Wish upon the Stars (Original Superhero cultivation sci fi litrpg)

[Malcolm Tent]

I groaned as I pushed the door shut. I was exhausted. Today had been my monthly compulsory education download, and those always took it out of me. No matter how many times I sat in that uncomfortable metal chair and got let them stick those awful leads to my temples it never got any less jarring or uncomfortable. Still, it was better than the alternative, rumor had it back before the download had been perfected they forced everyone at or under majority to sit in cramped rooms all day and learn everything through rote memorization. That sounded like torture to me.

Luckily, the download didn't actually hurt, it was just tiring and annoying to sit through. I called it a win in any case. I dropped my wallet and scan ring on the table by the door as I slipped off my shoes and headed inside. The lights were on when I got here, but that didn't mean much, so I raised my voice to call for my Uncle. "Hey Zeke, you here?" I got no response, but Zeke could get a bit wrapped up in his work so I headed back to his workshop to double check. The door was unlocked as usual and pushing it open all I saw was an empty workbench full of creepy painted masks, as usual.

I shrugged. Seemed like he wasn't home. I headed back to the kitchen and popped a mat stick into the materializer, selecting the meal I wanted and pressing the button. I left the food to construct and headed over to slump down on the couch calling out a command to the scan box on the table against the wall. A floating screen of light identical to the one that appeared over my scan ring when it was in use appeared above the table, and I instructed the box. "Local news. Let's see what's going on today."

The scan box brought up the local feeds as instructed. Scan tech was incredibly intuitive, a sort of amalgamation of old style AR and hardlight tech pioneered about a century ago by an Ascendant who went by the name of Dr. Radical. No one was quite sure why he called himself that, but mad scientists tended to be even weirder than most Ascendants, and even the heroic ones were usually pretty nuts, as evidenced by their label. Still, their creations made up about half of today's commonly used technology, so it was hard to be too dismissive.

That attitude sadly, was not one shared by most people in the Conglomerate, as mad scientists were part of a select group of Ascendant powers that were considered to be high risk for corruption. Any potentially corrupt power was treated with suspicion and scorn, and that was one of the many reasons heroic mad scientists like Dr. Radical were an anomaly. It was a shame too, because they were damn useful, but so many of them got driven off the heroic track and ended up specializing in weapons because of all the disdain.

The feed today was pretty standard. Some heroic Ascendants from the Unity going up against one of the local criminal gangs. Most of the heroic Ascendants in the city ended up working for the Unity, mostly because their training centers were the only real place to get an introductory course on your powers when you Ascended. There used to be other places that would give a tutorial class on power use, but over time they had all ended up being "uncovered" by the Unity as being villain affiliated.

They weren't all bad though, Zeke hated them with a passion but I was pretty impressed with some of the executives. I wasn't really clear on how Ascendant powers worked since non Ascendants weren't really allowed to be in the know on that kind of stuff, but they could do some amazing things, plus the girls were pretty universally hot and almost all wore skimpy outfits, so what was there not to like. My personal favorite was Nightstrike, probably the youngest of the executives based on what you could tell in costume. Some people even claimed she was eighteen like I was.

After watching a light type Ascendant newbie from Unity named Captain Polaris bounce a couple goons who wore the telltale black suits and red heart painted masks of the Queen of Hearts goons I ordered the scan box to open my emails and started sifting through all my messages. I figured it was unlikely that Zeke bothered to tell me he wasn't going to be home but it was always a possibility. I scanned through the list of messages looking for his name but didn't see anything, and I was about to close the client when a name jumped out at me from the list.

Elijah Wyndham. I frowned. My dad never bothered to message me, I hadn't seen him in years and I rarely even heard from him. Still I was curious enough to open the message. It was a video message, and when I clicked it my father's face popped up on the screen. His sandy blonde hair and bright green eyes were only a few of the many features we shared, and despite being much taller than average at six foot three, I lacked the gravitas my old man could project even over the screen.

His piercing green gaze locked onto me as the message opened, almost like he was staring out the screen right into my soul, and I swallowed nervously. He always had that effect on me. On everyone I was pretty sure. His voice was flat and composed as he spoke to me, like I was a business acquaintance. "Hello Shane. Apologies for my lateness but I wanted to wish you a happy belated eighteenth birthday. I realize I'm a week or two behind but I've taken the liberty of sending you a token of congratulations via courier."

I almost fell off the couch. That was...wildly out of character. My dad didn't give gifts. Not for birthdays, or Christmas, or even for special events like weddings. He felt they implied obligation in one direction or another, and despised the concept of favors owed. My father insisted that life was a series of transactions, and that if something was to be given, an equal price should be paid in recompense. I was honestly flabbergasted that he would even think of something like a birthday present. I wasn't really sure how to take that.

His clipped voice continued speaking as if he was reading my mind. "This token is not a gift. It as a form of repayment for my years of absence and for my failure to enlighten you on certain subjects which will later become apparent to you. I felt this was only fair, as this will be the last time I take the initiative to contact you. You are an adult now, and my messages, as few as they may have been, were and attempt to engage with a child." His voice was hard, but not cold, as he stared out of the screen sharply.

I...didn't know what to think. He was just cutting contact with me? He'd never been a great parent, but this was a bit abrupt even for him. I saw a slight softening around his eyes as he finished his message, the last paragraph clearly meant to soften the earlier statements as much as he was able. "Our family is a harsh one, Shane. You have to be strong to survive being a Wyndham. If you can't gain that strength and come to find me, never speaking to you again is more of a kindness than you can know. For what it's worth though, I hope to see you again someday, son. Goodbye."

The message vanished. In fact, it was literally deleted from my inbox, and upon further searches so were all the other messages my father had ever sent me. I kept them in a saved folder, and I'd only ever had maybe a dozen of them in there, but now the emails and the folder itself had vanished, and any searches I did completely failed to bring up even a mention of my fathers name. Even mentions of him in other emails weren't showing up, and when I checked a few emails to Zeke where I knew I'd mentioned him his name had been altered or deleted altogether.

I was just floored. Not only had I never expected this, my birthday had been over a week ago. The email was recent, like from today, and lateness was not a habit my father indulged in. I stood up, walking over to the materializer and taking out the hot steak sandwich I had set to construct before beginning the message, what seemed like ten minutes or even an hour ago, but had been, based on the time one of these took to make, less than two minutes. I took a bite of the hot steak, trying to focus and figure out what the hell had just happened.

Before I could focus much though I heard a knock on my door. I jumped, having been so distracted by my reverie I actually dropped my sandwich on the hard wood of my living room. I cursed and picked the thing back up, checking to make sure it wasn't visibly dirty before wiping up the slight mess with the napkin I had wrapped around the sandwich. I shrugged it off. I was hungry and the wiper unit cleaned the floors while we slept at night so no muss no fuss. I took another bite, pleased it was still just as good and headed to the door to open it.

Whoever had knocked hadn't bothered to try again, just leaving as soon as they'd rapped on the door, because I didn't see anyone in either direction down the hall. I assumed this was the "token of congratulations" my dad had mentioned, so I picked up the dark wood box with my non sandwich hand and carried it inside, kicking the door closed. I carried it into the kitchen and set it on the counter, scarfing down the rest of my sandwich. Then I washed my hands, drying them thoroughly and carried the thing to the table in the dining room nearby.

Opening it proved to be simple enough. It had a brass cypher lock like the ones my father used to give me as tests when I was a kid. A brass dial surrounded by a series of shiftable rings. I had to turn the rings to make a labyrinth, shifting the dial in between turns to extend a metal wire along the path. Once the wire was threaded through the rings to the outside of the lock I would push it in and a short electric charge would be conducted from the dial the rim of the lock, popping the latch and opening the box.

This particular lock had twelve rings and was unusually complicated, but I'd done enough of these to figure it our after some trial and error and after about a half hour I finally pressed the dial button and the box opened with a click. I nodded with a smile, I'd always felt pretty proud of myself after I did one of these, and even my dad was usually impressed. That thought wiped away the smile, since it reminded me he'd just basically cut ties with me completely, so I opened the lid and looked inside to see what he'd sent me.

Inside the box was a rolled up piece of old yellow paper. I frowned, but figured he wouldn't have sent me something useless. I unrolled the paper, but as I did, a small point of metal, something like a needle, which had been rolled up in it, pricked my finger. I dropped the paper with a curse, and it oddly rolled itself out flat as my blood dripped onto the yellowed surface. When my blood hit the paper though, it didn't soak in. In fact the paper did the opposite of get wet. It caught fire. A wave of purple flame rolled across the parchment from the spot my blood struck and I stared in slack jawed amazement as it scrawled out a phrase that was meaningless to me, yet somehow filled me with trepidation.

Welcome young Wishmaster. It's finally time to begin.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Now, one might think the thing that would scare me in that situation was the purple flaming piece of paper that seemed to have swallowed my blood. That person would be wrong. Mostly because I recognized the name printed on the paper and it belonged to someone even I had heard of. Callus, the planet I lived on, was a pissant backwater production planet on the outskirts of the Conglomerate. We were probably the poorest planet in this solar system, if not the entire galaxy. We were barely hooked into the Conglomerate news media, and even then, I had still heard of the Wishmaster.

The Wishmaster was a universe level criminal. In point of fact he was considered one of the top three on the list of thirteen most wanted criminals in the universe. Exactly where in that top three ranking he fell was a hotly debated matter, especially since the Wishmaster was a legacy title that changed hands multiple times over the centuries, but whoever the current Wishmaster was always had a spot in the top three. The Wishmaster wasn't ranked so high just out of raw power, though no one in the Unlucky Thirteen was personally weak, but more accurately because of his personal force, the Wish Curse Palace.

The Wish Curse Palace wasn't a place, or even a number of places. They were a sort of universal black market. They were known for their strict adherence to contract and were renowned as being the most reliable black market source for illegal goods in any of the known systems. The Wish Curse Palace might not have the manpower of the Empire, the Fairyland, or the Conglomerate, nor did they have the fanatical reputation of the Church of the Red Revenant or the Black Sorrow Cult, but they were hands down the richest of the known factions, and they had eyes and ears everywhere.

For some unknown reason no one had even betrayed the Wish Curse Palace, and all attempts to infiltrate them had failed spectacularly, leading to an incredibly terrifying reputation that gave even the major powers on the universal playing field pause. This was general knowledge even a hick from bumfuck nowhere like me was aware of, which only served to underscore how absolutely terrifying it was that I was holding something that belonged to the Wishmaster. Did my dad work for the Wishmaster? Had he stolen this somehow? Was he the Wishmaster himself?

As much as it seemed like the third option was the only real feasible choice I just couldn't bring myself to believe it. My father was competent and terrifying in his own way sure, but being the head of a force that stood equal with the whole Conglomerate? The Conglomerate and the other members of the Five Faction Alliance like the Empire spanned millions of worlds. How could my father be involved with something on that scale? Unfortunately that particular question would have to wait because the words hadn't stopped and the thing seemed to be continuing to list more information.

Wishmaster candidate status. I-rank. Ability: Minor Wish- Three times a day grant a minor wish in return for proper compensation. Wish must be feasibly achievable by the candidate's own efforts within a three day period with current statistics. Current statistics:
Might-1
Impact-1
Fantasy-1
Vitality-1
Focus-1
Perception-1
Creation-1

That was...a lot. First of all I knew what an ability was. It was what made someone an Ascendant. I'd even seen the occasional reference to Might or Vitality before, and those were definitely words associated with Ascendants. I was presumably an Ascendant now. I might not have believed it but purple fire that doesn't burn things is a pretty convincing method of delivering news. Second of all it said candidate. Which meant I was possibly one of multiple people who had been given this particular ability...however the fuck that worked.

So...maybe dad wasn't the Wishmaster? Maybe he just knew him? But he had mentioned our family so maybe we were related to him? My fucking brain was hurting. This was too much too fast. I rolled up the paper, unable to find the stick pin that had shed my blood despite looking for it everywhere. Still, I wanted to put this thing somewhere safe for now. It was obviously important. As I slipped it back into the box however I found something else. A black metal card with nothing on it but the etching of an old style lamp with a skull emblazoned on the front.

It was the logo of the Wish Curse Palace. I recognized the symbol from the various tags that had been painted across the less prosperous parts of the city. I was pretty much out of fucks to give at this point, so despite being pretty sure this thing would be useful for me somehow I just shoved it in my pocket, shoved the scroll back in the box, and clicked the lid shut, spinning the latch to pop the button out. With that I grabbed my scan ring from the front table, put the box under my arm and headed back to my room.

I'd originally been planning to read, so I left my ring out front so I wouldn't be tempted to game tonight. It was the weekly Doom Sovereign challenge, and I'd already lost more than enough credits betting on myself to enter the finals. I was semi addicted to the game, a widescale rpg that allowed you to pit your character against other players in massive elimination tournaments every week. I actually wasn't bad, but I wasn't in the top ten percent even for this planet, and considering the game had a universe spanning fanbase in the trillions that meant I pretty much wasn't shit.

The elimination tourneys usually went by region though, so I'd tried my luck recently to make some cash and got cleaned out when I realized I wasn't as good as I thought. Despite my addiction to the game though I wasn't interested in Doom Sovereign right now, I was looking to get in contact with my best friend Benny. I fired off a request for a video conference, trying to decide what I was even supposed to tell him, since I knew discussing any of this directly would get me murdered or thrown in prison for sure. The Conglomerate monitored all means of communication, my dad may have been able to circumvent that shit somehow but I most certainly couldn't.

Within thirty seconds the call picked up, and the smiling, olive skinned face of my best friend appeared on the screen. Benny's sparkling green eyes were glowing with amusement as he smirked at me from the screen floating above my extended hand, the call interface generated by the scan ring just as perfect and clear as if I was looking through a hole in the wall at someone two feet away. "Shane, didn't think I'd hear from you today. You lost so badly last week I expected you to spend all day sulking in your room in the dark like a luddite."

I ignored how valid that prediction was and rolled my eyes. "I still kicked your ass, so don't be too smug. But I'm not calling about the game. I need to talk to you in person, somewhere private. Can you get away?" Benny's parents tended to be much stricter than Zeke. My Uncle was a sloppy unreliable drunk, but he was also a generally affable guy who mostly let me do my own thing. Benny's parents, on the other hand, were heavily involved in local politics, and his father was actually the leader of the planet's miner's union.

Despite how that may sound, the miner's union wielded insane amount's of power on our little production planet, and outside the local branch of the Unity Benny's dad Hector was probably the most powerful person on our planet. He was generally pretty affable, but Benny's mom Amber was a total tight ass about image. I half suspected she let me hang out with Benny because it looked good for her precious boy to spend time with a down on his luck local kid like me. Despite that she was incredibly strict about when and where he was allowed to go, and it was almost sundown on a Friday night so there was a decent chance he wouldn't be allowed to leave.

To my relief he just waved me off. "Nah, mom and dad are at some kind of charity gala the Unity is putting on. They won't be back for hours and Maria already took of with her boyfriend. Even if they came home early and somehow caught me out I could just tell them I was out with you and throw her under the bus. You know how much they hate Zack." I did. Benny's younger sister Maria was sixteen and still in her rebellious phase. Her boyfriend Zack was a local street thug our age who did odd jobs for the Queen of Heart's cronies.

Zack liked to act like that made him hot shit, but he was mostly just a sniveling little creep. He avoided Benny and I like the plague because Benny was Maria's brother and I was much bigger than most people, so we mostly did him the courtesy of leaving him alone as long as he didn't get Maria into any real trouble. Besides that Maria never went anywhere without her best friend slash bodyguard Anna, who was an Ascendant, albeit a pretty weak one from what I knew, so even if he did get her into a situation she would be fine.

Still I was glad for her annoying habits tonight as I shot my best friend a grateful smile. "Ok, meet me at the park near your place." I paused, unsure of how much to say over this line, but I figured there was at least one thing I could share without any danger to either of us, since I was planning to visit one of the intake sites to get registered and get a tutorial tomorrow anyway. I swallowed hard and shot him a conflicted look. He paused, his smile falling as he picked up on my discomfort, and I was able to force myself to tell him. "I got an ability."

His eyes went wide. "Holy shit man really? That's awesome! I'm so jealous, I wish I had gotten one. I've been drinking those disgusting gene excitement tonics for years now and nothing, and you weren't even trying and you Ascended. Damn man, some people have all the luck. So, what did you get? Is it something cool? Can you shoot lasers out of your eyes? Manipulate fire? Can you fly? Shit I've always wanted to be able to fly." I shot him a quelling look and he shut up, his face becoming serious. "Right. You want to talk in person, no problem, I'll head to the park."

I was guessing based on his mood shift he had picked up on my discomfort and assumed I got one of the powers people didn't like to talk about. Something that people would assume was going to push me toward corruption. People could be huge assholes about that kind of thing, and if I'd gotten one of those it would seriously mess with my quality of life. That said, I wasn't sure I had. The whole Wishmaster candidate didn't seem like something that would show up when I was inducted, and Minor Wish didn't really seem like an evil sounding power. Then again it was related to the Wishmaster so for all I knew it would result in me getting thrown in prison.

I winced and got up, shoving the box in a spare bag I had laying around and putting my shoes back on as I got ready to go meet Benny. I needed advice, and Benny and I had been close as brothers since we were kids. I'd met him at one of compulsory download buildings when we were five, and we'd been inseparable ever since. He'd even gotten transferred to the local childcare I'd been in before I turned thirteen because Zeke was too lazy to raise a kid despite having the money for private care. If there was anyone I could trust with this it was Benny, now I just had to hope he had some idea what to do.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The trip to the park was both way too quick and agonizingly slow. I took a bus to get there, mostly because I blew all my credits on Doom Sovereign but at least had the presence of mind to buy a buss pass at the beginning of the year when I still had a bit of money. The bus was pretty empty at six PM on a Friday night, so I mostly just sat by myself and thought over my options. I'd decided to wait a day or two before I did the intake process for the Unity. If I went now I would probably get thrown in prison or tortured for info I didn't have.

What I needed was some way to disguise my ability, and I was pretty sure I knew where to get that. I reached down to touch the smooth black metal card in my pocket, tracing the faint engraving of the lamp and skull. The Wish Curse Palace was the place to go for that kind of thing, but in order for that to work I had to get some money first. Assuming this card could let me buy things from them, I'd still probably need thousands if not tens of thousands of credits for something like that. Still, having some kind of plan was better than panicking so I felt much more optimistic when the bus stopped at the park and I got off to go meet Benny.

My best friend was waiting in his usual spot, sitting under a tree in the back of the park in the shadows. For a rich kid Benny tended to dress down pretty sloppy, and the usual torn jeans and hoodie over a beat up t-shirt made me smile with their familiarity. As usual Benny's messy brown hair peaked out from under the hood, wavy and too long as usual, somehow managing to fall in his eyes even with his head tilted back, but when he heard me coming he jerked to attention, looking around for me.

When he spotted me he gave a sigh of relief and climbed to his feet, walking over to clap me in a fierce hug. "Oh thank the gods. After that cryptic ass message I thought you might have been hauled off by the Cautious Men or something." Fear flashed through his eyes as he mentioned the Conglomerate's Ascendant identification and apprehension task force. The Unity handled big name criminals, but everyone had heard horror stories of newbie's being snatched up by the cautious men. It was one of the main reasons people were so quick to do the intake despite being railroaded so hard by the Unity.

I squeezed him back and pulled away with a laugh. "No, thankfully, though I wouldn't rule it our for the future The stuff that's been going on has been kind of nuts." I gestured for him to sit down by the tree and started filling him in on everything that had happened. The message from my dad, the paper, I didn't hold a single thing back, and despite it having been objectively only an hour or so tops this still felt like it had been weighing on me for weeks. When I finished I felt unburdened and smiled, leaning back against the tree just happy to be free of the weight of doing this alone.

Benny whistled. "Holy shit man. That's...heavy. I know your dad hasn't always been around but for him to literally disown you like that? Plus it sounds like he might have been involved with the WCP the whole time, that's pretty nuts." He bumped my shoulder with his. "But hey, at least you got this cool new power, I mean, granting wishes sounds fucking awesome. Can I be your guinea pig?" His eyes were alight with curiosity and a bit of excitement, and all the drama aside I had to admit I kind of got that.

I laughed at the enthusiasm. "I guess so. If there's one person I trust to grant a wish to it's you. So...shit, how do I do this?" I considered taking out the scroll, but it seemed like the whole Wishmaster thing wouldn't exactly be secret if a bunch of people were walking around with a burning piece of paper. I narrowed my eyes before looking at Benny and saying in a clear voice. "Minor wish." I waited. Nothing happened. "Grant Minor wish." Again, nothing. I rolled my eyes. "Ok maybe we're doing this wrong. Make a wish in front of me."

Benny shrugged. "Ok, well you said it has to be within your capabilities within the span of three days, but like...what does that mean? And you mentioned stats too, so do those affect it somehow? Whatever, I'll just ask for something big and we can see what I can get away with." He bit his lip. "Ok, I wish you could give me an ability." I felt a charge run over my skin as he said that, a light rumble of static rolling across my arms, making the hair all stand on end as I felt my power roar up from inside me to answer the call.

Wish detected, grant wish? The words wrote themselves across my vision in purple fire, and from his lack of reaction Benny didn't see it at all. I mentally tried to confirm but the letters rolled across my vision again. Insufficient stat points to grant wish. Requirements: 50 Fantasy, 10 Creation, 25 Impact, 10 Vitality. I blinked. So that was what it meant by being able to accomplish it in three days. Still, the fact that I could even give someone powers was fucking insane. I told Benny what it said and he cursed.

He bit his lip. "Damn. Kind of makes me want to wait, but there's not rule you can only do one per person right?" I shook my head and he grinned. "Cool, then I can do something small time now and we can go from there. I wish I had a steak dinner." The tingle came back again, less intense this time, which I assumed meant this would be an easier wish, but it was still noticeable and still took up a ton of my attention. Once again it asked if I wanted to grant the wish, and once again I confirmed I did.

Stat points sufficient. Requirements: 1 Fantasy, 1 Impact, 2 Creation, 2 Vitality. Compensation required. I blinked, remembering what it had said on the scroll. Right, it had mentioned that. I turned to Benny. "Says I can do that one, but we need to agree on fair compensation. What would be fair?" He just shrugged. I scowled and th0ught it over, deciding to ask for something more ephemeral since this was clearly some kind of magic bullshit or something. Something he wouldn't miss. "How about your Doom Sovereign skills?"

Benny snickered at that. "I'm not sure you can really call them that, I'm not even as good as you are, but I don't enjoy the game that much anyway so sure. You can have my Doom Sovereign skills." He grinned at me, gesturing for me to get on with the wish granting, so that's what I did. I confirmed the wish after he verified he was ok with it. As soon as I did I felt that electricity on my skin spark up to insane levels, the power feeling like it was filling me enough to burst. I saw a purple flash int Benny's eyes and then there was another flash in front of us, and suddenly we were sitting next to a table, fully laid out with a juicy ribeye and all the fixings.

I gasped as what felt like sixteen hours of non stop sprinting hit me at once, bowling me over as I fell to the ground, gasping. Across my black spotted vision those same purple flame letters danced. Skill Acquired- Minor Doom Sovereign Mastery. Synergy with existing skills detected, merging. Skill Acquired-Lesser Doom Sovereign Mastery. I felt new memories slam into my brain. Nothing crazy, just hours of Doom Sovereign I'd never actually played. I felt reflexes I didn't have engraving themselves into my head.

Benny was up and at my side in a flash. "Holy shit man are you ok? That really took it out of you huh?" He helped me up, sitting me in the chair that had appeared next to the table with the steak on it. It was a tiny square table with a white table cloth, and the chair was cushioned and pretty comfortable. The steak on the plate was a juicy ribeye, with a nice steaming pile of mashed potatoes next to it and a bed of crisp asparagus to one side. There was a small dish of bread with a little plate of butter next to that and a full salad in a bowl to one side. Next to that was a glass of what looked like root beer.

I shook off the exhaustion and chuckled. "I'm good man, shit is just tiring. Still, you got your wish. Take a bite, see how it tastes." It smelled fucking amazing, and I was ravenously hungry after that. I was guessing that the closer I went to my limits the more tiring the wish granting would be. Still, it was pretty amazing I could make something out of nothing like that. Apparently creating a table with a steak wasn't a huge deal, since it only required a single point of fantasy and impact. I was assuming the creation was what made the actual process work, and vitality was probably what made it nutritious.

He looked like he wanted to argue with me but I shook my head, standing up and backing away from the table. He rolled his eyes, knowing that I wasn't going to eat any of it, though I suspected if he's realized how hungry I was he might have pushed me to at least take a bite. He sat down at the table, scooted the chair in and picked up the knife and fork, cutting off a small piece to pop in his mouth. I was struck by how weird this probably looked from the outside in, and I was glad we'd always come to this park because there were no cameras. Benny was paranoid about his parents checking up on him.

Since no one had seen me conjure this thing it would just look like some weird guy brought a table here to eat. I shook off the thought and focused on Benny. His eyes lit up as he chewed, and he swallowed the bite of steak down with relish as he picked up the glass to sip some of the root beer. He moaned with joy as his took a swallow. "Ok, that's the best thing I've ever tasted man. If I hadn't needed to pay with literal memories from my brain I would eat like this all the time. Wait, do I need to do that? Can I pay with credits?" I mentally consulted my power, which seemed to be happy to answer questions now that I was using it, and nodded to him in confirmation. He could pay in credits, though the price got a little nuts for anything more than basic conjuring like this.

He grinned at me. "Well then, I think I have the answer to your little money problem. If I can pay for food with credits than so can other people, and they can pay for other things too. If we're careful we can get you enough cash to pay for that identity masking whatever it is you wanted." He paused. "Though actually we should probably go see what that would cost." He cut another piece of steak and popped it in his mouth, not bothering to swallow before asking his next question. "So, you feel like going shopping tomorrow?" I had to admit, even knowing I couldn't buy anything right now the idea filled me with excitement. I was going to visit the black market.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The Wish Curse Palace did not, oddly enough, move. It was ostensibly hidden, but asking around a bit near where we had seen the symbol tags the next day got us concise directions. It turned out that none of the Five Faction Alliance were quite willing to piss off the secretive force of fanatically loyal spies and assassins who lived hidden amongst their civilian population, go figure. Because they weren't willing to break into an outright war and they themselves benefited from the place, they didn't try to shut down the WCP branches.

Since we didn't have to look around for the location we made good time the next morning on the bus down to the local branch. On the way we sat and discussed what the actual plan was once we got there. Benny was, of course, excited. "I can't believe we're going to the WCP." He whispered excitedly, somehow speaking louder than if he had said it in a normal tone of voice. I glanced around frantically but didn't see anyone staring, so I just glared at him. He smiled sheepishly and lowered his voice properly. "Sorry, but still, I've never been. I wonder what they have there?"

Despite his borderline bad boy image of himself, my best friend was actually kind of a goody goody. I was the closest thing to a tough guy he spent time with and I was an introverted game nerd with limited social skills. He liked to think of our friendship as rebellion, but he was basically the equivalent of those kids in child care who look both ways to make sure no one is watching before saying a curse word and dissolving into fits of giggles. He never did anything too bad and this kind of thing was a major rush for him. Granted it kind of was for me to. I was just distracted by other issues.

I kept my voice pitched low but didn't bother to actually whisper as I responded. "We're looking for the prices for a masking program or artifact or whatever the hell. I don't know. But we need to at least figure out a price for it." I grit my teeth before asking the next question, hating myself for bringing it up because I knew Benny was uncomfortable with his money. "Did you bring any credits?" He opened his mouth and I hurried to add. "I can grant you a wish for however much you have to spend, I wouldn't ask to borrow cash for nothing."

He rolled his eyes. "Relax man, I'm not going to bitch in circumstances like this. I appreciate you taking my attitude about my money into account but shit like this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I've never been to the WCP but I hear you need an invite to attend. I have a hundred thousand credits in my savings and we can use that. Though I won't say no to a wish id it'll get me another meal like that steak." He bit his lip. "Or should I ask for something else? Shit we should do it while we're on the way right? So you have the credits when we get there?"

He looked around slowly, making sure no one was watching. His brow furrowed as he considered what to ask for. "I wish I was a master haggler. I'm willing to offer one hundred thousand credits." I winced as he decisively offered his entire savings, but I made a promise to myself to pay him back once I had the money. I should be able to earn it pretty quickly once I got this all figured out. I had a few ideas for making money, though I admit a not insignificant part of me wanted to bust out my new Doom Sovereign skills at next weeks tournament and clean up on bets.

The purple flames wrote themselves across my vision. Wish detected. Grant wish? I mentally confirmed. Insufficient stat points for Skill- Master Haggling. Requirements: NA Master level skill beyond the capacity of Minor Wish ability. I blinked. Huh, that was new. I frowned but then my eyes lit up. "Right, Master must be too high level. My ability is Minor Wish but I have a Lesser Skill, wish for that." He tried again and I accepted. Insufficient stat points for Skill- Lesser Haggling. Requirements. 30 Focus, 10 Impact, 10 Perception.

I cursed. "Shit. That one is too expensive. I guess I can go up a rank if I need to though, so that's good to know. But how is giving you a Lesser skill on the same level as giving you a fucking superpower? What level is Lesser?" I thought back to when I got my Doom Sovereign Mastery skill. Apparently my power could take most anything as payment as long as it was worth the value of what it gave, but just flat out creating things was harder. I did remember something though. "Ok, try wishing for a Minor Skill. That should be doable. Minor was weaker than Lesser so try wishing for that."

Another wish and I accepted again. Stat points sufficient. Requirements: 3 Focus, 1 Impact, 1 Perception. I felt that same tingle in my skin, and I accepted. I saw tiny purple sparks play over the surface of my flesh and leap to Benny, whose eyes once again lit up purple, before subsequently rolling up in his head. I started to freak out slightly, but I felt my scan ring buzz and when I flicked up my display I saw a deposit of a hundred thousand credits. I exhaled slowly. Ok, if my power completed the wish then he was fine, I could feel that it wouldn't have worked if he couldn't handle it.

Still, that had been terrifying. Also what the hell was with those requirements? The stats from Minor to Lesser differed by a full ten times. If that pattern held true what the hell would Master rank skills cost? Judging by the way my power phrased it Master wasn't just a single rank above Lesser. Probably not even two or three. What the hell were Skills? It couldn't just be knowledge. Not at that kind of price. What did they do? My introspection was interrupted however by a quiet groan from next to me.

Benny was coming out of his...trance? Fugue? Who knew. Point was he was waking up. He rubbed his temples. "Wow. That sucked. A lot. Like, more than most things." He blinked his still faintly glowing eyes, the light fading from them as his brain integrated the new skill. He looked at me in awe. "Holy shit, Shane. I...I know so many things now. Shit I never knew before. I know how to read people's expressions and body language, how to tell when someone is willing to fold and when to take the deal, how to detect uncertainty in someone's voice... Damn man, this is wild. Like I'm not a genius at haggling, but it feels like I've been doing it for years and I'm pretty damn good."

His voice was tinged with awe, and I made a promise to myself to test out my new Doom Sovereign skills tonight when I got home. I'd been too excited last night and gone right to sleep so I could wake up and come down here. Apparently you could have a skill for literally anything. I wondered what they were for? What did they do? I couldn't imagine what a skill past Lesser even did. I shook off the thoughts however as our bus pulled up outside the building we had been instructed to head to.

I looked at Benny and we grinned weakly at each other and got up, heading off the bus to make our way into the massive building. The skyscraper in front of us was, much like the rest of the city, massive. Architecture had advanced considerably with the creation of certain hyper alloys and various advancements from Mad Scientists around the universe. Valen city, the city we lived in, was a thriving metropolis, and most of the buildings were absolutely towering monstrosities, packed incredibly close together and filling the sprawling land inside the natural ring of mountains the city used for it's various mining and resource gathering needs.

This particular building was basically falling apart, completely run down, though obviously not an actual danger to the citizens or they would have torn it down. We nodded to each other and headed inside, expecting to find some sort of guard or indication of an entrance. The inside of the building was empty. Not empty as in the place didn't have any people in it. Empty as in there was no furniture or object of any kind. There was just a sprawling atrium with nothing in it except empty marble floor.

Benny bumped me with an elbow, pointing to the opposite end of the room. "I think that's where we're headed." It wasn't a hard call. The only thing in this place was a set of brass double doors that obviously led to an elevator. The symbol of the Wish Curse Palace was engraved across the brass. I raised an eyebrow. "Subtle." Benny snickered and we set off across the atrium, each step seeming to take an eternity as we drew closer and closer to the doors, until finally we were standing right in front of the elevator.

Next to the door was the usual panel. The panel had two buttons, despite this being the first floor, but the lower button had a card reader beneath it, the button showing only the WCP logo. I pressed it. Nothing happened. I reached into my pocket and took out the black metal card, sliding it into the reader and pressing the button again. The button lit up, and I pulled the card out, stowing it again as a loud ding made me about jump out of my skin. Benny snickered at me again and I rolled my eyes at my friend as we climbed into the elevator.

Strangely the elevator had no buttons on the inside, as if pressing the WCP button had gotten us a special elevator just for this purpose, which admittedly was more than possible given the WCP's resources. I played with the card in my pocket. What the hell was it? Some kind of membership? Why did I get the feeling it was supposed to be a big deal? Benny bumped my shoulder with his. "Credit for your thoughts? You're spacing out man. Gotta keep your head on a swivel. Things are bound to get crazy."

