“You’re from the North?” Ryan asked, and she nodded. His thoughts raced a mile a minute and he desperately needed something to cling to so he could make sense of this. Of her.
The thought made him remember his arms, reaching out. He lowered them, paused, and didn’t know what to do with his hands. Lisa didn’t seem to notice.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Micah demanded.
“I just did?”
“You could have done it earlier. You could have warned us. Me.”
“About what?”
“That you actually taught me Northern magic, from the start? That, I don’t know, you weren’t being honest with us?”
“I did, I wasn’t, I— What? Even if I had, then what, Micah? Would you have stopped learning this stuff, told people, hated me like everyone else from the ‘North’?”
“No. No, but still. Lisa,” he said her name like an unspoken plea. Even Ryan couldn’t guess what he wanted.
Lisa. Lisa Chandler. Chandler, like the Dragonslayer’s granddaughter. Except, she wasn’t his granddaughter but his ward, and they liked to let people think that.
Because …? She was his ward because …?
Because Garen knew her parents and had offered to let her stay with him while she studied. Where would he know her parents from but his time beyond the border? That, his story, was something Ryan knew all too well.
Garen Chandler had made friends of Northerners, people said when they wanted to laugh at him. More importantly, he’d made friends in the Witch’s Forest. Hermits who taught him old magic mighty enough to bring down a dragon.
Lisa was shaking her head. “I couldn’t tell you. I’m still not sure I’m allowed to, but I wanted to do it anyway because—”
“Your family,” he realized. “You’re the sages who taught Garen, who helped him fight the dragon, who forged his weapon.”
Suddenly, so much about her started to make sense. Her weird relationship with the man, the secrets she kept, her mannerisms, and knowledge, and even how she preferred to eat monsters.
She was a Northerner.
The thought came together and Ryan saw her face. The fear was there again, along with a glimmer of pain in her eyes.
What had she been saying? He’d interrupted her.
“Garen knows?” Micah asked the obvious.
“Of course. He and my parents go way back and uhm, he’s the one who smuggled me into the country in the first—”
“Smuggled? You’re not allowed to be here?”
She winced. “No. Yes. I mean, sort of. It’s hard to explain.”
Micah was starting to look just as anxious as her. Before things got out of hand, Ryan cut in and tried to seem calm and reassuring. “Can you try?”
He kicked himself for getting lost in his own panicked mind while she was suffering hers.
“Of course. Just … give me a moment? I can’t remember where I wanted to begin.”
“The beginning, maybe?” He tried to keep his tone light enough so she could write it off as a joke if she needed it, but the beginning did sound nice.
She nodded and smiled, but it and her breathing were shaky at best after she broke eye contact.
Ryan glanced at Micah, who looked much the same with a scowl. He fidgeted as if he were having a conversation with himself.
He didn’t look well, which was a concerning reaction to something that shouldn’t have come as such a surprise, now that Ryan thought about it.
He nudged him to ask, “You okay?”
Micah almost jumped at the touch. “Huh? Oh, yeah.” All at once, his breathing went back to absolute calm and he stood straighter but still seemed tense. “It’s just … my head hurts. It’s a lot.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. Mine, too. But it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? Puts things into perspective.”
He nodded. “It does make sense, in a weird way. My thoughts don’t, though.”
“How do you mean?”
Micah glanced at Lisa, him, and turned away as he mumbled something that would have been inaudible to anyone else, Keep thinking … ‘traitor’. He looked so ashamed to say it and his voice rose as he went on, “It doesn’t make sense, though. It’s not like we’re at war. She isn’t a spy … I think.”
“Of course, not,” he insisted. “She’s our friend.” With a glance, he passed the message along and might have seen a fraction of a smile.
He didn’t get it, though. He’d had worse thoughts about Kyle himself this morning, but Micah hadn’t seemed conflicted at all. Then again, he had assumed the best about him from the start and Lisa had come right out with the worst.
Really, Garen had smuggled her in? And she lived with Myconids? It seemed unreal. What would living with thinking mushrooms even be like? Did she have to worry about, like, spores? Mold?
“I know,” Micah insisted and smiled at her, too. “You are.”
“Thanks. That means a lot to me, Micah, but I knew you would struggle more with this.”
He frowned. “Why? That’s not fair.”
She shook her head. “It isn’t. But maybe, try thinking of me as a guest of the houses Chandler and Heswaren instead? If that helps?”
He furrowed his brows and after a moment, looked surprised. “It does. Why does that help? Wait, no— They know about this?”
She nodded.
“Anne?”
“Her, too. Every Heswaren who’s been in the city in the last few years.”
Somehow, it was the mention of Anne that made Micah calm down, and when he didn’t immediately fire off another question, Lisa glanced at him and asked, “From the start, then?”
Ryan pulled himself out of his thoughts. “Yeah. Uh, do you want to sit?”
She looked so awkward, standing with her back to the camp and the ward that kept their conversation private. There was an even more awkward shuffle and sitting wasn’t much better on the dirt, but at least they were that much closer together then.
It reminded him of the days they had spent lounging around her living room. But even then, Ryan wasn’t sure he could remember the last time any of them had just … hung out for the sake of enjoying each others’ company.
The closest thing had been this morning, but that moment hadn’t lasted and he’d been glad when Micah went away.
“You were right. My family were the ones who taught Garen when he was young. We uhm, have a type of hereditary magic that functions like another sense for us. It tunes us into magic from birth. I’ve grown to think of it as magic radio but I’m not sure you know what that is …?”
“Yes, we do,” Micah said.
“Speak for yourself,” Ryan half-joked with an awkward smile. Their teacher tried to them about all the different things they might encounter in other parts of the world, but he only studied what he had to for the exams.
As soon as they started learning about how those things were supposed to work, his brain gave up anyway.
“You do?”
“It’s a communication device that can interpret signals from sort of ‘aura towers’ and turn them into sound. Similar to Skills bureaucratic Classes can get,” Micah said. He bobbed his knee every now and then and still seemed a little offended, but also proud to have known that.
Ryan could understand the sentiment. Anything to feel less lost, now. And he would have told him to stop fidgeting because it was making him nervous, too, but he felt the same way.
Maybe it hadn’t been the best idea to tell Lisa to go from the start, if it kept them from the important things.
It was too late now.
