It must take a long time to regrow entire limbs, because it had been hours and nobody had come out of the ‘Ironclad’ yet. Most of the people that Sylvia had brought with her, apparently all Order ‘classers’, had been shooed out of it to mingle with the camp. It had been a good idea, actually. The former slaves of our camp seemed to appreciate the presence of people who were from what seemed to be a well-known group. The caravan had lost an air of nervousness that I hadn’t even realized had been lingering.

As for myself, I tried to stay out of the way. For once, I hadn’t had any difficulty in retreating to a secluded corner of our campground. First though, I’d grabbed a bowl of stew from our ‘kitchen’. Funnily enough, Rachel, Van’s former slave, had ended up as the head cook of the caravan. I’d happily accepted a bowl of surprisingly tasty boar stew from the woman. She’d been too busy for anything more than a hasty greeting, though.

You know, now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen Van all day. He’d been a little morose since leaving Addersfield. I think he might have looked up to Orinbar, no matter how much of an amoral bastard he had been. I guess he hadn’t been as fucking insufferable as Magnus had been to Azarus, who hadn’t displayed an ounce of remorse over his death. I’d try and catch up with Van later, I decided.

I settled down on a makeshift log bench behind Gren’s personal wagon, where Grey, Azarus, and I had pitched our section of the camp. Thankfully, I was out of view from the rest of the caravan, so I settled down to eat. It didn’t take me long. I was honestly pretty starving.

Now that I was done with my dinner, it was time to get back to work on a couple of my projects. Grabbing what I’d been working on from a pack I’d been using for this purpose, I closed my eyes started to slip into my Aetherial Melding trance.

However, before I could do so, I was interrupted.

“Is this seat taken?” I heard a familiar feminine voice say. Cracking open one of my closed eyes, I found that Sylvia was standing above me, hands on her hips.

Abandoning my trance, I made a show of glancing down to the grass below me on my right, where my empty stew bowl sat. “Well,” I drawled, leaning back on my hands with a slight smile. “It looks like it might be taken by my bowl. I don’t know…”

Sylvia rolled her startlingly blue eyes at me before nudging the bowl out of the way, sending it and its spoon clattering to the grass below. With a solid-sounding thump, she settled down next to me on the log.

I spoke before she could. “So, is it done? Does Grey have his legs back?”

Sylvia nodded, gazing into the small, personal campfire we had. “Yes, father is fine now. He’s still a little tender, so he’s taking the time to speak with the classers. I think they’re settling on a plan right now. He’ll be along soon, though.”

“That’s good,” I said, relieved. “I was honestly starting to wonder where we were even going. Nobody has even said a word about an actual destination since we escaped.”

Sylvia hummed, before glancing at me from the corner of her eye. “Did you truly manage to create a way to break the slave bond by yourself?” I didn’t blame her for the slight note of disbelief in her silvery voice.

I shook my head. “God no. Grey had to teach me a bunch about Enchanting and Abjuration before I could make the Bond Breaker. Even then, I was really reckless in how I made it in the first place. If I’d made one small mistake, I could have killed myself in the process.” I paused for a moment. “I kinda think the only reason I didn’t is because of my Profession.”

The Sculpted woman turned to face me fully at that. “I don’t believe we spoke much about that, back when I was teaching you. I’m…sorry, but I don’t remember what it was called.”

“It’s alright.” I shrugged. “It’s apparently new anyway. It’s called Aetherial Melding.”

“Is that what you were doing before I interrupted you? Using ‘Aetherial Melding’?” Sylvia nodded at the odds and ends that I had sitting in my lap. I moved my hand to lay on them, somewhat self-conscious.

“Ah, yeah,” I said, a little embarrassed to be caught out. “I was just going to work on some of my own projects.”

Sylvia’s eyes lit up at that in curiosity. “Oh? What are you working on?”

“Oh. Um. Well, first, did you hear anything about a ‘Profession Shift’, a few months ago? It should have involved Clockwork Engineering?”

