《A Tale of a Thousand Names {Isekai Lit RPG}》


 A Storm of Windows

    I dragged my mind from a deep slumber, unsurprising as that''s what one does after they fall asleep. What was strange about my waking, was that I opened my eyes to a blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds and ringed with trees. The trees were odd too, having the needles of an evergreen, but the overall shape of a palm tree, with a ball of spikes atop a pole of wood. Each one was clearly naturally grown and had strong roots, which dug heavily into my back.


    I sat up, finding myself in the middle of a perfectly circular patch of grass with roots growing throughout it. I popped my back, as I had since I started high school, and found myself completely naked. I honestly wasn''t surprised at this point. If I''m going to wake up in a strange place it would simply feel half-hearted to leave me the decency of clothing. I did not appreciate that I was a skinny software engineer that hadn''t seen the sun in months. I also did not appreciate bugs at that moment. I didn''t see any yet, but the thought of being so exposed when I do. . . I shuddered at that line of thought.


    "What''s going on," I slurred.


    Luckily enough, the words did seem to conjure some sort of instruction, as a notification seemed to manifest out of nothing in front of me. It was matte black, yet completely transparent at the same time, with bold white lettering in very clear print. I felt lucky that it was in English, even though I didn''t get much out of the vague system messages.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    You have gained: Boon of Temporary Racial Trait: System Message.


    Expires in: 00:05:12


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    You have gained: Boon of Language: Kaldar.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    <em style="font-weight: bold">Congratulations! You have been randomly chosen by us, the wonderful gods of this dimension to join this world in an attempt to introduce genetic and intellectual diversity amongst our people. They have much to learn from you, and you have much to learn from them! Us gods hope that you see this as a wonderful opportunity to learn and grow as a person, and maybe even reinvent yourself! We in our infinite wisdom see your presence as a great gift and hope that you can think likewise during your life here!


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    The Five do not like it when powerful beings mess with the barrier between dimensions with great frequency, and as such you will be the only person from another world brought over. As this may seem sad, rejoice! You have the wonderful opportunity to grow as a person in a way you never could in your world, as personal and unified growth is rewarded swiftly and with the highest of honor!


    <hr>


    "Shit, I''m going to die out here," I said. I had a feeling computer programming wouldn''t be very useful in this world. I''m still a little impressed at how I handled the situation at the time, I mean, could you imagine? Confusion and being in a strange place with reality itself telling you what''s what? It would have broken some, but I was valiant. Instead, I cried a little and ignored the next few windows to pop up before one made a very angry sound.


    <hr>


    Notice, Dimwit!


    Read your damn notifications, this boon only lasts so long, we don''t have time for you to sit here and cry, get a move on!


    -God


    <hr>


    Damn, God was up my ass about this. I started frantically reading the notices.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    As the first of your race: Human (American) you will be given two racial traits chosen randomly from a list based on your personality. These racial traits will become the standard for the (American) subspecies of Human and will pave the way for more of your kind.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Racial trait gained: Eyes of the Watchful Scribe.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Racial trait gained: Soul of Book and Quill.


    <hr><hr>


    Eyes of the Watchful Scribe:


    You can see the mononym of any creature as well as any pseudonyms the public may recognize them as. You may mark a willing creature and become their scribe. A marked creatures status sheet is available to you at any time and you gain their notices as they do. You also know their direction at any given time and can estimate the distance from your target to a fairly accurate degree. You may only have one marked creature at a time and when you attempt to mark a second creature the first mark fades.


    This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    <hr><hr>


    Soul of Book and Quill:


    You may summon a magically imbued book and quill from within your soul with a small expenditure of Mana. The book is designed based on the makeup of your soul and has infinite pages. With a thought the book turns to the page or event that you need to view. You can then dismiss the book at any given time and summon it again at a later date. The quill needs no inkwell and will never run out of ink. The ink dries instantly and can change color with a thought. The quill needs no sharpening and can be dismissed at any time to be summoned again later. Ink drawn by this quill can be erased with a thought.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    You have accomplished a feat that no creature on this plane has ever completed! As the first to travel worlds, you have been Named.


    A Naming is the acknowledgment that you have become a master at some craft. It is common for a crafter to perform a Naming on an apprentice who he truly believes to have become his equal. They then hold this Name until they die. The other way to earn a Name is to make a new advancement in an area of expertise or accomplish a feat never before seen on this plane.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Name gained: Trajike (Traveler of Worlds).


    Name: Trajike, has enhanced the skill: Aetherwalk.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Skill: Aetherwalk not found.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Skill gained: Aetherwalk.


    <hr><hr>


    Aetherwalk:


    You have learned that the barrier between reality and oblivion is paper thin, and you have learned how to bend that reality into the oblivion, creating a safe space removed from this layer and into the Aether for a short time. You may move as normal in this state but you have no perception of physical reality while in this bubble. While in the Aether your Mana regeneration and Mana pool is increased to several times its normal limit. Leaving the Aether and entering into an object that cannot contain your mass causes heavy damage to you and the object, and can lead to solar system devouring black holes. Please don''t do that.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    You have a Name that has never been seen on this plane! As a reward, you have earned a random spell chosen from a list determined by your personality!


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Spell gained: Mightier than the Sword.


    <hr><hr>


    Mightier than the Sword:


    You may expend Mana to turn a quill you are wielding into the hilt of a wonderful magical blade. This blade is nearly weightless and is more effective than any mere metal placed against it. The blade can be shaped to the situation, making this a wonderful tool as well as a weapon! Further effects from the blade may occur due to the high concentration of pure Mana in the blade reacting with the affiliated Mana in the surroundings. Once one of these reactions occurs you may expend extra Mana to replicate the effect.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Your Boon of Temporary Racial Trait: System Message has expired. Without a racial trait to replace it, this is the last system message you will see.


    Good luck brave adventurer, we believe in you!


    <hr>


    As I read the messages I felt a burning in my right shoulder, right where a bicep would be on someone with muscles. I reached over, grabbed the area in pain, and saw a bright light before the skin started rising like a brand, but the skin didn''t discolor at all as a brand would have. The area of raised skin looked like a portal and was about three inches in diameter. After the pain faded I realized I hadn''t even noticed myself gaining the knowledge of how to use my other abilities. I knew how to pull a book from my soul, how to turn a quill into a deadly blade, and even how to step into some magical area called the Aether.


    I could feel the sheets of reality around me, and if I wanted to I could step through. But it was a skill, not an ability. That meant there was a trick to it, not just jumping in. I would have to experiment after I got clothes on.


    I looked around, still seeing nothing but strange trees, dirt, and sharp rocks. This wouldn''t be fun at all, I was sure. The only problem was, starving didn''t sound so great either. And I was pretty sure that magical forests had monsters. Although I was sure most of them just wanted to have a beer, I didn''t have a beer, and if Irish folklore taught me anything in middle school it''s that you should always have beer when you meet a monster.


    Looking up, I found that the sun seemed to be setting. I didn''t know much about survival, but I was pretty sure places like this got more dangerous at night. I needed somewhere to sleep for the night, but as previously mentioned, no survival skills. I had no tools with me, obviously, so I went to go find, if nothing else, a tree with leaves big enough that I could cover the dick swinging freely between my legs. I wasn''t sure how common such trees were in my world, let alone this one, but I could hope.


    I walked slowly and gingerly, clearing a place to put my uncalloused feet with my toe before each step. My progress was slow, but I wasn''t crying in pain and saw that as a major upside. I was slowly walking what would have been north in my home world, where the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, but I couldn''t make any assumptions about how the sun rose and set here with my very limited knowledge of astral physics.


    Eventually, I made it to a point where I could no longer see the area I arrived in. It had grown dark in that time, and I still had no idea where to go to sleep. "I should have slept in the grass," I said to myself. I threw my head back to shed some manly tears before I saw a tree that seemed to have normal leaves. It was shaped closer to a redwood, although it clearly didn''t have the red wood of the original tree, even from a distance.


    I decided to run there, not wanting to be awake any longer and hoping that I would wake up back home. This was far too real to be a dream. I assumed. I had never actually had a dream before, so this would have been a first. A scary first, to be sure.


    I got to the tree, breathing heavily, feet aching, and dirt coving my naked body, but that dirt only seemed to extenuate my nakedness. Doubled over and gasping for breath, I paused. After a few moments, I looked up and realized that such a tree would be quite popular amongst the wildlife.


    I had to admit, giant spiders are far more terrifying in person than they are in the movies, especially when they seem rather angry that you got as close to them as you did.

 A Very Large Spider

    I think that the main reason I found this giant spider more terrifying than in the movies was the fact that this was not a fluffy tarantula. This was covered in dark and shiny chiton, an acid-green pattern of cracked glass on the underside of it, and it had eight long, spindly legs that it moved swiftly and gracefully on. The thing looked large enough to eat me and have enough room left in its gargantuan stomach for more.


    It crawled down to the ground with its legs seeming to simply cling to nothing. I didn''t see any webs, which I took as a bad sign because I assumed that this spider had just arrived and was ready to fight. I turned to run, going in the most opposite direction of the spider as I could. I bolted and came to a complete stop, stuck in something incredibly sticky and just slightly pliable. I had nowhere near the strength to rip free of my invisible trappings.


    I used a string of Mana to pull the quill from my soul, a very instinctual process as the spider approached with speed. The quill was an ornate bronze with a black and green feather sticking from the top. It seemed to be a theme in color. The feather reminded me of the code in old hacker movies, although I didn''t have time to reflect on that, as the spider was almost upon me. I invoked the spell I got, pumping Mana into a serrated blade that glowed an acidic green. I felt a little lightheaded as I jammed magic into this quill and started cutting at the invisible strings holding me in place.


    The spider''s shadow covered me completely and I cried as I frantically sawed at the strings and urinated at the same time. The spider was calm as it crawled around me, its asshole pulsating uncomfortably as it did. The spider pulled my arms to my side and my quill fell away, going back into my soul. The spider finished encasing me and the last thing I saw was the spider crawling close to me before suddenly my cocoon went opaque. I was encased in white, sticky webbing, that was somehow invisible until I was completely encased.


