The rest of that day went by in a blur. I had so much to think about, so much to do. Training with my mom was an intimidating thought. A powerful A-ranker with two abilities, one of which was similar to some of my own powers. It would be interesting to see exactly how far I could go with Mephistopheles.
Hopefully I managed to apply the lessons to my other forms. Zagan wasn’t combat based, so I couldn’t really see how that one would work, but the others…well I’d have to see.
The next morning dawned with me still distracted. I got up, put on my armor, headed for the door…and tripped. I went sprawling forward as I came out my door, slamming into the wall and leaving a bunch of dents as I came back to my feet and spun around to glare at Benny, who was leaning against the wall with his foot sticking out across my doorway at shin height.
“What the fuck?” I snapped, glaring at him. I wasn’t hurt of course, I had State of Grace going almost constantly, plus sixty five Impact. Still, it was the principle of the thing. “Were you waiting outside my door just to trip me?”
He rolled his eyes. “Obviously. Now, mind telling me why it worked?” I opened my mouth to lash out at him…and paused. He was right. That shouldn’t have worked.
Benny was weaker than I was, had no Path, yet he’d been able to tip me over without me noticing. He held out a hand and helped me up. “You need to calm down.” He said bluntly. “I know you well enough to see when you’re in your own head. Callie lets you figure things out on your own, which is fine usually, but sometimes you need someone to throw off your stride.”
“That’s easy to just say.” I snapped. “This is a big deal. This isn’t JUST an interrogation. We’re presenting ourself to the factions. This will set a tone.”
He cocked his head. “You really think it’s that big of a deal? That this will mean that much?”
“It definitely will.” Came the voice of my sister from behind us. Neither of us was surprised, we heard someone coming even if we didn’t notice who, but we turned to find Chelsea smiling at us wanly. She stepped forward, adjusting my cape absently and then brushing a bit of wall dust off my chest.
Benny didn’t argue, just sat thoughtfully for a bit before asking. “What exactly are we walking into?”
“Today?” She said calmly. “Not much. The Conclave won’t start with a hearing or a meeting. It’ll start with a banquet. Introductions of everyone present are a must. It might seem petty, but it’s a fact of Ascendant culture. Appearances are everything, so they’ll make sure to be as ostentatious as possible in the ways they can.”
I could see that, it would be pretty on brand. It also gave the wolves at the gate a target, which was a bad thing. Then again, I could easily see how that would paint a target on us, so chances were good the enemy would assume something like that would be heavily guarded.
“What kind of schedule are we looking at for the whole thing?” I asked cautiously. “If appearance is going to play a role…” I trailed off, knowing she would get my point.
She chuckled. “The Conclave will last a week. The first night will be a banquet. Then there will be three days of games. They’re supposedly a chance to encourage cooperation, but mostly they’re a way for the younger generations of different factions to demonstrate strength. Their success will help build momentum going into negotiations.”
“Really?” I asked in surprise. This had to be what my mom meant about me needing training. It ALSO meant that my friends and I would be fighting on different sides. Not all of us, but Gabe, Bethy, and Chelsea all represented other factions. “How does some kids fighting mean anything though?”
“Like I said.” She shrugged. “Everything is based on image. A full on competition between the S-rankers would not only be way too destructive, it would be beyond the scope that most people would even be able to comprehend. When we fight it’s visible. There’ll be brackets for E, D, and C-rankers. Nothing higher than that.”
That was interesting, though I didn’t even think we knew any current C-rankers. Still, we’d be expected to represent our factions I assumed. “Why didn’t they tell us?” I asked numbly. “We could have prepared.”
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“So you didn’t prepare.” She said with a laugh. “They have some training in mind, I’m sure, but it’ll start after everyone is introduced at the banquet. Don’t ask me why. The C-rank games will be the first day, so we’ll have time to train.” That was a relief at least. I wanted to maybe watch the D-rank games so we could cheer on Callen, plus seeing a bunch of Masters fight sounded cool, but the first day we could skip.
For a minute I wondered how much of my heart to heart had influenced mom to train me and how much had been this. Then I realized I was going to be competing for Harrison and the WCP and she was going to literally be training her competition, and my heart warmed a bit.
We all met up downstairs in the front room of the inn, getting breakfast and then getting ready to head over to mom’s place. I wasn’t sure what we would do all day before we actually attended the banquet, but I didn’t mind the distraction. I wondered if it was considered cheating to give out some wishes to help everyone’s chances.
