Our next stop (and last on the ship) was talking to Jessie, Cark, and Cass. Nat was almost definitely coming with us, and Jessie was a probable yes, but Cark was going to have to make a call. He'd been hanging with Cass pretty much full time, and I wasn't sure if he'd want to come along and put himself in danger after all the downtime. Of course he'd ALSO been training with Zeke, and gods only knew what THAT had been like.

Knocking on the door of Jessie's place, I didn't have long to wait before pounding footsteps came rampaging toward the entryway. Within a few seconds the door was thrown open and a familiar face grinned up at me. "Shane!" Cheered Cass as she saw me. "And Callie!" She threw herself at my girlfriend, who caught her with a laugh.

"Hey kid. You seem sprightly today." Setting the nine year old on her hip with no difficulty, Callie carried the excited girl into the house. "You been good for your brother and Zeke?"

Cass giggled. "Sure. But Tony hasn't had much time for me anyway. Uncle Zeke has been training him. He's always super tired when he gets home, so I get to do pretty much whatever I want. I mostly watch cartoons and practice my Ragam. I heard Master came back with you guys?"

It was still weird hearing anyone refer to Abel as a respectable teacher. I nodded though. "Yeah, he's off with Mel somewhere. I think she wanted some time off before we head off. Granted, we're going to be in transit for a few months probably. We need to talk to your brother before we leave though. He might want to get off the ship before we depart, or make plans to stop partway."

When mom had mentioned arranging our trip, she'd given me a bit of time. I was using it to double check if everyone wanted to come along, and I was going to get in contact with Bethy and Gabe before leaving. Cark had been with us for a while, but this next leg of the journey was going to be pretty rough. I was happy to let him come along, especially after training with Zeke, but he'd probably be away from Cass a lot of the time. He deserved the opportunity to bail out if he wanted.

"Cassidy." Called a tired voice. "Don't harass our guests please." Cark stepped out of the hall, looking exhausted. "Shane, Callie, good to see you two. Here to see Jessie?"

I was guessing he was in serious pain, because he'd apparently missed all the stuff we'd said to his sister. My second clue was the fact that his eyes were blazing the telltale green of Jessie's life force. He must have been training like a madman not to be feeling energized by that much of her power. As I'd seen with my poison, Vitality prioritized injuries over anything else, so if you got yourself damaged enough it would soak up all the healing energy so you wouldn't be energized. He must have wrecked every muscle in his body to offset that much of it.

"And you." I said with a nod. "If you have the time. We're heading out on another trip, and I was hoping you'd come along this time. It's not like the Temple. Cass can stay with Zeke and you can visit her, but I'm not sure how much, so I wanted to give you the particulars. Though Jessie should also be part of this conversation, is she around?"

There was a loud crash from the back of the building, and Jessie came stumbling into the room, somehow covered in pots and pans on strings. "I'm here." She yelped. "Sorry, Cass and I were building a fort and she just ran off and left me in a big web of hanging pots."

"You were building a fort...out of pots?" I said incredulously, glancing at the wide array of metal cookware.

Cass sniffed derisively. "Blankets and pillows are for babies. I wanted a real fort. Like the ones you read about in books that can stand up to armies and stuff. I told Jessie and she said the biggest supply of metal in the house was all the pots. So were stringing them together and Jessie was gonna grow some special trees around them to hold them in place. Do you want to help?" Her tone was excited and pleading all at once, and Cark turned to Jessie with a frown.

"Why do you let her talk you into these things?" He said in exasperation. "And where is Randall." One of the pots rattled where it had been dragging on the floor, and it popped up to reveal a small bear the size of a loaf of bread. I blinked at him, and Cass squealed with delight, bolting over to scoop the little animal up.

I grinned at Jessie. "Been practicing with that shrinking necklace huh? Seems like it's working well for you." My friend had been untangling herself from the pots, and she didn't bother to look up as she shrugged. "It's convenient being able to take him places without Abel to act as a taxi service. Plus he's super cute like this." She paused, rolling her eyes and glancing at the bear. "That's not demeaning. Being cute is a good thing."

Recognizing the beginnings of an argument between them, I hurriedly cut her off. "Gotcha. Did you hear what we were saying to Cass? I'm thinking Cark was deep in his Focus, trying to concentrate on something other than pain, since he missed it, so I can explain again if you want."

"I got the gist." She nodded. "We have a new destination. You're here to find out if I wanted to go, though I'm sure you guessed I probably would. Mostly here to see if Cark is in, that all?" At my nod, she laughed. "You know I'm with you to the end. I take it you're also here to check on my stat bumps?"