    I tried to pull out my quill again, but there wasn''t enough room for it to manifest, and it hurt my head like hell using more Mana. "So this is how I die," I said to myself, feeling the spider crawling along the outside of my cocoon until it stopped, finding itself very close to my torso. "Oh fuck no!" I screamed. I then realized that I could still feel reality itself pulled in tight sheets around me, almost as a sixth sense.


    Panicked, I pushed at those sheets with my mind, making a bubble into what I assumed was the Aether. The spider jammed its fangs into the cocoon right behind me as I stepped into the bubble and pulled it closed behind me. My head was still pounding, and the effort of making this bubble didn''t help at all. I dropped my concentration, assuming that now that this bubble had been created it would stay put. It did not. The bubble immediately started to dissolve and I had to pull it back into place with immense concentration. I couldn''t appreciate my surroundings because they were spinning as I tried to take a few steps forward through the Aether. Not a chance. I had to reconnect the bubble to a more stable reality and stumble through.


    I found myself, luckily, standing on a string of what looked like flowing energy. I felt something in my head, which almost made me fall off the web. There was a complex network of webbing coated with a silver energy that felt like Aether. While Mana seemed to have its own personal color, the Aether was different, it was colorless, and I guessed that the spider had a way to access the energy and it coated its webs in the stuff so that the large webs were harder to avoid.


    I wasn''t in the Aether long, but it seems to have filled me almost full with Mana. The spider was still latched onto the ball if webbing, but something told me its confusion wouldn¡¯t last long. The problem was, I was very high up and there didn''t seem to be a good way down. Also, my bare feet were stuck to the web I was standing on. "Oh come on!" I whispered out in complaint as I tried to take a step. The spider must have noticed the vibrations my struggling caused and it moved away from the mass of Aether to deal with me, scittering horrifiyingly closer.


    As I stared at the approaching monstrosity, I felt one of my racial traits activate, letting me see the name of the spider floating above its eight awful eyes. The name was "Aetherweb Poisoner", a rather fitting name if you ask me. No time to waste, I summoned my quill again, holding it up and ready to fight with it, regardless of what little knowledge I had of swordplay. The spider crawled closer, legs landing on strings of Aether without a single missed step, grace and speed nearly flowing from the large creature.


    The spider was almost close enough to touch, and I pushed Mana into my spell, pushing the Mana to flow in the shape of a one-handed longsword. I was glad it was weightless because I could only imagine that a real longsword would weigh far too much for me to hold. The thing got close and I started swinging wildly, closing my eyes and whipping the blade around helplessly. The spider did not engage yet, watching its prey flail wildly. Not a single swing connected with the spider, who backed up and watched the flailing human with several of its eyes until I stopped and looked back, not seeing so much as a scratch on the beast. "Oh fuck me," I whined out.


    The spider saw that I stopped moving and lunged forward with its forelegs, ends sharp as any knife I had ever seen. I blocked one with my quill, the other cutting deep into my arm, causing me to cry out and lose feeling in my fingers in my left hand. The spider lashes out again, advancing forward to my stuck position. I swung at the forelegs, my quill biting deeply into one of them and causing the spider to retreat some. This dance continued for a time, but I was taking damage faster than the spider and I didn''t have mobility on my side. My head was starting to pound as I used every ounce of Mana I had gathered to make the smallest of cuts on the spider. The spider was taking damage, looking rougher and rougher with each passing moment, but it had no critical wounds to speak of, unlike me, who felt that all of my injuries were critical.


    Something changed, and the spider decided to wrap a leg around mine, which was thoroughly attached to the web I was standing on. It tugged at my leg and I heard a sharp *crack* followed by blinding pain. It tugged again and I felt like my leg was going to rip in half. "Let me the fuck go! Oh shitshitshit fuck," I cried out as I started hacking repeatedly at the limb. The spider tugged once more, trying to pull the limb back, but enough had been cut through that the limb separated itself from the spider. It screeched, backing up with blood spraying from the wound as it flailed. I turned my quill to my feet, trying to cut my way free of the webs. I managed to cut around my feet, which remained stuck to the webbing as a sort of shoe. As soon as the webbing was disconnected from the flow of Aether it gained a white coloring normal for spiders without magic.


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    The spider was not done though, it raced forward, locking me in its seven remaining limbs. I started hacking at the spider with my quill, my head pounding and the world spinning. I hacked over and over until another limb disconnected with another spray of blood and a sharp screech. The spider wasn''t done, twisting me rapidly to wrap me in webs again. I started cutting through the webs with my quill before I ran out of Mana and the blade collapsed into nothing. I looked about frantically for something to get me out of the situation and saw one of the limbs I had crudely hacked off within reach. Spider still wrapping me up, I grabbed the leg, turning my torso violently and stabbing the leg directly into the abdomen of the spider.


    The beast cried out as I punctured the chiton, twisting to find something vital. Dark blood sprayed out of the wound, covering me in the ichorous fluid as the spider paused in its turning. I cried and frantically tried to kill the beast. It had, apparently, decided that I was too much trouble to wrap up and lunged with its disturbing mouth to bite me with large fangs dripping with acidic green venom. I panicked, pulling the leg from the spider''s abdomen and holding it above my head, the sharp tip pointed up. I heard a squelching and felt resistance against my arm but didn''t let up until the legs of the spider opened up to drop my half-encased body on another sticky web, where I luckily came to a stop before falling several hundred feet.


    I opened my eyes again, blinking through the tears just in time to see the spider fall down and hit the dirt floor of the forest with a colossal crash. I figured that I couldn''t find a safer place to sleep than the web of a dead Aetherweb Poisoner, what I assumed was an apex predator. I cried myself to sleep, with a horribly mangled leg wrapped in webbing covered in Aether so as to make the bottom half of my body invisible.


    I woke up to pain. Nothing new, just the same, overwhelming pain from my previous fight with the spider. Summoning my quill, casting my spell, and starting to saw away at the webs encasing my lower half, I cut my left leg out of the webbing, leaving the mangled right in the webbing. The webs didn''t seem to stick to each other, so I dragged my way over to a more diagonal strand. I slowly moved from web to web, hobbling along on one leg and one arm, dragging the rest of me behind painfully.


    Slowly making my way down to the ground where the spider lay dead, chiton cracked and intestines flowing out, I was hungry, and the only thing that looked like it might be edible was the meat visible through the chiton of the spider. I wasn''t sure how to cook it though, because I didn''t have any knowledge of how to make a fire. I had enough knowledge of physics to try friction, but the movies always made a point that that wouldn''t work.


    I found a stick and jammed it in next to my leg, turning the webs into a makeshift splint, I hoped. I then started with a stick, perpendicular to a larger bit of wood with some smaller kindling around the vertical stick, like everyone always saw in the movies. It didn''t work, no matter how hard I tried it just didn''t work. Then I tried rocks. I had no idea what flint would look like, and I could only guess for steel, but I would have to try something. That also didn''t work. Not a single spark.


    I decided to try friction again, growing desperate. I dragged myself around and found a piece of wood that had been split by some force or another. I made a little circle of stones and pulled a stick back and forth across that split in the wood. Eventually, smoke started billowing from the wood, and in moments of me blowing on the wood and piling kindling on top, I had a fire. I put bigger pieces of wood on when the fire was big enough, and then I put a piece of spider meat that I cut off on the end of a stick to hang over the fire.


    While I was waiting for dinner, I summoned my book for the first time. It was leather-bound and looked rather thick, with had high-quality paper inside. The outside was black with a green outline of a much more brave than reality battle between me and the spider. I was curious if that battle was represented on the cover because it was the most traumatic event in my life, or because it was the first thing that happened here that was worth having a representation of before I summoned the book. I didn''t question it yet and instead simply wrote the crazy events of the day out in black ink.


    I had never been motivated to keep a journal, never really having the time or the mental energy for it, but as I wrote I felt something. It was amazing! I wrote out every detail as I remembered it, and even as I reached the end of what happened I wrote about how I wrote. It was freeing, yet sadly the spider meat was charred and not worth eating by the time I was done. The sun at its peak, I started again, cutting off another chunk and hanging it over the fire with sticks.


    I turned a few pages, knowing that the pages would arrange themselves however I wanted instinctually, and I wrote out things I knew that might be useful. I included coding knowledge, but I wasn''t sure how useful that would be out here. Most of it was guesswork from TV, but I fact-checked that with what I knew about physics and discounted anything too obviously wrong. I also included what little I knew of physics, although it''s mostly just concepts of math and very few of the actual equations my world ran on. I did include a few, F=MA, or Fullmetal Alchemist as I called it, E=MC^2, and the pull of gravity on earth, 9.13 M/S^2 not taking into account wind resistance. I wasn''t sure any of that would be useful, but I kept it because it made me feel smart.


    I did keep an eye on the meat, and when it seemed well done, I cut it open with my quill. It seemed cooked all the way through and I was rather hungry, so I took a bite. It wasn''t half bad for insect meat, even unseasoned it had a surprisingly decent flavor, sweeter than anticipated. I scarfed down what I had cooked and put more on the fire, hoping it wouldn''t kill me. I then decided that I was done sitting in the wilderness with my dick hanging out and went to go make some clothes out of spider silk. The stuff was ridiculously sticky, but I perfected the art of throwing one hand into an Aether pocket with minimal mental energy to get the webbing unstuck.


    Eventually, I just covered the silk in leaves to prevent it from sticking to me and carved out a shirt. I put the leaves on the inside, but I decided I wanted something more heavy-duty for myself, so I chopped some bits of the spiders'' chiton to the right shapes and sizes and stuck them to the webbing. I then filled gaps in the armor with leaves so I wouldn''t get stuck on anything. It looked like shit, but it was a sort of semi-functional armor that I could carry, even with my fucked up leg.


