“Should I call you ‘Mari’ now? It’s what your friends called you. Why did you pick that? It’s nothing like your old name.” Fyrnell wagged their tentacles through the air as I laid on the mattress. We hadn’t started talking when I entered. I had silently crawled on my bed. Back when I first caught my Bed Monster in the act, I had tricked my body into sleep paralysis and then opened my eyes to see Fyrnell hunting a demonic spider. They were the first to speak then too.
“My name is Exemplar. These other epithets I wear are for others, civil trappings for when my allies want to set aside the heroics to connect ‘on a human level’.” I made a disgusted sound. “A camaraderie of arms is fiercer than any bond formed in pleasantries.” While I liked hearing people use my new name, I also hated that I had to change it. Though my desires fit within a set of expectations, the expectations themselves grated on me.
Fyrnell stroked my hair. “Of course it is, but most humans can’t live on the battlefield.”
I curled on my side. “Why not?”
“You know why. Even you are haunted by what you’ve seen and done.”
I sighed. “I should join my companions in their celebratory libations. Before I go, can we set ground rules?”
They hummed. “A third of the monster parts spawned in this dorm seems fair. Prevent Riena from hunting me with her drones, and I’ll keep you all safe.”
“Won’t you starve?”
“Did you know Casimir, Derek, and Riena still sleep? Only Nyla stays conscious like you do. That’s more nourishment than your leaking nightmares.”
“Alright” I sat up and removed my armor. Keeping it on would put everyone on edge. The tentacles immediately retracted under my bed. “I’m still clothed.”
One tentacle poked out. “It’s weird seeing you unshelled.”
“It’s strange for me as well.” Layers of gambeson, chain, and plate served to separate me from myself. While fully armored, I was Exemplar and didn’t have to worry about any fleshy truths associated with that name. Between cleaning rings and certain removable pieces, I had spent months in my armor before one social obligation or another forced me out of it. “I’ll be back.”
I left my room and pretended the offered alcohol affected me. Nyla’s mead could have gotten me buzzed if I drank all of it. I no longer saw the point in being inebriated, but I had to pretend. They indulged my wants, so I had to indulge theirs.
During a particularly stupid drinking game on Riena’s third bottle of whiskey—the equivalent of two shots before her shade—she told a raunchy joke that sent the rest into fits. For an instant, their mirth bled into me through the bond, and my reflexive laughter became genuine. It had been a long time since I experienced joy outside of heroics. So long that I struggled to recall a specific mundane moment.
Did I enjoy my birthday? Last winter solstice? I… I had no idea. I could recall the exact muscle fiber flexes required to parry a bullet and hundred tales of my exploit, but this was beyond me. The details of that mysterious moment and this one faded. Already, Riena’s jest was hard to remember. It didn’t sound very funny in my head.
When they had enough booze and sought their beds, I retired to my room and prepared my new gathered materials for transport by breaking down the coffins and brine-curing the imp wings. Once the last membrane was placed in a jar, I settled down to meditate while increasing the osmotic pressure in the brine with my aura to speed up the curing process.
Fyrnell begged me to sleep, and when that failed, they contented themselves by humming eldritch lullabies that drifted into frequencies our reality couldn’t transmit. As the chords wafted out of reality, my mind wanted to follow them into dreamland, but an iron-will kept me rooted. The night served as good training, and Fyrnell’s assistance was appreciated.
In the morning, I was a tad fuzzy due to the added mental strain and didn’t recall my trip to the sparring arena. The lack of blood on my gear indicated that nothing important happened. When Gabriel charged, my mind cleared immediately. We only exchanged two attacks before Bright Burn called it. “Dammit Gabriel, I told you to stop half-assing it. Switch with Valkier.”
The Valkyrie flew from her duel with Nyla and hovered above me. “I don’t see how this matchup is remotely fair.”
I nodded. “I agree. You don’t stand a chance.”
“Oho, okay bitch. Enjoy your new hole.”
Valkier clenched her teeth right before charging me like she always did with Nyla. I jumped and deflected her lance with my blade before balancing on her invulnerable shield. At the end of her charge she stopped and would have sent me flying if I didn’t wrap my venom blade around the bubble. That handhold let me stay on her until the shield collapsed and I smacked her head with the flat of my glaive before I fell back to the arena.
She rubbed her cheek and asked, “How did you do that?”
“Your charge has tells, and your shield is merely invulnerable. That doesn’t prevent me from using it for better positioning,” I replied.
“Well shit, and here I thought I had a perfect combo.”
