Getting back up the mountaintop was surprisingly easier than expected. For me. Yvette made the climb, hauling us all up. She was literally ten times stronger than the rest of us, so it wasn't a tough trip, and she managed it smoothly and in like a fourth of the time I had, even WITH my little jump cheat.

Which meant we still had plenty of time to make it to the camp by nightfall even after getting up there. It made the whole thing about a thousand times easier and more convenient. When we arrived, I wasn't shocked to see Gabriel around, having relieved Bethany and sent her off to find the next team.

"Hello the camp." I said with a wave as I approached. I caught sight of Benny and Celine over by Annalise's canopy bed, and my best friend turned and saw me.

"You son of a bitch!" Benny yelled, more in irritation than anger. "I pulled a fucking all nighter managing those calculations and trying to put together a proper map and you just FIND one!" From Celine's groan I was guessing this particular complaint wasn't a new one.

I smirked at him. "You realize if we hadn't found the map we were all going to DIE probably?" I inquired politely, which I absolutely knew would drive him up the wall. Much like myself, the thing Benny hated most was being spoken to calmly when he was pissed off.

"I KNOW that!" He hissed angrily. "You ass. But NOW I have to completely rearrange our search parties and factor in the order we need to kill these things in, whatever that is. I've been recalculating based on the drop off locations we got and the teams should be easier to locate, but I think you'll need to make some more of those compasses. I have Gabriel standing by for a rework, apparently his second target point was slightly off." Celine snorted, and Benny turned to glower at her. "Was SLIGHTLY off, within an acceptable margin of error."

Annalise, who had been watching smugly as he spoke, added sweetly. "A hundred mile margin of error."

"This is a big planet!" Benny scowled. "There's a lot of STUFF here. And this stupid mountain doesn't follow the laws of physics, even the nonsensical version that WE live by. I was basing my calculation partially off of distance traveled on the way here. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to do."

Laughing, I turned to Yvette. "Can you help him with this please? Maybe consult with him for the calculations to decide the order we need to kill the conduits?" She gave me a solemn nod, and I rolled my eyes as I turned to head away from them, saying to Callie. "I forgot how whiny he gets when he's wrong about something."

"I heard that!" Shouted Benny from behind me. I just gave him the finger over my shoulder.

"You were meant to!" I responded loudly. Callie snorted and shook her head. "Anyway, did you find anything good among the spellbooks? I know the others found some too. Any interesting shadow spells?"

She shook her head sadly. "Too niche. I've been working on something though." She withdrew a pair of daggers I hadn't seen before. "You remember my bike?"

"The one I refused to get on for fear of a sudden fiery death? The one that looked like you'd crashed it a dozen times by the time I saw it?" I said flatly. "No, no memory at all." She rolled her eyes with a huff of annoyance. Everyone in our team had agreed not to let Callie drive. It wasn't exactly that she was bad at it, she had amazing reflexes like any Ascendant. It was more that her definition of acceptable risk when driving pretty much anything was much different than anyone elses.

"Anyway." She said loudly, forcefully talking over me despite me being completely silent. "The reason I asked is because if you remember, I had it made from special materials like my coat is, so I could imbue it over time with darkness. Made it pliable to my power without it being part of me." She held up the daggers. "These are not made of special material, other than being F-rank. Seems like a side effect of the power change is that I can still do it. Eventually. It's taking a really long time."

I held out my hand, and she passed one to me. I weighed the thing in my hand. "Nice. That's huge, Cal. You have a dagger teacher you can work with?"

She nodded. "Gabriel's crew is here for a while longer, and one of the guys he works with uses daggers. One of the girls uses a staff too. I figure the two of us could ask a favor, maybe get a little training if you're up for it. Your staff is damned useful, but you don't really know how to use it except for spinning it around and smacking things with it."

"I'd argue there's no other valuable use for a big stick." I said solemnly. "But a bit of hands on training can't exactly hurt. I assume you don't want to just ask on your own?"

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

To my surprise, her face pinched. "I want to get back into the habit of training together. We haven't been fighting like we used to since I got my power. I know the whole spy mistress thing is damned useful, but I don't want to lose our combat style. I have a lot of fun fighting with you."

I didn't know what to say for a second, then I nodded. "Yeah, I have fun fighting with you too." I reached down and took her hands. "Look, we're still getting our balance, ok? First you were way stronger than me, now that I've caught up you had this big power change. It'll take some time, but we're just finding our way on the battlefield again. We've got this, right?"