I gave him a small smile. "Sorry. Just...a lot going on. I'm good though. One hundred percent focused" The door closed and the elevator began to move. Not up into the building as expected but backwards, literally moving away from the doors for what felt like twenty or so feet before coming to a stop. I heard some slight shifting, though I barely felt a tremor, and then we began to descend. It felt like we'd been moved to a different elevator shaft before descending, which was...weird.

I was guessing the main shaft didn't actually go to the WCP and they probably had the the thing protected up the wazoo. As we descended I braced myself for what I was going to see. This was my first real step into a new world, the first time I would be interacting with a powerful force that might be able to help me make some sense of what was going on. I felt a kind of energy run through me, not the electric tingle of my wish power, but a sense of excitement, of adventure. This had all been crazy but I couldn't deny I was enjoying myself.

As the elevator slowed I exhaled deeply. We'd been traveling down for a while, and at a decent clip from what I could tell. We were obviously pretty deep underground. It didn't surprise me the Wish Curse Palace could manage something like this but still, it made me kind of excited for what we were going to see when we got down there. As we came to a stop I stepped forward, brimming with anticipation as the doors slowly opened. Regardless of whether I found what I was looking for down here, I knew nothing would ever be the same. This was going to be a whole new world.

Becuase of Amazon's rules on published content the first six volumes of the series have been taken down for publication but they can be found on Amazon

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Four months. We'd been in space on the road for four months. One hundred twenty days, seven hundred and twenty wishes. Of course, I hadn't focused all that on myself. While training was out as per my promise to myself (any my girlfriend), it was a big ship, and there were lots of people who WERE training. People who got injured doing said training, and I was more than happy to heal them with the charges I got from Jessie.

This enabled me to rack up a sizable nest egg by charging healing fees, as well as continue helping Jessie boost her Vitality, since she was the furthest behind out of all of us statwise.

Half of my wishes went to actually boosting my stats, of course which totalled out to twenty five hundred and twenty points each for us. I still had a bit of bleedover from the godslaying incident ( though not nearly as much as Callie ) which got me up to a solid three thousand points of added stats over the trip. I was officially over nine thousand total and closing in on E-rank which was pretty solid for not putting in any effort.

Aside from Jessie and I, Benny spent a no inconsiderable amount of time inventing, and sold most of it to Nat for wishes to keep up. While I was unwilling to train for the trip, my cousin was much less sanguine, and spent all her time either fighting or granting wishes, except on the rare occasions we were able to drag her away. Benny got a full two thousand points out of her ( Might and Focus, of course), and Callie had her godslayer renown still coming in, which netted her a thousand for doing nothing.

All in all, Jessie and Benny were both right on the edge of seventy five hundred points, with Callie and I both over nine thousand, and I had thirty six hundred F-rank chits (or thirty six E-rank) as a nest egg stashed away from healing fees.

More importantly, I got to spend time with my sister, my girlfriend, and my friends, just enjoying life and NOT worrying about being impaled alive on spider legs or eaten by wolfhornigators. Sadly, all good things must end, because according to Killian we were rapidly approaching Stratholme, an imperial C-ranked planet where would be joining up with a local force.

Vinnie had already left by the time we tried to get in touch, so hopefully we'd see him again at some point. This particular planet had been picked by Zeke after talking to some of his contacts (since this was about the war and not the candidate competition it didn't trip his geas) and would apparently be perfect as an entry point.

So we all gathered up at the house, where Callie and Chelsea had put together an information briefing on Stratholme based on research and preexisting knowledge.

"Welcome everybody." Callie said as we all sat down. "As you know, we've been heading for the Empire, planning to join a noble house for military training. Now, obviously we aren't signing up long term, this is more of a mercenary contract. It'll be for less than a year, but plenty of these places have high turnover, so it shouldn't be too tough to find someone to take us. Before that though, we thought we'd give everyone a breakdown on how the Empire works."

Chelsea nodded. "Most of you are from the Conglomerate. Which, while relatively established, is much more recent than the Empire. Because of that fact, and the structure of the Empire itself, it's a much more rigid and law abiding place. Individuality isn't quite as prized as in the conglomerate, even among Ascendants."

"How is that possible though?" I asked, a bit confused. "Renown is how Ascendants rank up. If nobody is doing anything interesting how does their legend spread?"

Callie chuckled at that. "First off, I think our standard for interesting is a bit skewed. But secondly, because they work on the job system. Much like the Church and the Cult, who you may have noticed tend to be mostly pretty uniform rank to rank. That's because the job system allows you to funnel large amounts of belief to specific roles, rather the people filling them. In the Empire that's nobility. There are other jobs, and those are managed by the Empire's roles, where he keeps records of who does what."

"Basically, the Empire is incredibly stratified because it lets the Emperor funnel renown to all the imperially accepted roles." Said Chelsea. "As a god whose domain is concerned with administration and the running of a nation, he has the power to do that kind of thing. It's why the Empire has MANY more possible jobs than the Church or Cult, which have less than twenty or so each."

Reaching out for a piece of paper, Callie sketched out a quick pyramid. "The Emperor, as a god, doesn't need renown anymore, but as the symbol of the empire it all feeds to him. He funnels it from there, first to the kings, then the dukes, and so on down the line. Each noble is responsible for funneling renown to those in their own territory, a duty heavily monitored and managed by the imperial court. Bakers, candlestick makers, even guards. Everyone gets some."

"That's...weird." I said after a minute. "But if it works for them whatever. How will this affect us? We don't have jobs, is it possible for us to get renown this way?"

Callie shrugged. "Somewhat. There's always excess, and the Emperor can't access of distribute renown outside the imperial scope. It won't be much though. Just not how the Empire works. Not a huge problem for us, since that's not why we're here, and you can always get a job officially to gain renown that way. But we've gotten off track. I mention this particular fact because it means there's actually LAWS in the Empire. More than just the haphazard random 'hey probably don't do that' guidelines we had back home."

To my surprise, Celine cut in. "She's right. The Conglomerate, especially the edges where you were, is chaotic. The Empire is a more regimented and lawful place, so we'll need to confine any issues we have to specified combat areas. Costumes should be fine, they're not the norm but there are people from all over in the Empire so they're hardly going to shock anyone."

"Speaking of costumes." I grimaced, glancing down. "I need a new one. I tried patching that big ass hole where Travis shivved me and nothing will stick. I have zero Skills for tailoring, and honestly I'm almost outgrowing the things anyway. They were really nice when we got them from Cicero, but it's been months, and I really need to get something a bit more suitable before I hit E-rank."

Abel snickered at that. "If anyone back home heard you say that they'd probably stab you again. Your progression is absurd. I'm lagging way behind at this point. If it wasn't for Nat I wouldn't even be at the halfway mark. Hopefully I can get a temporary military role while I'm on Stratholme and pump my numbers."

I hadn't even considered that Abel and Mel might be lagging. They were the strongest of us, pretty much. It just made it even more obvious how terrifying my mentor was, though I suspected he was also heavily focused in one area like Jessie was, and that probably helped.

"ANYWAY." Said Callie loudly, bringing us back on topic. "Stratholme is our first C-ranked planet. It's going to be pretty rough. Our stats are going to be suppressed by the native Impact, though everyone else's will too. There are certain areas like cities and special residences that are exempt, places where children are raised and such, but they're under heavy guard and the actions you take inside are tightly restricted."

She pulled out a few more papers, covered in tightly packed scrawls. "We looked into the various factions on Stratholme, and as a C-ranked planet, it obviously has C-rankers. In the Empire that's an Earl. The Earl in charge of the planet is Earl Nevius. His family pretty much runs things, though there are Viscounts, or D-rankers, of various factions, and each of them is in charge of several Barons, or E-rankers. Those E-rankers mostly field armies of F-rankers, or Lords, which is what we are. Any lower and they pretty much can't function on a C-ranked planet."

Which meant we were probably going to be the next best thing to mortals on this planet. With the weight of the Impact we were going to be under serious strain, luckily, we were at least HIGH F-rank, we'd probably be stronger than most. Good for training, bad for everything else. Joy. "I'm guessing there's a lot of political bullshit going on behind the scenes?"

"Tons." Said Callie with a grimace. "But the basics are this. The Earl is peak C-rank. He did...something, and the Emperor censured him, which means he stopped his renown gain. He's stuck unable to enter B-rank, but still isn't someone anybody wants to mess with. Because of that, he doesn't micromanage much, just lets the Viscounts do whatever."

I sighed. "Which means their Barons are probably fighting like a hundred cats in a five foot bathtub. We're going to be avoiding working for any of the big power players right? Because I don't need to get mixed up in imperial bullshit. We're here for training and possible faction building, not to get sucked into regional nonsense."

She nodded, circling a few names. "There are a few Barons that are essentially free agents. They call them Robber Barons. They don't answer to the Viscounts for anything more than lip service and taxes, and fight amongst themselves. Territory there changes hands semi-often, they don't actually lose TOO many fighters, and there's a high turnover as people prove themselves and use the reputation to join a reputable faction. Low commitment, medium risk, high intensity."

"That's perfect." I said with delight. "Let me see that list?" She passed me a piece of paper with a series of names and descriptions, rank, approximate level with that rank, personnel reviews. She'd really dug into this. It was a good thing the Empire was on the scan ring network. "Tell me about this one." I pointed at a Baron three quarters down the list.

She found him quickly enough. "Camden Tolbert. Father is a Viscount from the Tolbert family, big money in the Empire. Camden hit Baron young, decided to go out on his own. Bit rough around the edges and a tad battle crazy, but supposedly an honorable guy who takes care of his own. He was on my shortlist too." She read over her notes before nodding again to herself in confirmation. Before we moved on though, she reached over and put a hand on mine. "Are you sure about this Shane? This is going to be rough."

"I know." I said grimly. "But you heard Nat before. This will help us run our own faction when we reach that point. And mercenaries like this will be perfect for recruiting. Is everyone else still good?" I asked my friends, looking around for confirmation.

They'd all been quiet, listening to us talking and memorizing the information. Benny spoke up. "Honestly, I'm kind of looking forward to it. Being just another face in the crowd sounds nice. Like I'm sure you and Nat will tell this Tolbert guy about your powers when you can trust him, but until then, we're going to be bottom level grunts. I'm even looking forward to being normal levels of strong again."

I laughed at that, but nodded in agreement. We'd been getting so powerful, getting involved in such crazy shit. Having to prove ourselves and fight our way up would be a nice change of pace from fighting gods and their crazy fanatic worshippers. Of course, I was just as sure that was going to change quickly when we got to Stratholme. For now though, I just settled in for the rest of the briefing. I wanted to learn as much as I could.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After our meeting, I wanted to head back to my place and cuddle with Callie for a while, but I decided to stop and talk to Abel. He hadn't sounded exactly...unhappy, about dragging behind, but I wasn't the most observant about emotions, and I was trying to be a better team leader. So I pulled him aside to check in once the briefing broke up.

"Hey man." I said prensively. "I just wanted to check in, see how you were doing with all this. You mentioned feeling like you were getting left behind. I can focus more on you for wishes if you want. I know you did some work with Nat."

He shrugged. "I wouldn't say no, but it's not a big deal. I'm still growing, and jokes aside I'm happy with my progress." He shot me a wry smile. "I suppose you're trying to feel out if I'm getting bitter or discouraged. I appreciate the thought, kid, but I trained alone in a sausage stand for a few decades, remember? It'll take more than some time at the same level to bother me."

That was a solid point, and I let out a rueful chuckle. "I guess I forgot who I was talking to. I mean, Bethy's needling seems to really get to you, so I just figured.."

"It doesn't." He said with a smile. At my disbelieving silence, he laughed. "Really. I play along because it amuses me, but she's not hurting my pride or anything. In fact, I pretty much think pride is a completely useless emotion. That was part of how I broke my first shackle after all. I think I mentioned that. But...it's more than that too."

His voice was inscrutable, and his face was more serious than I usually saw it. "What do you mean?" I asked, curious what made him suddenly get so somber.

"This is my own personal theory." He said with a shrug. "But I think part of why I am the way I am is because I decided to let go of what other people thought of me. Not all of them, I care about Mel, and her opinion of me has weight, but so much of what we all do is wrapped up in appearances. And that's the duality of being an Ascendant, isn't it? The more you care the more effort you put in and the more hold it all has on you."

I blinked at that. "Are you saying that recursion is...optional?" It wasn't a take I'd heard before, or one that would make sense coming from most people.

He shook his head. "Is shame optional? Is embarrassment optional? Hypothetically I suppose. It's more that we walk a tightrope. We need the regard of others to Ascend, but I think the fact that we CRAVE that regard leaves us open to recursion in the first place. People like me, we don't really care. We just...let it go. Pride is just investment in the opinions of others, and I don't need it. And when I came to that conclusion, it felt like recursion lost a lot of its hold."

I thought back on our time together. In some ways, Abel had always been the most stable of the people I knew. Not because he was normal or healthy, but because he was what he was. He knew his role, knew his place, and it didn't change or twist over time. Some of that might have been a coherent story about him making the rounds, but the rest...

Zeke was like that, too, now that I thought about it. All the really powerful Ascendants I'd seen had this...core of steel. This conviction in who and what they were. Purpose. Sure, they might play the role, but the recursion didn't seem to touch them and I'd never known why. Callie had even mentioned it way back when we first talked about this. Willpower. That ineffable thing that let some people climb up without being swallowed by recursion.

"You think that the secret to that is just...not caring?" I said slowly. "Just let go of the influence others have on us completely and do whatever we want?"

My mentor just shrugged. "Doubt it. It was that for me. I see all these people talking about reputation and respect and I just...I don't care. I don't care who respects me. I don't care who acknowledges my power. Power isn't an opinion Shane. It's a fact. Respect isn't some magic wand that makes my punches work. If someone has a problem, I'll kick their ass, if someone doesn't like me, they can fuck off, who cares?"

"Why tell me this?" I asked after a brief pause. "Why give me the secret to your success. Is this some kind of wisdom you're passing on?"

He burst out laughing. "Nah kid, I'm telling you because I don't care if you know. Not that I don't care about your opinion of me, we're pals so it has some weight. Not enough to keep from doing my thing but some. It's more that I don't care if you spread it around. Maybe it'll help you. Maybe it just lets you understand me a bit better. Hell, maybe it's payment for caring enough to check on me, who knows?"

I nodded slowly. "I don't think I can do much with it to be honest. I just...I DO care what people think of me. Some of that is wanting to get stronger to help my friends, but some of it is just...me, I guess. I wish I didn't. That I could just brush off things like that."

"Well living alone in a shack for thirty years helps." He chuckled. "But really, if you want a guide, I can't give one. I'll say this though. It's all about consequences. If someone says something bad about you, what do you lose? How does it hurt you? What consequence does that have. And how does reacting to it benefit you. What makes that person important enough to matter?"

That was just such a...brutal way to look at the world. Like everyone was a ghost, with only a few select people mattering enough to be real. It fit well with Abel's personality, but I didn't think it would fit mine. I didn't want to just throw away my concern for everything that wasn't my friends or family. It would be easy, convenient even, and it probably would help me resist recursion. But that didn't seem like enough.

I glanced at my teacher. "I can accept you not having more of a reason, but what about the timing?Why now? Why share this tidbit at this moment? Is it really just repayment for caring enough to check on you? We're coming up to the Empire, is this something you think I'll need?"

He shrugged. "You're floundering kid. You've got a reason to fight, a backbone, and strength to push through, but you're missing something. I thought I'd volunteer my perspective. Maybe it'll help, maybe it won't, but like I said, my reasons for doing things aren't that complicated. I do what I want. You're the kind of person I respect enough to consider worth talking to, and if I can help my student, why not?"

That seemed to be pretty much it for him in terms of serious conversation. Abel wasn't a big fan of somber philosophical talk, and I could tell it had been tedious for him to try to put all that into words. Even now I wasn't sure I got it all, but I got enough, and I continued to let it swirl around in my head as I said my goodbyes and headed back to my place to pack.

Packing, as it turned out, is really easy with a spatial ring. And I got that done quickly enough, I got so lost in thought that I barely noticed time passing until Callie came to get me. "Hey, there you are." My girlfriend said cheerily as she found me sitting on a large padded chair in the living room. "I've been looking for you, we're close enough to use the shuttles, Killian said to gather everyone disembarking in Stratholme."

I almost jumped out of my skin, my Focus had been sunk into parsing everything that had happened to me so far through the lens of Abel's odd worldview, and in trying to retroactively puzzle out how recursion had changed me. I hadn't had much luck. "Sorry." I said, hopping to my feet. "Bit distracted, it's time to go already?"

"Yeah..." She said slowly. "Are you sure you're ok? You feel...tangled. Like there's a lot on your mind. You know you can talk to me, right?"

I leaned down to kiss her before putting on my mask. I hadn't been wearing it as often and it was going to take getting used to again. "Always. But this isn't a problem I can solve by talking or thinking. I've done enough of both. We came here for a reason. Let's go see where we've ended up." I offered her my elbow, and she stared at me impassively for a moment before taking it and following me out of the building.

We headed straight for the docking bay we'd first come into when we arrived on the ship, and everyone else was already there. Jessie, Cark, Benny, Zeke, Cass, Nat, Valk, Chelsea, and all our other friends were crowded together at the edge of an immense gap in the side of the ship, the same one we entered through, a permeable shield keeping out the vacuum of space.

Benny saw me coming and waved me over excitedly. "Shane! Come check it out. Our first real higher ranked planet." He sounded excited, and I didn't blame him. We'd been on ships, dungeons, floating staging areas and even an old ruin, but this was different. This was just a normal higher ranked planet like any Ascendant would travel to. Part of the experience of Ascending. It felt somehow safer and far more dangerous all at once. Anything could happen to us down there.

Stopping next to him, I stared down at the massive sphere of the planetary body. It was...big. Not that I'd expected less, it was C-ranked after all, but it just seemed large and imposing from here. Mostly dark blue with a large splash of purple that I was pretty sure was water. I took Callie's hand in mine as I stared down at it. It was...beautiful. Imposing. And HEAVY. I could sense the Impact from here. Immense and weighty.

"The Necromedes will be circling back." Said Killian from behind us. "We've taken a few small jobs in the area doing transport for nobles and cargo. Until we return you're stuck here. So make the most of it. Zeke should be up to the task of taking out anything that poses a real threat, so you just have to worry about things your own level."

I held out a hand to him. "Thanks again Killian. I appreciate all the help, and definitely the ride. I know that probably wasn't pleasant to break to the passengers."

He shrugged. "We got a better gig, and it was an emergency situation. We'll get them where they're going eventually, and we have contracts for this exact scenario. Extenuating circumstances and all that. Take care of yourself kid, and tell your old man hello if you see him."

I grimaced, which he couldn't see behind my mask thankfully, but nodded. "I'll do that. Safe travels." And with that we all headed for the shuttle, the smaller conveyance being the fastest and most convenient way to ferry us down to the planet's surface. As I climbed aboard, I took one last look at the Necromedes, where I'd spent more than half of my last year. I was going to miss the place, but hopefully not too much. After all, I was going to be busy pretty soon.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The first thing I noticed when I stepped off the shuttle was how...nice it was. Being back on a real planet, one we were going to be staying on for a while was special. It felt good to have my feet on solid ground that wasn't ACTIVELY trying to murder me. Of course, the second thing I noticed was when I crossed the shield on the shuttle and the ground started actively trying to murder me.

Ok, that's a tad dramatic. I mostly felt like someone dumped a small galactic cruiser on my head. It wasn't dangerous, just really strenuous, and I could feel not just my body but my mind and even my soul compress under the conceptual weight of the planet's Impact.

We all stepped off and stopped, trying to process what was going on, with the singular exception of Cass, who was holding Zeke's hand and seemed perfectly fine. One of the many benefits of his absurdly high rank was his ability to manipulate his Impact in ways like this. We'd seen it when he suppressed his aura on Callus, but this seemed much more impressive and direct.

With Cark coming with us, Cass's safety and protection would be left to Zeke, who could obviously protect her better than any of us, and he'd made it clear that something like this wouldn't be an issue for him.

Standing our ground, straining against the Impact of this massive planet though, I didn't feel crushed or beaten down, I felt...nostalgic. This was what it felt like to be a normal person. Well, I was high F-rank, so it was probably what it felt like to be a professional mortal athlete or a minor superhuman, but still. This was almost nice.

"Fantastic!" Crowed Abel as he limbered up. "This is just fucking phenomenal. I haven't had a playing field this even in years. If everyone at F-rank is this suppressed this trip is going to be a blast. I wonder if there's an arena in town?"
Mel sighed. "I'm sure there is, but don't forget we're joining an army. They usually expect soldiers to be...you know...soldiering. You can't just run off to punch idiots." She held out a hand and concentrated, a small flame sparking in her hand. "Plus, our Skills still function, even if it a drastically reduced level."

She was right. I focused on Belial, letting the power roll over me. A thin layer of dark toxic stone covered me, and I could feel the poison being severely limited, but it did work. Focusing hard, I pushed with my Path, focusing on the Fatewalker aspect of my staff form, and the rock got denser, the green glow beginning to brighten.

"Use your Path if you can. Impact does less to hamper it I guess." I said as I felt some of my strength return. Nowhere near the full amount, but Belial did make me stronger than the baseline human I had been before. In exchange though, the power was slow and hard to conjure, the Impact pressuring my Solid Path and making it a strain that I couldn't keep up for long. It receded after only a few minutes, leaving my soul quivering and aching.

The others mostly didn't have a Path, and the ones who did hadn't reached Solid, so their usage was more instantaneous, but I could see when Callie tapped into her Abyssal Path and Abel his Path of Blood that it was exhausting for them.
"Well." Said Benny with a sigh. "This is definitely going to get old. Why didn't we go to a lower ranked world again?"

I rolled my eyes. "BECAUSE it'll get old. This is a perfect place to train. We're unknown, pitted against people our own strength, and this will give us a chance to get some ground up military training we couldn't get easily with so many stats under out belt. Besides, we're all pretty close to E-rank, and once we hit that we're going to be able to function way easier here, so it's not like it's long term."

Turning to Zeke, I cocked my head. "So, you walking with us to the next town? Or are you going to fly to the capital or something?"

He shrugged. "I'll stick with you, that way you guys can visit pint sized over here between engagements. I won't be involved with any of this training anyway, so no reason to worry about setting off the geas."

"Sounds good." I pointed off in a random direction. "Onward!" I announced boldly, striding off into the (unfortunately prevalent) blue green forest. Callie caught me on the way, pulling me back to whisper in my ear, and I cleared my throat before proclaiming. "That was a test to see if you were paying attention. Most of you failed." I swung my hand about sixty degrees. "We're going that way."

Benny snickered under his breath and I flipped him the bird, making sure to angle my body so I didn't teach Cass a fun new hand gesture. Our language wasn't going to fix itself anytime soon, but I didn't want to add to the problems.
Celine, for one, looked positively enchanted by the place, and as they drew even with us, I couldn't help but ask. "Hey Celine, you seem less bothered by all this Impact. Is it just being in the woods? Because I'm already getting sore and it's been like a minute."

She laughed, shaking her head. "I grew up on a higher tier planet. Below F-rank isn't safe on anything above a C, but my home planet had areas where children could try to slowly acclimate to higher Impact levels. It's good for training the soul early on as well. It wasn't something we could do for long, and it wasn't this extreme, but I remember learning to hunt and fish under higher Impact on the grounds of mother's estate."

I couldn't imagine someone shunting the Impact from an area that large like Zeke was doing for Cass, but hell, Zeke could probably do it. I guessed it made sense as a training tool, even if it kind of highlighted how dickish Celine's family had been to her growing up. Though I guessed any proper training was a pretty shitty way to raise a kid. I'd had some basic drills and games and stuff growing up that dad had run me through, but no actual combat training, and I was kind of grateful for it.

As we set off, I froze in my tracks after about fifteen feet. "Um...small issue." I said slowly. "We're walking at normal people speed now right? Because of the Impact pressure?"

I'd told the shuttle to drop us about twenty miles from the nearest town, so we wouldn't need to deal with anyone seeing us come in and mark us as targets or enemies or whatever other stupid reaction we might get from random Ascendants. But...I'd neglected to consider the fact that we couldn't cross twenty miles in like ten minutes at a brisk walk anymore.

Callie gave me a horrified look. "You didn't factor in travel time? I assumed you had some kind of plan for that! Normal humans walk at about two to four miles an hour. That's a ten hour walk! Especially since we can only walk as fast as the slowest person in our group. Who is a NINE YEAR OLD MORTAL!" I very carefully didn't mention that it was probably a worse problem for her at five foot five than for me at nearly a whole foot taller than she was.

"Zeke can carry Cass." I said firmly. "He's B-rank, what's the point of keeping him around if he can't do manual labor. Plus Cass isn't involved in the competition so his geas won't prevent it. We'll be fine. We're all mid to high F-rank, so we're stronger than your basic human, even here. We'll almost definitely be able to walk faster than average, probably like five miles an hour. And that's a perfectly respectable four hour walk."

Callie gestured around us dramatically. "In the forest. We hate the forest Shane. And look at these roads. They're dirt. And not packed dirt either, we're out of the way. The chances of us running into someone driving around here who can give us a ride are insanely slim."

I sighed. I was high F-rank like she was, which meant I was stronger than pretty much anyone here at the moment under the suppression. Not counting Zeke or Callen, obviously. I turned around. "Fine. Climb on."

She blinked at me, backpedaling a bit. "Oh, I didn't mean... Shane that's sweet but I was just a little annoyed about the walk, I don't expect you to carry me. I'm exhausted just standing here, and you must be just as tired. I don't want you making it worse dragging me around."

"You sure?" I asked. "You're not exactly gigantic, and we're the same level of Impact so it wouldn't be too tough."

Benny let out a loud groan. "Come on! We're in the woods exhausted under this annoying new suppression, please don't also make us watch you two be adorable. There's only so much hardship a man can take."

"I'll give you a hard ship upside your head." I said spitefully to my annoying friend as he stepped on my moment.

He sneered at me. "That doesn't even make any sense. We're nowhere near a dock. Where would you even get a ship in the middle of the forest?"

I snapped my fingers, triumphantly holding up a book. "A boat building tome from the wizard's tower. Nerd. And we're surrounded by trees. I'll study the book, build a boat, and THEN hit you with it! You have anything to say about that? I didn't think so! Now you-hey!" I was cut off as Callie jumped on my back, sending me staggering forward. "What happened to not wanting to make things worse."

"I reconsidered." She said imperiously. "You two were being annoying. Worse is fine." She squeezed her knees like I was a horse. "Onward noble steed!" I was outraged, but I was mildly appeased when I saw Bethy jump on Gabe's back out of nowhere and mimic Callie's war cry. At least I wasn't suffering alone.

We made better time than expected. Three and a half hours, and carrying Callie really wasn't that bad. When we finally arrived I had to admit I was a little thrown by the entrance to the town. "Welcome to Saltzburg." I read aloud off a sign by the gate. "The imperial guard sees all. Huh. Clearly they're got a firm grip on this whole tourism thing. So...giant closed wooden gate. Do we knock?"

Almost as if they were waiting, a panel slide to the side on the gate at eye level. "Halt!' Bellowed a voice. "Who goes there?"

"I'm Shane." I said directly. After he paused for a minute and didn't respond I continued. "See why that's a dumb question now? We're strangers, we've come to try to get into the city. Can we get in?"

The voice was silent for a moment. "Do you have an imperial crest? Because that would make this much simpler."

"Do we LOOK like we have an imperial crest?" I demanded. "We just walked out of the woods covered in sweat and dirt. Is that imperial crest having behavior? Come on man, I'm sore, tired, and my girlfriend is getting bored. I don't have time for this shit. How do we get in? Like can I just bribe you?"

"A bribe?" The voice said cheerfully. "Well why didn't you just lead with that? Five G-ranked credits per person. Pleased deposit the money in the donation box to the left of the gate." I glanced to the side where a brass rectangle with a single knob at the top was set into the wall. I looked at the others, who seemed just as surprised as I was, then shrugged, setting Callie down. Well, it was nice to know some things were consistent at least.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The inside of Saltzberg was...weird. There was a word that people in DS would use in roleplay servers when someone said or did something that didn't fit the meta. Anachronistic. Saltzberg was like that. The construction was mostly kind of old timey. Not straw and mud or anything, but gabled roofs and cobblestones, but only mostly. One second I would see an old style house, the next a more modern building.

Rather than cars, people were using...not wagons, really, but metal boxy conveyances obviously running on enchantments. "So...this is kind of weird." I said to Callie as I stepped in after Nat paid the toll. "I was just expecting a normal city, why is it so...quaint?"

Zeke chuckled. "The Emperor is a big fan of control. He doesn't like things that are wild or untamed. Mad Scientists are the definition of that, and because of it they aren't on the Empire's roles. They get almost no renown here, and as such most of them don't bother coming. Because of that, along with being one of the oldest existing factions, the Empire took a...different technological path. They lean Enchanter heavy."

Not that it precluded tech. I could see plenty of things that showed me their technology level was just as advanced as ours, it just manifested differently. Rather than scan rings, people were watching things and talking to each other through handheld enchanted mirrors, some large with a handle and some in compact form. In fact, checking it on a whim, I realized there was no network here. Not one I could use at least. I'd still be able to contact my friends through the more walkie talkie features of our rings, but otherwise they were just tiny computers.

I knew that some of the Empire's information was on the larger networks from the Necromedes, but apparently they had alternate forms of communication. It probably helped a lot with the Emperor's control of the renown in the faction's territory.

We walked for a while, taking in the sights and sounds. "So, they obviously take chits here." I said as I inhaled deeply, enjoying the smell of freshly baked bread. "So first thing we need to do is use that to find a place to stay."
Chelsea beamed. "I knew you'd say that. Which is why back on the Necromedes part of my research was into the local area. Saltzberg in particular, since we knew this was our destination." She flicked a hand and a projected screen appeared in front of her. "No network here, but I do still have all the information I saved.

I studied the page on display. A list of inns, rated based on comfort and aesthetic. There was even a map showing where all of them were. Looking around, I could see a few tourists, though I wasn't sure why, so I got where the info came from, but it was nice to know my sister was on the ball enough to save it for later. I scanned through the list, looking for the right fit, and went through my criteria.

First we needed a place to stay that had spacious rooms, and also a lot of rooms, and also long term rooms since chances were good that Zeke and Cass would stay there after we left to go and talk to our prospective employer. That eliminated a few of them right off, then I nixed a few that were marked down as being run down or where the staff was unfriendly. With all the obvious stuff out of the way I was left with three, and I picked the one with the coolest name.

So that was how we found ourselves standing outside the Imperial Fork. I stared up at the sign in some confusion for a minute after we arrived. The image on the sign was just...a fork. It was a fancy gold fork with lots of delicate engraving, but it was a fork nonetheless. Shrugging at Callie, I pulled the door open, only to be hit in the face by noise and warm air and the smell of delicious food.

Inside, the Fork was a cozy little place. Dark wood and lots of low lighting. Candles sat on every table and the room was alive with cheerful conversation. No one noticed us coming in, and a pretty older lady in her mid twenties (she carried herself like she was older, but it was hard to tell age with Ascendants) "Welcome." She said with a smile. "I'm Anna, and welcome to the Imperial Fork. Quite a group you have there. How many rooms?"

I looked back, counting our party quickly. Bethy, Gabe, Nat, Valk, Benny, Jessie, Chelsea, Callen, Zeke, Celine, Cass, Cark, Abel, Mel, Callie, and me. Callie and I would room together, same with Benny and Celine. Cass would room with Cark, and Callen would want to be close to Chelsea, while Valk would want a room near Nat. "Thirteen rooms." I said slowly. "Close together if possible. You guys have an expanded residential floor, right?"

She beamed at me. "Yes sir. One of only five inns within city limits with the permits. Thirteen rooms is more than feasible. How long will you be with us? And do you want to include meals? Our chef is one of the best in town. I'll even throw in a bowl of the beef stew on the house. We don't usually get such big parties checking in."

That sounded fantastic. "Two rooms will be long term, we'd like them right next to each other, the rest will be for..." I glanced around. "What do you guys think? A week maybe? I'd like to look around before we sign up for training."

She chuckled at that. "Ah, here for Baron Tolbert's recruitment drive? We've had quite a few newcomers arriving for that. Before he arrived, lord Tayle was the only game in town, and his forces have long been at capacity. People are excited to work with such a young and promising noble."

After meals, accommodations, hot water, and a few other incidentals, I ended up paying six E-rank chits for the whole stay. That was honestly a bit pricey, but not so much that it seemed excessive. There was a bit left over, but I decided to leave a tip. Always best to endear yourself to the host.

Anna was thrilled, the older woman immediately escorting us through the back to a larger dining area clearly meant for private parties. Randall, in his tiny form, was sharing with Jessie, he was the only animal anyone but Bethy had brought along. We'd left the wolves on the Necromedes with Blake, since bringing them into a war seemed awful, so we didn't need much extra food. She had seventeen bowls of stew brought out, since we asked if she wanted to eat with us. She clearly knew quite a bit about the area and knowledge was power. Once we were all settled in to eat we started in on our stew, enjoying the tender, well seasoned meat as we peppered her with questions.