“There is no such thing. The art of war is as vast as the sea and sky,” as one of my mentors used to say.
Rather than being irritated, a light entered Valkier’s eyes as she cracked her neck. “Alright, how about this, then?”
The Valkyrie swooped without her abilities and launched into a combination of thrusts that demonstrated years of training. When I countered that assault and backed her into a corner, she would use the charge or shield to get out of it.
Rather than exploit every weak point presented, I gradually increased my speed and intensity to force Valkier to tighten her technique. My challenge for this spar was to see how much I could improve her own skill.
At the end of class, she collapsed on the floor and panted for breath. “Fucking hell.”
Bright Burn snorted. “Against less skilled opponents, blocking an attack with your shield could off-balance them. That won’t work against high tier monsters nor against anyone with the Exemplar ability. Most of us aren’t worried about fighting our fellow heroes, but you’re in law enforcement. Work on those techniques so you can challenge Exemplar the next time you fight her.”
I wait for my tips.
He shooed me away. “Bah. You don’t get something out of every spar.” The professor’s words to me banished Valkier’s fatigue and replaced it with rage. I’ve seen faces like that before. She’ll train at all hours until she can beat me. In the previous era, I would have been confident that I could continue to outpace her with ever advancing martial prowess, but my current progress was limited by knowledge, materials, and time. All she had to do was improve enough that the gap in our skill was covered by abilities.
It wouldn’t be a month from now or by next semester, but Valkier would overtake me if I stood still. I needed more tools, more weapons, more everything. That was the only way to maintain my edge and keep my place on future battlefields against the high tier monsters. Standing on the Savior’s side while storied heroes died around me in droves. No one liked seeing a kid there, but I was named and there with all the other named heroes. Being among their illustrious company was the crowning accomplishment of my life. I couldn’t lose that too.
Helping Valkier up and saying the expected phrases took little of my focus. I grabbed my things and hurried to join Nyla as she limped out the classroom while sipping a potion. She said, “I fucking hate Gabriel.”
I clapped her on the back. “You burnt off all his skin. That’s more damage than most inflict.”
“Like he cared. The fire elemental wannabe kept coming and beat me with distended muscle fibers.”
“I wouldn’t say that duel had a clear winner.” Part of me cheered Nyla’s unyielding nature while another was glad that Gabriel didn’t lose to anyone else.
“Whatever. I wanted to paste him.”
“The limitless possibility of a shapeshifter combined with an ability that lets him properly master his talents makes for a difficult foe.”
She shook out her leg as the potion did its work and kept walking. “You did it.”
I leaned by her ear and whispered, “Barely, but don’t let him hear that.”
We walked through the showers and went to our separate classes. By the time I got there, the rest were already at the table and working on their projects. Jeremiah glanced at me as I sat and asked, “How was raiding with your team?”
“During our first dungeon, we only had to fight one tier 5 monster,” I replied.
“How many limbs did you lose?” Bianca asked. The cube she worked on last time was covered in a larger stone and glass contraption that she was etching with indecipherable Fortran script.
“Six,” I lied.
X2 didn’t look up as it spoke, “My condolences on the limb you didn’t recover. When your head was removed, did you regrow your head or your body?”
“Both. We then dueled to see who got to be the real Mari. I won.”
“Fascinating,” it drawled.
Professor Gyro spared us from further small talk and started the lecture. “Today we’ll be going over creating sympathetic bonds with your aura.” Before her with two steel bars and a hammer. “The easiest way to learn this is to feel me doing it with your own aura, so I’ll continue to demonstrate as your tables are lifted by me.”
A mechanical claw reached down from the ceiling and ripped another group’s platform into the air and held them by the Professor.
“Good! Now we’ll begin.” She smacked one bar and both bars dented. “At first, denting both blocks will require more than twice the effort of denting them one at a time. With practice, you can learn to supplement raw strength with MP rich sympathetic components. This is terribly MP inefficient, but in a portal scenario, time can be far more precious than materials. If your whole team needs a specific item, then it is better to craft the whole batch at once.”
I thinned my aura and stretched it in a narrow band until I encompassed the Professor’s work area. This was another technique I’d been unable to glean from reading the book. She winked at me and continued.
“Additionally, mastering this eases you into manipulating concepts with your aura rather than reality.” Gyro placed a candle in front of her and lit it. When she struck the steel again, the flame flared and both bars still bent despite the strike being half as loud. Huh. Gyro was trying to trick us. The sympathetic bonds with and without MP were entirely different. The latter confused me utterly.
