“Soulless?” Alarion asked as he reached for his own weapon. If Sierra was on edge, he knew he was wise to be so as well.

“Steelborn created without freewill,” She replied. She paced along the outer edge of the plaza, watching the guards for any sign of movement as she explained. “There is a cost to making Steelborn. The creator invests a part of themselves. It can be a large part, in the case of a masterwork, or only a tiny sliver, like those given to the factory crafted designs. Even the smallest sacrifice is enough to give them free will. The ability to act independently of their creator’s will if they so choose.”

“And they don’t have that,” Alarion finished for her. “So they’re not alive?”

Sierra shook her head. “Worse. There is a mind inside. It can see, hear, think. But it cannot choose. They are things beyond slavery. And they can be very dangerous.”

“Iik Ko No!” The sentinels shouted as Sierra tested their boundaries once again. This time she waited. And waited. And waited. The command was repeated again, and again, but the Soulless took no action.

“Their next trigger is further in.” Sierra announced, even as the automatons continued their demands. “That line on the ground. Or maybe the tree line. Once we push too far, they will attack.”

“You’re sure?”

“No,” she admitted. “But it is a safe assumption. If there is no owner around to command them, soulless follow the last set of instructions to the best of their ability. Given how dangerous that can be, their directives must be extremely strict.”

Alarion cocked his head. “Why would that be dangerous?”

Sierra’s expression was grim as she focused on the Soulless, still shouting their same demands.

“Because Soulless can make other Soulless.”

Alarion opened his mouth to press her for more information, but before he could speak a bolt of realization struck him and left him to stammer out only a simple, “Oh.”

“Yeah,” she replied darkly. “We have our pick of reasons to destroy them.”

“Can we?”

“That I am not so sure,” Sierra admitted. “Something is interfering with my skill. I am getting feedback, but it is all garbled.”

Alarion scowled, then brightened abruptly. “If they’re trapped over there can’t we just hit them from here?”

“We?” Sierra said pointedly. “Has your throwing arm gotten that much better in the last few levels?”

“You can hit them from here,” Alarion amended without a hint of shame.

“Better. But no. Most Soulless have a self-preservation directive. They might not, but I do not think you or I are that lucky.”

“Smash them, then?”

“Not the words I would have chosen,” Sierra chided. “But yes. First, let us get a little closer.”

“Iik Ko No!” The Soulless shouted in unison as the pair of Awakened marched onto the plaza. The menial Soulless paid them no mind, going about their repetitive tasks, while their compatriots glowered at the approaching humans. They repeated the command twice more at staggered intervals, then adopted a new posture as Alarion crossed the line of trees that separated the outer plaza from the inner.

“Iik Ko No! Koga-a-rai!” The Soulless demanded.

They were no longer upright and commanding, but low and braced. Each had their left arm out in front, a translucent sky blue shield glowing a foot away from their forearm, covering them from shin to ‘scalp’. Their other arm was levied in his direction, the empty wrist pointing, as if to tell him to go back.

“Alarion. Back.” Sierra commanded.

He wasn’t willing to listen to the Soulless, but her he would obey. Alarion stepped back, across the tree line, but this time the mechanical men remained in their ready posture, even after he departed. Half a minute passed. Then a minute. They would not be resetting as they had before.

“Those shields will be a problem,” She grimaced. “But we can work around… wait, where are you going?”

“I’m trying something,” Alarion replied, jogging past her.

Sierra watched him go, her brows knitted together in confusion before the simplicity of the idea struck her as well and she sprinted to catch up with him. Sure enough, once Alarion left the outer perimeter, the Blackstone soldiers pulled up stakes, shifted their posture and returned to their original positions.

“Clever,” Sierra said as Alarion beamed. Sometimes it was easy to forget his age. “Let’s get set up. Kotone?”

“Yes Miss?”

“I will need my instruments. And some chairs. Over there, if you’d please.”

“Yes Miss! Yes Miss!”

“Alarion. You have your physical class now. Your body is trained, which means I think it is time for a magic lesson.”

Sierra had learned that Alarion could be distant at the best of times. A youth who lived in his own head, he could focus, particularly in times of extreme danger, but ZEKE had struggled to keep him on topic if they boy was not interested.

For once, Alarion was positively riveted with attention.

“There are twenty-four known affinities of magic in the world,” Sierra began, scrawling furiously in a notebook to prepare a diagram for a lesson she did not expect to teach. “In sets of six, along four sets of oppositional axis.”

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“Oppositional…?”

She was losing him.

“An illustration will help…. and, done.”

Sierra turned her small notebook to show a poorly drawn image of a cross with an X through the center of it. Each line had six circles on it, three on either side of the midpoint of the image. Two circles on a diagonal line, those closest to the center, had words written inside them in barely legible writing. Fire and Water.

“You see how fire and water are on opposites sides of the center? That is what I mean by oppositional. The elements oppose one another.”

“Okay,” Alarion said skeptically.

“Everyone is born with an aptitude, and they are also born with affinities. Anywhere from one to four, with more almost always being better-”

“So you can only use certain types of magic?” Alarion interjected, clearly upset at only now learning about this sudden injustice.

“No,” she said reassuringly. “You will be better at the things you have the affinity for, and you will be worse at those oppositional to your affinities. If you have a water affinity, you could become a fire mage, but it will be considerably harder for you than it would be for others.”

Somewhat mollified, Alarion allowed her to continue.

“There are countless things I could explain, and even more that I do not know myself, but for this lesson I want to be specific. And for that you need to know about affinities. Mine in particular. Can you guess what they are?”

“Music?”

“Sound, but close enough,” she nodded. “What else? Two more.”

Alarion pondered. “Ghosts?”

