Micah sat crouched in front of a table and upended the contents of his measuring cup into the mixture before him. Red powder. Salamander scales he had peeled and crushed himself. Whittled might have been a better word, though. Or shaved? Flayed?
He had cut half the underside of the scales off—the bit that produced sweat and insulated against heat—and only used the red, hot upper side, which was surprisingly flammable when dried. That was also the reason Prisha had banned him from using the stove.
Stupid salamander scales.
Making sure the temperature was just right, he whispered, “[Dissolve],” even as the powder sunk. The liquid’s sheen shifted from an earthy green to sickly orange as the spell passed over the bottle. It took ahold of the powders, essences, patterns, and essences again in descending order of … control? It seemed to have a firmer grasp on the powders, almost like manipulating essences was a side-effect.
Micah made a note.
He also wondered why it manipulated essences twice and made another notation to think about it later. For now, invisible hands took everything by the shoulders and slathered it onto the liquid like paint. Paint which unfortunately did not immediately dry.
Micah bit his lip. Drat.
So only a part of the scales really would dissolve in oil. He’d been hoping it would be unanimous. He was holding the rest of it in place by force. It would decay quicker than the others, alongside his mana, bringing the potion out of balance, possibly reducing its longevity.
Another quick cast would band-aid that problem, but he needed a better solution. Maybe he could somehow isolate the parts he wanted and sort them into water- and oil-solvability?
He made another note.
For now, he whispered, “[Dissettle],” and felt another wave of mana rush out with his words. A large part of it literally came from his mouth, another from his hand closest to the glass, and a bunch of other tiny trickles simply flowed out from everywhere else. He felt only a glimpse of that before it was gone.
He was getting better at sensing it, though. Not that he liked it. Realizing he had used mana freely for almost three years now had helped a little in overcoming Micah’s inhibitions about using it at all. Not that he understood those inhibitions, either. Something about using mana just reminded him of cutting his palm for blood. It was stupid, he knew.
But the realization had also made him a little more stingy with how often he cast spells during alchemy, though he was getting more comfortable again.
Either option didn’t have to be a bad thing. Or rather, the middle ground might be good. Precision was a virtue, after all.
The mixture immediately became a little smoother as water, oil, and itty-bitties of the salamander scales fell into place. Micah could run a sieve through the liquid a hundred times now and a hundred times it would catch nothing but viscosity.
The downside was that he could feel a second sheen of mana over the liquid, matting down its effects and bumping into the one already in place. Not enough to be a concern really, but a potion that relied on mana to hold itself together wasn’t a good potion at all. It was like walking around with a shirt held together by safety pins … which were made of ice?
He’d have to work on that metaphor. The point was, it was better to have the potion hold itself together through internal stability rather than external force, especially since his options were very limited in that regard.
Micah wanted to figure out how to make a potion last forever. He was being met with complications at every turn. Everything decayed, it seemed. Mana, essence, patterns, ingredients; none of it wanted to stay in one place. Mixing compatible ingredients together the right way could get him days or weeks worth of shelf life, but days and weeks were not decades. He needed to find the materials that would last. Where was the stone, glass, and metal? Everything seemed to be made of ice, glue, and things that could mold.
Maybe he just needed better glue. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on some better books. He knew that there were potions that could last for months or even years, expensive though they were, and wondered how they were made.
For now, he dropped some cracked wax golem crystals into the mixture and whispered, “[Dissolve].”
Again, the spell passed over the liquid. It noticed the large chunks of space that disrupted it, noticed the fragility of the cracks, took ahold, squirmed inside, broke them apart. It then lifted those parts—pure essence—into every corner of the mixture, infusing it with “candle” essence, how Lisa liked to call it.
Micah paid special attention to that and played it over and over in his mind so he could remember and think on it later. That was the advice Ryan had given him for his Path. But that was later.
For now, he made some notes asking how [Dissolve] did what it did. Dissolving essence was easy enough, he knew. Once it lost its anchor, it would practically do it on its own. But what about other things? The spell could dissolve ice just as well as it could potatoes, and even meats with a little help. Micah didn't know if it was edible afterward, but how did the spell know how to break things down like that? Did it even? If not, how else did it work?
It was fascinating. Micah actually prefered it to [Dissettle], even if the other made things just so … organized.
Right now, Micah was making a fire potion. Specifically, one for lamps. Adding candle essence was the last ingredient, since it would subtly make the liquid burn lower, but therefore longer. It had the same function that wax did in an actual candle—it paced.
Last potion done, Micah breathed a sigh of relief and let himself slump on the floor. The potion had an oily sheen now. Mostly orange, with hints of green and blue at the right angles. That was the last of the alchemicals Ryan had “ordered” from him, something Micah was still on cloud nine about.
He was finally making proper alchemicals.
He lifted up the journal and searched for the notations he had made, already having forgotten, and found a tiny, tight scrawl slanted upward into other lines. Slowly, Micah deciphered the words, Why essences b dragged twice?
Mm … that was what happened when he wrote without looking, physically and mentally, he supposed. It probably hadn’t helped that he’d propped his journal against his knee.
Micah scratched the question out and rewrote, Why do my spells move essences in more than one way within a single cast? He chewed on his pencil for a moment as he thought it over and wrote a tentative answer, Because these are monster parts? If monster patterns really do use essence, a bit of them might still cling to them when I infuse.
Was that it? … Probably not. Micah shrugged. He always felt like he was working with puzzle pieces, not but one more piece was better than nothing. He might keep it in mind for the future, his mind already working on ways it might be relevant. Purity could be an issue, if patterns dragged foreign types of essence into a mixture. Compatibility another, if patterns had preferences, he might be able to figure them out by how essences interacted with them.
Alternatively, essences might have preferences themselves. He knew as much from essence sludge, actually.
For anything else, he would have to meditate on the question in the hopes that his Path would help him along.
Next, he checked his other note and wondered if he could use distillation to separate things into water- and oil-solvability. Then there were the questions about his spells, but those were for another day. Micah doubted his Path would help him with them either. It was getting late. He started cleaning up.
He’d spent the last three days experimenting with [Disettle] and [Dissolve] to figure out how they worked and learn more about spellcasting, and quickly realized he didn’t have as much experience as he had hoped.
Silent casting, Lisa had told him, is not the same thing as doing it yourself. You’re still relying on your Skill.
Micah didn’t know the spellscript for [Infusion]. He did understand what it did and how it worked. He had cast it so often, it was second nature to him. But that was the problem. He was so used to casting it—the only true spell he knew—wrapping his brain around doing other things with mana was like learning he could bend his leg the other way. Completely foreign.
So now, he had to cast his new spells out loud and unlearn a lot of bad habits. At least, that allowed him to take a backseat and observe, which Lisa had instructed him to do anyway. Class spells might be rigid, but he could learn a lot from them when he had literally no experience at all.
What he had learned already, was that they were surprisingly similar to [Infusion]. Or at least, it felt that way. [Dissolve] felt more forceful and [Dissettle] more subtle, though he didn’t know enough to understand why. He would have loved to have [Mana Sight] to just see for himself. Now, he knew how other [Alchemists] must feel when working with ingredients. Blind.
Still, using his two new spells could make all the difference in a potion’s longevity. Compared to his old potions, the ingredients were now perfectly—
Micah caught a glimpse of something and stopped cleaning up the table. He frowned at a little bit of powder gathered at the bottom of the bottle. Okay, they were almost perfectly dissolved. But only almost.
Why? What had gone wrong? Had he used too many scales or too little liquid? That wasn’t good. He had promised Ryan he could get the potion just right, that he could make the perfect fuel for his lamp.
Micah quickly got a sieve and tried filtering out some of the powder at the bottom, but it was too finely crushed. Damn his thoroughness. This was where a filtering spell from an alchemy Path might have come in handy.
Great. The first time Micah made a proper potion for someone else, using Lean’s recipe no less, who traveled for a living, and it was subpar. Did he really want to hand this to Ryan?
Micah walked out of the backroom to check the clock two hallways down—dinner was in half an hour. He mulled it over, uncertain for a moment, and wrenched himself around, Screw it. He was going to make it over.