To test the technique, I grabbed a couple Infernal Iron blocks and a drawplate. With my aura, I imposed that one block was the other one. They were the same block. Once my will was imposed on the world, I pushed and pulled one block through the drawplate. The other unraveled into wire along with the first one.
The Professor was right, this was more than twice as hard. Despite the ductility runes, I had to use three drawplates to get the wire down to the thickness I wanted. While I drew wire, Gyro continued the lecture, but it was mainly different ways to understand the same basic concept. Whatever trick she used to replace muscle with MP was for us to figure out on our own. It couldn’t be explained or shown.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
I let my ability chew on that conundrum while I focus on making wire. Once I had enough, I made as many bonds as I could so that every link I twisted by hand was repeated multiple times. I had more than enough strength to spare for this activity, so being able to parallelize the process reduced the time I needed to make chain shirts for my team. They all lacked basic armor and were relying on our enhanced durability to protect them. As the Crafter, I had to rectify that oversight.
Finishing four shirts still required that I stay after class until it was almost time to grab coffee with Vanya before alchemy. Will she be there? I wasn’t oblivious. I knew our last discussion had hurt her, but surely the survival boost from caffeine would be worth putting up with my presence.
At the cafe near our lecture, I bartered extra wire for two coffees. Ideally, the small gift would help appease Vanya. People tended to like small gestures of care.
I waited for my elven friend to show… and waited… She should be here by now. I shook my head. Vanya was too practical to suffer through the Crone’s lectures unaided. Something must have happened to her. Yes, that’s it. I didn’t lose another friend, not yet.
As I left the cafe, I breathed in the nearby scents. Heroes' senses advanced with our shade but remained fundamentally human. While we would always lack the instinct of bloodhounds or better trackers, humans didn’t rely on instinct. We trained, learned, and taught skills.
I couldn’t find a teacher to help me track by scent. The heroes that could all had abilities to assist them. This was a skill I had to teach myself as I chased fleeing prey through the great wilderness while blindfolded.
Like any elf, Vanya smelled of moonlight, berries, and the singing of stars. Her scent was in the air. I followed it to where it was least diffused. She had been coming from the dorms before taking a path to the administration offices. Curious.
I hounded after the trail with two coffees in my hands and my weapons sheathed. The glaive stuck out from my back and I had to crouch through each entrance until I neared the Headmaster’s office.
From this distance I could make out parts of the conversation. “—kill us all, so we captured her.” The high-pitched voice had the lilting diction of a demagogue. I calmly placed both coffees on an end table and rested glaive on the wall before nearing to join the discussion.
A large blond man filled most of the doorway. Beyond him, Vanya knelt on the carpet with MP suppressing shackles around her hands and feet. Rick Danger sat at his desk with his hands folded in front of his face and stared at the red-headed woman ranting about elven plots.
I grabbed the door obstruction by the collar and tossed him behind me. Distantly, the snapping of bones could be heard as he tumbled along Aspiration’s reinforced floor.
The red head whipped to me in alarm and then relaxed. “Exemplar! I must apologize for my inattentive colleague. He should have had the presence of mind to make way for a fellow inquisitor. Have you come to present the evidence you’ve collected against the elf?”
I didn’t acknowledge her as I crouched and snapped the shackles off Vanya.
“Exemplar? What are you doing? Raj, stop her.”
When a hand reached for me, I snapped it at the forearm and whirled to punch the mousy red head. My fist shattered her orbital, sparing her eye. A brown haired man lunged at me from my left. I chopped his shoulder and shattered bones, arresting his charge. The last of this impromptu mob cowered in the corner. She had a Crafter’s uniform, so I spared her hands and snapped her shins with two swift kicks. As their bodies settled, I returned to removing Vanya’s restraints.
Their spokesperson leaned up while clutching her eye socket. “How dare you interfere in our work? This is—”
Rick coughed. “Ms. Scarlet, the purpose of the white uniforms is not to mark a student for harassment. It’s to indicate that the university trusts them despite their differences. Further—”
“That only means the elf’s deceptions are more intricate!”
“FURTHERMORE,” Rick talked over her. “The faculty do not discipline the students. You are all adults, and this is the frontline. Petty matters like these are for you to settle with your peers.”
Scarlet pulled herself to her feet. “Fine, I’ll gather allies and purge this corrupting influence. And you!” She pointed at me. “This isn’t over. Falling for this elf’s trick is inexcusable. I hadn’t expected such debasement from such a prolific inquisitor.”
After removing the last shackle, I turned and loomed over Scarlet and her minions. “Please do.”