"So." I asked between bites. "The Imperial Fork. That's an...interesting name. Where does it come from?"

Anna gave me a wide eyed look. "When my parents were young, they saved the life of a nobleman. They were invited by him to be his guests at an imperial ball. While my father was there, he pocketed a single golden fork. It's our family treasure, and we keep it proudly displayed on a pedestal in our ancestral home."

I raised an eyebrow. "That's an interesting story. I'd love to see it sometime." I tried to remain polite about the stupidest reason for naming something I'd ever heard. At least until I noticed her mouth twitching and she finally dissolved into laughter.

"I can't believe you bought that." She cackled. "Or I can, because it works every time. But still. Do you honestly think we're so backwater and destitute that we engage in fork worship? Saltzberg is on a three way imperial intersection, it's named after the bend in the road. I just thought the sign was funny."

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose as my friends laughed at me for falling for an obvious line of bullshit. "Alright I kind of deserved that." I admitted ruefully. "Sorry, it's just kind of weird seeing all this old timey stuff."

She took a bite of food, still chuckling. "It's fine. Honestly though, we have most of the same things you do, they're just more magical than technological. The Enchanter's Guild is employed directly by King Shadrak. The Emperor can keeper a tighter grip on commerce by using magical artifacts for industrial applications. We do have visitors though, so it isn't like I've never seen a scan ring."

It struck me exactly how much control the Emperor had over his faction. The micromanaging that must take, I was betting he'd been Focus heavy as a mortal.

Callie was grinning at the dark haired, blue eyes innkeeper. "You seem to have your finger on the pulse around here even without a scan network. Or whatever the equivalent is. Mirror network? We saw some people using magic mirrors to communicate and watch movies."

"The Mirror Space is similar to your scan network, albeit more ethereal. A void of floating screens and images you can search through for specific contacts, information, or sights." She laughed. "As for why I'm so well informed." She winked.
"Innkeepers and bartenders are always the ones to hear the dirty secrets. Why do you think I offered you lot a free meal. You're clearly interesting folk."

Benny snorted at that. "Doesn't seem like a great way to pump us for information. You just told us your intentions."

"I find it doesn't much matter." She said with a shrug. "Even if you don't tell me anything, you've got questions and I've answers. The things you need to know will tell me plenty about you. There are more ways to gain information than to just be given facts. So, tell me, what are a group of talented youngsters like you doing coming from one of the other factions to this little hole in the wall just to sign on with an upstart like Tolbert?"

It was my turn to shrug. "We need the training, and we don't want to get wrapped up in politics. Not everything has an ulterior motive."

Zeke, who had been watching Anna with interest, snickered at that. "Still teaching the kid subtlety. Maybe you can give him some pointers. You seem like a capable woman." She turned to look at my uncle, giving him a once over.

"Well I hardly noticed you there handsome." She said with a raised brow. "Content to let the kids do all their own talking? Most of them were quiet, but you practically blended into the background. I wouldn't have ever thought to look your way if it wasn't for this little cutie here." She smiled winningly at Cass, who was too busy eating stew to notice.

My uncle smirked, taking a bite of his own food. "What can I say. I only make an impression when I mean to. I'll be sticking around though, and I have plenty of questions about the local political environment, so I'm sure we'll get to know each other." I grimaced internally at seeing my uncle flirt, but mentally tuned it out. He and Stella weren't together, at least not consistently, and he didn't usually show much interest in anyone. We weren't going to be around anyway so if he wanted to date one of the locals it was his business.

Returning my focus to Anna, I started asking questions about Tolbert and his circumstances, letting the conversation veer back toward more businesslike topics. I had to say though, despite our rough start here (and I was still exhausted from the walk) I was loving the stew. I wondered if I could get some cooking lessons at some point while we were here.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"Are you sure this is the place?" I asked Callie as we stood outside a rather large house. "Because I'll be honest, it's not what I was expecting." We'd left the others back at the inn for a while and decided to take some time to ourselves to walk around. Inevitably our constant need to be doing something pushed us to check out Tolbert's manor, where we'd be signing up for our stint as mercenaries.

The house WAS huge and imposing, as one would expect of a noble, but that was where the image fell apart. The huge wrought iron gates were wide open, as were the doors to the manor, and we were able to walk right in without issue. Not that there weren't any people there, in fact, there were far TOO many people. Random men and women walked in and out around us, chattering and measuring and doing any number of other things.

The house itself was empty, no furniture or anything, and a large man with long dark hair and a goatee was standing in the middle of everything, fielding questions and barking orders as people bustled about. I did see a pair of men carrying a couch up the stairs, so I guessed they were moving in.

Callie looked as confused as I did. "I thought he'd been here for a while, since so many people have apparently showed up to sign on, but this looks like he's barely broken ground."
I just shrugged. "We're getting in on the ground floor. Maybe we'll get better terms that way."

"You won't." Chimed in a voice from behind us. I turned to see a whip think blonde man with a hawklike nose and an honest to gods monocle staring at us. "The terms are fairly awful. Camden put most of his personal wealth into securing this estate and establishing his claim on the local territory. This is such an unusual event that even if he was expecting people to fight for free they'd sign up for the chance to possibly become part of a noble coterie."

Grimacing at the news, I held out a hand. "Solomon. And this is Nightstrike."

He chuckled. "Conglomerate, I assume." He took me hand and gave it a firm shake, offering the same to Callie. "Alister Morgan, Camden's seneschal. Apologies for the chaos. As you surmised, we've only just arrived. I must say, it's a shock to see any possible hirees from such a distant place. We have the occasional fae signing up, but the Conglomerate is a ways off. How did you hear about us?"

Deciding to play it safe, I shrugged. "I have a friend in the Empire." I said evasively. "He hears things. From your earlier comment I assume the pay here isn't great?"

"Sadly not." He said ruefully. "Most of the volunteers are hoping to be offered a permanent position among the Baron's forces once he manages to establish his foothold. Camden's family isn't...thrilled, by his decision to set up his operation in such an out of the way area."

"Then why do it?" Asked Callie. "It seems like a lot of risk for not much reward. Not that I'm an expert on imperial politics, but this isn't exactly prime real estate, is it?"

Alister frowned. "It's complicated. The Tolbert succession isn't exactly neat and tidy. Camden wants no part of the family squabbles, and is hoping distancing himself will prevent any...accidents. Seven of Camden's cousins have been poisoned in the last year alone. His grandfather is ill, you see, and when he dies, Camden's uncle Vallis will take over as family head. Someone from the next generation will be chosen as heir and the position comes with quite a few perks."

That I could understand. It wounded even more obnoxious than my family drama. "Ah, so he's striking out on his own, and hoping that starting his own little sub branch will make him an unattractive target for the assassins?"

"Even so." Nodded the seneschal. "So I'm afraid if you came expecting a generous payday you've been misinformed. The contracts for employment are heavily weighted towards eventual payout rather than immediate gratification. We do accept short term employees, but their compensation is far reduced. Though if you're here for a long term assignment we'd be happy to put you through the necessary assessments."

Despite not being here for money, that wasn't really ideal. Still, a job was a job, and Camden seemed like the kind of person I could work with. "Sadly no. We're here for something a bit more short term. Maybe a year tops. Little less. We're not against taking a pay cut for a good fit though, and we're hard workers. We came with quite a few friends, since we heard you need all the help you can get."

I noticed something that made me feel a bit better about being here as I watched everyone bustling around. Despite him barking at a few of them for different things, none of these people seemed afraid of Camden Tolbert. The big noble was gruff, but everyone seemed more focused on keeping busy than flinching when he made any demands.

It said a lot about him that his employees were comfortable enough with him to ignore his temper like that, and it made me more willing to work for him by the second. "Alright, well, can we talk to Baron Tolbert? We'd love to hear more about his operation. You understand we can't commit to anything before we take the terms back to our companions, but hearing him out sounds like a good start."

Given we were joining an army, establishing myself as an authority figure seemed like it might cause problems. Best to take a more collective approach, since Tolbert's people would probably want to establish their own heirarchy rather than use ours.

Alister's face lit up. "Why, of course. As mentioned assessments will be forthcoming, but we're happy to discuss collaboration pending those results."

He led us over to where Camden was standing, glaring at a defiant looking woman with red hair in pigtails and soot stains on her face. "I'm telling you upfront." She said bluntly. "I can't turn your chandelier into a defensive emplacement with those specs. I understand your basic request here, but the power requirements are prohibitive."

"I told you to use Might gems for the crystal spikes." He growled. "I even budgeted for it. So what the hell do you need these energy storage runes for? Not to mention the extra hardware."

She pointed up at the ceiling. "Because the Might gems provide the power for attacks, but they don't launch themselves." She paused. "Well, they could, but I can't fit that kind of runework on the frame you commissioned. We need a secondary rune sequence for setup and launch, and it's going to require Perception. I can't do it with your current supplies. Get as pissed as you want, but that's not changing."

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "How much for the Perception gems? And what kind of changes will we need to make to the frame? I'm not made of money."

"Ten E-rank chits for the whole upgrade." She said sympathetically. "We're going to have to rework the whole frame, melt it down and reforge it. OR we can just go with the original design and nix the launch sequence. Have it shoot straight down when they walk under it."

Sighing heavily, he rubbed his eyes. "Fine. But I want delivery for the frame included. That's transport to the enchanter and back." She agreed instantly and he turned to us with a wry smile. "Sorry. Certain conventions need to be upheld for a noble establishing a manor, but I'm trying to get as much utility as possible out of the useless detritus I'm filling my home with. Now, I take it you're here about the army?"

I nodded. "Got it in one. There's fourteen of us pretty much. Varying levels of combat experience, most of us halfway to E-rank or higher. We have a healer with us who comes as part of a package deal if we decide to sign on, and her power can also wipe away fatigue."

Jessie's lifeweaving was even more valuable here because of the Impact pressure. Doing things here as an F-ranker was exhausting, and having access to a pick me up was bound to be helpful.

Sure enough, Camden looked interested. "A healer? Those are expensive and hard to find. My forces weren't a draw for many since they have so many other options. No one turns away a good healer. As for the fighting experience..." He shrugged. "It doesn't mean much. Fighting in a formation is quite different than single combat. In fact we prefer amateurs for the rank and file because they have fewer bad habits to train out. That said my drill instructor is damned good, so we can work with anything you bring us. Provided you're all up to standard physically and you can bring me the healer you're in."

"What about pay?" I said, mostly to make it clear I wasn't an easy mark. We were offering him a vital service, especially with Jessie coming along.

He looked us over, spotting the hole in my armor easily. "Tell you what. Every member of my forces gets a stipend and a set of gear. Forgo the stipend and I'll let you design the gear yourself. If your healer is willing to give up payment I'll even shell out for E-ranked materials. It'll end up being cheaper than paying by the injury in any case."

That...would be a huge win for us. It also made me wonder how much healers made, because it was an absurd amount of
money he was talking about. "I'll talk to her about it." I said firmly. "I can't commit to that big of a move without her input. Is the offer time sensitive?"

"Not unless I magically get another high level healer knocking on my door." He chuckled. "But basic starts in three days, so I suppose I'd prefer your response by then." He held out his hand. "On the off chance you accept, I'd like to welcome you both and your group to the Tolbert Military."

I shook, as did Callie, and we left, both of us feeling a bit unsure of what just happened. "So..." I said slowly. "We need to do a ton of research on local materials and healing costs right? I mean we'll bring it to Jessie, but he seemed way too excited to be paying that much money. I feel like he's dramatically undercutting us costwise. How rare are healers in the Empire?"

"It's not the Empire." She said, shaking her head as she slipped into stealth speech. "I think it's just here. Didn't you hear him? Healers can write their own meal ticket. Chances are most of them move up to more lucrative positions and more financially flourishing planets. We can look into it, but as for leverage..."

Grimacing, I did the same, isolating our conversation from prying ears. "Yeah. we're stuck here for the moment. Camden is the only game in town if we all want to stay together. Of course, he doesn't know that, but it's still true. At least we might get new costumes out of it. E-ranked gear for everyone is pretty enticing."

I really needed new armor, and everyone else getting their own was a stroke of luck. I was sure Jessie would be interested, though I hadn't been lying about not being willing to push her into it. We also hadn't mentioned Randall. I wondered if we could get HIM an E-ranked gear set. The idea of a giant bear in powerful armor amused me and seemed like it would be useful.

Walking back to the inn, I considered everything I'd learned and how this would probably work, and I couldn't help but get excited. Something about being back at a human level and being about to go through real training to work with a team from people who knew how to actually train others had me excited to start. Before that though, I had to fill everyone in about our conversation with Camden. We had some choices to make.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"So...that's basically all of it." I finished, filling in the others in on our talk with Camden. "I didn't want to commit to anything without consulting anyone. Being the leader is one thing, but signing you all up for military service working on commission for gear without asking seemed like a dick move." Benny snickered a bit at that.

Jessie, who was the person whose opinion I was here for, nodded. "I appreciate you checking, but yeah, I'm down for that. Helping people is what I'm here for. You really think we could get a set of armor made for Randall? Because that sounds crazy expensive." Despite her words her tone was eager. Apparently it sounded as cool to her as it did to me to outfit her giant animal companion with high ranking armor.

Everyone else seemed just as eager for the new gear, and we quickly confirmed everyone was interested. Once that was done, I moved onto the plan. "That said, I think waiting a bit to get a better handle on the local environment before we sign up. Training doesn't start for another three days anyway, so it makes sense to make the most of our time. First thing I want to talk to Anna about who exactly we're going to be fighting. The rest of you can do whatever, just let me know if you learn anything interesting."

We all split up, but rather than going with Callie, I decided to spend some time with my sister. Chelsea and I both headed downstairs to find Anna and ask about the local power dynamics. "So...how is it to be out on your own?" I asked my twin as we headed downstairs. "Must be pretty jarring."

She chuckled at that. "You have no idea. I'm definitely still getting used to it. I've been sleeping in the past few months. I'm always expected to be awake at the crack of dawn back home for training. Here I can just...be. It's lovely. I've also had a great time getting to know your friends. They've been so welcoming. I really appreciate you bringing me along with you, Shane."

"I'm happy to have you here." I said with a laugh. "Though that sleeping in thing isn't likely to last. Military trainers are pretty infamous for being strict about timetables."

As we'd been talking, we were strolling around the inn, with the expanded residential portion it was much bigger than expected. The place had five floors and dozens of rooms. Luckily Anna was down in the main bar area, so when we reached the first floor we found her easily.

The dark haired proprietress of the inn was washing and drying glasses behind the bar. I didn't see a bartender, though there had been one last night. Maybe she took shifts. She smiled as we walked up. "Ah, well if it isn't two of my favorite guests. What can I do for you?" I was pretty sure everyone was her favorite guest when she talked to them, but it was nice to get such a warm greeting.

"Hey Anna." I said, sitting down at the bar. "We were hoping to get some info about local politics. The movers and the shakers. We were talking to Tolbert and it looks like we'll be working with him so we want to know what we're up against."

She smirked at the question. "You sure you can afford it? My services don't come cheap. I have the best sources on Stratholme, and more than a few throughout the empire at large. Even a basic information package from me is bound to be more than you can afford."

"I'm sure we can figure something out." I said with a laugh, thinking of my wish power. I hadn't used any wishes today, so I was in a great position to bargain from. "Can we get some of the Shepherd's Pie by the way?"

Since we'd prepaid for meals, she didn't charge us when dishing out the delicious smelling meal, just retreating to the kitchen and coming back with two heaping bowls of potatoes, meat, and veggies. "So." She said, setting them down in front of us. "What exactly do you think you could pay me that would be worth my time? You lot aren't even Barons yet."

That drew me up short as I squinted at her thoughtfully. I'd never actually checked what rank Anna was. She didn't feel stronger than us, but I knew from Zeke that it was easy for strong Ascendants to keep that suppressed if they felt like it. Was Anna a D-ranker? I couldn't imagine her being any higher than that. How the hell had we picked this place out of all the others if she was high ranked? What were the chances? Fucking Fate Sense.

Whatever rank she was, it wasn't higher than Zeke, obviously. There was only one C-ranker on this planet, so we were safe enough to negotiate. Especially if she was D-rank, since that was just past the limit. "Well, that depends." I said smoothly, reaching into my pocket to pull out my WCP card. Aside from giving me access to branches, it also acted as a form of identification. "What do you want?"

She blinked, eyes snapping to the logo on the card. "Ah." She said thoughtfully. "That would explain the looker who came along with you. Seemed odd for such a powerhouse to be puttering around with a group of kids. Do you have a stock of scrolls, or can you actually grant wishes?"

"The latter." I said bluntly. "Six per day. And I'd be willing to trade for information, if that's something you're willing to discuss."

That got a laugh from the innkeeper. "Of course it is. I can't think of anyone sane who would turn down a wish. You're a bit young, so I'll need to keep it on the lower end of extravagant, but I'd still be interested. Though of course the limits will effect what kind of information I'm willing to trade."

Her familiarity with the process brought me up short. I expected her to recognize the crest, but this was a bit much. It finally occurred to me to ask the question I hadn't bothered to ask before now and probably should have. "Wait...do we have a branch on Stratholme?" Realistically I should have assumed that. We'd had several on Callus, and that was a much lower ranked planet.

"Of course you do." She snorted. "Three of them actually. Though one is in Crenwick, which is clear on the other side of the planet, and another is in Velholm, which is in the ice caps. The closest is in Roarfield, the capital. We don't merit an actual Wyndham obviously, though there has been a member of the family passing through now and then. Still, a resident Wyndham is bound to draw some attention."

While some people might have considered this a threat, or an attempt to gain leverage, based on her tone it was clear to me that Anna was giving me a friendly warning. She was an information broker, and I'd given her information. If I wanted to make sure she didn't sell it to anyone I needed to make preparations to keep it from spreading.

Luckily, I had an easy means of doing this by virtue of my geasa. I'd already planned to include the cost of keeping my bloodline to herself as one of her wishes, but I appreciated her pointing it out for me just in case. At the moment though, I really wanted to hear more about the local WCP. "I imagine the branch head is one of the Viscounts?" I asked, trying to focus.

"One of them." She agreed. "Though no one is sure which. The WCP operates a bit more in the shadows in the Empire. They aren't an illegal organization, but they keep a low profile because of the stricter legal precedent. Makes things easier for everyone. The capital branch head goes by Drelan. No one has seen his face that I know of."

That was interesting, closer to the way they did things in Velan than in Rajak. If anything it would keep them out of our faces though. No reason for them to be all the way out in Saltzberg if they were laying low.

Knowing there wasn't a time limit on that information though, I was more willing to waif. "Alright. We can talk about that later. I need information on who we're going to be fighting for Tolbert. If we're doing wishes we could use a place with more privacy. Don't exactly want to advertise."

Frowning, she turned to call back into the kitchen. "MATTIE!" She bellowed. "Come work the bar for a bit!" After a minute, a small blonde woman around my age in an old fashioned dress stepped out, looking annoyed.

"It's my break." She said belligerent. "Why can't Lionel do it?"

Anna rolled her eyes. "Because Lionel is unloading the kegs. Do YOU want to unload the kegs?" Her glare made it clear that the question was not rhetorical.

Mattie put her hands up in surrender. "I was just asking, gods. I'll do it. But since I'm working through my break I get to keep all my tips right?" Despite backing down from the presumably backbreaking work of loading kegs in this ridiculous exhausting planet, the girl didn't back down, her amber eyes narrowed like she was getting ready for a fight.

"Fine." Anna sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Keep your tips. But I'm checking the bottles when I get back. No freebies, and no pouting drinks for yourself when you pour them for customers."

When the blonde nodded, Anna gestured to us and escorted us to the back of the inn, into a storage room packed with everything from glassware to burlap sacks of potatoes. "Not afraid to mouth off to the boss, is she?" I asked as we stepped inside. "I'd recognize that complete disregard for authority anywhere. She your daughter?"

"Niece." She said with a laugh. "Lionel is her brother, and neither of them are nearly afraid enough of me. I take it you're related to your guardian."

I shrugged. "My dad's best friend, but basically yeah, he's my uncle. I suspect he gets just as exasperated as you by my own antics. So, here's how this will go. You make a wish, I let you know if I can grant it, and if I can get you offer the information you think it's worth as payment. Assuming my power accepts, I grant the wish and then we move on to the next one. Your last wish will be paid with a geas keeping you from divulging my secrets. Understood?"

This was a perfect solution to a lot of my problems actually. Because wishes concerning secrets were so expensive, information was at something of a premium to me. Since Anna had it to spare, we both got what we wanted out of this. She mulled it over, then nodded. "Sounds straightforward enough. Now, for my first wish..." She trailed off, clearly too excited to pick the first one. Eventually her eyes lit up. "I wish for a copy of Baron Clairdon's trade manifest."

Wish detected. Grant wish?

I confirmed, and the values for the wish scrolled across my vision in purple flame. I'd expected not to be able to grant it, since that sounded like secret information, but apparently wishing for a physical object was a way to partway negate the issue because it was just within my parameters. I blinked in surprise at Anna, who grinned at me. "I told you." She said with a chuckle. "There have been Wyndhams here before. In payment I'll offer everything I know about Baron Clairdon's forces."

Assuming he was someone relevant, I confirmed the wish, then held out my hand. The building electricity in my body welled up and manifested in my hand as a small leatherbound book. Anna took it gingerly from my hand, flipping it open and then rifling through it. Snapping it shut, her eyes returned to me. Thus began my crash course in Stratholme's local politics.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Baronies. On Stratholme, the undisputed ruler was the Earl. Vanden Nevius was a peak C-ranker that was stuck at the threshold of B-rank after pissing of the Emperor somehow. Even Anna wasn't sure how, apparently asking was considered a taboo, and pissing off the strongest man in the world was a pretty obvious no go. Beneath Nevius the twelve Viscounts stood supreme, D-rankers of varying strengths, each of them having carved out a decent chunk of the planet.

Viscounts, however, didn't micromanage. They were there to collect taxes and be left alone. The real movers and shakers on Stratholme were the E-rankers. The Barons. There were dozens of them, and dozens of Baronies that they ruled, though more than a few had several territories under their sway. As long as you paid up on time, the Viscounts didn't care what you did, so there was quite a bit of social mobility among Barons.

The Robber Barons were the E-rankers who didn't report or owe allegiance directly to a Viscount, and traditionally squabbled over poorer territories like Saltzberg, which was the whole reason we came here. That did NOT, however, mean that Saltzberg didn't already belong to a Baron, which was where Anna came in.

Baron Alexander Clairdon was first on the list. The Baron whose family had possessed this land for the last five hundred years or so was well known for his trade acumen, and until recently his rule had been fairly stable. At least until about a century ago when the neighboring Baron suffered and accident and his son took over. Chancey Highgrave was young, vicious, and had something to prove, and he'd declared open war on Clairdon almost immediately.

Unfortunately for Highgrave, Clairdon, while not particularly talented as a commander, was still much wealthier than the younger man, and had been throwing money at his forces for decades now, slowly whittling down both his own fortune and the Highgrave military. Due to this struggle, an opening in the local power structure was being created, and Camden had come to exploit it.

Because of the way politics was handled on Stratholme, none of the local forces had any wiggle room to try to break Clairdon or Highgrave's hold on their territories, lest they expose their own flanks, since the surrounding Baronies were all fairly weak ones, which made this a uniquely suitable place for someone like Camden, who was hoping to avoid his family politics by establishing himself as an independent.

Since we were here to help him, that meant we needed to be up to date on the information for Clairdon, Highgrave, and the closest neighbors who might risk exposing themselves to attack if the power imbalance got too extreme.

First up was Clairdon. Anna had asked me for a copy of his trading ledger, and had gotten it, but unfortunately for her the man wrote in code, and the decryption was too expensive for me to afford with my stats. She also figured out, after some perusal, that Clairdon didn't keep all his accounting in one place, he actually had four ledgers, and each of them made up a part of the decryption, with the code being written line by line across all four books.

How she knew this I had no idea, but she apparently had a Skill for cracking codes, and while she couldn't just breeze through whatever he'd done, she was able to get enough out of the books to figure out the basics.

Clairdon, as I was told in payment for the first book, was particularly adept trader, specializing in quick ship travel. He had an entire shipping industry setup along the river that ran through his territory. Because of this trade flexibility, his gear was better than most, and he put all those resources into heavy infantry. Every man a Might focused Job called a Cavalier and decked out in absurd amounts of heavy armor.

Highgrave, on the other hand, focused more on mounted warriors, and fielded mainly cavalry units called Hussars, a form of light cavalry known for their speed and mobility. The absurd overgearing Clairdon had done to his Cavaliers made them a nightmare for the Hussars, since harrying them didn't really do shit when you couldn't hurt them, though Highgrave continued to put pressure on the older Baron by using his forces to attack shipyards and other land based supply lines.

This had been happening for decades now, and both sides were bleeding men and resources at this point, hence Camden's presence.

After she explained the main players, Anna filled us in on the two closest Barons most likely to make a play if opportunity presented itself. Simon Prentiss and Albert Carrey. Prentiss was an entrenched Baron with centuries of time watching over a lucrative F-ranked iron mine, and his specialty was heavy cavalry. Slower than the Hussars but much harder to stop, his lack of mobility meant he was unlikely to exploit any small openings, and would only be a problem if everything went to shit.

Carrey, however, was much more likely to interfere at the slightest hint of weakness. The Carrey family possessed a force of powerful Dragoons. A type of mounted infantry that they used to devastating effect, riding to battle for mobility and then dismounting to fight on foot.

I wondered if Camden knew all of this, and when I asked her about it Anna just laughed me off. "Camden Tolbert is a scion of one of the great houses of the Empire. His information resources far outstrip my own, and even if he tried to keep things low key there's no chance he doesn't have detailed dossiers on every Barony in this area. His main weakness is that since he's making a patchwork militia, he can't field any specialized units like the others. The Tolbert family specializes in training Hoplites, but there's no way he's going to be able to specialize a bunch of random mercs into a new Job quickly enough for it to be helpful. I hope he brought a good general, because putting together a battle plan with a force like that will be a nightmare."

I had no clue how the Job system worked, though knowing you could change Jobs didn't surprise me. I knew all of them would have also been born with native abilities, though they would be Skills now that they had Jobs. "Alright, so...how does this work then?" I asked her after she'd given me the run down on all the players. "I know we'll be training, though I'm shocked Camden was able to buy property here when it's so obvious he's going to try to take the territory."

"Clairdon had no choice." Anna said with a snicker. "Until Tolbert actually declares, he's a visiting noble, and one from a powerful family. Not to mention Clairdon needs the money to keep Highgrave at bay. Tolbert would have still showed up to try to take the territory even if he'd said no, he'd have just been harder to pin down. Worst case he could have set up in the woods or something and Clairdon would have had no idea where the attacks were coming from."

That sounded stupid as hell to me, but politics usually did. "Isn't he worried about the defenses on that place though? Like if he digs in and builds it up it'll be impossible to get him out." We'd seen some of the defensive measured Camden was taking, and they would be hell to get past.

"Nobles rarely assault each others homes." She said with a shake of the head. "Any core dwelling will be heavily defended, and it's considered bad form. The only exception is the final push to take a territory, but it takes years to reach that point."

I groaned. "This is all such nonsense. It's more like a game than an actual war. We WILL be having actual battles right?"
"They call them skirmishes, but yes." She chuckled. "For quick and easily struck targets, raids are common, but in order to negotiate for border areas that could be contested by either, skirmishes are held. Basically both sides bring a whole bunch of soldiers and line up on either side of a field and then beat the hell out of each other for hours until one side is routed or surrenders."

That was more like what I'd expected, though it ALSO sounded stupid when phrased like that. It would be good enough though, at least for our purposes. "Alright." I said with a sigh. "Two more wishes. Payment for the first will be a map of the area complete with territorial markings and up to date affiliation. Second will be a geas from you binding you not to mention my presence here to anyone without my explicit permission, nor to allude to it through less direct means in any way you suspect may result in my discovery."

Her lips split in a wide grin. "Well someone knows all the tricks doesn't he? That's a tightly worded geas. Fine. For my fifth wish I want a new room for my inn. An underground space no one will be aware of, where I can conduct business of a...less than savory nature."

Wish detected. Grant wish?

Moving some dirt around wasn't exactly a stretch for me, though the Impact this planet had made it quite a bit tougher than it might otherwise have been. Still I could manage, and I told her so. Once that was confirmed she went ahead and had me create the room under the storage area we were already in. I walked to the back corner and discharged the building static into the ground, and the area in front of me glowed purple for a moment before the energy faded.

Reaching down according to what my power had told me as it was working, I pressed hard on the floor in a specific spot near the wall, and the stone dropped away to reveal a small wooden ladder. We all climbed down, and a switch near the wall lit up the whole area, exposing the new room.

It was...empty. She'd asked for a room and it was a room, with wooden posts supporting a ceiling structure that held up the stone and nearby earth. I whistled at the sight. I'd never used my power like that before, but realistically it wasn't a stretch. I could easily vanish dirt with Pit of Despair already, and a few wooden beams wasn't too much more effort. Seeing it all together like this just drove home the absurdity that my wish power was capable of though.

Anna grinned widely, then held up a finger, vanishing for a few minutes and coming back with a rolled up paper. She passed it to me. Unrolling it slightly I checked it over, and sure enough it was a map of the area with plenty of notations. "Last one." She said eagerly. "For now at least. I wish this room was tied into the rest of my wards. Not too many runes since there's not much in here. Should be doable, especially with permission. In exchange you get me under that geas."

Wish detected. Grant wish?

I confirmed, repeating the earlier geas to make sure there was no tricks. As the static built, she glanced around the room happily. "This shouldn't be hard to manage." She repeated. "My place is under recursive thaumaturgy wards. Each individual piece of the building is tied to a wardstone which in turn is tied to the building as a whole. You hit any part of the inn, and it gets redirected to the wardstone and back to the building in its totality, so you can't break any single piece of the building without demolishing the whole thing, and there are a LOT of pieces."

As I took her hands, discharging the static, my symbol appeared on her forehead for a second before fading, and runes began to appear on the beams and the tiles in the ceiling. They flashed once before fading, and the wish completed, my last for the day, confirming our safety here and concluding our business. I had to admit it had given me a lot to think about. I needed to talk to Callie about everything I'd learned. But first, I should spend some time with my sister.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next day we did another information swap with Anna (Callie had more questions), but the day after we'd already gotten what we needed, so it was back to the normal point swap. I got forty two Fantasy from Chelsea, swapping for forty two Might to fill out her physical stats a bit before training. With everyone having done their own thing for a few days, it was officially time to sign up with Camden.

When we arrived back at the manor, it looked a lot less empty. They'd carried in a ton of furniture and the place had transformed so thoroughly you'd have thought everything had been here for years. I whistled as we entered. "Do you think somebody here has an Interior Decoration Skill? I have to assume that's a thing somewhere, everything else is. I wonder what that would look like."

"Expensive." Came a familiar voice as Camden stepped into view. "It would look expensive, which is why no, no one here has it. Do you know how much experience it takes to rank up a Skill like that? The sheer number of houses and buildings you'd have to decorate even to make it to a point where you could apply it to other things?"

I didn't, though to be fair, I was biased. DS Mastery alone was something almost no one else would have been able to rank up. Forgetting the experience needed to start, just the sheer number of Skills I'd had to accrue to fold them in before my intermediate rank up was absurd for any non candidate. Focusing on our host though, I nodded solemnly. "Baron Tolbert."

He waved a hand. "Camden, when we're not in an official setting. Nobody has time for that Baron Tolbert nonsense. So, which one of you is my new healer? I assume you're here to take my offer?"

Jessie stepped forward, holding out a hand, and Camden grinned, stepping forward to take it, though he pulled back slightly as a miniature Randall poked his head over her shoulder and growled. Jessie shushed her bear. "Sorry about that Camden. Randall is a bit protective, especially in his small form. He prefers to guard me at a full size though, so when I start healing I'll need a sizeable tent."

The bear grumbled and settled back down, but the E-ranker was barely bothered. "Of course. I'll also be assigning you a guard. You can pick anyone you like. It's important to make sure you're well defended. No Baron would attack a healer in service to another noble, but anyone at the Lord rank will be free to try to kidnap or eliminate you. Better safe than sorry."

"Bethy." She said bluntly, pointing to the tiny vampire. "I'm positive no one at the...Lord rank, will be able to overpower her." She didn't mention the strong likelihood that our eccentric friend would be incapable of obeying any sort of military directions and would probably start some kind of camp riot after she got bored of trying on new uniforms. That actually solved a lot of problems I'd been worried about.

The vampire pouted. "Awww, I wanted to strike fear into the hearts of my enemies as I crushed them under my snazzy platform heel." She glanced down at her shoes, which were platform (though I wasn't really qualified to comment on their snazziness) then shrugged. "Oh well, I'm sure me and Jessie will have so much fun together. And I can let Luggage out to play! He's been so cramped in my Domain. He doesn't like to snooze as much as Poptarts and Donuts."

She waved a hand and a hulking black dog with glowing red eyes appeared in the middle of the room, shocking everyone who wasn't us as Luggage growled menacingly at the newcomers. Camden just closed his eyes and sighed. "Why do I get the impression that you all are going to be even more of a headache than having a healer will be a benefit?"

