“Ryan,” Micah said.
Ryan turned back, half his attention still on the fire mana he had layered over the jar. “Huh?”
His heart picked up as he found himself looking into wide, expectant eyes and his flimsy control slipped. He’d seen glimpses of it in their conversation, the way he acted, the way he looked at him, the things he said.
Next time.
That just now, Micah admitting Ryan had made a mistake, it had been a fluke, hadn’t it?
“We’re fine, right? You and me?”
It was like he was looking into a false mirror. And the Ryan he saw in his eyes wasn’t one he could ever live up to be. Micah would keep looking at him like that until the day there was no next time, when he realized Ryan wouldn’t become a famous climber, or rich, or that he’d gotten stuck at level twenty. He would keep on looking at him like that until the moment it all crumbled and then there would be nothing but anger and disappointment left.
He knew because he knew that look. His chest tightened and he told a lie he had told a hundred times in spirit, if not in words, “Yeah.” He remembered to smile. “Yeah, of course.”
Micah smiled back, both relieved and reassured. That was why Ryan did it after all, to reassure.
He sighed.
Then, deliberately and very reluctantly, he took Micah out of whatever unlabeled box he had been in inside his head—former crush, friend, comrade, bastard—and put him inside the same one as his parents, or Gardener, and to a similar but lesser extent, Lang and Finn. The people who looked at him the same as he did, the ones he needed but wished he could live without.
‘Family.’
It sucked so much.
He looked down, flooded the jar with mana, almost started a fire, drew back, looked around, and hoped nobody would see him. He wondered if he could switch guard duty with Kyle, if he could stay so still nobody would notice him, or get away with saying he had to take a piss on his own.
But Micah would offer to come with, or Kyle would make a comment about running off on his own, and he had the stupid jar, and—
Lisa came to his rescue. She looked tired, somewhat solemn, not in a bad mood, but not smiling either. She was clearly headed for Micah but she did glance his way and smile.
He could have hugged her. “Hey,” Ryan intercepted her with an awkward smile.
“Hey?”
He shoved the jar in her direction and tried not to let his voice crack. “Micah wants me to bake these scale peels for him, but I think I’m screwing it up. Can you show me how it’s done?”
She rolled her eyes but took the jar with a hint of a smile. Micah had looked up and he seemed apprehensive when she sat, forming a triangle of the three of them around his supplies.
She tsked. “You flooded this, Ryan.”
“I thought diluting fire mana in a lot of pure mana to create pressure might work?” he lied.
She nodded and effortlessly adjusted what was there to do it right, then said to Micah, “Hi.”
Ryan took the chance to scoot back. At the very least, he knew how to act around Micah now, he supposed. The same as his parents. He kept his face calm, posture right, and breathing steady as he was about to push himself up.
Then Micah nervously said, “Hi,” and he hesitated.
He could get up now, excuse himself, force himself to throw back a biting remark at Kyle, and take a minute to catch his breath on his own but …
“What are you making there?” Lisa asked.
“Uhm,” Micah said and admitted what he hadn’t earlier, “numbing poison. To overrun the itching poison?”
She nodded as if she had expected that.
More than himself, Ryan needed to make sure those two would be okay. He sat back down to listen. It wasn’t like he didn’t have questions of his own. And every conversation he missed between the two widened the gulf of understanding.
“And do you think that’s a good idea?”
The way he avoided her eyes was answer enough, No. But what he said was, “I’m only doing it this once?”
“You always say that. Yet you keep on doing things like this over and over. Just this once.”
“Yeah, but we’ve barely been in the Tower this last half-year. I’ve been doing far fewer unhealthy things than I would have otherwise?”
“That’s supposed to make it better?” she asked. “It’s the habit itself that’s a problem. And what about the things you didn’t even realize you were doing wrong?”
Micah scowled, and Ryan could see this devolving into the same argument they had had earlier. Part of him wanted to break them up. Part of him wanted to join in with what he knew—how strained Micah looked. It was clear he didn’t eat enough for the amount he exercised.
Caught in the middle, he said nothing.
“That’s not as bad as you make it out to be. I know what I’m doing.”
“I—” Lisa stopped herself from whatever she had been about to say. “I want to believe that you do,” she said instead. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I have a question to ask.”
“A question?”
She nodded.
“A test?” he accused her.
“Maybe?”
Micah scowled but it wavered. It seemed like his curiosity or maybe his need to prove himself won out. “What’s the question?”
Lisa sounded almost hopeful. “Can you tell me which essences are inside you, right now?”