Ryan would be gone for two weeks. The least Micah could do was get the alchemicals he’d ordered right or he wouldn’t be able to feel proud of himself. He just had to clean up at the same time and run home, then he might still make it.
This time, he made extra sure to get the measurements right. He was a level ten [Alchemist], the highest level alchemist applying to that school. He had to act like it or they would never accept—
Micah forced the thought from his head and started measuring oil again. The other reason why he had been experimenting with his new spells so much was because allowing himself to worry about the school was pure torture.
----------------------------------------
Ryan stood in a large plaza at the Northern end of the city with a mountain of luggage on his back. Bedroll strapped on, clothes, toothbrush, alchemicals, lantern, spear, water, trail food; everything he would need for two weeks spent in the wilderness.
He looked forward to it. Camping seemed like a great change of pace and, despite technically being a training camp, a good way to let off some steam after weeks of preparing for entrance exams.
They were headed for Anne Park, the massive stretch of forest halfway between Hadica and Anevos. And though their campsite was closer—much closer—to Hadica, it was still a two day’s march away.
March, as in, on foot. That was one of the few things Ryan was looking less forward to. Two days of walking with sixty or more people he knew nothing about and nothing much to do? He really hoped the scenery would be nice.
There would be horses carrying other things, of course. Some people also brought dogs, possibly because of their Class. Some supplies were already at the campsite, but the scouts themselves were hiking it. Leaving on Monday morning, they were expected to get there by Tuesday afternoon. Anyone who couldn’t keep up was expected to catch up, sooner rather than later.
According to Gardener, the theme of the Scouts’ trip was, If you didn’t level, you didn’t do it right, after all. They accepted all sorts of wilderness-related Classes and even kids without their Classes yet, then spent two weeks in the middle of nowhere teaching themselves survival Skills.
Unlike others, Ryan wouldn’t mind the cold. At night or in water. And if everyone was equally unkempt, he didn’t have to care about that either. The only problem, really, would be the bugs and sleeping on the ground. Well that and—
Two guys were striding up to him, one with a grin on his face, the other silently following.
—Other people. Ryan panicked. He recognized them, but he had no idea what their names were. He’d forgotten. Oh, man. He was going to spend two weeks with these people. He couldn’t start that by having forgotten their names. Remember, he told himself. Remember, dammit. But no matter how hard he tried, his mind only spat out, “Phil.” Who the hell was Phil?
This was torture.
“Ho, Ryan!” the one with the grin called and they clasped arms in greeting. “It’s me, Barry. We rescued that kid together, remember? I mean, I only carried him to the infirmary but I was there.”
“Of course, man,” Ryan said cheerfully and gave him a slap on the shoulder. Phil was pretty close to Barry, right? “How could I ever forget you?”
“Mark’s also here,” the older guy said, dragging his friend closer and they bumped fists.
Barry and Mark. Thank fuck there were still people around who introduced themselves.
“Man, when Gus told me you were coming along,” Barry started, “I’m not going to lie, I was wondering the entire time, Who the hell is he talking about?” He spoke from Ryan’s soul. “But then he mentioned the whole ordeal with the kid and I was like, Oh, yeah! That little twerp who followed me around for half a day. No wonder I forgot him.”
“Fuck you, too.”
Barry laughed.
Mark sighed. “I literally told him your name a few second ago, before we walked up to you.”
Barry’s laughter trailed off and he scratched the back of his neck. “Haa … Yeah, so on the topic of twerps following people around—”
“Oi,” Ryan said.
“—isn’t that the kid?”
He nudged his chin back through the crowd and Ryan spotted his parents standing at the edge of the plaza, still watching him, but giving an awkward amount of space for him to mingle.
Micah stood off to the side with his now-empty cloth bag and looked lost. It was kind of hard to equate that look with Micah beating up and kidnapping a Kobold from the Tower, but Ryan managed somehow.
He’ll be fine, he told himself. To Barry, he said, “Yeah. That’s Micah, by the way. Next to him are my parents.”
“Uhm, is your mom, uh— Are you going to be a big brother soon?”
Big brother. Rather than panic, Ryan focussed on how flustered Barry was and smiled, saying, “Yeah.”
“Cool, cool.” Barry nodded and mumbled, “He’s kind of staring at us. The kid.”
“Yep.”
“So were you like … friends before? Or is he following you around now like some kind of nancy? I had a friend who had that happen to him.”
Ryan hesitated, used to banter with Finn and Lang, and shrugged. “We kind of sort of took him in. Do you always insult people’s friends when you first meet them?”
“Haha, no—” Barry said.
“Yes,” Mark corrected him.
“But, uh, wow. That’s cool. I mean, I’ve got two siblings myself, though we aren’t quite as mismatched in the age department. And the looks department. Eh, I doubt you’d tan to match either. But anyway, I’m actually the youngest”—he slung an arm around Ryan’s shoulders and led him deeper into the crowd—”so I’m relishing the chance to be an older brother for a few weeks. I get to order the newbies around. Third-year scouts, baby!”
A few others raised their hands in agreement.
In a quieter tone, he said to Ryan, “Come to us if you want to break any rules. We’re your way into the lodges, buddy.”
Ryan grinned. “Not a scout at all, buddy. I don’t have any rules. I’m just tagging along for my Path.”
Barry froze and turned to face him, one hand on each shoulder. “Say that again.”
“I’m just tagging—”
“The other thing.”
“I don’t … have any rules?”
Barry looked at him with feigned intensity and said, “You and me—and Mark … and a few others, I guess; I’ll introduce you later—we are going to have so much fun this trip.”
Ryan smiled awkwardly.
“My condolences,” Mark said in passing.
“We’ll hold down the fort,” his dad assured him when he ducked away. The crowd was gathering near the front of the plaza now. His dad had an arm slung around his mom’s shoulders and smiled.
“You just have fun,” she told him. “And don’t get into too much trouble.”
Too much? Ryan wondered. Not 'any'?
“Yeah, have fun,” Micah echoed.
He nodded and they bumped fists before he left. Everything else had been said already. The supervisors gave them a brief schedule, told them the rules, and handed out bags of supplies to carry. They headed out through a Northern gate just as a morning bell rung in the distance. It was barely bright out.
He had woken up at four this morning. His family had even had to take the Roundabout to get to the Northern end of the city because they couldn’t find a coach. Otherwise, they would have had to walk for hours on end. And everyone else looked similarly tired, so they walked the first half hour so in terse silence, yawning occasionally.
As the sun and warmth rose, so did the activity. Some scouts started playing hacky sack over the entire group. Others started marching songs and chants. Barry introduced Ryan to his line of friends so he wouldn’t be walking alone, and Gus checked in a little later to see if everything was alright.
He was mostly just enjoying the scenery, though. The city outside of the walls and the old ruins gave way to fields of crops and orchards in the distance, full of things they couldn’t harvest as readily in the Tower, like pumpkins for the Fall. They passed a few signs of ownership. Some fields even belonged to schools, with students’ names signed around the edges.
When they joined the main road passing through a village, the traffic picked up around them. They spotted open pastures meant mostly for horses or cattle and, in the distance, the metal rod fence of a wealthy estate, a mansion hidden behind the treeline like the mere sight of it was forbidden. It was the type of property Ryan would probably never be able to set foot on. Not unless he became a famous climber, at least.
A small, private railroad even connected the estate to the city and he found himself wishing he’d been born in a time when the five cities had been connected. The only time when someone like him would have been allowed and able to travel by train would have been during the end of the first and the second king’s reigns. He wondered how long it would take for the city to be reconnected to Lighthouse instead. A few years, maybe? Would he still be in school?
Ryan added traveling to Lighthouse to his bucket list, as soon as the railroad was finished. He so wanted to see the red brick wall they had built around their Tower. And the beach. And Landsharks. They could make it a day trip if they had to.
Passing through avenues, Ryan did some cursory bird-watching, freshening up on names and sounds when nobody was looking. They reached green, rolling hills dotted with wild flowers, almost like a flat version of the Fields. Of course, animals thrived here unlike the Tower. Unfortunately, that included bugs clustered in balls over the road that buzzed past their ears.
