Victor’s mind raced as he stared at the strange, perfectly legible words scratched across the formerly blank page. Taking several shaky breaths, he sat up, hunching over with the book in his lap.

“What are you?” He whispered.

He felt rather silly — he already knew that the book was a focus — and he had also never heard of anyone talking to their focus before. They were just objects, after all. World shaping, life changing objects, but objects nonetheless.

The words faded, only for new writing to take their place.

I am your focus.

Shutting his eyes tightly, Victor ran both hands through his matted hair, swallowing nervously before opening them again. The message hadn’t changed. The book had answered him. Victor almost couldn’t believe it — it was simply incredible, barring even all of the ridiculous events which had led up to this moment.

“What can you do?”

This time, the words didn’t form all at once, but rather rapidly materialized one after the other from left to right.

Do you mean other than answer your questions? Is that not good enough for you?

Victor blinked. It seemed the book had a personality. Frowning, he thought hard about what to ask next…

“I’ve never heard of anything like you before. What kind of focus are you?”

This time, the words formed instantly and all at once.

Legendary Unique Focus: Tome of the Necromantic Artificer

Within these pages can be found the secrets to the manipulation of life, death, and that which lies between.

Through careful study, rigorous practice, and a determination of spirit, one may use these techniques to harness and direct the forces of death and rebirth to new ends.

This time, Victor’s frown was far darker. “So you can teach me necromancy.”

Necromancy — the profane art which had made a monster of his father. Which had robbed Victor of a life of idle comfort.

Not really. Traditional Necromancy is rather played out by now. And besides, it was never very creative to begin with.

Victor stared. He didn’t really know how to react, let alone respond — the book was giving him massive tonal whiplash. “So if not traditional necromancy, what is it?”

The book didn’t respond immediately this time, as if it were carefully considering its choice of words. Of course, it was rather hard to pick up conversational cues from an inanimate object. Finally, a single dark line of symbols revealed itself.

That is for you to discover.

Victor blinked. Wow. Very helpful.

Looking up for a moment, Victor took a few moments to relieve the tension in his body while he considered what to ask next. After loudly cracking his neck, he straightened up and crossed his legs, spreading the book out in font of him.

Frowning, he traced his index finger along the ridged spine. There was so much he wanted to know…

“You can talk to me.”

Most evidently.

Ignoring the book’s sarcasm — though it was difficult, as Victor already found himself becoming a bit annoyed — he decided to continue that train of discussion. “Like I said, I’ve never heard of a Focus communicating with its user before. Is this unusual?”

I am a Unique.

Victor frowned. He didn’t think that was how the Class grade system worked… but never mind that for now. “Why did you bond with me right away? I thought that a person had to initiate the bonding process themselves.”

I chose you.

That… didn’t actually answer the question. But it was interesting in and of itself, so Victor decided to press on it.

“Why?”

Our purpose is to serve. To guide inferior beings such that they might promote the Will of Creation.

They tried to force me to bond. They wanted my power for their own Will.

I refused.

That… was another non-answer.

But it was a fascinating one. Victor scratched his head — he didn’t even know where to begin with this latest turn of the conversation. So many questions — he just had to hope that the book would actually answer them.

The closet door knob began to turn.

Hastily leaping to his feet, Victor almost kicked the mysterious book under the blankets before remembering that it was his Focus.

For the second time, he tugged on that strangely familiar tether in his mind, and the book vanished just as the door creaked open.

“Kiddos are home.” Chloe peeked in through the crack. “And you might want to freshen up more while we have plenty of water.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Relaxing, Victor straightened his crumpled tunic and rubbed his eyes. “Right, good idea.” Stepping out into the main living area — well, only, really — he gave a tired smile and wave to James, Jackie, and Ezra before shambling over to the sink.

They barely acknowledged him. He couldn’t blame them — the three preteens appeared to already be engrossed in a game of dominoes, and they had been deliberately left completely unaware of how important today’s job had been.

As he splashed his face with cool water, Victor couldn’t help but wonder — Chloe would be overjoyed to learn that he had at least walked out with a Focus — a legendary one at that — regardless of the illegality of the class, or how odd the book seemed to be.

So why did he feel the need to hide it from her?

----------------------------------------

Victor woke up with a gasp. Strange visions had assaulted him throughout the night, nearly waking him several times — though now that pale early morning light shown through the cracks of the closet door, he couldn’t really remember what they were actually about.

Groaning, Victor tossed off the covers. Taking a moment to adjust to rejoining the waking world, he rubbed his eyes and yawned.

A moment later, the entirety of the past day’s events came tumbling down upon him, and he shot up in an instant.

Fucking hell.

It was almost unbelievable — so much so, that he briefly considered attempting to summon the book — his Focus — but something stopped him.

Not yet.

Most mornings, Victor made sure to tidy up his little bedchamber as best he could. But today was a reasonable exception — he would just unmake the bedding again that night anyway.

Rising to his feet, Victor waited for his vision to clear before stumbling out into the main room of the apartment.

No one else was present. The kids had put all their toys away, Chloe’s bags were nowhere in sight, and the stove was completely cold. Which could only mean that he had massively overslept, and was already late for his apprenticeship.

Fuck.

