“I wish I could tell you that the world is a safe place, Atlessoa. That a safe life is your right, and that you’ll have it because you deserve it. You do deserve it, but you aren’t very likely to have it. Not without strength. Strength is safety. And strength is attainable for you. Now stab this rat,” I said, holding a squirming polerat in my hands up to the horrified orphan girl.
“But…”
“No buts! You don’t even want to know how many of these things I’ve killed to get as strong as I am now. And you’re five years behind me from when I started. I’ll be leaving soon and I need you to be ready.”
Atlessoa pouted, misty eyed, and raised the knife I had bought her.
The polerat’s little squeal faded, and I took the knife from her, wiping the blood from the blade onto a spare cloth.
“Ok, that was step one. Now the second step for your survival plan. We’re going to cook this thing up and eat it.”
Atlessoa’s horrified face returned.
* * *
My first attempt at teaching Atlessoa to cook was an abject failure, which told me that she didn’t have the SP necessary. It would have to wait until she grinded out enough polerat kills to level up. I had her alternate between killing the vermin and pushing magic into her enchanted light and kept her topped up on MP with potions. It was grueling, and she was flagging, but she hit level 4 and I quickly had her pick up the cooking skill.
“Now that you have both a source of meat and a means of preparing it, you’ve got food to eat and a way to recover magic to keep training your powers,” I said, having explained that cooked meat will restore some of her magic power, though less than a sip of the potion would.
“How will I start a fire on my own?”
“You’ll have to get stuff to burn, but for the fire itself, that’s coming up,” I said, pulling out two stone discs. I had just picked up my new golden 4-point and 5-point magic circles from the engraver, so I could hand down my old stone magic circles to Soa. “Be careful with these. Don’t break them. Not until you learn to make more.”
I pulled out the 5-point magic one first.
“Does this remind you of anything?”
“It’s the same circle inside the light disc,” she said, holding her enchanted item up.
“Right. It’s the same kind of magical focal point: a 5-point magic circle. It can do other things, too, when you get strong enough. But for now, you’re going to try casting light from your own magic, not just from the enchantment.”
I got her seated and put the circle in her hands in her lap, and got her to close her eyes.
“You’re going to do pretty much the same thing you’ve been practicing, pushing that same amount of magic power into this circle. The same amount, Soa, not more. Now that you’re casting your own magic, it’s possible to use too much power, and if you use too much, it can hurt you or even kill you.”
She opened her eyes and stared at me.
“That sounds… dangerous. Is it really ok for me to be doing this?”
“Remember that fake fire I made to help us escape? That was this kind of magic. You have to practice so that you can get strong enough to do that, but it all starts with this.”
She nodded, shutting her eyes again, and focused.
“Push your magic into the circle, but unlike with the enchanted circle, this time shape your magic on your own to make light. It will feel similar, but more… controlled. More shaped. It has to come from your will, your imagination, your vision for what you’re trying to make a reality. Picture a light appearing in front of you, and send it exactly the same amount of magic you were giving to the enchantment.”
Slowly, with brows furrowed, Atlassoa pushed her MP through the stone magic circle. I appraised her, and grinned.
“Open your eyes, Soa,” I said.
Atlessoa opened her eyes and saw the floating ball of light in front of her.
“I did that?”
“You did. You’re officially a mage. Congratulations.”
Atlessoa squealed with excitement and threw her arms around my neck. I gently peeled her off and patted her on the head.
“Now take a sip of your potion. We’ve got more work to do.”
* * *
With the basics of magic sorted, though in the opposite order from myself, I had Atlessoa learn 4-point magic as well so she could start fires. I cautioned her multiple times to be careful, never to overdo it, and to try to recover magic power between spells with meat whenever possible, but told her that she would recover over time as well.
I didn’t teach her any combat magic, as she didn’t have the means to track her MP and didn’t have the reserves like Nodel to throw herself to it. I only taught her the very basics of each of the traditional four elements, focusing on fire as a practical need, and showed her how I made the circle by making her some small spares. I told her to work up to it slowly, shaping small rocks to begin before moving on to larger ones.
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What I really wanted her to focus on was illusory magic. She needed to be able to hide her face, hide her presence, be stealthy, be sneaky, and to survive.
“Watch,” I said, disappearing in front of her, then reappearing. Then I bent the light around me to make me look skinny, or fat, or female, or even an adult, although it was hard to convincingly pass as a significantly larger person when you didn’t interact with the world around you in the same way.
“And… I’ll be able to do that?”
“Only if you practice a lot and keep getting stronger. We should kill some more polerats. Come on.”
We walked to the back alleys we had been training in, looking for a polerat, when I saw something else digging through some trash.
“What’s that?” I said, pointing. Atlessoa squinted.
“Looks like a muskoon,” she said, pulling out her knife.
“Wait,” I said, and cast a calm spell on the beast. “These are common here?”
“Yeah. They get into the garbage like the polerats, but they’re a little sneakier and harder to catch. I see them a lot in the alleys.”