    I ate the spider meat I had cooked and contemplated what to do next. My leg was surely not splinted right and it would heal fucked up if I just stayed out here, but I had no idea where to go, this was the only notable landmark for miles and it was a death trap. I took a spider leg as a cane and crafted a small sled to put the spider''s body on. I probably wouldn''t be able to move it with some sticks stuck together with webs, but it made me think that maybe I could make it out with these new resources.


    I made an effort not to let the fire go out, with all my crafting I was starting to run out of nature to destroy to make my meager possessions with. I explored closer to the tree, looking around closer to ground level. I found that the tree was actually hollow, discovered qhen i found a large hole that looked perfectly round in the tree. I walked in and saw massive blobs of Aether. The spider had clearly not shown up recently if the web system outside was anything to go by, but this very much proved the fact that this spider had not, in fact, come to this tree recently.


    The blobs of Aether were clearly Aetherweb Poisoner eggs covered in webbing to hide them from outside viewers. They seemed to go all the way to the top of the tree, where I lost sight of all of the eggs in the darkness.

 Eggs

    Spider eggs. Thousands of giant spider eggs lined the inside of a giant tree that I had the genius idea to step into. Granted, there was no way for me to know there were eggs in the tree, but I still didn''t like this. I had barely handled one Aetherweb Poisoner, let alone the thousands that had to be in those eggs.


    "Nope. Hell fucking no," was the only statement to leave my mouth as I walked out of the tree and back towards the fire. There was no way I was about to leave that someone else''s problem, I had to take care of it before it became a danger. The best way was to burn it to the ground as far as I was concerned. To do that I had to test the flammability of the webs. To do that I threw some webbing cut off of the larger strands by my quill, and behold, it went up in glorious flames. To keep the fire burning so I didn''t have to try to restart it, more wood was thrown on the fire periodically as I struggled to roll the gargantuan corpse of the spider onto the dinky sled I had made prior.


    The spider did not move easily. The thing had to be several hundreds of pounds and was very stiff in rigor mortis. Not knowing if this hurt or helped, I pushed harder, finally pushing it onto its back and onto the sled. Returning to the fire periodically to throw more wood on it between bouts of slowly dragging the spider''s corpse exhausted me, but I felt like I was getting stronger already, even though it was all at a limp and leaning on a spider leg turned cane.


    Over a few days, I managed to get the spider corpse, which had quickly become infested with maggots, far enough from the campsite to finally burn down the biggest tree in the forest as far as the eye could see. Upon returning to the fire, I built it up a little more, making sure there was sufficient flame for my project. In my head, I just threw a torch into the tree and walked off like in an action movie, but that probably wasn''t a good idea in my hobbled state. Instead creating a trail of webbing towards the tree and setting a branch across it to eventually burn down to the webs, and by extension the eggs, in a slower path that I could slowly walk away from.


    It never occurred to me that the eggs may hatch soon, and after I set up the trail of fire and got the log set across the webbing that would lead to the tree I heard a tearing sound behind me. I turned to look, but soon thought better of it, figuring that they wouldn''t know to hunt me down if I wasn''t there. I hobbled slowly towards the spider corpse as quickly as possible. Several hundred dog-sized spiders swarmed the outside of the tree, but they didn''t seem to go anywhere else, so I assumed the inferno coming for them would be enough and left it at that.


    The corpse hadn''t moved, although no one was expecting it to. I wrapped the leaf-covered webs around my waist and started moving inch by inch northwards. Days passed and little progress had been made. I didn''t feel safe eating the spider meat anymore at this point, it had most likely gone bad and would kill me. Plus, I didn''t have a fire, and, honestly, that first fire had been a fluke. Getting another would be nearly impossible. During this journey, a large flame was visible as the fire quickly ate through the webs and killed hundreds of spiders. Luckily the fire didn''t spread far past the tree and stopped on its own for some reason.


    "Oh shit, I almost started a forest fire," I remark when I first see the flames above the treetops. Grateful, I continued forward. I was growing severely dehydrated, as the only liquids available to me had been my own urine, which was my main source of hydration, and the blood of myself and the spider. Sadly though, the flow of urination had ceased and now my main source of hydration had been depleted. All I could do was continue through the dark forest day and night and hope I came across some sort of water.


    I was starving, dehydrated, and beaten to shit, dragging a giant ass corpse for some reason. My constitution wasn''t very good to begin with, I never did naturey things, and this was testing my limits to the max. Almost passing out was my main worry, although the fact that I could no longer feel any of my limbs had been a growing concern over the last few days. Completely lost, with no concept of time or even my own well-being, I dropped my makeshift cane and leaned forward to pick it up, falling flat on my face during the process, and being unable to get up afterward.


    "I''m dying here, and this time there is nothing I can do about it," was the thought that spun in my head not for the first time as I slipped into unconsciousness. My face in the dirt, my body falling apart, I drifted off into what I thought was eternal sleep.


    Fog fills my head as I regain a semblance of consciousness. I''m unable to make out details but people were huddled over me. They poured water onto my cracked lips and I gained the strength to force my mouth open guzzling the water as fast as I could. I soon drained the water skin dry and sat up with the help of the strangers.


    "Take it easy friend, you''re in a bad way. Don''t push yourself," one of the men said. The words seemed wrong, foreign in a way I couldn''t place yet it was completely understandable to me. "Can you speak?"


    ". . . Yes," I croaked out in the same odd language. The words barely left my lips in my dehydration but at least one of the men must have heard me because they started asking more questions.


    "Where are you from? Can we get you back to your people?" the same man asked. I just shook my head in response, not wanting to waste my verbal capacity on a response. "You don''t know where you''re from?" I shook my head. "You know where you came from but we can''t get you back?" I nodded, finally an affirmative response. "We''ll take you back to our village then. Why were you dragging this spider around?"


    "Thought it might be useful," I croaked out before coughing loudly. One of the other men offered me another water skin and I thanked him before drinking it all down.


    "I''ve never seen a spider like this, and I''m a Hijald," said the spokesperson of the group. "Say, where did you find a corpse this big anyways? Spiders, even the giant kind, almost never get bigger than a dog," he said as a few of the other men put me on a primitive collapsible stretcher made of leather and sticks cut in a way that would allow them to be strong when put together but would come apart when needed.


    "It''s an Aetherweb Poisoner. I killed it at the big tree, but then I found its eggs and burned it down." I told them. They stared at me in shock.


    "No gear? No weapons? You just killed this giant spider with your bare hands?" one of the men asked, clearly excited by the new man of power they had just met.


    "Hey, leave the man alone, he answered all we needed him to for now, we can get the rest of the information out of him when we get home," the spokesperson said.


    "It''s fine, I can explain later. Preferably after I eat something and get my leg fixed up," I told the man. With some water, I was feeling much better, but that came at the cost of regaining feeling in my poorly mended limbs.


    "Oh, yeah. That''s got to hurt huh? When I was little my pa set up a trap for some sort of big creature and I stepped in it, got sharp teeth all in my leg, and it broke too. It hurt like mad," he said. I understood the point, relate to me so I can forget some of the pain, but it wasn''t working as he had intended.


    "Yeah, it''s never fun," I said back.


    I slipped in and out of consciousness for the remainder of the trip as the people around me talked about whatever it was hunters talked about when they don''t get any kills.


    It wasn''t long after, at least in my skewed perspective, that we arrived at a high stone wall with wood spikes across the top and a metal gate about twice my height that started swinging open as we approached. A man rushed out and started taking charge of the situation. "What happened?" he asked the man that I had spoken with before.


    "We found a man, injured, starved, and dehydrated. He was passed out in front of this odd sled carrying a giant spider. We managed to get some words out of him and he told us that this is called an Aetherweb Poisoner and that he was the one who killed it. We don''t know where he''s from, how he got here, or where he was going," the man responded without missing a beat.


    This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    "Did you find the cause of the smoke?" he asked.


    "The injured fellow started the fire. He said he found some of the spiders'' eggs and he set them on fire. I probably wouldn''t have done the same but it''s a reasonable response to the situation," was the rapid response.


    "Well done then. Take him in and have the Nalkin take a look at him, he does look pretty bad. The rest of you help me bring the spider to the storage shed, we can store it until the new guy is fixed up. After that, it''s his problem. Let''s move!" the last word was a shout as he waved his hand over his head to motion for the rest of the hunters to follow him. I and a few of the hunters moved in a different direction after entering the gate, approaching a hut that seemed to be two stories tall and rather wide. I assumed this was their version of a hospital.


    As soon as we entered into the doors of the shack we were greeted by a girl who immediately started asking questions. "You know the drill, what''s the situation?"


    "His arm and leg are in a bad way. He hasn''t eaten in a while and he had his first sip of water for days just a few hours ago. We don''t know if there is any poison and we don''t know if there is any infection. As you can tell he''s covered the injuries in this sticky white stuff, you''ll probably have to cut it off," said one of the hunters in reply.


    "Alright, bed five, we''ll have Mercy take a look at him before we try to mess with anything," she said before walking off, presumably to go find this Mercy fellow. I, of course, did nothing as I was transferred to a soft bed where I quickly fell asleep.


    It wasn''t long after I fell asleep that I was jolted awake by someone beginning to remove my clothing. I did my best to help them, but I was still in a bad way. I had never had a problem with nudity, not that I was well endowed, I just understood that in certain situations it didn''t make any sense to worry about people seeing you, especially doctors. Eventually, my makeshift armor was all off and the doctors had to move on to the patches of web I had stuck directly to my skin to stop the bleeding. They used knives and bits of wood to stick the webbing onto and throw it out, much more clever than my way of dealing with the webbing.


    They managed to get all of the webbing off of me, cutting me in several places to make sure there was none left. I simply sat there, wincing at every bit of pain. Several of the young nurse equivalents rolled their eyes at me repeatedly when I made sounds of pain, but the larger woman who was the Named healer was incredibly kind and even scolded some of the girls that she caught calling me overdramatic. She must have been a hundred years old by her skin, but she had the strength and steady hands of youth, so I felt I was in good hands.


