Chapter One Hundred Ninety-Eight: 'Preparedness, be acquired...'

It was a relief to be back at Warrenhold again. He hadn't even been gone a day, but it felt like weeks. As much as he had enjoyed catching up with everyone at the Gala, it was still exhausting, and the media circus around it certainly hadn't helped, either. The sun had already started coming up by the time he'd finally left the palace, and he had naively thought that the media would've dispersed by then, but nope. They jumped on him the second they saw him and made that last stretch to his vehicle as uncomfortable as possible.

At least he'd been able to say goodbye to Lynn and the Queen before departing. Thinking back on it now, in the comfort of his own bed, he wished that he could've talked to them more. About what, he wasn't sure. Anything would've been fine, really. As he drifted off to sleep, he foggily wondered when he might see them again.

The warm embrace of sleep was fully welcome. Damn, this bed was cozy.

Only too soon, he awoke--and not on his own.

A dreadfully familiar voice was talking to him in a horrifically familiar tone.

"--up. If you don't get up in the next twenty seconds, a cold shower will be visiting you in your bed."

Hector groaned but began to stir.

"It's time to train, Lord Goffe." Whenever Zeff called him that, it didn't sound like a term of respect for some reason.

Much as he wanted to, though, Hector didn't complain beyond a few more grunts. There was nothing to be gained by resisting, especially because in the back of his mind, he knew perfectly well how important these training sessions were--and how lucky he was to have found an instructor as experienced as Zeff.

He got dressed, making sure to choose clothes that he didn't care too much about, in the likely event that they ended up utterly obliterated.

He was hungry, but he decided to forego a meal for now. Zeff had warned him before about training on a full stomach, and Hector didn't doubt him. With how demanding the Lord Elroy was becoming during these sessions, Hector could easily imagine himself puking his guts out afterwards.

And today was certainly no exception.

"How is your progress with mapping?" said Zeff, as calm as if he were asking about the weather, despite the fact that he was currently trying to chop Hector's head off with a broadsword of solid ice.

Hector met the blow with his own iron sword, but the man's soul-strengthened ice still cut through it, though not without resistance. The icy blade was partially deflected and clipped the top of his iron helmet instead of decapitating him. "It's going okay, I think," Hector managed to say through labored breath.

"Show me," said Zeff, not even pausing to let Hector do so. The flurry of slashes from his sword only seemed to grow more intense.

They were wild, though. There was more power behind them, sure, but Hector could tell that Zeff was really just trying to push him back now instead of actually hitting him. And that was why Hector decided to do the opposite.

Instead of losing ground, Hector gathered his concentration and moved toward the slashes--between them. His armor made him bulky, but he didn't mind if it took some shallow cuts. The Scarf of Amordiin helped him sense the path of least resistance, and he was able to get in close and do exactly what Zeff just asked for.

The mapping technique was something that Hector had been working on for a while, ever since Zeff and Asad had told him about it when their group had first entered the Undercrust. In short, it was a method of easing the cognitive load of complex materializations by "mapping" them to physical movements in one's body, such as hand signs.

It was a slow process to refine, since it required memorization, but Hector hadn't been slacking on that front. He focused and made a fist with his right hand, but not to throw a punch with.

In an instant, thousands of iron spikes grew out of his armor--a tactic he had used several times before--but it didn't end there. With the basic spike defense mapped to his right fist, he was able to devote more cognitive power to adding complexity.

So the spikes grew faster than they ever had previously, granting them greater puncturing ability. But even more importantly than that, they branched off into more spikes--and kept branching.

Hector felt his spikes catch flesh briefly before Zeff backed off and covered himself in his own armor of solid ice, but this new spike technique was still not done, because he was giving it direction.

The spikes continued growing away from Hector and chased the Lord Elroy down--a feat which the man did not seem to expect, because they managed to catch up to him and enveloped him completely.

Not that it mattered too terribly much, of course. After a moment, giant icicles tore through the network of iron barbs and set Zeff free.

