When I woke the next morning, the room was still dark. It took ten minutes of careful maneuvering to not bump into any of the furniture in the small room. When I finished, the sun had just climbed its way over the top of the city walls. I moved to head down for breakfast but stopped when I realized I couldn’t smell any sign of food being cooked yet.

  With that in mind, I sat down at the desk, casually swept away some of the rock dust I’d missed yesterday, and brought my legs up under me to meditate. When I was comfortable, I opened myself to Ylena. The chosen bond allowing her domain to suffuse me. I focused my breathing until I felt that rhythmic pulse from my heart and followed it to the spot in my spine where [Grove Guard’s] class core was. Once My attention was on the spiritual core, I focused my intent on activating Beginner’s Shield Art. Right now, the goal was to master both Beginner’s Shield and Hammer Arts before I finished The Willow’s Wrath. Ideally, a refresher of the fundamentals would help me master the far more advanced style.

  I focused on activating the skill until I felt something lock within the class core. Both times I’d sense the core. It had felt malleable, like I’d be able to mold it with my hands. Now, the core felt like ironwood. Slowly, I felt a tugging sensation bloom at the center of my awareness. I ignored the sensation briefly to focus on the core, but as time passed, the pulling on my awareness grew increasingly insistent. Growing up, I’d been taught that the tugging was the System trying to pull your attention into your soul space and all you had to do was allow it. I resisted the sensation until after I’d inspected the ‘locked’ class core from every angle. What I did not know to expect was for the System to rip half of my mana out of my core and drag it along with my consciousness.

  When I opened my eyes, it was to the sight of the clearing that made my soul space. An endless forest surrounded me on all sides, each tree a paragon of its species. There weren’t any trees in the clearing, instead the only features were the long grasses and wildflowers that swayed gently in the faux breeze.

  I was still gathering my bearings when the Trainer manifested. It began as a vaguely human shaped absence of light. The wispy edges of nothing gradually solidified into hard edges. Crystal took the place of flesh or darkness and became gems the color of the night sky. When the transition finished, the Trainer stood slightly shorter than me, its bulky, masculine frame made up of razor-sharp edges.

  A figure of blackest crystal and razor edges should have inspired fear, or even terror in me, but warmth and understanding emanate from the being. Instinctively, I knew the Trainer meant me no actual harm. Its lessons might hurt, but it meant me no harm.

  I watched in silence as the Trainer turned to take in the soul space. Constellations appeared and disappeared on its featureless face as it did so. When it finished its survey, it held up its hand and from its crystal palm grew an hour glass made of marble and gold. Rainbows of light shone upon the flowers and grasses as beads of diamond filled the hourglass.

  There was a time limit to skills, and the musical chime as diamond beads fell on top of each other confirmed it. I took my own survey of the clearing, trying to find a shield, but there was nothing but the Trainer and me. It stared at me, twenty feet away, if randomly appearing constellations could stare. Until my eyes met the blank crystal of its face and it set down the hourglass.

  When the Trainer stood back to its full height, a wooden round shield was in its hand. As if it’d always been there and I’d simply failed to notice. I looked down and saw a round shield the exact size of my own was fitted perfectly to my arm. I hadn’t even noticed the weight until I looked at it.

  Across the clearing, the Trainer bowed to me. Its crystalline frame moved in ways that shouldn’t be possible as it bent at the waist and, in a fluid motion that defied reason, swept its unoccupied arm out towards me. I returned the bow deeper than the one given to me. I was the student, after all, and when I looked back, the Trainer had settled into a basic stance. One foot behind the other and its center of gravity lowered into a sturdy base.

  The Trainer made no move beyond that. Unsure exactly what it wanted from me, I settled into a quick imitation of its stance. The Trainer rose and sauntered to me, its movements languid and relaxed. It stepped behind me and before I could turn to look at it; swept my back leg out from under me and punched its shield into my relaxed shoulder, driving me face first into the soft ground.

  On muscle memory, I shot to my feet and whirled to bring my shield to bear in a position that covered ninety-five percent of my body. No further impacts arrived, and when I looked past the top of my shield, the Trainer was again staring at me, having returned to that basic stance.

  I looked to the crystal being and reflected that I’d deserved that punishment. Anything less than your best effort was not only dangerous, but an insult to your instructors. My half-assed stance had been unacceptable, and I took the correction as the reproach it was.

