Bregg’s training the next morning began with the hunter leading me on a run along the valskab’s farms to a boulder field a couple miles distant. A hundred or so Menskies clustered around the field, engaged in various exercises, drills, and sparring sessions, and I guessed that this was the valskab’s normal training ground for hunters and soldiers. That made sense; the ground here was too uneven and rocky for farmland or pastures, and while it was far enough away from the valskab to keep from bothering anyone, it was close enough that trained warriors could make the run in a few minutes, at least ones with physical stats in the twenties the way all the Menskies seemed to.
I’d assumed that Bregg meant for me to train with him, but the old man quickly disabused me of that notion. First, he set me to lifting and carrying boulders for an hour. After that, he had me practice my spear techniques while standing atop a pair of unstable boulders, and despite my fairly high Celerity and Skill, I fell several times—especially when he started throwing fist-sized rocks at me to distract me. I did my best to control those falls, but there was only so much I could do to mitigate the pain of landing hard and rolling on a bed of small, sharp rocks.
After that, I joined the other warriors in a sparring session, and while I was pretty proud of my spear skills at that point, I quickly learned that I really was still a student with the weapon in many ways. I fought an older warrior my first round and got my ass handed to me, as the man’s spear flickered around faster than I could easily follow, drawing my weapon out of line and stabbing me over and over in the chest, shoulders, stomach, and thighs. In fact, I lost every match I fought that first day—which I assumed was Bregg’s intent. The bastard still didn’t like me, and he probably wanted to remind me that I wasn’t much of a spearman.
If that was what he wanted, though, it backfired on him pretty badly. While I wasn’t a great spearman, seeing truly skilled warriors in action helped Sara improve my skills rapidly and funneled XP into my spearman profession, boosting it to level 6. Even more importantly, it made it easier for Sara to funnel Skill Points into my spears skill, bringing it to the savant ranks that first day. Both the level in my profession and the new rank gave me abilities, one of which was fairly crappy and one of which was pretty decent.
Ability: Spear Defense
Passive Ability
+1% per skill level to defense while wielding a spear and fighting defensively.
Ability: Heartstrike
Active Ability
Your next strike ignores 50% of armor or defenses and does extra damage based on your Skill stat.
Special: Must be used with a thrusting weapon
Cooldown: 1 minute
Spear Defense wasn’t bad, giving me a 21% bonus to my defense if I concentrated on it, but Heartstrike was nice. When I activated it, my eyes and spear seemed drawn to a critical spot on my opponent’s body, and my weapon flickered past their defenses pretty easily. Combined with the speed bonus I got from Serpent Spear, by the third day, I could hold my own against most of the warriors I faced in sparring. I still lost more often than I won, at least against the really experienced fighters, but I didn’t lose badly, and they had their own bruises to show afterward.
That was when Bregg started having me face multiple opponents, which gave me even more XP and skill growth, letting me improve even faster. I honestly wasn’t sure if Bregg was actually trying to train me, or if he just enjoyed torturing me, but the fact was, his brutal methods had significant results. My Spears skill rose another four levels, and I gained a point in each physical stat every couple days from his exercises. Boulders I’d struggled to move on the first day were now awkward but manageable, and instead of jogging to the practice field each morning, we practically sprinted. The fact was, I was now stronger and faster on average than pretty much all the Menskallin I tussled with, a fact that my status showed clearly.
John Gilliam, Master of Beasts
Mental Stats
Reason: 33 Intuition: 35 Perception: 36 Charm: 26
Physical Stats
Prowess: 48 Vigor: 51 Celerity: 38 Skill: 40
In fact, under normal circumstances, I was strong and quick enough to hand even Bregg his ass if I’d wanted. At least, so I thought until I sparred with him in unarmed combat and realized why he and the other Menskies had bound spirits to themselves, specifically beast spirits. Apparently, while they couldn’t call on them to perform tasks the way Aeld or Fifa could, they could draw strength, speed, and dexterity from them, making them as strong and fast as me, at least for short periods.
I quickly realized that while I had more experience in unarmed fighting than Bregg did, he was more used to fighting in an oversized Menskie body. That, combined with his sudden bursts of speed and strength, made our sparring match something of a draw. We both walked away battered, bloody, and bruised, but neither of us had clearly outperformed the other.
“Sara, can I do that?” I asked her silently after that match. “Channel strength from the bird spirit I’ve got inside me?”