"Hmph." The Lord Elroy dematerialized his ice armor and wiped a bit of blood from a gash on his cheek. "Not bad. Simple, yet effective."

Hector dematerialized his spikes but not his armor. "Thanks..."

"Many a warrior look down upon little tricks like that, but in my experience, they might very well save your life, one day."

Was that praise? Was Zeff actually in a good mood today? Hector was still waiting for the criticism.

"However, that particular trick won't help you much against an opponent who keeps their distance."

Ah, there it was. Still not nearly as harsh as he'd expected, though.

"Have you put similar thought into improving your projectile capabilities?" the man asked.

"Ah--yeah, I have." His projectiles had been key in that fight with the worm, so of course he'd been thinking about different ways to iterate or otherwise modify those types of attacks since then.

"Good," said Zeff. "We'll go slow this time. Show me the simplest concept of what you have for a quick projectile--something that you can use to retaliate instantaneously at range. Then we'll see about amplifying its intensity."

The simplest concept, huh? Hmm.

Hector actually hadn't put much thought into that. He'd only really been thinking about how to make things more potent, recently. Thus far in his "career" as a servant, he felt like his offensive abilities had always been his biggest weakness. It didn't help, of course, that he always seemed to be fighting uphill battles, but he also didn't expect that trend to change anytime soon.

He took a few more moments to think about Zeff's instruction here. A simplified version of what he had been working on. For purposes of instantaneous retaliation.

That definitely seemed like a useful thing to have in his arsenal.

Alright, then.

Hector made a hand sign that would be familiar to anyone in the world. A finger gun. He held off on pointing it at Zeff, though. "Ready?" he asked.

The Lord Elroy frowned, perhaps with disappointment. "Your control over velocity states has improved, but I don't think you are quite at the point where you can use it as a replacement for real firearms. I've yet to witness you harness that kind of explosive power without first requiring at least a few seconds of prep time."

That was true. Velocity states were fairly simple, all things considered, but they still had a high skill barrier when it came to achieving really potent speeds.

Hector already had a notion of how he might overcome that, though. He raised his finger gun in front of his chest. His question hadn't actually been answered, so he decided to ask it again. "Are you ready?"

Zeff's brow lowered, but he seemed intrigued at least. He donned his ice armor once more and took a bracing stance. "Yes, I am."

Even before the man had responded, however, Hector had technically already begun. Rather than simplifying his technique to the point where he no longer needed any prep time, Hector felt that he might be able to achieve better results if he could just make his prep time invisible to his opponent.

The orbiting technique that he had developed in the Undercrust had gone through several iterations since its inception, especially during the worm fight. Here and now, Hector was sure that it was his best idea so far for creating powerful attacks.

The problem with it, as Zeff had already mentioned, was the prep time. Anything that he put into orbit around himself required at least a few seconds to accelerate before becoming truly threatening.

But what if he didn't actually put something into orbit, and instead merely imagined that it was there?

Everything about materialization only functioned as a result of the imagination in the first place. The cognitive process would be identical. The only difference would be that there was no physical object there.

Until he put one there, of course.

So what would happen if he went through the entire cognitive process of putting an object in orbit, increasing its speed, and then, only materialized that object into reality at the moment he was ready to let it fly?

It would conceal his prep time, wouldn't it?

Hector hadn't actually had time to test this theory out, but it had been in the back of his mind for a while now, and he was fairly confident that it would work.

So when he pointed his finger gun at Zeff--having the cognitive process already "loaded" into his mind and made easier by the hand sign--he was able to instantly let rip an iron bullet.

It burst into existence with a deafening crack and tagged Zeff right in the chest. It didn't go cleanly through, but judging from the fresh red stain on the man's translucent armor, it at least managed to draw blood.

And considering that was just the proof of concept, that he hadn't even tried to soul-strengthen the bullet, Hector was pretty damn pleased with that outcome.

