Micah had a dream in which he straddled a terrified wolf. It had hurt him, or threatened to hurt him, he couldn’t remember just yet. Either way, he stabbed it with a jagged piece of glass he’d salvaged from his broken light potion. The glass cut into his hand while he worked, but he didn’t care. His enemy suffered more after all. And so he stabbed it. Over and over, and over, and over, and over again. It tried to run but he wouldn’t let it. Why should he? This was its fault, his solution to its problem.

[Of The Warrior Path discovered!]

[Skill - Savagery obtained!]

He woke up to those words, screaming as he had back then, with the image of the wolf fading like mist in his mind. At first, he thought it might be a clone and lurched to look over his shoulder, but he wasn’t in the forest at all. Or even in that cave with Ryan for that matter. He was at home in his bed and his parents were barrelling into his room, holding him and asking what was wrong.

Wait, Ryan? Had he really been there? No, no, they had left the Tower, hadn’t they? He had seen sunlight and remembered talking with that angry man … He’d collapsed. How did he end up here?

His parents were still hugging him, though he had stopped screaming the moment he woke up. Someone was brushing over his filthy hair to soothe him.

“I’m sorry,” he croaked. His thoughts had stopped churning and suddenly there was only him in his bed with his parents in his room. It was dark. He could hear his own breath and a dog barking in the distance.

“What?” his mother asked softly. His father pulled back.

“I’m sorry?” he said again and swallowed. This time it had been almost a question. That was a mistake. Micah knew it the moment he saw his father’s face. Why had he asked it as a question? He was sorry, after all.

“You’re sorry?” he asked. “You’re sorry?! Do you know how worried we have been?” It was the beginning. The floodgates were open.

Micah shied back into his covers, wanting to make himself small and disappear. When he moved, though, he felt the bandages and a weird paste shift on his hands, and then he noticed all the other ones covering his body, too. How many cuts had he still had? He’d treated them all, he thought. Maybe not some on his back that he couldn’t reach. Definitely not the one in his hand, aside from cleaning it … He remembered pressing into the wound, to make himself get used the pain just in case. He’d needed that then, to grow stronger. Micah swallowed hard and looked up at his parents as they berated him.

He deserved this now.

“We had people searching for you!” His father looked ragged. Micah had never seen him like this before. “We thought a bear might have eaten you, or-, or a monster, or that kidnappers took you. We hired a [Scout]! We searched the fields and forest for your body! You never told us you went into the forest, Micah! You never told us you went foraging. You always said it was alleyball or meeting up with friends. You never told us that my own son has his Class!”

“Why?” his mother asked. “Why did you keep this from us? You can tell us anything, you know that right, Micah? You could have just told us and we would have helped you.”

“Is it-, is it like some kind of manliness thing?” his father asked. “Did you want to prove yourself to your friends? Did you want to prove you were an adult? Or did you think you would only level up fighting monsters?”

“You should have known better,” his mother said.

“You’re a prodigy, Micah. You got your Class at thirteen. The other children can only be jealous of what you have. You were given a gift, Micah, and you almost-”

“You can level from training. If you had come to us-”

“Listen to your mother. We could have hired a tutor! You don’t have to go off fighting-”

“I always said we should have done that from the start, Class or no Class, but no, you said-”

“Oh, no, don’t start with that again.”

“I warned you when he turned eight. I warned you, I warned you, I did, I warned you.”

“So this is my fault?”

“If we had-”

Suddenly, they started yelling at each other.

Micah didn’t say a word, out of so many reasons. He felt confused that they were yelling at each other, ashamed that he had apparently started it, and afraid that he would only make things worse. But there was also the simple fact that his throat still grated when he spoke. It was kind of unpleasant. He needed more potion. And yet, even though he didn’t say a word, his parents kept on shouting for what felt like hours. Halfway through, they were blaming each other for past parenting mistakes and wandering around his room as they yelled over his bed, sat down, shifted, moved again.

Micah didn’t understand. His elder siblings had all turned out wonderfully. Wasn’t he solely to blame for his mistakes?

His parents came to the same conclusion eventually, because they turned back on him and started yelling at him again. He was grateful but suddenly felt very much like he was eleven once more. What had he been thinking, they demanded, going off into the Tower to fight monsters? That was the stupidest way to get himself killed. Hadn’t they told him it was a death trap? They always had. Everyone had. How often did his mother tell him it was a death trap? How often? And he went anyway!