  I needed to reach the standards set for me and to do so I had to take any opportunity to train as seriously as possible, and the training provided by the System was valuable no matter what discipline you studied under. That in mind I dropped into another imitation of the stance and tried to keep in mind the instructions first taught to me when I’d begun learning under the [Paladins] of the Order.

  As soon as settled back into the form, the Trainer left its own stance and strode to me. It circled me and I took a deep breath, prepared for the Trainer to strike me again. Its gaze on the back of my neck was a physical weight I had to struggle against, but a blow never came. When it was before me, it reached out and with a quiet strength pushed my center of gravity lower. The stance wasn’t painful, but it was deeper than my usual form and slightly uncomfortable.

  Once the Trainer let go of my shoulder, my instinct was to rise to the usual Willow’s Wrath stance, but I squashed that and remained where it had put me. The Trainer stepped back and looked to the sky. Nothing happened for a long moment but slowly, a heat hazed appeared. The haze built in the sky, then, like a leaf in the wind, drifted closer to the Trainer until the Vareth’s Fang constellation absorbed the mana into its face. When the Trainer looked down, it had gained a mouth full of ink black crystal teeth, the first and only feature on its face.

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  “You are large. For your species. You must remain lower.” The Trainer’s voice was a contradiction. Each stilted word screamed with an unknowable number of voices, yet remained as quiet as the whisper of a field mouse.

  The sight of the Trainer’s mouth unnerved me, but I knew Trainers were infinitely flexible; and growing up, I’d been told stories of Trainers gaining horrific mutations to help teach higher Tier skills. I watched the Trainer approach, eyes fixated on its teeth, as it settled back into the stance it had shown me. Shield raised high enough to protect most of its body while allowing it to see over the rim.

  I fell into that same stance, which the Trainer briefly corrected and nudged my elbow higher. It placed its hand back on my shoulder and held me in that position. I spent the next two hours locked in position. The only change occurred when the Trainer put my shield arm back into the proper position after it’d drooped slightly.

  By the end of the two hours, my legs shook. Liquid fire coursed up my legs, through my core, and down my shield arm. Eight pounds is challenging to hold out in front of you for thirty minutes. By an hour, it’s a significant weight. By the end of the second hour, it felt like trying to hold a boulder. Had I been in my physical body, my muscles would have failed within an hour, but the form I inhabited was an avatar of mana inhabited by my spirit and sheer will allowed me to hold the shield aloft where flesh would have failed.

  When the Trainer stepped away and allowed me to rise, I had to fight my legs to cooperate and rise rather than drop me to the ground. When I straightened, a ticking sound echoed around my soul space. The last diamond beads of the hourglass were about to fall and with the scant few seconds I had left in the skill, I turned to the Trainer and bowed to it; a bow it returned right before the last bead dropped.

  The Trainer disappeared. First, it lost its form and returned once more to the human shaped void of light. Visible threads of mana ripped themselves from the black. Some returned to the sky of my soul space while others, drawn away from the sky, disappeared into the endless forest around me. When the last thread disappeared into a red maple nearby, it jolted back to awareness with a sensation like falling to your death in a dream.

  I stared at the wood grain of the desk, unsure how to feel about my first time within a skill. It was an immense benefit to receive training from one of the System’s constructs, a being who had learned and mastered every martial style on the known material plane. The benefit far outweighed the single negative yet it was an intense feeling to have your mana ripped from you, used without input from your will, and then to have your consciousness slammed back into the material world once the System was done with you.

  Light was hard to judge in the city because of the wall, but I guessed I’d spent an hour within the skill even though two and a half had passed for me within it. Early morning gloom blanketed the streets. The shadow of the city wall loomed over half the streets in view from my window. Small pockets of lights from store fronts and through the windows of homes the only resistance.

  Before I left to get breakfast, I settled in and tried to regain some of the lost mana. I sensed it faintly last night, but now that I was rested, I could feel the difference distinctly. The mana in Woodsedge felt muddled compared to what was within the forest. Faintly I could recognize all the elemental mana types I was used to, but there were others hidden within the mana I’d never felt before. It took more time for me to regain enough to feel comfortable walking around than it would in the forest.

