No one said anything.

Either they hadn't heard, or pretended they hadn't. Beck was grateful for that. To them or to the Archangels, he wasn't sure. But what he was sure that he was tired. The camp started moving the moment the sun started peaking over the horizon, and it was rare for him be awake as late as he was the previous night.

His normal clothes were still covered in blood and dirt, so he donned the clothes he had been given. Pa's crossbow slung over his shoulder, Beck left his tent and found a barrel of water. Two applications of [Shape Water] saw that his face was clean and his thirst was slaked.

Now, it was down to business. Beck set off on the short walk to the section of the camp occupied by the tribe's crafters.

The crafters were situated right next to the cooking area, and it was easy to see why. The shells from last night's feast were sitting in the middle of their cleared area, with at two people each working to saw the things into usable sections. In addition, countless sections of leg were littered around, waiting to be utilized. The pincers were already in use, the main housing being turned into crossbows, while others seemed to be using the lower claw to make large pickaxes.

Kenna was one of three working on the picks, using her flame to heat the claw before shaping it. Beck watched in fascination as the claw changed more and more to resemble a reddish metal more than any shell. When it was finished, she grabbed a couple of leg sections and began to fuse them together, her hand clasped around the place where they would join.

The working had him in a trance, the way the shell flowed with enough heat distantly resembling the water from his dreams. Once the handle had been fixed to the head, Kenna handed it off to another young woman, then stood and stretched. That was when she noticed him standing there, and when he snapped out of it.

"Oh, hey. Ready for your lessons?" A small chuckle followed the question. Beck could feel a slight heat on his face when he realized he'd been staring.

"O-oh, ah, yeah. So uh, what first?" The large woman stepped from under the shade her and her fellows had been working under as he spoke, and began walking to the other side of the clearing. She was only slightly shorter than her father. He followed, mentally berating himself for his awkwardness.

What was that? Why can't you just be normal? Beck almost missed what she said in the haze of his thoughts.

They reached a tent full of crossbows, both complete and not, before she answered him, "The most important thing: how to string the bow." She picked up on that had yet to be strung, but was otherwise complete, then sat, the weapon laying across her lap. Beck mirrored the pose.

Before he could ask questions, Kenna had produced a length of tendon and tied the ends into loops. The resulting length was slightly shorter than the arms of the crossbow. She motioned to Beck's. "Remove the string, then put it back on."

He hesitated a moment, then did as instructed. He took longer than he probably should have, as the string did not want to come off, but he eventually managed to bend the limbs enough for it to slacken, at which point he was able to slowly pull the string off. Slowly, he relaxed his hold on the limbs, which pushed past their original position, only reaching a state of equilibrium when they were very near straight.

The woman sitting across from him smiled warmly, giving him a nod before slipping one end of the string onto her own crossbow and motioning for him to do the same.

They soon fell into a rhythm, unstringing and restringing the crossbows. Beck's arms were starting to ache when they stopped for a break, and he gladly set the crossbow down.

In that time, she had shown him that the reason they used the upper claw for the crossbow was that the claw itself could be used as a stirrup to more easily load the crossbow, and they had longer pieces of tendon in the crossbow tent specifically for setting the string, intuitively named stringers.

"Why couldn't we have used those to start with?" Beck was panting, rubbing his sore arms.

"Because you needed to learn how to do without it first, so you could appreciate it more. And watching you struggle was funny." Her smile had turned almost predatory at that last statement, but it quickly vanished as she stood and deposited her crossbow back where she'd gotten it.

Beck rose as well, and as they stepped out from under the tent, the pair realized that it was near noon. They had spent the entire morning on the crossbow strings.

Kenna laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Seems we took a little longer than I meant to. Let's go eat, and I'll introduce you to your next teacher."

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He had no objections, so he followed the big lady to the cooking area he had seen both last night and this morning. Apparently, the water from last night had been used for soup stock, as there was a massive pot full of soup in the middle of the area. It was a good deal wider than it was tall, and at least ten people could dip gather around at once.

Which seemed to be exactly what was happening. There may have been more at the pot, but the press of bodies made it tough to be sure. Kenna had already started pushing her way through, so Beck followed dutifully behind her.

At one point, someone had pressed a bowl in his hands. He hadn't even noticed.

When they got to the big pot, Kenna grabbed his bowl and dipped it in at the same time as hers. He was about to protest when she returned it to him.