Oh, this was going to have dire consequences, they said. When this was all sorted out, things would change.

“Allowance?” his mother asked, almost laughing. “Gone!” She enunciated it with her lips and waved as if cutting the very concept from existence.

“Free time?” his father asked. He just shook his head and put a finger down on his desk with each sentence. “You will go to class. You will go to a school of our choosing. You will come straight home where we can see you and study at the kitchen table, do you hear me? Day in, day out. You will have an instructor to train you when you have earned an instructor. You wanted to level up? Well, now you’ll just have to wait.”

Micah was confused. Did they think he had some sort of combat Class?

“Friends?” his mother asked.

“Uhm,” Micah raised his hand a little.

“DON’T INTERRUPT ME!” his mother bellowed at the same time as his father said,

“DON’T INTERRUPT YOUR MOTHER.”

Micah gulped and nodded.

“Gone!” she shouted. “You will have house arrest for the whole summer.”

“Not a single alleyball match, not a single trip into the forest, not a single theatre night, festival, or sleepover, do you hear us?” his father added. “Whatever standing you had with your friends, you just threw it out the window, son."

Okay, Micah thought. He’d no ‘standing’ anyway (what’s that?), not that he knew of. He wasn’t even sure if he had a position on his classroom’s alleyball team anymore. When was the last time he’d played a match? All that came to mind was hours thinking about alchemy.

“And every second of your free time, you will spend it working or studying, do you hear me? No more skipping chores or playing games. No more childish behavior. It’s time you grew up.”

“These toys?” his father asked, holding up a toy soldier and a ball and cup Micah still had. The only reason they were lying on the floor was that he needed to move them to reach his alchemy supplies.

His father looked to his wife, for her cue.

Gone, Micah guessed.

“Gone!” she shouted.

Yep, he’d known. What he hadn’t known, was that his father would throw the toys out the window. Micah’s face turned to pure shock. They must have confused it for dismay, because they seemed pleased with themselves. Micah didn’t care about that though. He didn’t play with the toys anyway, he was just surprised they would throw out something that used to belong to his brother.

“But those were Aaron’s,” he said.

His parents froze.

“What?”

“They were hand-me-downs,” Micah explained. “He gave them to me, remember?”

His mother visibly paled. She seemed much more shocked than he’d thought. He didn’t understand why she reacted like that, but she quickly found herself.

“Gone,” she said simply. And that was that.

There was a lull in the shouting, though, and Micah seized it.

“Mom? Dad?” he asked. “You said 'instructor'? What kind of Class did you think I have?”

“What Class?” his father asked as if it was obvious. “You went into the damn Tower, son. It’s [Fighter], is it not?” He seemed almost dejected by the fact that his son was a [Fighter]. Shouldn’t he have been more proud? Micah found himself happy that he could correct him.

“No, it’s [Alchemist],” he said. He forced what little amount of pride he could muster into his voice, all that was still left for him after this ordeal. He watched for their reactions, hoping they would be glad. Instead, they just looked incredibly tired.

“[Alchemist]?” his mother asked, frowned, and looked away as if trying to remember something.

“Why would you ever go into the Tower then?”

“Because ... ” Micah started, looking from one to the other. “I needed monster parts?”

They were still looking at him, waiting for more. Micah gulped and wondered if he could he tell them everything, everything he had kept from them in the last two years. He had always wanted to, eventually, but the plan had been to do it in stages when he was old enough for his achievements to be normal.

Nothing about this was normal anymore. The cat was out of the bag, much too late now. It was now drowned and beaten. He had to tell them. A clean slate. That seemed nice.

“I’m level 6 already,” he started slowly, judging their reactions. He had leveled up when he got out of the Tower. There were none so he went on, speaking a bit faster. Before he knew it, he was rambling, seizing the moment before it was gone. He didn’t want them to interrupt them, so he spoke quicker and louder until it was all out.

