Reben floated. Weightless. Drifting

  He was in a sea of soft, white mist. Above him, the sky was a deep, endless canvas of black scattered with shimmering diamonds. Madella often told the orphans about the stars - how they weren't just pinpricks of light, but massive, burning suns far away, watching over everyone. In his dream, he reached out, his small hand grasping for a cloud that felt like the frayed threads of his sleeve.

  It was quiet save the wind. It was perfect. He smiled, letting his eyes drift shut-

  "Reben! Wake up!"

  The dream shattered.

  Reben gasped, his limbs jerking as he was ripped from the sky and dumped back into the lumpy reality of his mattress. He blinked, disoriented. Pale, watery light from the dawn bathed the room. The air was cool and smelled faintly of the mist clearing outside. Around him, the rhythmic breathing of the other orphans created a soft, sleepy chorus.

  "Wha-?" Reben rubbed his eyes, trying to find the source of the disturbance.

  It was Adimia, looming over him, already dressed in his tunic and trousers, looking annoyingly awake and expectant. "Shh," Adimia whispered loudly, grabbing Reben's arm. "Don't wake the others. Come on."

  "It's not even breakfast time," Reben grumbled, resisting the pull.

  "Exactly. Best time to train." Adimia didn't want for consent; he hauled the ten-year-old out of bed and shoved a bundle of clothes into his chest.

  Ten minutes later, Reben stood shivering in the backyard, the wet grass soaking through his thin shoes. The sun was just crowning the horizon, burning off the last of the fog. He yawned so wide his jaw cracked.

  "Here." Adimia thrust something into his hands.

  Reben looked down and saw a piece of wood roughly hewn into the shape of a sword. It was heavy, uneven, and the handle was still sticky with sap, but someone had clearly spent hours whittling it down from a branch.

  "Did you make this?" Reben asked, running a thumb over a knot in the 'blade'.

  "Yeah. Last night," Adimia said, holding down his own matching weapon. He swung it through the air with a whoosh. "We can't leave everything to Paley and Teerom. We need to be strong."

  Reben stared at the sword, his brain struggling to wake up. "So we're hitting each other with these?"

  "It's combat training," Adimia corrected, adopting a stance that looked suspiciously like the illustration on the cover of The Knight's Code - a book he'd made Teerom read to him three times. "Monster Hunting pays well, Reben... I think. We both want to be knights. Hunters are basically knights who get paid for killing monsters. If we get good now, we can bring in silver. Maybe even gold."

  Reben processed this. The premise was sound. Paley and Teerom alone could still not get them to sit comfortably above the water.

  "Okay," Reben said, gripping the handle. "But if we want silver, why don't we just farm?"

  Adimia lowered his sword, frowning. "Farm?"

  Reben pointed to the vast stretch of overgrown land behind the cottage, leading toward the river bend. "No one owns it. The dirt is dark, which Jurie said means it's fertile. And seeds cost copper. Harvest sells for silver."

  "Farming is peasant work," Adimia scoffed, puffing out his chest. "We're going to be heroes, Reben. Heroes don't dig holes for turnips. They slay beasts."

  "Knights have to eat," Reben countered flatly. "And they eat what farmers grow. That makes farmers the best people in the kingdom."

  "Just get ready!" Adimia groaned, unwilling to argue something beyond his intellect at sunrise. "I'm coming at you!"

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  Adimia charged without waiting for Reben to prepare.

  At fourteen, Adimia was tall for his age, broad-shouldered, and fuelled by great energy. Reben was ten, scrawny, and tired.

  Adimia swung his wooden sword in a wide, horizontal arc. Reben yelped and ducked, the wood whistling over his hair.

  "Fight back!" Adimia shouted, spinning for another strike.

  Reben remembered magic. The Strength Magic that Teerom taught him. He focused, squeezing his eyes shut. He felt the hum of mana in his arms and legs. His muscles locked up, turning hard like stone.

  He tried to swing his sword to block Adimia, but his movements were jerky and stiff to say the least. He moved like a hinge after years of rust.

  Adimia's blade hit Reben in the ribs - not hard enough to break anything, but enough to knock the wind out of him. Reben tumbled backward into the dirt, his concentration breaking.

  "You're thinking too much!" Adimia yelled, looking down at him. He was grinning, sweat beading on his forehead. "A knight acts on instinct! You have to feel the flow of battle, Reben. Don't think, just do!"

