Prince Khalik had first heard the common tongue in infancy.

His very first memories of hearing any language were of his mother, brother, father, nanny and nursemaid speaking Tekish, and on some occasions, the common tongue.

When those close to him spoke to members of the household staff who’d hailed from abroad, he would hear the language. Well before he turned six, on days when he was bored, he would listen to his father’s meetings with dignitaries from foreign lands—lands both near and far. On some occasions, he’d be in the room, and on others, he’d be hiding in the palace’s secret passageways, hidden there because his parents hadn’t known that he’d seen his father entering one, unaware that his youngest son was near. As he grew older, he would listen carefully as his older brother spoke with his trainers, tutors, or guards: all of whom spoke a variety of tongues. In time, it was Khalik who was being tutored in the common tongue as well as the many tongues of the southlands.

He took to languages easily; his tongue was quick and his mind was keen and clever. The young prince very quickly learned that there was a fundamental truth about language.

Those who spoke only one tongue, innately tied meaning to its specific words and syllables. When they wrote, meaning would be innately tied to the symbols of their mother tongue.

They would think in that tongue.

Meaning would come from sounds and symbols.

But for Khalik, this concept was not true.

To the prince—who had grown up in a world of many tongues—he’d learned that meaning could not be contained to one sound or syllable. A concept could be expressed with many different words, sounds, syllables, songs, or even a tone, a click of the tongue or a gesture.

Meaning was not tied to one single thing.

And Khalik had grown to understand just how much that applied to spellcasting.

That understanding soon allowed him to break through a barrier.

The prince stood in the middle of a forest clearing with Najyah circling high above him. His lips uttered the incantation of one spell, while his hands and arms performed another. Power flowed from his mana pool and into both spells.

He unleashed them.

Two fourth-tier spells activated at once.

The first spell, Wall of Stone, raised a stone wall from the earth in an instant. The second, Stone Spears, raised thick, sharp, stalactites from a rock surface nearby. Both spells combined, creating a stone partition that instantly sprouted spikes on all sides.

“Not bad!” Khalik shouted, excitedly.

“You got it!” Thundar cried sprinting up beside the prince with Isolde close behind. “That was fast!”

“It was many weeks worth of work,” Khalik said. “Swift by some standards, and slow by others. But I am proud.”

“You got it before I did,” Isolde huffed. “Which makes sense, since you have always been better with languages than I am.”

“But you are making more progress with mana manipulation,” Khalik said, grinning. “You have talent for it, Isolde.”

The young noblewoman shrugged. “It is mostly experience, not talent. I have some experience with mana manipulation, because I need it for alchemy. That experience is letting me advance faster with mana manipulation, faster than I am advancing in casting spells nonverbally.”

“You can both take a hike,” Thundar sulked, crossing his arms across his chest. “Mana manipulation and nonverbal casting are both bullshit, I hate them and I hate both of you.”

“Oh, do not say that, leader of the cabal,” Isolde smirked. “You cannot hate your ‘subordinates’.”

“Indeed!” Khalik said. “It is improper for a leader to be like that. Besides, you are making great progress when it comes to breaking down spell arrays and spotting their patterns.”

“Yeah, well…that’s easy,” Thundar said.

“Easy he says!” Isolde snorted.

“Yes, easy. I mean, when you’re working with illusions you have to learn everything you can about shapes, textures, colours and…stuff like that, right? The more you notice the details of a shape, the better you can recreate those details in an illusion,” Thundar said simply. “It’s like noticing the details in a spell array: learn the details, learn the shape, and figure out how those shapes come together. It’s pretty similar to what I already do.”

“An’ that’s why I’m hatin’ all three o’ yous!” Cedric shouted from across the clearing. “Fancy writin’ shite, fancy language shite, fancy mana shite! Feels like m’head’s gonna bloody explode!”

The Chosen was sitting on the ground in front of a tree trunk, pulling at his red hair as though he was going mad. “I feel like I’m goin’ mad!”