Her grimace smoothed out. "Yeah. We got this." She let out a deep breath. "We got it. So all we have to do is train together a bit more."

"Nope." I said bluntly. At her look I just shrugged. "What? We can't just punch stuff together and magically make things better. But I think we've already been doing other stuff. I think a lot of the problem is that you're having trouble finding your place in the group since giving me the reins. Or am I wrong?"

"Not...wrong." She hedged. "I mean, sure, I can do the whole intelligence gathering thing, but it's not really the same."

I nodded. "I know. But that's not all you do. You're my partner. You've been letting me take the lead to find my way, to...middling success. But you're still involved. We're still doing this together. It's not like you aren't up front when I do things wrong. And I'm glad. I need someone to yell at me when I do something stupid. It's going to happen sometimes."

"Sometimes?" She said skeptically, though I could tell she was fighting down a smile.

I rolled my eyes. "This? This is why we can't have nice things. I was TRYING to have a moment here. You couldn't let me be romantic for a minute?"

She smiled sweetly and took my face in her hands. "You're always romantic, sweetie. It's one of the things I love about you. Another is that you care enough to check in with me about my own insecure bullshit. Everything you're saying is true, and I know we're in this together. I'm feeling a bit aimless after transitioning between jobs. That's not about us, and I know the difference."

Blowing out a breath, I nodded. "Well...that's good at least. I guess that means I can't help with the whole aimlessness thing, huh?"

"You?" She said incredulously. "You literally JUST figured out what you wanted to do with your life like two weeks ago. That's not a dig. It's just my point. Sometimes it takes a while. Most of my life has been about sticking it to my dad, and now he's just some random asshole on a backwater planet. I'm adjusting to the change in scale before I set my sights on something new."

Which was fair. It wasn't like I could take shots at her for not having a life goal, especially not given what I'd been doing up to now. "Alright, well I still think training together is a good plan, and I'm glad you brought it up. Any time I get to spend with you pretty much guarantees a good day."

She rolled her eyes, but she was smirking. "I still don't know how you say gooey romantic shit like that and make it sound reasonable." Letting her hands drop from my face she grabbed one of mine and started dragging me toward Gabriel's group. "Come on you sap, lets go get started letting someone beat you violently about the head and shoulders with a big stick."

"Joy." I deadpanned. "Exactly what I always wanted."

We headed over to where Gabriel was, and the big blonde man nodded somberly as we approached. "So, you heard we've been temporarily benched I take it?"

"Yup." I said succinctly as I dropped into a seat nearby (they'd set out a whole living room set for some reason and one chair was free) Callie plopped down in my lap since it was the only empty seat. "I take it you heard about the ritual and the fact that we were probably going to die following the original plan?"

He nodded. "I did. I'd say it was lucky they found the tower, but between fate sense and intentional placement, it doesn't seem like there was much luck involved. Still, it's certainly not a bad thing to have more information. We found another of the teams, and Bethany was sent out for one. The other seven search parties had varying levels of success. Four of them came back with their quarries, the other three reported no results. Either those teams are dead or they were too far away to find."

"Fifteen total then." I said with a sigh. "And four potentially dead. Not ideal, but it could be worse. With the new map we should be able to dispatch another wave of search parties, but I have a feeling you, Bethany, and I will probably end up on a different sort of detail. In light of that, I was hoping I might ask a favor. Callie mentioned one of your guys is a dagger expert, and one of your team members uses a staff?"

He nodded. "Archimedes actually uses daggers most of the time. And yes, Willow is proficient in staff techniques. I take it you were hoping for some training while we wait?"

"If you're open to it." I said with a shrug. "I can pay for it with wishes. Callie is my girlfriend and making her safer is in my best interests since we fight together. And I could really use a better handle on my own combat style. The meta mechanics I have down, but some more advanced techniques would certainly help." I actually had plans to eventually create my own staff art based on the techniques I already had from DS Mastery, but walk before you run, right?

"I believe that could be arranged." He said after a moment. "We'll be working together on this in any case, and your gesture helping us with the temple turned out to be even more fortuitous than expected. You may have saved our lives by joining us, and I won't forget it." I didn't mentioned the information he might be holding onto about my mom, whatever it was, I didn't think now was the time. I was off balance enough. Standing up, he gestured us over to where some of the team members not seated with him were talking. "How about we get started right away."