“We likely won’t have eggs or milk for a few days,” Chester told me, breaking the silence in the forge. My sniffling had subsided abruptly when he entered, and I wondered if I was again where I wasn’t supposed to be.

“I was looking for a place to practice my spells again,” I tried to explain even though he hadn’t objected to my presence.

“I’m happy for the buffs,” he shrugged and pretended to clean up some tools that were already orderly.

“I needed somewhere to practice up my fire spell,” I told him, casting the buffs on him because I could. “The chicken coop isn’t really safe for that today.”

“Cast away,” he offered, waving his hand toward the forge.

“If you’re working today, I can find somewhere else to practice,” I said, brushing off my skirt. I could have just cast clean, but I was already uncomfortable with how much higher my maid skills were than my combat ones.

“Nah, Lily was right when she said there wasn’t enough blacksmithing work around here to keep me busy. Besides, I like to watch you work,” he admitted bashfully. “I keep hoping I’ll figure out what you’re doing.”

“You want to cast spells?” I asked, surprised.

“It couldn’t hurt,” he hedged.

I wondered if I could teach him. Sammi had said teaching was possible. I’d done some training back at home. I had been a corporate trainer for several years. I taught computers when DOS was switching to Windows. If I could teach legal secretaries to give up the blue screen of Word Perfect for a mouse and macros, I could teach magic, right?

“I can try to teach you,” I offered.

“Really?” Lily peeked around the door. She’d been listening at the door?

I gave her a quizzical look.

“It’s just that business in a little place like this is very slow,” she rushed to explain. I didn’t know why they were both so nervous about it. “And seeing all the adventurers come in with sacks of silver sure makes adventuring look appealing.” A sleepy little place sounded perfect to me, but by the look of Lily and Chester, maybe it was too quiet for them.

“I just got ambushed by a rabbit with poisonous ears,” I scoffed at myself. “It nearly picked my calf clean of meat to feed to its many babies. I don’t know that I have a lot to teach, but I will teach what I know.”

“I was worried about you going out there alone,” Lily gave a light-hearted backhand to Chester’s shoulder.

“She did tell me to stop you,” he admitted, sheepishly. Terra brushed up against him. “But I thought since you knew so much magic and were brewing up potions already that you probably knew what you were doing.”

I laughed at that, probably harder than I should have. “I’m a babe in the woods.”

“Then you just need a little help is all,” Lily encouraged me. “You could teach me to heal, and I could make sure that you stayed healthy.”

“And I could put on some of this armor, and I’ve got enough swords to use,” Chester put in, getting excited. “I’m not a great tank, but I can swing one of these if someone was behind me making sure I didn’t die from a bunny while I was trying to learn.”

“And we’d only be gone in the afternoons, when nobody’s coming through anyway,” I figured, liking this idea a lot.

“I like them too,” Terra told me silently, giving them a quick meow of approval.

“Let’s see if I can teach this stuff,” I rubbed my hands together.

I cast my Sparkler spell at the forge a few times to see how I might teach it, then I took Lily’s hand in mine. I had no idea how magic was normally taught in this world, but I was willing, and able to be patient. Lily was similarly patient. She didn’t see mana like I did, but she could feel it. I found I could push her mana around a little. Once she figured out what I was doing, she opened up to me and it became even easier.

I guided her hands and her mana into the motions I used for my clean and mend spells. When she got drained so quickly, I found I could push my mana into her almost like I had with Lift Spirits. She didn’t refresh from petting Terra the way I did, so I couldn’t use that. She also couldn’t see my spell book. The pages were blank to her. Just like they couldn’t see their own character sheets, they didn’t really get a class either.

Spell Taught: Clean

Spell Taught: Mend

Spell Learned: Mana Boost

Skill Learned: Teaching

Exp +90 (440/1800)

I got experience for teaching both of them. I got experience when they levelled under my tutelage. It was like a magical pyramid scheme, and I was going to use it for all it was worth. Lily did level. So did Chester. I taught Chester the buffing spells. I figured that he could use his pool of mana to buff before a fight and she could learn the heals to use during the fight. From what I could tell, they didn’t see themselves as levelling as much as they just realized they were getting better.