"Time out," said Zeff as Axiolis flew in to check his wound for him. The regeneration had been active for a while, so Hector knew that wasn't their concern. More likely, they wanted to see exactly how much damage the bullet had caused.

Axiolis in particular had been quite studious about these things whenever Hector and Zeff sparred. The aged reaper seemed especially interested in trying to measure every major wound they received and collateral impact points in the environment. Hector still wasn't entirely sure how observing these things so closely all the time was supposed to be of any use, but he wasn't about to doubt a four thousand-year-old reaper's expertise, either.

'This is fantastic,' the reaper was saying. 'Hector, this puncture is significantly more damage than anything you have previously landed on Zeff. The flesh wound is still relatively minor, of course, but this impact area where your iron connected with the armor--the diameter of this must be around, oh, five hundred percent larger than even your second most damaging blow was.'

Hector wondered if he would ever be able to share Axiolis' apparent passion for geometry. He certainly wanted to be able to share it. But math just sucked so hard. It had always been one of his worst subjects, and learning new concepts in it always felt like he was trying to chisel rock with his bare hands. Or even his bare face, sometimes.

'How were you able to muster such a profound increase in velocity with so little prep time? I was watching closely, and I didn't see anything.'

Hector explained what he'd done.

"Ah, so you cheated, then," said Zeff, carrying that familiar tone of disapproval again. "I told you to do something with zero prep. Hiding your prep, while potentially useful, was not the point of the exercise. You need to be able to summon power like that on a moment's notice--to take advantage of fleeting openings in combat. If your prep takes two seconds, but your window of opportunity is only one second, then your technique is still useless."

"No, I understand that," said Hector. "My intent is to prep beforehand, and then just keep it 'loaded' in my head. Like an actual gun, y'know? So I'll still be able to react to that one second window."

Zeff's expression was doubtful. "You'll keep it 'loaded?' Hector, doing that is not free. You would be sacrificing some of your cognitive power for a technique that you may not even use, depending on how the rest of the fight goes. And because you have less cognitive power at your disposal, the rest of the fight is then more likely to go badly for you. You'll be distracted. Your reactions will be slower."

'Trying to multitask so heavily like that in the heat of combat is highly dangerous,' added Axiolis. 'Your brain is already processing a million different things at once in those moments. Prioritizing a "loaded" gun, so to speak, means not paying attention to other things.'

They had a solid point, Hector knew. And he didn't want to go against their collective experience and wisdom, especially when compared against his own, but... he also felt like they were underestimating the blessing of Focus that Rasalased had given him.

He had explained it to them previously, but in retrospect, he couldn't tell if anything he'd said had actually made sense. It was difficult to explain something that he didn't fully understand himself.

"I get what you guys are saying," said Hector, "but I, uh... I think I can manage it pretty easily with parallel thought processes." He scratched his cheek. "I mean, it's true that I could be using that extra thought process for something else, but... I think having a 'loaded gun' at all times during the fight might be my most powerful option, right now--even if I don't end up using it all that often. Especially because... well, that was the weakest version of it. I'm sure I can make it stronger without overextending myself."

'Hmm,' was all Axiolis said.

Zeff took his time considering what Hector had said. The disappointment in his face seemed to diminish somewhat, but the sternness didn't. "If you truly believe that, then there is little point in discussing this further." He waved Axiolis away and took a readying stance. "Your hypothesis is set. If you are to ever prove it true, then we will have to push you much harder than we have been until now."

Aw, shit.

The sparring erupted anew, more brutal than ever. It soon seemed obvious that, despite what Hector might've previously thought, Zeff really had been going easy on him before.

It was like trying to fight a blizzard all of a sudden. The Lord Elroy had never bothered to use any visibility-reducing tactics against him, and the piercing cold that accompanied it couldn't be overlooked, either.

He tried to rely on the Scarf, but with all the snow, hail, and icy daggers flying everywhere, it was only so helpful. In fact, the Scarf might've even been making things more difficult, because there was just so much more sensory information swirling around him constantly. Choosing what to focus on was crucial, lest he lose a limb to a blade that he didn't see coming.