“Well, yes,” Sylvia said slowly, before pausing. She looked at me in surprise. “Was that you? Did you cause it to change into ‘Mechanical Engineering’?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I didn’t get to keep it long, or even get to use it honestly. Aetherial Melding just came along and replaced everything for me. I’m not complaining about that, mind. But I never forgot about Mechanical Engineering, and wanted to see if I could do anything in line with it.” I wasn’t even lying. I’d been working with Azarus in the evenings about the basics of how Engineering worked here, and trying to puzzle out the Mechanical version for my own use.

“What are you trying to make?” Sylvia asked me.

I took a moment to look down at the metal parts lying in my lap. There were…a bunch of things, honestly. Tubes, springs, blades, and interlocked metal bits and bobs. I was once again lucky that Azarus had thought to save my little smithing grill and some raw materials from the fire. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to make this stuff. I looked up at Sylvia. “Ah. A couple of different weapon ideas I had.”

“Weapons?” Sylvia said doubtfully, looking at the junk I’d made.

“Yeah,” I said absentmindedly, fiddling with a small curved piece of iron. “I thought I’d try and recreate something from back home. I don’t know if I’ll be able to, and it’s a long shot, but I thought I’d give it a try. The other thing is almost done, though. That turned out to be easier than I thought it would be.” I handed Sylvia what I was talking about. To layman’s eyes, it looked like nothing more than a dagger with a slightly longer handle than usual. In fact, I had used one of my spare daggers in its construction.

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Sylvia took it from me, looking it over with a curious. She looked up at me. “It…just looks like a knife?”

“Look again,” I told her with a sly smile. I pointed to something on the hilt. “Press that rune.”

Sylvia took another look at the dagger, and found the rune that I was talking about. My eyes widened, however, when she pressed the rune with the dagger pointed in my direction. With a sudden flood of adrenaline, I dove to the side.

Just in time for the blade of the dagger to shoot out of the hilt and fly through the air where I had been sitting. A variety of other things flew out of the handle in Sylvia’s hands as well. Among them were hollow links of pipes and various springs and gears.

I panted, lying on the grass. That had been close.

Sylvia dropped the empty hilt in her hands with a gasp, flustered since the first time I’d met her. “Nathan! Are you alright? I-I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“Y-yeah,” I said, interrupting her babbling. Shakily, I stood up and looked in the direction that the blade had flown. I didn’t have to look far, as I found it embedded in the outside wall of Gren’s wagon. I took a shuddering breath. Well, at least it had missed the canvas. Gren would have been more pissed if we’d torn that. I yanked it out of the wood and turned back to Sylvia. Walking over to her, I gently took my prototype from her limp hands. “I…I’ll just be taking that back.” I sat back down on the log with a thump.

We sat in silence for a moment before Sylvia broke it. “Is it…a blade shooter of some kind?”

Flicking my eyes in her direction, I shook my head. “No, it only did that because it isn’t done.” I picked up a few lengths of tubing that had shot out of the hilt. “It’s actually supposed to be a kind of collapsible spear that can double as a dagger. I…like the spear for straight-up combat, but I find myself needing to do knife work pretty often. This is my attempt to bridge both of those needs.” I smiled wryly. “I just haven’t got the mechanism right yet.”

“Oh, I see,” Sylvia said thoughtfully. “That’s inter-”

We were interrupted by a small group of people approaching the fire. I stood up to greet them, with Sylvia following a second later. Seemed to be Azarus, Gren, and someone else that I was happy to see walking around.

Grey, standing on his own two feet.

He was shorter than I’d been expecting him to be, I noted. It was hard to gauge the height of someone when they both didn’t have legs, and had been wheelchair-bound. I’d built him up to be this titan in my head, considering how strong he was supposed to be. But he was an old man, after all. He looked to be maybe only an inch or so taller than Azarus, who was abnormally tall for a dwarf. Both of them were shorter than my five foot eleven frame, so maybe around five foot six or something. He was also carrying a bowl of stew, cupped in his hands.

Sylvia perked up at the sight of Grey and walked over to greet him with a hug. Grey returned it readily, stew bowl around her back in one hand. Separating, Sylvia looked him over critically. “How are you feeling, father?”

Grey smiled at her wryly. “Oh, the new flesh is still tender, but it’s nothing egregious. The feeling will pass eventually. Other than that, I’m fine.” He looked over Sylvia’s shoulder and nodded at me. I returned it. “Nathan. I see you’ve been entertaining my Sylvia.”