“Spirit. But again, a good guess,” Sierra smiled. “You will not get the last one.”

“Summoning?”

“Not an affinity in and of itself, no.”

“Creation?”

“No.”

“Explosions?”

Sierra tipped her head up at that. “Closer than I’d thought you’d get. Force.”

“Force. Sound. Spirits.” Alarion reiterated.

“Correct. Most of my spells and skills incorporate some element of all three. You don’t have to embrace your affinities, but doing so can be what separates a good mage from a great one. Which brings us back to our lesson.” Sierra gestured ahead.

Kotone had been busy. Out in the plaza the little minion had set up four chairs from Sierra’s extra-dimensional space along with just as many large wooden string instruments that Alarion did not recognize.

“It is called a Cello,” She said helpfully. “My father used to say that if you want something done, you can have it fast, you can have it good and you can have it cheap, but you can only pick two. Everything is a trade off. If you want something good and cheap, it will take time. Fast and good, it will be expensive and so forth. Magic is very similar, but even more demanding.”

Sierra took a seat on one of the chairs, gently touching the most ornate of the four instruments with a loving hand while a chorus of Iik Ko No serenaded her.

“When you gain a spell-casting class you will automatically gain a spell-casting skill to go along with it. Similar to your Weapon Mastery, if much more intricate. The skill fills you with the knowledge on how to cast the spells that you earn through skills, and gives you the base to be taught or develop variants. If you became a pyromancer you would learn something basic like ‘Firebolt’, and over time you could manipulate the parameters of that Rote spell to suit your taste, or learn new spells entirely.”

“Most combat spell casting you see emphasizes speed, for obvious reasons. This makes it cost more MP, and it lowers its overall potency. There are truly great spellcasters who can throw spells as fast as you or I swing a blade. Rear-area healers, meanwhile, might focus on efficiency over potency or speed. If you have hours or days to heal a hundred stable patients, then sustainability is your issue. The important thing to note is that there is always a cost. Always a trade off in some fashion or another.’

Kotone floated by with a set of freshly rosined bows. She handed one to Sierra then set the others neatly on the empty seats before she vanished from existence with her telltale pop.

“Almost always.” Sierra corrected herself. “Your spell-casting skill teaches you the simplest way to use your spells. Changing parameters is nothing more than rearranging furniture in a room. You might like the new layout but, the actual amount of space has not changed. The trick is to build a bigger room.”

Sierra’s cello rang out a beautifully crisp note as she drew her bow across it. She was delighted to see Alarion’s studious expression light up once again, but her joy was short lived as a thought intruded. “Have you ever even heard music before?”

Alarion scratched his face as he considered her question. “In the city. When I was little.”

“Well then this will be a treat,” Sierra said without a hint of humility. “Magic is all about sympathetic ties. What is the first step of Elena’s Void Trap?”

“Pulling out my hair,” Alarion grumbled, taking a half step away from Sierra.

The girl laughed. “It was an example. I am not going to take your hair.”

Alarion kept his distance anyways.

“Sympathetic ties are the ties that bind,” Sierra said with a roll of her eyes. “Void Trap is possible without a bit of your hair, but it would cost her considerably more. A piece of you helps target the spell. In my case, the sympathetic tie is-”

“Music.”

“Exactly. I was an artillery mage during most of my time in subjugation. This won’t be as big as the last one. But it will be close. Be sure to cover your ears when I give you the warning.”

Alarion didn’t need to be told twice. Not after last time.

“What sort of things are sympathetic?” He asked, committing the word to memory.

Sierra grinned as she stroked the bow across her instrument in slow, practiced motions, bringing life back to an empty city. “Spell components, implements, times, locations, there are a world of things you can do to empower your magic. In my case, I have focused back in on my affinities and my skills. I use one skill to empower another. This is not strictly magical in nature, instead it is called a Skill Circuit. You even discovered one yourself.”

“I did?”

Sierra nodded. “Void Trap and Survivor’s Endurance. On its own, Endurance is an unremarkable starter skill from an unremarkable class. But paired with Void Arena, you were able to draw far more power out of it. In the future if you take condition related skills, they might work in tandem with Endurance, further lengthening the circuit.”

“And what does yours look like?” Alarion asked.

Sierra smiled. Music was her answer. The melody was somber. A series of slow, mournful notes that spoke to Alarion’s heart and made him look at Sierra in a different light. She was a severe girl, yes. Maddeningly so at times. But such a gentle song was wholly out of keeping with the girl he thought he knew.

Then the bows began to float.

At least, that had been what he thought at first. One moment they had been neatly set upon seats, the next they were in the air, grasped by almost imperceptible spectral hands. He hadn’t heard Sierra incant the name of her spell. Was it a skill? Or did the music fill the same role?

The sad strings grew toward a high point as the other bows set themselves to join her. Then her bow stopped.

And chaos erupted.

Alarion had never heard its like. And he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Gone were the doleful notes. In their place, a whirlwind of sound. A different sort of beauty. A more intense one, certainly more in keeping with the Sierra he knew.

She took the lead through the song, her fellow players little more than backup as sharp notes keened out across the plaza. Across the city. The Soulless, true to their name, did not react to the gorgeous performance. Nor did they seem to notice as Alarion felt a tingle run across his skin, a static spark in search of a discharge.

Longer and longer she played, her music rising in intensity, then slowing, then rising again. It never returned to that initial melody, searching instead for an ever-higher peak, a final culmination that was not far off.

Sierra met his eyes, and he understood. Fingers perched over his ears, ready to protect him from further damage, even as he was unwilling to miss the end of her performance. Once, twice, three times she teased a crescendo. Until at last she stopped playing with a single vicious stroke of her bow.

And the Soulless exploded.