“I saw how he did it, John, so yes, I can work out how to,” she assured me. “However, you might want to try getting a more appropriate beast spirit, something like an enyarv, or even an ishvarn. The hemmorn is an ambush hunter, not a fighter.”
My training with Aeld, while nowhere near as grueling, was plenty taxing on its own. Before the shaman would teach me any spells—or patterns, as he called them—he had me moving power around in circles outside my body, just controlling it without losing anything. That wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, even with my experience in spellcasting in other worlds; the power wanted to return to the spiritual field the moment it was outside of me, and I had to work to keep it from leaking away. I supposed that was the point, but after a few failures, I had to spend our sessions with Draining Aura active to keep from running low on energy.
Once I could manage that, he finally taught me a few patterns that Sara quickly helped me turn into spells. None of them were very powerful, and all of them were summoning spells that called a spirit to do what I wanted, but I supposed they were useful, if nothing else. Plus, all that practice gave me a new skill, one that promised to make spellcasting in this world a lot easier.
Skill Gained: Spirit Channeling
Rank: Neophyte 3
All Spiritual Spells cost 1% less power per skill level.
New Spells!
Spirit Light
Power: 1/10 minutes
You summon a light spirit to provide a light equal to twilight.
Spirit Flame
Power: 1
You call a fire spirit to create a small fire that will ignite anything combustible
Spirit Breeze
Power: 1/minute
You summon a wind spirit to create a small breeze capable of moving light objects.
Steady Stone
Power: 2/minute
You call an earth spirit to stabilize sand, gravel, or unstable stone beneath your feet.
Special: Does not function on soil.
Dowse Water
Power: 3
You call a water spirit to find and bring to the surface a small amount of pure water.
None of the spells were particularly powerful—at least, not until Sara tinkered with them. As it turned out, strengthening those spells required calling a more powerful spirit and using enough energy to coerce it into doing what I wanted without leaving it upset and vengeful. Otherwise, the patterns involved were pretty close to identical, and upgrading those spells was an easy enough matter.
Radiant Light
Power: 1/minute
You summon a light spirit to provide a light equal to daylight.
Roaring Flame
Power: 18
You call a fire spirit to create a large fire equivalent to a bonfire. This flame will ignite anything flammable within it and can scorch and weaken metal or stone.
Spirit Wind
Power: 1/second
You summon a wind spirit to create a wind capable of pushing Menskallin-sized objects.
Spirit Tremor
Power: 22
You call an earth spirit to shake sand, gravel, or stone with sufficient force to knock a person from their feet or topple unstable structures. Lasts for 3-5 seconds.
Special: Does not function on soil.
Spirit Geyser
Power: 21
You call a water spirit to create a powerful geyser of water in a specific spot. Lasts for 3-5 seconds.
Special: This spell only works in an area with natural underground water.
The improved spells were much more useful, and even better, I could simply depower them to mimic the lesser spells I was supposed to know. I didn’t want Aeld to realize that I was upgrading the spells, especially because Kadonsel had supplied a lot of her knowledge to help refine them and to create more effective calling patterns. Apparently, since the ojaini couldn’t command spirits the way letharvisa could, they’d had to get a lot better at using their spells to guide and control them.
“These patterns are ridiculously inefficient,” the woman spat silently when I first began practicing. “Half of the energy here is being wasted on telling the spirit what to do multiple times! Here, change this part to this…”
The woman’s alterations seemed to drop the power requirements by about a third, making them a lot more useful. With Draining Aura active, I could keep a Radiant Light going at all times or keep up a Spirit Wind for several minutes easily. Even better, all of this practice and information leveled up scholar to 6 and undtharvis to 4. The scholar level wasn’t much, giving me a single point to Reason, but the undtharvis level came with two points to Intuition and Charm and a point each to Perception and Vigor.
Those weren’t the only benefits I gained. Over the course of the first day, Sara’s slow addition of Skill Points kicked in, and one by one, notifications popped up in my vision.
Skill Increase: Weapon Focus (Unarmed Combat)
Rank: Savant 1
Ability Gained: Crushing Strike
Crushing Strike
Active Unarmed Ability
Your next unarmed attack shatters solid matter beneath it.
Special: The depth of material shattered depends on its hardness and your Skill stat.
