For the first week, Reg spent every free moment struggling through The Antebrumerian Landscape’s tangled prose. Yeva and Jashal helped too: between the three of them, and with help from Val and Annise, they were able to at least understand the basics of each chapter.

There were a few interesting tidbits. It sounded like ‘sheepdogs’ were used for herding rather than spiders. According to Val, dogs were basically a variety of panther that didn’t know how to climb. She’d never seen one, but told him everything she knew about all of the foreign animals the book talked about: cows, horses, oxen, rabbits, wolves, moose, deer, and bears. And while some buildings were made from wood as was proper, most seemed to include mud or stone that came from the ground. Metal came from the ground too: vast pits that were as deep as the Tree was tall.

But most of it was frustrating. Yeva’s constant complaint, that none of this was about how to fight the things down in the mist, kept coming up. Who cared that knights wore full plates of metal armor to symbolize their wealth and power? Or that there were churches to both the gods and the primordial dragons? Or that magic was rare and court wizards mostly cast spells for the nobility? None of it was trunk-solid and about what dangers patrols actually ran into.

Even Val’s enthusiasm for the text waned a bit after she finished it. It only offered tantalizing morsels about what forests, plains, mountains, and canyons had been like, and instead focused almost entirely on social structures and attacking other academics’ ideas about what the antebrumerian world had been like.

After the first few days, classes started to feel normal. Even puking and crying during The Self and the Other started to feel regular; it was still awful, but he started to be quicker at treating his terror as a sign that he needed to do something to help others. The hardest part of that class was choosing to swallow the potion at the start that weakened his mental defenses; Reg noticed that many of his classmates had started surreptitiously dumping it into canteens or holding it in their mouths. Reg didn’t blame them, but his experience in the mist gave him some faith that Instructor Mossgate’s horrifying mental attacks might have some use, so he choked down the full dose every time.

Advanced Arms continued to be crushing. The healing draughts they took after every class felt essential, and almost every class saw a few of them in the infirmary receiving more targeted healing. They never even touched a weapon in any class; instead, each class started with the Instructor of Arms declaring them, “Weak. Slow. Clumsy. Not ready battle.” before finding more and more extreme exercises to torment them with: squats while balancing on the hanging line, hanging from their arms while moving their legs in painful contortions, pushing sleds loaded down with heavy sacks across the rough floor of the cavern, and more.

Near the end of the week, when Dun and Reg were both face-down and shirtless on beds in the infirmary with a healer working on their backs, Reg ventured a question, “Is this how you upper-brancher normally train? I feel like I’ve gone ten rounds wrestling an invisisnake”

“Oh, bark and bramble, no. This is the strangest and most strenuous training I’ve ever done and my masters at House Adat were fond of odd training regimes. Fenjor has saying that the instructor is too twisted to teach and I’m starting to agree with him; I find it incomprehensible that we haven’t been able to practice actual techniques.”

Reg grunted assent. “That might be the first time Fenjor and I have ever agreed on anything. I don’t see how any of these exercises are supposed to help us use a spear better.” Reg paused for a few thoughtful moments trying to find the right words, “This is going to be a strange question, but you don’t seem to look down on me nearly as much as Fenjor does. I don’t see you laughing when he makes his comments about my inability to read or keep up during morning runs.”

“Oh, that’s simple.” Dun answered. “You touched me during our duel. You might be illiterate, slow, useless at magic, shameful with a bow, and speak like a muck-covered moss-farmer, but anyone who gets a touch on me in the circle is worthy of some respect. One day you might be worthy of serving in a platoon under me or helping guard my family’s holdings. Your current deficiencies are disappointing: I’d love to have more of a challenge here.”

“Thanks,” Reg said slowly, “I guess.”

“You’re welcome.” Dun answered cheerily.

Captain Merrin’s Tactics was the lone enjoyable class in the schedule. The first week, they focused entirely on after-action reports. Reading report after report, the class started to get a sense for what monsters lurked below in the mist: hidden maws in the ground that tried to lure patrols on to them and consume them; skeletons of humanoids and of mammoth creatures; flying shriekers that directed flocks of brightly colored flying beasts after patrols; twisted worlds that captured any who stumbled inside and could only be exited after finding a key; powerful revenants that were remnants of the times before that could cast strange and powerful magics; and other strange monstrosities. Each session, Reg felt like he was learning more about what it was the guard actually did.

He was quite proud of some written feedback on one of the scrolls he handed in -- “Your atrocious handwriting, deficient grammar, misspellings, and poor argumentation all serve to hide insights that might bloom into good policy. Adequate work.” -- and he carefully cut the feedback out, folded it up, and put it in a pocket in his sling-bullet pouch. That was top-fork praise from Captain Merrin and it was one of the few things during the first week that made Reg feel like he might actually belong here.

Evocation was frustrating and was made more frustrating when Jashal was able to charge his battery and make it glow with a soft, green light. Reg tried to be happy for him, but it was hard not to feel jealous that he’d been able to get past his block and Reg was still stuck holding a dull battery in his hand at the end of every class. Jashal described the feeling as “like relaxing after you’ve been holding it in for a while and you’re finally sitting down to share your bounty, you know?” That description wasn’t as useful as Jashal seemed to think.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

At the end of the week, Professor Ashsprocket called Reg over to his desk after directing the rest of the class to “Shape your sparks so that they cover the ball. Control of form like this is the first step towards many weapon-based evocations that Captain Merrin tells me are essential in the mists. Once you’re able to consistently coat the outside of the ball in two breaths, you may move on to the bowl and then the rod. Focus on form first, speed second.”

