time before I could hope to attack someone who really knew what they were doing.

Errod, on the other hand, didn't have any specific bad habits and was eager to learn everything but had so little natural ability that Hugh had to take frequent breaks as he barely resisted screaming in frustration. They also kept arguing about Errod using a sword at all - Hugh insisted a spear would be a much better choice, but Errod wouldn't budge because in his vision or dream or whatever he'd been using a sword.

I'd have happily traded talent with Errod if it had meant I would be able to use magic. I was beginning to think I just didn't have the knack. Katrin had tried writing a spell down but had quickly realized she couldn't for some reason and had eventually - very reluctantly - pulled an enormous book out of her pack. It had a thick metal cover and the inside was covered in these strange tiny hexagonal tiles with different symbols on them, and on the pages... "I can't read this. It's just gobbledygook."

"I didn't recognize that word. Is it from Arizona?" I'd given Katrin and Errod the baseline cover story which was, apparently, plausible enough to avoid the most awkward questions.

"Kind of, but it just means that it's nonsense. I can't do this."

The language in Katrin's book of spells was some sort of angular runic script that - according to her - you should just be able to understand magically after getting into the right mindset and concentrating on it. "We'll keep trying. You might be forcing it too hard? I'm not sure. I taught myself so I don't really know a lot about this."

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I closed the book - I'd been staring at the page for half an hour and it was starting to make me angry. I decided I needed to remind myself why I gave a shit. "Show me the light thing again."

Katrin smiled and closed her eyes. I could see her lips moving, just slightly, though she had insisted she wasn't saying anything. After a moment a ball of white light appeared in the air between us - it was about an inch across, but very bright. It was that cold light like an LED or something, and she could mentally control it in order to move it around.

"Ugh, I'm so jealous. I want to do magic so badly. Look at that!" It was clear Katrin had overstated her abilities and felt self-conscious about it, but all I could think was holy shit, that's real magic!

"It will just take time. I'm sure you'll be able to learn it eventually. I can feel it." She was being extra reassuring like I was a little kid with hurt feelings, even though she my age. What that age was, I wasn't so sure - I'd have to get some scratch paper and do actual math at some point. Seconds, minutes, hours, and days were suspiciously similar to Earth measurements - enough so that I had assumed everything would be. But while talking to Katrin she'd mentioned that she was turning fifteen soon and I knew she had to be at least a few years older than that.

I'd pulled Hugh aside and he'd confirmed that there while there were still the familiar twelve months in a year, each of them had exactly thirty-six days which meant a full year was more than two months longer here than on Earth. I couldn't figure out why that one thing would be different when everything else seemed the same. At any rate, it meant I was just over fifteen which matched what the letter had told me to say.

There was no official age where you counted as an adult, but at the very most it would be fourteen (which some back-of-the-napkin style math told me was something like sixteen and a half Earth years) so it didn't really matter to me. I was an adult either way. It did mean yet another thing on top of the base-six counting to confuse me around numbers.

I opened the book again, and tried just looking at it without really thinking. I went back to my project of whittling down a stick into a essentially a toothpick, and let my mind drift.

"I've got a relative in Theramas," I lied, "and they have some influence. So I think I'll be able to get into a Duminere before long. But I wanted to learn magic like this, too."

Katrin looked up, eyes wide. "Do you think you could get me in?"

"You already have a spellbook, and you can do the light thing and that fire starting thing and the shield one. What are you so excited about?"

"I keep forgetting you don't know how this works. Well." She straightened up, going back into teacher mode. "Everyone has some sort of magical potential. Some more than others. Some races on the other planes have specific magical talents, but normal humans like us can use spells which are... they're harder, but much more flexible. Wild magic is a little easier to learn from what I've heard, but it's way more dangerous and it's actually outlawed most places. Proper magic, Imperial magic, the kind the Clockmaker created, is much better but it's extremely hard to do which is why you shouldn't beat yourself up for struggling - especially when you've barely started trying.

"If you go into a Duminere, you get a Dumine whether you want to or not - you can't leave without one, even though for some people it doesn't give them a gift at all. This locks you out of using your mana for other things which means you can't do wild magic, and other races can't use their natural abilities anymore. Except!" she leaned closer, excited. "One of the thirty-six individual gifts your Dumine can grant is increased ability at understanding magic. That means you get way better at it, learn spells faster, all sorts of things."

"Okay. But you could also go in and get nothing, right?"

She nodded, and made the little light do figure-eights in front of her. "Yeah, most people get a dud. It's like a Dumine, but it's just silver and it doesn't give you any gifts. It won't help with magic at all, and it will mean I have to stick with Imperial magic and can't try to use wild magic, but that's fine. And they say it has other benefits, that you recover mana faster and even heal a little faster. And anyway... people talk, and it seems like how many gifts you get has at least some correlation to your natural ability. I was able to read this book the very first time I looked at it, and learned spells without any help. That has to mean something, right?"

What Katrin hadn't said is that the same logic implied I would just get a dud.

I was planning on sinking into a funk, but right then Errod started screaming. We all jumped up and ran to where he had been practicing his forms, and there he was in the fetal position with blood everywhere. He was clutching one of his shoes, and his sword was thrown off to one side. Hugh ran past and began scouting for enemies, while Katrin crouched down to calm Errod. I ran and grabbed my stolen first aid kit, and by the time I got back Katrin had figured out what happened.

She told me, I did a great job not laughing, and then I called Hugh back and told him we weren't under attack. "He was practicing some kind of lunge, and he stumbled. He uh... planted his sword right down on his foot and lost a toe."

"Ah," Hugh said, then paused. "The large toe?"

"No," Katrin chimed in from the ground next to her brother, "the one next to that."

He relaxed. "Good. Then it should not cause him trouble once it is healed, yes?"

"Can we heal it back on? I just have that goo, but you have that flask right?"

"With a healer, yes. A potion? We could try holding it in place and hoping, but it does not always work."

"It doesn't matter," Errod muttered, "she took the toe anyway."

We all just stared for a moment in silence. Katrin finally spoke up, and if Errod heard the concern in her voice he didn't acknowledge it. "Errod, uh... it's just us here. Nobody took your toe. You cut it off yourself."

"No, I did but... she popped out from behind that bush and grabbed my toe when I pulled my shoe off and it fell out. She was wearing a plain wooden mask and holding a staff, and... oh god, she's going to use the toe to curse me."

Hugh met my eyes and shook his head. There hadn't been anyone there. I decided it was just blood loss or shock or something, but I'd be lying if I said I slept well that night - and we never did find the missing toe.

In the morning there was another foot injury, this one much less serious. Hugh pulled his shoes on and stamped them down as always - then screamed out a word that my bracelet didn't translate but which made Katrin blush so hard I thought she would give herself a sunburn. Hugh pulled his left shoe back off and reached inside, retrieving the tiny sharpened spike I'd been whittling the day before.

"You told me to injure you," I said.

"In combat, Calliope."

"If you are so busy treating your enemies with respect that they are able to take advantage of you..."

He scowled at me, but I think he was faking it.