  Reben wheezed, sitting up. Adimia sounded like the storybooks, but Reben noticed something else. Adimia looked... relieved. Happy, even. For weeks, ever since Paley arrived with his immense power as a Quimnia, Adimia had been quiet about his own lack of magic. But right now, standing over a magic-user with nothing but muscle and grit, Adimia looked confident.

  "Again," Reben said, standing up.

  They went five more rounds. Reben lost all of them. He took a hit to the shoulder, one to the shin, and was shoved into a mud puddle.

  "Stop being so stiff!" Adimia instructed, panting heavily now. "You gotta flow like the water!"

  Reben wiped mud from his cheek. Flow? It didn't make sense. Battle was about swinging fast and hard not about water. Maybe it could be about water if either of them used Water Magic. He gripped his sword again, but this time, he didn't immediately lock his muscles with magic.

  He watched Adimia.

  Adimia reset his stance. He tapped his left foot twice. He flared his nostrils, taking as deep a breath as possible. He dropped his right shoulder.

  'He's going to swing upward,' Reben thought. 'From the right- my left'

  Adimia shouted and lunged. Reben didn't try to block or even to overpower him. He simply took a single step to the left. Adimia's sword carved through empty air where Reben had been a second ago. The momentum carried him forward, off-balance.

  Reben saw the opening and took it. He bought his wooden sword down and it landed squarely on the back of Adimia's neck.

  Adimia froze. He stumbled forward a few steps, then turned around, his eyes wide. He reached up to touch his neck. If it had been a real blade, he would have been dead.

  "You..." Adimia stared at him. "How did you do that?"

  Reben lowered his sword, breathing heavy to recover. "You flare your nose," He said, taking another pant, "And you tap your foot before you charge. And your shoulder went down, so I knew it was going up."

  Adimia blinked hard. His confidence drained from his face and a crushing look of inadequacy and disappointment replaced it. He looked at his own hands, then at the wooden sword he'd spent all night carving.

  "Oh," Adimia said, his voice quiet. "Right. I guess... I guess even a farmer can beat the knight eventually, huh?" He tried to joke, but couldn't bring himself to taste his inferiority any longer.

  He threw his sword onto the grass - not angrily, just defeated. Shoulders slumped, he turned away. "I'm going inside. Magic wins... I get it now."

  Reben felt a pang in his chest. It wasn't the magic. He hadn't even used the magic that time. But he knew Adimia wouldn't see it that way. Adimia saw himself as the only broken weirdo in a magical world.

  "Adimia, wait," Reben called out.

  Adimia stopped though he did not turn.

  "I-I didn't win because of magic," Reben said, walking over to pick up Adimia's sword. "I won because I lost 6 times. Because you taught me the moves. I didn't use magic. I just watched... someone who was a talented fighter."

  Adimia looked back, a flicker of hope in his eyes accompanied by a welling of tears. "Really?"

  "Yeah. I'm terrible otherwise. Look at me, I'm covered in dirt." Reben held out the sword handle to his brother. "I need you to teach me how to actually swing hard and fast. I can't hit hard like you."

  Adimia took the sword, a grin returning to his face. "Yeah, your whack there didn't hurt one bit!" he laughed.

  "So we have a deal?" Reben asked, ignoring Adimia's annoying remark.

  "What deal?"

  "Every morning we train together. You teach me the swings and stuff. And..." Reben pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the overgrown field. "And in the afternoons... we do stuff with that land. We do both. Monster Hunting and farming. Two incomes."

  Adimia looked at the field, then back at Reben. He sighed. "Deal."

  By the time the sun was fully up, the morning mist was gone.

  Paley was on his way for a monster hunt when he stumbled upon a sight in the field behind the cottage. Two figures were at work. Adimia was attacking a stubborn tree stump with a pickaxe Teerom made for him, sweat flying, groaning with every strike, channelling all his frustration and passion into the wood. A few feet away, Reben was on his knees, carefully measuring the distance between holes with a piece of string, using the maths that Jurie taught him to ensure as much symmetry as possible for the future crop they'd plant there.

  They worked in silence, they were different, but they moved in rhythm. Paley smiled. 'What are they up to?' He wanted to ask them himself but knowing Adimia's tendency to yap, he'd be late for the hunt. So discreetly, he vanished into the forest where Hig was supposed to be waiting.