They made midday rest next to a small bend in the Free River and watched the boats in the distance, then headed Northwest, into more forested areas and uphill rises. A few hours in, Gus told them they were “officially” in Anne Park. He even pointed out a marker a moment later. Unfortunately, the Lost Queen’s summer estate was weeks away. They wouldn’t be able to go sightseeing.
They made camp as the sky darkened above them, about twenty-five kilometers away from the city. By then everyone, even Ryan, was dog-tired. The people without any kind of Class had it the worst. He would have loved to drop dead on the duff and wake up in his bed at home again, but they had to set up camp before it got true dark … and then tear it all down in the morning.
He followed the scout master’s orders to a spot in a clearing and helped set up a temporary tent with five others whom he had just met, then shrugged off his things and headed out again, to look for the next set up orders.
He’d barely pushed past the flap when Barry showed up. “You got a chore assigned to you, yet, desperado?”
Ryan cracked his neck and tried not to yawn. “Nope.”
“Good. You can help up us set up the bonfire.”
He perked up. “Bonfire?”
“Unless you want to join the hunt?”
He pointed over to a line of second-years who were getting their faces painted by fingers dipped in wooden bowls. Their jaws were set and their faces grim. One senior walked along behind the line and held a speech. They repeated parts or barked replies at others.
In the distance, a cluster of newbies looked on in awe, even if others looked like they were having a hard time keeping straight faces. Barry, for starters.
Ryan had to admit, that did look fun, but he wasn’t a true scout. He was even lower in the hierarchy than the newbies, actually, so what right did he have to join? Besides—
Campfires, grilling, and fireworks. That was what he was used to doing in the summer. The only fires he’d spent any time around this year, though, were the stove and Lisa’s spells. He had spent too time around Micah. Now, he longed for it. Building an actual bonfire himself? That sounded awesome.
He shrugged casually and made a polite excuse to decline the hunt, “I suck at using the bow and arrow.”
“You still got a spear, right?” Barry asked and nodded over his shoulder at the tent. “You even use a boarspear, man. Are you sure you’re not a scout?”
“Oh, yeah.” Ryan remembered. Those were meant for hunting. He’d picked it as the more defensive option, to keep monsters off him and his allies, even if some other types of spears could do more damage, to unmade especially. He hesitated and just admitted, “I still want to start a big fire, though.”
Barry grinned. “Right on.”
As he led the way through camp and away from the hunt, the older guy pointed out what the others were doing.
“The third-years are out catching up on woodcraft and foraging. Not all. Gatherers and gardeners. The chores are split among Classes. Tamers get to take care of the horses. Mages help wherever they can, depending on which spells they know. Some scouts are doing logistics. The brunt of the Classes went along with the hunt, but we fighters, we get to help lug wood with the lumberjacks.” He pointed at group of guys who were sharpening their axes.
Ryan looked around, but he didn’t see any wood except the trees. They hadn’t carried any either. “Wait, you’re going to cut down a tree for the bonfire?”
"Trees." Barry nodded. “Sure thing. Where else would we get it?”
That was … kind of awesome. Ryan smiled and followed him deeper into the forest, away from the hunt and back the way they’d came. A scout master marked dead trees for them.
Then, for the first time in his life, Ryan got to cut down one. It didn’t take nearly as long as he had thought it would, but it was twice as exhausting. And at the end of it, he got to yell, “TIMBER!” along with the others.
With a dozen cracks of breaking branches, the tree crashed into the duff. They got to cutting and sawing it into beams. Another tree was cut into chunks and split down the middle to make log torches instead.
Ryan didn’t actually get to stack the wood or light it, sadly. He was sent off to collect stones to fix up the moss-overgrown boundary from last year.
The hunters and gatherers returned victorious an hour later with a boar tied to a stick, carried between them over their shoulders. Someone had put an apple in its mouth and they grinned.
It was the only animal that was paraded around. The others carried the rest of the game to a station shortly after where Mark of all people taught them how to skin and prepare them for the fire.
Ryan could have easily imagined Micah and Lisa sitting there with the others, listening attentively and then doing it themselves, like they did after Tower trips sometimes. They might even have been the instructors, Ryan thought, remembering the silent rhythm they had worked out in the kitchen by now.
But when night truly fell, the fire was lit and it burned. Its raging flames baked his skin from yards away and spit off plumes of sparks as wood crackled and fell. Ryan dug into a meat skewer that wasn’t half-bad and grinned.
The scouts sat in a far ring around the fire, or in smaller groups around log torches. The older scouts were telling a well-rehearsed ghost story about the campsite they were headed for, and Treants eating people, until someone jumped out of the woods to scare them and they screamed.
Ryan, along everyone else, doubled up in laughter. It was Barry after all, wearing a stupid Treant mask and a moss-covered shirt. Ryan had heard him coming from a mile away. It helped that he’d been clued in earlier, though he almost regretted it. He would have loved being scared along with them.
For a moment, he sat there and knew that while Lisa and anyone else might have enjoyed all of this, there was no way Micah could have. And that was fine. Ryan tore off another chunk from his skewer and stood up. He walked over sat down next to the other newbies, holding out a hand to the one closest to him, “Hey, I’m Ryan.”
Bonfires were the best.
----------------------------------------
“So,” David said at the breakfast table, staring at just him alone, “what are you going to do today?”
Micah sat there and felt awkward. A morning chill hung in the air. It didn’t exactly help him relax. This was the first day he was staying at Ryan’s place without, well, Ryan. The other guy was off on a camping trip he’d signed up for weeks ago and Micah was left back here. Alone. Again, awkward.
“I’m—” His voice croaked and he downed a glass of cold water before he managed to reply, “I’m going to Mr. Faraday’s shop to ask him about the type of Skills [Alchemists] get and stuff.”
“And stuff?” David arched his eyebrows.
Micah nodded. “And stuff.”
“So you won’t be cleaning up the house?”
“Oh, of course, I could do that afterward.”
“Afterward?” he asked again.
“Afterward?”
“Afterward…?”
“Afterward, sir!” Micah snapped and felt the irrational urge to salute. He hadn’t really paid attention to it before, but though David didn’t have his son’s physique, he was a bouncer and spent most of his time lugging heavy crates around because the inn was so peaceful. So while Ryan often looked grumpy, it was a more sulking grumpy. David’s grumpy looked intimidating.
The man grunted. “Good. Now, what about shoppi—”
Noelle swatted him on the back of the head. “Give it a rest already.”
Her husband rubbed his head and burst into laughter, all tension suddenly gone. “Oh, you should have seen your face.”
“That’s mean.”
“Oh, your face.”
“That was mean,” he repeated himself.
“No, that was funny. Ooh, boy.” He wiped a fake tear away and stood up. “You’re so easy to impress, Micah. It’s fun. You have fun bothering Faraday, kiddo. No pressure here. Just don’t let him wrap you up in an apprenticeship. Remember, it’s not impolite to say no.” He pointed at him and ruffled his hair walking past.
“Mean!” Micah called after him, but smiled when he went to do the dishes. He had almost let himself forget how awesome Ryan’s parents were. But of course they were, letting him stay here even when their own son was gone.
He turned on the faucet and started scrubbing. The sound of two sets of toothbrushes scrubbing echoed from the bathroom. When he turned off his faucet, they turned theirs on and gurgled for a ridiculously long amount of time. They spat out. The sound of something clink against the sink, then tumble into cups and a pause. Someone tapped him on the shoulder and Micah looked back, wet hands in the sink.
Noelle was holding out a key to him. A door key. “Here. You’ll need this, now that Ryan’s on his trip. Unless you want to climb in every time?”
Micah stared at it for a moment before he wiped off his hands on his pants and quickly took it, thanking her.
“Just don’t lose it,” David said as he slipped on his shoes. His wife sat down to do the same.
“I won’t. I promise.”
“But if you do …?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you right away.”
Micah had learned that lesson vicariously through Ryan’s lost wristband. Lisa and he were planning on looking for it, too, while he was gone. It might make a good welcome back present. Plus, Lisa said they could sell maps just as easily as loot nowadays and Micah could use all the money he could get.