“Good to see you on your feet, Grey.” I smiled at my mentor. “And yeah, I was just showing her a project of mine.” I left out that she had nearly killed me with it. Gren and Azarus walked past us while we were talking, holding bowls of stew of their own. I exchanged nods with them.

“Oh? Which one? The spear or the device for flinging little balls of metal?” Grey asked me teasingly.

I felt my eyebrow twitch at the now familiar jab, but smiled anyway. “The spear. You know the second is still just in the concept stage.”

Grey walked over to where I was standing with Sylvia trailing in his wake. Both of them sat down on the log. I followed suit, noticing that Gren and Azarus were sitting on the one across the fire. “So, what’s up?” I asked Grey. “I heard you were deciding on a destination with the other guys from your Order?” I asked pointedly.

“Oh, it’s hardly my Order these days,” Grey said, unphased. “I may have founded it, but I leave its affairs mostly to my second. I’ve attempted to step back and leave overall command with him, but he stubbornly insists that he’s not yet worthy.”

I hummed in though. “You know, nobody has even told me what an ‘Order’ is, you know. If you’re so involved in the running of one of these, I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned it before now.”

Grey’s eyebrows shot up in realization before a chagrined look crossed his wizened features. “Oh, my apologies. You’re quite correct, Nathan. It simply slipped my mind with how busy we’ve been. An Order, or rather, a Martial Order as they’re correctly termed, occupies a rather unique position within Herztalian society. Not quite an official part of the military, but also not quite civilian, they’re something of an attaché. They are also definitely not a mercenary force. Rather, they are organizations given charter by the crown to independently recruit and train ‘classers’.” Grey said, making air quotes. “Those being independents that are serious about advancing their Status and reaching higher tiers. These Orders still owe allegiance to the throne, and can still be called to service alongside the military in times of great need.”

Grey paused for a moment to take a bite of his rapidly cooling stew. “Oh, quite good tonight. Anyway, it was realized centuries ago that while the military is effective, they’re somewhat of a blunt object. A new approach was needed, alongside the founding of my Academy, to battle the ever-growing threat of monster attack on the frontiers. Thus, Martial Orders were born. In any case, we’re to meet up with my second. He’s been amassing troops and supplies from our allies in the Uprising as well as the Order in my birthplace. A small, sleepy little town named Hollow Hill.”

I nodded at him, following along. “I’m guessing we’re leaving soon then?”

Grey nodded back at me, with a spoon between his lips. He took it out and answered. “Indeed. We still need to settle a few things, and then we’ll be on our way tomorrow afternoon.”

………………………………………

When I woke up in my tent early the next morning, I could tell that the camp was only starting to get busy. Getting up, I started to outfit myself again for another hunt. Last night, after my conversation with Grey and Sylvia, I’d decided that it couldn’t hurt for the camp to have a little more fresh meat before we left. This area was just too filled with game to pass up the chance. Luckily, I’d remembered to leave my blood-splattered hunting outfit with the camp washers yesterday. The scent of blood that would have trailed me otherwise would have driven things away from me.

Stepping out of my tent, I found the camp was only starting to wake up like I’d thought. Azarus was awake though, drinking from a steaming mug of tea next to the embers of our campfire. He set his metal mug down for a moment to raise a tired eyebrow at me. “Again?” He asked in dull surprise.

I shrugged at him before smirking. “Hey, this way I don’t have to help pack up camp.”

Azarus made a rude gesture and shooed me away. I left camp at that with a chuckle.

………………………………………

It actually took me longer to find suitable game than I was expecting it to. It took me a few hours, but I eventually tracked a deer deeper into the forest than I’d typically gone. Once I’d found it though, it wasn’t hard for me to bring down, with my literally superhuman strength and speed born from Sylvan Vigor. Hauling it onto my shoulder, I set off back in the direction that I thought camp lay in.

On my way back, I found something else, though.

Stopping at the edge of a forest clearing, I slowly set the deer carcass down on the forest floor. Mesmerized, I stepped into the clearing and tried to make sense of what it held.

It looked like some kind of giant stone monument.