“What?”
A grin consumed my face. “Come at me as many times as you like. Know that for each failure, I will break a more precious bone or tear an important tendon. I’ve found this is the most effective approach to bullies. They either learn their lesson or disappear from my life.”
“Bully!?” Scarlet managed to look outraged through the pain. “Scouring elven corruption is a holy duty, not mere bullying.”
“Dress it up however you like. The reasons are always so varied, but they mean nothing to me.”
Scarlet continued to rant as she limped away with her minions. Once they were gone, I offered a hand to Vanya, who was still recovering her MP.
Reluctantly, she grabbed it and let me haul her to her feet. She then snatched her hand away and stumbled out of the room.
“Goodbye!” Rick waved. “I always appreciate visits from my students!”
I hurried past Vanya to retrieve my weapon and coffees before offering one to Vanya.
She swiped it and said, “Thank you,” before chugging half of it. “That was for the coffee, not for beating up my bullies. That doesn’t help me.”
I didn’t need her to explain how I only exacerbated the cycle of violence for her. “Breaking the shackles was for you. Beating them up was for me.”
Vanya rolled her eyes. The motion was more subdued and didn’t loosen the hunch in her shoulders. “What do you possibly get out of it?”
I shrugged. “Breaking bullies has always brought me this thrill that’s close to the satisfaction of slaying a monster. I haven’t really thought about it because who doesn’t want bullies stopped? Over the years, most of the victims appreciated it, but honestly, it was a way to kill time between fights. They didn’t owe me anything.” Breaking my own bullies didn’t feel nearly as good.
She drank her coffee and eyed me carefully. “It doesn’t really matter. I’m only a monster in your eyes.”
“Vanya… I may not care about you in the ways that are important to you, but I do care about you in the ways that are important to me. I’ll… try to mend the differences. If I actually care about you, then I should care about your feelings.” I didn’t, but I knew I was supposed to. “After all I’ve done to elves, it’ll be hard to see them as human, but I’ll try,” I lied.
“After ‘what you’ve done to elves’, not after ‘what elves have done’?”
Flesh burning on the pyre, the smell of roasting pork with no porcine in sight, a face locked in rictus glee at justice being delivered, stirrings of excitement within: those memories and more flashed through my mind. “Yes.”
Vanya smiled a little. “At least you understand that you’re the problem here.” She sighed. “These little silver linings are all I can work with. I regularly talk and deal with more hateful people. Did you know that ‘monsters’ don’t get assigned a team? I share my dorm with other monsters. We’re all different years and look after each other, but it's not the same close-knit bond as a proper team. In this school, you’re my only friend, so the bigotry you do have hurts a lot more.”
While I still struggled to see her as human, I did see myself in her. The barbs of a thousand students did less damage than one hate-filled invective from Gabriel. “I’m sorry.”
She stood straighter. “I have borne worse. Come on, let’s get to class.” Moments after her ordeal, Vanya held her head high and walked with purpose.
When people were less than accepting of me, I cut them out of my life. While I could tear down a mountain, I didn’t have Vanya’s strength to keep trying over and over again. I imagine that if Vanya had been in my place, she would have found a way to give that speech, damn the consequences. Maybe she could be an ally against more than monsters. The thought lightened a tightness in my chest as I followed her to alchemy.
The Crone’s lesson was more dreadfully boring than the first one. She talked about the ways calcination could ruin an ingredient if a sufficient number of steps weren’t taken, ultimately recommending that we should skip this unless we did at least four more of the seven steps.
I kept myself awake by trying to simultaneously brew a dozen potions. Imps had natural restorative qualities, but they were immune to fire, making calcination tricky. Due to running out of goblin livers, I also didn’t have a second restorative ingredient to mix the crushed imp with. The miscellaneous herb flux I had would let the potion function, but it didn’t count as the conjunction step. I had to settle for dissolution, separation, distillation, and coagulation.
The resulting potions were barely tier 2. That could do wonders for me, but would only stabilize Riena from a lethal wound. Without Maleficum’s skill, this was the best I could do with the ingredients I had.
During my potion making, I was nearly too distracted to notice that the same damn dude fell asleep again. This time, I made a sympathetic link between my arm and his before pinching myself. The dumbass jolted awake as the Crone started opening her mouth. She tsked and went back to the lecture without cursing anyone.
After class, I groaned and stretched by one of the columns in the hall before turning toward the student workshop. Vanya and I walked the same direction for several minutes before she asked, “Are you following me?”
“No. Do you also need to Craft?”