“Right, uhm, so with a radio, you can change frequencies to get different signals, sort of like turning pages in a book or changing your lenses, Micah. We can do the same with magic if we know where to look. Any magic. My family uses that to study every type they can get their hands on. They travel or invite people to visit us. They have a hunger for answers because they were left with so many questions. We’re a lot like the Heswarens in that sense, too.”
The repeated mention reminded him of something, but he struggled to remember the context or who the conversation had been with.
“And they know about you? Wait, you said the Heswarens visited you once! Your parents, to check if you were practicing any ‘dark magic’ or something.”
She chuckled uncomfortably. “Yeah, our families have a history. But they aren’t the only ones who know. Some of the Tors are aware of me through aunt Allison. I think Navid and his family have their suspicions, but they haven’t said anything. They’re too respectful.”
“So that’s why you’re friends with them?”
She shook her head. “Other way around. I was friends with Anne first because she knew and was the only person roughly my age who had enough time to hang out. I got to know the others through her and private events.”
Ryan remembered, then. “Anne’s cousin. On your birthday, she said you two were distantly related.”
“Diane did?”
He nodded, though he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn the Heswarens trained themselves to lie after all. It made sense, if only because some of them were lawyers.
Lisa frowned. “In a certain sense, we are. Not by blood, though. It’s hard to explain why …”
She trailed off when she noticed his look. He wanted to make sense of this, of her. She was his friend.
“And you want me to try.” She sighed. “Where to start? In certain circles … There’s a notion where blood and craft can intermingle. Like, say you become a [Alchemist] with your own shop someday, Micah”—she gestured at him and the guy tensed up—”and trained an apprentice, and your sister trained someone to take over the bathhouse. Your apprentices would be cousins of your craft because the two of you were siblings, understood? Even if they learned entirely different things from you. Similarly, if you had multiple apprentices, they would be siblings and could then train related apprentices even if they were not related by blood.
“The Heswarens and my family are spiritually related because Lady Heswaren and my grandmother were spiritual cousins. They got their magic from siblings, and they passed them down.”
“Oh.”
So some weird cultural stuff, then? Except, this was Lisa’s culture so it was harder to write off.
Micah squinted. “So am I … your craft son?”
Lisa laughed, and it was a wonderful thing. Ryan could chuckle and the other guy looked like he was pouting again.
“What? You taught me a lot.”
“No, you’re … You’re the annoying neighborhood kid I sometimes babysit because I don’t want to see you get into too much trouble.”
“Oi.”
“You’re your own person,” Lisa said, “studying your own Path, and a teammate, and friend? That thing with craft families, don’t take it too seriously. The only reason Diane would consider us related is because our respective magic is hereditary. It’s more of a … Northern thing.”
She sighed, and a bit of the good mood slipped away again, just like that. But not all of it.
“Oh,” Micah mumbled. “Okay.”
And looking at the two of them, Ryan drew another worrying connection. He had to overcome a small hill to even voice it. “Lisa?”
“Hm?”
“Your family taught Garen, and you’ve taught Micah …?”
She looked at him and, as soon as she caught on, said, “Completely different things.”
He didn’t know if he should be relieved or disappointed. Micah was the type to think because he could fight something, he had an obligation to. It meant his strength would never truly keep him safe, but keeping him from getting stronger would keep him from being happy, too.
It had taken him ages to come to grips with that.
“Aw, really?” Micah asked, proving him right.
“What I’m teaching him—you—it’s almost universal, in my opinion. It’s a basic lens any culture could adapt to interpret their magic through. What my family taught Garen, I know the name of, but it’s the same thing as knowing that a [Pyromancer] has something to do with fire magic. I have no idea of the specifics. I’m not— They know so much more than I do.”
She sounded overwhelmed just admitting it.
“And that name?” Micah asked.
“Not telling you.”
“Ah—”
“I doubt the Heswarens would, either, if that helps.”
“Oh. Uhm, it kind of does.”
Of course, it does, Ryan thought with a mental eye roll. Of course, it was their name that had reassured him.
He wondered if he should guess, though, because he thought he could. Something to make Garen strong enough to fight a dragon almost on his own, or maybe because he was alone, despite having been a young [Adventurer] at the time.
From the stories, he had the [Champion Path]. Maybe something like his [Strength in Numbers] pushed to the extreme, a way to turn one person into an unstoppable weapon …?
He pushed the thought aside. Lisa had admitted she didn’t know and a lot of what she did know, she couldn’t share for good reasons.
… Right?
But if she was their ally, shouldn’t her family share their knowledge? They knew how to forge enchanted weapons that could last decades, the answer to a modern mystery.
He wanted to bring it up because he felt like he had a responsibility to, as a citizen, but he didn’t know how or if he wanted to.
She’d already turned him down once when he’d asked for Conner’s sake. What if he pushed the issue and she pulled away?
That was without even considering more pressing issues.
“Seriously though, Lisa,” Ryan said and just came out with it, “are you allowed to be here? You said Garen smuggled you in but … what’s the story behind that?”
Micah shot him a glance.
Her smile wavered. “Oh. Uhm, I’m allowed to be here. Sort of. I’m a guest and nobles keep guests all the time so if anything were to happen, a lot of people would protect me, but uh …”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t those guests vetted beforehand and placed under observation by the city?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
“Were you?”
A shake of the head. “No.”
Micah sagged with an almost disappointed look. “So you aren’t actually allowed to be here?”
“No, but I could be—!”
“How are you even enrolled in our school?” Ryan wondered, considering all of the documents involved. Lighthouse was the only city that really allowed foreign students, and only because of their military base and ties to the forts overseas.
“With their help!” Lisa insisted. “I don’t think you two realize just how much clout the Heswarens have, politically. Or all nobles for that matter—”
He shook his head. He didn’t buy it.
“Sure, they’re knocked down time and time again, but they always pick themselves back up again. If they wanted to publically pronounce me their guest, they could.”
“They why didn’t you?” Micah asked.
“Because … we wanted to avoid attention, and because I didn’t really plan on coming here.”
“How can you not plan smuggling someone across a border?” Ryan asked in a joking tone. “Did Garen kidnap you or what?”
“No, I kind of … I hid in his luggage.”
“You—” He blinked, and both he and Micah leaned forward as they demanded, “What?!”
Micah glanced at him. “Jinxed.”
Ryan ignored him and stared. Just from Lisa’s flustered expression, she was telling the truth …?
“He was about to leave again, and I didn’t know how long it would be until he came back, and I had to make a choice, so—!”
