I joined Lyria and the Bow Brothers to clean off in the river after the fight. I couldn’t get a moment on my own, so I left my helmet on and scrubbed blood and bits of rootling from my clothes and hands.

“Does he ever take that thing off?” Kass asked Lyria.

Lyria shook her head. “He’s horribly ugly under there. You should thank him for keeping it on.”

“Really?” Kass said. He delicately flicked a chunk of something from his bright red clothing. Somehow, the man hardly looked like he’d been in a battle. I guessed that was a perk of using a bow. Technically, I supposed I was mostly a ranged fighter, too. But that hadn’t stopped me from getting more filthy than anyone.

Well, anyone but Bloody Steve. He was beaming on the shore of the river, hands on his hips and still covered in blood. Tomte seemed to like literal names, and I was sure I now knew how Steve got his.

Perch splashed a little water on his face, then stepped to shore. He was staring. “I’ve seen metal like that before.”

“Oh, you’re right,” Kass pushed his blonde hair out of his face with a wet hand like he was in a modeling shoot. “That woman in Bree? The Gold?”

Kass nodded. “Had a dagger just like that. Looked like a slice of stars.”

“Voidsteel,” Perch said.

“She claimed it was made with dimensional magic,” Kass continued. “We didn’t buy that. But what is a lowly Wood like you doing with a helmet made out of pure voidsteel? That woman was a Gold and seemed to treat it like her most prized possession.”

“It was a family heirloom,” I said.

“Ah.” Kass nodded. “Any special properties?”

Lyria gave me a subtle look that said it wouldn’t be wise to answer that question honestly.

“Well,” I said, quickly forming together a story in my head. “I’m still trying to figure out what it does, exactly. No clear answers, yet,” I added with a little fake, hopeful cheer to my tone.

“Hmm,” Perch said. His eyes lingered on me long enough to send an uncomfortable chill up my spine.

“Well, we should get moving, right?” I said, eager to change the subject.

“Suit yourself,” Kass said with a shrug.

We continued through the Black Wood. The townspeople seemed more cheerful than before. I felt like I nearly died when those rootlings rolled in, but maybe the sight of Bloody Steve smashing his way through them like they were ants had reassured them of their safety. I didn’t blame them. Part of me wished I could ask to join Minara in that protective bubble next time, but I had to remember Circa’s advice.

I needed to push myself at every opportunity.

I set to practicing again as we walked. Bloody Steve was at the front of the group. From how he was swinging his hands around and puffing his cheeks out with sound effects, it seemed like he was telling battle stories to Kass, who was nodding and smiling. Lyria was talking to the two little girls, eyebrows raised as she told an animated story that had them giggling.

I kept to the back of the group, focused on my task. I decided visualization was the initial key to unlocking the use of my abilities. With that in mind, I started forming a vivid picture of how I imagined the mana moving through my body and the air around me.

It felt like the mana always started at the center of my chest. When I used abilities, I could feel it flowing through vein-like channels from my chest, through my arms, and to my hands. So maybe I could imagine myself like a plant siphoning water from the soil around me.

I formed a picture of vivid blue motes drifting toward me, landing softly on my skin and flaring brightly as they sunk into me, then I imagined them drifting through my veins to pool in my chest.

I couldn’t say if I was just imagining it, but I thought maybe my mana filled more quickly while I held the image.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I put more focus into working on Forge Echo. It was a more difficult ability because I had to hold the visual for the spell's duration. With Elemental Projection, I only had to picture it until it started spewing from my palm.

I groaned as the cloud-like impression of my bottle drifted apart for the second time. Nobody else in the group was working on their abilities as we traveled. I figured Lyria was probably running low on mana already and trying to conserve what she had left after our brief training and the following fight. Were all the others so limited on mana, too?

I already had to use Lyria’s advice when Kass drifted back at one point to ask me how I was using so much magic. I told him the lie she’d helped me craft about a paved path I was following from the outer rings. He had seemed mildly interested, but like Lyria predicted, he didn’t pry too deeply for more information.

We reached an area of the Black Wood that I was fairly sure I recognized. It was rocky here, and the formations funneled us into the easiest path. The same path I was certain I’d taken after leaving the cursed tomte village.