“I do not want to hear that from the man who is closer to breaking through to his next-tier of spells well before the rest of us!” Isolde shouted.

“Oi!” Cedric pointed to the golden glowing scales over his heart. “Y’see these? It gives me a bloody shit load o’ mana, but all that means is I kin keep practisin’ spells ‘til I turns blue in t’bloody face! If I hav’ t’speak another incantation, I swear I’m gonna throw m’self in t’bloody sea!”

“You will be fine, Cedric,” Isolde said. “I believe in you.”

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“Thanks,” he said dryly. “Been like pullin’ teeth, though…” He looked to the west. “Y’think Drestra and Alex are makin’ progress?”

“I don’t doubt it,” Thundar puffed out his chest. “If I know Drestra, I know she’ll be mastering what she’s gotta master before any of us.”

###

“This is hopeless!” Drestra screamed, orange light blazing between her fangs. “I can’t do this! It’s a failure! I’m a failure!”

“Drestra, we’ve been doing this for four days, not four years.” Alex raised his hands, trying to calm her down. “It’s not a big deal if you haven’t gotten it yet. You’ll get it, I’m sure of that.”

“Merzhin got what he needed to get after one conversation!” Drestra hissed, throwing herself on the ground and staring up at the sky. “I feel like an addled-brained blob of flesh next to him!”

“Sometimes folk get what they need real fast,” Alex sighed, sitting on the ground beside the Sage. The pair were practising in a meadow several miles away from the others. It was quiet and peaceful there.

No sign of Ravener-spawn.

In truth, the spawn in the area had been reported to be helping folk recently instead of harming them, and that strange behaviour had allowed most of the Heroes to practise in peace. Alex, meanwhile, had sent Hart, Claygon, Merzin, Bjorgrund, Asmaldestre and even Birger—along with a sizeable force of soldiers—to different area of Thameland where Ravener-spawn were rampaging like they wanted to tear the very foundations of the world apart.

He hoped everyone was alright…but, he was also quite confident that they were, considering who all was with them…including the newly invigorated Saint. After his Mark’s evolution, Merzhin’s divinity was enhanced, making him a devastatingforce on the battlefield. He could channel miracles at speeds he’d never known before, and every divinity he used was stronger, overflowing with power. From what Hart had said, the Saint had been taking out all of his frustration with Uldar on the Ravener-spawn, and doing so with such brutality that even the Champion would be in awe when the two of them returned from hunting.The soldiers had noticed the Saint’s newfound power, as had the priests.

When they’d asked Merzhin about it, his reply had been a cryptic, “I have been given a gift, and in time, the giver shall be revealed.”

Of course, the fact that he’d sewn the lantern-symbol of the Traveller into his priest’s robes was lost on few. The rest could make of things what they would.

Though soon, there would be no need for speculating.

Tobias Jay was preparing to announce the coming of the General, the transformation of the Marks, the discovery of Uldar’s equipment, and how all of this was tied to Hannah and her mercy.

Over time, his message should send a flood of strength her way.

And if that didn’t work…Alex had a feeling he knew what would…

But, that was for another time.

He turned his full attention back to Drestra, who was looking at him peevishly.

“Did your mind wander off?” she asked.

“It does that, sometimes.” Alex smiled apologetically, stretching beside her. “Listen, I think it’s simple: Merzhin simply got what he needed at the time he needed it. It was exactly what he needed, and he was ready to receive it.”

“Well I am ready to receive it!” Drestra sounded annoyed. “I don’t know why it won’t come to me. Mana manipulation…I have so much mana flowing through me you’d think it would come easily!”

Alex shook his head. “Just because you have a big mana pool, doesn’t mean you have a lot of experience manipulating mana. Most wizards find the art pretty difficult, no matter how powerful they are, and there’s no shame in that.”