Noelle shut the door on her way out and Micah brushed his teeth himself before getting changed. When he dribbled back down the stairs though, the house was suddenly empty. Everything was silent. They were both off to work already. He hurried up, locking the door behind him. It was fine, he told himself. They wouldn’t be gone forever.
A bell rung over the shop door. Janet was helping a woman at the counter, so Micah sat on one of the waiting chairs a discreet distance away and browsed through a booklet of common products.
He was almost through two-thirds of it and opened a page to the illustration of a pink potion when Janet vaulted over the counter and pulled it out of his hands with an embarrassed smile. She looked like she was trying not to laugh when she said, “Those are for when you’re a bit older.”
The other patron did chuckle on her way out of the shop. The bell rang again when the door fell shut.
Micah squinted at the booklet and wondered if he could snatch it back if he was quick enough. What kind of potion was only meant for adults? And why wasn’t he allowed to see?
“Flowers, right?” she asked, putting the booklet on the counter, far out of his reach. “Are you here for Mr. Faraday again? Oh, or did your, ah, friend get into another fight?” Her expression shifted to worry. “He’s not getting picked on, is he?”
“What? No," Micah said. Who would pick on Ryan? Who could pick on Ryan?
Janet looked relieved. “Good, good. But I’ve been working on improving my concealer and, to be perfectly honest with you, that Ryan has me worried about selling it. Or rather, worried about the type of person who would buy it.”
He blinked. “Huh?”
“I mean—and let me be frank here—I don’t exactly want to endorse hiding violence, you know?” she said, beginning to pace. “But I still have to sell my wares. Then again, a lot of people practice self-defense nowadays. Hiding bruises in your daily life might just be an aesthetics thing, you know? You wouldn’t want to work at the front desk with a bruise on your cheek, right? It might be a good solution. Just how am I supposed to know which kind of people would buy my products?”
As she spoke, she got more and more agitated and seemed to be talking at Micah rather than with him. He just sat there patiently and waited, not knowing what to do.
“How am I supposed to take responsibility, then? Am I supposed to background check every one of my customers? I’ve got these eye drops that make your eyes really pretty. Like, ridiculously pretty. Or that can kill someone if you mix it into food. Am I not supposed to sell them just because someone might commit murder with them? Does someone who sells knives worry about their customers committing crimes with them? What do you think? What would you do?”
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Micah opened his mouth to ask about the eye drops, but she went on.
“No, you’re right. It’s not right to sell poisons. Knives can be used for cutting food. Poison can only be used … to make eyes pretty. To kill rats. To kill those damn snails snacking on the vegetable garden. Wait, no. I need to take responsibility. I can always work on the recipe to make it less lethal or sell it in tiny doses. Maybe I can find out a way to copy its properties onto something that works on eyes, but doesn’t have any kind of negative repercussions for the body? Mm … maybe.
“But what about that other thing? What if I notice a meek person with a shawl wrapped around themself buying my concealer? What about doctor-patient confidentiality? Saleswoman-customer confidentiality? Argh!” She froze all the sudden, as if she'd had an epiphany. “Maybe I should become a vigilante.”
“Uhm …?” Micah was beginning to wonder if he could speak to Ben instead.
Janet spun on him. “Huh? What was I talking about?”
He waited a moment, just to make sure he was allowed to speak and then said, “Isn't that when you're supposed to drag people into backalley to, uh, 'teach them some manners'? At least, that was I was told."
He didn’t know if that was still right, but Janet nodded. “Yeah, of course. But you have to do it right. Do you remember how?”
“Uhm,” Micah thought back. “Depending on how bad it is, you have to get other people, too? Because if it’s just you alone, no matter how tough you are, they’ll think you’re just one person. You can’t be everywhere. But if you let them know everyone is keeping an eye on them …”
“They’ll always be looking over their shoulder.” Janet finished with a smile. “Exactly. I actually had to do that for a second cousin of mine. It got so bad, he was never allowed to go anywhere without permission. And, like, you didn’t really notice it, but it looked like he owned a cat? But he didn’t actually own a cat.” She began pacing again, more wistfully this time. “So I dragged her into the alley behind old Beth’s apple stand and told her, ‘Listen here, missy. If my good cousin Dex wants to come to my class party, he can come to my class party. And I’m an [Cosmetician] now. I can make people pretty, I can also make them ugly.’ And she, of course, didn’t believe me, so I had to prove my point. It’s always important to prove your point.”
When he heard that, Micah’s eyes went wide and his imagination running. “Ooh, what did you do? Did you, like, use something to give her pimples or a rash or something? Oh, or make her hair fall out?”
She froze. “What? No. I punched her. Why would I waste good ingredients on someone like that?”
Oh. Practical. Micah liked it.
“But the point is, these wouldn’t be my friends and family, you know? These would be customers of mine. Complete strangers. I don’t know their lives, their stories. What right do I have to interfere? I mean, my concealer is good. I want to sell it. But I don’t want it to be abused, you know?”
Micah didn’t understand the problem. “Why do you feel responsible for what people do with your wares? You could just as well use a frying pan to hurt someone. And, uhm, can’t you hide wounds just as well with regular makeup?”
She frowned a little, though it wasn’t so much her frowning as her putting on a frown. She was just very expressive when she talked. It was made doubly clear by how pretty she was. She really was the most beautiful person Micah knew, objectively speaking. Not that he cared about that.
“You can,” she said. “But it’s not as easy and not as good. I mean, my products are so simple even your friend could use them, and he’s a teenage boy who had never held makeup in his life. It’s quicker, too.”
Now, Micah frowned. What was supposed to be so hard about makeup? It was just putting powder on your face and using lipstick, right? That probably took about a minute.
“I just don’t know,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he admitted. “I don’t know either.”
Janet sighed. “Yeah. Look at me, trying to seek wisdom from a fifteen-year-old. Ha!”
“I’m fourteen.”
She glanced down at him. “Huh. Good on you.”
Was that a compliment? Micah thought so and smiled a little, cheery again. He was about to get back to his question when Janet asked, “Wait, aren’t you level six or something?”
He nodded awkwardly. “Ten, actually. That’s sort of why I’m here.”
Janet seemed to actually look at him for the first time then, opened her mouth to say something, closed it again, and shifted her posture to one of polite bewilderment. “See, no, I’m level eleven in my [Alchemist] Class. And I’m less than five years older than you.”
“You are?” That was surprising. “But, uhm, don’t you have two other Classes as well?” He had only one other and it was pretty new, so he didn’t know if it counted. Plus … he didn’t really have any hobbies. Or a life. He was painfully aware of that after the school application.
Maybe he should pick up a hobby when he got the chance? He could learn how to play an instrument again or join a sports team at school or in the community.
“Right, right.” She nodded a little. “That’s true. So why are you here again?”
“Skills,” he said. “I was wondering which ones [Alchemists] get. Is there a list or something, or …?”
Janet smiled. “Oh, I can help you with that.”
She had to stay behind the counter to work, so Micah just scooted up to the closest chair and listened raptly while she taught him about his own calling.
“You see, Path-wise, [Alchemists] are a mixture between magic and natural sciences,” Janet began, “which is doubly superior to other Paths. Applied science Paths are better than theoretical ones because those have nothing to work with except their brains, and the brain can only be pushed so far. At least, not without levels to help them. They get fewer Skills from their Path and the ones they do get are rather universal, if you ask me.”
She was going through an appointment catalogue and comparing what was under the counter, ready to be picked up soon while she spoke. Sometimes, she’d had to duck into the back, but her voice carried.
Micah took notes.
“Applied sciences, on the other hand, have things to work with. Chemicals, biochemicals, materials and their designs, and mons— Uh, I mean, herbs and the likes. That gives them more Skills, since they have something to do. And they can level. Not that the only value in a Path is Skills, of course. They’re better than guidance Skills on their own. But when you add magic to the mix, you suddenly get far more options, plus an affinity for spellcraft related to it all. That’s why [Alchemists] are the only true natural scientists, is what my teachers always say. We study everything and then apply that knowledge to create things.”