"Because you're a smart guy?" Said Benny with a snicker. "But you'll sign with us anyway, because we're a hell of an asset. Now, where are the contracts we'll be signing. Shane, Celine, and I are all going to need to go over them. Shouldn't take long, not with Focus like ours."

We'd decided to try to get the best possible terms out of signing up, so Benny's Haggle Skill, Celine's negotiation experience and political savvy, and my contract knowledge would all be put to good use here. Snapping his finger, Camden summoned a tall rail thin man with slicked back white hair and a well sculpted mustache, who handed him several sheets of paper.

"We had these made up. If you'll follow me I can have my lawyer walk you through them." He led us into a study, where a massive dark wood desk sat on plush carpet amid walls lined with bookshelves. A woman with red hair in a ponytail wearing an expensive looking suit sat at the desk, seemingly waiting. "This." He said as we entered. "Is Patricia Smallbrook. The Smallbrook family are some of the best lawyers in the system, and are known for skill and discretion."

Lawyer was apparently a job on the Empire's roles, from what I gathered. "So, you'll all be joining our little operation?" Said Patricia with a smile. "Glad yo have you aboard." Her green eyes twinkled as she gestured to the three chairs on the other side of the desk. I had to wonder if those had been there the whole time or if she set them out before we arrived. Either way it was impressive.

I sat at the far end, followed by Benny and then Celine. The contracts were laid out in front of us in stacks. "These are all the same right? Except Jessie's, which I imagine is more detailed given her particular status here. So we can just each read one and then adjust them as we go?"

"By all means." She said cordially. "You can each go over the healer contract one at a time if you like. We have nothing to hide."

That was a nice sentiment, but it didn't change what we needed to do. I picked up the contract closest to me and started parsing the language. It was mostly pretty clear cut, with a clearly stated term of employment, mention of the benefits we'd be giving up in exchange for our armor, and a few target goals for us to hit in terms of training and battles won. I had to stop a few times to clarify certain terms native to the local legal statutes, but for the most part they'd been pretty fair to us.

Benny, on the other hand, was having a field day, changing terms and altering certain stipulations when it came to our armor. Increasing the material threshold, potential enchantments, and he caught a tricky piece limit on our armor sets that probably would have screwed us. Between Inventing and Haggling he knew exactly what we should aim for, even if he wasn't really in a position to get it.

Once he found those, Celine took over, her noble negotiation skills making for quite a challenge to the smiling lawyer, whose grin became less smug and more acknowledging by the second as our resident elf worked to get us the best deal. It was probably closer to what Patricia was used to, given the Fairyland also used the Job system (alongside the Domain system we'd seen in the tournament).

Apparently the legal terms were more familiar to Celine, because she and the lawyer were bartering back and forth without pausing for breath, changing materials, enchantments, and even equipment types rapidfire as they negotiated. I grabbed Jessie's contract as they bartered, finished it (after making notes) then passed it to Benny who did the same before handing to a just finishing up Celine, and back into the negotiation they went.

Even with my Focus it was hard to follow, though I did hear her bring up Randall's armor, which brought them into an entirely new phase of bargaining. As we'd talked about, Callen had given up his right to new equipment for Randall, since he was already pretty well geared. Camden had to be consulted on a few of the changes, given the huge size difference between the bear and the swordsman, but eventually we came to an accord.

After a second time going over everything for each of us, just to make sure we hadn't missed anything, we finalized the contracts and each signed our own. Six months with an option to re-up for another two, as well as possible command training for any of us who reached E-rank.

We'd agreed to leave four months for travel to the conclave, given how long the trip here had taken. Once we finished all of our negotiating, Camden poured us each a snifter of brandy to toast our new partnership, and filled us in on exactly what we could expect.

"Well, first thing is you'll be staying in the barracks." He clarified as we all retired to a library with a whole host of overstuffed chairs. "Male and female barracks are sepeaate to prevent fraternization. It can be a distraction. You'll get weekends as time off, though we recommend you don't stay up too late because you'll be expected to be awake and ready to start your day at Reveille each morning."

Callie's expression darkened at BOTH of those things, we'd gotten used to bunking together, and she hated being woken up early. We'd expected them though, so she didn't say anything. "Any rules about healing?" I asked cautiously. "We used to have a trainer who insisted we go without. Said it was better for muscle memory."

"It is." Admitted Camden. "But most of the people here have had physical training already. Formations are more of a mental thing. There will be combat drills to train you with your standard issue weapons, but for the most part we'll be working on formations, since we don't have time to get people into the Jobs we would normally prefer. Healing should be fine. Be warned though, I can't guarantee you constant access to the healer's tent, even if you are friends."

I knew we'd have to work around injuries, both training and battlefield, but luckily for us I could act as an intermediary because of my stored heal bursts. As long as heals were allowed we'd be fine. I was pretty sure we would need them too, this planet's Impact was going to make the whole experience here hell.

The excitement I'd been feeling had only grown. This was going to be such a good environment to correct some of the bad habits and weaknesses I had from growing up a mortal. Maybe not erase them completely, but it would be more than enough to improve my foundations as an Ascendant and a combatant. Even if we hadn't been planning to hit E-rank within a month or two and then get bumped up to command, I'd still have signed up.

Of course, at nine thousand plus, Callie and I could do it easily, and I was sure the others would be at E well before we left the planet. My goal was to have us all there by the time we hit the conclave, because I hoped it would help them take us more seriously. Plus we didn't know where it would be held, and if it was a B-rank planet F-rankers like us wouldn't even be able to stand up there let alone function.

With all the negotiations finished and our brandy sipped (apparently it wasn't a chugging alcohol) we thanked Camden and split up, Patricia offering to escort the girls to the womens barracks. I gave Callie a quick kiss before she left, hugged Jessie and my sister, and then followed Camden himself to the mens barracks to set up my space, a much easier feat with a spatial ring. Then I got in bed and went to sleep. I had to get to bed early, tomorrow was my first day of basic training.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

In my life, I'd been through plenty of unique and often unpleasant experiences. I'd had ribs broken, been stabbed in the gut, been beaten, and a host of other torments. All of these things had sort of crowded my memory, and made it difficult to remember EARLIER pain and hardship, which paled in comparison. Yet, despite the scale of it being dramatically different, there was one pre-ascendant hell that I still remembered with absolute clarity. Alarms.

I HATED waking up to alarms. It was the one guaranteed way to completely ruin the quality of my sleep and destroy any sense of wellbeing I gained from slumber. I looked back on the few times I'd found it necessary to awaken to an alarm with disdain and irritation.

The first morning in the training camp cleansed me of all those memories. I no longer looked back on alarms with loathing or disdain. My entire concept of an unpleasant wakeup was washed clean by the absolute HELL that was "Reivelle'.

Once could be forgiven for not understanding how awful it was from the word itself. Reveille sounded light and airy, almost charming. It did NOT sound, just from hearing it, like a wall of screeching sound that pounded your eardrums like a drop hammer as you writhed in impotent agony on your bed, clawed from slumber by the shrieking wail of a sound that reminded you of nothing so much as a flock of geese being run through a rusty trash compactor.

I rolled clear out of my bed, hitting the floor with a surprising amount of force and grunting as I dragged myself up off the floor, disoriented and in legitimate pain from what was basically a sonic attack. I looked around, finding my friends for the most part just as disoriented, though Abel and Callen both seemed only minorly annoyed as they calmly got up and started changing into our new uniforms.

Armor would be waiting until the end of the first week, as per the contract, at least our personal sets. We'd have an assigned set of gear for battles so we would be a cohesive part of the unit and those would be passed out fairly soon.

Once we finished changing we were called outside, and we all stumbled out the door, blinking sleepily in the far too bright morning sun, the far too cold air like razor blades on our skin as we puffed out small clouds of steam. Camden was there, as were the girls, on the other side, and a series of stern looking figures I didn't recognize but pretty much already hated just from context.

"Good morning." Called Camden sadistically (he may have just been speaking normally, I'll admit I might have been projecting). "Welcome to your first day of training. Beside me are your instructors. Each of them is an experienced warrior proficient in a certain skill, and they'll be passing those skills on to you. Weapons training, formations, conditioning, and any number of other important and useful skillsets will be yours to acquire in this camp."

He gestured to the tall, dark skinned man beside him with a close cropped dark beard and piercing green eyes. "This is Commander Hamill. He will be in charge of your physical conditioning drills. While most of you are already familiar with combat, the ability to function and push through pain on a C-ranked planet is one that must be honed. It will be unpleasant, but it will probably save your lives in the field."

I grimaced at the thought, but he wasn't wrong. Being able to get tired again was a big change, and learning to work through it would be integral to being able to function in combat. Most of us were so far from human on lower ranked planets we barely even remembered what getting tired was. I'd already experienced some of that when we got here, but I had a feeling I'd be gaining a new appreciation for it before the day was done.

Camden continued, introducing the other trainers, then turned and nodded to Hamill, who stepped forward, glaring coldly at us. He gestured behind him. "Between those two buildings, one of which is the mess hall and the other being the healer's quarters, you will find a freshly dragged dirt path. At the beginning of that path you will find a rack, and on that rack are weighted vests. You will each take a vest and begin running laps. You will not stop until given permission."

Forcing myself to start moving, I wondered why in the name of the Revenant I had been excited about this? My head hurt, my eyes hurt, my fucking skin hurt, and that was just from the abrupt wakeup. Benny, who was stumbling along next to me, looked almost as bad. Despite having much lower stats, his might was four hundred points higher than mine because he was so specialized. Lucky bastard.

The rest of the company looked even worse, and I was deeply thankful for the extra Impact we'd picked up in the Glade, which was clearly blunting our reaction to the pressure more than I had realized. Of course, once we reached the rack and took down the vests, I quickly realized that wasn't going to be as helpful as I'd have liked.

Strapping the thing on, I started running, almost staggering under the weight at first before I forced myself to push through it. Callie fell into step next to me, dark circles under her eyes. Even in agony of my own, I had to shoot her a teasing grin. "So...how's your morning going?"

"Jump in a hole." She growled, her irritated gaze locked on the distant horizon as we ran. "A deep one. Full of spikes."

Laughter really was the best medicine, because my cackle of glee made me feel infinitely better as I picked up my pace a bit. "Love you too honey." Taking pity on my girlfriend, I left her to wallow as I turned to talk to Benny. "So, what do you think they'll serve for breakfast. I'm fucking starving."

My best friend's face took on a greenish tinge. "Don't bring up food right now. Imagining eating is making me motion sick. I'm glad they didn't feed us before this. We'd be puking our guts out."

The mental imagine made me cringe. He was right, but I wish he'd phrased it different. As we ran, I was reminded of all the terrible sensations I'd felt as a normal human being. My knees were throbbing, my lungs were burning, and I had a stitch in my side. Even my Vitality wasn't enough to offset the pain.

I desperately wanted to heal myself, but part of the contracts had been amended for this exact situation. We WERE allowed to heal, but only after the entire day's training was done. I now thoroughly understood why Camden hadn't been worried about it. We were still getting the full effect of the training this way.

In fact, knowing I could have healed myself at any time and been full of energy was making the pain WORSE, because it all felt so damned pointless. I just had to push through it, watching the blue leaved trees as they slowly crept by, trying not to focus on the agony that was my entire body and losing myself in the staccato rhythm of feet pounding dirt.
We ran. And ran. And ran some more. Did I mentioned the running? Finally, Hamill stepped out into the path in front of us, signifying it was time to stop.

Rather than coming to a halt, most of us just dropped to the dirt where we were, caked in sweat and panting as we twitched on the ground. The impassive looking Commander nodded. "Good. That was exactly what we needed." He looked down at the path, a circular track we'd run dozens of times, and tapped it with his boot. "You packed the dirt down. Now the track is ready for use. All of you hit the mess hall. Once you eat we can start that actual training."

We all stared at him, horrified, before glancing down at the dirt path which, as he'd said, had been packed down hard by our boots as we ran.

I almost wanted to say something, but I was saved by the fact that my lungs were in too much agony to easily speak. So just like everyone else I watched in silence as he turned and strode off. Crawling over to Benny, I used him as a handhold to lift myself up, climbing to my feet painfully. I considered taking off the vest, but decided against it since no one else was.

Benny glared at me from the ground, and I almost offered a hand, but I didn't think I had the strength to actually lift him, especially in his vest. Instead, I walked over and offered my hand to Callie, who was much smaller and weighed less IN the vest then Benny did without one.

The vests were weighted with more than physical weight too. They were F-ranked materials themselves, which added to the strain. My best friend flipped me off but crawled over to help Celine, and then we all headed for the mess hall as a group. I debated finding the others, but I was pretty sure they could track us down, and I was too sore to delay. It felt like it took an hour to drag myself to the building indicated, but apparently it was only a few minutes, because there was still plenty of food when we arrived.

I'd expected shitty food, but they'd kind of gone all out. Eggs, bacon, sausage, a full breakfast including fresh squeezed juice from some native fruit called a gwunch (disgusting name, but a pretty decent taste, kind of like a mix between a guava and a pineapple) that I had four glasses of.

Mentally, I knew I shouldn't fill up. I knew that it would make working out worse, but between the hunger of having recently woken up and the hunger of my body trying to repair itself, I had no choice but to pig out. It. Tasted. Amazing. I didn't know if that was due to the cooking or my hunger and I didn't care. I just devoured the stuff.

Once I finished eating, I shoved the plate forward and let my head thunk onto the table, groaning in relief at the sheer ecstasy of not moving. I heard a chuckle and had to lever my head up to see a lanky, olive skinned blonde woman and a short, powerfully built tan man with red hair. They both looked... better than I did. The woman grinned at me. "First time doing an adjustment drill?" She asked with a chuckle.

I meant to respond, but all that came out was something like. "Urgh." Which just made both of them laugh harder.
"It gets easier." She promised. Once you acclimate to the pressure. The thing they don't tell you is the drills don't just help you push through the pain, they also teach you how to properly leverage your muscles. Might is what decides your output, but just because you're strong doesn't mean you know how to engage your strength. It's an important skill, and not one that many people bother with."

I hadn't really thought of it that way, but it did make sense. "Thanks." I grunted, managing speech this time. "Solomon." I jerked my head in either direction to indicate Benny and Callie. "Clockwork, Nightstrike." Then nodded to our fourth party member, who also seemed surprisingly unbothered. "Celine."

The woman laughed again. "Loretta. And this is Owen. We've been mercs for a few decades, though we're new to the planet. Tell you what, stick with us an we'll help you navigate the ins and outs of the first few days." I nodded gratefully and forced my hand up, holding it out slowly to shake. Which they both did. Two new friends on the first day wasn't bad. I just wished I wasn't so sure my day was going to get much worse from here on out.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Hamill's comment about us not having even started yet was sadly not an exaggeration. If anything, it was probably an understatement. Pain from running was quickly replaced by pain from squats, push-ups, pull-ups, crunches, burpees, and a dozen other exercises designed to hit every single muscle we had.

I expected my body to give out, but Hamill seemed to have an almost mystical ability to see when we were about to give up and give us the exact least amount of rest necessary for our Vitality to get us functional again.

We spent HOURS working out. Nothing but exercise all day. I forgot what it felt like not to be in pain, and when the day finally ended and we were allowed to crawl back to our barracks, the first thing I did was heal burst myself, Benny, Callie, and Celine. Since they were the ones actually with me at the end, I used some charges, but the others all just went to see Jessie, since I could only hold ten charges at a time.

"That is SO much better." I groaned as I felt energy and life fill me. I wasn't wired like I normally would be, since all the energy was taken up healing, so the life force inside me just felt like a soothing warm bath. It was absolutely amazing and just what I needed after such a hard day.

Callie, curled against me, groaned weakly. "That was hell. Why would anyone do that to themselves. We're going to have to do that every single day?"

"It gets easier." Said Abel from a cot where Jessie was finishing up pumping power into him. "It's all a matter of discipline. Plus you two are close to E-rank anyway. Once you rank up you'll just be doing your command training. You have what? A few months of this tops?"

The thought of repeating this for months or even weeks was horrifying, but at the same time I couldn't wait to rank up. "So, does anyone feel...stronger?" I asked vaguely. "Like we didn't get any Might from that, but they said it would help, so...did it?"

"I think so." Said Benny from his own cot. Jessie had cleared out the building when we showed up, not that there had been anyone there but staff. Her healing abilities were absurd, and she hadn't had any long term patients because of it. We were all meeting in here to catch up. Benny seemed to be the most enthusiastic. "I feel more in control of myself. Might gives us the raw power, but I haven't been engaging it well. Hell, I couldn't even move some of those muscles before."

That I could understand. I'd had more than a few muscles that I didn't remember ever straining before, and those workouts had damned sure hit all of them. I was already thinking over some of the movements in my staff forms and trying to make small improvements, as well as building a framework for my next form.

Nat, who had been quiet up to this point, spoke up as Jessie got to her. "I feel...better. Not good, but better. This was a good distraction, and I feel stronger and more confident. There's something freeing about learning to use your body better. But is this really all we're going to do here? Just train until we can't stand? Because I have to admit that sounds
pretty pointless over such a long period of time."

"Of course not." I said with a shake of my head. "We're going to be in actual battles too. Plus we get weekends off. Hell, we could probably take nights too. There was nothing in the contract requiring us to stick around here, as long as we're up and ready to work at Reivelle. They probably assumed we'd be too exhausted. Maybe they underestimated what Jessie could do."

She shook her head. "They didn't, but you're right about the loophole. In fact, I got a message from Camden earlier, inviting all of us to dinner at the manor. I think he might have dug up more about who you two are. He seemed interested in talking to Nat and Shane in particular."

I grimaced. That was the downside to becoming better known. We weren't a household name or anything, but enough people knew about us that a concentrated search effort should turn up something. Camden had access to Tolbert sources, or at least something like them, so figuring out who I was probably wasn't too tough. I wasn't exactly subtle. Chelsea should be safe enough though, with mom covering her tracks. Luckily we'd brought a ton of people so she was likely to just blend in.

"I could eat." Said Callie, to the surprise of exactly no one. She and Abel were our biggest foodies. "Is everyone ok to go though? When is it?"

"An hour and a half." Said Jessie with a nod. "And yeah, they'll be fine by then. Your workout finished at six, and the dinner is at eight. As thorough as the damage is, it's not actually too harmful. Your natural Vitality was allowed to patch you up periodically throughout the day. I've been reading some of the healer books on my downtime, and the way Vitality interacts with Impact on planets like this is fascinating."

I smiled at her. "Glad to hear you're learning a lot. The contract mentioned a mentor, did he already have a healer around to teach you?"

"Nah, there's a part timer he pays like a mercenary. She works with a dozen other local nobles too, and is only available one week out of the month. They have some expensive stasis bandages that can hold someone together if they get hurt badly, but if something doesn't kill you immediately as an Ascendant it usually won't kill you at all. Everyone with less severe wounds either waits for the healer or just walks it off."

Despite knowing how hardy Ascendants were, that still sounded awful to me. "Did we bring anything to wear to a fancy dinner?" I asked Callie. "I don't pay attention to that stuff. I guess we could just go in costume though."
She nodded. "I doubt he'd put us through all that and then expect us dressed to the nines. That said, it may not be necessary." Flashing a grin at the bored looking vampire fake snoozing in the corner, she called loudly. "Hey Bethy, do you want to dress everybody up?"

Bethy's eyes snapped open, glowing an ominous red and shining with a (much less literal) intensity that scared me more than her bloodlust did. "I can...dress you all?" She said, her voice faint and kind of dreamy. "Are you sure?"

"No!" I said quickly. "She's not sure. None of us are sure. Go back to sleep. This has all been a dream!"

Bethy's lips slowly spread in the most unsettling grin I'd ever seen, exposing fangs that I was almost sure weren't usually that long or sharp. "Nope!" She crowed as she blurred to her feet. "Not a dream! A dream come true! Oh, I have so many ideas. Does Shane need to wear that creepy mask?" She asked Callie, ignoring my presence entirely.

"Yes." I said firmly, positive it wouldn't matter. Luckily my girlfriend also said yes, and Bethy pouted as she started circling around me.

"Oh, fine." She said as she pulled a tape measure from...somewhere. "Earth tones then." She started measuring me, shoving my arms up, twisting my head, and basically tying me up like a pretzel to get a proper idea of my measurements. Snapping her fingers, she whipped out a black button up with obsidian buttons, shoving it into my hands alongside a pair of brown leather pants, a long brown leather coat, and a pair of knee length black boots with a pirate cuff on them.
Without asking my opinion of them, she turned me and shoved me toward the other side of the room where there were curtains around some of the unoccupied beds. I gave Callie a panicked look but she just shrugged apologetically.

Bethy, as we all knew, absolutely adored fashion. She was constantly wearing new gowns and dresses, and coming up with designs. I was pretty sure she actually had a tailoring Skill, though she'd never confirmed it. I knew Aida and Tracey, her thralls, both had fashion and design related Skills, though they weren't their primaries. But Bethy hadn't brought them along because she didn't think they would let her have any fun.

As I changed into the clothes, I could hear grunts and squeaks as she contorted and bullied all the others with her measuring tape. I think she'd been planning this for a while, actually, because she somehow had something sized for everyone, though she did make a few adjustments apparently (and I was grateful not to have needed those, given the yelps of pain from needle prodding) before sending each person off to their own curtained area to change.

I admit I hid back there for a few minutes after I finished, afraid to get her attention again, but eventually she barked out. "Present!" And all of us shuffled out into the main room again.

She'd pulled a mirror from her ring, and when I saw my own image I had to admit I didn't look bad. The clothes went with my mask, and the whole thing gave me a mysterious and dashing image. Callie was wearing a pitch black off the shoulder ballgown, the bodice of which was studded with some kind of shiny little scales like an onyx fish. Benny was in a copper colored outfit that looked like a cross between a tux and the leathers gunslingers wore in old movies, while she'd dressed Gabriel in a gunmetal grey smoking jacket and black pants over a grey silk shirt.

Abel was wearing a silver and black long coat over a grey shirt and black pants, while Chelsea had a black and white dress that matched her hair and Mel was in a crimson gown that went with her mask. Celine and Jessie both had hunter green dresses, while Nat's was black, and Callen, Cark, and Valk were in black suits. All the clothes were matched to our masks (for those that had them), since Bethy had taken my insistence on wearing mine as something standard. I wondered how many outfits she'd made for each of us to have such a wide selection.

"You all look so COOL!" She squealed happily. "I new that silver thread would set off Andy's mask, and Gabe you look so handsome in grey."

The uncomfortable look crusader grimaced at his clothes. "Why do they all get suits and I have to wear this. I look like a lothario."

I snickered at his old fashioned word choice, but shut up when Bethy's eyes snapped to me, narrowing in annoyance. I'm not ashamed to admit I stood up straight and avoided eye contact. She was even scarier like this than in combat. "You look very nice." She said in a tone that threatened imminent and dramatic violence to anyone who disagreed. "Doesn't he everyone?"

We all chorused 'yes' at the same time, and she gave a vindicated 'hmph' and a nod as she slipped behind another curtain to change into a blue velvet gown with black lace along the arms. Callie, pleased we were all finished getting dressed and completely indifferent to the terror we'd just been through somehow gestured to Jessie. "Now, how about you hand me the invitation, and we can go over a bit of noble etiquette with Celine before we go.

Our healer passed my girlfriend the envelope, which she opened and read over, apparently gleaning some information from what was written there. Then she passed it to Celine, who bit her lip in thought, then gestured us into the center of the room. "I'm not sure how necessary it'll be." Said the elf with a determined expression. "But I'll do my best." Somehow, I suspected this would be worse than the training.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After getting dressed, we made our way up to the manor, mostly mentally exhausted from the ordeal of being dress up dolls for Bethy. When we reached the house (which looked much more imposing at night) the door opened without any prompting, revealing Alister Morgan, in all his seneschal-y glory. "Ah, Master Solomon and Lady Nightstrike, welcome back. Might I take your coats?"

He stepped back, ushering us in, and said nothing to anyone else. It took a minute for me to realize that he didn't KNOW anyone else, and I needed to introduce them. I gave introductions across the party, not mentioning my relation to Chelsea just in case. When I finished (we didn't hand over our coats and he didn't press) , he bowed formally with an aristocratic flourish of his arm. "It is lovely to meet you all. I am Alister Morgan, Baron Tolbert's seneschal. Welcome to the Baron's home."

We were escorted to the dining room, where a massive white clothed table was bedecked with all sorts of china plates full of food and crystal glasses next to bottles of wine, whiskey, juice, soda, and a few drinks I didn't actually recognize. Camden sat at the head of the table, eating a truly massive steak next to a heaping pile of mashed potatoes. When he spotted us, he swallowed and grinned. "Sorry I started early. I'm not particularly patient. Come on in and take a seat."

We did, and as we sat down, a flurry of servants came out to put napkins on our laps and pour the drinks for us. The bottles were all sealed and were opened fresh in front of us, presumably to demonstrate that they weren't poisoned. I wondered how cutthroat politics got here if they needed to make a big show of that, but shut the thought down as I picked out a nice grape soda for my meal.

Jessie, who had been the invitee (though Callie and I were namechecked) beamed at Camden. "Thank you so much for the invite. The food looks lovely. I was surprised to get this invitation on the first day here."

"Lot of surprises today." He said with a smirk. "But I wanted to reach out and talk about a few things. Contracts are done, of course, but I needed to speak with you all about some of the information I'd managed to dig up. I'm sure you know what I mean. Still, no need to be rude, lets get everyone's plates sorted before we start the shop talk. My chefs outdid themselves. I even had them set a place for your ursine companion."

He gestured to a pillow next to the table with a large metal platter set on top. Jessie grinned and placed Randall, who she was still carrying, on the ground. "Do you mind it he makes himself a bit more comfortable?" She asked innocently. "He's normally bigger than this, and he likes to spread out when he eats."

"By all means." He said with a wave. "Plenty of room." And there was, this dining room was absolutely huge. Jessie pulled out her necklace focused it on the bear, and spun the star. Randall shifted in size, expanding to become a larger, though still not full sized, version of himself. Camden whistled. "I see what you mean. I assume he'd prefer meat?" He gestured to the table. "Feel free to select whatever you'd like, the servants will plate it for him."

She did, and I reached out, starting to load my own plate up. Camden didn't seem to mind, so clearly we were fine to make our own food. I grabbed some of everything I could reach. Potatoes, beef, vegetables, a kind of savory bread pudding dish I'd never seen before, and I even ladled some soup into a small bowl to eat with my meal.

"So." I said after a few bites. "What exactly have you heard about us? Given your resources, I'm not shocked you dug up a bit. Solomon isn't a unique name, but Nightstrike isn't too common, and in conjunction we gave you quite a bit to go on. I don't want to give anything away you didn't find on your own."

He grinned, tipping his head in acknowledgment. "The basics. Lady Nightstrike is a godslayer, which is not a title many people have, obviously." Callie started to clarify, but he held up a hand. "There were extenuating circumstances, I know. If not the tale would be in the mouth of every information broker and storyteller in the five factions. But still, it made enough waves for me to get wind of it with some digging."

"You planning to advertise?" I said dryly. "Telling people you have a godslayer in your army would be good press. Even moreso when we rank up, which as I'm sure you guessed, won't take long."

Shrugging, he made an uncertain noise. "Well...I considered it. If it were just Nightstrike I probably would have. But Solomon was part of that story too. Solomon, who is a descendant of the Wishmaster, and a candidate to inherit his office. A godslayer's reputation is a powerful thing, but I think access to wishes would be more useful for me at the moment. After all, not all the notoriety from releasing your feats would be good."

"Enemies would be bound to be as common as friends." I said stoically. "So you're interested in access to wishes, I can understand that. You do know, of course, that payment has to be rendered for things like that? I seem to remember you being a bit light on cash."

He grimaced, looking around. "You're not wrong. But there are other potential avenues of compensation. I have this army here, and I'm planning to use it to make a place for myself here. You'll be ranking up soon, and there are multiple territories on offer. Perhaps we might come to an...arrangement. Would becoming landed Barons be of interest to you?"

I blinked at that. "Can we...even do that? We're not citizens, can we claim territory?" We weren't going to be staying, but we had more than enough people that we might be able to leave someone to run things. Having our own territory wasn't exactly something I wanted to turn down out of hand.

"You can, though without a noble Job you couldn't be added to the Empire's roles." He said contemplatively. "There are substitutions that can be made to handle renown distribution to people within your territory, but without access to the roles you would be stuck taking physical taxes. It would be a substantial loss of functionality compared to what a normal noble might have."

I glanced at Celine curiously. We DID have a noble in the group. We could theoretically have her act as an intermediary. It would help speed up her growth too. "Would the noble in question need to be present? Or could we leave someone to watch the territory in their place?"

He paused, mulling it over. "Possibly. I know Alister can act in my stead when I'm gone, and provided the noble had a means of distributing the renown as necessary, I don't see why it wouldn't work. I take it that means you're interested in my proposition?"

Callie was incredibly interested in having roots somewhere after hearing about my discussion with Anna. Wishes provided a method of upgrading territory (albeit slowly at my level) that other people wouldn't have access to. I had plenty of spare wishes to use, and Callie had enough points coming in to use them as payment without worrying too much about slowing down her growth.

The point was, we were building a faction. A small one, but a faction nonetheless, and we needed a base. Callus wasn't going to work given it was only psuedo D-rank, but a real C-ranked planet like Stratholme would be able to hold our people and even allow them to rank up for quite a while. Not to mention having Camden as an ally would give us access to his training methods and might help us build an ACTUAL army. There was a lot of pro's to this. I'd have to discuss with Celine to see if she was willing, but given her wish to improve alongside Benny it didn't sound like a stretch.

"So, you promise me future territory in exchange for wishes to what...help you win the war?" I wasn't sure exactly how he would be structuring this deal, but I wanted to know what was on the table in the best case scenario.

Taking a bite, he nodded as he chewed, swallowing before responding. "I have some ideas about possible applications, if you agree, we'll hash out the size of the territory in question, my duties as your ally, and any other guarantees you need. You can contract future wishes for a lump sum, yes?"

"I can..." I hedged. "But it'll be a geas, not a contract. You'll be bound to uphold your end of things. If you don't...well, I haven't exactly seen what happens to defaulters, but I gather it's unpleasant. I'd advise against making promises you can't keep."

Camden just waved the point away. "I wouldn't have come here without assurances, and with your resources I'm not worried. I'll get the job done. I don't exactly have another choice. I leveraged every asset I had to get here without accruing a debt to any of my relatives, and if this doesn't work I'm probably dead. In for a gold piece, in for a chit, as they say. The question at hand is, exactly what is our end goal. I assume you know the political situation around here?"

"I know you're here for Clairdon." I admitted. "I assume you're offering my Highgrave's territory? I'm not sure what his assets are aside from a robust horse trade. Are you considering trying to bait Prentiss or Carrey into getting involved? I'm not sure of the logistics but do you have enough people for that? Even wishes have limits."

"Carrey is a hotheaded moron." He said frankly. "I suspect with the proper motivation we could enlist Prentiss to put pressure on him at the right moment and fracture his hold on his territory. We could split it in thirds and it would increase our own territorial gains by at least forty percent. Carrey's lands aren't bountiful or resource rich, but his ability to dispatch his Dragoons at speed lets him control a large swathe of territory. If we let Prentiss know we have access to wishes it should be more than enough to motivate him."

Glancing at Gabe, I cocked my head. None of us were soldiers, but he and Callen were the closest. They were the closest to tactical advisors that I could find at the moment. He gave me a considering frown and then tilted his head uncertainly. "We're interested." I finally said. "But we'd need to hash out exactly how much territory is on offer, under what conditions you'd hand it over, and some redundancy payments in case we don't hit the targets we want."

I didn't care about penalties for geasa, or I did, but more in that I didn't want to see anyone suffer them. That didn't benefit me and it would be actively harmful to potential allies. Putting in redundancies and severance fees was something I'd been playing with just in case, and this seemed like a good time to institute that policy, because I'd be taking quite a bit on faith here.

He agreed without any hesitation, and we got down to the business of haggling. As we settled in, I couldn't help but feel a thrill of excitement run through me. Having my own territory, even if I had Celine put her name on it, would be fantastic. I was excited to find out how Callie was planning to develop things. She'd been close with Stella, and would have a good idea how to run a territory like this, or better than me at least. With my wishes, the sky was the limit, and I couldn't wait to see how high we could go.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

We worked on the contract for the territory well into the night. This time the whole group sat in, chiming in with suggestions or addenda. I was damned grateful for Jessie's ability, because we were definitely going to need energy boosts when we got to training. I doubted any of us were going to sleep at all. The charge should carry us through the early portions of the day, though later on it was going to be hell.

"So, all told we're talking a hundred square miles for each party total, or fifty for both of us if Prentiss doesn't take the deal." I said tiredly. "A three century alliance, including a defensive pact, offers of military training, aid for my seneschal and lessons for my chosen noble liege. In exchange you want five wishes per day for the next four months."

Camden nodded. "Six hundred wishes, with a default payment of sixty D-rank chits if I can't hold up my end within the time of your contract. I have some assets I can sell off in case of emergency, since I'd essentially be a dead man walking anyway I don't mind liquidating everything. We can start the noble training early, if you like, I'll help you make inroads with the local nobility."

"The...the ones we're going to be invading?" Callie asked incredulously. "You want, what? Go to parties and schmooze with them?"