Cooldown: 5 minutes
Skill Increase: Tracking
Rank: Savant 1
Ability Gained: Dauntless Tracker
Dauntless Tracker
Passive/Active Ability
When tracking, your Perception stat is increased by 25%. This stacks with Improved Tracking.
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Special: Once per day, you can double this bonus for one hour for tracking purposes only.
Skill Increase: Meditation
Rank: Initiate 1
While meditating, you regain mental or magical energy at an increased rate of +1% per skill level.
Skill Increase: Ritualism
Rank: Initiate 1
Your rituals have a 1% chance per skill level to remain stable when altered or damaged.
While both Bregg’s and Aeld’s training were fairly intense with really good results, Fifa’s was—to put it bluntly—boring as fuck. As she suggested, the woman wasn’t much of a teacher, so her lessons consisted of her droning on about Menskallin history for an hour a day. My boredom quickly overcame the physical effects she had on my body, and I found myself drifting most of the time, letting Sara listen for important information that she could give me later on. If the letharvis noticed my boredom, she either didn’t care or didn’t mention it.
Most of what she told me was just an expanded version of things I already knew. She spoke of the times before the Retreat, when the Menskallin spread out over the entire continent, and of how warlike the race was at that time. She definitely didn’t mention the Ritual of Chaining, obviously, but she did talk about how a rogue letharvis took over the clans. It was history, and I suppose it was important for me to learn, but it felt too much like being back in high school for me.
Honestly, the most interesting thing about her lessons was the aura of arousal she seemed to emanate. It hit me every time I saw her after a separation of a couple hours or more; she walked into my room each morning, and my body immediately reacted. I saw her after Bregg’s training, and it responded again. I’d gotten good at expecting it and ignoring it, but I couldn’t seem to simply put it out of my head. It was weird; I encountered dozens of Menskie women in the valskab, and not one of them had that effect on me, but Fifa did, every time—and as the days passed, it seemed to grow stronger.
It took three days for her to get to the part of her history lesson that I actually cared about: the coming of the Oikithikiim. Aeld hadn’t told me much about that, save that when the world’s climate changed, they showed up on this continent, but knowing what happened between the groups had to be important.
“No one knows what began the Great Change,” she told me solemnly. “The memories of the valskabs say only that once, the world was colder than it is now, and that at some point, it began to warm. When that happened, the Oikithikiim came, fleeing their own homeland, which had become a desert with the world’s warming.”
“So, they invaded?” I asked curiously.
“No, they came as guests, asking to live among us, and we agreed,” she said angrily. “At the time, the dark times of the Haernunga were a dim memory, and the clans all lived in peace with one another. The Oikithikiim asked for land that we didn’t use, and no one saw the harm in it—at first.”
She sighed. “As the years passed, though, the Oikithikiim numbers grew, and the lands we gave them were no longer enough. They asked for more, and when we told them there were none to give, they rose up with violence and took them. They struck at Clan Amyri first, approaching as friends and neighbors, then turning on the clan while they slept and slaughtering them. No survivors lived to tell the tale, but the clan’s spirits escaped, and the slaughter became known.
“We sent emissaries to speak with them, to ask them why they’d killed our people, suspecting that perhaps the old times were back, and the spirits were to blame. They killed those, as well, and sent their heads back to us. Then, we knew that they intended violence, so when they struck again, we were ready for them. They attacked Clan Stinhus, but they found three clans waiting for them, ready for battle. They were defeated and driven back, and again we thought the matter settled. The spirits were on our side, and they’d learned that they couldn’t defeat us.”
Her voice grew even angrier as she spoke. “We were wrong again. The four-legs gathered together into a horde and swarmed on us, and at first, we were driven back from lands that had been ours forever. The clans rallied, though, and on the plains of Asletta, we met them and broke them once more. They continued to strike at us, though, and while we were stronger, there were simply too many of them—and when they couldn’t defeat us by force of arms, they came at us through stealth. They struck at innocents, slaughtering hunting parties, ambushing women and children. Many of those, they captured, taking them away for an unknown purpose, and we never saw them again.”
Her nostrils flared furiously as she continued in a flat, icy voice. “As we fought, the world kept warming, and we found the southern lowlands less and less comfortable. So, we retreated from the heat and the depredations of the four-legs. We ceded them all of the lowlands, more than enough for them to use, but they continued to harass us until our only refuge was the cold wastelands, a place they couldn’t survive. Even then, they gathered a great army, intending to slaughter us all.”