“Oh, that’s easy!” He lit up. “Uh, a bit of air essence and some wind. Traces of other things, like spit and stuff from my shots, and some general lint essences but … not much else …”
Lisa was already shaking her head.
“What? That’s all there is.”
Even Ryan knew that wasn’t true, even if he didn’t know the right answer. It wasn’t his Path.
“What about your blood?” she asked. “Your flesh, your bones, muscles, and all the different chemicals in your organs, the flora in your guts, the things you’ve eaten today? The essences around the mana in your nerves?”
Micah drew back. “Of course, I can’t feel those.”
“And I didn’t expect you to. I mean, I feared you might because you’ve been picking this up so quickly but …”
Micah made a face that said exactly what he thought about how quickly he’d been picking this up.
She sighed. “I don’t doubt you can sense foreign essences inside you, Micah. But ones that are part of yourself? That requires a deeper level of insight. You would probably have to practice meditation for that, more like Ryan.”
They both looked at him and Ryan awkwardly looked back, feeling like a stranger in their conversation.
There was a hint of something different in Micah’s eyes, though. Shame or fear. He had lagged behind in meditation training even before Ryan had met him—well, not really since he was still a year ahead, but it wasn’t like Micah would think so—and he’d seemed adverse to learning.
Ryan had his suspicions about why. Meditation became more and more of a mental experience the deeper in you went. One wrong thought could turn things into nightmares and Micah probably had enough of those he did not want to relive.
Either way, it would be unreasonable to expect Micah to be as far along as him. Ryan was far more obsessed with meditation than his peers. He used it as a distraction or escape whenever his thoughts turned wrong. The difference was, his Skills could offer limitations as to how those thoughts could unfold themselves. Boundaries. He didn’t have to worry about guys or his future career when studying Teacup Salamanders in his head or painting birds onto branches.
But that was exactly the type of thing Micah would expect of himself … if given an excuse.
“Okay,” he said, “I mean, that’s awesome to know. It’s something I can work toward! But uhm, what does that have to do with your test?”
“That better not be the entire test,” Ryan said, “because it took me years to get where I am now.”
Lisa answered a question with another question, “Have you ever breathed something in and then later, when you went back to check on it, there were fewer essences there than before?”
The question was innocuous enough. Micah’s chest rose up for one breath before his [Controlled Breathing] kicked in.
Ryan frowned and glanced between the two. What? What was the problem?
“You mean—” Micah said, eyes a little wide around the edges. “But what if— Don’t I just breathe them out?”
“Some?” Lisa asked with a small shrug. “Definitely. But all?”
Now, Ryan had to play catch-up. He tried to think back through the conversation to make the mental connection those two could make so easily. Essences he breathed in were missing and … he needed to practice meditation more to sense essences that were a true ‘part of himself,’ whatever that meant, and … Lisa had said his spiritual lungs worked like actual lungs so …
Oh.
He’s been breathing in essences that poison him, Ryan realized, and those essences have been becoming a part of him without him even noticing.
But what about his ‘normal’ breaths, the thing they had talked about? Lisa had said something about … authorities or whatever, that Micah had learned how to always breath in more than was usual.
He spent so much time around crystals and dangerous alchemicals, just how much of a mistake were they talking here?
You’re making your spirit sick, Lisa had said. And the spirit shapes flesh. If you screw up, it can happen like that.
“But I clean!” Micah insisted.
Ryan turned to her. That’s right! Often, when he closed his eyes and Ryan asked if he was meditating, to know if he had to watch over him, Micah insisted he was just going to clean.
Would that help?
“Yes, but that’s not much different than breathing out—”
“No! I’m thorough,” he said. “I promise. I always make sure to get as many of them as I can.”
She frowned, then fetched one of the crystal from an open sack and held it out to him, saying, “Show me.”
Micah held the crystal to his face as if he were about to bite into an apple, but he inhaled instead and the crystal shifted. Spirals bored down into it like seashells. Just like that. With a breath.
Ryan didn’t know if he should feel envious or not. He wished his Path could give him a purpose as obvious as that. And Micah complained about weakness.
He closed his eyes and Lisa gently pushed his hand down and her own hand to his mouth when he exhaled. A haze escaped like a fogged breath on a winter morning, despite the heat, but looked like a vague shadow of the crystal’s light instead.
He kept it up for a few more moment and she took the crystal from him to inspect the spirals, then cracked a smile and chuckled while shaking her head.