And if he didn't maintain a heated variant of his armor, then the cold would quickly begin to wear down his movements and render him even more vulnerable.

He tried simply escaping from the localized blizzard entirely, but that didn't seem like much of an option, either, because Zeff could just make it follow him.

After a while of getting smacked around, sliced up, and just generally humiliated, a period of calm arrived as Hector was still trying to pick himself up off the frozen ground.

"You're not thinking clearly," came Zeff's disembodied voice from somewhere in the blizzard. "You must assess your circumstances quickly and efficiently. And prioritize. Determine your most pressing problem. Don't try to deal with lesser issues first. A man can't repair his house while it's still on fire."

The most pressing problem...

To Hector's mind, that had to be the poor visibility. But how in the world was he supposed to overcome that? He'd already tried to escape the blizzard, and that hadn't worked at all.

Agh. Don't complain. Just focus. Figure it out or die trying. That was his job, when it came down to it.

Well, how about just big, fat chunk of iron? So big that it could disrupt the blizzard? Make the snow and wind break against its body?

Worth a shot.

He materialized an enormous cylinder all around him as a kind of shelter, making it far wider than it was tall. As it grew, he hollowed it out and gave himself more space to move around. It wouldn't be long before Zeff broke in, so he was already preparing for it. He had multiple bullets "loaded" into his finger gun, and they were larger than that test version had been. He was just waiting for Zeff to show himself.

That did not happen, however. Instead, a dozen giant spears of ice pierced the iron shelter and peeled it apart like so many can openers.

And Hector still couldn't tell where Zeff was. The blizzard was still there.

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Hector expected another walloping, but that didn't happen, either.

"Better," came Zeff's voice again, "but still not good enough. You're at least trying to solve the problem, now. Your solution was just incorrect. Try again."

Huh.

Hector couldn't help being a bit awestruck at how much slack the man was cutting him. Maybe he really was in a good mood, today.

He focused on the task at hand.

A simple structure wasn't going to work. That much was clear. He could try a complex one, like the maze that he'd used against Karkash.

But no, that didn't seem right, either. The problem was locating Zeff. A maze wouldn't improve his visibility. It would just help him hide--essentially giving Zeff the same problem that he had, right now. And sure, maybe that would be useful in its own way, but he felt like he could do better.

In parallel, another thought process was thinking about wind. Could he generate wind with his iron? Yeah, probably. But could he generate enough to blow the blizzard away?

Hmm.

Time to find out, he supposed.

Hector put a half-dozen big iron plates into orbit around himself, positioning them flat against the clockwise direction in which they were moving. He wanted as much air resistance as possible so that when he increased their speed, they would begin to whip up a nice little tornado around him.

And it worked like a charm. As he focused, pushing them for higher and higher speeds, the winds began to rise visibly amidst the blizzard. Snow and hail stopped touching him entirely, and then he began to notice something very interesting.

The Scarf of Amordiin was telling him all sorts of crazy new things that he'd never sensed before. Being at a center of a whirlwind changed everything. The flow of air immediately around him had become uniform, and as a result, it was suddenly very easy to sense any disturbances within that flow.

Like, for instance, a pair of icy spears flying at him from behind.

He launched himself out of their path on an iron platform, and the whirlwind moved with him.

This was so weird. Not quite disorienting, exactly--just very unfamiliar. He almost felt like he was in a video game all of a sudden, where there was a set radius of visibility around him while everything beyond it was just darkness--except in this case, that darkness a blizzard. Unfortunately, that blizzard wasn't simply dispersing as he had hoped, but his miniature tornado was still cutting into it like butter. It was progress, at least.

He was looking for Zeff, but the man must've been keeping his distance. He wondered why Zeff didn't seem to have any trouble seeing through his own blizzard. Was Axiolis just telling him where Hector was with soul radar? That seemed a little unlikely. So was there some other trick to it, then?