“So, what did you do?” I asked when she remained silent for a while.
“The Great Bargain,” she whispered. “We forged the Peace of the Haelendi that forever shelters us from their assaults. We gave up…” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I won’t speak of that, but suffice it to say that since then, the Oikithikiim haven’t stepped foot on the Haelendi and never will. They still hurl themselves at us pointlessly, and we kill them in return, but the valskabs are safe, and so are our people.”
“That—that isn’t how it happened!” Kadonsel protested in expected outrage. “The savages were twisting and harming the spirits, and they asked us for help! We tried to convince them to give up their ways, but they refused and attacked us, trying to drive us out of the land that we’d claimed for ourselves! And when we fought back, some of them came to us willingly, promising to give up their savagery and embrace civilization: the Redeemed Elders!”
While I was sure Fifa’s tale wasn’t the whole truth, I couldn’t help but notice a couple of glaring flaws in what Kadonsel said. “Wait, how did the spirits tell you that?” I asked. “You said that they don’t talk to you the way they do the Menskallin.”
“They speak to us through the Redeemed Elders,” she replied hotly.
“Who you just said came to you after the war had already started. So, how could you have known what the spirits wanted back then?”
“I—I don’t know the details. I just know that our histories clearly state that the Menskallin attacked us first!”
I didn’t bother arguing, but I couldn’t help but consider that the Oikie culture advocated conflict, and they seemed to be a pretty aggressive species. At the same time, Aeld’s and Fifa’s stories showed that the Menskies weren’t above bloodshed and savagery either—and that Fifa’s story hadn’t mentioned the whole “profane Henguki” thing, which seemed telling. Why wouldn’t the Menskies’ biggest complaint about the Oikies play into their conflict? I didn’t know, and while Fifa didn’t seem ready to tell me, I decided I’d keep trying to find a way to get her to spill.
The seventh day of sheltering at the valskab began the way the others did, with my training with Bregg. I lifted rocks, did balancing exercises, and finally sparred with a pair of warriors.
I leaned slightly left as a spear thrust flashed past my face. The shaft of my own spear tapped the incoming weapon lightly, knocking it out of line just enough to keep it from jabbing me in the skull. As it withdrew, though, I tapped it again, this time knocking it downwards, then slid forward, thrusting my weapon at my foe. The tip of the spear caught my opponent under his chin, and he reeled as his head snapped backward, taking him out of the fight.
I recovered swiftly as his partner struck, aiming for my unguarded left side with his spear. I shifted to my right, sliding my back foot to rotate my whole body away from his thrust. I jabbed at his chest with my spear, and he lifted his weapon to block my strike. I quickly shifted my aim and stabbed up at his face, drawing his weapon higher, then lifted my right hand and stabbed down toward his crotch. He swept his weapon toward the ground reflexively, using far too much force to try and block the feint. My weapon slithered back and darted upward, crashing into the hollow of his throat just above his ribcage, and he dropped backward, coughing and spluttering.
“Hold!” I lifted my blunted training spear and stepped back as Bregg’s shouted command ended the mock battle. I was relieved that the old hunter decided to end the battle at that point; technically, I’d “killed” all my foes, but he sometimes let the fights drag on until someone got truly injured—especially if I was likely to be that someone. Our spears were basically regular weapons with a blunt stone tip instead of a sharp one, and while killing someone with one might be hard, they could break bones or dislocate joints pretty easily if someone used too much power. I’d seen it happen a couple times over the last week of training, and while I’d managed to avoid that sort of injury, I’d ended the first few training sessions with a sea of bruises and muscles that screamed from exhaustion.
That wasn’t the case anymore, though. The two spearmen facing me hadn’t touched me in the entire combat. I’d grown quickly, as I tended to do in new worlds, and I was pretty happy with those improvements. Breg, though—well, I had trouble imagining Bregg being happy about anything, especially me finally coming out on top of a sparring match with two skilled spearmen at the same time.
“What was that, Hettlug?” the old hunter demanded, stomping toward me and the two defeated warriors. The first simply touched his chin, looking disgruntled, but the second held his throat and eyed me suspiciously. Bregg ignored them both, though, his hard eyes boring into me.
“That was me winning, Bregg,” I replied calmly.