She cut off and searched for the right words, deflating a little. When she spoke again, she sounded almost embarrassed. “Look, I grew up hearing stories from Garen, about the Tower cities and adventurers. I would wait on this hill on the outskirts of our forest for him to come back and listen to the gentle hum of your nation in the distance. I daydreamed like, a lot.”
What? Ryan almost laughed. Not to make fun of her. Because it was unexpected and also, so familiar.
And kind of lame, he could admit to himself, so it was a surprise Lisa would admit it out loud.
“I needed to see it for myself,” she went on with ironclad confidence, “and I really needed to get away from home.”
“Why?”
Micah poked his face. “Hey, you’re jinxed. You can’t talk.”
He pushed his finger away and added, “And what do you mean, Garen came to visit you?”
“In secret, of course. Even before I was born. I think he felt odd, returning to a home he no longer recognized? He left a young soldier completing his mandatory Church service, stationed in the middle of nowhere because he annoyed the wrong person, and came back to find the last stages of a revolution. People didn’t trust him. They didn’t respect him because he hadn’t fought like they had. Or maybe he had seen more of the world. He didn’t leave on the best terms with my family, the first time around, but he always came back to us.”
Ryan frowned. He had never considered that part of his story, that Garen might not feel at home in Hadica. By all rights, he was a hero. And he was special because he was so unlike the other heroes of his time.
It had been decades since. He was fine now, right?
“The upside,” Lisa went on and her mood picked up, “is that I grew up having him around. He visited about once a year for my birthday, sometimes twice, sometimes every other year, brought me presents, and told me stories while he stayed for a few weeks on end.
“And as for your other question, my parents are kind of overprotective. In a way, I’m their only child, but not by choice? They never let me go anywhere on my own. I can count on one hand the number of times I left our town, and only twice did I visit another city outside our forest. I grew impatient so when I saw a chance to leave … I took it.”
Ryan stared, awestruck, and whispered, “You rebel.” Something that audacious took guts.
But of course … that was Lisa.
“And that worked?” Micah asked. “He just didn’t notice all the way to Hadica and you avoided the border guards, and state guards, and city guards—”
She chuckled. “No, no. It was a lot more complicated than that. Well, Garen didn’t notice for the longest time but my mom did. She hunted us down before we got too far and would have dragged me back kicking and screaming. You should have seen the look on his face.
“But I got the chance to talk thanks to him and … People in my family, they sort of have their own projects, you know? They will travel halfway across the world to explore a rumor, or study a form of magic, or interview an interesting person or explore a ruined site, and I told my mom, this could be mine. My first project.”
“This?”
“The Towers. You.”
“So you are a spy.” Micah sat up. “Wait, do you even have levels, or was that a lie, too?”
“I do. Since last year. And I’m not a spy.”
“But you said—”
“How?” Ryan interrupted him. “It can take immigrants over a decade to get a Class, the same as growing up here.”
She nodded. “I know, but I lived pretty close to the border and I think my family still has an open invitation from the Dwarf from when my grandmother was here. She was invited and she refused. I accepted. The night I first wanted a Class, I got one.”
Ryan frowned. That sounded … wrong. Sure, the first generation had gotten their Classes right away but how could an invitation be passed down like that? And why would her grandmother have refused?
“Your paper, and your Class. Are those true?” he asked. Something closer he could cling to.
She nodded. “The most recent one I showed you? Yeah. All of it.”
“You got that far in just a year?”
She smiled. “Just like you two. It took a lot of effort, I have to admit, but I had to keep up.”
Here he had always thought she was ahead of them.
“So back to your not being a spy,” Micah said with an almost childish spin on an interrogator’s tone, “what did you mean, this could be your ‘project’?”
She sighed. “My family already inspected your magic a long time ago, Micah. I have an aunt who lives in Lighthouse. We have books from your Registry, items, paintings, more. Sure, a lot of it is outdated but that was never the point. I just needed something to convince my mom because she never would have let me leave otherwise. And it worked.
“Everyone in our family gets to choose their own projects, I told her, so when would I? I was supposed to be a member of our family, too, but some days, I felt more like a prisoner or experiment than their own daughter.”
A surge of emotion slipped out with the word and her face twisted in a sketch of pain. Just from the memories?
A worry welled up inside him and Ryan pushed past a lump in his throat to gently ask, “Experiment?” ‘Scholars’ could do all sorts of unspeakable things in the name of science.
She shook her head. “Not like that. The way they would treat me, with figurative gloves on, always so methodological, careful, expectant of results.”
He wanted to relax, but worry changed into shared pain. He could understand that, in his own way.
“But it did work,” she went on before they could linger, “and I’m glad because it meant I could come here. But the only reason why it did was because we already had those studies at home and my mom thought your cities would be safe, that this was a project a child could handle.” She snorted in annoyance. “She was being condescending again in her own loving way.”
Ryan frowned and didn’t really know why.
Micah articulated it for him: “We’re dangerous. We’re the most powerful people in the world!”
Pride.
She snorted again, chuckling this time.
“What? We are.”
“Yeah, yeah, you are, but you’re young. You don’t have any ancient secrets. And your magic is …”
“Awesome?” Micah supplied.
“Limitless?” Ryan tried.
“Mysterious?” Micah wiggled around. He didn’t know what that was supposed to be. A snake from a basket? Belly dancer? Jello mold?
She smiled and rolled her eyes as she found her own answer. “Shallow, in a way that magic elsewhere isn’t.”
“How do you mean?”
“Look, there’s no nice of putting this, but your nation is a backwater patch of land in the middle of nowhere, spiritually speaking. None of the warm magic currents run by here so barely any spirits want to visit, there’s no ancient ruins, no history—nothing. Until the Towers showed up.
“That’s probably the reason they did show up here, because no one cared. Except for the Lady at the time, I guess, since she claimed to have owned the land, but she only had a few distant, poor villages here because you don’t even have any natural resources to speak of!”
Ryan stared at her. “Well, that’s just not true.”
“Oh, yeah? How do you differ?”
He continued to stare and shrugged. “It just isn’t. Here is great. Other places suck. Stupid spirits, who wants them to visit anyway?” He turned to Micah. “Right?”
“Right!”
Surreptitiously, he glanced around to make sure the ceiling wouldn’t crash down on them for that comment, but nothing happened.
And Lisa was smiling. That was always a good thing. This was a complicated enough situation to balance, especially with his own curiosity tugging at him.
