FH 57 Spring, Winona

“So, I know it looks a lot like my coat, but I thought that maybe you’d like that?” Telos held a calf length red coat out to me. It had beautiful embroidery across the cuffs and shoulders, and glimmering obsidian buttons drew my eyes right in. Unlike Mom’s coat, which had snowflake embroidery across the shoulders, mine had dragon flies in a style she called goth.

“It’s absolutely beautiful, mom.” I looked out the window, at the sun shining on the Academy grounds visible from the front parlor of Arkaziel’s manor. “But wouldn’t a coat have been more appropriate in winter?”

Mom laughed and ruffled my hair. She had to reach up to do it. I had finally shot up past both of my parents and had reached one hundred and ninety-two centimeters tall. Lilith had stopped growing at one hundred and eighty, just short of our mothers’ heights. Lilith had taken to wearing thick souled boots to make up a few centimeters difference.

“It’s a versatile coat. It looks like a long coat now, but I designed five different preset appearances for it. Long coat, tailed coat, windbreaker, suit jacket, and vest. Any of the equipment you link to it can be transformed along with it, so you’ll always look good.”

“Wait, what?” I blinked a few times.

“Yeah, you can link your equipment with it. Temporarily or permanently, and use a little transmutation magic to change their appearance to what you’re imagining, but I made four presets, too for on the fly or mid-combat. You’re a speed based close quarters combatant, so I thought it was best that you have control of these things.”

Mom grabbed the end of her fluttering scarf and gave it a tug. Not for the first time, I wondered how her scarf always fluttered on invisible winds, but the answer always came back to the fact my sense of drama had come from somewhere.

“You don’t want people tugging on your clothes or hair,” Telos laughed.

“I’ve never fought anyone who could even catch my hair besides you or Sun Wukong,” I said with a laugh. I knew that wouldn’t always be the case. There were people faster than me out there, presumably, and the faster I got the more the System would throw similar speed challenges at me, or it would find ways to negate me.

“Someday you’ll find more enemies on your level, tough guy. That’s not all the coat does.” Mom let that hang in the air, and she watched me with all three eyes. And watched me. Clearly, she was determined to not speak until I did. The last time we tried to out stubborn one another we’d spent three hours staring at each other.

“Oh yeah? What else does it do?” After I asked, I stuck my tongue out at mom.

“You’re seventeen now Alexander, and sticking your tongue out stopped being cute when you were five.” Mom shook her head in exasperation at me, then patted the jacket. “I put so much good stuff in this thing.”

“Like what? An apple?” I asked in honest confusion.

“Yeah, you betcha. An apple.” The room felt suddenly colder. There was a direct correlation of how annoyed mom was to how cold the room was. “Dumbass.”

“No, not an apple. The first one unlocks at level twenty, Mr. I’ve been stuck on level nineteen all winter. It’s called Reflex Resonance. Every successful evasion will grant you a stacking bonus to speed and agility.” Telos smirked. If anyone knew my abilities, it would be Mom, and she’d made me a perfect item.

“That’s really good. But I know that smirk. What else?”

“Oh, just it has a few other unlockable bonuses on dodge. There’s Momentum Burst, Echo Echo, and even Oh-No-He-Didn’t!” Mom’s smile lit up the room. Figuratively and literally. She always struck me as happiest, in these moments, talking about something she’d made for Lilith or I. I only noticed it for a moment, before I fully processed what she’d said.

“What is Oh-No-He-Didn’t? That sounds amazing.”

“It’s a health and stamina surge for each evasion. More precisely, it’s a 5% health, 5% stamina restoration over five seconds, stacking.” Mom looked at me, waiting.

“You’re the best! That’s ridiculous, and I can totally imagine someone getting very mad at me healing while they fail to hurt me. The stamina restoration might be even better. Thanks, mom!” The moment I thanked her, I got picked up and spun around as if I was a helpless child. It drove home the fact that compared to her, I was, which made me bristle inside a tiny bit.

“So, uh. I set the appearance for your gloves to look like mine when you have your coat in trench coat form. You can change it up if you want, I may have gotten a little carried away while I played with everything.”

“Your gloves are awesome; I’ll keep it that way.” That got me another hug I couldn’t escape from. Apparently, that had been the right answer.

“It’s time to go!” Lilith shouted into the parlor, shortly before she appeared in the doorway. Like me, she was fully equipped, and wore a new robe. If you could call an armored dress a robe. The white skirt nearly touched the floor, and elaborate bronze scrollwork went around the bottom hem of the skirt. All along the bottom of the dress were ornate iconography of arcane beings. Dragons, demons, spirits, nature beings, and monsters I didn’t know the name of. Unlike the skirt, the bodice was actual armor. It looked bronze, but knowing our parents, it was some impossible metal unknown to anyone but Telos and Kallos.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Lilith’s hair had been piled into braids and arranged in a haughty array to show off the matching crown she wore. When I acquired the Spectrum Goggles, she had acquired the Invoker’s Diadem, and it looked fantastic in her hair. Unlike the armor, it was a work of arcane sigils and iconography that wasn’t faces, and the band had numerous colored gems, while the top of the piece had white-blue teardrops at each upward point.