That’s what Micah opened his eyes to. “What?” he asked.
“Why am I not surprised you know how to do that?” she asked.
“Shouldn’t he?” Ryan spoke up.
He needed to do something. How would he even help with something like this if they couldn’t find a solution? Force him not to use the skills he’d put so much effort into learning ever again? Like that would go down alright.
She glanced back. “To do it this well? That can take years to learn. So either you’re a freaking prodigy, or your Path is helping you.”
“Or both,” Ryan said. There was no reason it couldn’t be both.
“Or both.”
“Paths,” Micah said, stressing the ‘s’. “I think my [Winter Cleaning] helped me out a little?”
Lisa leaned back. “Ah. Of course. Well, maybe this isn’t as bad as I thought, depending on how often you do that. But even so,” she raised her voice before he could say something, “this and your [Lesser Constitution] are just filters. They lessen the damage, but not entirely.”
Micah opened his mouth again, leaning forward.
“What about his passive breath?” Ryan interrupted before the two could get carried away with something again. That was what had him worried … as well as the flesh-shaping thing.
Micah frowned and impatiently bobbed his knee, glancing from one of them to the other.
She frowned. “He shouldn’t have to worry much about that. Especially not with his [Lesser Constitution]. Even if he breathes poison in and that poison affects him,” she said, “he only consumes a small part of that. It depends on how much there is and how strong the essences are. We breathe in things like smoke, perfume, or dust all the time right? And your lungs can clean themselves to a degree. So this should be negligible. It’s stuff like his breath attacks and that stunt with the stone essence that worry me.” She turned back. “Or what you do with spell affinities, come to think of it.”
Micah shook his head and blurted out, “You can check, right? You said you could see if I had essence sludge inside me? Can you do that, please? Now?”
He had gotten to speak but he still didn’t stop bobbing his leg. Essence sludge was like mud, if Ryan remembered correctly. He would be worried about having that inside him, too.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Lisa frowned. “No.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because it will hurt you. And because it can harm you. And—”
“But didn’t you do something like that with Ryan, once? Back at your place, to test his mana?”
She glanced over at him and shook her head. “That was more like me groping him or counting his pulse than what I would have to do with you.”
Wait, what?
He seemed desperate. “But if—”
“Micah. What you call essence sludge would be the equivalent of necrosis or organ failure. You would know if it happened.”
That both seemed to calm him down and aggravate him more. “That isn’t what you said earlier? You said I wouldn’t notice.”
He sounded almost angry. Lisa did have an inconsistent way of communicating, to put it nicely, Ryan knew.
“You wouldn’t notice until it happens. And then it would be too late.”
“Oh.”
The wind seemed to go out of his sails and he deflated, then took calm breaths and seemed to watch them.
Ryan sighed, overwhelmed. He wondered if it was the same for them or if it just felt that way because he lacked their insight, the right Path. This felt like something Lisa could have told Micah from the start.
He wondered if he should be angry himself, but he wouldn’t know whom to be angry with or why. He barely knew what was going on.
How did Lisa know all this stuff anyway? Sure, she said her parents researched all sorts of magic from around the world but if their daughter knew this much … Were they famous mages or something? It wasn’t like Ryan knew many famous mages, but shouldn’t he have heard more about that around the Chandler household and from her friends if they were?
What if it was a noble thing? Anne seemed to know a lot about this, but that might have been because she was a Heswaren. Their family members were born knowing when someone else lied and built on that ability with Skills later in life, to be able to do all sorts of things.
Weirdos.
He wondered if he should ask, but if she hadn’t told them yet, about that, her family, or anything else she might be keeping secret, should he really pry? What if she didn’t want to share?
Ryan still remembered how she hadn’t told him—and others, apparently—about her relation to Garen because she didn’t like how they reacted. It had hurt, but he got why. He had almost screwed things up with her.
What if this was similar? What if her parents were really, really famous researchers? Should he say something as cheesy as Micah had told him, that she could tell him anything if she wanted to, or would she respond the same way he had, with a lie?
Was there a way to show her that, instead …?
His thoughts went somewhere they shouldn’t and Ryan shut that down. None of this mattered. She would tell him when she wanted to. Either way, she was his friend. One of his few good friends. And Micah was family, he supposed. He focused on that and the issue on hand.
“Lisa?” he asked. “Is this permanent? The way that he’s been poisoning himself with essences?”