Only then did Micah notice, Janet mightn’t know he didn’t have the [Alchemy Path]. He quickly reminded her before he caused yet another misunderstanding. He wasn’t entirely sure Lisa understood he wasn’t poor, still.
Janet paused in counting bottles of a crate. “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t even think about that.”
“It’s fine. What about the Class?”
“Right. Well, while Path-wise we are the true natural scientists, Class-wise we are a mixture between [Mage] and [Worker].”
Micah brightened a bit at that. “So we get a lot of Stats?”
Again, she hesitated. “ … No.”
“Aw. Why not?”
“We get some,” she said. “Dexterity, Perception, Focus, and Resistances are the most common ones, I think. And we get higher tier mixtures like Constitution. But we don’t get the good stuff like Endurance or Vitality. We get other Skills [Workers] get though, and those are great. Things like [Internal Clock], [Steady Hands], [Eye Measure], and [Work Ethic]!”
She smiled and picked the crate up.
Micah dimly knew those Skills were valued highly by employers, but he was having a hard time feeling excited about them. They didn’t sound like they would help him as much in the Tower as something like Ryan’s [Strike Down] or a spell would. He could imagine some uses, but …
“Yay?” he asked.
Then again, those were the Skills [Alchemists] got through apprenticeship, studying, and well, working. Maybe he would get others from fighting and teaching himself alchemy?
“Don’t look so glum,” she reprimanded him. “You’ll learn to appreciate them when you’re older.”
Micah agreed. “And otherwise?” he asked. “What about spells?”
“Mm … my teachers always say getting a spell from a level up is a wasted level up,” Janet told him. “We get a lot of spells you would rather get from practice. They often work with our ingredients, like purifying liquids, shaping them, drying things, cooling them, containing, or changing some properties around. We can make ingredients act differently, like make them withstand higher temperatures.”
Ooh, Micah thought as he leaned forward a bit. That sounded like it could be useful. He asked her for specific spell names and wrote them down.
“And then there are, of course, the complicated spells that are worth getting from level ups,” she said, “like the basic three we need to make potions with, appraisal spells, or healing.”
“We get healing spells?” he looked up, surprised.
She nodded. “Most commonly to cure poisons, but I have one classmate who has a spell that can heal minor flesh wounds, like cuts or scratches. She even considered switching over to medicine because of it.”
Micah nodded along. Healers were always in high demand. “And what else?”
“We get some aura and enchantment Skills at higher levels, to make our tools stay in perfect condition, our potions last longer, or to protect us from accidents. We also get adjustment Skills for our alchemical catalysts, like learning how to use different forms of energy to fuel them. I heard some alchemists are experimenting with how the basic three act when fueled with electricity.”
His eyes shot up. “And?”
“I don’t know the details. Sorry, kiddo.” She put the crate back under the counter and turned to the next page.
“Aw.”
“Yeah. But that’s about it, really.”
Micah frowned at the sparse journal entry of names and descriptions he’d made. It didn’t look very professional, but he would still have loved to have them all. How was he supposed to know where to start?
“Do you have a list?” he asked. “Of like … a study plan or something? Learning requirements?”
Anything to give him some structure.
“A full one? Not on me, no. But I have … “
He perked up. “Yes?”
“I have my license information sheets in my backpack.” She pointed a thumb at the backroom.
“Can I see?”
She hesitated before shrugging. “Sure. I don’t see why not.”
Micah waited patiently until she came back with a binder, then jumped up to the counter, waiting while Janet flipped it open, revealing pages upon pages filled with tidy school notes and drawings. He recognized a lot of chemistry and biology, some recipes, and worksheets. On the sides were doodled drawings and notes on ideas Janet was working on.
Seeing it all, Micah really hoped he’d be able to attend a school in the Fall, any school, so he could take his own alchemy classes. The climbers’ school even had two of them, “Alchemy 101” and “The Dangers of Healing,” he knew.
For now, he listened.
It was a common misconception that apprentices had to be level twenty to get a license of their own, Micah had thought—and level thirty to become a master, Janet added, which he hadn’t known—but apparently, neither was true. Instead, apprentices needed to collect points by attending classes and working, pass exams, and then have Skills that could fulfill certain purposes.
An alchemical catalyst spell. An ingredient identifier. An alchemical identifier. Emergency containment abilities for alchemical fires, spills, and gases. A Skill to assist in first aid.
That was what her notes read.
“[Douse Fire], [Shape Liquid], [Shape Wind], and [First Aid] are literally enough for the secondary requirements,” she told them as they hovered over the piece of paper. The top buttons of her blouse were open and it hung low. Micah noticed and immediately looked back at the paper. “They really only want the bare minimum for the basic license. Other licenses get a little trickier, though.”
“Wow,” he said.
It was only an overview sheet, but it gave him a sense of scale. To get seven specific Skills from his Class, he’d probably need to be level 25 or higher since there was a high chance he’d get something else. And meanwhile, others could get their license much earlier by working with their Paths and having their masters tutor them the right kind of Skills. Micah really needed to teach himself soon. He didn’t want go get a simple spell from his next level up when he could be getting something else instead.
“What about the identifiers?” he asked.
“Oh, even something like [Recipe Book] can be enough for ingredients, if you pass the right type of exams,” Janet said. Micah gave her a confused look. “That’s a type of memory Skill. But for the other one, you’ll need at least [Identify Potion], because potions are harder to judge than chemicals. Poisons and healing potions can look the same. Running tests on them is harder and potions are used much more often in daily lives, so it’s important to have it.”
Micah wondered if his [Essence Sight] would fulfill that requirement, if he made a good enough case for it. Of course, getting a license was still years down the road. He didn’t even know how many years of school he wanted to do. Three, at least, he thought. At least, that was what his parents had always told him, but now he could make his own decision. Would two be alright? What about the full five?
He didn’t know.
“Do you have all the requirements already?” he asked her. Janet was years down the road from him after all. He wondered just which kind of Skills she had, but didn’t want to ask.
“What, me? No, no, no.” She looked equal parts flattered and alarmed. “I’m level eleven in my Class because it's my secondary one. I’ll probably need another year before I can get my license. I am not looking forward to the exams.”
That just left the points. How did she get those aside from school?
“Do you have an apprenticeship?”
She shook her head. “But I can get points by being active in the Guild. I actually published an essay that got me a lot of traction with the cosmetecist community. I’m also slowly earning the print fees back as more and more people buy it. So that’s kind of nice.”
Micah had also bought her essay and … skimmed it. He didn’t understand half the words and wasn’t too interested in the other half. It was about make-up, after all. and he’d been busy. The title still sounded interesting. Maybe he should get behind it when he had a little less on his plate?
Right now, he wanted to learn how to cast spells and use them to learn more about essences. So he congratulated her and asked if she could explain any of it to him, but she politely declined. Lunch was about to start and she had to work through it before her shift ended. A lot of people ran errands during their breaks, apparently. The shop would get too busy to talk.
Instead, Micah asked if Ben was there, but apparently, he wasn’t in the shop at all until this afternoon. So when the first customer came in to pick something up, Micah thanked her for everything, wished her good luck on her exams, and left.
It had been kind of cool to see a senior going though something as daunting as getting a license on her own, though. Outside the beaten path, no less.
He was lost in his notes when he rounded the house, climbed up through the window, and found an empty room. Oh, right. No Ryan. Micah eyed the bed and headed downstairs to clean up. He’d said he could, after all.
Then he filled a glass with water, bit down on a spoon, and grabbed some crystals from his treasure chest. He sat on his bedroll, placing the glass on the floor, the crystals in between his crossed legs and took a deep breath.
It was time to practice.
It was a two part routine that he had devised to study how essence behaved, so he might somehow further his Path. Micah had a light grey crystal in his hand, the filter stone they had dug up in the Fields back then. It was a type of water crystal. If Micah wanted to work with a type of essence, it would be that. He doubted a extinguishing foam crystal existed, after all.