"Thanks." The woman simply winked and started pushing her way back through the crowd. Now that they were going against the flow, people moved much more easily. It helped to have someone well over six feet tall leading the way.

After they had cleared the throng, Kenna found them a place to sit. They ate in silence, both absorbed in their food.

Once they had finished, Beck stood and went to gather empty bowls, then realized that he didn't know where to take them. It didn't take him long to find the place, though.

Setting the bowls down in a large pile, he set to work in the kitchen tent. Using the small pot of water he had been told was set aside for dishes, Beck made use of [Shape Water] to clean each bowl one by one. It was made much easier by the fact that everyone had eaten almost all of their soup.

Once he was done, though, the water had gone milky from the amount it had soaked up. Seeing as he was no longer operating on a surplus of water, the young man began to try to separate the substances. The water plopped into one of the newly cleaned bowls, where his attempts saw no success whatsoever. Granted, he was trying to pull the substance from the water with pure willpower.

After trying for a full minute, Beck had started to develop a headache, so he took a short break from his efforts. Eyes closed, he leaned his head back to let out a sigh. Then his head hit something solid. He opened his eyes, and standing behind him was Kenna, a smirk on her face and an eyebrow raised.

"What are you doing?"

Beck felt his cheeks heat again, even though he hadn't done anything strange, then looked back at the bowl. "Just... Training, I guess?"

He could hear her chuckle, before she lightly tapped his thigh with the side of her boot. "Just don't take too long. I still have to introduce you to your next teacher."

That got his attention. Beck turned back to the large woman, a look of confusion screwing up his face. "I thought you were going to teach me?"

A soft smile replaced the smirk, but she shook her head. "I was just supposed to teach you how to maintain your weapon. Zephyr's the one who'll teach you to wield it." With that, she strode from the tent.

She didn't linger long enough for him to ask any questions. Beck looked at the soupy water in the bowl once more, and with no more than a thought, seized the solution with [Shape Water].

The liquid burbled as it began to spin vertically, forming an orb of constant motion. His will pushed down, trying to mold the water like a potter to clay, and a divot appeared in the top of the orb, only for it to destabilize in the next instant.

The water splashed back into the bowl, residual energy forming waves in the surface. Then, an idea. Another application of will, and the water began to churn, a swirl forming in the middle as the liquid turned clockwise. It took more effort than a Skill ever had before, but a void opened in the middle of the swirl, forming the water into a spinning donut in the bowl. Beck slowly increased the speed, and as he did, more of the soup congregated at the edges, while what water separated was pulled towards the center.

Beck started to feel a tightness in his chest as the pure water began to freeze, starting from the middle and radiating outwards. After enough ice formed that it could comfortably be referred to as a chunk, he let the water splash back into the bowl and fished out the ice, then let it clink back into the bowl. The release of the water was accompanied by a profound relief, like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

But he wasn't done. What was left was more concentrated than what he'd started with.

Overall, it took an hour to remove all the water from the soup. Beck was left with a powder that no one had any use for, so it was simply thrown away. It wasn't much, but he felt good about himself nonetheless.

It helped that he'd level [Shape Water] again, as well.

[Shape Water] has leveled up! +1 Wisdom It is now Level 3.

He had mixed feelings about it. The Skill had languished for two years of effort, and he'd leveled it twice in as many days. Not to mention the timing of his growth. It left a bad taste in his mouth.

Once everything he had brought was clean, Beck went to find Kenna. He found her chatting with who he could only guess were hunters, between their clothes and the crossbows hanging by their waists. At his approach, the large woman said goodbye to her companions and stood from where she was sitting.

The smirk was back on her face. "Finally. I thought you'd never come out of there. Come on, you've kept him waiting long enough."

Beck simply nodded and followed. He couldn't help but wonder about this Zephyr. It didn't sound like a Kode name, since they were primarily attuned with fire, and followed the standard naming convention.

His idle musings were proven correct when he saw the man who was to teach him. Tall and wispy, with sky blue hair and skin the color of a cloud, there was no doubt this man wasn't born to the tribe. His hair fluttered in a non-existent breeze.

Beck felt a hand between his shoulder blades, and found himself pushed right in front of his new teacher. The man looked down at him, dark eyes searching for... something. He spoke only two words to Kenna before she left them alone.

"He'll do."