“Shouldn’t our people count as ‘natural resources’, though?” Micah asked. “We can do things no one else can.”
“Barely. Most of you never leave. The handful who do are more likely to be nuisances or terrors than a ‘resource’.”
“Hmph. So maybe people should come to us and buy our awesomely crafted wares.”
“They do. It’s a small number because you turn away most comers or scare off the others, if only with your exorbitant prices.”
“… Oh.”
Ryan scratched his hand and awkwardly spoke up, “So did you do a study on us or whatever?”
He remembered a time when she and Micah had discussed the composition of mana in her living room. He had secretly rolled his eyes back then because it had sounded like a childish fancy, but if all of this was true …
Lisa sat up as if she’d been caught in something and his hopes rose until she looked aside and sheepishly scratched her face.
“I started doing that,” she said, “and then I got distracted, and a little bored, distracted by other stuff and … I had school, which took up a lot of my time, I went to explore the Tower in my free time, and the city, Bazaar, food stalls, and rode the tram for hours on end … ”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
She mumbled toward the end and suddenly doubled down, “And then you people showed up and distracted me even more! So if anything, really, it’s your fault I didn’t finish my project.”
“You’re welcome?”
“Why would I be ‘welcome’? You convinced Garen to make me give you lessons.”
“That was his idea—”
“Sure.”
“—and I sold you Sam, whom you’re super passionate about.”
“Oh. That’s true, I suppose. Thank you.”
Ryan sighed. Of course, he couldn’t lean on her for answers. He had learned that lesson already. At least, his question had brought him back to something else he had nearly forgotten.
“Lisa,” he spoke up again, unsure for another reason, “you want to visit home in the summer?”
“I know,” she groaned and looked nearly as worried as she had at the start of this conversation. “What am I going to show them for my time? I guess I could … compile my thoughts and reference some Registry papers, or maybe buy their decade publication as a placating gesture? Argh, but that seems lazy, and expensive, and I don’t want to disappoint them.”
He winced. “That wasn’t my point. You want to leave, but are you sure you can come back?”
As her eyes searched his, he held his breath and he hoped she saw his worry. “Of course …?” she said.
He almost let out a giant sigh of relief.
Micah added to the nightmare. “But what if your parents don’t let you? As punishment because you didn’t finish your project or something?”
Ryan’s brain immediately kicked back to panic. Yeah, what then?
“I’ll have to finish, I’ll tell them. As a matter of pride. I have to finish school, and Sam’s design, and … I want to see my friends again.”
As heartwarming as the words were, the mention of school brought his mind back to other issues.
Micah, too, apparently. “But how are you even going to get past the border and back again? Wouldn’t it be better if you made the Heswarens publically pronounce you their guest first? Then they could also clear if it’s okay for you to bring Registry stuff back, or maybe the city would send a gift of their own, if your family really is as important as the Heswarens, and then—”
“Micah, for the last time, I’m not a spy.”
“No.” He scowled. “That’s not that I’m worried about. I’m not worried about you, I’m just …”
“Is it my family?” She scowled, defensive.
But Micah shook his head. “No, it’s …” He sounded desperate as he searched for the right words and they let him find them. His voice was gentle as he said, “I’m worried for you, Lisa.”
Ah. Ryan almost smiled. It seemed like such a weird thing to think, to be worried for Lisa, but he was absolutely right.
“What if something happens, you get caught and they pull you out of school, lock you up, or kick you out of the country, and I— we suddenly never get to see you again?”
Lisa made a small sound. “Oh.”
“Can’t Anne’s family help?”
For once, Ryan agreed with him. If they thought the Heswarens could be good for something, why not let them? They had the resources.
“Maybe? We really did want to avoid attention, but more than that, things have gotten somewhat complicated over the last few years. It will be harder now than it would have been back then.”
“Then why wait, wouldn’t that make things even worse?”
Speaking from experience?
Lisa nodded. “I guess? But if it’s that important to you, I’ll ask Garen to see what we can do.”
“Garen,” Ryan said. A reminder. “We should probably consult him first before we do anything else because—and don’t get me wrong, Lisa. I trust you—but we’re barely adults; more kid than adult. It would be nice to get some assurances from someone who actually knows.”
She nodded. “Sure.”
And just like that, the three of them deflated where they sat. He wasn’t sure a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, but he certainly felt more tired from one conversation than he had from the entire day of fighting.
He did smile and leaned back against his hands as he wondered. “Myconids. Really? What are they like?”
“Relaxed.” Lisa smiled. “As if they had all the time in the world. Very energetic when they do get up to something. Sly, in that way.”
“Huh.”
“A lot of them remind me of Micah.”
“I’m not lazy,” he protested.
“I never said lazy. I mean because you’re so carefree and energetic. But also, I think I mentioned this to you once, one of our more famous ancestors was named Micah.”
“Wait … Micah the Myconid?”
“Yep.”
“No!”
She chuckled. “Yes.”
Ryan smiled and squinted as he tried to think. His mind was full of questions, many of them for her specifically since they had largely ignored her side of things, but it was hard to grasp any of them.
He pushed past the exhaustion and remembered, More like a prisoner or experiment than their own daughter.
He worried about that. Was she fine?
“And I’m not carefree, either,” Micah said.
“Of course, you are.”
“I have worries about the future.”
“Yes, but you never let them drag you down.”
“I do, I—” He paused and said in a lower voice, “If we’re being perfectly honest here, I still have nightmares.”
Ryan snapped to attention. “What?”
“Not nearly as often as before, but regularly. Every other week or so, I wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble going back to sleep, so I study, go for a jog, or get some fresh air to clear my head.”
He stared. Why hadn’t he said anything?
“And sometimes, because I’m clumsy or I … am too loud, I wake my roommates and I think they might have gotten annoyed by it. It’s part of the reason why we don’t hang out as much. Only part. Not like your roommates. And it’s like, I spar against people who use fire all the time! I spend lots of time in the workshop around open flames and stuff. Even after facing my fear, it still keeps on happening, so I don’t think I can do anything about it. It’s just something I have to suffer through, but it sucks knowing it might be like this for the rest of my life.”
Fuck. He was supposed to be better.
“Micah,” Lisa said in a gentle tone. “Have you considered … talking to someone?”
“About?”
“What happened.”
“I have?” he said and nudged his chin at him. “With Ryan.”
“I meant someone more professional.”
“Like a doctor? I don’t think anything is physically wrong with my head. It’s just … bad memories, I guess.”