“Yeah, I want to finish my submachine gun before the excursion this weekend.”
“I mean no disrespect, but I think solo conquering a portal is beyond your abilities.”
Vanya laughed. “No shit. The profs aren’t that crazy. I’ll get shoved into random groups. This weekend I’m paired with the same team as the Enigma’s family’s scion, so it shouldn’t be too bad. They’ve always had cordial relations with elves and other differently human groups.”
I barely avoided a stumble. “Gabriel?”
“Yes, that was his name. You don’t have anything against shifters, do you? People struggle to distinguish between heroes with abilities like those and changelings.”
“Oh, Gabriel is one of my dearest friends, but don’t tell him you know me. We are going through a rough patch.”
Vanya suppressed another eyeroll as she entered the workshop. “Gee, I wonder what you could have done to piss him off.”
I responded with a dry laugh before scouting the area. We almost had the room to ourselves aside from the one student in the back trying to align his laser sights. Vanya beelined for the lathe and uploaded a program to one of the mills. I headed for the more antiquated corner.
My current garb was insufficient—watching my arm fall to the ground—for a Crafter heading into a portal. Anything less than tier 3 was an embarrassment. To remedy this, I wanted to make a set of leathers with the imp wings, a suit of chain with my leftover wire, and a full set of platemail on top of that. The Infernal Iron was very easy to shape. That weakness would normally be a problem, but as an inherently magical metal, it reacted well to durability runes, which should make for stronger armor than my current gear, even after factoring in that it couldn’t repair itself. What I had been debating all day is what other abilities to give it.
An item’s tier was determined by the number of abilities it had. The more abilities an object could bear, the stronger those abilities would be. Enhanced Durability was my go-to enchantment. Basically everything I made needed it. Those runes would use up my remaining imp paste to power. Since I had captured fire elementals and an aligned material, I didn’t have to limit myself to necrotic runes, but what fire related abilities are useful with Nyla on my team?
First, I blurred between the forges and heated my iron. While those were warming, I sewed the imp-wing leather together. By inverting or reversing sympathetic bonds, several stitches could be made at once. The Crafting technique had transformed making a full suit of armor in a day from wishful thinking to a practical reality. All it required was massive strength and complete expertise in handcrafts along with multitasking talents. I learned how to multitask to fight with two weapons. My ability then kept improving the skill to a useless pinnacle. All multitasking skills let you do was distribute your mental abilities along multiple processes. It didn’t augment the brainpower behind them.
Low tier Crafting like this didn’t require a fraction of my focus. Once I moved to mid tier items, I would probably have to slow down, but for now, I enjoyed the drastically enhanced speed.
Once the leathers were sown, I hammered my ingots and shoved them back in the forge. As they warmed again, I worked on the chainmail. Hours passed as this cycle repeated until I finally had all my pieces and could set down to enchant them.
“Fire is dumb,” my captured necrotic elemental chimed from my bag.
I leaned toward them. “I thought you didn’t want to power my gear.”
“Better than doing nothing.”
Goddammit, I didn’t need to be appeasing a nascent sapience mid-project, but… “There is one necrotic ability I wanted to mix with a fire ability.”
“Which one?”
When I told them, they agreed readily. I scrapped the idea of adding Fire Immunity and added those runes instead.
Very late in the night, well after Vanya had left, I finally set down my imbuer and took in my armor. The dark gothic full plate shone with a blood red hue like a dark coal dripping with ichor and ill intent. All the runes were hidden under folds in the plate or were etched on the inside. The helm still had wings, in homage to my old dream, but would completely cover my face. I considered a flap for potions, but my alchemical supplies were limited. Overlapping plates covered flexible joints and all standard armor smithing wisdom went into its construction. Higher tier armor would require more ‘creative’ designs that better channeled MP, but while I could make proper armor, I did. A little bit of the design was devoted to vanity. It didn’t need to conform to my figure as much as it did.
When I put it on, it fit like a glove and two extra ‘limbs’ connected to my mind. That was how the human brain interpreted Crafted abilities, weird limbs that worked wrong. Most didn’t bother with them since they were limited to the strength of the gear and required dedicated training to use at the fraction of proficiency of a natural user.
I laughed as I pulled fire from the forge and wrapped it around my hand. A tier 3 Fire Manipulation ability wouldn’t be terribly useful on its own, but with Nyla throwing around esoteric flames, that should give me options.
More fires joined the first as I practiced sword forms for an hour. If I ignored the countless little details, it was almost like having a second ability.
Almost…
