Andy and Darius returned to the training area and met up with Wiles and the others. The sun had passed overhead and was now making its slow retreat over the horizon, leaving Andy chilly from his wet clothing. Yet his mind was burning as he walked into the blacksmithing tent to meet up with Will and Master Mournings.
Master Mournings was sitting at a table, using a compass to draw a circle on a piece of parchment with a special pen. Then, he picked up the compass and chanted. A white halo of light shot out of the tip, and he brought it to the blade.
“Control is everything. If you cannot regulate your mana, the beam will warp.” Master Mournings closed his eyes, and the perfect halo of light wobbled, distorting. When he opened his eyes, he masterfully righted it into a halo again, but it was far from perfect. “The circle isn’t that important, but etching lines or runes incorrectly will cause it to fail. Do you understand?”
Will nodded hesitantly.
After a two-second pause, Master Mournings huffed and turned to Andy and Darius. “Yes?”
“Hey….” Andy swallowed. “Can you teach us how to create fortification arrays?”
Master Mournings rubbed his eyes and laughed. “That’s what I had pla~nned for today, but Lady Reece has in~sis~ted that Will learn sharpening arrays, so it’ll have to be until next week.”
Darius grinned widely.
“Is… there any way you can just quickly teach us the basics?” Andy asked.
Master Mournings turned around with a primal glint in his eyes. “No, I will~not teach you how to produce garbage arra…. What are you doing with that?” He looked at the axe with a snarled lip. “Get out of here.”
Darius smirked, but Andy shot him a glare, and he turned away to hide his expression. “Master Mournings,” Andy said. “Sara is asking us to construct a bridge that she can’t destroy.”
“Sounds like quite the problem,” Master Mournings said with sarcastic indifference, continuing his work.
“The solution is to create arrays like this,” Andy said, grabbing his axe and presenting it. “I know that you aren’t a fan of sloppy work, but that seems to be the point, and if we don’t do it, we’ll fail.”
Master Mournings exhaled, staring at the blade that he was light etching. “Do any of you know how to load an array?”
Andy looked at Darius. Darius shook his head. Will smiled wryly.
“Okay, then I’ll explain what you need to learn, but you will need someone else to teach you,” Master Mournings said. He thrust out his hand toward the axe. “Give me that monstrosity.”
Darius hesitantly handed it over, and to his horror—the worst came to be. Master Mournings silent-casted a water spell, and washed all the blood off. “Hey!” Darius yelled. “You didn’t have to—“
“Be quiet, you fool!” Master Mournings chuffed and handed the axe back. “Activate it.”
Darius looked at the blade with confusion. Without the blood array, it was just a rusted axe. Yet when he closed his eyes and fed mana to it, the array lit up on the blade. “Woah, what?”
“Surely you didn’t think that magic requires ink?” Master Mournings snorted. “Magic….” He rolled his wrists around his head. “It takes place outside the tangible. All these circles do is help you establish a relationship between magical concepts. You’re establishing it—not the ink.”
“Then why are we etching it?” Will asked. “Wouldn’t it be better to do it with ink?” That was Andy’s question, too. If people could see the array, they could replicate it. So it’d make more sense to use ink and wash it off.
“Ink doesn’t stay on metal,” Master Mournings explained. “Arrays require exactness, and contrary to what she just made you believe, this isn’t poorly constructed. Look closely.” He grabbed the axe and activated it, showing the runes and lines. When they looked at it again, their eyes widened.
It wasn’t in chicken scratch anymore—the array looked extremely well crafted.
“Ink, blood, the engravings—these things don’t affect magic. Magic binds itself. It makes its own lines when you load it. Look.”
Master Mournings scribbled a chicken scratch circle like the blood array. Then he put a rune on the bottom and another at 3 o’clock. Finally, he drew a line from the bottom array to the top of a circle, disregarding the rune on the right. The line just led nowhere.
“As you can see, I’ve created an array without connecting the runes. Once I load this….” He put his hands onto it, and something fantastic happened: a beam of light connected the two glowing runes together, ignoring the line on the top. “It connects itself. The lines we draw show what it should look like if you’ve done it correctly. It’s not what it does. Now this….” Master Mournings picked up the rusted axe and activated it again. “… has all the runes in the exact places they need to be at the right distance. Lady Reece deceived you by making you think that she slopped this together. In reality, she must’ve practiced this….” He stopped himself from saying “hundreds” or even “thousands” of times. Will knew that. Master Mournings knew of Sara’s relationship with the past, but it was something that was not to be discussed, so he didn’t. He didn’t need to anyway. “This isn’t a random array,” Master Mournings said.
“I see….” Will said with sunken eyes. He looked like he signed up for a race only to find out that he had to buy his own car. “So she really didn’t brute force it?”
Master Mournings sighed. “Yes and no,” he admitted bitterly. “The process of establishing a magical relationship is determined by a person’s mana pool and their level of refinement. If you and I had the same level of skill, then your array would vastly outperform my own.”
“How refined is her mana?” Darius asked.
“I don’t know,” Master Mournings said. “There are people in this world far more talented than I, and she’s one of them. I’m not sure to what extent because she’s hidden that from me. But I’d wager that she was beyond my skill level even without her core.”