He chuckled. "Of course. First rule of territory ownership. You have to treat everyone as both a potential ally and a potential enemy. Relationships between lords change like the wind. One day you might be attending someone's birthday gala, and the next day you might be burning down the mansion you had dinner in the previous evening. Be approachable, but not vulnerable, and affable but not trusting."

Benny groaned. "This sounds like the kind of stuff my parents used to tell me about mixing with upper class businessmen and their kids. I HATED those lessons."

Patting him on the shoulder, Celine smiled sweetly. "It's nice to know you're well informed, but
I'll be doing the bulk of the interaction. If I'm to be the public face of this Barony, I'll be required to attend parties and social events when I'm on the planet, but you need not concern yourself."

"The fuck you say." Said my best friend instantly. "I'm not leaving you to be harassed by greasy nobles." He shot Camden an apologetic smile. "No offense."

The Baron shrugged. "None taken, I despise most of these people. Hate the players not the game, and trust me, I do. That said, as the actual owner of the territory Solomon will need to have an understanding of how everything works. Celine's name might be on the roles, but she doesn't have the backing to remain unaccosted, especially not if she won't even be present."

Nat laughed at that. "So you're saying that Solomon will own the territory, but it'll officially belong to Celine, probably through contract or geas, and that she in turn will need to pick someone to manage it. Not only that, but all three of them will need to know all this political nonsense so we pretty much all have to learn to schmooze with high society since we have no idea who that will be?"

"Essentially." He said with a shrug. "If it helps, you won't only be interacting with our targets or potential allies. Some of these events will be with more distant neighbors who won't affect our day to day, but could come in handy as trading partners down the line. Not to mention we'll need to pick a Viscount to affiliate ourselves with."

I groaned. "I thought we didn't need to do that. We're Robber Barons right?" Half the point of that was not having to deal with higher ranking nobles and their nonsense.

"We still have to obey the Viscounts." Said Camden in irritation. "It's a less involved relationship, but they run the planet. Same way they all have to pay lip service to the Earl, despite not actually being on his side. Different Viscounts have different levels of involvement though. It's something of a tradeoff, increased freedom means little to no protection. We could go with the Viscount who governs this section of the planet, which is why we can even do this much in terms of invasion planning, but we could also sign up with someone more distant for greater benefits."

Celine seemed to have expected that, because she explained to the rest of us. "A foothold inside another noble's territory is always beneficial. It gets complicated, however, because due to territorial constraints certain formalities have to be observed in the form of taxes, while secondary allegiances are usually touted as alliances or trade contracts, at least as a formality."

"This was supposed to be simple!" I whined. "Not easy, maybe, but we just needed to get our asses kicked on the regular and become better warriors. How did it turn into this?" I turned to Callie. "Are you sure we need to do this?"

She gave me a sympathetic smile. "Yes." She said mercilessly. "You saw how one wish was able to alter a building." She was vague by necessity since Anna didn't want her secret room to be well known. "Applied over time imagine what we could get done in a whole territory. Anything too resource intensive would be expensive, granted, but materials aren't the only thing that slows down development."

I knew she was right. You could hire an architect, or someone to shape the ground, or a stonemason, or any number of other professions. But wishes let us do any of those things as well as an expert in the field. Not only that, it let us do ALL of them at once, at least for small projects. Whole rooms like Anna's were just the beginning. We could do entire houses with my stats most likely. And if we couldn't we could do them in stages.

Affecting large amounts higher level materials was out, so we couldn't make like, E-rank fortresses, at least not in a timely manner. But we could make F-rank versions of them and upgrade the materials later. And our ability to raise F-rank buildings would be unparalleled.

I was imagining whole towns, smithies, alchemist shops, all the best F-rank could offer to draw in skilled craftsmen and to provide places for our friends to do their thing. A library for Chelsea, a lab for Benny, a greenhouse for Jessie. Training buildings for our troops. The sky was the limit, and even that was more of a suggestion, we could actually probably build stuff in the sky.

It was worth the extra bullshit for a chance at that. The possibility of having a real place to hang my hat, where my friends could come to be safe, was too good to pass up.

"What happens if we finish before the six months are up?" I asked as I perused the contract. "With five wishes a day, chances are good you'll be more effective than you expect. Even if the majority of those go towards stat advancement for your higher ranking officers you should have more than enough extras to turn the tables. To clarify, Prentiss's wishes will be coming out of your total, yes?"

That had been nonnegotiable. One wish a day was a big hit, but it was something. I wasn't going without for months, I'd get left way behind. Callie was closing in on E-rank, and while I didn't mind if she beat me, I DID mind if she was ahead of me long term. If she built up momentum it would be hard to catch up, even for me, and we were partners.

Nodding grudgingly, Camden just sighed. "A hundred. I won't go further. I'm willing to give a bit on that, but not too much." That had been part of the negotiations when he'd wrangled his six hundred wishes. Even with a hundred square miles of territory and a three hundred year alliance, the price had been steep. The lessons and the help with building out army traditions helped, but the assumption that he would be footing the bill for Prentiss was what drove it up. Four hundred wishes had been where we'd started, but he'd negotiated another two hundred on the assumption that he'd pay.

"Then I believe we have an accord." He said formally, reading back over the contract quickly before signing his name. He passed me the pen and I did the same, scrawling out a neat and orderly signature next to his.

As I signed, I saw a shock of purple static leap from the pen to the ink, and the ink itself glowed briefly before fading back to black. I looked around but as usual no one saw anything out of the ordinary except Nat, who winked at me conspiratorially.

This was kind of a new thing for me. I'd done contracts like this before, getting paid in advance, but that had been for more concrete goals. A lot of this was up in the air, and whole 60 D-rank chits was an absurd amount of money to me (especially since chits were more valuable at D-rank and above) I didn't want that to come into play.

From our negotiations, I'd developed an appreciation for Camden. He was a straight shooter, at least with me, and he seemed passionate about his cause. If things went bad and he died I'd be poorer for it, money or no.

Which was why we were going to train our hardest to help, as well as do our best to rank up quickly so we'd be more useful. This territory thing might not have been my idea originally but I was going to fight for it. Even if Callie hadn't had her heart set on it I'd have given it my all.

Once the contracts were signed, Camden insisted we have a celebratory cognac, and while I wasn't a drinker, the glasses weren't exactly overflowing, and a sip of liquor wouldn't kill me. He poured us each a splash into large round bottomed glasses and took the time to run a lighter under the curve before passing it over, and then we toasted. It was...not great. I didn't like alcohol, but this was sweeter than most, which helped.

"To a harmonious cooperation." Camden said with a smile. I happily toasted back. I was much more comfortable working with him now that I had a contract in place. I was sure he wouldn't double cross me in any case, since getting help from a candidate wasn't exactly something that happened to everyone, but a bit of insurance never hurt. Not after what had happened with Travis.

I felt a flash of anger as I remembered the traitor, and a phantom pain in my gut from the knife. Trust was important, but it wasn't something I could afford to give away lightly anymore. I felt a hand on mine and looked over to see Callie giving me a soft smile. I let my shoulders slump, nodding gratefully to her.

Being careful and being jaded weren't the same. I wasn't going to be a sucker, but I also didn't want to become my dad. Needing contracts for everything and never taking anyone at their word didn't sound like much of a life. I couldn't lose who I was.

As we finished our drinks, we bid our goodbyes to Camden as we all headed back to the barracks, Jessie taking the time to charge us up. We had more training the next day, as well as our first meeting with Camden for nobility tutoring. We'd even given up weekends for events and the like.

The next four to six months were going to be some of the most challenging of my life, I had no doubt. It was nice that challenge wasn't going to be in the form of murderous assassins, but it would still be difficult to overcome. Whatever happened though, I still had my friends, and we would face it together. I just wished that thought was enough to get me through the rest of today's training.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I was so tired after the next day's workout that I wanted to scream. Jessie's energy had been burned off pretty quickly. It was pushing our contract to even use it, since it might theoretically give us an unfair advantage by healing us while we worked. Only the fact that exhaustion soaked most of it before we even started made it just within bounds. Of course, by the time we finished exercising, it was completely gone, and we were all left even more tired than we started.

There were, in my experience, levels of tiredness. There was basic tired, where you were about to nod off. There was extremely tired, where you were somehow TOO tired to sleep, despite needing it badly. And then, there was PAIN tired.
Pain tired was what happened when you were so tired that your body was basically trying to shut down. Where your skin was one big bruise, and touching anything felt like sandpaper.

Mixing pain tired with exercise was a one way trip to hell, and we had already been on our way there yesterday. Now we were on the express route, and I was really missing all the pleasant stops from before as I hurtled headlong into the burning abyss of misery that was military training.

"Now." Said Hamill as he escorted us to a particularly large section of training ground covered with large equipment.
"Yesterday, we took things easy. Since it was your first day, you were only expected to do basic calisthenics and conditioning exercises. Now that you've had a night to acclimatize we can move onto actual training. To that effect we have...this."

He gestured at that stacked high mess of wood and ropes and any number of other equipment. His pride in the...thing, was obvious, and at our blank looks, he puffed up further. "This." He said patronizingly. "Is the century course. It's a devlishly complex and useful device. In essence, it's a multi person obstacle course. You begin at the bottom, doing challenges and physical obstacles to reach the top. However, you'll enter it in groups of ten, and should one of you get further ahead by too large a margin, the obstacles behind will become more difficult."

One of the other cadets, a tall harsh featured man named Crallus, raised a hand. Nodding to him, Hamill accepted his question, something he did regularly and one of the things I liked about him best. Crallus cleared his throat. "Sir, does that mean that it's a pass fail exercise? That all of us have to make it through or none do?"

"Exactly so." Beamed the instructor. "Battle as a soldier, whether formation or pitched, depends entirely on the person next to you. Learning to adopt the pace of your weakest link, to remain cohesive and stable, is invaluable. We're not training warriors here. Being the best and getting ahead won't serve you well on the battlefield, it'll just make you an easier target. One soldier, no matter their talent, can't make a difference against an army of the same rank."

That was...kind of a good point. Even Abel, monster that he was, couldn't fight ten thousand F-rankers. Quantity had a quality all its own. The philosophy was interesting enough that it almost helped me focus past the agony I was in. Almost.

And so the training began. Ten at a time. I'd hoped that we would all be together, but we were clearly expected to reach this level of cohesion with any of the others, not just our friends. I did get lucky enough to get paired up with Benny, who nodded to me tiredly as we each climbed up onto the huge contraption that was the century course.

Stepping into the wooden...hallway, I guess was the best word, I followed it down the course to the first room. There were ten entrance corridors made of slatted wood with gaps between, and once I got into room one, I could see the others through the walls, able to spot flashes of them as I looked at the first obstacle. I couldn't see them well, but it was enough to pace myself a bit.

The obstacle itself was...weird. A large wall covered in multi colored protrusions, with a huge series of buckets at the top. Periodically, the buckets would tip, spilling scalding water down over the handholds. The sequence wasn't random, not after taking a few minutes to map it, but it was complicated.

I wanted to wait longer and figure out how to do it safely, but through the slats I saw some of the others already partway up. Grinding my teeth, I bolted to the wall, hopping up to grab some of the handholds and begin climbing. It wasn't so bad to start, a bit hard to pull myself up, but not terrible. At about the quarter way mark, I realized I was going to be under a bucket. I scrambled sideways, straining hard to get out of the way, and just barely managing to get to the next segment before the water poured down the face of the wall.

Flecks and droplets of hot water splatted onto me, my current armor not covering enough to prevent it from burning my skin. It wasn't enough to blister or anything, but it was fucking HOT. I gritted my teeth, climbing faster to try to avoid having to do that again.

Scaling sideways to avoid the buckets was about ten times more exhausting than climbing up. I didn't know why, but it was. Finally, after getting burned and almost letting go twice, I managed to reach the top, slumping onto the ground and panting in pain. Looking around, I saw a few others through the slats. "Hey!" I shouted. "Can you guys see if the people on either side of you made it up?"

There was a pause, before the guy on my right bellowed back. "Looks like mine is there. He was about to start on the next leg. He says the girl on his other side had already made it to the third section he thinks, he didn't get a response." I groaned. That meant the next section would be harder for us.

Letting myself rest for a minute, I called out to the others to check if they were ready. After a particularly irritating back and forth between everyone, we got nine of us on board, and timed it so we'd all be going at once. Counting down, we all launched ourselves forward at the next obstacle at once. This one was a slightly different exercise, though in a similar vein.

The tilted wall we were climbing was lined with ropes and holes. We climbed the ropes, and every so often blades would pop out of the holes at random to cut the ropes (or us) and force us to fall. The only saving grace was the slight click before the blade popped out, enabling us to avoid getting pincushioned. Unfortunately, the blades did NOT pop one at a time, and the mad scramble to get up was frantic.

Avoiding the stabs was only part of it, if a blade popped and severed the rope above us we had to grab one of the nearby lines. The blades seemed to follow us at least, so all the ropes didn't get severed up top and make the trial unpassable, but they did pop like a foot or two above us. I had the sneaking suspicion this was the "making things harder" part that Hamill had mentioned, and I mentally cursed whoever went ahead.

Finally, after reaching the top with minimal holes poked in me (three, two on my arm and one in my calf) I called the others to check that they'd arrived. Everyone had made it, though several of us were injured. A small stab wasn't the end of the world for an F-ranker, and I assumed there was some scanning ability or something because none of us got stabbed in the eye or face. Still, damage was damage, and we all needed a minute.

"Anyone manage to get in contact with the one in the lead?" I called to the guy next to me. "Maybe we can convince them to slow down."

I didn't know how you could be stupid enough to ignore that big long speech Hamill gave, but nobody ever got rich betting on the limits of human stupidity. As Mad Scientists were fond of saying, there was no point in trying to idiot proof an item, because even if you managed, the universe would just Invent a bigger idiot.

His response was surprisingly positive. "Aye. Apparently the climber three down from me managed to catch her before she got past this section. He convinced her to wait at the top for us. He apparently said to pass a message along to 'that dipshit Solomon' not to ruin his hard work by going ahead like a big wooden faced showoff. Is that you?" His attempt not to burst out laughing was obvious in his voice.

"Yes." I said through gritted teeth. "And the moron in question was my best friend Clockwork. I, however, am far more mature and self possessed, and of course need not pass a message on to him through other people like a five year old. We should take a few minutes to heal up before the next section then. I'm Solomon, like he said, what's your name?"

"I'm Bill." He said simply. I waited for some kind of addendum or title but nothing came. Apparently some people just used normal names here. Weird.

After a second, I finally responded. "Hey Bill." I said uncertainly. "Nice to meet you. You get stabbed on the way up?"

There was a second of contemplation. "Aye. I was stabbed." He said as if he was talking about the weather. "Once in the meat of my thigh and once in the ankle."

"Ouch." I said sympathetically. "You going to be good for the next section? We'll wait at the top for you if you want." I was pretty sure we were losing points waiting. There was no reason to train cohesion if there was no way to improve. Chances were good there was a timed aspect as well, so cohesion could be refined by improving on your score.

His response was cut off by a call from the other side, where the other guy had apparently gotten the message to go and was passing it on. I shouted it ahead to Bill and got back at it.

The next section was harder. No stabbing or anything, this one we had to jump from beam to beam, using wooden perches that stuck a few feet out of the wall to leap further up. At random intervals they would be yanked back in, and I'd miss my footing, usually smashing ribs first into the next one down and having to scramble back up.

Jumping like that WAS possible for someone like me at high F-rank, or even for the others at mid, but it was an exhausting full body workout that was made even more difficult by our tiredness and all the exercises we'd been doing.

It took about thirty minutes for me to finish that one, and when I called around, several people hadn't made it yet. Those not all the way up could still hear us calling, as with those who had embarked on the next level, though past that it seemed to isolate our voices somehow. Either through magic or just distance, we could only communicate with each other when we were one ahead or behind.

And so it went, test after test, section after section, until we finally got to the top. Once we reached the peak, we were all in the same room, and Benny and I were too exhausted to even rag on each other. We all just silently dragged our battered bodies into a small wooden room in the middle that appeared to be some kind of elevator. I dreaded doing this again, but I was sure we would. Hamill hadn't been joking. Yesterday was the easy part. The real pain was just beginning.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The rest of the day crawled by. Like, at glacial speeds, over glass. We had more exercises, a few drills they wanted us to practice, but mostly they were just killing time while all the other cadets went through the course. By the time the day ended I wanted to sleep so badly I almost burst into tears, but I had a training session with Camden and Celine, so I had to stay awake.

I burned another heal burst to repair the damage of the day and a second to energize me as best I could get, because I still had to grant today's wishes. I decided to just do all six for Camden and bank the extra, that way I would have a decent stockpile for when we actually got our territory.

Callie caught up with me as I was leaving, coming with me up to the manor for moral support (which is to say, to catch me if I passed out) and to my surprise, we were quickly joined by my sister.

"I'd have thought you'd avoid this like the plague." I said to Chelsea with a chuckle. "It's going to be insanely boring. Jessie is patching everyone up and then they're all going to sleep." I sighed in pure jealousy. "I'd give anything to go to sleep right now."

Even with the charge of heal burst I was so exhausted I felt like I was underwater. My sister just smiled though. "I came to get to know my brother, not just to have adventures. Which, by the way, I don't think I would categorize this as. So far this vacation is sucking pretty hard."

I shrugged. "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Should have asked around about all the nonsense we get into. This was bound to be somehow horifically annoying or possibly fatal." I softened the joke with a smile. "But really, I'm glad you came with us. I want to get to know you too. It's just so...weird, thinking about having a twin. There's so much we never got to learn about each other."

"There's so much I never got to learn at all." She said sadly. "I mean, even about myself and the things I can do. I've just been so...limited. I don't even know what happens if I use both my abilities at once. I've never been allowed to try."

Wincing, I shook my head. "Actually that one was probably a good idea. I've seen what that looks like. It explodes. Don't."

"Oh." She said in a let down sort of tone. "Ok. But still, my point stands. I've been pretty much kept in box my whole life. I know a lot of random shit from books but not much else. Seems like you at least got to interact with other people. I want to learn all about you for sure, but I hope you can teach me to be a normal person too. The way you learned."

Callie snickered from the other side of me. At my glare she shrugged. "Sorry, honey, but calling you normal is a stretch. You were basically a shut in before we met. The only person you talked to was Benny." My feeling of dismay must have rolled through the bond, because she backpedaled. "Not that my childhood was any better. Running away at sixteen to live in an underground criminal dystopia is hardly the best way to hone your people skills."

Chelsea giggled at the interplay. "It's sweet how close you two are. I can't imagine knowing someone that well. My brother was lucky to find you."

"Yup." I agreed unashamedly. "Best thing that ever happened to me. Sadly, I think we have to cut the heart to heart short though. We're here." I pointed up at the manor, and at the door where Celine was waiting for us. We'd split up to get changed into our more formal clothes. Chelsea, having joined us on the walk, was still in her armor, but she wasn't taking lessons so it didn't matter.

Alister was standing beside Celine, and when we approached, he bowed formally. "Greetings, Lord and Ladies. Be welcome in the home of his grace, Baron Camden Toldert. Declare your allegiance."

I just looked at him, unsure what the hell he was talking about. Celine, smiling slightly, stepped past him to stand beside us, dropping into a low curtsy as she said primly. "Greetings, honored seneschal, from my liege Shane, of house Wyndham. Son of Elijah and slayer of Suvaya."

That wasn't what I expected her to say, but she knew what was what so I just let it go. As they both rose, she turned to me with a laugh. "For future reference, declaration of allegiance will include your house, as well as the house and provenance of your liege. Technically speaking, despite you being in attendance, declaring myself for you is a bit of a loophole, but you would normally declare yourself for Baron Tolbert, at least until you rank up."

I shrugged. "You guys didn't mention that to me. Isn't that what the lessons are supposed to be for?"

"I believe it was a test." Said my elven friend. "Though perhaps an ill timed one on Alister's part, given your current frazzled state."

The seneschal sniffed reproachfully. "Nonsense. Good manners are to be observed at all times. One is not granted dispensation for mere tiredness. Your response was...technically passable. You may enter. We've arranged a small repast while you speak with his grace on the content of his wishes."

Excited by the idea of food after working out most of the day, I followed him in, but was stopped by Celine. "Be careful when we go in." She said in a low voice. "Watch how I eat, and follow my lead. If Alister is already testing you, a meal isn't relief, it's a trial." She nodded to the others, who presumably could eat however the fuck they wanted, and then swept inside.

Grumbling, I followed her inside, ignoring Chelsea and Callie snickering at my downcast expression. I was annoyed, I admit. I'd been wearing myself out all day and I was tired and hungry. I just wanted to eat a normal meal, not some fancy nonsense test dinner.

Camden was waiting for us in the dining room, the table overflowing with meat and pasta and several kinds of vegetable, some of which I didn't recognize. He grinned and waved me over as I arrived. "Solomon, or should I say Shane, I suppose? Come in, come sit down. Your guests are welcome as well."

Chelsea and Callie introduced themselves with real names, though Chelsea didn't mention being my sister. Anders wasn't as well known a name as Wyndham, since the Radiant Pope rarely went by his given name. In a huge universe it was unlikely someone would make the connection. They sat down, Callie in her nice dress and Chelsea in her armor, which was surprisingly clean despite a day of exhausting training. Purification flames have many uses.

"So." i said as we all sat down. "How do we do...this?" I gestured at the food. "And why, more accurately. This doesn't seem like the best timing. Alister's whole 'always be ready' motto aside, I'm exhausted and starving. If we could do the food portion of these lessons...not today, that would be great."

He just chuckled. "Sorry Shane, but it is a necessity. We're going to be attending a banquet this weekend, to try to get your names and faces out among the nobility before the big takeover. TECHNICALLY as an unlanded Baron I shouldn't be invited, but my name does come with some small perks, and anyone in the Empire would want a Tolbert at their party, distanced from the house as I may be."

I blinked. That was...efficient. I'd been expecting a long wait for our big introduction. "Guess we'll have to pick who will be staying behind to manage the territory." I said slowly. I didn't know who I would leave, or even if I was willing to do it. It was a hard decision. "For now, why don't you fill me in on the particulars of fancy eating, and we can get started on your wishes. Did Alister tell you I wanted to do six today?"

"Of course, that's fine." He said with a wave. "We put provisions in the contract for that. You said you'd done similar things in previous contractual arrangements?"

"Back on my home planet." I agreed. "So what will your wishes be. You going with stat gains to start? Or do you have other ideas." As we waited, Alister began pointing out forks, bowls, and various smaller utensils. The array of rules and affectations were dizzying, but with my Focus it wasn't tough to remember it all.

Camden took a bite, mulling it over. "I think I'm more interested in doing a bit of...territorial shifting." He grinned at me. "This area is well known to the locals, but if things were to change... well, that would make matters more complicated, especially if I knew about the changes and they didn't." Withdrawing a map, he started pointing out sections of it to me.

Despite my stats being more than enough to move some ground, the more of it that needed moving the more it cost. Even wishes couldn't just magically make a fifty mile tunnel underground on a C-rank planet without a trace. At least not my wishes and not all at once. After some trial and error, we managed to carve out about a mile of tunnel per wish, under the condition that no trace of the formation would be detectable.

He didn't set it up below the manor, choosing to make it in the middle of a contested area he pointed out on the map. Six miles of tunnel, following a very specific route he marked out for me. With my already exhausted body, the drain of the wishes hit me like a punch to the gut, but I got through it, then followed the ridiculous directions to eat my overly complicated meal.

By the time we finished it was about eight P.M and I could barely stand. The food and the crash from the wishing had mixed together into a roiling cauldron of exhaustion that had me ready to pass out. Callie and Chelsea helped prop me up as we said out goodbyes, making sure to take down the time we'd need to leave for the banquet and telling Camden who would be coming along.

Then they walked me back to the barracks, and I stumbled inside, staggering to my bed and slamming into my mattress without even taking off my clothes. Benny, who was bunked near me, saw me come in and helped me push my legs over the side of the bed so I wasn't hanging over the edge.

"You look wiped, man." He said tiredly. "I wanted to stay up to make sure you got back ok. Everything go alright with Camden?"

I groaned, pulling my mask off and dropping it on an endtable near the single twin bed. We had privacy curtains, though mine was open in the direction of Benny's bed and the same for his. I was glad it was taken care of, since I didn't want to sleep in a wooden mask. "Yeah, we have a banquet this weekend. Your girlfriend can tell the details, I need to sleep."
Chuckling my friend laid back in his own bed, closing his eyes. "I'm right there with you man. I'm exhausted myself. See you in the morning Shane."

"Night Benny." I muttered as my eyes forced themselves shut. The day was over, thank the gods, and tomorrow wouldn't be nearly as bad, since we'd be well rested. We had a few days of this until the weekend, where we'd have a whole day off before that banquet in the evening. I just hoped things didn't get any more complicated from here.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The rest of the week flew by. Three days of training should have been terrible, but I was so desensitized to the pain from the second day that it almost seemed easy in comparison. I also stockpiled more wishes, granting six a day for Camden, bringing my total of usable extra wishes to four. When Saturday rolled around we all gathered at the tent where Bethy dressed us in new clothes (we didn't want to keep wearing the same fancy outfits) and went over the details before meeting Camden.

"Alright." I said, looking around. "Benny, Celine, Callie, Chelsea, and Nat." I counted off, just making sure I had everyone. "You're all coming along, everyone else is heading back to Saltzburg to visit Zeke and Cass. We'll meet up with you after the banquet."

We'd all been outfitted in matching black and silver color schemes, albeit in differing shapes, because they were apparently neutral colors. Some houses had specific hues associated with them, so we'd had Bethy set us up in something that wouldn't state any allegiance. We were representing Camden, but only as mercenaries, and that gave us a bit of leeway, where signing on with a Viscount as an actual vassal would be picking a side.

Everyone agreed, and those of us going to the banquet filed out, meeting up with a transport heading to the Clairdon estate. Clairdon's eldest son, Sutton, was being 'honored' for his most recent win against Highgrave's forces. In reality, Sutton hadn't done much, and it was a badly disguised fund raiser for Clairdon to hit people up for 'gifts'. People would give Sutton money, and Clairdon would pocket the donations, keeping a ledger of who to pay back once he beat Highgrave.

Because of the underhanded nature of the exchange though, Clairdon needed to invite everyone nearby, claiming to be hosting a formal event. It allowed all the sharks to circle, making notes of clandestine alliances in order to exploit the support later if things fell through. Sometimes overtly or sometimes just as leverage to blackmail their own 'donations' in case of emergency.

I, of course, had figured NONE of this out, and had it spelled out for me by Callie and Celine. I think what really bothered me most about politics was all the unspoken arrangements. So much of it was based on 'trust' which was just a devious way of saying conflicting and coinciding interests and your knack for reading them, as well as your information sources and their ability to keep you in the know so you could read the nonsense a bit better than the other guy.

Not that I couldn't DO those things if given the chance, but my nature was more transactional. I liked my relationships codified into hard terms. Contracts were one aspect, but even wishes were like that. I give someone A and get back B. Simple and straightforward.

In fact, I suspected recursion was partially to blame for my political blindness. The perception of Wishmasters as being direct and to the point was ingrained in our image. We could and would give you whatever you wanted if you asked and could pay. We were seen as above the petty bullshit, at least at the higher end of the spectrum. Of course, the candidate's competition gave lie to that pretty overtly, but recursion was based on perception, not reality.

That particular realization had mostly been brought about by some careful reviewing of my own thought processes.
Whenever politics came up, something in my head told me 'you're not good at this'. It was something I'd repeated to myself so often it was almost a mantra, and something about that behavior didn't seem natural.

I'd tried to ferret out any other mental ticks I had that were similar, but nothing came to mind. It only drove home how insidious recursion could be, and how even the smallest bit of perception could worm its way into my worldview and shift it just enough to be a problem. I was pushing back against it with these political lessons, and I hoped to try to counteract more of the harmful effects as I noticed them.

The transport to the banquet was an odd thing. It was a magical vehicle, obviously, but it had clearly gone through quite a bit of refinement. It reminded me of a mixture between a fancy carriage and an old fashioned car. It was dark metal with gold filigree along the panels on the sides, and the engine was some sort of magical alchemical creation (I'd convinced the driver to show it to me while we waited for everyone to get aboard). It was strange to see a machine swirling bubbling blue glowing liquid through what looked like steam chambers, but it was interesting to look at.

Camden was waiting inside for us, the interior being larger than the outside, obviously, and he poured us each drinks and chatted until we arrived at the Clairdon estate and we all disembarked. When we came to a stop, he addressed us.
"Alright. My last advice to you is this. Do not agree to anything. Do not disagree with anything. Speak often and say little. Flattery is useful, but don't overdo it, or they'll sense weakness, don't be insulting or they'll take offense."

I blinked at him in confusion. "So...what the hell are we supposed to actually TALK about? Aren't we here to make friends."

"Friends?" He said with a laugh. "You are here to be NOTICED. Do not make friends. Friends come with obligation, and establishing those limits your options. Don't express too much interest in anything anyone says, or too little. Don't ASK for anything or offer any gifts. Taking a favor implies a debt, and granting one suggests an alliance. I'll feel out Prentiss while we're there and you can leave that bargaining to me. Any questions?"

I had a dozen, but none of them seemed important, so I just shook my head, taking Callie's arm as we stepped down from the transport.

The night air nipped at my skin as I took in the entrance to the massive mansion. Where Camden's manor was luxurious, it was also defensible, with plenty of hidden (and not so hidden) defenses. Clairdon's mansion, however, was a sprawling study in largesse. A series of real gold hedges highlighted the open style of the estate, showcasing a series of high rank statues made from precious gems of multiple colors.

I assume they were going for fancy and impressive, but honestly it mostly just came off tacky and badly designed. My eyes hurt just from looking at the terrible decorating. "Well, this is...unique."

Camden snickered from beside me. "Yes, Clairdon is well known for his eclectic tastes. It's my first time here, but I've heard stories. It's just as interesting as described." I made a mental note of all the ways he'd just politely stated that Clairdon was a dumb asshole with bad taste, because it was pretty impressive and then we advance to the open doors where a pair of hulking guards in thick metal helmets were standing stock still holding giant spears.

From behind them stepped a small, weaselly man with a thin mustache and overly large spectacles that made his eyes look huge. "Names?" He drawled in a snooty voice.

Camden stepped forward, doing his whole formal announcement thing. To my relief, he did ours too, introducing us as his vassals and letting me skip the rigamarole. The weaselly man checked a list (a scroll he unfurled about three feet as he ignored us) until apparently locating Camden's name.

"You may enter." He said officiously. "Be welcome in the home of his grace, Baron Alexander Clairdon, on this, a day of celebration of his lordship Sutton Clairdon, hero of the realm."

Camden smiled tightly at him, nodding before escorting us past the guards. Once we were inside, he scoffed loudly.
"Hero of the realm. As if this pissant backwater counts as a realm. In civilized parts of the Empire they have men hung up and beaten for making claims like that. I hate frontier showmanship. We're inside now, so just remember my advice. Be friendly but superficial, and don't commit to anything."

We nodded, then headed off to mingle, though we stuck together in groups of two. Nat and Chelsea stayed together, my sister clearly being more comfortable around family than on her own.

Callie and I ended up in a small gathering of E-rankers, all conversing quietly about the local economy. When they saw us, they smiled politely, and a tall woman with dark skin and plaited green hair smiled kindly at us. "Ah, newcomers. Greetings, my name is Baroness Natalia Danvers. Who might you be?"

A short man with an olive complexion and neatly trimmed red hair beside her snorted. "You know who they are Talia. They're the Tolbert brats new retainers. Introduced with use names, as I heard it. Solomon and Nightstrike?" Part of the reason Camden had introduced us was so we could keep my name a secret until we actually hit E-rank and came out as Barons. We didn't want the other nobles figuring out his plan too early.

Natalia glared at him. "I was being friendly, Lucas. You should try it. Perhaps if you adjust your bahvior your next wife won't leave you like the last six."

The pompous man stiffened. "Those marriages were mutually dissolved." He gritted out. "We'd grown apart."

"A bit of advice." She said patronizingly. "When you 'grow apart' from six different women in a row, many of whom went on to have happy successful marriages with other people, it might perhaps be time to address the common denominator in all of those failed nuptial arrangements." She gave him a sweet smile, and he turned and stalked off, trailed by a pair of younger nobles with similar features I suspected were his kids.

Natalia, now one of the only two remaining people in the small crowd, smiled apologetically at us. "My sincerest apologies for Baron Myers. He's unhappy about the Tolbert boy's insertion into our little slice of heaven. He fancies himself a bit of a spymaster and he's been gathering information to leverage the mess between Clairdon and Highgrave for a few years. Tolbert's entrance shook up the hornets nest and rendered his work up to this point moot."

I wondered if he knew Anna, but it didn't seem relevant at the moment. I offered a hand. "Solomon, as he said. This is my girlfriend Nightstrike." She took our hands one after the other, shaking firmly as she gestured to the last remaining noble from the original group.

"I already introduced myself, and this is Lady Marcella Winfries. My personal attendant." I'd been so wrapped up in what was going on that I'd missed that the pale girl with metallic neon orange hair was F-rank like we were. Her bright orange eyes lit up as she smiled at us, dropping into the same sort of curtsy I'd seen from Celine.

