I woke to the smell of cooked meat greeting my senses, stirring as I heard the most friendly voice.

[mys] “ah you must’ve been tired last night, sleeping in”

I bolted upright, grabbing my clothes to put on hastily “WE’RE LATE!?”

[mys] “Stop! Relax, take a breath. We’re not on that strict a schedule. Though this is it for me bringing

you your breakfast, you’ll have to get it from now on alright?”

“y-yeah, I… we, we can do things without a time limit?”

[mys] “almost, I mean we still have to get things done but aside from that they don’t care about, the specifics” I heard his wonderful trilling laughter as my hands bounced in joy. It hadn’t been that long, but I took to the changes. Burned them into my mind expecting years or decades of being a penitent, if not a whole life. What had made Reveals- Rev elevate me so soon after my penitence had begun?

“it smells delicious, thank you for bringing the meal mys. Can I eat it throughout the day?” his head tilted

[mys] “why would you? We get our evening meal as well you know”

“I didn’t actually” I take my first bites of meat, shredded pieces falling back onto the plate. “mhhh by the mother that tastes delicious after…”

[mys] “bet it is, but eat it up we’ve plenty of work to do yet.”

The rest of the day goes well, copying texts of various types. One on magic from the great mother's blood that I can’t really understand. A second on metal working and identification of the various metals, I do my best to remember the information. The third that I start is a collection of accounts of our history before the invaders. Large families called creches being the main organizing principle, everything else built up from that. Multiple creches forming a commune, several of those making a colony, colonies forming cities and Directorates. With the sunset over an hour ago I set my equipment aside for tomorrow and head to bed.

“what did you copy?”

[mys] “sacred texts of the chanters. Ran around a fair bit, showed the soft one what to do”

“soft one? Why do we have a soft one?”

[mys] “reassigned since you were elevated. Still need someone doing that grunt work. What did you spend your time on?”

“magic, metal working. Though did you know we had families? Before the invasion that is”

[mys] “no, that’s weirdly like the soft ones”

“ehh, ours were larger. More siblings and such. More working together to help each other out, I think. I don’t really know too much about soft-skin families”

[mys] “think you got it, for them its just the breeding pair and their offspring. Offspring that disobey and fight them. Really makes hard to understand why they even breed sometimes”

“guess it’s their nature… hey mys”

[mys] “yeah?”

“i’m really glad I know you”

[mys] “you’re not to bad yourself. Night”

Weeks more of writing and learning follow. Math, history, philosophy, smithing, machinery, alchemy, and more all learned from exposure. Imperfect as was my understanding but still all there for me to take in. One day mys changes things up and has me see to the soft one. A definitely smaller, too thin creature that wile it looked less soft did so by being to thin. It was no wonder why it wasn’t set to do manual labor, it’d likely die from it. The too thin soft one did it’s work attentively though so after that I went to the markets to make the few needed purchases in my masters name. There I met one, a penitent. It’s lower arms having been removed instead.

[penitent] “why”

“wh-what? Why what?”

[penitent] “why you? You actually made a wrong decision, why do you get to stop being in this so fast?”

[Al] “well you can’t please everyone can you?”

“i-i don’t know”

[penitent] “doubt that, you know. You know why so what’s the reason”

[Al] “my my, so full of bravado! Especially for being laid low so recently”

I look down and see the crude blade he has. W-was he going to kill me? If I’d had my strong arms still I wouldn’t be worried about it, with how weak I was though he could do it easily. “wh-why are you here?”

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[penitent] “if you think yourself too important to answer then know, I’m blade in shadows and I will have my answer. One day whelp”

[guard] “hey! Penitent, back on the cart. You’ve got battles to fight” Blade in shadows backs away, his crude knife in hand as his head stays aligned to me as he gets to his transport cart. As the cart goes I let out a breath. I don’t know how an earned name was made penitent, but I definitely didn’t want to see him again. Maybe he’d die in battle.

[Al] “he seemed quite perceptive, maybe he knows I’m here?… nah that’s not how it works. Still had you thinking for a moment didn’t I?”

under my breath “you’re going to kill me with fear or concern aren’t you?”

[Al] “or? Why not both? Hehe, relax my friend you’re on the rise. He wouldn't have done anything to you.”

Before long the purchases were made, items carried back to the Scholarum. Weeks more passing, occasionally checking in on the soft one. Light brown skin with brown hair and golden flecked green eyes. They still looked so wrong, but they were probably the most easy to deal with of their kind I had known. Mys was always good to chat with at the end of the day, sometimes talking about what we’d read. It felt good to have purpose, to have a role of worth again… honestly this was a better position for me than organizing the off putting soft-skins had been, my talents fully being utilized. With two months of copying and reading texts Rev had me called back to his work room, quizzed on what I’d read, what I’d thought about it. What I understood and could recall, somehow he seemed to know it all in depth… no not somehow, of course he’d know. Lifetimes to learn and master each subject… well not every subject, but how?

“Rev may I ask a question?”

[Rev] “you just did. And for future reference you can ask me any question you find important and can’t get answers to yourself. You can also write questions rather than use up my time this way if it’s not time sensitive… after you ask what you had in mind”

“r-right” Damn he still put me on edge “w-well if you’ve had lifetimes to learn and understand so much then I don’t understand why you aren’t a magic user?”

[Rev] “I am” he lifts his hand and with a few muttered words there’s a bright red shimmering light floating above his palm. It’s there for a moment then disappears as he closes his palm. “I'm just not particularly good at it. For whatever reason I just don’t seem to have the mind for it… perhaps if I applied myself to it for...forty lifetimes I might become a good or great mage. However I do far more good for our people as a scholar, and truly great mages only need five lives at the most to become masters. It would be very wasteful of my time to pursue becoming a mage. Let that be a lesson in itself, make the most of your time. You can do many things but some you will do better faster, that’s where your energy and focus should go.”

“is following scholarly pursuits one such place?”

[Rev] nods “yes, it’s why I elevated you. My guess was correct. Mathematics, logistics, much of the learning that deals with the physical and mundane you have proven adept at. In fact I’ll be making sure you get plenty of alchemy texts to copy.”

“may I keep having history texts to copy as well?”

[Rev] he nods “now my testing is done. Return to your work and learning”

I turn to leave then pause. “did we, used to teach differently than this?”

[Rev] “before the invasion?… yes. it feels like an eternity since then, all the lives we told ourselves it’ll all go back once we kill them all. Every last soft-skin… maybe that will never really happen”

“no, it’ll be good to eradicate them all. Like you said, this life is different”

[Rev] “walking proof. Now out, I have work to do!”