He focussed on it, breathing slowly in and out, and tried to push some mana out of his body and through its porous shell. He wanted to observe how essence would react to the presence of mana, if it even reacted at all. He hadn’t noticed anything during the interview after all … but maybe just because he hadn’t been perceptive enough?
That was exactly the kind of doubt Micah needed to eliminate, either through proof or by being more attentive. He had a unique view of the world, he couldn’t let himself think of it as commonplace.
Of course, he couldn’t move mana at all yet—he had barely been practicing for three days—so after a quarter-hour of frustration, Micah used his aid. He bit down on a flesh crystal until it broke and dropped the pieces in his glass of water, then stirred with his spoon, thinking gently, Infuse.
The mana rushed out of his body to break the crystal apart and Micah immediately turned to his river crystal again, trying to replicate that sensation. It helped. For a minute or so, he had a firm grasp on the magic in his body. The only problem was that whenever he tried to cast anything, it would automatically be [Infusion]. Habit.
If was frustrating, trying to get his mana to do literally anything else before he could learn what he wanted to learn.
But a few minutes later, his control slipped anyway. Like a muscle he'd been able to twitch if he didn’t think about it too hard, it was suddenly gone. He spent another ten minutes trying to reclaim that feeling before he bit down on the next flesh crystal.
Over and over, Micah practiced until Noelle got home and he went down to greet her. Before he knew it, he’d spent three hours training. They were going to have a late dinner today, so he put on his shoes and continued on with physical training, doing all the exercises Ryan had shown him. He hadn't been in the Tower at all today, after all.
Don’t slack off, Mr. Sundberg had told him, too. Micah wasn't planing on it.
After dinner, he went back upstairs to do the second part of his routine. He sat on his bedroll with his water crystal and closed his eyes, huffed out a breath, tried to think of a topic related to essences. Which topics could he think about?
He leaned over to fetch his journal and looked through the notes he had made, frowned at his writing again. He struck some out, then rewrote them. Biting his pen again, he thought about some answers and wrote them down along with a few other musing. He scribbled some doodles himself, like Janet had done, and tried to draw some illustrations.
Then he had to go to the bathroom and did that, and brushed his teeth while he was at. But David slipped in while he was pacing in the hallway and then he had to wait until he was done so he could spit out and gurgle.
When he got back, his bedroll was a mess, so he laid it out nicely, then sat down and closed his eyes. Had he remembered to put out the trash? He thought so. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know if he should check. But it was weighing on his mind now …
He jumped up and checked.
When he got back again, his bedroll felt uncomfortable. Micah looked around and sat on Ryan’s bed instead. It felt weird, sitting on someone else’s bed while they were gone. He’d slept in it before, but that wasn't the same as being here alone. Micah lay down and looked at the ceiling, the view Ryan would’ve seen every night. He wondered what he was doing right now. Probably scaling a mountain in a lightning storm. More likely, he was making camp or … meditating.
Micah looked over. His water crystal was on the ground. He tried to lean over to fetch it, but it was too far away. He brushed it with his fingertips, but that just shoved it away farther. Maybe he could just leave it there? One last try—
He fell off the bed.
“What are you doing up there?” David called, amused.
“Nothing!” Micah called back, embarrassed.
"Alright." His voice didn't sound like he believed Micah.
“Nothing,” he repeated to himself quietly and sat there. He was doing nothing at all. Deep breaths. One, two. He snatched his crystal and put his back to Ryan’s bed, just where he had sat the few other times they’d meditated next to one another.
He just had to do this.
Micah thought about anything having to do with essences, anything at all. He caught on [Dissolve], and how it had broken that crystal apart yesterday. It really was the most forceful of the three, wasn’t it?
[Infusion] could dissolve crystal chunks, yes, but not cracked crystals, let alone full ones. At least, not in one cast. Maybe he could increase the heat to—
No, Micah didn't think about that.
But [Dissettle] …
He frowned. He had used [Dissolve] on crystals these last few days because, well, he was dissolving stuff. It was like sugar into water. But he had never even tried to use [Dissettle]. Why? If essences really did have preferences … maybe he could use the subtlest of the three spells to find it out? Could he use it to make two types of essences coexist, like oil and water?
It was an idea.
Micah smiled. There. An idea. Surely, it was one he would have come up with without meditating. He would have thought to use [Disettle] on a crystal eventually, but that wasn’t the point, Ryan had told him. The point was to focus his thoughts on a subject more deeply. To reflect, to get used to meditation, to create a foundation to think off of. It helped with organizing the mind and memories.
Micah agreed with that much at least. Ryan also used it to relax, but he doubted he would. Not just because he was afraid, but because he prefered to do things. Paths and Classes were about devoting oneself to something. While there was overlap there, there were also differences. He would rather sit in classes, read, study, ask questions, experiment than sit at home and meditate. He wanted to act. He didn’t know if his Path was theoretical or practical, but Micah was definitely the latter.
He comforted himself with that thought as he meditated. Was there anything else he could glean from his memory? Dozens of things, he bet, but none he could answer yet. He would have to learn more about spells first. And maybe crystals? Some of them seemed more fragile than others, Micah had noticed. He could eat Sewer Rats’ crystals easily, but the one from the Rathound was harder to break. It was something about their forms, their structure. He just couldn’t put his finger on what. It was frustrating.
Crystal structures, Micah wrote down when he opened his eyes again, and then, Experiment with [Dissettle] tomorrow! Done. Easy. He practiced some more mana manipulation with his water crystal. There, at least, he could see clear results as he got better and better.
----------------------------------------
They watched them run. Mostly during the day, a few times at night. Ryan had never seen them before. Wolves. Actual, living wolves. They looked so different from Prowlers. They each looked different, had different furs—browns and greys—and different patterns. And they hunted, played, walked, rested. Their howls sent shivers down his spine, and though they were wild, they weren’t always the ferocious beasts from the stories. Actually, they were rarely ferocious, Ryan thought.
They were just beasts.
Some tended to make weird gurgling sounds or the type of sound a five-year-old would make when he hadn’t yet realized other people could hear him. Others’ sounded like moody teenagers who didn’t want to get up in the morning.
They snapped at one another and showed their gums when they growled. When they walked up to one another, their necks would go weirdly stiff and they would stand like statues before pulling away. Ryan wondered what that was about. Sometimes, they even pushed against one another as if they were trying to walk through a wall or ignored one another entirely.
But it was so often “one another.” They rarely did things on their own.
Some even tripped or got confused, looking around as if asking, Where did the rock I was just playing with go? Ah, there! They hopped into brush or tall grass like dogs did. And despite the obvious differences, they looked so much like dogs. Ryan could see the family resemblance.
These are living beings, he realized. They were much more real than a monster could ever be. And in a certain way, they were more dangerous, too. Some were much larger than the Prowlers—
A group of six jogged up to a stag, panting like dogs on a walk. They looked like they were smiling. The stag didn’t run. Not because it didn’t notice them, but because it had nowhere to run. It was at the end of its line.
From panting, smiling, they tore into it without warning. The stag went down in a second. Six wolves tore bites of it and looked around, as if checking the scenery. Some were panting again. Smiling again. Others ate until their snouts were red. The stag lay still. Ryan wasn’t entirely sure that it was dead, though.
“The savagery of nature,” Nikolas narrated.
—but on the other hand, some were much smaller. A group of five were barely larger than cats and spent all their free time wrestling or trying to snap at one another rather than help hunt. When it was dinner time, though, raw and pink tendons stretched and snapped beneath their smaller jaws as they pulled them away. Their furs were tainted just as red as the hunters’ had been.
They ate so they could grow, so they could survive. Unlike monsters which just grew like flesh from a bottle. Unmade bled light and died in a puffs of smoke. Fighting them in the Tower all day, it was easy to forget that regular animals wouldn’t. They traveled, hunted, fought, bled, ate, had children. They died. That made them so much more precious, Ryan thought.
There were seventeen in total in the pack they observed and each of them had been given a name by the local [Forester], Nikolas—or “Nick” for short. He was a friend and senior of Gus who had agreed to teach them. The man was miraculously never busy, even when a horde of teenagers was constructing a campsite around him. As an adult, he got to sleep in one of the cabins. The Lodges, as Barry called them.