When Reg came over to Professor Ashsprocket’s desk, the short professor beamed at him, “Great news, Reg! The package I told you I ordered finally arrived. I think it’ll make a huge difference.” With a flourish, Professor Ashsprocket pulled out a small box that he handed to Reg to open.

Inside was a child’s doll of a noble elven lady: carved of dark hardwood, tiny crystal eyes glittered in a carefully painted face and it was draped in a fashionable silk dress of gold with violet accents. The doll was outfitted with crystal jewelry, bangles and a necklace, that on closer inspection was set into the hardwood body. The box included a few other tiny outfits for the doll: enchanter’s robes, a throwball uniform, and what looked like it was supposed to be a hunter’s leathers, although cut as they were, they wouldn’t offer much protection.

Reg gave an inquisitive look, “Uh, Professor?”

“Brilliant, if I do say so myself! Your problem with the battery is that you’re pulling so hard you can’t tell when you’re making progress. This will help. You know, my little Lettie spent so long playing with one just like it when she was three or four. She couldn’t bear to be separated from Mrs. Mucklehead for even a minute.” Professor Ashsprocket said, which didn’t really answer Reg’s question. The professor looked at Reg expectantly.

Reg gave the doll another look, “Professor, but what is it? I’ve never seen a doll like that. How do I use it?”

Professor Ashsprocket struck his head with his hand, “Oh, I should have guessed you wouldn’t have seen one of these! Dr. Keljor -- brilliant professor, you know, I maintain it was a real shame he was kicked out of Nest’eff -- anyways, this is a product of his toy company. The enchantments on these things are frankly better than most commercial work and they’re designed to respond to a child’s level of magic. Watch.” With that, Professor Ashsprocket laid one finger on the doll and its crystal eyes, crystal bangles, and crystal necklace all lit up immediately. “Pretty, isn’t it? And with a little practice, you can make the lights rotate or change their color.” As he said “rotate” and “change color,” Professor Ashsprocket demonstrated on the doll. “It was great practice for my little Lettie, and I’m sure it will help you get past your block. I want you to practice with it whenever you have a spare moment out of class. Good thing Jashal figured things out: I had originally thought the two of you would have to share when it arrived.”

Reg took the doll in its box back to his stool. On the one hand, he was excited to have something that might help him figure out what he was doing wrong. On the other hand, he didn’t want anyone to find out that he was so magically deficient he needed to play with a child’s doll. With luck, he could keep it in its box and nobody would ever see it. Plus, maybe he’d be able to figure out how to light it up in just a day or two.

Luck was not on his side.

Reg wasn’t sure when Fenjor or someone else noticed what he had in the box: maybe it was when he was practicing during dinner? Or maybe someone caught a glimpse during class? Or it could have been when he was working with it in the library. Regardless, ‘doll boy’ entered the list of insults that Fenjor delighted in hurling his way. What was more galling was that he wasn’t making any progress with it: the doll’s eyes stayed dull no matter what visualizations he tried.

After the six grueling days of classes, the weekend’s arrival was a relief to the recruits. Before releasing them, Captain Merrin stressed that, “the week’s end is not a time of rest. It is a time for you to do work for your classes and focus on remedying your many failings. Those who take this as a time of rest shall soon find themselves with as much time to rest as they’d like.” Reg wasn’t sure if she was threatening to kill students who relaxed, to kick them out of the guard, or warning them that they’d be killed by twists, but he took her warning seriously; the thought of failing out of the guard in under two moons when they had their first set of exams preyed on him.

That weekend set the pattern for the ones to come.

The first morning, Reg and Val headed out near the throwball field and the obstacle course where there was a nice open area where Val could practice her spearwork with Reg. Yeva sat nearby, channeling sparks over and over again. Annise had organized a throwball scrimmage and there were friendly shouts and heckling as the teams ran back and forth, dodging grasping vines, bolts of force, spider webs, and icy blasts.

Val was atrocious with the spear. She could move slowly through the forms on her own, but as soon as Reg assayed even the slowest of strikes, Val would inevitably either drop the spear, trip herself with it, or somehow stick it into a ridge of bark. They eventually settled on practicing the same block over and over again; Reg would do a slow overhand strike and Val would bring her staff into a position to block it. Even that was hard work for the gnome: she struggled to get into a consistent position that had her bracing properly with her core and legs.

The normally cheerful gnome got more and more frustrated as the morning went on, “By the mist-touched blight, why can’t I get this?”

Reg shrugged, “You’re getting it; it’s just slow work. You blocked two of the last eight with good form and you only dropped the spear once during that span. That’s strata away from where you were at the start of the morning. Let’s rest for a bit before getting back to it.”

That afternoon, they nested up in the library. Val worked through some advanced readings Professor Ashsprocket had recommended while occasionally answering Reg’s vocabulary questions. Between Yeva, Jashal, and Reg, they had a journal that was already almost full of strange vocabulary terms like cuirass, boulder, field, concomitant, steel, internecine, parochial, machicolation, and feudal. Without Val’s help, they’d have been totally lost.

The second day of the weekend was much like the first: Val and Reg spent the morning at the archery range and then the afternoon at the library.

That evening, Annise plopped down at their dining table with a bowl of beetle congee and exciting news; she’d heard when the first practicum would be and what they’d be doing. In two weeks, they’d be headed down to experience the mist.