This is where I’m just going to stop having this silly quill write out all the experience gained. I figured it out later that teaching a spell got me twenty experience, and when they levelled up, I got a whopping hundred and fifty experience. Just sit back and imagine you can hear the ka-chings racking up those experience points for me.

Skill Learned: Identify

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Finally, I could see their stats! I could see their levels and their Health and Mana pools as actual numbers floating around them. I could sit here and bore you with how I levelled up each stat, skill, and spell for me and my new party but why? Suffice it to say that I got an upgrade to Sparkler.

Spell Upgraded to Flare

A party was just what I’d needed. Well, what I really needed was for that spell to level up to fireball, but a party meant I could focus more on offensive spells. Healing was great, but I wanted to be able to do damage too. I needed to. If Beau walked into the tavern tonight, I was doomed. Even if we were the same level, I didn’t have enough to defeat him. Most of my spells were helpful… in the kitchen, as a maid, or in a clinic.

I set Lily and Chester to practicing, something they were having a bit of fun doing. We’d gotten into a rhythm. I sent a Sparkler at Chester. Chester tried to block or dodge it. Lily healed him when he failed. Chester didn’t seem to mind the pain of Sparkler, but when it upgraded to Flare, we had to change the game. I taught Spark to Lily, and they played on their own. Every once in a while, when they slumped over, I would boost their mana and return to my own studies.

Spark had done 3-4 points of damage. Sparkler had added a control aspect and increased the damage to 8-9 points. Flare had taken the control element out and increased the damage to 15-19 points. I started studying the mana as it flowed through the motions of Flare. The forge oven was the perfect place to cast into.

I tried changing the flavor of the mana that shot out. I say mana and frequencies but that’s only because it was so hard to describe some invisible force that I could almost see, almost feel, and sometimes alter in little ways. Fire felt angry and spicy, but also passionate and warm. As I changed the feel of the mana in the spell, I edged it toward something sweeter. It fought me, so I let it slide more to the side into sour and got a new spell.

Spell Learned: Casting Stone

That was more like it. I joined the game again until the damage upgraded.

Spell Upgraded to Stone Skin

It wasn’t a buff. It literally turned a patch of the target’s skin to stone. It took me a while to figure out how to soften the skin, but I was never going to need hand lotion again.

Spell Learned: Soften Curse

I went back to Flare and tried to take it to sweet again, sliding the other sideways this time into a saltier flavor.

Spell Learned: Soft Breeze

It was useless except as a minor puff of air, so I joined the game again until it upgraded.

Spell Upgraded to Breeze

It was like the spells I was learning were given so reluctantly that they were practically useless. On the other hand, I was getting a bunch of free spells with it.

When I combined Breeze and Stone Skin, I had my biggest ah ha moment since I’d arrived.

Spell Learned: Moisten

And there it was. I had all four elements. I laughed at myself and got Chester wet. Lily laughed too.

And here I’d told you I wouldn’t bore you with my grinding. Thanks for being a little patient. I kept it as brief as I could. You really are a good sport to go reading through all that. I might not have. Fast forward now, okay? It was getting dark, so we called it a night and were all ready for dinner at the tavern. It only took a few minutes to put the finishing touches on things. Lily and Chester spent that time freshening up, I would guess. In any case, they were very cheerful when they made it to the tavern an hour later.

Spell Upgraded to Create Water

I didn’t have to go to the well anymore. Beau didn’t show up that night. I managed another class and profession level through the sale of my food, and all the practice we’d done in the forge. I took my buffs up a little, but I went to bed early rather than fight the headache my day had brought on. Turned out creating spells was exhausting, but I was hooked on it. Mana was my new friend and I’d cherished, seduced, taunted and teased it to do my will. It was like painting with emotions and flavors. My natural creativity kicked in so hard, I found it hard to stop. I passed out in my bed still playing with the flows of it.