“Oh, no,” she said with wide eyes. “No, our bodies can heal themselves. Our spirits can, too. To a degree. If the essences haven’t sunken in too deep yet, simply flushing them out with new ones can help. Clean air, you know?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
“But if you’ve poisoned yourself bit by bit over time, you’ll also have to heal bit by bit over time.” She turned back to Micah, again. “Time during which you cannot do stuff like that again.”
Micah shrunk together. “And then?”
“What then?”
“Say I don’t use my breath attacks for a few weeks—”
“Months.”
He winced. “Months. If I make sure to be careful and meditate often to clean up my lungs afterward, can I use them then?”
She hesitated and from that alone, Ryan knew the answer, but also how she felt about it.
‘Yes, but.’
Micah wasn’t really one for being careful after all.
She shook her head. “There’s … a better way. You can take time and stay healthy to let your spirit heal … or you can replace the essences with something else.”
Immediately, he seemed to catch on. “A spiritual affinity?”
What the hell was that?
Lisa smiled in bemusement, surprised he knew the answer already. “Yes. That should give you even more of resistance against unwelcome essences as your spirit rejects them. I thought I could go over the basics with you? The terms, the dangers, the different forms of essences intake, and the thoughts behind matching essences to different organs?”
Organs?
“Oh. Yes, please? And by the way, do you—” Micah said with an excited smile, then cut himself off and looked down in … shame? What had he been about to ask? “I meant, uhm, but can I work on my numbing salve at the same time or …?” He scratched himself.
“Sure?”
“Thanks. Just a second.” He rushed to grab a bunch of different ingredients to mix them together, distracted for the moment.
The situation seemed resolved enough to Ryan for now, thankfully … which made him wonder if he could ask a question of his own.
“Lisa?”
“Hm?” She looked happier than she had before. There was a slight smile there now, but she still seemed exhausted.
“Uh, this might be a stupid question, I don’t know, but what about … essences around us? Can they affect us, the way you were talking about?”
Say, ‘No’.
“Oh, uh, no. That’s not a stupid question at all,” she said. “That’s actually something I wanted to propose to Micah. They can, but it’s harder. The essences need to be highly dense or highly potent and skin-tight to actually affect you.” She turned to Micah. “That’s one way some people get stone shaping and stone skin abilities, by taking special types of mud baths.”
He perked up. “Wait, really?”
“Yep.”
Ryan frowned. That seemed like a weird way to train. But it hadn’t entirely answered his question.
“So what about … sort of, more abstract essences?” He tried to think of a way to put it without actually asking the question he wanted to ask. “Like, if you wrap someone in them for a defensive spell or something?”
She perked up herself mid-way through his question but frowned by the end of it. “I’m not entirely sure how it works with mana, but for essences— Yeah. As I said, if they’re strong enough. That’s what the mud baths are supposed to do, wrap stone essence around you in a way that will sink into your skin.”
Sink into …? Right. That was closer to what Ryan was thinking, what he was worried about.
Another question, then. “So my strength aura …?”
From what he had seen during meditation, it did something similar enough, though he had no idea if it was true.
Lisa seemed to catch on to what he was asking, though he hadn’t voiced his true concerns. He thought of a silver giant wrapped in a multi-colored sheen and a blue painting.
“Ohh,” she said. “You mean like blessings?”
Wait, what? “Blessings? Uh, no. I mean, uh—” he stammered.
She rolled her eyes. “Relax. I meant more like what Anne does. You know, with her Skill, [Bless]?”
“Uhh …?”
“This is a terminology thing again, isn’t it?” Micah asked, squinting at her with a lazy grin, probably because she had brought Anne up.
She huffed. “I guess? Anyone can bless another person, if you learn how. It’s simply using your influence to grant a magical effect to another person instead of mana. It’s the same thing as a protective spell, just with essences.”
“Oh? So my aura …?”
“A blessing.”
Ryan frowned. He was supposed to be doing the same thing as Anne? “Isn’t there another word you could use …?”
“I don’t know. You could always use ‘buff’ like a stupid [Adventurer] would.”
“Hey!” Jason called over. “I heard that!”
“Relax!” she called back. “I live with one of you people!”
Ryan jerked to look in his direction, but the guy was preoccupied with stirring the simmering soup. He couldn’t see his face. If he had heard Lisa’s comment, had he heard his, too?
“Okay, so my … blessing,” Ryan said, then decided otherwise and lowered his voice. “My aura. What about it?”
“Uhm.” Lisa smiled awkwardly. “No offense, Ryan, but that’s not quite the level of quantity or quality I was speaking of. I mean, how many people can you affect at the same time anyway?”