    They fed me some food, careful not to give me too much and make me sick, and I washed it all down with water. It was the best crappy bread and chicken stock I had ever had. Quickly the world stopped spinning so fast and I could see the mononyms of the nurses. I assumed mononyms what they called their names because of the Name thing that gave people brands. There was Celia, Grandure, Bottina, and the larger healer was called Sinsa, although my racial trait also showed me that most people call her Granny Sa.


    I was slowly being brought back to good health, and one night I decided to start writing out the rest of my journey, seeing my arrival here as the end of the adventure.


    "My, where did you get such a fancy book and quill? I didn''t see any nearby last I left you," said Granny Sa who had appeared in the doorway with no warning. "Sorry, I''ve grown bold in my old age. We haven''t truly met yet, have we? I''m Sinsa, most people call me Granny Sa," she held out her hand as I stared her down.


    I figured I might want to reinvent myself, David wasn''t a very interesting name, after all. I could go by my first earned Name, although that seemed weird, especially since it was pronounced so strangely. I realized that I had been staring at an old woman for a long time, and she had grown rather uncomfortable, and it showed. "Sorry, I was just thinking," I said as I took her hand. She pumped it twice before sitting down in a chair near my bed.


    "Might I ask what?" she asked as she settled into her chair.


    "Oh, nothing really. Just my uh, mononym. I go by Sigurd," I finally responded. Sigurd seemed to work well, and while I didn''t know much about the Vikings, I did know the legend of Sigurd snake in the eye.


    "Well, it''s nice to truly meet you, Sigurd. I am still curious about how you got the book and quill. I''ve never seen any quite like that," she said, pointing a finger in the direction of the leather-bound piece of my soul.


    "Oh, well, you see," I wasn''t sure how much to tell her. I wasn''t sure having another subrace of humans would bode well for my fate, but I wasn''t sure how else to explain it. I decided that these people deserved the truth, regardless of the dangers. "It''s a racial trait I have. I can pull these out of my soul," as a demonstration I put them back in and pulled them out without moving.


    "Racial trait? Not some sort of spell?" she asked, wrinkled eyes growing wider.


    "Yes. I''m human, just a different kind. Because of that, I have a different racial trait. I understand you get a system message ability, which seems super convenient, but I don''t have that one. I do have a spell, but it just turns a quill into a sword," I spouted out as quickly as I could.


    "Different human. . . And a spell I''ve never heard of. . . There is a young man I think you need to meet. Just give it a couple of weeks. I''m sure he will take a liking to you. Take that as a promise from Granny Sa," she said. After another moment she stood up and left the room. I willed my book to open to a blank page and it flew open, but Granny Sa paused in the doorway to say one final thing as a goodbye. "I''ll leave you alone, I wouldn''t want to intrude on one working on their craft. A Name is not easy to earn, but worth every minute spent on the craft you love,"


    I smiled and turned my attention to my book, writing out what I remembered of my time between the spider and now. I made an effort to include Granny Sa, my favorite person in this world so far. She deserved it, regardless of the fact that there was no intention for this story to go public.


    The next day Granny Sa must have blabbed about how I could give some useful information because I was questioned heavily by a man called Jim. "What is your mononym?" was the first question.


    "Sigurd," was the simple answer I gave, trying not to be difficult.


    "Where did you come from?" asked the brown-haired man with the scar on his cheek.


    "Georgia most recently. It''s where I went to college and I liked it there," was what I responded with instead of anything helpful.


    "What?" he responded, confusion tightening his face.


    "Oh, um, it''s very far away, and college is like a type of school." I elaborated.


    "How far?"


    "Um, all the way? I can''t go back anyways, I was, uh, exiled," I told him, the lie obvious. The man must have assumed that I had lied for a good reason, probably because of the innocent expression on my face, and let it go.


    "How did you get so far?" was the next question.


    "I''m not sure. I just kind of. . . Woke up close to here," was my response.


    "You cant possibly think im that stupid. Alright, how did you kill the big spider? I noticed all the gear you had was made out of pieces of it, so how did you kill it?" this question seemed far more pushy.


    "I used a spell and my racial trait to cut it until it died," I told him truthfully.


    "What racial trait? And what spell?" he asked. I decided to just answer both by demonstration, pulling my quill and book out of my soul, and then running the dark green Mana in the shapes and frequencies to create a blade around the feather. I decided to make it bigger than normal to get people interested, and it came out to six feet, barely short enough to prevent it from cutting into the wall. "The spell makes a shittier version of a Mana blade, and the racial trait makes a book. Sinsa was right, you are something else. I''m just not sure if it''s good or not," he said in response.


    "Shittier? What makes mine shittier?" I asked, slightly offended.


    "You need a quill for it. A normal Mana blade just appears and you can change it to whatever shape you want. Yours just looks inconvenient," he said as he popped his back.


    "Oh. I guess your right then," I said to him dejectedly.


    "Look, you seem like a good man, but you don''t seem to have any useful skills. You need to contribute if you''re going to stay. Or, you could find someone to take care of you, and I know Sinsa won''t. She has too much to take care of already without another person relying on her," the man said. I looked at her and she just nodded.


    "I can teach! I''m good at math, and I know some science. I''m very good at problem-solving and I''m sure I could figure out magic, it can''t be too different from my job back home," I told the man.


    "What was your job?"


    How did I explain computer programing to someone who had never seen a computer? "Well, you know lightning?" he nodded in the affirmative. "Well, I used to use bits of that in certain patterns to store information. My job was to give the lightning commands to make it move in the patterns I needed it to transfer information," That was the most butchered explanation of computers ever, but it got the man interested.


    "So you can do this in our village?" he asked, clearly excited by the concept.


    "Uh, no. I do know enough to get started with harnessing lightning. It''s not the same, but it''s a start," I told him.


    "Alright, I think you can stay. We''ll have to find you somewhere to live. You can work off the debt of the building, it won''t be too much but we have to compensate our architects somehow, you understand," he told me.


    "That''s fair, I wouldn''t ask for more than you''ve already given me, but I don''t have any money," I said.


    "That reminds me. You have a spider corpse, was there anything you wanted done with it?" he asked, turning to me and meeting my eyes again.


    "There was nothing, in particular, I wanted to be done with it. I think you can consider it a token of my gratitude," I told him.


    "I''ll tell the Corpasi. Welcome to Salandia," he told me before turning his back and rushing out of the room.

 Graduation

    It didn''t take long for me to get into a rhythm in the village. I was let out of the hospital after my leg was rebroken and set again, a limp obvious in my stride. A man from the village was a Named carver, and he had taken the hard chiton of the spider as a challenge and had requested some of it to work on. He of course got some and had fashioned me a rather nice cane out of the same leg I was using as a staff before. The cane came to a sharp point at the end, taking advantage of the natural shape of the leg, and was about three feet long with a top in the shape of a spider, an Aetherweb Poisoner to be specific, with the patterns carved into the dark chiton. Green paint was added to make carvings in the cane stand out, and it was all protected by a very nice finish that made the paint impossible to get off, or so I was told.


    I was shocked on my first night outside of the medical hut to see two moons over the night sky, one larger than the other by a significant margin. I wasn''t sure how I hadn''t noticed it before, or if I had then how I''d forgotten it, a very memorable thing to see that really drove home that you were no longer on earth.


    I had spent several days in the medical hut telling my tale to whoever would listen, and apparently, the man who carved my cane had taken notice. The carvings were of webs with spiders crawling through them, and close to the top you could see a humanoid figure holding a blade of magnificent green, facing down the spider looking down the rest of the cane. I wouldn''t need the cane soon but decided that it would come with me everywhere I went from then on, a tribute to my successes.


    I walked from my hut, a surprisingly sturdy and large space, out to the small hut made for schooling that barely saw use. Learning had been overlooked in this village, and I would assume this world, due to the rewards around growing skills like crafting or magic, and as a result, children went on with little knowledge of the workings of the world. I had tried to build a generator, and a lightbulb, but wasn''t sure of any of the processes used in my world and couldn''t describe them well enough to have the problem fixed.


    Instead, I stayed as a teacher, and it''s been a few weeks at this point, and my class had barely gotten through addition and subtraction, let alone more complicated math, and science. It would be long, but I would teach these children what I knew.


    "Alright! Good morning ladies and gentlemen! How was the weekend?" I asked. Being the person in charge of all schooling left me with some liberties, like imparting a seven-day week with five school days, and the six-hour-a-day elementary standard from back home.


    "Good!" came the ready voices of the little kids. I chuckled, knowing that that hope would die soon just like it did for everyone else back home.


    "Wonderful! Now, can anyone remind me what two plus five equals?" I responded, knowing I would be met with resounding silence. I wish I had a chalkboard or some equivalent, but I had no idea how to make that work, even though using visual aids would have sped up the kids learning by a lot.


    "Um, six?" said Steve from the middle of the room.


    "Close, remember your counting? Use your fingers," I hinted.


    The boy held his hands up, one of them holding up two fingers and the other one holding all five up. The boy ponderously counted to seven before exclaiming his new answer to the world. "Seven!" he cried out with the confidence only found in youth.


    "Perfect! Well done Steve. Do you have any questions?" I asked.


    A confused look crossed his face and he blurted out a question I honestly should have been more prepared to answer. "What happens if I run out of fingers?"


    "You know what, I need a better way to show you guys this stuff. Tomorrow I can show you, but for today we can work on what we already know, alright?"


    "Okay," the boys said dejectedly. There was little I could do, but I vowed to talk to someone about getting some sort of chalkboard before tomorrow.


    And so the day went, passing through each subject and getting very little done before just past noon when I sent the kids home to work with their parents. I would never be the guy to invent homework on another planet, no sir, I just wanted the kids to clean around the house and do some yard work or something, although some of the kids were always trying to do the things they learned at school. Future scholars right there.