She pursed her lips and sighed. “Nevermind.”
“I’ve been looking into, uhm, medical stuff. Sometimes, it gets worse when I had a stressful day and I know I’ll have a bad night beforehand, so I could make myself tea to help then. Brent was right about that. It can be useful.”
Ryan just wished he had said something earlier, but … maybe the important part was that he had told them now?
“Do that,” he said, “because that sounds awful. And thank you for telling us. You, too, Lisa. I know this couldn’t have been easy, but it means a lot to me.”
He felt like he knew her so much better now, but he didn’t really feel surprised by any of the things she had said. They made sense. They were very … her.
Well, except the Myconids. That still boggled his mind.
They both smiled and returned that relaxed silence they had shared, and Ryan tried to gather his thoughts.
Then they glanced back at him.
It wasn’t a stare, just a look. They didn’t say anything. In fact, there was a conspicuous lack of words as they waited, giving him a chance, maybe, and he could feel the weight of their expectations.
If we’re being honest here. It felt like a moment for sharing truths, and it was clear they wanted him to say something.
Thank you for telling us. His own words. Maybe, they would actually be grateful if he did …?
His heart pounded all of a sudden as, maybe for the first time, he actually considered doing it. “I—”
They looked at him and he choked up.
“I, uh, like …”
Guys the way I should like girls. Just say it. One sentence and he would have to run as fast as he could.
“I killed the Summoner.”
Lisa grinned.
“You did what?” Micah asked, frowning instead.
Ryan groaned and twisted his head down, rubbing his eyes in pain.
“What do you mean, what Summoner?”
And then it was too late. He had to explain himself, he thought.
“The one this morning, obviously. I didn’t lead a pack of Prowlers away. I snuck into the Kobolds’ camp to assassinate its leader and left just before Lisa and the others could get there.”
“How? Why?” he sounded so hurt.
“Because I wanted to level,” Ryan repeated his earlier reasoning, but that was only part of it, “and because I’ve been frustrated for a while now, and I need to keep up, I wanted to—”
“What do you mean, keep up?” Micah interrupted him. “You’re the one who’s ahead of us—of me, at least. I don’t know how to measure Lisa anymore.”
“I’m at the top,” she joked.
Ryan shook his head. “You’re both ahead of me, in some ways. I’ve been falling behind in others and ‘keeping up’ is something that requires constant effort. Acting as bait, I didn’t feel like I was doing anything. It got to my head and I needed to take control of the situation.”
“So why didn’t you say something?”
“It was too late, in the moment. We had a plan.”
“Your plan.”
Ryan bristled. “I did the talking because nobody else would.”
Micah grimaced. “And before that? You could have said something earlier, that you wanted to level.”
“Micah, everyone wants to level.”
“I don’t,” Lisa commented.
He looked at her. “Figuratively. You want to get ahead in other ways, don’t you? On your project with Sam?”
“Point.”
“What about the rules?”
“I’m tired of following rules,” he said. He didn’t voice the thought that followed, Of always doing what’s expected of me.
“Then what about your grade?! They could fail you for this. Actually fail you. It would drag all the hard work you put in throughout the year down. For one mistake.”
He shook his head. “Same thing. I don’t care about my grades. Not really.”
He only cared about the way his parents would smile when he brought them home to them.
“I already ran off on my own yesterday. Doing it again seemed … easy.”
“Yeah, it’s easy to slip into bad habits,” Micah snapped. “Go figure, Ryan!”
He blinked, and any thoughts he might have had slipped away. Had Micah … actually just told him off? It felt like ages since the last time he’d done that.
After seeing Maria? Did that count, when he’d been panicking? Their fight, way back when?
“It didn’t have to be this way,” Lisa said in a lighter tone. “We could have lied. I would have covered for you, but you—”
“What?” Micah interrupted her. “No.”
“No?”
“No, we can’t lie. That would be wrong. And if someone finds out, the consequences will be far worse. They have Skills for that kind of stuff, to deduce how authentic reports may be.”
“What about Ryan?”
He looked at him and Ryan could see how torn he was. He kept quiet because he wanted to hear what he really thought.
After a moment, Micah admitted, “I don’t want to lie anymore, not if I don’t have to. Not even for you, Ryan. I did it for too long, I slipped into a bad habit, it always felt horrible, and the consequences were worse.”
The pain in his chest felt bittersweet. Regret and pride. “Don’t worry, Micah,” he told him, “I would never put you in a situation where you would have to lie for me.”
He hadn’t missed the moment. It was gone for good. At least, until everyone knew and at that point, it wouldn’t matter anymore.
At least, he consoled himself, maybe I can still confess it to Lisa, someday?
As if mirroring his thoughts, she said, “It doesn’t matter. As I was going to say before you so rudely interrupted me”—she shoved Micah lightly—”it’s too late. Ryan already told the scouts.”
He spun on him, eyes wide. “That’s what that was about? Wait, you told them before us?”
He nodded and swallowed. “They thought Lisa was the one who did it. I couldn’t let them leave thinking that. They would have dragged her down in their reports.”
“Oh. So you … did it for her?”
“Of course.”
“Then when did you plan on telling us, the rest of us?”
“After. I didn’t want to bring morale down any more, start another fight, or complicate things for your reports.”
Micah took that in with a nod, considered, and groaned, “Of course, you didn’t.” He let himself fall back holding his knees to roll onto the ground.
Ryan waited for him to say something else. When nothing came, he tried. “I am sorry. It was a mistake. As I said, I was being stupid. I doubt I’ll level from it anyway, to add to the punishment.”
He shook his head, dirt grinding into hair. “You will level, Ryan. You’re awesome and you work so hard.”
Somehow, that wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear. Where was his anger from earlier? Didn’t he realize his shitty actions would affect all of them, the team?
But he was already settling back into that lazy exhaustion, with a hint of a smile and a hint of a frown on his face, and Ryan didn’t want to force a reaction out of him … right?
What about dancing with Anne?
“If you really want to level that bad,” Lisa said. “I can help.”
He snapped out of his line of thinking. “Huh?”
She got up and headed up the incline before Ryan could stop her, saying, “Follow me.”
He jumped up, panicking. “Lisa, no. Wait!”
“Trust me, I can help.”
“I don’t want you to help, I—“
She said something in response, but her voice was muffled and distorted through the sound ward.