"Milord." She said formally. "Milady. Greetings from the nobility of Stratholme. Be welcome to our home. I hope your stay is most pleasant."

I nodded back, because that was apparently the protocol for curtsies. Happy with the pleasantries, we started making conversation, following Camden's instructions as best we could. It turned out that talking alot and not saying anything was actually really hard. I was impressed so many politicians throughout history were so good at it. Making meaningless conversation and committing to nothing at all took serious concentration.

Luckily Natalia seemed to know how the game was played, and she was able to guide us through an entire discussion where no one said anything relevant or meaningful at all. After about ten minutes we were out of nonsense to chatter about, and we were about to say our goodbyes.

I was just settling in for hours of unmitigated boredom when the music and chattering stopped. With only that split second of warning, the lights went out, and the entire banquet was consumed by darkness. As the screaming started, I just sighed. Of course even the boring parties had to go wrong.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

To my utter and complete shock, we did NOT get immediately attacked when the lights went out. The screaming had me setting my stance for a fight, but apparently nobles were just weirdly jumpy. Reaching out a hand, I clasped Callie's fingers in mine. "So...can you see in this?" I asked calmly, completely unable to spot literally anything in this oppressive darkness. "Because I'm planning to use an...alternative means of sight, and I don't want to blind you."

"I can." She responded succinctly. From her tone she was incredibly focused, probably trying to process a large amount of data at the same time via her shadow sense. "Go ahead and exclude me."

With a nod, I reached for my Moonlit Night ability, filling the area around us with fog. Now, one might be curious how further occluding the sight of everyone nearby would make it easier for me to see, but Moonlit Night manifested the fog as a translucent cloud of light to mark its boundaries. Once the fog spread, everything was suddenly perfectly well lit, easily visible even in pitch black.

To me. Easily visible, to me. The people weaving through the crowds slipping hands into pockets suddenly found themselves just as blind as the people they'd been robbing, and shouts of their dismay joined the shrieks of panicked nobles.

I was frankly shocked that had worked. Whatever this was, it was clearly enough to block off E-rankers from being able to see at all, barring unique abilities like Callie's. The only reason besides my slightly higher Impact I could attribute the quirk to was that I might not be ACTUALLY seeing anything. Maybe the cloud was acting as a kind of sonar? Or whatever the physical version of that concept was.

Thinking through the possibilities, I casually reached into my coat and slipped out my staff, releasing Callie's hand as I hauled back and smashed the E-ranked stick into the masked face of one of the thieves as he got a bit too close to Callie for my liking. He fell over with a shout, and I spent a minute beating him violently about the head and body with the weapon, just to really drive home the message.

He was an F-ranker, like me, but I had three extra Impact and was beating him with an E-ranked stick, so there wasn't much he could do, especially without the ability to see, except curl up in a ball and take his punishment. After confirming he was down, I kicked him once for good measure glaring down at him for a minute before moving on. Putting his creepy thief hands on my girlfriend in the dark wasn't going to fly.

Leaving the whimpering thief in a puddle of his own blood, I pulled Callie with me out of the way of the main force of thieves and up onto the steps, just to get us some room. The fog wasn't effecting her, since I hadn't brought her into the skill other than to exempt her from the stealth aspects, so her ability to merge with shadows let her process everything that was going on with extremely high precision.

Finally, after about a minute and a half of darkness, a voice shouted. "ENOUGH!" A loud thud of something hard striking floor came down, before a wave of bright energy blasted across the hall, dissipating the choking darkness and leaving everyone confused as to what was going on.

A tall, stately man with far too many rings on was standing in a circle of dark figures, glaring at them in rage as he held a brightly glowing staff. For a second I thought they were attacking, but after a moment I realized that they were all completely paralyzed. One of the rings, a green stone thing in a gaudy gold setting, glowed sedately on his hand as his blue eyes blazed.

"Shadow Troupe." He spat. "To think you would be so brazen as to assault an event where I am in attendance." He slammed the staff, a tall dark rod of wood with the end wrapping a glowing crystalline stone, once on the ground, and an eruption of plants exploded from the ground, reaching up and wrapping around all of the dark figures.

Looking closely, I could see the faces of the men hidden behind beaten masks of matte black metal. They were creepy and featureless, though they gave the impression of amusement. These weren't great masks, Zeke would have been appalled, but they definitely lent their wearers an air of competence and mystery. One of the ones being restrained, choked out. "Magister Weston." As the plants started to grip him harder.

A magic user. I'd heard of them, the owner of the Wizard's Tower where we found the ritual information we used to defeat Suvaya was one of those. It was a job dedicated to learning and practicing spells. When a person took a Job, their ability became a Skill, albeit a main Skill. Skills could be taught and learned, and certain Skills with narrow usage but impressive and interesting results were considered spells.

I had no idea what made something a spell, but I knew magic users could learn a lot of them, and from a variety of useful disciplines. Technically anyone could, but the Job system made learning and advancing Skills easier in some ways. Especially Skills related to your job, which made magic users complicated but sometimes very effective combatants.

Several of my DS Mastery subskills were probably considered spells, but I now had that as an ability, which meant they would automatically rise when I ranked up, a useful part of heroic cultivation Job system cultivators had to give up in exchange for protection from recursion and some other useful tricks. I was pretty happy with the direction I'd gone, all things considered, but it was damned impressive seeing what a magic user could do.

Weston turned, blue eyes searching the crowd until they fell on a sallow man with dark hair and a waxed mustache.
"Clairdon." He intoned coldly. "Might you wish for assistance disposing of these...interlopers?" He technically asked a question, but his tone made it clear that 'no' wasn't an answer that was on the table for the Baron.

Clairdon's face was getting even paler, but I didn't have time to react to that before I was tapped on the arm. "Excuse me." Said a familiar voice. "Might I trouble you for a moment of your time." Turning around, I froze in shock as I looked into the eyes of a formally dressed Anna, who smiled patiently as she took both my arm and Callie's and led us further up the stairs, pulling us into an alcove at the top. "What are you doing here?" She hissed when we were alone.

I raised a brow at her, before remembering she couldn't see my eyebrow behind my mask. "What are YOU doing here?" I chuckled as I gestured to our outfits. "We were invited. You didn't exactly seem friendly with Clairdon when you mentioned him."

"Because I'm not." She spat. "But I do know most of his private business dealings now. I was able to suss out where he keeps one of his emergency stockpiles of chits by crossreferencing information I had on his movements with the dates and times in the ledgers. I sent the Shadow Troupe to distract everyone while I lifted the money, but I had to pull out last minute because Weston is here. Clairdon is a nobody, but fighting the Magister would be a death sentence for me."

Which implied that guy was at least D-rank. Why the hell was he HERE? Anna couldn't see my face, but she obviously picked up my curiosity from my body language. I could feel the telltale stuffiness in the air of a stealth Skill in use, and I was pretty sure Anna was doing it. So at the very least we didn't need to worry about being overheard. Still, she looked around furtively and lowered her voice.

"I don't know why Weston is here." She said worriedly. "He shouldn't be anywhere this backwater. He's not a Viscount, but he works closely with the Earl at times. He's something of a stabilizing influence on Stratholme." She cursed quietly.
"This was supposed to be an effortless job. I'd probably have still tried it, given my skillset, but you're the goose that laid the golden egg. Can't let you get caught up in this nonsense. Which is part of why I pulled you away. Weston CANNOT find out you're a Wyndham."

That sounded ominous. "Why, does he have a problem with the WCP?" He was D-rank, so Zeke wouldn't let him act against me personally, but still, that only lasted until I hit E-rank myself. While he wasn't as restricted as he had pretended at the start (Zeke had let me believe 'protection from anyone two ranks higher' didn't include the rank I was at when I was starting out so I'd be more careful) once I hit E-rank, people like Weston would be able to do whatever they wanted to me.

Once I hit D-rank, the protection would end completely, but I wasn't ready to think about what that might mean. Anna brought my thoughts back to her with a rapid head shake. "No, but you're a strategic resource. He can and would use you. More than that...his being here seems odd, like I said." She glanced down the steps worriedly. "You're here with Tolbert right? How tied up are you with his settlement attempt so far."

"Very." I said firmly. "You think Weston is here for Camden? Why would he even bother with that?"

She shrugged. "Lots of reasons. Could be doing a favor for one of Tolberts off world enemies, hell, the Earl could be involved. Just be careful, if Weston is here, someone big is making moves, and there's no way he's their only card. Something else is happening and I somehow doubt it's going to be pleasant for Tolbert or anyone involved with him."

Which was really something I could have used information on before I signed a binding contract with him and got heavily invested in his business. While it was nice not to be the active TARGET of the insidious plot this time, being sucked into it by accident was almost as annoying. worse really because this time it was entirely my damned fault, and I just knew my fucking fate sense had influenced this nonsense.

Anna sighed and shook her head. "Anyway, I need to go. I'm going to try to spring my people before Weston gets them back to his estate. He's an unpleasant bastard, and chances are good he'll take them home for experiments. I can't take him in a fight, but my skillset is suited to prison breaks and disappearing into the forest. Be careful." She nodded and then turned and strolled casually down the steps, before LITERALLY vanishing into the crowd. One second she was there the next she was gone.

I looked at Callie worriedly, but without Anna's stealth we couldn't really talk too openly. Callie's own Skill wasn't anything to scoff at, but with a D-ranker here the chances of us being overheard were too high by far.
Offering her my arm, I gestured back down to the party, and she nodded solemnly. We needed to blend. Once this night was over we could talk to Camden about all this. Hopefully he'd have some idea what was going on and what to do about it, because I was thoroughly out of my depth.

We rejoined the milling throngs of nobles, smiling and flattering and being noncommital about everything as we killed time. As we did I considered how Camden might get out of this. Someone was clearly acting against him in a less than straightforward way, based on what Anna said, and that might give us a chance. After all, they didn't know about me or the wishes I'd signed over to Camden. Part of me was looking forward to seeing how that would tip the scales. After all, my other enemies had mostly known about my powers and been prepared for them. This time, THEY would be the ones in the dark.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I was mentally exhausted by the time the banquet ended. Political maneuvering wasn't just complicated, it was tedious. How many times could you say the same ridiculous bullshit before someone actually commented on how inane it was. Telling people their clothes were nice, talking about bullshit tourist nonsense from their territories, listening to THEM regale you with pointless stories.

Despite the conversation, I had to watch every word so I didn't give anything away, and more than once Callie caught me before I said something genuinely personal instead of just fake bullshit personal, like talking about my likes or dislikes. It was tiring, annoying, and by the time we left I was ten seconds from slugging the next person who smiled at me.

We filed into the carriage, and Callie sighed as she slumped onto the seat. "That was...awful. Most of those people were terrible human beings. I almost stabbed Baron Langdon. His creepy stories about all the women he takes to his lake house were gross. If Shane hadn't been with me I think he might have tried inviting me back there."

"He looked like he was considering it anyway." I growled. "I was about ten seconds from taking my staff to his wrinkled old face. How is it possible that he's THAT old physically at that rank? He looked like, ninety. I thought Vitality kept people in their peak health for their age?" The unpleasant E-ranker had been a nauseating conversationalist, and I was still shaking with rage at how he'd been looking at Callie.

Camden grimaced. "I looked into him. He didn't manage to reach any notable rank until late in life. He was passed over by his family for his position, and fell into it by default when the previous Baron of his territory died. The Imperial Roles supplied enough renown to reach his current rank, but his advanced age had a profound effect on the stats he gained. He has almost no Vitality."

I hadn't know that could happen, but it couldn't have been done to a nicer guy. I hoped he was miserable. Forcing myself to calm down, I took a deep breath, counting to ten as I forced myself to regain my calm. "Well, don't expect us to talk to him ever again. If he ever looks at Callie again I'm going to kill him in his sleep."

My girlfriend arched an eyebrow, holding up one of her daggers and slashing out, the darkness of her Abyssal path severing the air in front of her with a hiss. "That's sweet honey, but I can take care of myself. If anyone is going to kill that creepy old fuck in his sleep it'll be me. Leave the nighttime executions to the experts." Despite her tone, I could feel the warmth through our bond. She loved how protective I was, even if we both knew she didn't need it.

"Yes, you're adorable." Drawled Benny. "But maybe we can focus on that whole...shadow...thief thing. What the fuck was that? Where did those guys get taken? And who was the guy with the staff?"

Sighing, Camden shook his head. "Weston. A D-ranked Magister who works with the Earl on occasion. I'm not sure why he was there. I'd been briefed on him along with the other power players on the planet during my research, but I wasn't informed he frequented the area."

"Because he doesn't." I said bluntly. Looking around, I studied the walls. "Can we talk safely in here? Without being overheard? We have...sensitive information."

He raised a hand. Reaching up to one of the rings he was wearing, he twisted it and there was a flash of blue light. The walls of the carriage flashed in response, and a series of runes began to glow. He nodded. "We should be safe to speak. We're in a pocket space, and the isolation enchantment will prevent any sound from being picked up by anyone outside the vehicle."

Once he confirmed that, we told them all everything. We left out Anna's name, only calling her a friend, but everything else we laid out directly. Once I'd told him all about what had happened, I shot him a searching look. "Do you know who might be pulling strings? Because we didn't exactly sign up to fight the Tolbert family. This was supposed to be a low level conflict we could use for training."

Pinching his nose, he sighed. "I'm sorry. I didn't think anyone would bother following me here. I recused myself from family politics, and this place isn't worth the effort to come into conflict with me." He trailed off. "But if someone is here, I know who it is. My cousin Spencer. He and I have had conflicts over the years. If anyone in the family would pursue me it would be him."

"Well what will he do?" I demanded. "What's his M.O? We have a contract and I'm not buying it out, so we're with you, but we need to know more about this guy. He won't know about my powers right? That at least could be useful."

Camden nodded. "I doubt he does. I only dug into you after learning your names, and I doubt Spencer even bothered. He's an arrogant bastard, and it wouldn't occur to him to waste resources digging into his lessers. He'll consider you nuisances at best. Mercenaries from a backwater nowhere planet just like any of the others. Since you came with me to the banquet he might have his interest piqued, but I can make sure he doesn't find what I did."

I wasn't sure HOW he could do that, but it was a relief to hear. "So what do you think his plan is? Will he try to take the territory from you? Get involved in the regional battles? Because if he tries to gather mercs like you did I imagine it'll be tough with you having snapped them all up. Could be an advantage."

His expression became pinched, worry creasing his brow. "I pray that his plan is something so mundane, but I fear the opposite. Spencer is a vindictive and cold person. He'd burn the whole territory before he saw me get it. I worry that we may be in for far more than a simple battle."

Cursing, I glanced around at my friends. "Well, there are ways to work around him. We know he's here, and he doesn't know we know. My friend being at the banquet was a freak accident caused by a few wishes she made. No one would have expected it."

"That is quite the advantage." He admitted. "I'll reach out to my information contacts and feel them out. Don't worry, I won't tip our hand, but checking what Spencer is doing won't raise any suspicion given our antagonism."

Standing, he nodded to all of us. I'm going to consult Alister up front. You can talk amongst yourselves. Thank you for this warning. I'll do my best to make the most of it." With that, he turned and strode into front of the carriage where the driver was situated, closing the door behind him.

Turning to the others, I cocked my head inquisitively. "Alright, now we're alone." I gestured to the still glowing symbols on the walls. "So...what does everyone think?"

"We help." Said Benny firmly. "That much is obvious. Even without the contract we can't afford to lose out on a potential territory on such a massive planet. Plus I like Camden. He seems like a good guy. Though I have to say, it feels pretty good to have a choice. Not being the targets of the secretive assassins isn't a bad turn of events."

I snickered. "Yeah I had that thought. But this is a dangerous thing to get involved in. There are outs in the contract. And I do have a bunch of wishes stockpiled outside the arrangement for the territory. We could have Anna buy us out if we really need it."

To a D-ranker, the amount of money we'd set up for the buyout wouldn't be nearly as big of a problem. Realistically I could get a lot more bang for my buck if I worked with higher rankers all the time, but they had less need for lower rank wishes, and the circumstances were far less controllable. Still, in this case it was an option, and one I felt compelled to offer even if I didn't want to take it.

Callie took my hand, beaming at me. "I know you don't want to abandon him, or the possible home we might be able to make here. I love you for offering us an out, but no one here wants to take it. We came to this decision together, signing up with Camden after everyone agreed." She winked. "Plus we haven't gotten our new costumes yet. Nobody wants to miss that."

Sighing, I shook my head. "Alright. We'll need to find a way to tell the others without anyone noticing, just in case they want to abandon ship, but otherwise I'll proceed as normal." I grimaced. "So more training...yay." The others all laughed, though I could hear plenty of sympathy in their tones. Once everyone agreed, I pulled my sister aside to check in. "Hey." I said as we reached the wall, using Callie's stealth Skill to avoid anyone overhearing. "You sure you're ok with this?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes Shane. I'm fine. Just because I may have spent a bit more time working on cross referencing than crossing swords doesn't mean I'm a coward." Her tone was bitter and a little confrontational, and I was kind of blindsided.

"Whoa!" I said in surprise, hands going up defensively. "Pull it back, that's not what I meant. This isn't your problem, and it was my bad luck...or fate sense, that dragged us into it. You have no skin in this game, and I don't want you in danger for something I did." I didn't want any of them in danger, but my friends had earned the right to make that call themselves. Not that Chelsea didn't have that right but...she was my sister. I felt compelled to try to protect her.

The hard look on her face softened. "And that's sweet, but I knew when we did this things weren't going to be safe. I have Callen with me, and uncle Zeke will step in if someone too strong tries to hurt us. For threats closer to our own level...I trust you. And the others too. I'm with you, Shane. All the way."

"Well then," I said with a smile. "I suppose we should buckle down on our training. I can't tell you waht's coming, but I can tell you it's probably going to be a nightmare. These things rarely blow up small. The curse of being an Ascendant." Or just of being me. It always made me wonder if the Wish ability was special somehow. Like maybe being the focal point of so many changes in reality had some impact on the world and invited disaster.

Then again Nat didn't seem to have the same nonsense luck I did. Maybe it was some factor of being descended from three different gods. Chelsea got a second ability and I got crazy luck. Whatever the case, I had enough pattern recognition to see it for what it was. Inevitable.

Chelsea laughed like I was making a joke, and it was all I could do not to sigh. She'd figure it out. Until then, I needed to talk to Anna again. If she had information we could use I'd be willing to trade wishes for it in a heartbeat. Anything to level the playing field a bit. Lucky for us, we were already on the way to visit Zeke and Cass at the inn. We could discuss things there, in her new secret room. In the meantime, I was going to get a snack. Food hadn't been served at the banquet aside from canapes on account of the emergency with the thieves, and I was starving.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

After eating, I went to see Zeke. After telling him what had happened, I then spent about fifteen minutes waiting for him to stop laughing at me. "Are you done?" I finally snapped. "I know that fate sense steers us to the interesting, but what are the chances of this happening? Should I be expecting someone from the cult to show up? Be the icing on this extremely unpleasant cake?"

"Sorry." he wheezed. "I shouldn't laugh. But your face is priceless. What did I tell you about rolling with the punches kid? You couldn't be doing that any less right now."

I threw my hands up. "Well sorry if I don't want to get straight up murdered by random nobles! This on top of the normal nonsense that is my life would be enough to kill us all. So please tell me that we only have to deal with one crisis at a time, or do I need to buy a bomb shelter and reinforce it with A-rank metal."

"First of all." He told me with a roll of his eyes. "You could sell every planet you've ever heard of and you wouldn't be able to afford that. Don't let the Necromedes fool you. The Zayne clan are absurdly rich. Secondly, I'm laughing because I just realized you missed one of the basic points of being an Ascendant, and it's probably been causing you to suffer for months now."

I sighed, knowing whatever he was about to say was going to piss me off. He was only this gleeful when he was taunting me, so whatever I missed must have been obvious. "What, exactly, did I miss?"

"Fate sense steers you toward interesting things. Ascendants are drawn toward dramatic and life changing events." He said in a bored tone. "Some people think it's a sort of conceptual gravity and that it's more based on Impact, while Fantasy just attunes you to the draw. Some people are more affected, people with strong lineage tend to be tossed about on the winds of fate quite a bit, but the main point is, crazy shit happens to Ascendants."

I let out an annoyed growl. "I KNOW! I literally said that to you earlier. That's not something I'm missing, it's the cause of my whole issue. Am I going to make even more of a mess by being here."

"That's why I'm laughing, kid. I just told you Ascendants need to be in the middle of craziness. Mostly you can find that anywhere there are lots of us, big populated planets, that kind of thing." I nodded, waving my hand for him to get to the point. "So, my stupid little nephew, what makes you think that fate sense, or conceptual gravity, would pull you toward an adventure, if you're already in one? If it stacked like that you'd have been buried in danger until you died from it."

I shrugged. "So what, I mean, that's good but I don't see what I miss..." I froze, my eyes closing as I let out a long miserable sigh. "Please tell me you aren't saying what I think you're saying."

"There's an old Ascendant proverb." He said, his grin showing far too many teeth. "Great Ascendants don't stay at home and wait for things to happen. They go out and happen to things."

I buried my hands in my face. "You're telling me I could have avoided almost all of the terrible shit that's happened to me by STAYING BUSY!?"

"I mean, not ALL of it." He cackled. "But probably some. Think about it, did anything bad happen during your big trip back to Valen to visit Callie's mom?" He shook his head in disgust. "Honestly I wasn't even messing with you on this one, I just assumed you knew. This whole trip seemed like you trying to head off as much deadly insanity as possible by putting yourself somewhere interesting."

Sighing again, I slumped back in my chair. "I guess subconsciously I probably was. Well at least it worked. What about the rest of it? You can still guard us against D-ranks right?"

He nodded. "Yeah, as usual. Once you hit E-rank though the only person on this planet who won't be able to touch you will be the Earl. Which won't be an issue, obviously. But the Empire is...messy. If I fight an Earl I'm picking a fight with his Marquis, and that'll piss off a Duke. The chances of a King deciding to fight me are minimal, not that I would CALL that a fight so much as a brief moment of resistance before my inevitable demise. My basic point is, try not to piss off the Earl."

"I mean, I'm not trying to piss off anyone. That Magister does WORK for the Earl though. If he tries to kill me and you kill him I can't make any promises." I paused. "What about Chelsea? Aren't you chaperoning? Ranks aside, you're supposed to protect her no matter what, right? Does that mean I might get some rollover protection?"

It was his turn to sigh. "I wish, but the geas won't let me. Plus I don't need to. I have a significant amount of control. I could kill anyone on this planet without implicating anyone else in any way. if someone attacks Chelsea they'll die, assuming the blow would be lethal, and I can tell. Otherwise I'm supposed to let her take the hit. Healing is a wonderful thing, and she asked your mother for the full experience."

Despite knowing he couldn't help, I found myself putting a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry." I said softly. At his raised eyebrow, I clarified. "I know how much it has to suck to want to help and be bound by your geas not to. I'm not going to blame you for it, but I DO feel bad for twisting the knife. So I'm sorry, for the position my dad put you in by being an asshole."

He gave me a sad smile. "Shane, I appreciate that. But I don't resent Eli for the things he does. He can be a cold and calculative bastard, but he does what he thinks is best. He loves you, and Chelsea, and your mother, and even me. He's just...bad at showing it now. Devils are naturally inclined to manipulation and deception, and his bent towards contracts makes him extremely granular in his approach. I hope someday you learn why he does what he does, and that you can forgive him. As absurd as that might sound now."

"How can you defend him?" I snapped, standing up and stalking away, only to turn and pace back. "After everything he's done. After all the pain he's caused."

His expression was calm. "Because he's my best friend. Because as much as he's changed, he's done more for me than anyone in the universe. Because without him, I wouldn't have you in my life. Take your pick, kid. And partly because I see things at a wider scale. In the grand scheme of things, a couple decades under a geas isn't such a big deal. And someday you'll feel the same."

I wasn't sure that was true. I wasn't sure I WANTED it to be true even if it was. Which, of course, made me assume it probably was. "I can't take this on faith." I said with a sigh. "I can't get past the bullshit. Mom is back, and she's trying, and I'm trying, but dad...he's not. I need to blame someone. Someone needs to be the asshole that put me through all this, and at this point he's all I've got."

"I know." He said simply. "Hell, he probably knows. But just because you feel it doesn't mean its right. I understand, but I'm just telling you my perspective." He tapped his forehead. "Kind of wish I could tell you better. But this damned geas makes that impossible."

I snickered. "I thought you didn't mind it." I raised a taunting eyebrow, relishing the chance to poke him a bit over something he didn't seem to care much about.

"I said in the grand scheme of things it isn't a big deal." He said flatly. "And neither is being punched in the throat. Which I am DEFINITELY doing to your father the next time I see him. We may be best friends, but I live by the motto 'play stupid games, win stupid prizes'. Even if I signed the damned geas in the first place. This has been FAR more irritating than I expected."

My grin widened. "I have to say, it's refreshing to hear you say that. The whole forgiving saintly friend routine was touching, but it's just not YOU."

"I'll have you know that I'm very forgiving." He said piously. "And I'll kill anyone who says otherwise. No second chances."
We both laughed at that, and it was nice to just be back with my uncle, hanging out and talking shit. Sure this was a serious situation, but for once it wasn't my serious situation. This felt more like discussing the weather, if the weather was a terrifying hurricane about to suck up the house we were currently standing in.

Which brought me to another point. I shot him a sly look. "How are things with Anna by the way. She seemed interested. You and Stella weren't dating last I checked. You thinking of starting something up here?"

My uncle just rolled his eyes. "I don't understand where I went wrong that you're basically married at eighteen, but some of us don't feel the need to make lifetime commitments to everyone we date. I swear, your parents splitting up gave you serious attachment issues."

"That's..." I trailed off. "Probably true, honestly. But if it did I think Callie has them too, so it works out." I'd kind of just assumed a lot of what pushed us together was recursion. I loved her and I didn't mind, but thinking about things, our respective family situations probably made us both a bit more ready for a commitment than not. However it happened, I was glad to have her, so I just stuck out my tongue at Zeke.

He snorted. "Eloquent as always. Anyway, Anna and I are spending some time together. I doubt she's interested in travelling the universe with me or anything, but she's fun to be around."

"She's not going to be new auntie?" I asked, widening my eyes innocently and batting my lashes. His unamused expression was enough to break through my teasing and set me off in a cackling laugh. "Jokes aside, it's nice you found someone to talk to. I worry about how isolated you are when we're not around."

His face softened and he chuckled, clapping me on the shoulder. "You don't need to worry about me, kid. A bit of solitude isn't likely to cause much of an issue. I've had time to work on my craft, as well as prepare for my final ascension to A-rank. I hit my stat limit a while ago, to be honest, I'm just preparing for the...other, requirements. I still need something big and flashy to..." He trailed off as his geas flashed. "Huh, guess I can't talk about that even casually, probably for the best."

I knew better than to push, since it would only hurt him, but I was overcome with curiosity. I knew there were other requirements as you got stronger, things beyond just stats. I'd met them up to C-rank and a half step into B, but beyond that was a mystery. I'd been told looking too far ahead could stunt my growth at this level and to just focus on my current trajectory.

Which was quickly approaching E-rank. In fact, I decided to prioritize that. With everything coming, I needed to be as strong as possible. No matter what that everything was, being at the same level as Camden was bound to be a help. I had some stockpiled wishes I'd been planning to use for working on the territory, but also...I realized I still had my alchemy allotment. Elixirs were an option for quick and steady growth at this point. Tomorrow was another day off, and I believed it was time to go shopping.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

The next morning I gathered everyone coming along for our alchemy shopping trip. Jessie, Bethy, Benny, Callie, Celine, and Gabe all filed out into the inn to have breakfast before leaving. The others decided to sleep in, so it was just us. "Anna." I said as we approached the bar. She was behind it, cleaning glasses. "We were hoping to wrangle breakfast, and maybe talk to you about some of the local shops. You have some time to sit and eat with us?"

Smiling, she set her glass down, before calling over her shoulder. "Mattie! Tell Cheswick to make a round of bacon and eggs. Then get Lionel out here to man the bar. I'm going to be eating with guests."

An annoyed voice bellowed back. "Gods! I'm doing inventory! Can't you do it yourself?" From the back of the inn, and Anna gritted her teeth, holding up a finger for us to wait as she stalked into the back. After an extremely uncomfortable few minutes listening to Mattie get torn a new one, Anna came back out, pasting a happy smile on her face.

"Sorry about that." She said brightly, I've got a table for you over here." She gestured to the far end of the room. "So, what exactly are you looking for. I won't even charge you for this, because direction to local amenities is more than covered under your room tab. You should take advantage of my wisdom, not many people are entitled to free access." She winked at us. "You're lucky I like you kids."

Looking around at the others, I gestured to Callie and I. "We need elixirs. Neither of us has used our allotment, and we're within a thousand points of E-rank." Honestly I wasn't happy about needing to rank up so fast. As miserable as training was, I felt like it was benefitting me. Once we hit E-rank we'd be on the officer track as per our contract, learning command. We'd miss out on basic training.

"How much will you need?" She said consideringly. "Are the rest of them going to be ranking up with you?" She studied our friends. "Because honestly, that might be a problem. Elixirs are tightly controlled. Getting two thousand points worth might be doable if you look in the right place, but the empire doesn't like people achieving mass rank ups through means outside the imperial roles. Alchemy has a...negative connotation here."

I cocked my head. "They can't. They're not close enough to the next rank. We have alternative means for them to reach E-rank." Nat was working with the two of them. They were only twenty five hundred points away give or take, and between Celine's resources and Jessie doing a bit of off the books healing, they could cover that in only a few months. But I was more focused on the possible ramifications of that news. "How negative exactly? Will we be arrested for using elixirs?" I hadn't considered that alchemists would be something they might not like in such a carefully controlled place.

"Nothing so extreme." She said with a wave. "Don't forget that elixirs are expensive. Nobles are the only ones who can really afford them, so they've taken steps to make sure there are ways to acquire the materials. It's just that those ways tend to be less out in the open. I know a place nearby where you can get your hands on some elixirs, but they're going to cost a premium."

I wasn't worried. I had plenty of money after our trip out here. I wasn't excited to burn it all, but I would if I needed to. Our timetable had moved up now. Luckily, we had four months to before the battle to take over the territories was set to begin. That was enough time for Jessie and Benny to hit E-rank with Nat's help, and hopefully some of the others too. It was also enough time for Callie and I to learn to command troops. I just hoped whatever Spencer Tolbert (if it was him) had planned wasn't going to come to fruition early.

I glanced at Callie, who had picked up my mood from the bond. She couldn't read my mind, but she could feel my impatience, regret, determination, and all the other minute emotions mixed into my current mood. Callie and I knew each other better than almost anyone, and given the circumstances, it wasn't hard for her to extrapolate my thoughts from what I was feeling. She gave my hand a squeeze and smiled encouragingly, and I could feel the love and support through the bond.

"We're interested." I said finally. "I assume this place accepts chits?" Anna smiled and nodded pleasantly. "Alright, then we'll have breakfast before we go. Can you guide us there? Or give us a map?"

She pulled out a beautiful silver hand mirror. "Of course. Do you have your mirror on you?" I blinked dumbly at the thing, and she groaned. "You really need to get one of these. Without access to the scan network here, you'll need mirrors to function. Even if your rings can still make calls to each other, not being able to interface with the locals will be a problem."

"Can we get them wherever you're sending us?" I asked. "Because I can shell out for fifteen of them as long as they aren't too crazy. Given everyone has one, I doubt they're going for too much."

Nodding, she put hers away. "There are different models, but you can get a barebones mirror for five F-ranked chits. I'd recommend investing. They should have some at the thieves quarter."

Benny perked up. "Thieves quarter huh? That sounds pretty cool. Is that where we're going? Are there people with thief jobs in the empire? How does that even work? There's no way they could be on the imperial roles, how do they rank up?" He seemed fascinated by the inner workings of the empire, and I didn't blame him.

"That's...complicated." She said hesitantly. "Theoretically, the dark professions shouldn't be imperially sanctioned. More realistically though, theft and assassination are bound to happen, even without support. Most thieves guilds have arrangements with the local noble. Nobles apportion the renown for an area, and once it reaches them, it's theirs to do with as they please. Often they support the darker guilds and businesses in exchange for a greater say in how they operate."

I frowned. "They can do anything with it? What's to stop them from keeping it all? If they skimmed a bunch off the top they could make themselves much stronger, couldn't they?" The idea that people could control something like renown and actually portion it out like currency was staggering to me. How did it even work? I knew that the Emperor's power had a lot to do with it, but it still blew my mind.

"The Emperor stops them." She said simply. "The Empire is a machine. An esoteric one to be sure, but a machine nonetheless. Every person plays a role, and in order for that to continue they need to be supported. There are ways to increase the net gain enough to have a bit of extra renown to funnel toward other pursuits, such as thieves guilds and the like, but the nobles still have to pay their citizens. If you don't pay the baker, no bread gets baked, the workers don't eat, and eventually, someone comes to investigate. Nobles who try things like that die in public and horrifying ways. The Emperor IS the Empire. To participate and fail to do your duty is to spit in his face. No one is that stupid."

I wondered if the renown generated by people like me, who weren't on the roles, was one of the ways to increase net gain like she said. Honestly the whole thing was so weirdly abstruse I had no idea how anyone could track it. Probably why there was a literal god running the show.