    I was happy, although no one was paying me to teach their children, and the leaders didn''t see my position as important enough to warrant more than giving me food and water and making sure I''m not naked. That last bit was more for everyone else, but I appreciated it regardless. I finished the contemplation before standing from my simple little stool and limping around to clean the place up. It never got very dirty, even with the kids bringing lunches and eating them in class, but I wanted to make sure it stayed that way.


    After cleaning my classroom, I walked out into the center of town, somewhere I had never been before, usually never going anywhere other than the nightly bonfire where I get my meal for the day, my class, my hut, and the stream for some water. I was rather lost, seeing the symbols for several Names above doors, a few had people going into them and others seemed rather dead. The smith was rather swamped, people always wanting some new metal tool or another, and the baker and chef were nearly overrun with people, although their smiles never seemed fake. I looked around and found a building that seemed completely empty and had the symbol for a Nadir, the mason.


    Before I could hobble my way in there was a shouting that caught my attention. "Mr. Sigurd! Mr. Sigurd! I never see you out of school! Mommy! It''s Mr. Sigurd!" I turned to look where the noise was coming from to see Kaycie, a little girl in my class dragging one of the chefs in my direction. I smiled and started limping over in that direction, not wanting to make the chef leave the others alone.


    As I got close Kaycie stopped trying to move her mother who continued to tell her child to calm herself. "Hey, Kaycie! It''s good to see you out of school. I was just looking for something for class, actually. It''s a surprise though, so I won''t tell you." I said, a smile still on my face. She glared at me for a second before shrugging and snagging a piece of meat and running off. "And you must be Kaycie''s mother," I said to the woman who had an amused look on her face. Her mononym appeared above her head, showing me that she called herself Catrina.


    "I am, and I have heard a lot about you. Although I''m not sure what to believe from her," she said. I held out my hand for her to shake but she left it hanging for a moment before saying something. "I have hands covered in food, don''t want to get weird things in it and make it taste bad," she explained.


    "Oh, right of course. I can''t believe I spaced that," I said, letting my hand fall to my side. That was a practice at home too, although that was about sanitation rather than flavor.


    "So, what kind of things have you been teaching my child? I want her to follow her passions, but if it can''t get her a Name then how can she function in society?" Catrina asked. It was a fair question, this world used the Names as crutches, assuming that only Named people had value to society. While the Named may have the most value in certain skills, people get stronger as a whole, not as individuals.


    "I came from a place without Names. We had things you could only dream of, and magic was never even in the picture. We had boxes that kept things cold, we had flat panes of glass that could control everything, we had pictures that moved, and we could fly and move at the speed of sound, and that all started with the same practices I''m teaching every kid in the village. I promise, your daughter will have the foundation to be successful in any road she decides to follow," I told her. It wasn''t an exacerbation, although it probably wasn''t necessary.


    "You can do these things? Prove it," she said, growing defensive very quickly.


    "Not exactly. I don''t have the tools to make these things, and I only have the concepts of how some of those things work, I never actually made any of them," I told her.


    "You''re just saying a society like that had this school you made," she said.


    "Yes, exactly. A mother as smart as her daughter. Sadly I must go, it will take a while for me to carry my little surprise back to the hut," I said, marking the conversation as over. I had survived my first meeting with a student''s mother and holy hell do I have a new respect for my teachers growing up.


    "Of course, I hope to see you around," she said.


    "You as well," I responded before turning and making my way over to the mason shop.


    Upon walking in I see a counter like I would in a trashy kitchen found in a back ally that had the best breakfast sandwich for absolutely no reason. "Uh, hello?" I asked loudly into the room.


    "Yeah?" asked a voice from the other side of one of the doors to the back, clearly trying to shake the sleep off his face. A large man with a dark beard walks in, muscles flowing all over his body but with thin and long fingers, an odd combination in my head. "You want something other than to wake me up?" he asked. His mononym was Gerald, nothing too strange.


    "Oh, yes, I apologize, but I would like a piece of flat slate, about eight feet by four, as thin as you can get it without destroying the integrity of the stone, please," I told him. I guessed the size, but I thought that would be sufficient for my needs. "Oh, and if you could shape some chalk stone as little sticks, for writing that would be perfect," I added.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    "That''s an oddly specific request. Why would you want to use chalk for writing, wouldn''t you just use paper and a quill?" Gerald asked, clearly unsure why I would want any of this order.


    "Well, if you take some chalk and you rub it on the slate, it makes marks that can easily be erased. I want to use it for teaching so I can show the kids what I''m thinking,"


    "That''s an interesting idea, I''m not sure where you got it, but I like it. Alright, I''ll get started. Although, you don''t look like a fella with much gold to his name. How were you gonna pay for this?" he asked, clearly not confrontationally, just more as a curiosity. I went pale regardless.


    "I. . . Hadn''t gotten that far. What can I do to repay you?"


    "How about this, I''ll give you a year, and you can pay in however much gold you have at the time in installs. The total cost is two hundred, not cheap but for this kind of project, it''s a deal, how about that?" he asked. I had a problem though, I didn''t make money, I barely survived.


    "You see, I don''t make money. I don''t get paid at all in fact. I teach kids and I''m allowed to eat at the bonfires, that''s all I have," I said.


    "I do see. How long does teaching take every day? I''m sure I can get you a job that can pay you, even with that messed up leg of yours," he said. This man clearly wanted to help me out, but I wasn''t making anything easy on him.


    "Six hours a day I''m afraid. I came straight from the school building for this. If you can''t help I understand, I''m really more of a charity case anyways. I can find something that will work. Thank you regardless my good man for your compassion and willingness to help," I said before turning slowly around while leaning heavily on my cane.


    "Look, I can do this one job for free. Kids these days only learn one skill and I remember when I was a kid my grandpappy had a hundred and two Names. He got a boon and everything, but now people get one Name and stop learning. If you can teach these kids that one bit of knowledge isn''t enough, then I can do this for you," said the burly man.


    "Thank you so much! I knew someone would understand the need for education!" I exclaimed.


    "This won''t take too long, if you wait a few hours I can help bring the finished product over to the school," he offered.


    "You are a true saint, and I thank you on behalf of the students-"


    "I am no Saint, I only have four Names, not five hundred," he said, cutting me off. Well shit, I didn''t know Saint was an achievement here.


    "I- no, you''re not. It''s just an expression where I''m from. It means you are a very kind person," I explained, trying to stay on his good side. The man nodded and moved to the back. I sat down in a barrel that was nearby, probably full of something but I didn''t know what.


    A few hours passed and the mason finally left the back, carting a large slab of slate that was smooth but left rough enough for the chalk to rub off onto it in a flat wagon with wood wheels that looked like it could barely contain the weight of the slab. Gerald towed the cart into the room before turning back to the room and disappearing again. I moved to grab the cart and was in the process of picking it up when Gerald returned with a bucket full of perfectly shaped chunks of chalk, exactly like my college professors had used.


    "This is wonderful, thank you!" I exclaimed one final time.


    "You''re not used to people helping you, are you?" he asked.


    "I-no. People don''t help each other where I''m from," I tell him.


    "That''s a strange place you come from. I wouldn''t want to live anywhere near that place. You take the cart, I''ve got the chalk," he responded to my depressing truth.


    "Of course," I said, pulling the cart with my left arm and supporting my right leg with my cane in my right hand. Progress was slow but we made it to the school and Gerald helped me set the slate onto the wall, leaving the bucket of chalk on my desk. "Thank you one more time," I said to Gerald as he left the school.


    "Don''t worry about it. Your a good man and I respect what you''re doing here," he said in response. I let him leave, taking stalk of the room once more before going home as well, taking notice of the darkening sky.


    I opened the door and walked into my hut, closing the door behind me before filling a cup with water from the bucket I had filled in the morning and taking a drink before laying down in my bed and falling asleep.


    When I woke up I went to the stream with my bucket and a change of clothes, washing off in the cold water and cleaning my clothes while I was at it before filling my bucket with water and setting it aside. Next, I got dressed and limped back home, setting the bucket on a table and rushing off to the school. It didn''t start as early as school did back home, but it wasn''t late enough to be ponderous about getting ready.


    I walked into the classroom to find it full of students, all admiring the chalkboard. I looked out a nearby window to make sure that I wasn''t later than I had thought, but no, the sun was just coming over the horizon, just like it had every morning.


    "Mr. Sigurd! Is this the surprise?" asked Kaycie, the first to notice me enter the room.


    "Indeed it is. Since everyone''s here, I say we get started then. We have a lot to learn!" I said, walking over to my desk which had been surrounded by children, who quickly moved to their seats so I could show them the wonders of the universe.


    And I did, for another five years I taught, taking on a similar system to what early school systems had in the Americas, me teaching all ages and giving different work to different age groups, even having the older kids help with the teaching to set the knowledge in. I was very thin and that didn''t promote muscle growth well regardless of everything I did every day, but I could walk just fine, using the cane more as a prop than anything else.


    One day, while I was teaching some of the older kids about more complex algebra, giving them imaginary numbers and graphing and honestly anything I could remember when I earned another Name. Silfara, the mathematician, but with it came several other Names, one for number theory, algebra, calculus, matrices, and statistics.


    I then gathered that gaining a Name in an overarching skill awarded all of the Names for the subskills as well, and people started paying me to teach their children, instead of just allowing me to live in the city. I of course refused a large portion of the money, but I did want to have more than one meal a day, and some changes of clothes would have been nice, so I accepted some gold. My first investment had to be into a coin pouch, as I hadn''t had one previously, so I went into town for one.


    I wasn''t as lost as the first time, although I never went anywhere but to Geralds'' place for more chalk before, but I knew the signs and walked up to someone who worked in leatherworking. "Hello good sir, I am simply looking for somewhere to keep my coins, it appears I have lost mine," I said as I walked right up to the man up front.


    "What are you doing here then? I work with leather, not silver. The enchanter is right down the street, next to the smith, for obvious reasons," said the boy in his late twenties behind the counter.