“That was you getting lucky! You dropped your spear completely out of line; if Freibor hadn’t fallen for that feint, you’d have taken a spear to the face.” He grabbed a spear from one of the defeated warriors and held it with his left hand in front and his right hand near the back.
“Change directions with your back hand, aim with your front hand!” he snapped, shifting his right hand up and bringing the spearpoint downward swiftly. His spear slipped forward like a striking snake, and he dropped his right hand as he thrust, shifting the blow to rise toward my chest. “You see how much faster that is?”
“I thought that’s what I did,” I frowned.
“No. You’re still using your front hand to try and move the spear too often. That pulls your whole body out of line. If you’d been facing another fighter, while you recovered from that, you’d have gotten a spear in your right side. Try it again.” He gestured toward me, and I tiredly lifted my spear and dropped into a fighting stance. I spent the next fifteen minutes practicing the movement until what he meant clicked in my head. By keeping my left hand relaxed in the center of my body, I could shift my spear’s aim easily even in mid-thrust by moving my right hand. The resulting strikes really were faster, but they also felt cleaner and left me well balanced and ready to deal with another attacker.
“Good enough,” he finally said, glancing up at the sun hanging low in the sky to the southeast. “Time for you to head back. Tomorrow, you’ll face a third opponent, and we’ll see if you’ve really learned today’s lesson or not.”
I grabbed my own spear without reply—I couldn’t bring myself to thank the hunter for tormenting me, even if it had results—and ran back toward the valskab. That was a lot easier than it had been the first few days, when we were all still acclimating to the cold. The sauna had done its job, though, and every night when I bathed, the pumice stone scraped away clumps of thick, gray-white fur. Ultimately, a much thinner layer of fur that turned out to have a pale gold color rather than grayish white remained, one that left me much cooler during the day.
As it turned out, almost all of the Menskies had similarly colored fur. Aeld’s turned the color of cinnamon, while Bregg’s was chestnut streaked with gray that I assumed denoted his age. I saw lots of golds, reds, and browns; the Menskies basically looked like leaves in autumn when they gathered.
During the day, most of the Menskies in the valskab seemed to spend their time aboveground, not that I blamed them. I wasn’t a fan of the tunnels, myself, and if I could do all my training out in the sunshine, I certainly would. The farmers, fishers, and herders all had to work aboveground, obviously, but they spread out over the fields, so I barely saw them during my run back.
The main part of the settlement, though—where the stone mounds that I now knew housed the hunters and soldiers who defended the valskab were—was a lot more active. Menskies thronged between the mounds and wandered in and out of them as needed. People pounded grains into flour; they cleaned and prepared hides; they gutted fish and cut hunks of meat into slabs for cooking or salting. A pair of Menskies labored over a simple forge, pounding copper and tin instead of iron, while another pair blew glass that had been melted from the silt at the bottom of the silica lake. Weavers turned the pale golden moss into thick mats, while carpenters hacked at the soft wood that could be gathered from the trees that grew around the lake.
The place was a hive of activity, and I’d stopped to observe and ask a few questions over the past several days. The Menskies weren’t really comfortable with me, and most of them had trouble speaking aloud—their voices cracked, and their lips stumbled over words they probably hadn’t had to pronounce aloud in years if ever—but I was a guest of the valskab, so they generally answered any question, even if it was politely saying, “None of your damn business.” Today, though, I had a specific person in mind, and I wove around the various crafters and laborers, following the sound of metal cracking against stone.
I stopped as I reached my destination, a woman who I guessed to be middle-aged. I wasn’t sure of that, but she had the same gray streaks in her fur as Bregg, and she oozed an aura of confidence and surety that the two people assisting her clearly lacked. I stood, watching as she placed a large, milky crystal into a bed of burning embers, holding it in place with bronze tongs. The crystal didn’t turn red-hot or anything, but after a couple minutes she took it out, placed it on a wooden block covered with thick leather, and struck it with a bronze rock hammer. A large chunk of rock flew off and landed on the ground, and she struck again, knocking off a corner and leaving a rough, squarish point at one end. She continued to work, her hammer falling at various angles that sheared away large chunks of gleaming crystal that fell to the ground. Soon, the oblong crystal had a roughly flat and angular shape, and she returned it to the embers, then looked up at me.
“If you’re looking for a weapon, I can’t help you,” she said bluntly in a raspy, thick voice that she obviously wasn’t used to using. “Everything I make is for the valskab.”