2
Sara overlooked the heroes who chose to be heroes with a stern expression. “I’ll warn you now—if you expect to learn grand spells in the next six months, you can leave.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The atmosphere shifted, and the heroes exchanged glances.
“From today until you become proficient, you will only be doing mana manipulation exercises,” Sara said. “Mana is your fuel. If you can’t distribute and refine it, you’re worse than a car without fuel—you’re a liability!”
3
“Damn.” Darius summarized, capturing Master Mourning’s endorsement for Sara.
“Anyway, she’s not wrong,” Master Mournings said bitterly. “On a battlefield, you don’t have time for perfection, and your loading will bridge the power gap. That said, if you don’t create a proper relationship, it won’t even activate, or worse—it can establish the wrong relationship and harm you. So take things seriously.” He reached into a notebook and pulled out a piece of parchment. Then, he took the time to draw an array with beautiful precision. “This is a basic fortification array. I suggest you set aside your bridge for a week to practice it.”
“A week?” Darius laughed. “She’ll flay our asses alive.”
“No she won’t,” Andy whispered, shaking his head. “No she won’t,” he repeated quieter.
“Oh, it’s one of those. I hate it when women don’t just say what they want.” Darius sighed.
Will and Andy chuckled, but they soon lost their enthusiasm when it was time to get to work.
It would be a long year.
4
Sara looked at the crimson sunrise with an exhausted expression. Things were going far better than expected. The leaders were quickly picking up on the nature of what they had to do, and people weren’t crying that they didn’t have enough time. They got it. With any luck, more heroes would show up the next week and half would be staunch loyalists by the end of training. That’s all it would take to turn the hero threat from an existential crisis into a manageable political consideration. That’s all she needed.
Still….
Sara turned back to the area where Tara was sitting for most of the training day, and found her missing. That made sense. No one was going to sit and watch people in silence for fourteen hours a day unless they were an active spy. Still, Sara could feel it—invisible hands reaching out to grab the heroes. With enough time, she could win them over, but even someone as weak and pathetic as Halter Escar could weaponize them before her loyalists had matured. The heroes couldn’t succeed—not now. But it would put her in a scenario where she had to butcher her own, and that would cause serious problems.
Time.
It always came down to time.
Yet time to succeed was time to fail. By the time she finished, Daniel might have woken up, Kyritus and Rokus might’ve hit a snag, or any other harrowing development. Sara closed her eyes. This is all I can do, she told herself. This is all…. She didn’t believe it. Experience turned her into a pessimist, so she did what she always did—she prepared herself for the worst.
5
Tara sat down at the dinner table with a complicated expression. Helen, her best friend, sat next to her with a frantic gaze.
“Hey, did you see Andy?” Helen asked.
“Recently?” Tara looked around.
“No. I just mean in general.” Helen’s face darkened. “He looked… distraught. You don’t think she’ll make them choose… do you?”
Us or Her. That’s what she was worried about. That's what Tara was worried about, too. Now, she could only smile wryly. “I don’t know. Probably, but… not actually.”
Helen’s fidgety panic turned into a still frown. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t think she’ll make them choose,” Tara said. Her thoughts seemed so absolute, yet articulating them was confusing and disjointed. “I just think… that’s par for the course,” she said with words she wasn’t certain actually made sense. “Packaged deal.”
“Quid pro quo?” Helen asked.
Tara winced. Quid pro quo was one of those pretentious terms all women knew because it notoriously described a I’ll help your career if you help my cock scenario. This was that, but it definitely wasn’t that.
“No. I’m sure her fanboys will get preferential treatment, but it doesn’t feel like the haters will get left behind. It’s just more like….” Tara looked up. “Look, it’s just like everything else. If you want a promotion, you don’t talk shit about your boss. But it feels deeper….”
“Because she’s the queen?”
“Yeah. That, too. But….” Tara picked up a piece of renth fish with her fingers and brought it to her lips. Before it touched, she dropped it onto the plate. “You remember Mr. Derwin?”
“You mean Panty Pete?” Helen chuffed and shook her head like a bobblehead.
“Don’t call him that.” Tara rolled her eyes. Their cheer coach wasn’t creepy. He looked at her classmates like unfuckable insects in the future tense, so the girls got together and put their panties on his desk. He came out of his classroom with a ball of panties in his hands, and when he saw the phones out, he pointed at the person recording with the hand holding the panties and said, Principal office. Then, he did the same for the rest. Now. His expression didn’t change. The girls got in serious trouble and they started calling him Panty Pete ever since. It really seemed petty, cruel, and honestly, like something that could’ve got him investigated if he wasn’t, well, a teacher that looked at them like unfuckable insects. “Look,” Tara said. “Everyone hated that guy, but didn’t you want to impress him?”
Helen frowned.
“Right?” Tara asked. “It’s like that.”
“Even you look ready to join,” Helen said.
Tara rested her elbows on the table and ran her fingers through her hair.
“You serious?”
“It’s the smart thing to do.” Tara looked her in the eyes. “It’s like selling your soul for money. The benefits are great.”
Helen looked at the other heroes who didn’t accept. They all looked isolated, lost, and confused. “Yeah….”
They ate in silence. Something was going to happen soon. Something needed to happen. They just didn’t know where they’d be when it broke.