  When I stood, my legs ached faintly, like it had been days since I’d trained rather than minutes. Pain after a skill session was normal. Even though your physical body had done none of the work, your soul had, and when your spirit expected pain, it provided the pain. Like all things, once you got used to skills and their effect, the phantom pains would stop. Your soul no longer unaccustomed to being away from a physical form.

  When I entered the common room, it was behind a group of five mercenaries who’d left their rooms just before I had. People had already begun their breakfasts when I entered. The smell of eggs and fresh bread wafted through the room and conversations as I followed the scent up to the same barstool I’d occupied last night.

  “Morning kid!” Widow called out to me, her smile wide and genuine. “Want some breakfast?”

  “Please.”

  Widow disappeared into the kitchen only to return within moments with a plate stacked high with eggs, a bowl of porridge, and half a loaf of the bread I’d smelled. I’d grown used to the enhanced cooking of Selena and Pinera during the year I’d spent mostly at home and was admittedly a little worried that the food here in the outlands wouldn’t hold up to their standards, but Widow’s food was fantastic. Pinera had an entire path dedicated to cooking so her food wasn’t as good by Widow was by far and away better than the Order’s [Cooks].

  “Inhaled that I see,” Widow said as she leaned over the bar, uncomfortably close. “I upped the portions and everything. Figured a growing boy like you could use the calories.”

  “That was kind ma’am. Thank you.” I replied.

  “Loosen up would ya? You’re too formal for a boy your age. Kids are supposed to be pains in the ass.” Although her words were nominally chiding, her voice held a hint of fondness that suggested nostalgia.

  “You have kids then?”

  “Plenty.” She challenged; her smile dared me to ask her age.

  “Any advice for a new dad?”

  During Rebecca’s pregnancy, I’d asked the [Warded Merchant] who usually visits Twin Oak to grab me a book on parenting, and one of the first things it had recommended was to ask older parents and your elders for advice. That had been particularly frustrating to read. I’d bought the book specifically for advice and it was shunting its duty onto the people around me.

  “You’re a dad?” Widow asked, genuinely surprised.

  “Yes ma’am, my daughter was born a few months back.”

  “Gods be damned. You said you’re sixteen?”

  “Yes?”

  “Pardon my manners, but what the Hells are you doing having kids?”

  “Excuse me?” I bristled. Fifteen was a little young, even back home, but it wasn’t too uncommon and no one had ever questioned why Rebecca and I had had Helena before.

  “I mean no offense when I say this kid, you seem nice enough; but no unawakened kid is mature enough for children of their own. How old is the mom?”

  “Twenty-one.” I answered, not totally sure why. I’d surprised her again because she took another look at my face and leaned further towards me.

  “How’d that happen? If you don’t mind me asking?” I didn’t. When we’d announced the pregnancy, I had the question demanded of me enough times that it no longer phased me.

  “My daughter’s mother and I celebrated the harvest together.”

  Widow studied me for a moment longer before she pulled back and made a tutting sound.

  “As far as advice goes, the best thing I can come up with off the top of my head is; don’t forget your daughter is new to life. There are going to be times when she does something so obviously dumb it makes you want to pull your hair out. The thing is, she doesn’t know any better. Odds are, it’s the first time she ever seen or done that. She’s not being dense, she’s just exploring a brand-new world.”

  Widow took a step back from the bar, pleased with her advice, while I took a moment to chew on what she said.

  “Thank you.” I said, genuinely grateful for the advice, even if her questioning my daughter had gotten on my nerves.

  “I’ve got a question of my own. How would you like to pay for your breakfast this fine morning?” Widow asked, her friendly smile replaced by a distinctly predatory grin.

  “Coin?” I asked, unsure of what she meant. Perhaps she thought I had a different denomination than the coins made in Teles.

  I matched actions to word and brought out the eleven coins I owed her, ten for the five nights and one for the meal and advice. Widow stared at the coin with none of the malice I’d seen in her grin. She sighed and swiped her hand over the coins. Each disappeared as her hand passed over.

  My senses weren’t the most attuned to mana, but even I felt some fluctuations when spells were cast around me, but I’d felt none from Widow. Either she had fantastic mana control or she used an item of some kind to store the coins like that.

  I stayed at the bar for a couple minutes longer to soak in the atmosphere before I stood, said goodbye to Widow and went to go look for the Adventurer’s Guild.