He pushed through with a grimace against the echo in his ears and placed a hand on her shoulder. “We haven’t finished talking yet. About you. I’m sorry if we made it seem that way.”
“No. No, of course we’re finished talking about … that,” she said lightly. “We agreed to ask Garen first, right?”
“Not that. You. About how you are and how you’re dealing with everything.”
“I’m fine. I’m happy,” she insisted. “This went better than I had feared. It’s great to get that off my chest. And I’ll feel even better if I can help you.”
“Like you helped Micah, at first?” he accused her. “You’re dodging. Avoiding us and falling back into old habits. If you don’t want to help, you don’t have to. Not if it comes at your own expense.”
She made a face and put a hand on his. “It won’t. But talking would. I’m exhausted in my own way, Ryan. I need some time to think. In the meantime, I can help without needing to do anything.”
He frowned but gave her a chance. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll see.”
Kyle jerked when they stepped back into the camp, eyes darting from person to person with his hand close to his pack. Ryan wasn’t sure, but he thought he might have put layers back on in the time they’d been gone, and his pack was tied shut, ready to leave.
Lisa ignored him, striding past the group, and to her own things. She pulled out a thick bundle of cloth and Ryan could see where this was headed.
“Soo … what’s up?” Kyle asked. “What did you guys talk about?”
“None of your business,” he shut him up.
The pest frowned and Lisa was busy, so he leaned over to ask, “Micah?”
“Really, none of your business,” he said in a lighter tone. “Personal stuff, plans for after the exam, summer break, and all that.”
“I see.”
“Here,” Lisa said in a lower tone and offered the unwrapped spellbook to him. “Read this. Remember what you said about why you did it? Maybe part of the issue is because you haven’t learned any spells in months of studying. This can help.”
It was a magic item that would have made his younger self bounce off the walls, right in front of him, and he asked, “Are you sure? Wasn’t this supposed to be a gift?”
“My cousin literally won’t know the difference between an untouched book and a slightly worn one and I know you’ll take good care of it. You guys lent me your slime crystal, remember? So here, take it.”
He hesitated, thoroughly wiped his hands off on his pants, and gently accepted the book, cracking it open from the back to search for the start of the last spell, though that could be somewhat fluid with these.
The spells and descriptions were drawn again and again with slight variations each time over multiple pages and then sort of … overlapped despite the paper, like a thumb book. Forty pages could become, in practice, three.
And normally, spellbooks were ordered from their easiest spell to the most difficult, or they had some other order to them, lessons building up on each other. He knew which were in here.
The last one would be the most difficult, [Lightning Bugs].
But as he glanced at the pages, their contents shifted. The pictures and size of the writing grew larger while the overall quantity of what was written decreased. Lengthy sentences were rewritten into shorter ones.
Ryan watched with excitement until he caught on. Then, he didn’t know if he should be insulted or disappointed.
You know, he thought to himself, like a children’s book.
He glimpsed the word ‘carapace’. It changed to the word ‘shell’. An entire section describing the particulars of an electric current changed to one line that was, essentially, ‘This shocks the enemy’.
[Lightning Bugs] does? Who would’ve thunk?
He knew he wasn’t the most intelligent person. He made up for it by rote learning and considering what the teachers expected from him, which worked for most exams up to a certain level of education.
The stupid book doesn’t have to be this blatant about it. He’d known what all those words meant, even if they were dry and boring.
But even as he thought it, parts of the changes began to revert before his eyes. The pictures started to shift into a more sophisticated art style that decorated the pages like a fanciful explorer’s guide.
He resisted the urge to grin. He failed miserably. Because it didn’t just adjust to his reading comprehension level. It took into account his feelings about his own reading comprehension level, adjusting everything within its power to make studying as easy as possible for him.
Which, for him, meant he had to feel excited about what he was reading. He’d never read a math textbook and jumped up, thinking, I want to practice math homework now! But as a young kid, he had sometimes read a particularly exciting scene in a story, jumped up, and wanted to emulate the swordfights with sticks in his backyard.
It was the same concept here. He had to feel a certain wonder about magic to get in the mood to learn spells. A wonder he thought he had drowned in mistakes.
He didn’t know if he could reclaim that, but here, the spellbook definitely helped him unearth that buried glimmer of excitement he had sensed this morning, watching it from afar.
It had been a demonstration. The stupid thing had known just what to do to get him here and … he didn’t quite know what to do with the feelings.
Ryan wasn’t exactly one to jump in excitement like the others had when they’d tested the magic items. At least, not anymore. But maybe, he could show some gratitude?
He glanced up from the page, grinned at Lisa, and said, “This is awesome.”
She smiled back. “You’re welcome.”
He looked back down and found the ‘first’ page of the spell. The contents shifted to the center and its light blue ink grew more vibrant with an almost impossible inner glow that faded toward the edges of the pages. A few shapes that suggested beetles echoed the glow in places.
The image continued to cgange, working toward … an illustrated title card?
He watched and the color … indented. The center of each line hollowed out in a way that let him look inside the letters, as if there was a greater, three-dimensional picture hidden within the page.
It was a familiar sensation, from two different sources, and he hesitated. It was like peering inside the motes of potential in his meditation space or appraising an object. He didn’t know if he wanted to think of that, of his failure, now.
But he trusted the spellbook, to a degree. Or rather, it was that he had no reason to distrust it. It wasn’t like it was sentient or sapient. Definitely not malevolent. It just followed the commands of its enchantment because it wanted to help him, as its demonstration had shown.
If the magic thought this would help him, even if he didn’t feel entirely good about what he saw, maybe that was fitting.
The image had paused along with him but when he looked again, light blue color opened up to reveal—a pulse of light. It went through the entire book, making the ink glow in a wave out from the center.
Fireworks.
Fire, color, and fireworks, those were the three things he most commonly saw in his [Mage] mural.
The sparkles of the fireworks attached to the electric blue light of the ink to make the image come together.
[Lightning Bugs].
Three in the center, constructed from blue energy, more hidden beneath leaves and written letters around the title page. Whenever they fanned their wings, lightning bolts acred between them.
Ryan smiled when he saw it. He felt like he found a piece of … something. A preview of what the final product was supposed to look like. Understanding.
Then Lisa’s hand came crashing down on the page and ruined everything. He got a headache just looking at the ink trying to flow around the obstruction and put the image back together.
He grimaced and looked up. “Oi.”