"So the thieves had a deal with Clairdon?" I asked, considering who was probably in charge of the roles in this are. "Will they get involved in the battles?"

She waved my concern away. "Viscount Creck. Barons aren't stable enough to make a long term deal with. Thieves, assassins, and the like, tend to work with more static authorities. Viscounts usually. Their territories don't change hands nearly as often. As I'm sure you know, Mastery is a watershed. Picking a fight with a Master at anything less is a difficult prospect, and it's a rare Baron who can manage."

Which made sense. My Solid Path made me a dangerous opponent at F-rank, but even an Illusionary Path like Callie's Path of the Abyss made a huge difference in combat. All Masters had Paths, and with both stat and Path advantages, it was bound to be a nightmare to try to beat one. Not an issue I'd have if I was punching up ranks, though I'd still have all the other obvious problems with fighting someone stronger.

"So we're supposed to visit this thieves quarter? What's to stop us from thieving US?" I asked cautiously. My group was pretty tough, but here, where we were so badly suppressed, multiple E-rankers could easily roll us for our stuff.

Anna rolled her eyes. "Stealing things to sell only works if you can sell them. Do you think anyone would go to the thieves quarter to buy things if they were just going to get robbed. Thieves that let other thieves steal in their territory don't last long. The quarter is the safest place in the city. Though most of Saltzberg is pretty safe. The guard doesn't allow street crime. Arrangements with the viscount or not, they still serve their purposes. Most robberies are burglaries, and they tend to avoid violent confrontation."

I'd wondered how the guard played into that whole thing, given she'd said people still had to serve their purposes. My thoughts were cut off as Mattie stalked out of the kitchen in the back, carrying a pair of trays laden with bacon and scrambled eggs with cheese. She slammed them down in front of us one after another, turning to glare at her aunt when she finished. "Please enjoy your meal." She hissed through gritted teeth. Then she spun and stormed out of the room.

"Wow, she really hates being polite." Said Benny through a mouth full of eggs. Celine glared at him and he swallowed. "I mean...why's she so upset?" He said weakly. I held back my snicker at the irony, not wanting to draw her ire myself. She was formal and polite most of the time, but Celine could do a pretty good withering stare when annoyed. That would really mess up my meal.

Anna sighed. "She's been out of sorts lately. Lionel too, but his anger is more of a quiet seethe. Mattie takes after my brother Marcus, when she's upset, EVERYONE knows it. Their parents sent them to work here against their will. They were worried about them getting in trouble in the capital. Lionel offended the heir of a Viscount and they packaged him off to Saltzberg to keep him out of sight. Mattie in particular feels caught up in things that weren't her problem."

I winced. "That does sound rough. It's nice of you to look out for them though. I'm assuming you can't just warn the Viscount off?"

"Soft power is more my style." She said with a shrug. "I protect my own, however. I was able to get my friends from the other night out of trouble. Though one of them was beaten in a particularly merciless fashion by someone carrying a big stick." She gave me a pointed look.

I took a sip of the glass of juice that had somehow appeared with my meal. Guava. It was pretty good. She rolled her eyes, turning back to her food when she realized I wouldn't apologize. He'd deserved it. We all enjoyed the food (the bacon was a deliciously crispy maple and brown sugar cured treat) but soon enough it was time to go. Anna sighed and stood up herself. "Well, I suppose with no mirror I'll have to just show you the way. Come along, children. I'll teach you all about honor among thieves."

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I'd expected the thieves quarter to be underground. I know, I'm biased because of the WCP, but still, I'd figured it would be somewhere hidden and secure, where no one would be able to find it. Understanding or not, the guards had to guard stuff, so keeping a bunch of stolen shit out in the open would be ridiculous. There was no way they would have the whole thing in an obvious easily locatable spot.

The street signs directing us to the 'Merchant's Quarter' were the first and most obvious indication of how wrong I was. Benny couldn't stop cackling at the fact that merchants were so synonymous with being stingy pricks that thieves would use the designation as an all but open proclamation of their profession, though I was a bit confused.

"What about the actual merchants?" I asked as we walked. "They can't all be thieves in disguise." At that point, even Anna cracked up, and I sulked for five minutes as we walked through the streets, the whole group of them laughing at my word choice.

"Sorry." Anna gasped. "It's just not often someone sets up a straight line like that. I honestly think there were so many possible jokes that it prevented me from being able to tell one. There are merchants, but they tend to mix with the thieves pretty seamlessly. Similar mindset."

Entering the 'merchant's quarter', I was surprised once again. The place was picturesque, like a little shopping district. Cobblestone streets and thatched rooves. "Alright." I said as we approached. "We're looking for Might and Vitality focused elixirs. Where would we go to find that?"

Callie and I had discussed our needs, and while I preferred to more evenly disperse my stats, and Callie had her big concentrations in Perception and Fantasy, we both figured Might would play a solid role in the battles to come, and Vitality would help us maintain our stamina. Ranking up would offset a huge amount of the pressure from the planet and help us return to our more powerful forms (partially at least) but having a physical edge couldn't hurt.

Anna made a considering sound. "I'm not sure. There aren't a wealth of alchemists around. I checked my mirror before we left, and Burton Stovall seems to be the top pick for most accomplished alchemist in Saltzburg. At least according to my sources." She pointed down the street, gesturing to a small, picturesque building with a tiny fence around its bucolic yard. "It might be a bit pricey though, I hope you brought enough money."

We had. In fact, that had been a large portion of the reason we'd decided not to fill out Jessie and Benny's elixir allotment too. We weren't sure we'd have enough. A thousand points of stats was nothing to scoff at. Even for an F-rank assortment of pills it would most likely break the bank to get enough for the two of us. I was hoping the thirty plus D-rank chits I had on me would be enough.

Nodding to her instead of answering, I gestured to Benny. His haggling Skill had hit Lesser after our negotiations with Camden, though he hadn't mentioned it until later. That still wasn't anything impressive here, but it was better than nothing. He, Callie, and I all stepped through the gate, making our way down the idyllic path of flat stones interspersed through the path up to the door.

I pushed it open, going first, and there was a bell-chime as we entered. I braced myself for some kind of lab or concoction room, but once again this place failed to live up to expectations. The inside of the room was open and clean, unsurprisingly bigger on the inside, but besides that it wasn't anything like I'd expected. Glass tubes filled the walls, coming down from the ceilings and each filled with a certain kind of pill.

Solid colors, stripes, swirling patterns that danced across the surface, there were so many it made my head spin, all lined up next to each other in a dizzying display. At the base of each tube was a metal plate with a slot for a coin, and below it there was a small metal hatch that would let out one of the pills. Each metal plate had a small, neatly written label on it.

Behind us, above the door, lay a sign. 'Help yourself, to buy in bulk, approach the counter.' A red carpet ran the length of the store, coming to a stop in front of a small wooden counter, behind which sat a fidgety, neurotic looking man with square glasses, flipping through a massive leatherbound book.

Glancing at Benny and Callie, we heard the others come in behind us, but ignored them for the moment, walking down the carpet side by side. I tried not to look at the pills, because the variety was hurting my head. Some of these were higher rank than I was, but even the F-ranked stuff was in high concentrations and it seemed to be straining the world around it. The glass they were behind glittered strangely, and I realized that as light hit, if I looked VERY closely (something I couldn't do for long) there were runes in the striations in the glass.

"Don't look at those." The man said boredly, catching my attention. "They're warded. The glass is a propreitary cast from a small company on Reigel. Good security is irreplaceable. I assume, having read the sign, you're interested in a bulk purchase." He squinted at us behind the glasses, then his eyes strayed to Anna. "You brought a D-ranker. That's certainly enough to engender my interest."

Not for the first time, I wondered who the hell Anna was. Why was a D-ranker on this planet but not one of the nobility? Why did no one seem to know she existed? Where had she come from? How did this guy know what rank she was, when we couldn't tell and I hadn't seen any sign the Magister noticed her either?

Stepping up to the counter, Benny smiled at him confidently. "Hello, we' re looking for a certain combination of elixirs. One thousand, eight hundred and eight points of Might and Vitality elixir at F-rank. What will that cost us?" Callie was at ninety one hundred points and I was at nine thousand ninety two, so we didn't need a full two thousand.

"First of all." He said flatly. "You can't. Making an F-rank elixir with more than a hundred points in a stat is prohibitive. You'll see high dosage pills like that at lower ranks, because the Impact values are so close it doesn't matter, but past F it becomes prohibitive. I can tell you came from somewhere with extremely low alchemy standards to even ask that question."

Benny faltered, clearly put off by the response. Clearing his throat, he stood for a moment, not speaking. Finally he sighed. "Alright, can you tell us how this works then? We need that value in pills, can you give it to us? In whatever combination?"

He sighed, removing his glasses and slipping a thin cloth from his pocket to clean them. "Basically, your average high end F-rank stat elixir will give you fifty points. In order to make a higher concentration of stats you need rare F-rank materials, which is prohibitive. It's more cost effective to take an E-rank stat elixir aimed at F-rankers. They're tempered specifically to dilute the Impact, and the more powerful base ingredients allow you to more easily hit the values needed."

Knowing how Ascendant values worked, I nodded. "The E-rank pills go up to five hundred points, I take it. The tempering prevents the problems you can normally get from ingesting pills of too high a rank? I thought one rank higher was safe?"

"The higher you go, the bigger the Impact difference rank to rank." He said matter of factly. "An E-ranker has sixty two Impact to an F-ranker's thirty two. You CAN take E-ranked pills made normally, but it's a massive strain. The large difference is why you can get so many more stats out of them. It's an advanced alchemy technique called conversion. At lower levels, taking a higher ranked medicine will give you the same amount of stats. Once you get into the higher ranks conversion pills become more commonplace."

I sighed. "Forget the eight points then." I was going to have to grant a wish to get those. I was reasonably sure I could do eight at once when I finished taking the pills, I was already able to trade seven. "Eighteen hundred points then. How mach for those?"

He pulled out a small jewelers loop, looking through it at the both of us and frowning. "Two top grade E-rank conversion Might pills, two middle high Vitality." He said after a moment. "Five hundred and four hundred points respectively." He glanced over at Anna. "I'm willing to price for post conversion, assuming I can count on seeing your benefactor again in the future?" She nodded.

"Twenty E-rank chits." He said finally. Benny opened his mouth, but the alchemist just glared at him. "If you try to haggle the price doubles. If you don't like it you can go buy from the OTHER alchemist who can reliably source E-ranked pill ingredients in enough numbers to have extras beyond what the nobles reserve. Spoiler alert, there aren't any. You MIGHT be able to find enough pills to heap together the points you want, but they'll gouge you worse than I did."

Benny shot me an apologetic look, but I just shrugged. Plans didn't always work out. I passed the twenty E-ranked chits over, grimacing in nearly physical pain. That was months of work. Elixirs got expensive at higher rarities. Still, I couldn't help but glance around. "These can't all be for stats." I said cautiously. "What other kinds of products do you sell?"

Rolling his eyes, the man muttered. "Civilians." Under his breath before gesturing out at the shop. "Alchemy is not exclusively the creation of stat elixirs, despite what the uneducated might think. There are pills for stealth, pills to allow you to see certain kinds of energy, pills to resist cold, or fire, or lightning. Pills that let you protect your mind from intrusion or temporarily harden your flesh to the consistency of stone. Almost any ability a person can have can be distilled into a tincture. There are endless uses for alchemy."

His tone was proud and excited, and it was easy to tell that Burton Stovall LOVED what he did. I even considered buying some more pills, they sounded like they could be damned useful, but I only had ten E-ranked chits left. I was pretty sure he'd given the pills to us almost as cost in consideration for Anna shopping here in the future, too, and I doubted he'd be so nice again.

I indicated we were finished and he bustled away, coming back with four pills, two dark red and two emerald green. Callie and I took one of each color, then bid our goodbyes and turned to leave. As we walked out, I studied the pills again with new eyes, trying to discern what each one did beyond the name on the labels, many of which were abstruse and unhelpful in determining the purpose of a pill.

Alchemy was an interesting field, even more than I'd considered before. It was clear to me that I hadn't gotten a good idea of its depths back home, where techniques like 'conversion' didn't exist. A method of converting higher Impact to more stats. It reminded me a bit of the way my wishes worked, where Impact could act as a substitute for other requirements. Was the alchemist who created the technique on the same level as the original Wishmaster in terms of talent? Was it another god? Maybe one that wasn't around anymore?

I had plenty of questions, but in the end they'd have to wait. We had our pills now, which meant I was only giving Camden the agreed upon five wishes today. My last would be used to gather the eight points I'd need to finish reaching E-rank along with Callie. It was finally time to step into the same level of power as the strongest on our home planet. I for one, couldn't wait to see what it was like.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

"So." I said, holding the pair of pills. "This is going to fucking suck, isn't it?" We were back at the inn, Callie and I sitting across from each other. Chelsea was sitting in too, having volunteered to be the one wishing for the eight points I'd need to rank up after I took the elixirs. "Our souls are pretty sturdy, but nine hundred points is a decent chunk of our current values. Especially in the stats we have. Almost a quarter of each for me."

Callie grimaced. "The Might won't be a problem, percentage wise five hundred is much less for me than it is for you. Four hundred Vitality is literally more than a hundred percent increase for me, though. It's going to be agony, especially since I don't even have an Azure Soul Body like you do to blunt the pain."

I reached out and took her hand, squeezing it gently. "I'll take as much of it as I can handle. We can go one at a time, so it'll be more like both of us are doing the upgrades together. Do you want to go first?"

"Oh sure." She said shakily. "Soulrending pain is my favorite thing ever. I guess I'd better do Vitality first then. We can deal with it when we're both in peak condition. You sure you want to help me ride this one out? You can't do much more than take some of the pain. It might not be worth it. It's not like it's going to kill me."

Rolling my eyes, I pushed the emerald pill in the box closer to her, and she sighed, nodding as she used the hand I wasn't holding to pick it up. Popping the clear crystal box open, she picked up the shimmering green pill. "Wish me luck." She said as she tossed the thing back like a shot. She sat there for a second, waiting, and then her back arched and her body slammed back against the wooden floor.

Life energy blazed through her, manifesting like a tidal wave of pure Vitality rolling through her whole body. Her hand clamped down around mine like a vise, and my eyes widened as several of my bones cracked. I hissed in pain, but I didn't pull away, letting her grind them together as she choked down screams of pain. It honestly helped me focus as I tried to withstand the flood of agony coming through the bond.

I was taking as much of her pain as I could, this was a weight on my soul sure, and on hers, but more than that, this was her body and state of being adjusting to suddenly being more than twice as strong. I was regretting picking Vitality as the stat we used the elixir for, and I could feel she was too.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour but was probably more like thirty seconds, the pain faded. Callie slumped back, panting in pain and releasing my hand. I triggered a heal burst immediately, using my other hand to try to shift the bones into the right positions to make the healing easier. "That..." Panted Callie. "Was the worst idea we've ever had. Why would I possibly have considered doing that? On the upside I got a full fourteen percent to my soul strength for weathering that shitstorm."

I flexed my hand with a grimace. "Yeah, probably would have been smarter to let Vitality drag up naturally as you ranked and pumped the points into Perception or something else that could have taken it better. On the upside Might should be a cakewalk after that."

She shrugged. "Our logic was solid. It would have been stupid not to fortify my Vitality. Even with the extra Impact from the rank up, the extra stamina and regeneration will be vital. Let's get this moving. Might time." She grabbed the second box, popping it open and tossing it back like she had the first.

This time, there was some strain as she adjusted, but it didn't really HURT. Callie was heavily invested in Might, and the five hundred points she was gaining was far less of a shock. There was still a bit of difficulty as she withstood the E-ranked pill as it converted to an abundance of F-ranked Might, but between the two of us withstanding it was easy.

She completed the stat acquisition simply enough, and after allowing herself to rank up, she ascended smoothly to E-rank. It was almost anti-climactic after everything else. But her soul was strong, and she was able to handle the growing Impact easily enough. In fact, it was stronger than mine now. As she ranked up, it made the shift from green to blue officially sublimating into a form that prevented any further breakage of shackles. Not that she would have a problem with that.

I felt the weight of her beat on the air as she Ascended, breaking through to a rank that I knew she'd been dreaming of since she was a little girl. She was officially an E-ranker like her father, and with a Path already to boot. She was already ready to take the step into D-rank that he could never take on Callus. She opened her eyes, tears spilling down her cheeks as she stared at me in wonder. I could feel the emotion crashing through the bond like a tsunami, her new and weightier sense of self almost overpowering to my weaker being. Almost. She grabbed a piece of paper, writing out her new status and handing it over to me.

Calliope Reynolds. E-rank. Ability: Expert Abyssal Infiltration- Enter the shadows and emerge where you will within range, shape the darkness to your call, moving it as if it were part of your body, and even extend your senses through the shadows to spy on your enemies.

Might-3350
Impact-65
Vitality-742
Fantasy-2105
Focus-908
Perception-2375
Creation-485
Progress to next rank: 10030/100000

Soul strength- Blue-64%
Pet-Wolf named Rellia

Skills: Minor Tracking, Minor Dual Dagger Mastery, Beginner Stealth, Beginner Trap Mastery, Beginner Disguise, Lesser Balam Mastery, Intermediate Shadow Manipulation Mastery. Intermediate Paired Dueling.
Path of the Abyss-Illusory

"I...I can't believe it." She said quietly. Staring at the paper. "I'm finally here. Finally as strong as he is. Maybe not as far along, but I have my Path, and that has to count for something. Plus my soul is definitely way stronger than his. I bet I could kick his ass."

I laughed. "Maybe hold off until we hit D-rank. Might as well make a big spectacle when you prove to him what a dumb asshole he is."

She lunged forward, throwing her arms around me. "Shane...you don't know what this means to me. Or maybe you do, but still...I love you. Thank you so much." She giggled. "Apparently helping me achieve my lifelong dream was at least worth a Skill rank. Paired duelling ranked up. I should be able to help you withstand your own stats way easier with a blue soul." She puffed out her chest as she pulled back, proud to be able to help and of how far she'd come.

Blue. The soul of a Master. It was a heady thing. My own upgrade would bring me to the next soul rank, and I was curious what that would be. What was the complete sublimation state after Azure Soul Body? A halfway step into Indigo, I was sure, but what would it be called? Deciding I was going to find out, I grabbed my own pills. One and then the other, I took them, tossing them back and then waiting.

It wasn't...pleasant, but it didn't hurt, not really. Just some pressure, and the small amount of discomfort Callie helped with easily through our new and improved bond. She seemed almost annoyed she couldn't do more, and it was hard not to smirk at her pouting for not being needed during this.

Chelsea, who had been watching the byplay with an amused smile, smiled at me. "Alright, you ready for this? I wish for eight points of Might, and I'll pay with eight points of Fantasy." She enunciated clearly.

Wish detected. Grant wish?

I agreed without hesitation, holding out a hand and grabbing hers, letting the rising static of my power carry the last eight points I needed. I was glad I'd been right about the bump being enough to get me to eight points per wish. It would have been hellish getting stuck at one point away from E-rank. As soon as it settled, I felt the weight of my incoming shift in self.

Impact. The conceptual weight of a being. Thirty points of Impact was nearly double what I had now. But I wasn't worried. Impact weighed on the soul. Stats affected the body, especially ones like Vitality, so there was bound to be difficulties in a big jump, but Impact? The soul weight settled onto my Azure Soul like a warm blanket.

I was uplifted. Ascended. I became more than I had ever been before. My Path of the Doom Sovereign, an ability I'd clawed and scraped together and worked to refine, seamlessly rose alongside my wish power. I couldn't wait to see what kind of changes that brought about. New subskills, sure, but changes to the ones I had I was sure. The changes were gradual to that one. It would take time to settle from its first rank upgrade. I'd check those later, for now I was more focused on the earlier portions of my status and how it had changed.

Wishmaster candidate status. E-rank.
Ability: Expert Wish- Seven times a day grant an Expert wish in return for proper compensation. Wish must be feasibly achievable by the candidate's own efforts within a three day period with current statistics.
Expert Path of the Doom Sovereign- A Solid Path toward a great destiny.
Might-2975
Impact-65
Fantasy-950
Vitality-2162
Focus-1120
Perception-1204
Creation-1554
Progress to next rank:10030/100000
Soul strength- Sapphire Soul Body

Stored:7 shadow attacks, 10 shadow jump (seven in reserve), 10 Stealth charges, 0 fire attacks, 10 triple strenth tranq blows (ten in reserve), 10 triple strength density shifted attacks (ten in reserve). 10 spider leg attacks (ten in reserve), 9 heal bursts (4 reserve), 3 gravity attacks, 10 shadow clone (2 in reserve), 19 scan heals (I-rank ability so Shane can hold more)
Pet- Wolf named Jin

Financial resources:10 E-rank chits


Skills: Expert Path of the Doom Sovereign, Lesser Valtek Mastery, Lesser Cooking Mastery, Lesser Inventing Mastery, Beginner Balam Mastery, Minor Piano Mastery, Minor Guitar Mastery, Minor First Aid Mastery, Intermediate Paired Dueling

There was a lot to unpack there. Seeing Expert instead of intermediate thrilled me, obviously. Seven wishes would come in handy and let me stockpile more for the territory while fulfilling my contract with Camden still, and I could feel my body shaking off the bonds of the pressure it had been under. Not completely, obviously, but some of my old strength and speed were returning.

Then there was my soul. Sapphire Soul Body. Each rank of the soul had its own peak sublimation. The Azure Soul Body was the first, but each rank up would reveal another. I'd never bothered to ask what the peak of blue was, and seeing it, I wasn't sure how to feel. I didn't feel different really, though I suppose I wouldn't. The new clarity I'd gained in the temple had been a result of same rank soul changes. Ascending was the natural method of growing the soul, and it wasn't really supposed to alter the way I felt.

Turning to Callie, I scribbled out my own status, passing it to her, and let her read over it. I could feel her pride and excitement against my soul, the combination of new bond and new us making me feel even closer to her. She finished reading it and threw herself at me again, and I held her as bright, shimmering laughter spilled out of her, pure exultation at we had accomplished together. I started laughing alongside her, and I didn't even care that Chelsea was looking at us like we were lunatics. It was good to be alive.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

I'd like to claim that I immediately went through my DS Mastery to see what I got. This rank wouldn't have been a death blow since I'd gotten Marked for Death last time, but I still had to check what new subskills popped up, not to mention see if the ones I had upgraded. My Path wasn't something that could be found in the game anymore, it was unique because of the additions I'd made.

That's what I SHOULD have done. But...I was just so giddy. Being suppressed by the world around us was so tiring. I'd been clocking MAYBE a pound per point of Might in terms of raw strength. Still freakishly powerful for a normal human, but nothing like what I'd had even as an H ranker back on Callus. As a planet of not even D-rank, my old home put almost no pressure on Ascendants, though at the cost of limiting their advancement.

Stratholme, meanwhile, turned F-rankers into veritable mortals. Even at E-rank, I was at maybe a tenth of the strength as I'd be were I completely unencumbered. That said, a tenth of the full output of my body was a hundred pounds of lifting strength per point of Might, of which I had nearly THREE THOUSAND. the lessening of the pressure putting me FIRMLY back into the realm of the superhuman.

I crowed in joy as I hit the street outside the inn at a dead sprint, Callie speeding along at my side. The feeling of freedom, of sheer unrestrained POWER, was intoxicating, and as we approached the walls, we bent our knees and hurled ourselves into the air, slipping the bonds of gravity through main force.

Of course, I wasn't a moron. State of Grace triggered as I soared up, if only to lighten the impact of my eventual landing, and it was the easiest thing in the world to reach through the new and improved bond, allowing it to extend to Callie as she joined me in the sky.

The guards below watched us with bored expressions, and in a shocking twist, I heard Callie's voice in my head. "I'm surprised they don't try to stop us."

My eyes snapped to hers, and she looked surprised. I reached out experimentally, pushing a thought through the bond with the strength of my Sapphire soul. "Can we...talk telepathically now?" I said cautiously. "Wait, is this a deliberate thing or are we reading each other's minds. Because I'm definitely NOT ok with that."

As we reached the apex of our parabolic arc out over the forest outside town, I kicked off the air with Ripple Running, changing direction to send me drifting down toward the trees in a spot where I could see an opening. Callie tapped into the skill effortlessly, doing the same, and we sailed down among the trees like leaves on the wind. "I don't think so." Her voice rang in my mind. "I don't think this is a brain thing. I think we're sending messages with our souls."

We hit the trees, separating as we kicked off a branch each, shooting forward as we sped from branch to branch, weaving through the forest in a blur, losing each other behind the giant boughs of blue leafed giants, but never worrying about not finding each other again.

She was right. I could feel it. These weren't words exactly. They were a sharpening of the empathic impressions we'd had before. A more controlled form of communication through our souls. Whether we gained that control from our massively improved soul power or the new rank of the Skill was anyone's guess. As holders of souls of a Master level, we were bound to be discovering new tricks. Whatever it was, I didn't dislike it.

I could still feel a constant trickle of Callie's emotions across the bond, a comforting low hum in the background of my mind like white noise to fall asleep too. I got clearer impressions along with the words when she spoke, though I knew from my own responses she could have shut that off. She didn't though. Our bond was stronger than ever, and with it came a sense of absolute trust built on living in a world where we were each other's guiding light even in the deepest dark.

The thought and the emotion that went with it clearly carried across, because I felt a tide of adoration and love roll over, me, turning to panic and shock as I missed the branch and went pinwheeling into the brush.

I was so shocked by her fear that I didn't even bother to kick off a Ripple Running platform, just smashed into the leafy expanse of bushes with a crash. Callie was at my side in an instant, worry writ large on her face, but I just brust out laughing as I pulled myself out of the branches, picking leaves from my hair as I straightened my jacket.

"Well." I said breathlessly. "We're going to have to get used to that again. Bit more intense than before. With our current soul power I doubt we'll have trouble controlling it. We'll just need to be a bit more mindful to use a lighter touch."

She wrapped her arms around me, resting her head on my chest as she laughed along with me. "Yeah. Intense. Good word for it. That was...wow. When I focused I got your emotions way more clearly than before. I felt you thinking about me and wanted to know what was going on and...I think I created a feedback loop for a second. You feeling me feeling you feeling me." She giggled almost drunkenly. "There was so much love. It was nice."

"It was." I agreed, a stupid grin on my face. "But maybe not the safest thing to have going on around enemies."
She sized me up. "Or shrubbery, apparently." We both burst into giggles again at that, and I had to even out my breathing as I clamped down with my soul. I'd been wrong about the difference not being noticeable, it had just taken a bit to him me.

"Ok." I said, exhaling slowly. "We'll need to work on that. Good thing we have the day off. Is it me or does it feel like..."
She nodded. "Our souls are way too strong. We should do some kind of big Skill or something, tire them out a bit so we can feel this out gradually. Anything come to mind?"

"Yeah, I need to check out the details of my Path of the Doom Sovereign." I said with a shrug. "Might as well try some of the new tricks out. What about you? Do you have anything that'll strain your soul? Most of your tricks are part of your ability and that doesn't carry much soul weight. Normally I'd say do something complicated, but your shadow manipulation makes that and active part of your ability itself, which prevents too much soul strain."

She winked at me, and then she...SHIFTED. Dark jagged stone coated her body, green magma striations spitting with toxic flame covering her. I felt her tapping into my strength through the bond, not just my Skills, but into my Path itself, through its solid connection to my nature. She was using Belial.

For about a second. Then it blinked out, crumbling off her as she staggered, catching herself on the tree. "Wow." She groaned. "That was rough. I don't think Path stuff is meant to be used through the bond. That felt like deadlifting a small moon. My soul didn't crack or anything though, just got really strained really fast." She blinked a few times like she was clearing spots from her eyes. "We were right though. This feels much less...extreme."

The soul was the basis of the self, and while after the rank up we hadn't really felt too different, it had quickly become clear that even the slightest flex of our soul strength MASSIVELY overshot the mark. The bond was the most obvious place to see it, but far from the only one. With Callie having confirmed the guess, my next move was checking out my Doom Sovereign abilities. Holding up a hand I let the familiar purple flames roll across my vision, this time finally focusing on the part of my status I'd been ignoring.

DS Subskills. Monk: Stone Limb, Moonlit Night, Consecration of Flame, Ripple Running, State of Grace, Steam Arrow, Afterburner, Pit of Despair, Mountain Stance.

Rogue: Mercy Kill, Double Trouble, Touch of Tears, Flurry of Blows, Heavy hands, Marked for Death, False Fatality

Diviner: Overlay, Song of the Soil, Rhythm of the Wild, Eye of Revelation, Danger Sense, Piece of Mind



Goetia Staff Art: First form- Belial. Touch of Tears, Stone Limb, Consecration of Flames
Second Form- Mephistopheles. Consecration of Flame, Afterburner, Mercy Kill, Marked for Death.

First were the obvious additions. Piece of Mind and False Fatality. Both far more useful than they sounded. Piece of Mind allowed me to fragment part of my consciousness and create a second self basically. It allowed for divination on the fly, but combined with the shadow clones I had stored would essentially allow me to be do two things at once in a way that even high Focus couldn't. Normally impossible tasks would be achievable once I got the hang of it.

The second, my new rogue ability, was even better. Rather than a fake death skill, False Fatality allowed you to offload a powerful attack onto a specified target. Specifically it worked in synergy with Marked for Death, taking a strong hit directed at me and redirecting it to someone with the Mark. It was a huge lifesaving trump card, even if it required special conditions to set up.

I excitedly explained the new abilities to Callie, possibly geeking out slightly at seeing some of my more powerful DS skills finally starting to come through. I didn't have a monk skill this time, but Mountain Stance was still incredibly powerful so that was fine.

Then I paid more attention to my unique DS abilities and how they had changed. The ones I used most often seemed to have been altered at some level, though some less obviously than others. State of Grace now actively enhanced my speed when in use, Moonlit Night allowed me to apply the stealth damage bonus to others, as well as more easily allow them to see in the fog, and Heavy Hands went from ten percent armor penetration passively to fifteen.

All in all, the utility of each one had increased. It also showed that combining my subskills allowed them to evolve along with my rank ups, though for some reason only the ones I used often seemed to have changed measurably. I was sure that would mean something to me later, but for now I just wanted to try something out.

I used Piece of Mind. In a blink, my consciousness split in two. It was a strange sensation, I was looking at everything twice through the same set of eyes. A sort of constant deja vu assaulted my senses, but I ignored it. Dedication one parallel of my thoughts entirely to using Song of the Soil, I triggered Rhythm of the Wild and staggered at the information overload as I sensed everything within range both on and beneath the ground.

Herbs, plants, stones, I gained a nearly perfect understanding of the environment around us, able to percieve both of them in a way that shouldn't be possible without rendering me completely immobile from information overload. Turning to Callie, I grinned. "Ok, this is actually a strain, but you were right, that helps. I wonder though, can you use this one?"

My girlfriend closed her eyes, reaching through the bond to try to tap into the new skill, and beamed at me as she was able to split her mind like I did. "I can." She said in wonder. "It can only be used for a single instance, but...with my shadow clones, this could let me be in two places at once, or I could devote it to my shadow infiltration so I can use it without having to be immobilized." She cracked her neck, limbering up to try the new trick. "Use those senses to find us something to fight. I want to try this out." So I did. I had to admit I was just as excited.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

One of the first things I'd learned about combat under Abel was the somewhat paradoxical fact that, barring specialized training, having more people with you in a fight was a hindrance more than a help. That had seemed a bit ass backwards to me at the time, numbers are a good thing, but after I'd learned to actually fight with a partner via my paired duelling skill, I understood.

Humans, even Ascendants, are monocentric creatures. We have to be. We're born in one body, see through one pair of eyes, and experience the universe from a single point of view for our whole lives. We may use empathy and communication to try to understand others, but there are more than just five senses. Even if we know what a person tastes, hears, or smells, we don't know how those inputs affect them. We never really understand anyone else.

This leads to discord in combat that needs to be overcome. When you fight with a partner, you're not just both attacking one target. Even if there's only a single enemy, you have to be aware of the attacks your ally makes, aware of their positioning so YOU don't attack THEM. Then you get into overlapping attack patterns and how they can affect each other, and that only multiplies the more people you add to the equation.

Paired duelling, as it happened, was the way to combat that. Feeling the emotions, intentions, and reactions of your partner let you internalize all of the various aspects of combat like they were your own thoughts, allowing true and reasonable cooperation between partners, making paired combat the asset it should be.

Or at least, that had been what it USED to do. Now...now it was so much more. I could feel not just vague impressions of what Callie planned, but detailed ideas she was about to execute. With our souls both as strong as they were, processing and responding was a matter of instants, and I was able to track her progress in battle with the same speed I could my own.

Focus played no role, nor did Perception. We were a single unified force, thoughts flitting from my head to hers as I thought them, and then back just as fast. We weren't just operating seamlessly in conjunction, we were operating BETTER. It was like having two brains, which would have probably been confusing and distracting in any other circumstances, but with the bond, it just felt...right.

We didn't even need Piece of Mind to fight properly, since all this was done through the soul. I had no idea where Abel had learned this Skill, but it was amazing and incredibly complex. I wondered if it had been changed at all by our use, or if Abel and Mel thought like this all the time. It was no wonder they were so in sync.