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“I got stuck at level 3. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t level up anymore. I don’t have the [Alchemy Path] after all, I have the [Alchemist] Class, you know? I need to actually make potions to level. Do things. Discover how they work. Advance. Rinse. Repeat. The repetition, it- and some of the potions need my blood. I had to cut my palm. It was so frustrating. I was running out of ingredients. The potions I made were too basic to give me any experience, so I needed something more. I was saving up, but then I saw the Tower in the Climber’s Bazaar every time I visited to check the shops and I thought to myself ‘Wouldn’t that be a better way to spend my money?’ Right, dad? Why buy a single ingredient when you can get a dozen yourself for the same price? I thought I was being resourceful. And I need a lot of ingredients because I need to figure everything out for myself. I don’t have any books, nothing on alchemy to guide me. One ingredient wouldn’t be enough. Or even six for that matter. So, I went in on a whim. Into the guild, I mean, and I talked to some people, lied to some people … I got everything I needed, and I made my potions, and stole your knife mom, and I went into the Tower. Everything was supposed to be alright. Just one day. In and out again. And I did go in. I even killed a salamander and got its crystal, but- but it bit me and it hurt, and then there were more and I, I-, I just, I didn’t-” he hiccuped. Sometime during his ramble, he had started sobbing. Not quite crying, but it was close enough that he had to stop thinking about it, lest it started the waterworks.

His parents looked sober now. They were paying attention to what he had to say.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he told them honestly, a lump in his throat.

Where had everything gone so wrong?

“I screwed up,” he said. “I went in the wrong direction, a wrong tunnel, and I got trapped. I was so scared. I had to fight my way though everything. Swim. I had to swim so far and it hurt so much. And then I was trapped under the rubble and had to climb. And-”

“Shush,” his mother said, hugging him. She started stroking his hair again, though it hadn’t been washed in almost a week. It was covered in dirt, and grime, and smoke, and blood.

“I tried so hard, and I fought just to get home. I had to, but there were so many of them.”

“Shush,” she told him. “You’re safe now. You’re home now. Everything’s alright. There are no monsters here, Micah.”

She held him while he rambled and stroked his hair, whispered to him softly. She kept on doing it until he started crying in earnest and he cried himself out. Then he wiped his nose on some bandages. It was disgusting, but so was he right now.

When he calmed down enough to talk normally again, his father asked, “So you’re an [Alchemist]?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Yes, sir.”

“And you’re level 6 already, that’s true?”

“Yes.”

“When did you get the Class?”

“When I was almost twelve,” Micah said. He’d been eleven and a half back then. It sounded better when he said twelve. “I don’t know how I got it, I never did anything like it after all…”

“Oh, that’s easy,” his mother said. “Don’t you remember?” She looked at him quizzingly, and even his father was frowning as if it was obvious.

“No?” he asked.

“During the family gatherings when you were little, you would always want to play with your older brother. Of course, he didn’t want to play with a small kid, he didn’t have the time, so he pushed you off to his best friend. The alchemist working with his caravan. What was his name again? Lee? Liam?”

“I think it was just Lean, honey,” his father suggested.

“Lean? That’s a stupid name.”

Micah remembered.

“William,” he said.

“William? Are you sure?”

“Lean was his nickname because he was, well, lean, muscular ... How was he so lean if he was an alchemist though?” Micah wondered. “Was it a Skill? Alchemists aren’t usually in form ... Oh no, am I going to get fat? I’m going to get fat, aren’t I?” He was rambling, and his mother quickly pulled him away from those thoughts.

“Don’t be stupid. William let you help him make potions and you liked it so much, during every family gathering you wanted to do it again. Eventually, your brother even got jealous and tried to pull you away, but you wouldn’t go. You refused to leave even for the promise of sweets.”

“I hugged the wagon’s axle while he tried to pull me away, once,” Micah remembered all the sudden. “Because I didn’t want to go. Eventually, something cracked. I thought it was the axle and started crying. Aaron thought it was my bones and that was why I was crying. I think they gave me some really high grade healing potion to stop me before you could hear.”

“We did hear,” his father said gravely.

His mother scowled.

“Idiots, giving a seven year old healing potion. You’re already so little, did they want to stunt you forever?”

Micah had been reminiscing fondly, but suddenly thought he’d missed something really important.

“Wait, what?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” his dad said. Micah begged to differ. “Just be sure to thank William for your Class the next time you see him.”

“Right,” he said. “I will.”