“Nice dress!” I immediately complimented Lilith, which got her to spin around and show off the new equipment. Mom somehow slipped the coat onto me while I clapped, and all of my gear’s appearance morphed a bit. Even my goggles, which had been hanging around my neck, were now nearly lensless glasses.

“You seemed so jealous of Morgan’s glasses,” mom said while she fiddled with my clothes one last time, then stepped away. “There, my handsome young boy is ready to become a man.”

“Mom!” I tried to fend her off, but Telos was faster, stronger, and seemed to have fifteen arms at once. I lost the battle, got squished in another hug, but then was saved when she went to attack Lilith instead. As usual, mom was right, and I loved the glasses version of my goggles.

“Do they still work as well, even though they only cover a fraction of my eyes?” I asked.

“No, yeah, they still provide total protection from blindness and light attacks and will prevent anything from stabbing you in the eye to boot.” Mom always had some kind of hidden amusement when talking about items like this. There were comments she seemed to want to make so desperately, but refrained from doing so because Lilith or I wouldn’t have the context to understand. So, doubtlessly, it was something from one of the Lower Realms.

“Why would that surprise you, your gloves protect your whole hands despite being fingerless.” Lilith lashed me with her tongue and smiled while doing it.

“Good point,” I admitted. The extra levels of thinking before I spoke when Lilith was around could get exhausting quickly.

“Alright, let’s get over to the academy. They’ll be opening the Trial soon, and Aisha won first entry in the lottery. If I don’t get to give her a good luck kiss I will be very cross.”

Mom and I shared a smile at the threat in Lilith’s voice and headed to the academy.

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The academy rarely had so many people in it. Nearly everyone in town had shown up, and it had turned into almost a fair. Students showed off their abilities to friends and parents, vendors tried to peddle snacks and treats, and then there was row after row of tents of travelers and adventurers who’d come to peddle equipment to the hopeful graduates. A magical item could, potentially, mean the difference between passing a Trial or failure.

“This gets busier every year,” Kallos muttered, and her cloak of chains transformed into metal wings. The jangle of chain lengths that hung from her metal wings, mixed with the dark power in the Heavenshadow chains, got the crowd to part like a bubble around our group. People wisely got out of the way, and if they didn’t, the chains writhed and clanked at them, as if they were hissing snakes.

“There’s Aisha!” Lilith shouted and pointed.

At the heart of the practice grounds a ten-meter-tall portal had been opened. The colors of it cycled and changed, one moment gold, the next black, then maybe gray. I saw no rhyme or reason for it. Why was it that big? Drama. Why did it make that weird humming sound? Also, drama. Dungeon portals didn’t make that sound.

Arkaziel stood talking to Aisha, and behind him a ring of professors stood vigil over the portal. I saw Professor Luminous wave at me, and then Professor Stormreaver must’ve made a snide remark, because she looked guilty. They were probably bored, since it was all for show. Arkaziel had to give permission for someone to enter the portal, otherwise it was just a flashy bit of lights, but it had started a few years ago after some younger students had tried to sneak into the Trial and caused a whole scene when it didn’t work.

I missed Lilith delivering her good luck kiss to Aisha while I’d watched the professors.

Arkaziel lifted a hand into the air. The sky filled with fireworks, explosions, lasers, and just an eyesore of light, that went on for a solid minute, before he lowered his hand and the lightshow ended abruptly.

“Now that I have your attention,” Arkaziel said in a very self-satisfied voice. “It’s time for this year’s Trial to start. Students, line up in your assigned spots.”

A line quickly formed, with Aisha at the front. Lilith was in the front third, Derrick had ended up in the middle. Morgan and I brought up the end of the line, which was fine with me, since it gave me a chance to give Morgan a good luck kiss. Repeatedly. Until Professor Sylas made birds swoop at us until we stopped.

“Are you nervous?” Morgan finally asked when half of the line before us had gone into the portal.

“Not even a little, we’ve got this. You?” I didn’t have a hard time finding confidence for the both of us. We were awesome, after all.

“I don’t know. I’m more nervous about what will come after this. We’re really going to go up north and put an end to Argarg? What then? Once he’s dead I’ll have avenged my parents.” Morgan chewed their lower lip nervously.

“One step at a time, dear. Not everything has to be planned out. It’s a big world, and Argarg isn’t the only tyrant out there, right?” Mom had mentioned Sun Kings, Terror Lords, and other preposterous names. Argarg the Barbarian would be the start of our legendary tales, not the end.

“That reminds me, did you find anything good in the vendor stalls?”

“Some consumables, a tent that turns invisible and stays warm even in the coldest of winter, and some makeup.” Morgan sounded slightly guilty about the last one.

“No money left over, then?” I laughed, because I’d expected it. Any money you gave to Morgan was as good as gone, and you should never expect to even get change back. It was one of their major flaws, and a sticking point that Lilith still used to pick fights with me about Morgan.

“Oh, here, try one of these pastries.” A cream puff appeared in their hand, fresh from their inventory. It smelled fantastic and tasted great. Not on the level of something cooked by Aunt Bobbi, but it had been made by a master, nonetheless.

“That’s shockingly good,” I said, but then Morgan had to wipe some frosting off my face.

“I bought fifty of them. Check your status, they even give a buff!”

I didn’t have the heart to tell Morgan the buff was too weak to overwrite the food buff I already had from breakfast this morning.