    "Of course, my apologies," I said awkwardly. I didn''t need a silver coin pouch, what was this man going on about?


    It was very clear when I walked into the enchanters and found rings about half a foot in diameter with scripting all along the fine surface set up all over, along with some other tools, such as farming equipment and such, although these things had quite the price tag on them. The rings were what I was looking for. Apparently, it was rather customary to have a ring keyed to the individual that held a small pocket dimension. The larger the dimension the bigger the cost, obviously. I splurged a little bit, getting a higher-grade ring, even though I never intended to have any money.


    The enchanter stepped out and he had me prick my finger, running the blood along the script until it flashed blue and then the dark green of my Mana. This ring apparently worked very simply, you simply touched something to the ring and if it could fit, it disappeared, and if it couldn''t, nothing happened. To take something out, you simply touched the ring and willed the item out. The ring seemed to expand the mind of the user, so I always knew what was in my storage ring.


    I stored the last fifty gold I had left after dropping a hundred on a complicated bag. In hindsight, taking more money would have been a smart move, but I still had almost no experience with currency here, it was a conversion rate of ten coins between them. Ten coppers to one silver and so on, although inflation had made gold very common, the most common currency to be found on the streets. It was odd to me that platinum coins were still incredibly rare, with the first conversion of a thousand occurring between gold and platinum. A thousand coins were the average down payment on a hut, all of which were rather well built and came well furnished with things the carpenters had made while cutting the wood for the house.


    About a week later I gained another Name and the accompanying Names of the subskills. These were all science-based, getting Names for theoretical physics, energy theory, and so on. I had nothing for language, and nothing for history because I didn''t teach those things. The kids usually knew them better than me anyways.


    It was odd to have so many brands on my skin. I had never gotten so much as a tattoo before but now my body was marked with twelve circles of raised skin down my arms, each one showing my breakthroughs in whatever area. I never thought anything of this Naming convention here before, more taking it as an odd system that simply showed who was capable in a village, but I did notice myself getting far better at the skills I was named at, mainly doing calculations faster and understanding the things I kind of understood before.


    I found that this world was very similar to my own, only in a different solar system with two moons and magic seeping into the world. The magic never seems to affect the physics, at least when you don''t actively add magic into the equation. I assumed that it would do something, but I used whatever money I had in my free time to run some experiments and got the same things that the famous scientists in the other world did, at least as far as my memory is concerned.


    A few months later and I decided that the oldest group knew enough to graduate and move on to other places. I told them that before I gave them the summer, a tradition I was not going to be getting rid of in this world. I didn''t make a big deal of it, but I told them to stay after class one day and they obliged happily, but got very upset when I told them they won''t learn anything else by coming back.


    "What do you mean we won''t learn anything? We''ve only been here for six years, it usually takes a lot longer to be Named," said a now-teenage Kaycie.


    "Just that. I don''t have more to teach you, and I need to focus on the new students coming in. I gave you a foundation, now it''s time for you to leave and build on that foundation and do something great," I told them in response. These were incredibly smart kids, and they picked up the material with a speed I didn''t know was possible. It must have had something to do with the gods trying to selectively breed the smartest and most talented. I would not deny that it worked seeing the kids barely in their mid-teens graduating already.


    "Then why don''t we have the same Names you have? If there''s nothing to learn we should get Names," she said back.


    "We aren''t worthy, isn''t that right Mr. Sigurd?" accused Samuel.


    "No, no, that''s not it. I don''t know how I got these Names, let alone how to give them to you," I told them honestly. The Names were still so new to me that I never even considered doing a Naming for graduation, although it made as much sense as anything else.


    "It''s natural, you just do it. I knew he was bullshitting us with this whole school thing," said Caleb.


    "Alright, I''ll figure it out. Next week we''ll have a whole ceremony, you''ll get Named and graduate. Invite your parents, family, friends, whoever you want," I told them.


    The next week, I did what I said I would, lining the children up, giving a little speech about how talented these kids were, and walking up to the closest, Saydie. "You are a mathematician and a scientist, and I can''t wait to see what you do with the world," I said. The Names appeared on her and she got a far-off look as she read the notifications. I did the same with each of the children, after which I earned a new Name as well, Sander, the teacher. Each of the kids left that day with twelve Names to start their lives with, a very good haul if I understood this world correctly.


    I was walking back to my hut when a voice from the shadows of a nearby tree caught me off guard, causing me to fall flat on my back. "I need your help, Sigurd,"

 The Young Prodigy

    "I''m sorry?" I asked, trying to regain a bit of composure from my fall.


    "I apologize, I realize I could have given some warning. I saw what you did back there. It''s unprecedented for a Named one to take on so many apprentices, let alone to give so many Names at once, and in so short a time no less," said the boy who walked out from behind a tree, a shadow still obscuring his features from sight.


    "I''m not sure what you mean. Thank you, I suppose. If you are here to shake me down I''m sorry but I made the mistake of making a teacher''s salary, so I don''t have much to give you," I told the boy. He pulled a sphere out of his pocket and it quickly lit up with an internal light and floated near the boy''s head, revealing his features.


    He was young, just older than my first class. He had dark hair and sun-tanned skin, lithe muscle filling out his clothing with bright blue eyes that seemed to glow in the night to tie it all together. His clothes were practical, and he had various weapons about him, a longsword at his side and a bow and quiver about his back with various makes of knives around his chest in a bandolier. He was scarred heavily, silvery lines running down his arms and one on his face, though it wasn''t a defining feature like it was on some, coming in just under the ear and barely gracing his cheek with its presence. He also had ten Names clearly visible, although I had a feeling that he had far more Names than that. The mononym above his head was Zerrious.


    His face was marked with confusion at my last sentence and he told me as much. "I''m not sure why I would shake you, or why it would have anything to do with your yearly income, but I am on a quest to join the gods. I ask you to allow me to shadow you until you deem me worthy of all of the Names that you have," he said.


    "Oh, is that all," I said pulling myself from the ground. As he saw me struggling he reached a hand out with an embarrassed expression and helped me regain my feet. "I''d be happy to have another student. We start in the morning tomorrow, but if you are willing to wait three months we will start a new school year and you can come in at the beginning,"


    "No, I think I will start tomorrow. I hope to have these Names soon, so I must learn as fast as possible," he responded.


    "Well, I''ll see you in the morning then," I said as I started walking again, making my way home for the night.


    "Yes sir," he said with excitement and ran home with an incredible speed I could never hope to match.


    I continued my nightly routine and went to bed later than I usually did, finding the boy a little bit odd, though clearly very talented. When I woke up that morning I had a similar thought process as I did when falling asleep. I quickly went through my morning routine and headed off to class.


    Zerrious was standing in front of the small building, although it wasn''t locked and there were clearly other kids inside from what I could see through the windows. Zerrious greeted me as he saw my approach with a bow and some quick words, a bit too quick for this early in the morning. "Good day master, what chores do you require this morning?" was his quick greeting.


    "You''re not doing any chores right now, mostly just observing for now, although you''ll want to shadow me when I plan the next day''s lesson after school," I told him, chuckling a bit to myself at the boy. "Also, don''t call me master, here I am Mr. Sigurd, and simply Sigurd when I''m not teaching,"


    "Oh, okay ma-Mr. Sigurd," he said then, stumbling over himself because of confusion at my odd teaching style. It was evidently customary for apprentices to do chores for the first few years of their internship, something that I assumed was why it usually took so long to get profession Names in this village. That and the fact that those jobs actually involve a bit of skill, unlike the basic subjects I teach.


    I laughed a bit and walked inside, motioning for him to follow me. He did so, walking into the room and standing in front of the classroom with me. "Now everyone, this is Zerrious and he is going be helping me out for a little while, so I need you to be as nice to him as you are to me, okay?" I asked the kids. Of course, they all agreed to the affirmative, but I was nervous all of a sudden. I had never had any sort of T.A. or substitute since I started the school. If I was sick we just didn''t have school that day and that was fine by me, but they never got used to someone else telling them what to do, so I wasn''t sure how they would react.


    Luckily I had nothing to worry about, the kids mostly ignoring Zerrious for the day. He learned a lot following me around for the school day, taking notes on both class concepts and my teaching style throughout the day. When I left Zerrious moved to leave as well, likely to work on some other skill, but I called him back to finish the day with me.


    "Zerrious! We haven''t completed the school day yet, follow me," I shouted as he started jogging off.


    He paused and turned to me with a puzzled expression on his face. "But all the children have left, what else is there to teach when they are gone?" he challenged.


    "I''m not teaching them anymore today. I have to prepare for what I''m teaching them tomorrow. It''s the most important part of a teacher''s work to be ready to teach and to answer any questions your students may have. Most of my day is devoted to the children of this village and I wouldn''t have it any other way," I explained to him. He seemed shocked by the words, although I supposed that it would be odd in this world for one person to spend so much time not bothering to improve on a skill, but to spend all of it making everyone just as good at those skills as they were. Which was evidently what I was doing.


    "I apologize, I didn''t realize the devotion this calling took," he said as he quickly caught back up to me on my way to my shack.


    "Don''t worry about it, I''m sure it looks like more than it is, especially when I''m not worrying about grades like my teachers always did," I told him.


    "Grades? They required certain quality levels for. . . Well, I''m not sure what they would require the quality levels for," he said, eager to drink in my knowledge no matter how seemingly useless.


    "Well, we used to be given assignments, practice problems that we had to do without any help. If we didn''t do the problems correctly, or if they didn''t like you much they would give you a bad grade. Often times it would hinder your growth because the teachers never cared if you understood, only if they mentioned it in passing. That is something I vowed I would never do, that kind of terrible system was doomed from the start," I told him, nodding sagely all the while.


    "I think I understand, thank you for taking the time to explain," he said.


    "What kind of teacher would I be if I never answered questions? Ask away and I will answer to the best of my ability,"


    "Thank you, Mr. Sigurd," he said in way of ending the conversation.