“Twelve?”
She nodded. “And the strength you give us is nice— It is! But uhm …”
Micah was nodding in agreement.
Ryan shook his head. “No, I get it. I was just wondering, in theory, if that was possible.”
She smiled. “It is, in theory.”
“Thanks. I’ll, uh, leave you two experts to it then,” he said and jerked a thumb over his shoulder, then lied, “I’ll go meditate on that true Salamander. Have fun teaching him the basics?”
She gave him a pained smile. “Thanks.”
“Good luck!” Micah said. “And hey, don’t look at me like that. I’m not that bad of a student.”
“You’re too quick for your own good,” she said. “That’s the issue.”
Micah frowned at the compliment, then stuck his tongue out at her.
Ryan wandered over his pack, propped it up against the wall, and let himself sag into it with a sigh. Looking up at the stone ceiling, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He looked down and opened them to a dark void and painted stars.
It wasn’t hot, nor cold. It almost felt like the temperature was just gone, but he knew that wasn’t true for his [Salamander Path], or near the scout fires, or the birds’ tree whose seasons changed from branch to branch. If he just focused for a moment, he could feel the heat of his [Hot Skin].
But the sound of simmering soup, background conversations, and insects thrumming in the distance were absent. As were the itching sensations all over his body and the sweat on his skin.
He could have willed them all back with a moment’s thought, that was how this place worked, but why would he do that? There was a reason Ryan liked to meditate so often. It was blissfully peaceful, here on his own.
At least, he thought he was on his own. He stood, tried to avoid peeking at the silver giant looming behind him—legs stretched out, back at an angle, head down—and peered around.
The birds were there, chirping happily on their tree. The herd ran in its constellation above its crown like a framing archway. The bonfire burned like flickering shards of glass and the Anyones sat around their campfire and spoke without sound. Salamanders ran in twisting halls, a blur of colors making the beginning of a larger painting a little way off to the side.
But those were just paintings. They weren’t alive. The birds hopped closer to him, but that was probably because some of him wanted them to. Everything here moved the way he wanted.
Why then, did he get a feeling sometimes that he saw something move in the corner of his eye?
Ryan huffed and strode forward into a circuit around the argent walkway, just to take a look around.
It was stupid, he knew. He was stupid. He still did it, like double-checking whether or not he had locked his dorm room when part of him was sure he had.
A thoughtless glance to the side and Ryan scowled. He had read up on this form of meditation and apparently, he would either have to bond an item like some kind of [Traveler] or [Enchanter] to have it appear here with him, or he would have to practice visualization a lot.
In other words, Ryan needed magic pants.
It wasn’t like he minded his … mental construct self being naked too much. He was used to wearing loose clothes. But the giant silver Ryan hovering in the air? It was a replica of the real Ryan, and knowing that made him feel irrationally naked out there.
“Magic pants,” he mumbled and shook his head. “Why does it have to make sense, too?”
He already had the rain jacket to protect his torso and arms so …
He came to a stop and sighed. He was being stupid, imagining something moving in the shadows, thinking about magic pants. Really, Ryan knew he was just wasting time.
He looked up and saw three walkways branching off from the circle. Three paintings, each larger than the last, stood at the end. Blues, greens, and tan hues that reminded him of the city.
His Classes.
It was a stupid thought, but … In theory, Lisa had said.
When Ryan stepped up onto the walkway of the smallest one, the silver giant behind him shifted like switching from looking with just his left eye to his right.
A subtle displacement, hard to notice if you weren’t watching closely, and he should not be watching too closely because that could still cause his concentration to break and kick him out.
But, he had learned to look and glimpse himself. And the Ryan up there was wrong. It no longer was a near-perfect replica of his real self out there at all, anymore.
Depending on where I stand, the Ryan in the center shifts to adjust to … something. What is that something? And depending on what I do, he changes as well.
He pressed a hand to the mural behind him. Blue motes of light flowed out from it, but they weren’t really blue. Or they were only blue on the surface. He glanced at one as it passed him and immediately saw red. Flames. They gave way to multi-colored, blurry circles and then—
A shower of sparks in the night sky. Fireworks.
Looking into the motes felt like looking through those appraisal glasses Mr. Walker had allowed him to use for the Yellow Fleece: it was like diving into an ocean of possibilities, rushing rivers of different colors, images, and ideas all around him.