He tended to wear hats and camouflage. He always carried binoculars on his person that he would hand over at a moment’s notice to point out an interesting sight. A bird. Their nest. A plant. Some tracks in the distance. A lynx lying on a branch and sleeping.
When they went wolf-watching, he narrated in fascinated whispers about the beasts. It almost made Ryan envy him, since he had nothing he was so passionate about. He had no hobbies to speak of other than working out and studying. He had alleyball, but he wasn't part of a team. So he let a little of the man’s passion infect him and listened.
“That young one with the brown patch on his shoulder is Osric,” he said. “He’s roughly fifteen months old. He’s got a bit of a mischievous streak, still a little too childish, but the others are becoming less and less fun and more and more sticks in the figurative mud, God forbid it becomes literal out here. The last thing we need is rain. But they won’t have none of his shenanigans.
Ah, see there! Willow The Third is telling him to wait his turn. By her gums, you can see she’s not in the mood for sports right now. Now, this is a good dynamic to observe. You see the roles clearly? As the new generation, Oscric’s going to have to earn his place in the pack. Too much play and he’ll never assert himself in the eyes of the others.”
He sighed and Ryan found himself concerned about a wolf he’d only known for a few days.
“If it goes on like this, the poor fella’ is going to be ostracized. Or he is going to have start a pack of his own, though I doubt he’d be able to. He never learned to hunt on his own, you see? Again, he’s too childish. Ah, and now he’s really poked the beehive this time. Hungry little fella, isn’t he? Too bad. With animals more than humans, you can see how much nutrition matters. A little less meat here and there and you’ll never grow up to your full size, like old Bellow over there. He always had to defer to his brother. With the black patch? Yes, that’s right. They’re from the same litter, not that you would recognize it with one being half again as big as the other.
Now, Osric’s going to have to look for his meal elsewhere. That’ll shave a centimeter off his height in a few months. Well, more for the others.”
Ryan wasn’t a true member of the group. He was a tagalong. As such, when he wasn’t watching wolves, he had a much looser schedule than the others. He got the odd chores and the rest of the time, he could dip his toes in any activity he wanted. Even literally, as the campsite was just far enough away from the river to avoid flooding.
He prefered to the physically demanding things, like climbing trees and cliffs, trying and failing to use a bow and arrow, hunting for dinner with the others, going horseback riding, and his favorite activity: rowing with Mark, Barry, and the rest of their friends.
Especially when it was against others.
His rhythm sucked and he lacked the right muscles—Ryan had never done it before—but as soon as he got the hang of it, he made up with sheer determination. They had to raise their voices to hear one another over the raging river and chanted a wordless rhythm while the water hit against their hulls and oars. Eventually, they started horsing around, turned the boat over, and got drenched in ice cold water.
It was fun.
Ryan wondered if he could get the school to start a rowing team, despite having no true experience himself. They weren’t that far away from the river in Hadica, but they probably didn’t have the right kind of equipment. And it might just be a waste of time. But maybe a different type of extracurricular could be fun?
A towel draped around his bare shoulders, though he wasn’t shivering like the others, and on his way back to camp, Nikolas suddenly appeared and shoved a pair of binoculars in Ryan's hands. He pointed up at a tree.
Ryan hesitated in setting the device to his eyes and looked through.
“Do you see that?” the man asked.
He focussed a little, checked with his bare eyes, and searched the branched for what he was pointing at. Then he spotted it, because it was the only thing worth being excited about in that tree.
“It’s—”
“A Naysayer,” Ryan whispered.
He adjusted the focus a little to get a better look. In two years of birdwatching, he had never seen one before, only read about them in stories. This one came in the form of a bluebird, but it looked sickly. Its frame was thin, its plumage unkempt, their colors looking bleached except for two trickles running down the sides of its head, as if its ears were bleeding from ruptured drums.
That was just the way its feathers were colored. It wasn’t actually bleeding. They never were.
The bluebird looked around and cried, “NO!”
“Wow,” Ryan mumbled as it hoped around on a branch, crying its tell-tale word in between a sickly rendition of its normal song. “I had half believed they only existed in stories, like something parents make up.”
He hesitantly lifted the binoculars again and handed them over, in case Nick wanted to see, but the man was staring at him.
“Are you a birdwatcher, young man? I’d say, you recognized that bird before it had even cried out.”
“Singer, actually,” Ryan said and mimicked the sound of a normal bluebird’s call. It was one of the more pleasant birdsongs he knew, even if its pitch was a little too high and its melody hesitant. He quickly glanced back to make sure the Naysayer was still there. He definitely wanted to add it to his collection.
Oh, and he was so going to scare the crap out of Barry later.
Nick grinned and clapped him on the back. “Fascinating! Simply fascinating. Is that a Skill of yours?”
“Yeah, [Bird Singing],” Ryan said, watching the bird. “I can mimic the sound of any bird I observe. I did a lot of bird-watching when I first started taking afternoon classes, so I picked some fun facts up about them along the way. I was always more interesting the more mythical ones.”
“Oh, please, do tell. And show! Can you mimic even things like crows? What about monsters?”
“Crows, easily enough,” Ryan said and did the caw caw. “I haven’t met any monstrous birds yet, though. My school and instructor were a little overprotective with how high I was allowed to climb, so I’ve never been to the Cliffside or far enough into the Fields to get a good look at a bird of prey.”
“You have to show me more,” Nikolas said.
“Uhm, can I add the Naysayer to my collection first?”
“Oh, of course. My apologies.” He took a step back. “This is a rare opportunity and I almost wasted it. Go ahead.”
“Thank you, sir.”
It was a little embarrassing at first, but after Ryan painted the sickly Naysayer onto a tree branch of his [Bird Singing] Tree—”NO!” it cried—he slowly replicated bird calls for the old [Forester] on a stroll through the camp, though he couldn’t mimic every one the man requested. Ryan did only have two years of experience, after all, and he wasn’t planning on devoting many more to it.
While fetching a dry shirt from his tent, they met another [Scout] who had a similar Skill, but did it by whistling into his folded hands. Of course, others noticed them and from thereon out it got a little more … ridiculous, because some birds had truly ridiculous cries. They sounded like choking or dying animals.
Still, it was fun.
Somehow, Ryan ended up getting roped into tree climbing practice by the [Bird Sounds] guy afterward, and then into another activity by a friend of his, and then one by Barry, after Ryan made him jump by screaming an avian, “NO!” right into his ear. He’d chased Ryan around while his friends laughed. And then the whole day had gone by in a flash.
The next followed just as quickly. And before he knew it—
[Scout Class obtained!]
[Scout level 1!]
Huh? Ryan woke up. He was a [Scout] now? Oh … But he hadn’t even gotten a Skill from it? Ryan sat up and frowned. So he either had the Skill he was supposed to get already or … he just got unlucky? That sucked. Did being a [Scout] suck, though? Ryan wasn't sure he wanted to be one, not that he could change anything about it, now ...
He turned around and went back to sleep. If they didn’t have something planned for the morning, the scouts woke up at least an hour later than he normally did after all. Ryan could think about his new Class sometime later. Or maybe never, like everything he didn't like to think about.
"Sounds like a plan," he mumbled to himself.
“Ryan,” someone hissed in the dead of night. “Ryan, wake up.”
He woke up groggy and considered telling whoever it was to shut up—junior scouts had a hard time respecting sleep, it turned out—but then he realized it was a man calling him. A scout master?
“Ryan, my boy, are you awake?”
“I man now.”
He blinked. That didn’t sound right.
“You man now?” the person asked. “Certainly. Ryan, my man, are you awake, I meant to say. Though, I would think a man knew how to use verbs properly. I am a man now, is what you should have said.”
It was Nikolas. Suddenly, everything made a lot more sense. The man never did seem to get any sleep after all.
“Sorry. I am now,” Ryan repeated himself, “is what I meant to say. Awake, I mean.”
“Ah. Apologies. I just wanted to tell you, since you expressed so much interest, and you’ve been to each and every one of my wolf watching lessons—I’m given to understand you are here for them?—I thought you might want to know—”
“Sir?”