    We made it back to my little hut and prepared for tomorrow''s lesson. Or lessons, I should say. We needed ten, one for each grade level I deemed necessary to learn everything up to the high school level. It took longer than I had anticipated because Zerrious would often stop me, apologize profusely, and then ask questions. I would of course always answer and we would continue. By the time we were done, it was late into the night and I offered to let Zerrious stay for the night.


    "I would be honored Mr. Sigurd," was his curt reply. He slept on the floor with what I had as far as bedding went, and I wrote my experience of the day.


    I had stopped journaling prior because nothing interesting ever happened anymore, there was no point to my writing. Zerrious though, could go far. I wrote down what I could about the odd boy, who clearly had no intention of teaching but of being able to teach. He was understanding concepts that had never so much as been hinted at in the village previously and quickly applying them to situations, although he had more trouble understanding the more esoteric problems. Exponents, roots, and imaginary numbers weren''t used much in a society without taxes, something I found odd because new public works were created at a speed that I found insane. Regardless, I found that teaching him something he couldn''t easily see was going to make it hard to teach him, regardless of his innate intelligence.


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    "Have I missed something in your instruction? I heard nothing of taking time to write at the end of the day, is this important for any of your skills?" asked Zerrious late that night. I jumped a bit, making an unintended mark on the page which I quickly erased with a thought.


    "No, this is nothing of note, I simply like to write the interesting things that happen around me. Not much happens to me, so anything of note gets jotted down," I explained, continuing my writing.


    "This clearly means something to you, you have an enchanted quill and book, not cheap or expensive things to come by here. Feathers, leather, and vellum tend to be too weak for enchantments unless they are enhanced with various magical treatments, not an inexpensive thing to do in and of itself, regardless of making the scripting invisible, another very expensive process. Why would you spend so much on such items, let alone such powerful and high-quality ones if it wasn''t very important to you or a skill you are trying to turn into a Name?" he asked, not backing down at my simple, although true, answer.


    "Well, I didn''t buy these. These aren''t real in the sense you think, at least if I understand correctly. These are parts of my soul," I said simply. In hindsight, it should have been obvious that that would create more questions than it answered.


    "My deepest apologies for the litany of questions, but I''m not sure I follow. The soul hasn''t been proven to exist, at least in this village with little magical knowledge. Is there some sort of spell that creates this book and quill that you can teach me? I would love any foreign knowledge you may have," he said so kindly that part of me wanted to explain the concept of porn to him just to throw him off.


    I didn''t, instead, I gave him my story, pulling my book out and using my writings and poorly drawn illustrations to tell my story. "I was born in a world very far from here, yet so very close. Indeed I did say world because I come from a different universe than this one. I grew up in a very strange way for those living where I find myself today, but it was the most natural thing in the world where I came from. I grew up with no idea what I wanted to do with my life, going to school, and hanging out with the nerds that had their lives figured out, or thought they did before coming into contact with reality. My parents split up when I was in middle school. I knew that neither wanted me, but they made an effort to try to make me feel better, pretending to be sad when I left. My dad got drunk a lot, and by high school, I was taking any advantage of that I could get. I was a fairly heavy drinker, taking whatever classes my counselor thought I would be good at, never thinking I would go anywhere with my life. Well, I ended up in a computer class and as it turns out, I am rather good at giving proper instructions to computers. I pulled myself together, I quit drinking and I invested myself in coding, earning scholarships, and getting a job that I hate that doesn''t pay the bills with enough left over to matter.


    "But one day I woke up with adventure in my veins, in a whole new world with gods telling me I could save a world that was losing heart with their skills. I tried to find civilization, walking about aimlessly for days before finding the nest of a large evil spider-"


    I was cut off by Zerrious excitedly exclaiming "I''ve heard this part! You got the shit beat out of you and you almost started a forest fire because you didn''t have any concept of bodily coordination so you could barely fight at your best!"


    "The details aren''t quite there, because I walked out like a champion and never even looked back at the fire, you also left out the handsome, valiant, and exquisite fighter parts, but you got the overarching details right," I said, embarrassed by the way that story had evolved without my help. "The book is because I''m not from this world. I got a few different racial traits. I cannot get system messages, but I do get a quill, and I can see peoples na-mononyms,"


    "Interesting. You seem to enjoy the life you had before this much more than you enjoy teaching by the way you tell it," he says.


    "Ha! I hated that place, what makes you think I enjoyed my life?" I asked.


    "I don''t think we''re talking about the same life. You enjoyed that fight with the spider, you enjoyed going on an adventure, and you love telling the stories of your travels, I can see it in your eyes," he explained.


    "Well, that life is over for me now. I''m a teacher, the only things from my journey still with me being my cane and my memories, as I believe they should stay," was my retort.


    "These are the last Names I can get here. I leave soon after I gain these last Names. I want you to come with me, experience the adventures and tell my story when I don''t come back. You don''t have to decide now, and I will of course give you ample time to train someone to replace you, but think about it. This isn''t the life the Gods had planned for you, and I think you know it deep down," Zerrious looks at me seriously before turning away from me and quickly falling silently asleep.


    I did think about it that night. Reaching the same conclusion I did before was a given, my life was simply too easy and I didn''t want to ruin that. I had everything I needed to make myself feel good and never change anything except to make my life more comfortable. Going to school the next morning was similar. Teaching the kids and giving pointers to Zerrious on his teaching practices went as well as it always did, the brilliant children growing almost as fast as I could teach them.


    When I decided to break for lunch, one of my graduated students approached me.


    "Ah, Kaycie! What can I help you with?" I asked as she approached me.


    She got rather close before answering my question, talking in a low voice as if someone would care about our conversation, which piqued my interest until I learned of the topic of conversation. "I want to teach. You''re getting old, and you haven''t taken an apprentice that can follow in your footsteps. I want to teach and you can''t do this forever. Take me as an apprentice, you will never have to worry about your students again,"


    That seemed rather rude, although it was clear to see where she was coming from. In a world without modern medicine, age is a much more dangerous prospect as you get more susceptible to disease and your body starts getting weaker. The difference is, I spent most of my life getting pumped full of vaccines and learning how to slow the aging process, even inadvertently. The thing was this willingness to teach because of my influence both filled me with joy and made me reconsider Zerrious'' offer. If I got Kaycie ready to teach, could I go on an adventure? Tell my story in different lands? Follow a boy who intended to master every skill and had the real potential to do it? As I thought about it instead of dismissing it out of hand like before it sounded like this was what I was meant to do.


    "Kaycie, I think you would make a wonderful teacher. I would love for you to take my place,"


    "I''m glad, this has been my dream since the first week of learning from you," she said, making me all warm and fuzzy inside.


    "I already agreed to it, you don''t have to butter me up," I said as a joke, which she actually understood and started laughing at.


    We took turns teaching the students, me taking most of the burden as the one with the most experience to show them how I like to teach, although I encouraged both of them to create their own methods and do things how they understand them. It was hard to get them to teach in multiple different ways, because when a student asked a question they would both tend to default to repeating the same answer over and over until I stepped in.


    When I got closer to the end of my time teaching, nearly passing on my entire wealth of knowledge to the two students learning to teach I talked to Zerrious after completing a lesson plan. "Am I still invited to join you when you leave?" I asked simply. It was a simple but loaded question. Essentially, I was asking him if he wanted someone to follow him like a lost puppy and document every failing, every embarrassing moment, but also his triumphs.


    "Of course, I never go back on my word. If you are coming though, I will need to make sure you can handle yourself. It may very well get incredibly dangerous, and I can''t be stuck worrying about you," he said. "I will make you armor, something light and understated, and I will teach you how to use that quill blade to protect yourself. If you still want to come, we can start training tomorrow,"


    "I would still like to join you, and I am of course willing to learn whatever you deem necessary for our journey," I told him, not entirely sure what I was getting myself into.


    A few weeks of training with a metal blade later I was reasonable enough that I wouldn''t kill myself, and had to take a break to prepare a graduation ceremony, which had gotten progressively more extravagant as the years passed on and required more preparation in return.


    The children wore the same thing, more mystical type robes than what we wore back home for graduation because that''s cool, and the kids all got to keep them at the end, a monument to the school they attended as children. There were several speeches given, not by some valedictorian, but by parents and myself. I then opened the floor to any children that wanted to talk, and almost all of them did. They were happy to be done, but sad to leave. I then called them up one by one to give them their Names. Afterward, I made one final announcement before giving two individuals one more Name.


    "I am so glad that you made it this far and I am incredibly happy that every single one of you made it through, but I am sadly no longer going to be teaching. I pass the torch on to Ms. Kaycie, your teacher next year," I then grabbed the shoulders of both Kaycie and Zerrious and gave them the Name of a teacher. "I will be leaving the village at this time. I would like to thank every single one of you for making this village home to a stranger like myself. I am glad that I managed to share what little knowledge I had before leaving for good. If I were to stay I would ask that if you need anything you ask me, but alas I cannot, as I will be going to get more knowledge to teach, and more stories to tell. I thank you all, and good night," I said before quickly leaving out the back as silence was broken by pandemonium.


    Zerrious and I were prepared to leave this night. While I was giving my speech, Zerrious slipped out the back and prepared our bags. I had never so much as seen the things he had promised to make for me, but Zerrious insisted that they were in the bags and that I could change later. We ran out into the dark of night, chasing knowledge and adventure.

 Stories in the Wild

    "That went about as well as I expected," said Zerrious as we ran out into the wilderness, darkness encroaching from the sky and the din of voices fading quickly behind us.


    "That went decidedly worse than I expected." My feet pounded rhythmically as I followed the lithe form of Zerrious holding both of our bags loaded full of rings. They were bonded to Zerrious but he insisted that we would have a chance to rebind them later. Now, if these assurances sounded a bit off, consider that I essentially never spent a moment without the boy for the past year, as such we grew trust for each other, if not necessarily friendship.