The opponents I'd found were a pack of strange dog headed lizard things. They had huge hind legs, small, sharp clawed arms, and oversized heads on long sinuous bodies that could build up absurd speed when they leaned forward and charge, and apparently could see heat signatures.

They charged us from all angles, needle like teeth snapping and tearing to get at us, but it felt like...like we were walking on air. Not State of Grace. I didn't use it here. I didn't use any skills at all. This was good practice for learning to fight properly. I still planned to get some training, and I'd still need to learn the formations I'd be using as a commander. I had to get used to the limits of my new and improved physical capabilities, and that meant FINDING those limits.

I reached back, leaving my hand hanging in the air behind me without looking, and feeling Callie's palm slap into mine with the calm certainty I'd have felt if I'd been clapping. Closing my fingers, I pulled, and her feet came off the ground, an enemy rushing past where she'd just been. The monster bisected itself on a hanging slash of darkness from her path even as she landed in a spin, her leg lashing out and smashing into the bend of another of their legs.

The monsters were angry, enraged by the casual slaughter of one of their own, and I pulled my staff, whirling it around my neck to slap into Callie's palm, and then pulling her toward me in a twirl like we were dancing. When she came out the other side the staff came with her, her grip loosening and allowing the staff to slide down its length, extending as it swung.

Callie didn't have the skills to use a staff like that, but I did. My Valtek Mastery was easy for her to tap into. We continued like that for what seemed like an hour. It was beautiful. I felt so close to her, so...complete, and I knew she felt the same.
By the time we were done, there were dozens of the monsters dead around us. It wasn't a particularly hard fight, they were all F-rank, albeit relatively high up in that rank. If there had been E-rank monster packs wondering around this planet would have been much less safe for F-rankers like we had been.

"I think we might have gone a bit overboard." I said wryly as I cleaned green blood off my staff. "We killed a whole bunch of them."

Callie smiled fondly at me. "You don't need to feel bad. They were predators, and they wanted to eat us. Though I think if it wasn't for my stealth they would have run. No way they survived long enough to form a pack by being stupid enough to attack higher ranked Ascendants."

"Not what I meant." I said with a laugh. "I saw several of them tear apart one of the wounded ones. They were vicious bastards and I don't think I'm bothered by that. I just kind of feel like a bully. Being stronger and starting a fight. I don't hate the idea of being this strong though. It'll keep us safer in the future." I grinned at her. "We can finally learn to command troops."

She smiled back at me, and I could feel the comforting bubble of her excitement as it percolated through the bond. The time fighting had helped us both learn exactly how to moderate the bond. We could clamp down or ease up on the connection at will from either side, and we were both comfortable with the basic empathy that stretched between us. Being without it was like missing one of our senses.

Offering her my arm, we started our walk back to the city. "Kind of glad we waited on the armor stuff." She said as we walked. "The new costumes being tailored to our post breakthrough bodies should make them a better fit. Plus being at E-rank ourselves will make using them easier. The Stygian Branch was much easier to handle. Even with the bond it used to be hard for me to move it much. Now it just feels like a stick."

"I noticed that too." I said with a nod. "I can't wait to integrate this into my future forms. I've been working on a new defensive stance. Might be tough to do it before Benny breaks through to E-rank though. I was planning to include a stored attack when I created it. First time trying that, but with my soul as strong as it is I should be able to hold things stable while I form the structure of the new form."

She gave a thoughtful hum. "Can you just use ten of them? There's a ten times difference between ranks, so you might be able to make it work."

I nodded slowly. "That...that might work. I'll give it a shot when I have a minute free. How about you? Any big plans now that you've managed to hit E-rank? In terms of your capabilities I mean? I know you'll be training tactics too, will you focus on that exclusively? Or maybe join my political lessons?"

"Those both sound like fun, and I might sit in, but mostly I'm going to focus on my Path." She said decisively. "Seeing what yours can do, I'm excited to reach the Solid Path state, and to integrate that path into my ability. To truly wield the powers of the abyss." She sounded almost gleeful at the idea of wielding such a dangerous power, and I couldn't blame her. It was pretty cool.

Reaching Saltzburg, we entered without a problem and headed for Camden's estate. I wanted to check in with our patron, plus I still owed him five more wishes. Speaking of which, I saw a familiar form stomp up to me. "What the hell?" My sister said in exasperation, throwing up her hands. "You guys just took off. I spent like twenty minutes sitting there like an asshole waiting for you to come back."

I froze, blinking at her in slight confusion. "Oh...Chelsea. Hey..." I was at a loss for words. I'd been so overwhelmed with all the changes I'd just...forgotten she was there.

"You completely forgot about me, didn't you." She said with a sigh. "It's fine. I know that rank ups can be intense. You're back now, so I can come with you to...wherever. Actually, where are you going?" She looked a bit embarrassed to have only just ask, since we'd started walking again and she was strolling along beside us.

I gestured into the distance. "We're going to hit up Camden's manor." I said in explanation. "I want to let him know we're going to be moving up in the training camp. So sad for you guys that you're going to be stuck with the torment for a while longer, but honestly you should be coming up on a breakthrough right? You and Callen were both pretty close to E-rank last I checked."

"That's true." She said with a nod. "I'll catch up with you two soon. Does your contract cover me for command training too? Because I've always been fascinated by books about tactics."

That was a good question, actually. I glanced at Callie, who shrugged. "I...don't remember." I admitted. "I think so, and if not we can tweak things. Wishes aside, he owes us for sticking around. We could find someone to buy the contract out easily, and honestly there are a couple of hazard pay provisions and political specificity clauses I could use to break the damned thing if I really wanted to."

We arrived at Camden's manor to be greeted by Alister, who stared at us in shock as he escorted us into the manor. We didn't bother to hold back our auras or use stealth this time. We were here to show off, and being low profile would be counter productive.

When Camden saw us, he whistled. "Damn, you guys made quick work of that. I have to say I'm impressed. I knew you had enough of your elixir allotment left to get the bump, but those can be hard to find here. Congratulations are in order I suppose. Welcome the the E-ranks. If you were locals I'd welcome you to Barony, but I suppose that will have to wait until you get some land and appoint your regent."

He gestured for us to sit down, and I brought up Chelsea's question. He seemed a bit uncertain as well, so we busted out the contracts and pored over them, finding out that yes, Chelsea was entitled to command training as well under the final version I'd drafted. I commended my past self on excellent wording. Once we sorted out the details of our promotions, we got Camden's wishes out of the way and then we headed back to the inn. Tommorow we would return to camp, and be upgraded to our new barracks. Until then, we were just going to enjoy the rest of our day off.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Callie and I woke up refreshed and energized. We'd been sleeping under the equivalent of a lead blanket for the last week, and just the sheer bliss of being able to breathe freely and easily was almost intoxicating as we greeted the day. We had to be back to the camp for the command tent meeting, which was thankfully after Revielle, so we didn't need to go back a night early and could have breakfast with Cass and Zeke, something we both enjoyed immensely.

"These parfaits are amazing." I told Callie as I dug into the cup of smooth, sweet yogurt, covered with granola, fresh fruit, and drizzled with delicious honey. "So the command tent meeting is at ten, right?" She paid more attention to that kind of thing than I did.

She let out a blissful sigh as she took her last bite. "The blackberries are so fresh it's crazy. This is so much better than the eggs and bacon from the mess hall. It's not bad, but it gets so old after a while. I wonder if we can have breakfast here every morning."

Zeke took a long sip of his coffee as Cass ravaged a plate of pancakes with strawberry syrup. "You totally should." She said through a stuffed gullet. "We could eat breakfast and hang out and and it would be so much fun."

"Cassidy." My uncle chided without looking over at her. "What did I say about talking with your mouth full?"

She paused, thinking it over. "To make sure I'm eating something that was pretty colors so people have something to look at? I am though, look my pancakes are red." She stuck out her tongue, exposing her chewed food, and I grimaced and looked away from the poor display of table manners.

Raising an eyebrow as he read the paper (I hadn't known Saltzberg even HAD a paper) he scoffed without looking. "And how many colors, might I ask, is red?"

Slumping, the ten year old swallowed her food with a pout. "Just one." Somehow that logic seemed unassailable to her, and she sulkily started gorging on her food again as Callie looked at her in confusion. I just chuckled, because I remembered similar conversations with Zeke as a kid. My uncle was surprisingly good with children, to the point that I wondered if he'd ever had any of his own.

That was one question I had never asked. If Zeke had kids, he didn't see them anymore, and I'd never heard him mention them. It was clearly either a non issue or a painful subject, and I'd never been cruel enough to bring it up in case it was the latter.

"I don't think every morning will be possible." I said apologetically. "It's too far from camp. We're already here, so we can make it since the trip is one way. If we had to COME here and then go back we'd be too late getting to the meetings, and we have to sleep in our new dorms except on weekends. Even officers aren't exempt from that."

Callie sighed as she stared longingly at her no finished parfait, but eventually pushed out her chair. "We should probably get going then." She smirked at me gleefully. "We can make it to the camp with plenty of time given how quick we are, but showing up to our first command meeting at the last second won't exactly make the best impression. If we're going to be working with these people for the next four months it'll be best to make a good impression."

"I'm kind of worried about commanding a century of soldiers." I admitted as I stood up and shrugged on my coat. "Even with Camden's formations I'm scared I might get someone killed."

Zeke gave me a comforting smile. "Oh, don't worry about that." I waited for him to continue, but he just sat there smiling.
"Because..." I prompted. "I have a natural gift for command and will excel at being in charge of an army so they'll all be fine?"

"No." He said casually. "Because it's probably inevitable you'll get SOMEBODY killed, so there's no real point in psyching yourself up about it." At my glare, he just shrugged. "What? Do you know how many people manage zero casualties in command of their first battle?" After a pause, he prompted. "Well, do you? Because I have no idea, but I'm assuming the number is low."

I briefly considered flipping him off, but we had SOMEHOW managed to keep Cass from picking up the gesture despite the frankly gratuitous use it saw in the house, and she was sitting right here, so I just glared. "You are the literal opposite of helpful, do you know that?"

"Nah." He said in a dismissive tone. "I'm super helpful. You just can't recognize it yet. My amazing and flawless teaching style flies right over your immature heads. You'll look back on this time in your life for centuries, mining my every word for nuggets of priceless wisdom. Appreciate your elders, foolish children, for they will be gone too soon, and you will have no more wells of experience and practical advice to mine."

I pointed at his face. "You've got whipped cream on your chin."

"I know." He said spitefully as he wiped it off. "I was using it to underline my point. You're too easily distracted by the superficial. It'll spell your doom."

Callie sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Zeke, even Cass can tell you just made that nonsense up, and she's TEN. Can we get going please? Because we have important places to be, and I can feel myself getting dumbed just sitting here listening to you two bicker about this."

"Good thing you don't need to worry about that happening to Shane." My uncle said snarkily. "I don't think he can get much dumber without his head literally imploding."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Cass, sweetie. Cover your ears for a minute. I have a few things to say to-"

"Nope." Callie grabbed me, dragging me away physically. "Not letting you get sucked in. He's trying to bait you because he's bored. It's obvious. How are you BOTH children when one of you is centuries old?" I couldn't help it, I started laughing as she dragged me away.

Zeke and I hadn't really teased each other much since this whole trip started. Not like we had when I was a kid. Talking about my dad the other day had been rough, but it seemed to have eased a tension with my uncle I hadn't even realized was there. Zeke was one of the most important people in my life, and since I found out about the geas, part of me had always felt like he'd been forced to be there for me.

Knowing he didn't hate my dad, despite my own anger at the man, it was a weight off my shoulders. If he didn't hate dad for putting him under the geas, then that meant he didn't feel burdened by it. Maybe I was reading too much into things, but it felt like I was right to feel like that. Like we were back to our old selves. Judging by the gleam of amusement in his eyes, Zeke felt that too, and I caught him shooting me a fond smile as I looked back.

Gripping my hand, I turned to see Callie smiling at me. "I'm glad you're happy." She said softly. "I hadn't even realized things were strained between you."

I shook my head. "They weren't really. It was just me being stupid. I pulled away from Zeke because I didn't want to burden him more than I had to. But it was a stupid way to look at things. He used to tell me 'Shane, family means never having to say thank you. It also means being able to say 'you're welcome' in a really passive aggressive voice when the other person doesn't.' I guess I forgot that."

She dissolved into giggles, and I cocked my head. "Sorry." She snorted between laughs. "It's just, that sounds SO MUCH like Zeke. You too, now that I think about it. I think you and Benny are a good example of that concept in action."

"I guess we are." I said with a laugh. "I can think of worse people to be like. Zeke might not always be in the right, but he cares about the people in his life." I trailed off, leaving any mention of my dad unsaid, and the hand around mine squeezed a bit tighter in comfort.

We walked in silence for the next five minutes or so, finally arriving at the camp. I wanted to drop our stuff in our new barracks, but I didn't know where it was, so we just headed for the building where the command meeting would be. I wondered if Hamill would be there, or if he was exempted for his training duties. Probably the latter given we'd seen him every day last week.

"Halt." Said a crisp voice. We both slid to a stop, turning to look at the towering figure of a man who stepped from the shadows. I'd noticed him, actually, but he'd been standing so still in full plate armor I thought he was a statue. I wondered if that was an unusual stealth application, of if he was just that easily overlooked. "Who goes there?"

Normally I'd have given a sarcastic response, but we WERE new, so saying it once didn't seem like it would be too out there. "Solomon and Nightstrike." I said plainly. "Newly minted century commanders. Our promotions just went through."

Reaching up, the man removed his helmet, a cascade of crimson hair flowing down his shoulders. There was a scar splitting his lip, neatly bisecting the left side of his well kept goatee, and it made him look like he had a permanent sneer. "Ah, the new bloods." He said in a dead sounding voice. I couldn't tell if he approved of us or wanted to roast us over an open flame with apples in our mouths.

"That's us." I agreed. "So can we...like, go in?" I gestured past him at the door he was blocking. "Don't want to be late for the meeting, do we?"

He blinked at me, cold blue eyes showing no emotion. "Lateness..." He trailed off. "Is unpleasant."

I waited for him to continue talking, but he seemed to have finished, stepping back to let us pass. "Right." I said slowly.
"Big fan of punctuality. Good to know. You have a name, big guy?"

"Charles." He said succinctly. Real chatterbox, this one. Nodding to him, we stepped past him as he replaced his helmet and resumed his perfectly unmoving stance. I could see how we missed him before. He really did seem to just vanish into stillness. Looking at him was like seeing a statue. It was deeply unnerving now that I knew the person in that armor could move and interact.

We entered the command building, and everyone already there turned to look at us. I saw Camden and Alister standing over a map table covered in small models, and a group of E-rankers surrounding them. The other commanders, from what Camden had said, were all non-noble Jobs, mostly combat oriented. Barons didn't often work under other Barons, but other E-rankers were available for hire.

Camden looked up. "Ah, Solomon, Nightstrike. Lovely that you could join us. We were just about to start." He gestured for us to step up to the table, and we crowded around, staring down at...the tunnel he'd had me make. He shot us a wink as he began filling the others in on his secret digging crew and the months of work that went into its construction, and I had a hard time not snickering as everyone started complimenting his foresight. Finally, he finished up his explanation, and our first meeting as commanders started in earnest.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

With the preamble out of the way, Camden had us all take a seat around a truly gargantuan wooden table packed with chairs. Callie and I sat close to the head where Camden was, just so we could be involved, but we didn't plan on talking too much. Listening was the best way to learn, and these meetings had been going on for ages without us attending. They had their own trajectory that we needed to pick up. At least that was the plan, sadly Camden didn't get the memo.

"Welcome everyone." Said Camden as we all sat down. "As you've noted we have newcomers among our number. Nightstrike and Solomon have recently reached E-rank, and due to special considerations in their contracts, will be assuming command of a century." I knew not every E-ranker in the army was in command. There were several squad leaders and trainers who were higher ranked, though his words led me to believe I hadn't seen all or even most of them.

A dark skinned man nearby with a placid expression and amber eyes nodded at us. "Lovely to meet you both." He said in a light, slightly melodic voice. "As newcomers, I suppose we should introduce ourselves to you. My name is Marco Powell, and I'm the captain of the first regiment of Baron Tolbert's military. The other commanders report to me when his grace is indisposed, so we'll be working closely together."

"That's IT?" Spat a sickly looking blonde man, slamming his hands on the table. His eyes were an odd golden color, and his dark hair was shaved on the sides and bleached on the top. His face was sunken and he was tall but unusually thin.
"They show up and hit the next rank and we hand over an entire century? We all broke our backs to be here, signed contracts that last for decades. I heard these bastards won't be sticking around for more than half a year? What the hell?"

Camden's eyes narrowed. "Sigmund." He said softly. "I don't recall where in your contract you were given the authority to question my decisions? Are you secretly the general of this army? Why was I not informed of something so important? Nightstrike and Solomon paid for their positions and more. Their contributions to our endeavors are substantial, and do NOT need to be enumerated at your request."

The other eighty plus people looked similarly upset. We had, from what Camden said, five regiments, totalling eight thousand people. Each of the five had two companies of eight hundred, each broken down further into eight centuries.
There were another two thousand elite troops under the command of Hamill, who were considered core forces most likely to become high ranking officers once the territory was settled. As century commanders we would be educated in field maneuvers, formations, training techniques, and various other base level instruction styles.

There had been talk, back when we were drawing up the contract, of just promoting us to company commanders, pulling soldiers from the core forces for us. In the end we decided to start small and earn our way up. It was less likely to cause problems, and most of what we needed to know for our territory we could pick up here.

Marco, smiling disarmingly, held up both hands. "Your grace, we don't question your decisions. If you say they've earned their place we're of course happy to welcome them into the fold. I think Sigmund is just voicing the concerns he feels may impede their integrations, so we might disarm a potential distraction before it becomes problematic. It is YOUR decision whether they're allowed to remain, of course, but we'll be working with them. Perhaps a bit of information on our new colleagues might put us all at ease."

Camden looked annoyed, but I could see that Marco's method of doing things was harder to just crush. Not to mention Marco was a regiment commander, one of only five in the main force, which meant he was probably pretty strong and had a lot of authority. "Fine." The Baron said with a sigh. "The two of them are the team leaders of Agria, the new healer we recently acquired. I trust you've all made use of her talents?"

To my surprise, that seemed to settle them all down a bit. Sigmund looked pensive. "She's been instrumental in keeping me on schedule." He admitted grudgingly. "Team leaders huh?" He glanced at us, then sighed. "Not used to how the other factions do things, but assuming that means she's like a vassal, I could understand the credit. Healers are invaluable. Especially one so useful."

Marco nodded with a wide smile. "Agreed. Lady Agria has been a great boon to the camp. She's saved us time, energy, and prevented not a few deaths. At this rate, she'll put us far ahead of our expected progress. Which century will they be taking command of."

Seemingly pleased with the return to matters at hand, Camden smiled back at the regiment commander. "I'm giving them Olena and Stern's centuries. Those two have been causing problems, and I've had them reassigned to Weber's unit in the core force for...disciplinary training." Every person at the table shuddered visibly as the seemingly innocuous words, and I made the brilliant deduction that I didn't want to ever find out why.

"The thirty third and the nineteenth?" Sigmund burst out with a laugh. "Why didn't you just say that? No reason to be jealous of them getting THOSE units. Laziest and most difficult centuries in the entire main force." He shot us a pitying look. "I actually feel bad for you all now. Olena and Stern were problems from the start, and they were given the most recalcitrant recruits. Thugs and morons mostly."

I grimaced. That wasn't ideal, but we had ways to handle things. I glanced at Camden, who was grinning at me mischievously, and rolled my eyes internally. "Is that so?" I said lightly. I should have known he'd find a way to screw me at least a little. If I brought it up he'd probably feed me some bullshit about learning more with a more difficult task, but I was pretty sure he was just passing the buck on a problem. "Then I want to request a few transfers. Two specifically. Gabriel Brightlaw and Abel Castleton. One for each of us."

Camden made a noise of amusement. I'd been polite about asking, knowing more about how far to push after my lessons on diplomacy, brief though they had been. Eventually, he held out a hand to Alister, who stood behind his chair. The seneschal passed a scroll, and the Baron opened it, skimming the names. "Mercy and Desmond. Those two are outliers in terms of productivity. They'll take your friends places in the tenth and forty third centuries. Acceptable?"

Since I didn't know who those people were, I just nodded. If these assholes were so obnoxious the other commanders were pitying us, we'd need all the help we could get. Sure, as E-rankers we could kick the shit out of all of them, but if we had to keep crippling and healing our people to get them in line it would look bad. Letting Abel and Gabe do it would be MUCH more reasonable.

"Well that's the easy part taken care of." Said Marco cheerfully. "Now we need to figure out who is going to be instructing them on training methods. It'll need to be someone running one of the more disciplined centuries, since they'll have to be away for a while helping these two adapt. Any volunteers?" He scanned the room, and a pair of hands went up. A small, olive skinned girl with aquamarine hair and kind blue eyes, and a tall tanned man with dark, intense eyes and long straight hair.

Camden reconsulted his list before nodding. "Demia and Niles, is it? The fifty seventh and sixth centuries?" At their agreement he glanced at me. "Very well, the two of you should be suitable. Make sure to help your new comrades to the best of your ability. This isn't a punishment detail. I have faith that Nightstrike and Solomon can whip those units into shape, and anyone found derailing that goal will be penalized. Understood?" He cast his glance across the table, and everyone nodded solemnly.

I was glad he'd said that. His little joke aside, if the other commanders got the impression we were intended to fail, they could make things difficult for us in plenty of ways. Making sure that we weren't the victims of hazing was the least he could do, and made me wonder if he really HAD given us problem units to make us better commanders.

The rest of the meeting was much less tense, and much less focused on us. Camden checked up on troop movements, assigned field exercises, patrol routes and just did general upkeep stuff I hadn't even known was going to come up, and once he was done, we were all dismissed. He asked Demia and Niles to wait for us outside and called for us to stay back to talk to him.

Once everyone was gone, he slumped a bit in his chair. "I hate doing these." He groaned. "Sitting all still like that is terrible for my back. Alister, get a back pillow made for my chair." The seneschal made a noise of confirmation and jotted down a not, and the Baron turned back to us. "That went pretty well, all things considered. Do you have any questions?"

"You mean like why you screwed us over on unit selection?" I said dryly. "I assumed its some nonsense about adversity building skill."

He barked out a laugh. "Nope. Politics. As you noted, once I mentioned your assigned units the dissatisfaction abated quite a bit. I can't babysit you two, and if the other commanders have a problem with you it'll make things much harder around here. Olena and Stern were bastards, no one liked them. If I'd given you a proper unit, I'd have had to take it from a more respected commander, and it would have turned everyone else here against you."

"This way we can prove ourselves." Said Callie in understanding. "If we can straighten up the problem children, we'll get a reputation for being competent, and without depriving some well liked commanders of their posts. But are you sure we can actually DO this? Olena and Stern were E-rank too, I assume."

He shrugged. "Barely, and they didn't really try much. They weren't exactly command material. Olena's brother Matthias is a particularly competent bastard who runs one of the units in the core force. I put them in charge as a favor to him, but once they proved they couldn't hack it he had no issues with me pulling their command. THEY had plenty of issues, but attacking fellow soldiers in the camp is taboo. They might challenge to a duel though, so I'd watch out for that."

I nodded solemnly. A duel wasn't too bad. We were newly minted E-rankers, but we had our own advantages. If these two were beginners we could definitely take them. "Demia and Niles." I said leadingly. "They're talented?"

"Two of my best." He said with a laugh. "I know all my top recruits, checking the list was just to make it look like I wasn't playing favorites. I had Marco approach them before the meeting to volunteer. The first thing you need to learn about command is to make sure you don't leave anything up to chance. That was all scripted, Marco, Sigmund, all of it. Now everyone knows what I want them to know about you, and nothing more. I've given you a good position, what you do with it from here is on you."

With that, he dismissed us, and Callie and I headed out to meet our new teachers. Demia and Niles were waiting for us at the entrance to the tent and once we joined them, they escorted us to meet our new units while Abel and Gabe were summoned for their new duty. Time to meet our personal armies.

 

[Malcolm Tent]

Demia and Niles split us up, Demia coming with me and Niles escorting Callie. When I arrived at my section of the camp, I found Gabe standing at attention in full armor, waiting for us to arrive. "Commander." He said with a serious salute, thought I noticed a slight twitch of his lips that made me sure he was fighting a smirk.

I paused to think about everything I'd heard of military etiquette, and returned his salute with an. "At ease." I glanced at Demia, who nodded encouragingly, and Gabe finally let his grin show. "I can't believe you and Callie hit E-rank already. I'd already used up my elixir allotment, or I'd have asked her Ladyship to help me achieve those heights so I might better protect her."

"Hitting her up for money huh?" I said teasingly, avoiding mentioning Chelsea was my sister only with effort. "You sure Bethy won't get jealous?"

He chuckled. "Of which of us? She and Chelsea have been getting pretty close. I think it's been confusing her. She doesn't seem to know how to act around us anymore. At least not alone. I don't suppose you have any..." He trailed off. "Advice? The situation has been confusing me as well."

"I'm not getting involved in either of their love lives. Chelsea for obvious reasons and Bethy because she terrifies me." I said with a snort. "Figure it out yourself. Now isn't the time for that though. Demia here is going to help me whip my century into shape, and I asked for you specifically to aid us in the task. It seems like it would be frowned on for me to kick them around at E-rank, so I need someone to act as my fist." I glanced at Demia. "Or is that a bad idea?"

She smiled back at me placidly. "Not at all. Most commanders have an intermediary to establish discipline and order. Being forced to personally punish your recruits is considered a sign of weak management." Her tone was gentle and incredibly hard to parse for emotion. Not monotone, exactly, but she sounded the same whenever she spoke, and it made reading her impossible.

I'd been right. Politics. It pervaded every aspect of the Empire, including the more militant parts of the culture. Not to mention as Ascendants we were all somewhat impressionable, and prioritized reputation.

Recursion DID happen in the Empire. While the Job system protected people from individual recursion much better than heroic cultivation, it had its own effect on its users. Jobs themselves caused recursion, pushing their users to fit better into the mold. It was less extreme since a Job didn't define your personality, but the perception of what a thing SHOULD be definitely affected what it WAS. Given the political leanings of most of the imperial heirarchy, it was no shock that even lower ranking Jobs would be swept up in their games, just by virtue of the assumption that they always did.

These had been some of the things included in my political lessons, which had been substantially more complex and nuanced than what I expected.

"Well, either way, he's here now." I said, straightening up. "I think its about time I met my century. I'm curious why they have their own territory though? Shouldn't they be training with Hamill like we were?" The differing command structures was odd. Hamill must be high up in the heirarchy, so why was he teaching random grunts.

She smirked, the least peaceful expression I'd seen on her face so far. "The General likes to take a hand in the first two weeks of conditioning. He says it establishes the proper baseline of fear and resentment in the soldiers, even those not directly under his command. Once those two weeks are up, they get cycled out to normal commanders. There are eighty centuries, surely you didn't think you'd seen them all in your training class?"

That was a good point. I supposed when he mentioned 'training starting' back during our initial meeting, Camden meant this particular training cycle. "Ok. So...before I introduce myself, what am I going to be doing today?"

"That depends on your management style." She said with a shrug. "I've known commanders who invite every soldier to attack at once and crush them under their boots. But that strategy is unlikely to bear much fruit unless you have subordinates at the same rank, for reasons already enumerated. You can go with a softer approach, offer rewards for certain milestones, or even just ignore them like Olena did. I'm hear to give you the tools you need to train them, not to train them for you."

I stroked my chin. She wasn't wrong. But I had a few ideas that might work. Ideas that utilized elements from all of those styles.

Marching into the cordoned off area in front of the thirty third barracks (apparently each century had their own after they got through the basic training cycle) I found a group of ninety nine people in the standard armor Camden had given us to use in training. Some of them were grouped up into cliques, some of them lounged by the barracks, and a few of them were just hanging out individually sleeping or reading.

"Officer on the field." Snapped Demia, in the harshest voice I'd heard her use. "Attention!" The shout split the air around us and I jumped slightly, staring down at the unusually loud for her size woman. They all got up, lazily assuming loose rows, though most of them didn't seem too motivated. "This." She said gesturing to me. "Is your new commander. Solomon."

I nodded to her, and stepped up next to her as I surveyed the various faces. "My name, as she mentioned, is Solomon. I'll be assuming command of this unit. I hear some of you are problematic. I'm sure you resent my presence here, and if you don't you probably will once you dig into me a bit. I don't actually give a shit." Demia looked surprised by the tone change, though not disapproving.

"I'm supposed to train you." I continued. "To guide you. And to learn by doing so. The skills I'm going to pick up from this are important for my future, and I'm not going to let some whimpering devil may care assholes fuck up my plans. If you have intentions to fuck around, abandon them, if you're expecting this to be easy, don't." I nodded to Gabe. "This is Gabriel. He's a friend, and he's also my second in command. As an E-ranker, it's unseemly for me to discipline you personally, so he's going to do it for me. Which one of you is the strongest here?"

Everyone turned to look at an unassuming girl standing near the back. Her hair was ivory, her eyes a virulent toxic green, and her pale face delicate in a way that reminded me a bit of Callie. Her eyes met mine, and she smiled. "I guess that's me. My name is Alanna Sunwell. It's nice to meet you...sir. I take it you want me to face your friend there in combat? Establish his chops in front of us all to show it how its done?" Her tone was sarcastic and snide.

"Sure, but you can say no." I said with a shrug. "I'm sure someone else would be interested in the five E-rank chits I'm going to pay the winner."

Every eye in the place snapped to me, and I grinned internally. These people had signed up here as mercenaries. They respected money, wanted money, and would demonstrably FIGHT for money. I had officially begun speaking their language.

Alanna stared at me suspiciously. "That's...a lot of money. Are you really going to pay up if your boy loses?"

"I want you guys to fall in line." I said with a shrug. "That only happens if you're incentivized. Not only will I put up five E-rank coins on the outcome, but I'll be setting up a little tournament. Once Gabe proved his mettle, he'll be withdrawn, and I'll let the top ten percent of you fight it out once a month for an E-ranked chit."

An E-ranked chit was ten F-ranked chits and a hundred G-ranked. G-ranked chits were usually base currency. Acting as a single unit in most markets, which made the prize pool a decent chunk of change. Especially with Gabe being counted out.

I had to do that, because as an Adamant with a path he was almost definitely going to crush the competition, and if they decided I was fleecing them it would have the opposite effect.

It was two birds and one stone. I would earn some goodwill and establish my lieutenants superiority, thereby preventing future challenges.

As Alanna accepted and followed Gabe to a training field in the center of our designated area, Demia stepped up next to me. "You sure he's going to win this?" She asked casually. "It's going to bite you on the ass if she puts him down, and Sunwell is a nasty fighter."

I just smiled knowingly. "Gabe can handle it. Just watch." I pointed at the training ring. I was looking forward to this myself.

Alanna strode out into the ring, hands in the air like a returning champion, and several of the other unit members hooted and hollered encouragement. Seemed like she had a rep among my people. Good. That would make this so much more effective.

Gabriel flipped his wrist, and the massive lance he used for his charges appeared in his hand. I saw him adjust his grip as the pressure and his current near mortal state made it a trial to hold it up, but hold it he did.

"Wow, compensating for something?" Taunted Alanna gleefully. "Not that I can complain, I tend to work with a lot of hardware myself." She waved a hand, and a fan of gleaming spears made of ice arrayed itself behind her, shifting in the air to point straight at Gabe.

Demia nodded. "Lancer Job. Ice based main Skill. She uses it to deadly effect. Like I said, she's going to be a tougher opponent than you might think."

Of course, Gabe didn't seem phased. He stomped his foot, a starlight charger manifesting beneath him as the crusader took his stance, preparing to charge. "You may wish to defend." He said politely. "It would be a shame to kill such a promising recruit by mistake."

From anyone else that would be arrogant, or at least mocking, but Gabe wasn't like that. He wasn't arrogant, he was just certain. The charge of an Adamant wasn't something just anyone could withstand.

Alanna sneered, about to respond with some kind of scathing remark, but before she could Gabe began his charge. I'll give her this, she wasn't stupid. She could sense the momentum, the sheer POWER behind his assault, even as his roar of 'RUBRUM GLORIA' split the air and his body was endowed with the power of his Path. Adamant. Unyielding. Nothing could stop him.

The hooves of the charger thundered across the hard packed dirt as his lance flashed toward her, and Alanna panicked. Her hands went up, grasping two more ice spears from the air as the others overlapped in front of her, positioned in front of the incoming holy lance. Gabe hit her makeshift shield like the fist of an angry god, his lance punching through the ice and smashing into her defending spears as she crossed them to tank the attack.

There was an explosion of light and force and Alanna was sent sliding back, desperately trying to stop herself. It wasn't to be though. Her feet left divots in the ground as she was driven backwards until her spine hit the barracks building.

Her eyes were wide with terror as she stared down at the lance, the tip of which was pressed flush against her windpipe, having pushed just past the skin and drawn a trickle of blood. Following the lance up, I could see that Gabe's arm wasn't fully extended. He'd stopped on a dime before spearing her through the throat. He retracted his lance, and she fell to the ground, shuddering. Damned if that man didn't know how to make an impression.