Get to the point? the word politely asked.
“Ah, yes. Of course. Osric’s just been kicked out of his pack.”
Ryan was wide awake. “What?”
They crept through the forest at night for a mile or so until they found both the wolf and a stand they could watch it from. It walked on its own, despite the darkness. Its shoulders seemed somewhat hunched. It was panting a little, but it wasn’t smiling.
Why wasn’t he asleep? He should huddle up and take a break before he went on, Ryan thought.
“Where is he going to go?” he asked.
“Northeast,” Nikolas told him. “First, he has to get out of his pack’s territory and find some food. Then—”
“He’ll start his own pack?”
“He’ll have to get out of the next pack’s territory,” Nick said. “Unfortunately for him, thataways lie two. Millyfjord’s and Fred’s. They aren’t exactly friendly, either of them, if you catch my drift.”
Ryan gazed back into the binoculars and mumbled, “Oh.”
Of course not. Nobody was friendly. Not really.
“Added onto that, Osric’s a little fellow. He hasn’t hunted on his own before and he’ll probably be eating off of squirrels and rabbits for a while, if he can catch them. That’ll tide him over, but it’ll just make him scrawnier. That’d be liked living off of only an apple a day. That wouldn’t keep the doctor away.”
He lifted his binoculars. “Can’t we give him some food?”
Nick almost laughed. “Give the wolf that can’t hunt a reason not to learn? No.”
Osric moved out of sight and they climbed back down the ladder again, then moved on to keep an eye on him.
“And if he makes it through the territories,” Ryan said, “and it doesn’t … starve to death, what then?”
“Then he’ll have to find a mate,” Nick told him, “and start his own pack if he can. And then he’ll have to feed the little ones and defend his territory, gather others. But if he can’t even feed himself …”
It doesn’t look good for the playful wolf, Ryan could imagine the man narrate. It was the first week of August. Fall was around the corner and Winter loomed like the dead-end of a bad alley.
“Couldn’t we, like …” Ryan hesitated and blurted out, “tame him? Adopt him somehow?”
“We?”
“The scouts?” He was one of them now, after all.
A shake of the head. “No.”
“Me, then?”
“Oh, are you a [Beast Tamer]?” He said it in good faith. “I hadn’t known. Which level are you?”
“I’m not a [Beast Tamer].”
“Oh. But you want to be? Do you have something to capture it with on you or at the camp? A cage to keep it in? We could double back.” He pointed over his shoulder, ready to leave if Ryan gave the word.
“No,” he admitted. “I don’t have anything.”
“Then do you know how to approach a wild wolf? How to capture it? How to care for it, to feed it?”
He didn’t answer. They walked for a minute in the silence of a forest at night. No wolf howled.
“I mean, you could try,” the man whispered as they scaled a small hill. “But considering it’s a slightly malnourished, fifteen-month-old wild wolf that has never interacted with a human being before, it just got kicked out if its pack and is looking for food— There’s a chance it’d run away, of course. Hell, there’s even a chance you would succeed and get a Skill to help you along. More likely, it’d tear your throat out to tide itself over ‘till next week.”
Ryan hung his head. It had been a stupid idea.
“And anyway, where would you keep it? With your mum and dad in the city? It’d wither away.”
“My pregnant mom,” Ryan reminded himself. “And no, I’ll be going to school soon, so I’ll be living in a dorm.”
“Ah. Can’t keep a wolf in a dorm either. It’s the thought that counts though, Ryan. Every [Forester] goes through that phase at some point, but someday, you just have to learn to let nature be. The exception, of course, being the times when it would run itself into the literal ground. Can’t have that. But chin up. Osric still might make it on its own. It’s not Winter yet.”
He pointed and Ryan looked through his binoculars to where Osric was drinking at a stream, moonlight illuminating the water. It still looked kind of sad to him, but he answered, “Yeah. He might.”
They watched it for a few more hours and Ryan felt guilty the entire time. He had some jerky with him that he could have handed over easily, or left on the ground for the wolf to find, but he kept it in his pocket. Osric would have to fend for itself.
On their way back, Nick asked, “Have you considered getting a dog? 'Might be better for your health.”
“I know it was a bad idea!” Ryan blurted out, rolling his eyes in frustration.
Nick shrugged. “Just checking.”
The second week, they followed the lone wolf Northeast.
Osric was having troubles hunting a deer on his own. He tried to sneak as close as he could get, but a few meters off, the animal noticed him in the tall grass of the sparsely covered field. It ran.
Osric chased, but two steps in, the deer simply turned around and charged at him. Suddenly, the hunter became the hunted. Osric tried to stand his ground. His legs wide, body low, he growled and barked, but it wouldn’t let up. When it got too close, his composure broke and he ran. He couldn’t afford to be injured, not when he had to fend for himself. And a charging deer would hurt him.
In the end, the deer ran away and Osric chased for a little while, looking for opportunities to ambush it, but he went hungry. He backed off and licked his wounds from a tussle he had gotten into with a bobcat yesterday. Ryan could still remember it yowl.
It was hard to watch and not do anything. It was even harder to paint the scene again in his mind. But isolation made the lone wolf weak. With his pack, Osric could have hunted a stag.
They appeared around him. Bellow, Willow the Third, his older brother, and three others. They circled the stag, cut off its hope with its escape, jogged up and tore into it to feast. Even if they had to chase, together, they could chase it down though the forest.
But they weren't here. Osric was on his own. They disappeared one by one, into smoke like Prowlers. Osric was alone and had to run from a deer.
There was a simply truth there, in the pack, Ryan realized as he painted the picture. He had spent ten days watching these wolves, seen them act, seen their hierarchy in play, seen Osric get kicked out and struggle, and he realized that truth had nothing to do with wolves and everything to do with living beings alltogether.
Alpha couple? Pack hierarchy? Territory? Screw that. That was for wolves. It wasn’t the picture Ryan wanted to paint. No, he wanted to …
... He took a step back and his vision shifted.
In the void, he saw a hundred birds sitting on a massive tree of interconnected paintings, singing a disjointed cacophony. They were all together, but each of them was alone. Where were their eggs, their nests, their families? There were a few, from when Ryan had mimicked the high-pitched cries of baby birds, but not all of them had those.
Remembering now, he painted as many as he could onto the branches, filling out the tree. Here and there, an ugly baby bird broke out of its egg.
Then he took a step back again and looked to his left, to the interconnected plazas made of glass scales and eyes that represented his [Salamander Path]. He saw a handful of Salamanders there for his Skills, but they were each alone. Where was the horde? Five bends in, Teacup Salamanders rarely fought alone.
Ryan painted a splash of light brown and folded it up into a tunnel. There, he painted a horde running after a boy with dark skin. Then he painted a Salamander jumping from the wall to ambush and help its ally, working together, as it should be.
He caught half-dream glimpses of wolves running in the void around these images, remembered balls of insects swarming over roads, herds of cattle, sheep, and horses on the fields they had passed here, each joining the run around Osric and his other images in the void.
It was a simple, universal truth that he painted. There was a—
[Skill — Lesser Strength improved!] → [Skill — Strength in Numbers obtained!]
Finally, Ryan took one last step back and painted a massive bonfire in the night and a ring of Scouts surrounding it, a ring of trees surrounding them. Above, the unpoluted night sky. They scared each other with ghost stories, sharing a dinner they had all helped make. Ryan was one of them, eating a meat skewer. To the side, he drew a smaller campfire and seated people around it, himself included again, and one a bit further away than the others.
The pack of animals ran around those images as well, but it wasn’t just wolves now. Screw the wolf pack. This was a different sort of group entirely. Not beast, it was almost … human.
[Examplarism Path explored!]
[Skill — Lesser Charisma improved!] → [Skill — Pack Aura obtained!]
The scouts were awesome, but Ryan couldn't wait to go home.
----------------------------------------
Fifty-five kilometers away, nine people got a little bit stronger for a moment before the distance proved too far. Only one of them noticed, and only because she missed catching Sam again after throwing it up too high. It crashed into her face, she fumbled to catch it, and looked around, mumbling, “The fuck?”