“I understand,” I replied easily. “I just wanted to watch what you’re doing.” I lifted my spear, then set the butt back on the ground. “In case I ever need to repair mine.”
She snorted contemptuously. “Assuming you have the tools, which I’m certain you don’t, you’ll just ruin it,” she said flatly. “You’ll never pick this up by watching. It takes years to learn how hot to make the crystals, how to hammer them to break them along their fracture lines without shattering them, and how to flake off an edge. If your spear needs the edge reworked, talk to the letharvisa. If they approve it, I’ll fix it. Otherwise…” She let her words trail away as she removed the crystal from the fire and set it back down, this time on a stone block with a flat top.
I watched for a few more minutes as she hammered what looked like a horn or antler awl onto the stone, knocking off long, flat flakes that smoothed and shaped the crystal. I walked around to observe from different directions, tapping my staff as I did, until eventually, I could sense the irritation flowing off the woman. I left at that point, smiling smugly as I walked away.
“How did we do, Sara?”
“You collected seven crystals that might work to store spirit energy in, John,” she replied. “Oh, and if you really want it, I could probably help you learn the skill Crystal Knapping from what I observed her doing.”
“Is my spear in any danger of getting dull?”
“No. Even if you broke it, I could simply reform it in a few seconds.”
“Then, there’s probably no point. We got what we needed—at least, I hope. I think tonight, we’ll see if Kadonsel can show me how to store spirit energy in a crystal.”
As I stepped through the moss curtain into the stone dome leading down to the part of the valskab I knew, though, that thought froze in my head. Aeld and Fifa both stood before me, obviously waiting for my arrival. I glanced around the room and found it empty, which couldn’t have boded well. Usually, the inside of the dome was a hive of activity during the day, with people coming and going constantly. I’d never seen it this quiet, and I assumed that meant something bad.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen the two of them at the same time since—well, ever. In fact, I hadn’t seen Fifa out in the valskab at all since the first day when we ate together. In the mornings, she woke me and vanished until it was time for our lessons; during the day, she always sent messages through her spirits when she wanted to see me.
A strange thought popped into my head. What if the effect Fifa had on me wasn’t just something that affected me? I glanced at Aeld and noticed his rigid body posture, his stiff neck, and his clenched hands. He was obviously uncomfortable, and while he stood beside Fifa, his body language toward her was totally closed off, as if trying to will a separation between them. I had a feeling my suspicion was correct: whatever Fifa was doing, it affected everyone around her, not just me. That explained why I never saw her out and about in the valskab, and it was probably why the room was devoid of people right now. Either Fifa cleared it out, or everyone left so as not to deal with her—whatever it was.
Of course, that realization also meant there had to be a strong reason for her to be here, and for the pair of them to be together. A quick activation of See Spirits showed the small, lavender beast spirit bound to Fifa that I’d seen when I first awoke in the valskab and that she often used to watch me or check up on me; had she noticed me taking the crystals? If so, would she and Aeld put together the reason I wanted them?
I forced myself to stay calm and only let a little surprise show on my face. “Fifa,” I said to the woman pleasantly. “Aeld. I was just coming to find you for our training session.”
“No need, Freyd,” he said with a smile. “We won’t be training in the valskab today.”
“We won’t? Why not?” I glanced at Fifa. “I assumed you didn’t want the rest of the valskab to see me getting trained and taught, so they weren’t uncomfortable.”
“I don’t,” she agreed. “But not because it’ll bother them; they already know what I’m teaching you, and they’ll ignore Aeld’s teachings since they aren’t letharvisa. It’s you that makes them uncomfortable, not the teachings.”
“You aren’t part of the valskab, Freyd,” Aeld reminded me. “They aren’t used to speaking aloud, much less to dealing with someone whose presence they can’t feel, and it bothers them.”
“It bothers me, too,” Fifa grinned at me. “But that’s your personality as much as anything else.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes, knowing that was the reaction she wanted. Fifa loved to tweak me whenever she could for some reason. “So, then, what are we doing?”
“The elders have decided that it’s time for you to pay for your education, Freyd,” she replied.
“You want me to claim a spirit?” I looked around. “You want me to do that here?”
“Of course not,” she laughed. “All the spirits here are part of the valskab; you couldn’t claim them if you tried. We’ll have to go find you one.” She smiled at me. “We’re going on a spirit hunt!”