He sensed more spears coming for him, a trio this time from the side. He simply stepped out of their way. They, along with the two from before, hadn't really been moving all that fast now that he was thinking about it. Zeff was going easy on him again, he figured.

And while he appreciated not getting gored through the chest or having another limb torn off, Hector wasn't sure he liked this sudden show of compassion from his teacher.

In fact, he was starting to find it kind of annoying in its own way.

He needed to find Zeff if he was ever going to give the man a reason to stop taking him so lightly, and Hector had a couple ideas of how he might be able to accomplish that.

The first was to make his tornado larger. More uniform wind meant more area for the Scarf to describe for him, and he still felt like he wasn't losing control of it yet.

His second idea was guideposts. At the edge of his vision, he raised temperature-manipulated iron pillars, making them hot enough to glow so that he could see them better through the blizzard. He would've liked to make the pillars more complicated, or even add orbiting whirlwinds of their own, but he was already worried about reaching the limit of his cognitive load. Between his warming suit of armor, his growing tornado, and his loaded finger gun, he already had plenty of things that required constant focus. The most he wanted to risk on anything else was single-instance creations like platforms or guideposts.

Plus, of course, he had to keep an eye out for Zeff. Where the hell was he? Hector just needed--

There. A whiff of movement and shadow on his right. Hector let his gun rip, firing multiple shots this time. He thought he heard them make contact, but he couldn't be sure.

Until a few moments later, when Zeff came charging in with a slew of his own icy gunfire.

Rather than trying to dodge, Hector just relied on Haqq's shield in his left hand. The Lord Elroy's bullets left a few impressive dents in it, but that was all, and Hector kept 'loading' up more bullets of his own.

After having his ice armor pierced a few times, Zeff raised a full barricade for himself and took cover behind it.

Hector decided to do the same. He strengthened his iron barricade with his soul, as well. He knew it wouldn't help much with his weak soul-synchronization, but he wanted every bit of extra durability that he could get.

And then they had a shootout on their hands. Just straight up gun-blazing chaos, constant firing back and forth. The stream of deafening cracks in the air that accompanied each and every bullet soon became just background noise, like a waterfall raging in his ear, and Hector could hardly think of anything other than loading more bullets, keeping it going, not falling behind. He sacrificed his warming variant armor and devoted a second thought process to just making more ammo. He started adding heat to his bullets as well, just to give them that much more of an edge over ice.

The barricades on both sides were being shredded like cardboard, and they both just kept remaking them.

It probably wasn't even an entire minute of battle, but the sheer intensity of it made Hector feel like it was taking an eternity. At length, he felt like he might actually be gaining a slight advantage until he realized that most of his right hand was gone, blown off and spurting blood.

And suddenly, Zeff's gunfire seemed to grow even more furious. The man's barricade was in shambles, but he didn't bother recreating it. He merely stood up and started marching closer.

This wasn't going to be good. Hector knew he had to do something, but not having a right hand in this moment was more than just an inconvenience. Ever since having his mind "tempered" by Rasalased, he'd been having trouble using his left hand for normal iron materialization. At first, he and Garovel had thought that he'd completely lost function with it, that he could only use his left hand to materialize Haqq's shield, but more recently, Hector had tried practicing with it anyway and discovered that he actually could still use it for iron--but only a little.

He'd been trying to regain more functionality with it and had made a bit of progress, but it still had a long way to go, he felt. And hell, even before the tempering, he'd been right-handed, so that might've been a factor, too.

Here and now, though, his left hand was already quite busy just holding onto his shield--the only thing currently keeping him from being turned into a bullet-induced meat-spaghetti.

So his options were limited. And Zeff was closing in. And Hector was starting to get really freaking cold again, too.

But he still had his orbiting iron plates left. This whole time, they'd never stopped moving. They'd caught a few stray bullets here and there, sure, but they were still whipping around him just fine.