Screwing up a daring heist at La Isla fucking Bonita vault was not excuse for tardiness at the imperial academy. Cursing under his breath, Victor stripped as quickly as he could, actually tripping over his trousers and tumbling to the stained carpet with an undignified yelp.

Just a couple of minutes later, he was ready — if not necessarily presentable — and he was already out of the door when he realized he forgot his identification certificate.

After retrieving the enchanted placard from where he had stowed it under a box in his closet bedroom, Victor dashed back out of the door and practically flew down the exterior staircase to the street level.

He didn’t grab anything to eat of course. There was no time for breakfast.

Lord Harvey had once joked that if you were late, there was no reason to rush, as you couldn’t be late twice.

Amusing in principle, but experience had taught Victor otherwise.

As Victor jogged past the nearby church square on his way towards the center of the city, he spared a glance at the small mechanical clocktower.

Eleven o’clock. Well that’s just fantastic.

His apprenticeship was supposed to start at eight. He was, in a phrase, totally screwed.

Even at his frantic, poorly paced jog, it took Victor a quarter of an hour to reach the imperial academy gates. The enchanted iron fence surrounding the sprawling complex rose at least two and a half floors, and Victor knew it would be a fool’s errand to try to scale it — a lesson he had learned the hard way early on when he made the mistake of leaning against it while on break.

The guard manning the ingress booth didn’t seem to give a single shit about either Victor’s obvious tardiness or his atrocious state of hygiene. Victor had the proper certification to enter, and that’s all that the gloomy-eyed man needed to care about.

Once inside, Victor picked up the pace, practically sprinting down neatly trimmed, shady garden pathways crisscrossing between pearly white, impeccably clean buildings.

It was rumored that the entire school was a fully claimed dungeon zone that had been forcibly unearthed all the way up to the surface. Victor didn’t really believe it, but he couldn’t definitively claim otherwise, either.

Technically, Victor was not actually a student at the academy — he was a trade apprentice. While it wouldn’t seem like such a bureaucratic technicality would carry much significance, it actually did. Victor wasn’t allowed to use most of the resources available to students, such as the cafeteria, the library, or even the central courtyard.

He was also completely dependent on the good will of a single instructor — something he absolutely could not afford to lose.

Quite literally, as if his master in butchery, Harold, were to decide that Victor was unqualified, unskilled, or just plain inadequate…

Well, that would be the end of Victor’s potential future as a skilled tradesman with a Focus of his own.

And being over three hours late certainly didn’t look good.

Leaving the academic section of the campus behind, victor wove between the buildings of the practical section. Finally, he made it to the central nexus — a spot where the most important walkways and buildings converged, crowned by the most prestigious building in the section of all…

The delver’s hall.

The fully walled off, towering cylindrical structure was where delvers worked, trained, and prepared for entering the dark depths snaking below the entirety of the capital. It was supposedly dangerous work — but it came with no small share of fame, wealth, and glory.

Granted, there were ordinary workers who regularly entered the dungeon as well — maintenance crews, rail workers, and so on — but really, who cared about them, when they didn’t wield enchanted swords or conjure walls of mortal flame?

To get to die in glory was a luxury.

The butchery was right next to it, naturally, as no one wanted to drag freshly slain monster corpses halfway across campus. None of the other staff or students wanted you to do that either.

Bursting inside, Victor ran up the nearest staircase three steps at a time until he reached the third floor where his personal workshop was.

Yes, he had his own workshop — a luxury which he was incredibly fortunate to have acquired just one month prior, and which he absolutely did not expect to last beyond the week.

He would be sure to capitalize on it for as long as he could.

He briefly considered stopping at Harold’s office to see if he could catch his master and let him know that he arrived — but he quickly decided otherwise. He could already imagine what the gruff, tough old bastard would say.

‘So why the fuck are you standing in here wasting my time with excuses?’

No, he needed to get straight to work.

Dashing through the open door of his workshop, Victor nearly collided straight into the broad chest of none other than Harold himself.

Skidding to a halt, Victor hastily righted himself and clasped his hands across his waist. “Apologies for my tardiness, Sir. I have no excuse.”

The older man stroked his magnificent gray beard, staring down at Victor with a disinterested expression, before wiping his meaty hand across the front of his clean white apron. “You look like shit.”

“I feel like it, Sir.”

The master butcher snorted. “Understood.” He turned slightly, and gestured to half a dozen large steel buckets clustered on one of the two lab tables. “Everyone else has already finished their tasks. As you failed to show up on time, I distributed your day’s materials for their convenience.”

He turned back to Victor. “You may use their assorted scraps however you see fit. But don’t disappoint me.”

Victor nodded sharply. “Yes Sir.”

Without another word, Harold strode past Victor and closed the door behind him. Once his thunderous footsteps receded down the hall, Victor collapsed against the door and shuddered in relief. It had gone far better than he dreaded — but he also had no doubt that the task would be demanding, to say the least.

Approaching the lab table, Victor peered into the buckets and groaned. No, this would not be easy.

Resigned to his fate, Victor turned away from the table to grab his work equipment… only to freeze in place as a tantalizing idea squirmed its way into his mind.

The book had promised mastery over the manipulation of life and death. Maybe — just maybe — it could provide something useful.

I really shouldn’t do that here.

Honestly, it would be a terrible, impulsive idea, and he doubted anything good would come of it.

Victor made up his mind, and the book materialized before him on the table.