Once we finished, we left for the Church District, taking the bus, and as we sat there, chatting about the games, I realized another reason they might be doing this. On the eve of war, having something positive and fun to focus on might help people keep calm. This was going to be a big deal for years to come, and a bunch of really stressed people making those decisions would only make it harder. Affecting the tone of the Conclave in a positive way was probably very smart. Especially with so many Ascendants who would probably be influenced by the renown gathered here. A good start to the recursion could be nothing but good.
While we rode, I withdrew from the conversation, reaching into my ring and pulling out a book I hadn’t spent nearly enough time reading. Basics of Skill Design. Opening the old book, I started again on page one.
The text was…dense. I noticed that every time. Not just packed in tight, but heavy. Like the book itself had Impact, even if not enough to qualify as an enchanted item. The longer I read, the more I lost myself in it. The first page was a foreward, and philosophical musing on the nature of Skills, and despite it not containing any technical information, it was incredibly useful.
The author mused on Skills, on what they really were, and why they existed, and why so many of us chose to create new ones rather than to make do. He posited that Skills weren’t really some mythical complicated system at their core. They were a wish.
A skill was just a dream that someone made reality, using the dreams of others. A heartfelt plea to the universe to accomplish a goal. And all the Skills we made, or found, were just mechanisms to grant the people who had them their hearts desire. I stopped, staring down at the volume quietly as I considered who had written it.
The person in this book made no mention of the Wish power, not of the WCP. He spoke as if those things didn’t exist. His name was Wyndham, and his unique stance on Skills…was this my great-great however many times great grandfather? Was Alistair Wyndham the original Wishmaster?
It made sense, honestly, not just because of how old Arble was, but because I’d heard the name Alistair Wyndham before. One of my relatives in the Moonsong Glade had it. If you were going to name your kid after a family member, why not the biggest baddest family member of all. How many Alistair Wyndhams were there in the family? Ten? Twenty? I was glad I’d only met the one. That seemed like it would be confusing.
Shaking that thought off, I went back to the book. The more I learned, the more subtle meaning I managed to dig out of each word. This book was written by someone who knew what they were doing. Layers and layers of meaning hidden in each and every word.
Some books are too technical to be read by beginners, but some books are written by people who understand how things start. Set a foundation, introduce the mechanisms and the premise, but do it in such a way that while a layman might only get a few scraps of information, a reread will produce more knowledge.
It only took me about fifteen minutes of reading to understand exactly what made the Wishmaster different than anyone else. To find the reason he became a god. He KNEW Skills.
The Emperor and Fairy Queen were great leaders, as was the Unity, as were, in their own way, were Black Sorrow and the Red Revenant. They were all charismatic people who gathered the worship of large groups on their way up.
Not the Wishmaster. Not really. He stayed out of the limelight, even as his power drew him to be a focus. He was unique among all the gods because he reached that height in spite of the attention of others not because of it. Though this was pre-wish power (I was almost sure) Alistair Wyndham casually mentioned reaching Master level in no less than seventy Skills within the first chapter.
They weren’t dropped in as a matter of arrogance, simply to illustrate different points, and to show the way different stats could interact to produce different effects. The diagrams were oddly complicated, but familiar, because they were the patterns and Skill constructs I saw when I was making Skills myself.
Except…they weren’t. It was like a child making small buildings out of blocks, then walking into a toy store and seeing a hundred foot scale model of a futuristic city made of those same blocks. My fumbling Skill designs, even my best, were nothing but crude scrawling messes next to even the simplest of the constructs he was drawing out.
It was staggering, how much I could learn from them, despite how incredibly small each diagram was, and how complex. There were, for instance, certain patterns and substructures that different stats took to better than others.
Vitality liked curves, Might was inclined to straight lines, Focus should include circular patterns, and as such, worked exceptionally well with Vitality, but poorly with Might unless you included a construct of Perception, which used waves. Unless of course you stacked in some diagonals from Fantasy.
It was dizzying, really, the amount of caveats and sub rules included in the manual, and I was only in the first chapter, only barely managing to scratch the surface. I had so much to learn, to apply to my own Skills. I thought I’d been doing ok, but that was because of the strength of my soul and the relative simplicity of the Skills I was making.
I lost myself in the book, trying to commit everything to memory, but the sheer density of information meant even my Focus wasn’t enough for a single read through. I found myself going back to reread sections, understanding more the second time.
This book wasn’t just going to take me weeks to finish, I’d have to reread it multiple times to get everything I could out of it, and at this rate it would be slower each time. By the time we arrived at my mom’s place though, I was grinning from ear to ear. Training aside, this was something I could do to get better. I wasn’t worried about the monsters the enemy could make anymore. When I finished learning everything this book had to teach, I would be a monster too.