By morning, I had yet another level and more skill levels. I practically skipped down the back stairs to my chores. I was up earlier and fast to work. It wasn’t work. It was a joy, helping me forget my troubles as the morning sun made its way over the treetops of the forest. During my morning cooking, I figured out another spell that I’d been wanting.

Spell Learned: Freshen

The stale bread from the day before perked up. The stores in the pantry were upgraded in quality. The dried herbs became fresh ones. I used my new culinary knives with relish, making relish. I found I could pull freshness out of something to cure it a little.

Spell Upgraded to Preservation

I nearly danced through my morning cooking. Terra danced with me like we were YouTube stars in the making. By the time Mabel came in for her breakfast, I was half-sprawled into a corner chair and Terra was caught in a sunbeam from the back door.

“Good morning, beautiful,” I called out to her as she scooped some honeyed oats into a bowl for herself. My mind was already spinning with how to make a mana version of baking soda for some oatmeal cookies.

“You’re awfully cheerful this morning,” Mabel grumped, but my happiness was undeterred by her normal morning grumpiness.

“The sun is shining but not too hot,” I gushed stupidly. “The outhouses are clean, the rabbit pot pies are resting and desserts already bubbling and I have a date with the forest as soon as my partners get here this morning. What’s not to be cheerful about?”

“So, you’ve seen him already?” Mabel asked, sending a chill down my spine.

“Who?” It wasn’t fair. I was happy and just a day away from close to ready.

“That bard you’d asked Marlo about before?” she confirmed my worst dread, sending my stomach plummeting into my shoes.

“He’s here?” I squeaked out in barely a whisper. Terra nudged me with her head, and I petted her, trying not to lose my mind.

“Showed up last night asking if we had any strangers around,” Mabel settled down on her favorite stool and began to eat.

“And what did you say?” I was ready to throw up.

“Nothing stranger than you,” she joked, not noticing that it fell flatter than my cookies.

“You told him I was here?” I asked firmly.

“What?” she finally seemed to notice that I was not amused. “You look terrible. Are you alright?”

“No,” I whispered, my eyes darting from the tavern doorway to the back stairs. “Does he know I’m here? And where is he? Mabel, just answer me quickly.”

“He’s upstairs, probably sleeping off all the ales folks bought for him,” Mabel admitted, setting down her bowl. “We didn’t tell him nothing. Marlo said we had a new cook, but…”

I was out the back door and halfway to the forest when I heard his drawling voice.

“You can run, but you can’t hide from the quest,” he called. It was his voice, but it sounded even more honeyed than when I’d known him. I didn’t pause to see his face.

“I challenge you to a duel tonight,” he yelled out from the doorway. I felt the challenge wrap around me and knew that he’d done something. Something formal. I was bound to return.

All I knew was that I wasn’t ready. I was at half mana, my Beauty stat around my ankles, and my offensive spells almost useless at the levels they were at. Two minutes ago, I’d been as hopeful and happy as I’d managed to be since I’d arrived.

Terra must have tripped him up. He cursed and I turned in time to see him kick at her. I almost ran back for her. I identified him and my heart sank lower. He was level ten! How was he such a high level? How had he gotten here so quickly? He had a sword at his hip, and a mandolin over his shoulder. I saw a limp gray form near the well. Was she dissolving?

“Run,” she told me, her voice weak in my mind.

I gulped and hated myself. I prayed harder than I’d ever prayed before that Terra had gotten somewhere safe. I could summon her once I got to the relative safety of the forest. She’d better be okay, or I’d kill him. Maybe I only had to defeat him, but now I thoroughly wanted to kill him. Then I thought about the forest and bunnies, and changed direction for the chicken coop. I’d take my chances with them, since I might as well be a larger version of one of them.