Hector decided to use them and go all-in. He ramped up the speed of the plates while simultaneously modifying their shape and increasing their mass, turning them into big blocks. He leapt high up into the air with the aid of an iron platform, flipping haphazardly and unintentionally--yet still maintaining his focus enough to sense the spears of ice that Zeff was already raising up from the ground to skewer him. They broke upon his shield instead. Hector took a half-dozen bullets to the chest as a result, but in exchange, he was able to bring down two of the big iron blocks simultaneously--right where Zeff was standing.

The impact with the ground had the force of an explosion, and Hector was sent flying backward, completely beyond the range of the blizzard. He hit the ground skidding and toppling on his half-busted armor.

A bit dizzy, he struggled back to his feet.

The blizzard was mostly gone, Hector saw. In its place was a cloud of dust and mounds of destroyed rock.

Perhaps that training session had gotten a little out of hand. He was glad that they'd decided early on to move these sessions quite far away from Warrenhold. This empty cavern on the other side of the lake below the castle provided plenty of space to test things out, and with the lamps that they'd set up to dispel the darkness, no one could approach without being spotted. Plus, Axiolis or Garovel was usually around to observe, and the reapers could easily sense any nearby souls thanks to how lifeless the rest of the environment was.

Axiolis hovered to Hector now. 'Not bad, my boy.'

Hector sensed Zeff approaching from his upper left and half-expected to get attacked again, but instead, the man came sliding down from an icy platform.

"Indeed," said the Lord Elroy. "That was an admirable showing." His left arm was missing, and his clothes were dirty and torn in several places, but... was that a slight smile on his face? "I'm proud of you."

Wide-eyed, Hector didn't know what to say.

After a beat, however, the man's expression was wiped clean again, and he said, "Don't be too pleased with yourself, though. You still gave me many opportunities to kill you."

"I-I know that."

Axiolis grabbed Zeff's shoulder, then addressed Hector. 'How's your regeneration? It should be starting to wear off now, no?'

The reaper was right. Hector could feel a familiar sensation, an oncoming wave of fatigue. Not quite there yet, but he'd felt it enough times now to know that it wouldn't be much longer. "Yeah."

'That's probably enough training for today, anyway. Let's go meet up with Garovel.'

Zeff carried them both back over the lake on a mobile platform of ice while Axiolis kept apace.

Along the way, Hector was reminded of the buildings in the water there. He hadn't forgotten, exactly, but he wondered when or even how he might be able to restore them to use. It seemed like a waste to just let them sit there.

Zeff had more to say before they reached the other shore, however. "Before I forget," he said, "there is an important lesson I should teach you. Or perhaps you are already aware of this, the fact that you still have a critical vulnerability."

Hector just listened.

"When you are fighting a materializer who is significantly older than you, such as myself, they can simply do this to you." He flicked his wrist.

Hector's mouth and nasal passage felt suddenly and blisteringly cold. It was painful, and he couldn't breathe, but after a moment, it was gone.

"If that ever happens to you again, you're dead," said Zeff. "They can grow a spike straight up into your brain--or worse, they could carve it out of your skull and capture you."

Hector wasn't entirely surprised by this revelation. He remembered pondering similar techniques a while back.

Zeff seemed amused. "This isn't a very common problem for most servants, which is why I hadn't thought to tell you about it sooner."

"Er... what do you mean? Why wouldn't it be a common problem? Everybody's soul sync is weak when they start out, right?"

"Yes. I am saying that it is not a common problem, because most servants don't put themselves in such situations to begin with. But the more I've come to learn about you, the more I've come to think that you and I are kindred spirits, in this rather unfortunate way." The man spared him a look. "We both always seem to end up fighting opponents well above our station."

Hector wished he could argue with him.

"In any case," said Zeff, "if you think that such an attack is coming, then remember that you can block their materialization by doing it to yourself, first."

Hector blinked a couple times as he imagined that. Hmm. He hadn't thought there would be a solution, much less one so simple.

