I wasn’t sure if he’d recognize me.
The level sixteen crystal that he’d given me as a parting gift felt like it was burning a hole in my pocket. I swallowed as I watched him.
“Trent Vowler!” The brown-skinned man wearing full leather armor with a black sword on his back held out his arms and the two of them embraced.
“Class I would like to introduce you to a horrible student and halfway decent Adventurer. This is Paul Mite. This is…”
He was interrupted by Aelin pushing Justia the rest of the way out of the RV so she could see what was going on.
“Jus?” The Knight ran over and gave Justia a big hug. She squeezed him back, but not very enthusiastically.
“Uncle Paul, please, you’re embarrassing...” Justia tried to push her way out of his embrace without finishing.
“Uncle Paul?” Aelin and I said at the same time.
“Atlas?” The black-haired man let go of Justia and came over to me.
I offered him my hand, but he wrapped me in a hug. He let go and kept his hands on my shoulders. "I knew I had a good feeling about you!” He looked me over. “Let me guess. Your class is…” Our weapons were in Trent’s crystal band, so those wouldn’t give it away, but I had been using a longsword, which would have thrown him way off.
“Hitter?”
I shook my head. "No, I’m a…”
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He held up his hand. "One more guess, you’re a Shoo…” His eyes drifted over to Rix and he shook his head. "You came from the Cathedral, so you’re not a Shooter.” He pointed at Justia. "Not a Healer, congrats by the way. Your mom told me when I got back, sorry, I couldn’t be there, I was busy leading a Farming party with this guy!” He turned me so that he could give me a side hug. And looked from Aelin to Ether.
He pointed at Ether. "You looked like you were ready to jump in front of him when I came this way, so you’re either the Tank or his girlfriend…” He laughed and squeezed me. "Both! Three for four!” He turned to Aelin. "Hitter, Caster, Buffer…” He looked back at me. "You’re not a buffer, so Caster?” He seemed confused. "Huh, must be getting old.” He turned back to Aelin who was doing a poor job of pouting and pointed at the blonde. "Buffer, sorry miss, but you’re too timid to be a Hitter.”
The knight tried to look around Aelin. "Where’s the Hitter?”
“That’s part of why we’re here Paul." Trent walked over and saved me from the crushing hug. Over the course of his guessing game, Paul had forgotten that he was a much higher level than me and started squeezing too hard. I wasn’t sure if Justia was going to be able to heal the bruise I had later, but maybe her parents could.
“There was an accident and he had to go home to recover.” Trent shook his head. "Honestly, there’s a reason why we encourage the non-Healers to not double up. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a student manifest a tier three ability and not be able to handle it.” He clucked his tongue.
“Too true.” Paul snapped his fingers. "You know my daughter is Hitter. She refused to take the Mantle Trial without me there. We were able to get an exemption, but by then, all the Cathedral slots had been taken. Did you know that there were five new kids from Zeb this year? I get that the Cathedral takes all of those from the Godless sites before handing out slots, but if we’re going to start getting more, maybe you could talk to the ArchBishop about starting more classes?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Trent nodded. "I got three of them.” He pointed at us. "Aelin Zeb, Atlas Zeb, and Rix Zeb.”
“Wow.” Paul looked at us. "You guys have no idea how lucky you are to have Trent here as a teacher. Make sure you pay attention because you’ll learn something.”
We all nodded, I was surprised that for once, Aelin had nothing to say.
Her words finally caught up with her. "How did you do that thing? You’ve got to teach me!”