Suddenly they were nothing left to say. Well, there was plenty left to say and plenty of shouting left to do, but for a moment there was peace. A pause. Respite. Micah began to notice he was hungry. And not just hungry, he was absolutely famished. He could eat a horse. Literally. He kind of even felt like horse, but it was expensive. He’d had it once or twice before, during special occasions. His sister’s wedding. He couldn’t ask his parents for something like that right after the stunt he pulled. Plus, he didn’t want to break the silence.

“So you’re an alchemist?” his father eventually repeated.

Micah nodded before remembering his manners. You speak when spoken to.

“Yes,” he said.

“Our son’s an alchemist,” he said again, turning to his wife. He didn’t look quite so tired anymore, and neither did she.

“And I have my Path already?” Micah offered.

They glanced at him, let out a deep breath and suddenly both grinned like madmen.

“Huzzah!”

Micah’s response was to let his stomach groan.

----------------------------------------

They grabbed Micah some fruit from the kitchen, to appease his hunger. They didn’t have a lot in the house though. His parents had been busy with searching for him, they said, and hadn’t had time to go shopping.

So it was decided that they would visit his sister Prisha and have her do all the work. She was worried sick about him, too, and they hadn’t told her yet that he was safe. What better time than the present?

Micah’s father had to help him out of bed though. It was embarrassing. He was just a little wobbly on the feet, he assured them. Just a moment and he would be fine. It was a bluff while he said it, but after his parents helped him down the stairs, he did manage to walk on his own again. It was as if his legs had woken up from a deep sleep, one they had definitely earned.

Still, his father hovered while they made their way through the city, as if he expected Micah to collapse any moment. It was unsettling, because his father had never acted that concerned before. It was embarrassing, too, Micah thought. He was thirteen, he could walk on his own. Thank you very much. He was glad when he spotted the building and tonight’s bouncer, Ed.

“You found him!” the burly man called when he saw them walking up the street. He laughed and slapped Micah on the shoulders, almost forcing him to his knees.

“Careful there, he’s still a little weak,” his mother said.

“I’m fine,” Micah assured them.

“Where did you run off to, little guy?” Ed asked and they went silent.

It was bound to happen, really. Of course, people were going to ask where he had been, Micah thought, but when he glanced back, his parents looked like they were on the verge of shouting at him again.

He gulped.

His father raised an eyebrow and leaned forward, as if to say, Yes, Micah. Tell the man where you were.

“The,” he started and croaked. “The Tower.”

“What was that?” Ed’s eyebrows were high and he feigned digging his ear, as if he couldn’t believe he had heard right.

“I got lost in the Tower,” Micah said dejectedly and sighed. He was beginning to think he would have to say that to a lot of people a lot of times in the upcoming days. Questions, conversations, people looking at him, expecting things of him, whispering behind his back. Exactly what he had wanted to avoid all those years ago.

And the classroom. He was going to have to stand in front of everyone and tell them about his calling, too, he knew. His parents wouldn’t have it any other way.

How annoying.

He let his head fall and looked at his feet, determined to stay that way for the rest of his life.

“Uhm,” Ed said.

“Three, then,” his mother switched topics behind him.

“Oh no, I couldn’t. Neil would have my head if he heard I made his in-laws pay.”

“Nonsense, I won’t be the one to rob my daughter of her earnings,” she insisted. They didn’t budge, both she and his father behind her. They were stubborn like that. “Go on, take it,” his mother said and Ed let out of a big sigh.

“Alright, but I’ll have a word with Neil about this,” he said.

“I’m sure you will.”

His parents herded him into the building.

Instead of taking the hallway straight ahead, which led to the common areas and the changing rooms, they took a door on the right. There was a sign on it that said ‘private’. The moment Micah opened it and walked down the short hallway into the kitchen, he heard a squeal and something clatter. A tall girl, or rather a young woman now, let a pot drop into a soap-filled basin when she saw him, and then his sister Prisha was upon him.

“Micah!” she screamed. “You’re safe.”

She hugged him like a bear, pulling him off the ground a little ways and pressing him into her as if she could somehow absorb him, like water into a sponge. She always did that. This time, though, it felt different. Just this once, instead of pushing her away and cursing at her like he usually did, Micah let her have the hug. It felt nice, if he was being honest. He wrapped his arms around her and just enjoyed the embrace. She was big and cuddly, and she was so warm-

That ruined it for him. Micah pushed her away and surprisingly, she let go. He took a step back, shuffled around on his feet and looked up at her.