Some of the motes flowed into him, some into the argent path like a river, and some drifted through the air freely. Fewer ones freed themselves from the other two paintings and did the same. Once they reached the circle, the Ryan in the center was wreathed in a sheen of multi-colored light.
[Lesser Fire Resistance] …?
His body changed ever so slightly, too. His fingers were slightly longer, more nimble, his eyes flashed and looked clearer, and phantom roots appeared all over his skin.
Ryan dropped his hand and the effect vanished. He looked over to the green painting and knew if he touched that one, the Ryan would become leaner with more focus on his ears and legs—more of a sprinter build.
Because I do nothing but run away? he mused.
And the Fighter Ryan …
He scowled. Even from this distance, he saw the rain jacket in some of the patches. What kind of a [Fighter] hid inside an impenetrable armor and a ward while his allies got hurt and hit by dozens of poison darts anyway?
If he touched that painting, it made the real Ryan stronger, slightly taller, with broader shoulders and better posture.
Fake.
He turned to the Mess. He would rather look at him. The arced [Swathe of Flames] above his head had faded into the background, now a part of the decorations of the frame. His hair was less disheveled but had lost the charm, his eyes were downcast, the wristbands frayed, and his fingernails chewed. All around him, runes, and spellscripts, and magic circles or images of monsters flickered with dim candlelight—but only fragments, unfinished and left to rot.
Wonder had been drowned by indecision. That was the [Mage] he had become.
It was apt. That was the issue. It was too apt. It fit him perfectly, that side of himself, but where had it come from? Every time he came here, he wondered.
Ryan walked up close and looked the Mage Ryan in the eye. “If I didn’t create you,” he asked, “does that have to mean someone else did?”
Maybe … maybe it was an unconscious thing, like his birds hopping closer to him or all the little details in his paintings he couldn’t possibly have added intentionally? Maybe—
Something moved in the corner of his eye and Ryan spun around. But it was his giant self, spasming in the air from its shoulder outward. Someone was shaking him to wake him up. Shaking hard.
Fucking Kyle.
Ryan grimaced, closed his eyes, and took a few seconds to will himself awake. But he found himself scowling at Jason instead.
“Ryan,” he said. “Oh— Are you awake?”
The jarring shift from there to here, from the face he had expected to see to the one he saw caught him off-guard and Ryan needed a moment to collect his thought. “Uh.”
“Sorry, sorry. I was just … Lisa said the others are coming?”
“Oh?”
Huh? The others? Oh, right. The other team.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he lied and began to push himself up. “I’m here.”
“I just thought you would want to talk to them, because … Well, you know some of them, right?”
“No,” Micah said across the chamber, having listened in. He was putting on his boots and armor. His voice was hard, like he was ready to make an argument. It drew the others’ attention. “Kyle, you talk to them.”
“What?”
Ryan didn’t really care. He tried to sort his thoughts out. He had been on the cusp of something before Jason had interrupted. What was it?
“Because you want to, don’t you?” Micah said. “Ryan is too friendly. They’ll try to take advantage of that. I’m too young, so I’m out. Lisa doesn’t want to. And Jason— Sorry, Jason but you’re too kind. So that only leaves you.”
“What about me?” Lea asked.
Micah looked at her, eyes full of derision and doubt.
Something about the paintings. A thought Ryan had had, once. They represented his Classes.
“I can talk to them,” Lea insisted. “I can negotiate. I have experience with things like this, unlike you. What would Kyle even say?”
“Whatever he wants,” Micah said. “That’s just it. He was right. We are better than them. Better equipped, at least. Higher level. He should be himself and make demands, be rude.”
“But Kyle only makes demands,” Jason said. “And is only rude.”
“As much as I hate to say it,” Kyle said, “he’s right.”
“He’d probably start a fight.”
“Hey, now—”
“I know you don’t like me,” Lea interrupted, “but let me talk to them. Or both of us. I’ll do the best job of it.”
Micah scowled, but nobody disagreed with her. He glanced his way, but Ryan was too distracted.
“Fine,” he spat.
Others. Right. Ryan had his paintings, but Lisa’s textbook speculated everyone had something to represent their Class.
“Don’t shoot!” a voice called in the distance with a joking tone. “We’re friendly.”
The others headed for the entrance, but Ryan tried to put the jumbled mess of his thoughts into words.
If, he started, I, weak as though I am, can give twelve people a tiny bit of strength then … how strong would someone have to be to affect millions?
No. He shook his head. No, he was just being stupid. But as he grabbed his spear and headed after the others, part of him wondered: What if he wasn’t?