"Your armor may afford more help in that regard as well," said Zeff. "The heart of the problem, of course, is your soul's field density being simply too weak. So even if you block the opponent from materializing a spike inside your head, they can still coat it from the outside and spike you that way."

"And you think my armor will protect me from that?"

"If it is fitted closely enough to your head, yes. Your eyes might still be vulnerable, however. They are a small enough target that, in the middle of combat, you may not need to worry about it, but it is still good to keep in mind, nonetheless."

"Hmm." With the Scarf, he actually didn't need his eyes all that much.

Which reminded him.

He inspected the Scarf more closely, searching for tears or bullet holes, and indeed, he found a couple of the latter.

He and Garovel had been wondering about the durability of the Scarf for a while now. The item hadn't been bothered at all by face-melting heat of the Undercrust, so it had seemed reasonable enough to assume it was quite tough.

But that didn't mean it was invulnerable. And with how incredibly useful the Scarf was, Hector was afraid of it getting destroyed in battle, one day.

However, this wasn't the first time that he'd noticed damage to the Scarf. And he had since come to discover that the Scarf appeared to have a very slow regenerative capability of its own. These two bullet holes that he was looking at right now would probably take several days to heal.

He had been quite relieved to learn that about the Scarf, and yet, it still didn't quite alleviate all of his concerns. It seemed very possible to him that the Scarf could become too damaged to repair itself--or just get completely obliterated by a strong enough attack.

He would just have to do his best to take care of it, he supposed. Much as it concerned him, Hector certainly wasn't about to stop wearing the Scarf in battle for its own protection. The whole point of it was to aid him in battle, and it had to hang freely over his armor in order to function properly. He'd tried tucking more of it in, but he found that it became less effective.

Which only made sense, he supposed. Its power was undoubtedly linked rather closely to its surface area. The more that was exposed, the more it could help him sense.

He parted ways with Zeff when the man's children came to greet him in Warrenhold's main plaza. Marcos and Ramira Elroy were strange kids, to be sure. Before departing with their father, Ramira offered Hector a high-five for some reason, and Marcos, a polite bow--which he found somehow even more weird.

But he was glad that they seemed to be in good spirits, at least. Ramira's foot injury all the way back in Dunehall was still mending, and unaided, she was largely immobile. Zeff seemed only too happy to have her in his arms or on his shoulders, and Marcos could often be seen pushing her around in her wheelchair or following close behind her when she was on crutches.

Marcos had worried him a bit, too. The boy's shyness was something that Hector could intensely relate to, and his apparent melancholy, even more so. Garovel said that the poor kid had been having nightmares ever since his mother's death.

They'd been through so much. Hector wished he could do more for them. They were his "cousins," after all, via Garovel and Chergoa's relation.

How the heck were you supposed to cheer kids up, though? Toys? Food? He was pretty sure they already had plenty of those things.

Eh, he was being stupid. He knew perfectly well those things wouldn't actually help them. Superficial things only helped superficially. If there was one thing Hector knew in life, it was that.

He didn't want to just give up on the idea, though. He was the Lord of Warrenhold, now. There had to be something he could do for the Elroy kids. He just had to figure out what it was.

With his training for the morning over with, Hector returned to his chamber to change into clothes that weren't tattered, and then started making the rounds. Garovel had previously told him that he should make a habit of visiting all of Warrenhold's facilities every day.

'Even if it's just a brief check-in, the routine of it is important for a multitude of reasons,' the reaper had told him. 'As a lord, you have a responsibility to your subjects, and the more visible you are to them, the easier it will be for them to place their trust in you. But also, there's no telling when someone might use this routine as an opportunity to inform you of something that you didn't already know. A proper lord should try to know everything that happens on his land.'

Hector very much appreciated the advice. When it came to acting like a lord, he was basically just winging it.

As he was making his rounds, however, a familiar sensation acquired his attention, and he decided to interrupt his lordly duties for a more pressing concern.

The Shard of the Dry God was calling out to him.