“Hey there, sis,” was all he could think of to say.

All around him, people were poking their heads into the kitchen and asking if he was back. They saw him, turned around and ran to spread the word. It went through the family business like wildfire and soon, Prisha’s husband, Neil, came stumbling into the room while Micah sat on a stool and ate leftovers.

“Ah, Mr. Stranya,” he said and shook their father’s hand. Micah smiled a little at that, remembering a joke his sister had told him once that Neil was deathly afraid of his dad. That sounded stupid. He was taller than father, after all, and he owned his own business. Nevertheless, he always bent his head a little to be on the same height as the smaller man.

Weird.

“And little Mr. Stranya,” he said and ruffled Micah’s hair before turning back again. “I see you found your son.”

Micah waved, smiling hesitantly. He had half a link of small sausages in his hands that he was gnawing on like a rabbit. It made his stomach happy, and so he was happy, if only for a little bit. It was a brittle facade, he knew, that would come and go with the amount of links he still had left and the mood of the people around him. Already, there was a prickling sense of unease growing in the back of his head that wandered down and took up residence in his spine.

The atmosphere in the room was off. Stilted. Neil must have noticed it, too, by the way he was acting.

Micah was a little happy, but that only for five or less sausages or so. Prisha was a lot happy and a storm, gathering things from around the kitchen to start cooking. His mother looked sourly amused, she sat on a chair in the corner, and his father was a cold statue leaning against the wall.

Neil was sweating. Micah took it as a bad sign. He inhaled his sausages while he still could.

“Yes, we did,” his father answered.

“Guess where,” his mother added.

Then Prisha turned around from where she was searching through their food cabinet. A small frown blemished her smile.

“Yeah, where were you, Micah?”

All eyes turned on him and he chewed quickly and swallowed. He told her. She laughed and told him to stop joking (no really this time). He told her again. This time her smile was the small thing that blemished her frown.

The shouting began anew. At first, it was just Prisha. His parents joined in for the second part, and they even bullied Neil into it, though he did so reluctantly and with great reservations. While his family was like the thunderstorm shouting down at him, whipping debris into his face and threatening to smite him on the spot, Neil was a few drops of leftover rain from yesterday that said ‘Hey, maybe you should stay inside today?’ The only reason Micah didn’t ignore him was out of respect. Well, that and the one time he’d seen the man yell until his face went blue. Definitely not a pushover. This just wasn’t his territory.

At the end of it all, Micah was surprised to find himself genuinely happy. He smiled, accidently letting it show.

“What are you smiling about?” his mother demanded.

“I’m home,” he said.

They all looked at him like he was crazy. Then they smiled and welcomed him back.

“That you are, little brother,” Prisha said. They all started talking over one another then, not just about him and how stupid he was, but about Neil and Prisha, their family and how the business was faring.

Someone found him another chain of sausages and Micah nibbled on it as well. While his sister was cutting carrots, his eyes wandered to the knife she held, cutting through the vegetables and smacking down on the wooden cutting board. He hadn’t retrieved his mother’s knife from the … alpha wolf? Was that Ryan’s teacher had called them? Didn’t they know they weren’t wolves, but worms in disguise? He hadn’t told his mother that he’d lost the knife yet, either. When he did, he was sure she would start yelling at him again. Better he did it soon … just not right now.

When his sister finished with the carrots, she switched to bell peppers and forced the knife in from above, carving out the stem. She scrapped out all the seeds and innards and dropped them into a bowl. He heard them crunch as she cut them into strips and then into cubes. When she switched to tomatoes and started slicing, more of a sawing motion, up and down, cutting into the soft flesh, Micah put his chain of sausages away.

Then she got out the meat and he got up.

“Can I go wash up?” he asked his mother. “I want to wash my hair.”

“Brush your teeth first,” she whispered, as if it was some secret that they stunk after four days of no care. But she was right, so he nodded and asked one of Neil’s many relatives if they had a spare toothbrush and some paste he could use. They happily supplied, along with replacement bandages and some healing paste they said was alchemical. For his wounds. He was going to wash the current one off after all. Micah was thankful that they were so thoughtful. He wasn’t.

He used a private washing room that was barely a small cupboard to brush his teeth. Then he went to the general men’s baths to wash his hair. He almost tripped on the wet tiles when he saw Ryan sitting there in the water.