She chuckled and turned the page with a cantrip. “This was probably part of the issue as well. You don’t have a Path like Micah. You can’t … skip ahead, Ryan. Sure, you have two Skills to help but still, you’re overreaching. Don’t start from the back.”
She paged through and Ryan got another headache as he watched the images be torn apart from all sides as they tried to put themselves back together again.
They passed other spells. Thorn … something. Something with thorns. There were two of those in the book. [Thornwhip], maybe?
Then that apparently took too long because she shut the entire thing and opened on the page she wanted, saying, “When you learned how to fight from Gardener, where did you start?”
The basics.
[Firebolt].
“Ugh.”
“Don’t ‘ugh’ me.”
“Ugh,” Ryan repeated and the book made the flames roar. He still looked away. It wasn’t omnipotent. He wasn’t in a hurry to read this spell standing up in the middle of their camp with everyone staring at him.
More gently than Lisa, he closed the book and asked Bluth, “You said you wanted to sit upstairs?”
“Why? Do you want to read up there?”
He shrugged. “Call me romantic, but I like the idea of studying a spellbook at a cliffs’ edge at night.”
The others stared. It took him a moment to realize why. “No! No, no, no, not like that!” he rushed to say. “Not romantic because of you, but the view, you know? Stars, trees, and the cool breeze and— I need someone to stick around so I don’t break the rules again. That’s all. Really.”
Kyle chuckled and turned away, mumbling, “Idiot.”
“Uh, I think I’ll pass,” she told him. “Not because of you, but I already asked Jason if he would sit with me?”
“Oh. Then …?”
“Second choice?” Lisa asked and faked a wince. “Ouch. That hurts.”
He tilted his head. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I’m not setting up a sound ward, and I don’t want to distract you.”
So she didn’t trust him to not ask questions if they found themselves alone? That hurt a little.
“I’ll sit with you?” Micah spoke up. Last choice.
“Huh?”
“I mean, if you don’t mind.”
“No. Of course, not,” Ryan said, “but … I would really want to read, you know?”
“I know,” he said and picked up one of his pitons. “Me, too?”
“Oh. Okay.”
He didn't really have a reason to refuse.
Ryan slipped into the raincoat and grabbed his spear but had to wait at the stairs for him to put more of his armor on as well, so he trapped the spear against his side and peeked inside the book again.
He found a less impressive title card than the one for [Lightning Bugs]. It was simply the spell going off on repeat, a wildfire bolt vanishing into the distance. The book was being realistic and not even trying to oversell it to him again.
He could appreciate that.
Well, it was either that or the simplest spell had received the least amount of effort in the enchantment. Spellbooks weren’t omnipotent. That [Lightning Bugs] had found that hint of sparkles to accentuate its spell was a minor miracle for a book they had found on these floors, and that was purely cosmetic. It wouldn’t be able to create new content to adjust to every reader.
The reminder both tempered his expectations and made him better appreciate what it had shown him so far.
But then again, those thoughts made him pause and squint at it. He had begun to appreciate the book a mighty lot in a very short amount of time. It wasn’t sentient … right?
The [Firebolt] went off again and again without change to his thoughts. Tan paper stared back at him.
“Everything alright?” Micah surprised him. Suddenly, he stood next to him and Ryan hadn’t noticed. That was something to keep in mind while they sat up there. The book would distract him.
“Yeah,” he quickly assured him, “everything’s fine.”
He was just being idly paranoid because, if he was being honest with himself, he was in a good mood and it amused him.
“Awesome.”
Ryan knew a prompt when he heard one and ducked into the staircase, leading the way up the waxy steps to the floor above.
Right led deeper into the mountainside and the features changed. Apparently, they had fought a Candle Golem here. An area like the old Dripping Teeth, maybe?
He headed left up an incline against the chill and stopped as soon as he could see the stars and waxing moon above. A moon above.
He didn’t literally sit at the edge. That would have been a needless risk and the light would have drawn the attention of monsters, some of which could sneak up the cliffside. Besides, he still wanted to be close enough to the stairs to see in case something tried to sneak down to their camp.
But he did sit close enough to have a view.
Micah settled in against the opposite wall and laid the pitons down. True to his word, he began to inspect them without saying anything.
Ryan considered doing it himself to get rid of that lingering hint of awkwardness in him—and maybe in Micah, too, if he felt that way—something to reassure him, and maybe to apologize.
But he didn’t want to invite a conversation, either.
Something shifted in the other guy’s hand and he pressed the piton down. The earth gave way as easily as it had for Clay with a grinding sound of rocky mud against rocky mud, his eyes went wide in awe, and he twisted from side to side to peer at it.
He seemed happy enough.
Ryan turned to the second page. Red light illuminated the darkness and trickled through his raincoat, making it harder to see his surroundings. He trained his ears on the distance and read.
The book showed him a two-page spread on how to build his own [Firebolt], piece by piece. There were mental bridges that detailed how to taint pure mana to fire, including a mention that he could just use his affinity if he was lazy, as well as spellscripts that showed how to move mana to achieve the same.
Of course, he had to do the same to charge the bolt with kinetic energy so it flew and had its punch. There were options on how to go about the two steps, or even treat them as one.
Looking at those, though, he saw hints of things he had already learned and practiced for [Create Fire] and that barebones strength spell he had practiced for the Sports Festival.
Of course, he couldn’t use the muscles of his legs as a bridge for a spell he cast with his hands, but all of the mental imagery he had learned to think of for it could still be useful.
And actually punching? Apparently, it was a viable way to give a bolt spell its kinetic charge.
There were downsides, of course. He could see that for himself. A punched [Firebolt] would require, well, a punch, when he could just as easily stab something with his spear. Ryan had to think about how he wanted to use the spell.
He thought of Lisa and another girl from their combat training Micah liked to hang out with, sometimes.
Looking at the book, he realized, Lisa’s [Firebolts] were slow. Not the bolt itself, but her casting time. She had said as much to them, once upon a time, but he had never stopped to consider it for himself.
He thought of the other girl, Stephanie or something, who liked to do this insidious thing where she just had to point at an opening in close-quarters combat to shoot a [Firebolt] right into her opponent’s guts, like a sucker punch without the need to move her arm.
And she honed the spell, going through the painstaking process of improving a Skill she had already learned. One day, through sheer effort and practice, or the right assisting Skills, she could be one of the [Mages] whose [Firebolts] could punch through armor better than an actual crossbow.