“I might say that if I wasn’t struggling so hard with nonverbal casting,” Drestra hissed. “It…it’s a complete puzzle! Meaning through eyebrow twitches and muscle movements, I just can’t make it make sense to my body! I’ve been working on that since you told us about your plan for us to grow more powerful weeks ago!”

She ground her sharp teeth. “And I still can’t do it!”

“Yeah, that is odd, I’ve gotta admit,” Alex said, frowning. “Everyone’s made some amount of progress. The fact that you haven’t, is strange.”

“Thanks,” Drestra said dryly. “You sure know how to comfort someone.”

“If you wanted to be comforted, you would have asked me, like you did when we first met,” Alex said.

She scowled. “I did not ask you to comfort me!”

“Not verbally, but with your body language,” Alex said. “You were hard to read, but I could tell from your tone, and partly from your body language…it was saying that you wanted someone to talk to back then.”

Drestra rolled her reptilian eyes. “Great, you know more about my body language than I do.” She snorted. “By all the spirits, that’s unfair. Why can’t I get this right? This is stupid! I’m so stupid!”

“You’re not stupid.” Alex shook his head. “You’re smart. Real smart. You pick things up quickly: honestly, if you went to Generasi, I’m sure you’d be one of the top students in your classes.”

“There’s a thought,” Drestra sighed. “That sounds so nice: going to school to learn about magic and the world, instead of getting my knowledge and skills firsthand in a warzone. I envy you. All of you. My title is the Sage, but I’m no sage. Not in the true sense of the word: I have no great knowledge or wisdom to share with anybody.”

“You’re wiser than you think,” Alex pointed out. “And if it’s knowledge you want, you can attend Generasi after the war. But, just…don’t declare that’s gonna be your grand plan for your future or anything because most characters in the old stories who do that always end up dead—” Alex paused, remembering that he and his cabal had talked about their grand plans for when the war was over.

He cleared his throat and quickly moved on. “—my point is that you can attend the school after the Ravener’s dead, if you want to.”

“That would be nice,” Drestra grunted. “But maybe I won’t be as good a student as you think.”

Alex shook his head. “I’m sure you’d do really well.”

“Then why can’t I get either mana manipulation or nonverbal casting right?” she grumbled.

“Like I said, things take time,” Alex said. “And also, if you’re smart—and you are smart—and you still can’t get it, then something else could be going on. Either the teacher’s bad at teaching—”

“You’re a great teacher,” Drestra assured him.

Alex blushed a little. “Thanks, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I kind of agree. The Mark of the General literally makes me good at teaching if I concentrate on it, and I’ve been concentrating. I’ve been using it to try different ways to teach you how to do nonverbal casting, but, our successes and failures don’t seem to be getting us any closer to solving your problem. Which brings me to the second possibility: something else, beside your teacher, is the problem. When I had the Mark of the Fool, it didn’t matter how good my teacher was or how much I tried.”

He thought of Ram’s class.

“I was always going to fail at spellcraft at a certain point, especially combat spells,” Alex said. “So maybe there’s something blocking you from getting the body language right…”

“And what could that be?” Drestra asked. “Since you know my body language better than I do.

“I’m not sure…” He thought back to when he’d first met her, going over what he’d observed in her body language. He remembered thinking, at the time, that it seemed slightly off.

There’d been something odd about it.

Maybe that had something to do with the problem she was having now? But, why did her body language seem so strange back then?

“Oh look, there’s Najyah,” Drestra said, watching a distant shape soaring high above the forest. “I wonder if she’s hunting? Maybe we should take a break and go get something to eat, I’m starving.”

“Wait, you can tell that’s Najyah from this distance?” Alex squinted at the faint shape.

Drestra nodded. “Dragon eyes can see much, much farther than a human’s.”

Her words struck Alex like a lightning bolt and he leapt to his feet. “By all the gods, I’ve been a fool!”

“What? What is it?” Drestra looked at him, startled.

“I think I know why you can’t get the body language right!” Alex cried, looking at her reptilian eyes. “We’ve been trying to get it with you in the wrong body! Transform to your true form!”