I nodded easily. "Sure, if you want to share. We got Benny's already, and I'm curious to know what you got, though I highly suspect I know already."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

She grinned. "My stats do tend to be in a specific vein. Though I'm starting to hit the point where my rank is dragging tthe low ones up with it. Most of it was what you'd expect though. Lots of Vitality, still riding off the godslayer incident from what I can tell, and a big chunk of Might." She grabbed some paper and scrawled out her stats for us to see.

Jessica Evans- F-rank. Ability: Intermediate Lifeweaving- Infuse living things with life itself and direct their actions while the users power flows through them. Control had limited effect on sapient entities. Prolonged exposure to life energy may cause lasting effects in controlled subjects.

Might 1125 Impact

35 Fantasy 108 Vitality 3292 Focus 105 Perception 115 Creation

108 Progress to next rank: 4780/10000 Pet- Wolf named Lily and bear named Randall(Beginner Beast Bonding with Jessie) soul strength: Green- 20% Skills: Intermediate Horticulture, Beginner First Aid, Minor Herbalism, Minor Flower Arrangement, Minor Beast Taming Mastery, Beginner Beast Bonding, Intermediate Shape of the Wild

One thousand three hundred and twenty two points. Not bad. I wasn't surprised her stats had all been dragged over a hundred, she was the only one of us that still had anything lower, and I'd been expecting that soon. Still, a flat one thousand Vitality and two hundred fifty Might wasn't bad at all. Especially not for Jessie, whose Vitality was higher than any stat any of us had now, despite her being the lowest in total stat points.

"Very nice." I said with a whistle. "No wonder you're so happy to play with Cass. Do you ever run out of energy?"

She chuckled. "I do juice myself up more than I maybe should. Anyway, is that enough points for...whatever you're planning? Actually, what ARE you planning. You've been cagey since you got here."

I considered how to phrase it, but in the end coming right out seemed smartest. "With the big fight coming up." I made sure not to use the W word in front of Cass. "I thought we needed some more regimented training. Not just in fighting, but fighting in a group. Stuff that's going to carry over when we expand the pavilion later and during my candidacy. So I want to head to the empire to join up with one of the noble armies. Get some field experience. I figured you wouldn't be against learning some field medicine."

Her face brightened. "That sounds like a blast. My First Aid Skill is falling behind anyway. I need it at Intermediate before my next rank up. And with my new soul strength I could even get it to Expert maybe! My Horticulture I've been training on my own, just recently got it to Intermediate, so that's taken care of for now. I got a nice bump in the alchemy room back at the Academy."

"We figured you'd feel that way." Callie said with a grin. Turning to Cark, she raised a questioning eyebrow. "The big question is how do YOU feel? You willing to come with us? I'm pretty sure boot camp and being deployed with one of the noble armies isn't going to be fun, but we're almost definitely going to learn a lot. If you'd rather go off on your own we could drop you two somewhere nice though. Or you could keep training with Ze-"

His eyes went wide with panic. "NO!" He almost screamed. "No more. I'll go. Going through basic training sounds like heaven compared to what HE has me doing." Suddenly I was less upset that Zeke's geas kept him from training me. I'd seen Cark take on monsters the size of a bus, but he sounded like he was going to cry just remembering what Zeke had been doing to him. What was it with high level Ascendants that they only knew how to train people like monsters?

Cass pouted at him. "You should be nicer to Uncle Zeke. He's just trying to help you. Master says that training is three parts hard work, three parts talent, and four parts suffering. You need to keep going if you want to get stronger."

I tried not to snicker at my friend's devesatated expression as his nine year old sister who wasn't allowed to do anything but katas lectured him on hard training. "What is he TEACHING you? And WHEN? I've sat in on all your lessons except the ones Zeke watches over." He glared at me. "This is your fault you know. Your uncle has no concept of human limitations."

"Because he's basically not one?" I said with a shrug. "After a certain level of advancement you start losing that kind of stuff, or so I'm told. Maybe don't expect temperance from the guy whose idea of a relatively long training session is probably spending a hundred years sparring."

I wasn't sure Zeke saw things like that, but some of his comments made it likely. Plus I'd seen him spend like a week almost uninterrupted crafting masks. That level of focus (or maybe Focus with a capital F) wasn't something that normal humans would have. He sighed heavily. "Yeah, you're not wrong. I'm so used to dealing with G-rankers and lower, back home I never had the chance to even interact with anyone at E-rank, nevermind a MASTER anything."

Laughing, I clapped him on the shoulder. "Trust me, I feel your pain. Anyway, I'll ask Zeke to lay off for the duration of the trip. It'll probably take a while, and we can all relax, aside from my basic wish stuff. But before our downtime we have one more job to do. We have to say our goodbyes to everyone else, and talk to a few friends before we leave." Bethy and Gabe were still floating nearby on her dad's ship. I just hoped the Vampire didn't mind us visiting.