I started to feel a little nervous as we approached. Bloody Steve was a tomte. What if he could tell I was the one who slaughtered the entire town of cursed tomte? What if he went into some kind of berserker rage and killed us all at the sight of the devastation? I was busy trying to think of frantic plans. None of them were good.

Mostly, I came up with running for my life before we reached the village or trying to find some way to divert our course. But if it didn’t work, it would be even more obvious I was responsible for what we were about to walk up to.

I settled for quietly panicking as I walked at the back of the group.

“Well, look at that!” Bloody Steve said as we approached the tiny, walled-in town. I could smell death and poison even from where we stood. Steve jumped with surprising agility and gripped the top of the wall. He did a little pull-up and stuck his bald head over the top of the wall.

The rest of us were tall enough to look over it from where we stood.

“Anybody alive in there?” Bloody Steve shouted. He waited, let go of the wall, and landed, dusting his hands. “Looks like the dumb fucks poisoned themselves. Ah, well. A dead gloomer is a good gloomer.”

“Gloomer?” I asked.

“Ayup. Murks. Grims. Gloomers. I know you bigs call them cursed tomte, but they don’t deserve the tomte name.” He spat on the ground.

“I read about cursed tomte somewhere,” I said carefully. “According to the book, it sounded like a sort of mutually beneficial relationship between cursed tomte and… uncursed tomte. Was that wrong?”

“Uncursed tomte? You mean purefolk,” Bloody Steve said proudly. He seemed to stand a little straighter at that, too. “But must’ve been an old book. Hundreds of years ago, sure. Gloomers worked for purefolk. Then they started seeding our women, and—”

“Pardon,” I said. “Seeding your women. You mean—”

Bloody Steve made a rude gesture as if he was trying to “seed” the air.

I nodded with a smile. “Got it.”

“Anyway. They wanted us to raise their bastard halfsies like they were purefolk. We fought a little war, and that was that.”

Minara, as usual, had been listening. “‘Little’ might be underselling the scale,” she said. “We call them the underwars. The Radiant Path was highly involved in trying to settle the dispute. One of our elders even developed an ability to cure the cursed tomte, but the purefolk, uh… ah…” She licked her lips, then swallowed. She’d been speaking like she was reciting a history lesson, but the darkening expression on Bloody Steve’s face had quieted her. “The cure was not popular among all parties,” she said. “The cursed tomte were driven out of cities after a great deal of bloodshed, and now you’ll find them clustered in little communities like this in the wilderness.”

“There were enough of the cursed tomte to fight a war against the purefolk?” I asked. “I got the impression there weren’t too many of them.”

“Where do you think the curse came from?” Steve said. “Damn swamp hags and their green magic. We shut that down once we caught on to how they were pluckin’ our strings from a distance. They didn’t like it, so they sent their beasts to help the gloomers.” He dusted his hands and shrugged. “Look who holds the cities, though. Look who still lives in the feckin’ swamp. Look who is out here wipin' their asses with leaves and poisonin’ themselves like idiots.”

“Yeah,” I said in a tone I hoped was neutral. There was no point pretending I had a loose grip on the reality of the situation. All I had was apparently outdated information from a tooltip and Bloody Steve’s passionate account of how things went.

The fact that my tooltip’s information was outdated was a new concern, though. I’d been assuming it was all up-to-date and accurate. I needed to remember to take it all with a grain of salt.

I let Bloody Steve walk a little way before continuing after him. The man may have been the size of a small child, but I’d seen enough to know he could smash me into a pulp if I got on his bad side.

If he was bothered by the reminder of how much he hated gloomers, though, he didn’t show it. He whistled and tossed a hammer in the air, then caught it on one fingertip in perfect balance. “Hah! You saw that, right, Helmet?” he asked.

I cleared my throat, then flashed a thumbs up for him. Apparently, I was “Helmet” now.

Looking pleased, he turned back and tried the move again. This time, he dropped the hammer. He cursed and threw it suddenly at a nearby tree. It exploded through the wood, sending splinters out like shrapnel.

Everybody froze until Bloody Steve waddled over, hands on his oversized belly, and then picked up the hammer. “Whoopsie,” he said, continuing on.

What a scary little man…