Ryan didn’t need to go that far, but he would rather learn a version of the spell that worked like hers, that widened his options. He didn’t know how the spell would translate to fighting with a spear and he didn't waste his time on something that would be useless.
Mentally, he ‘chose’ the internal spellscript version and flipped a page. The majority of the image didn’t change, but the other options that had been described became mere footnotes while his choice was elaborated on.
He smiled and, out of curiosity, flipped back. Everything reverted. Just in case he was exploring options or had changed his mind? It was nice to see that worked. If it hadn’t, that could have been frustrating.
He leafed back to where he had been but hesitated. Something seemed off and he didn’t know why until he checked in on his hearing and realized, a sound was missing.
He looked up. Micah had stopped poking holes in the ground and studying his pitons, but he wasn’t watching him as Ryan had feared, either.
He sat with his legs crossed in the near darkness and stared out at the night sky. The dark silhouettes of the rolling canopy swayed in a gentle breeze below and the stars shone brighter than any city night.
He looked so intent, Ryan wondered if he was looking at something specific, but as he searched, the red glow in the corner of his vision began to bother him and he shut the book.
That got Micah's attention.
“What are you looking at?” Ryan asked.
It took him a moment to answer, “The stars. They look different here, their constellations.”
He hesitated before he looked away and after a moment of searching, realized he was right. He was no astronomer, but he knew how to tell North from the stars and how to find his way to the right constellation to do it.
He didn’t even recognize any of the ones here. An illusion spell? Maybe there were glowing rocks miles above them? Or ... he was actually gazing up at a foreign sky?
A terrifying thought. If they were on an entirely different planet ... Thoughts like that made him feel tiny in the grand scheme of things, which he of course was, but also ... somehow not, because he was here, in this Tower, from Hadica where there was a gateway to the center of it all.
Almost alone in the middle of nowhere, he looked up and felt like he was a part of something bigger than himself. That he wasn't so alone after all.
“You said once,” Ryan betrayed the silence, “that you could see star essence. Giant constellations of spinning patterns and lines that draw themselves into the sky every night.”
His voice was quiet and not surprised. “You remembered that?”
“Do you see that here …?”
Micah looked up and nodded.
That was an answer and much bigger question.
Ryan felt the odd need to ground himself. In a lighter tone, so light he regretted it, he asked, “What even is star essence? Like, it’s just light, isn’t it? What even could you do with it?”
“I don’t know about uses,” Micah said, “though it probably has many, but … it’s light, I think. And something geometric. And something else. I’m not sure what.”
“If you had to guess?”
He stared ahead and almost shrugged as he said, “Death?” He turned back. “Death essence?”
“That exists?”
“I saw a glimmer of something once. At my Nana’s funeral. I thought I had imagined things but looking back … I think so? It was small and ephemeral. Blink and you would miss it.”
Ryan didn’t know how to respond to that. In a way, he had brought it up, but he didn’t want to steer the conversation in that direction. Death essence.
He didn’t know why he was trying to start a meaningless conversation at all, or what he wanted, he just—
A tear rolled down Micah’s cheek.
“Micah?”
“Huh? Oh.” He rushed to wipe it away and smiled awkwardly, apologizing.
“No, don’t … Are you alright?”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s just really beautiful because like …” He swallowed and gestured helplessly. “It’s not ephemeral at all, now? But also, it sort of is. By its nature, because it has already passed, because this moment will. If that makes any sense at all?”
“Does it?” Ryan tried a smile.
“Sorry for explaining so bad—”
“No, no. It does. I think.”
“Ugh,” Micah groaned with a bit of a frog in his throat. “I wish I ‘d spent more time on trying to figure out how to make an [Essence Sight] potion, so you can see what I can. Or bought a pair of glasses because”—he blinked hard and when he opened his eyes again, squinted—”all I can see is blurrr.”
Ryan chuckled. “It looks beautiful to me, too, even as ‘normal’ stars, in case you were wondering.”
He spun back. “Really?!”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Oh. Uhm … cool. I’m glad.” He wiped his eyes again, stopped squinting, and went back to his pitons.
Ryan hesitated for another moment as he watched him. Micah, a guy who had just openly cried from stargazing. The thought made him lose his smile and look away.
The spellbook, maybe sensing his mood, unfurled the full wonder of its enchantment when he cracked it back open, colors nearly bursting from the seams, and he was glad it and the silent breeze let him escape.
They didn’t stay up there for long, of course. They couldn’t. Their team would have to stay below to keep watch throughout the night, since there were three avenues of attack in their chamber, and Bluth wanted some time up there as well. She climbed the staircase after roughly twenty minutes had passed and tapped them out.
The sound of her guitar trickled down the steps after a while. Then the music abruptly stopped and shrieks and curses echoed instead.
Bats?
He hoped the guitar was alright.
They had to use summons to cover every entrance and when they took watch, Ryan gave Micah the honors of summoning Spike. He seemed excited about it and only reluctantly sent the little stone hedgehog away to watch the corridor on its own.
For once, Ryan focused entirely on one kind of magic instead and continued to read in glances during their watch, silently going through the motions of the spell with some pure mana.
Maybe that was what made the difference. Probably not. When he woke up, though, he heard:
[Mage level 2!]
[Spell — Firebolt obtained!]
Ryan pushed against the pains in his body to sit up and tried to wrap his mind around that, not knowing how to feel. He looked around and paused.
Micah lay with his eyes open not far from him, staring at the ceiling in silence. He was awake already. Had he …?
----------------------------------------
[Scout Class obtained!]
[Scout level 1!]
[Skill — Aimed Shot obtained!]
That was a head-scratcher. Micah didn’t know how to feel about that. It was always the unintuitive answers that were the right ones these days and this …
He had wanted to be closer to him, Ryan, and he hadn’t known how.
Hopefully, he won’t hate me for it.
But like, he couldn’t decide which Classes he would get, right? And what, he was not supposed to learn how to scout ahead or make the most out of his Skills? It wasn’t his fault … right?
Someone shifted in the corner of his vision and he tilted his head back to see. Ryan stared at him and briefly, Micah considered hiding the news from him. A bad habit that would make things so much easier for him, and was so easy to slip back into.
He dismissed the thought.
If he wasn’t going to lie for him, he definitely was not going to lie to him. He put on an exhausted smile instead and stifled a yawn as he stretched up, butchering his words, “You are not going to believe what just happened.”
“Let me guess,” he rasped, “you leveled up.”
Micah hesitated. “Sort of? Not really.”