I hadn’t seen one of these before, and I couldn’t help myself. New beasts always made me curious. I approached the calmed creature, and took a closer look. It was long in the body and looked pretty, well, wiggly. It had stubby legs, a little snout, a masked face, and a ringed tail. It was covered in sable colored fur and had little grabby hands. It was an adorable mix between a ferret and a raccoon, and roughly a size between the two Earth animals. I immediately wanted to tame it, but scolded myself. I couldn’t just tame every beast I met, that had already been a disaster once.
Atlessoa, on the other hand…
“Hey. What would you say to getting a familiar, like Treepo is for me?”
She made a face.
“A muskoon? I don’t know…”
“Well, a muskoon, for now. Come on, this’ll be fun.”
I gave Atlessoa a piece of meat, and then slapped her hand back down when she went to stick it in her own mouth. Then I had her focus on it, guiding her through the same process of channeling magic as she had with the enchantment, but into the meat.
I was finally starting to get an idea of how all these skills worked together, and how to teach them better. I had learned a lot just from teaching Soa. Having a simple enchantment to learn on was a huge help. I would remember that for later, and decided to keep my remaining enchanted items for the moment.
Once I saw her MP dip, I had her feed it to the muskoon. At level 4, she should have gained 4 SP and had already used one point each on cooking, 5-point magic, and 4-point magic. Assuming one hadn’t got assigned automatically along the way, she should have just enough to learn taming.
I watched as she acquired a familiar and the taming skill, and grinned wide.
“Now you’re a tamer like me, too,” I said, patting her on the head.
“Yeah, but he’s not as cute as Treepo,” she pouted.
“Right. Well. We just need to evolve him like I did Treepo, then.”
I pulled out some shagloth meat and a small piece of draconewt meat. Both were powerful beasts and should rapidly propel the muskoon to its level cap.
“First take a sip of potion, then infuse these with magic and feed them to your familiar,” I said, guiding her to do the work instead of doing it myself. It would likely improve their bond, and I didn’t know how other tamers affected familiars. I thought of Gregory with Bilgus, and checked my own stats, but he was still listed as my familiar.
Once the muskoon had eaten, and was probably getting pretty full, I pulled out a magic crystal.
“Oooh,” Soa cooed at the sparkly blue rock.
“Now feed it this,” I said. She looked at me like I was crazy, but did what I said.
I watched with delight as the muskoon glowed with evolution, eager to see what it would turn into.
It grew larger, nearing but not quite matching Treepo. Its arms and legs got a bit longer, proportionate to its body, but it still maintained a weasel-like shape, though more muscular, kind of like an otter. The tail fluffed up quite dramatically, and the beast’s fur in general grew lighter along the body, into a point coloration, which was likely why it was called a pointed muskoon when I appraised it after it was finished evolving.
“Ok. It’s kind of cute now,” Soa said, scooping up the beast and holding it in her arms.
“I like it,” I said with a grin. Soa held it so that its lower body dangled free under her arms, so I could see between its legs. “I like her, I suppose I should say. She’ll need to eat, but she should be able to help you hunt polerats and other small animals. And I’d rather you have someone to watch your back once I leave.”
Soa’s face fell, as it did every time I mentioned leaving, but I couldn’t stay and I couldn’t bring her. That was why I was putting so much energy into helping her get powered up and prepared.
“You’ll need to come up with a name for her,” I said.
“I will,” Soa said softly, looking down at her new companion.
* * *
Gossip about the “fire that didn’t happen” spread through Roko, but with no actual damage the investigation didn’t last long. Several mages were still studying the district, trying to get a read on the local magic, but as far as I understood there wasn’t actually a way for it to get traced back to me.
That didn’t mean there wasn’t some way to track me and that it wouldn’t come back to cause me problems, but I was still confident I had done the right thing. I would be leaving Roko soon enough anyway. Before I did, I wanted to do what little else I could for Soa, and also myself.
There wasn’t much else I could do for her, not in such a small timespan. I fed her some shagloth meat and draconewt meat as well. Even though she was a human and not a beast, the meat was still powerful and a novel experience and pushed her ahead a little bit. The sooner she got to level 5 the better, because she needed the boost to her MP to improve with magic.
Beyond that, I had to prepare myself to leave Roko. Marshan had cleared out the inventory from Mirut and was stocking up for the journey south, and I still had to pick up my armor from the smithy.
I managed to get there before they closed up for the night, and the smith brought me in to take a look at the white draconewt scale armor and to try it on for size.
It was magnificent. Resplendent. Powerfully defensive. I felt untouchable in it.
“This is truly a work of art,” I told the man, and he nodded.
“Aye, that’s some fine light armor. You come to me when you’ve grown out of it, yeah?”
“I will. Hopefully you can modify it so I can get some more life out of it,” I said, holding back that I had loads more on hold for then anyway.
After paying and thanking the man, I tossed my cloak over the armor rather than take it off. With the higher quality clothes underneath and the shimmering armor on top, I felt amazing, even if I hid it under a cloak to avoid standing out in Roko. I didn’t need to get the blood of some thug all over my new gear on day one.
When I got to the warehouse, I found Marshan, who nodded to me.
“Pilus, glad you’re here. Change of plans,” he said, motioning at some new cargo. “We aren’t headed to Haklan next. We’re headed north, to the capital.”