    "Why would you say that? They lost the most reliable teacher they''ve seen in their lifetimes. Not to say that your replacement wont be just as good, but people don''t know that for sure. They saw power and are afraid of loosing it, is that so bad?" Zerrious ran into the tree line and slowed dramatically, almost causing me to bowl him over like a linebacker.


    Pulling up short we looked around. I wasn''t sure what for, but did it anyways. Zerrious quickly decided which direction to set off in and started walking. It wasn''t long before I started humming and muttering songs from back home, trying to pass the time as Zerrious worked to find a good place to set up camp for the night. Where we finally stopped seemed random to me, but Zerrious clearly knew what he was doing. Plus it was getting rather dark. I knew as much as anyone the dangers of the forest. A quick glance at my walking stick and the scars peeking out from under my clothes was all the reminder I needed to stay safe and follow the expert.


    Zerrious set down one of the bags and opened it, the front falling away to reveal rows of rings set into the back, each easily accessible and removable, yet clearly well secured. "I may be Named, but I do have limited resources so I went with quantity over quality," he said as he pulled a set of strange tools from a ring in the other bag. "Prick you finger and I''ll get to work on rebinding these."


    My stupor was dispelled with those words and I pulled a small blade from my side, a tool that found itself at my side out of convenience for various meals, and pricked my finger on the tip, probably harder than necessary as blood quickly started to flow down the blade. I focused on the pain and looked at the knife for a while, thinking not for the first time that this was normal in here. People would hurt themselves just for convenience, a cut throat mindset created by the gods to drive innovation. History from my own world proved this well, invention happened faster and better during conflict.


    By the time I looked up Zerrious was already done setting the rings up for attunement. Walking up and kneeling down I spread the blood on the inscription on each ring one by one and they all flashed just like my first one. As each flashed I good a sense of what was in each one, leather armor, cloaks, and other clothes. Each set of clothing and each cloak was in a different style, likely to fit in with weather and customs.


    "I wasn''t sure what styles would be acceptable in most of the places we''ll go, so I made an array of styles," said Zerrious as he saw my expression. The storage inside the rings was just about two thirds of what my first one was, and that was about the size of a one man tent, hence the multiplicity of rings. Total there were about twenty one rings if you counted my first one, and the pack made them easy to carry as well as providing a sense of adventure, something I found incredibly important, as this was, in fact, an adventure.


    "Good thinking, wouldn''t want to stand out too much, accents and genetics will do just fine for that." I pulled a collapsed tent out of one of the rings in my bag and attempted to set it up, although my trouble was obvious. Zerrious saw my struggle and set the tent up with a few quick motions, the dome popping to existence nearby, his own tent already set up twenty feet away. "Thank you," I said.


    Zerrious soon had a fire started and we were eating some preserved meat we had brought, although we stayed as light as we could on food and water to make it last at least until the next village where we could hopefully resupply. "We should sleep, I don''t know how far until the next village, no one has gone that far since this town was founded," Zerrious said suddenly.


    Agreeing, I nodded and climbed into my tent, pulling a blanket and pillow from one of my rings and laying down. Videogames, movies, even most books got this wrong. This didn''t feel like adventure, it felt like hiking and camping. I was sure something would go wrong and make it feel like an adventure, but that hadn''t happened and I just felt like I had thrown away my security. A teacher wasn''t my favorite job, but it was calm and it kept alive. I could go back, but was it worth it? No, I was already here, might as well see it through.


    Waking the next morning I crawled out of my tent to find Zerrious had already packed all of his things and had a small animal roasting over a fire. I quickly packed up, putting my simple dark leather armor on, putting the tent away far easier than setting it up and joined the young man around the pop of hot colors in the cool greens dominant in the forest. Neither of us talked, although I was screaming inside to say something.


    Soon Zerrious removed the rabbit from the fire and carved pieces off, silently offering me pieces as he did. I thanked him and accepted, chewing on the wonderfully seasoned hare and thinking.


    "You aren''t a teacher. You''re a story teller. It''s obvious in how you describe things, how you keep mementos of your exploits, how you get so exited when someone asks about your walking stick," Zerrious said suddenly, staring into the fire and putting another piece of rabbit in his mouth.


    "What about it?" I wondered aloud. What caused this line of thinking? Was he regretting letting me come along?


    "Do you have any stories I haven''t heard? I''m just used to learning something all the time, I''m not used to turning my brain off," he said. Oh, he wanted a story! Simple enough. . . until I can''t think of a story.


    I wracked my brain in silence for a moment, before falling on a classic. I couldn''t recall the details of Lord of the Rings, but I could give some of the broad strokes. It would make a wonderful story either way. "Once there was a hobbit-"


    "What''s a hobbit?"


    "A short man, not more than four feet tall. No more questions, you''ll understand as I go on," I told him. He laughed although he clearly added "hobbit" to his internal dictionary. "Once there was a hobbit. He was an unadventurous hobbit, and had lived in a hole in the ground in Hobbiton all his life. This was no ordinary hole in the ground, because the hobbits build their homes in these holes, and they ate seven meals a day, happy as can be doing nothing all their lives."


    The two of us silently put out the fire and started walking as I continued with my story. It wasn''t long before we paused for lunch. After eating preserved meats we walked on as I described everything I could remember about the famous Tolkien story and making up what I couldn''t.


    When we sat down at the end of the day I set up my tent, figuring it out without Zerrious'' help this time. Zerrious had gone for a long time when I finished setting up my sleeping arrangements, and I did get worried, but instead of dwelling I set up a ring of stones for the fire and changed out of my armor, getting more comfortable for the night time.


    Zerrious came back with an armful of firewood, and soon he had a fire going. I started my story but Zerrious pulled a large chunk of tree out of one of his rings and I paused, surprised. "Why did you stop?" Zerrious asked.


    "Why did you pull out a log?" I responded.


    "I figured you''d like an instrument. Music isn''t something you can learn, but I have a feeling you''ll be good at it," he said as a knife found it''s way into his hands and he started carving something. I figured I could figure out how to play it given what I knew of music theory. Continuing my story, writing down it down as I did, I spun the tale of Frodo and his trusty friend Sam, who I had always liked more anyways. The one ring seemed to scare Zerrious, even though it was a story. It must have been far more likely that an evil ring crafted by an evil warlord could happen here, while in my world it was an interesting idea that could never see reality.


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    This continued for another few days, until I finally finished what I remembered of the Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Sam going back to Rivendell victorious against evil, and Zerrious was almost done carving what looked like the pieces of a guitar that needed attached to one another and strings added. I was exited, because I could kind of play some acoustic guitar, at least, it would be easier to remember how to play something I already learned at one point.


    "That was quite the story. I noticed you were writing it down as we talked. That''s good, it''s the kind of story people would pay good money to hear," said Zerrious as I finally fell silent after a few days of constant babble.


    "It was back home. One of the greatest stories of all time. An instant classic."


    "Got any more?"


    "I''m sure I do, I''ll need some time to recover though, my voice is growing strained. It lasted longer than I expected it would though," I told him as my mind raced for more stories from home to tell. "I''m sure that adding music will make my shorter stories much better."


    "I look forward to it then," said Zerrious as we fell into silence on our journey. We walked for a while, not talking but thinking all the while.


    Zerrious took turns at seemingly random moments but we never ran into giant man eating spiders, so I assumed the man was just that good at navigating the wilds. Even the bugs seemed less persistent during our travels then when I was doing this solo, although I don''t think I was in a good enough place to appreciate that enough to remember fully.


    Walking through the wilderness took half a month, during which I finished the stories of Enders Game, something that took far too long considering it happened in the future from my world and I had to explain a number of concepts, and Vicious, a more obscure book but with a brutal story I found enthralling, and even only half understanding Zerrious was hanging onto every word. Part way through the story Zerrious finished the guitar, and I worked on tuning it as the story slowly crawled to a close. Trying to tune the instrument as the story continued I tried to remember what each string was supposed to sound like. I was good at this in high school, but it had been long enough that it took a while to get it right, taking some time after the story was completed to work out the notes.


    A few days of me plucking random notes and strumming pointless cords until I remembered enough to do something, though I didn''t remember any songs by heart.


    One day, as we walked, random notes started pouring from the guitar, each one flowing into the next in both a lyrical way, and in a sort off-putting twang that didn''t quite line up with how the human mind wanted the notes to flow, some quick and some slow in a way that made for a haunting song yet fast enough that didn''t quite feel haunting. In a way, a story without words.


    My voice soon joined, hesitantly raising the wordless notes in the same lyrical way as the guitar, my voice providing a chilling contrast to the percussive sound the instrument made. The guitar soon took on a more repetitive set of notes and I turned from singing to speaking, words spilling out with little thought.


    "In London streets,


    painful beats,


    back in 2005,


    a lady born in Paddington,


    fights just to make her health prevail,


    Violet weeps,


    her heart may fail,


    to set the scene we must rewind,


    the hands of time,


    for Violets tale,


    Violet was a silent girl,


    grew up with troubled past,


    her mother never loved her and her father was a problem,


    every night he closed the door but never left the room,


    I hate to say the things he did,


    nobody even cared,


    Violet was a silent girl,


    moved out before sixteen,


    she got a job at Costco,


    stacking jars so she could eat,


    she met a boy named David and he was a little prick,


    Violet was a silent girl and Violet she loved quick,


    David was a problem but he sure knew she would love him,


    every night he''d close the door but never leave the room,


    history repeats itself,


    she wakes up black and blue,


    to die,


    she never stood a chance,


    to dance this evil dance,


    Violet was always too quite,


    he says at the bedroom door,


    and he''s angry,


    drinking and smoking keeps him up late,


    he stands in the doorframe,


    she shakes,


    but she doesn''t wake up,


    you fucking slut get your ass up,


    and he pinches her eyelids and pulls them back,


    Violet,


    why you always too silent,


    Violet,


    she''s too quiet,


    things get violent,


    that''s the sound of his fists as they fall like a crashing pilot,


    burn like brimstone,


    one to the collarbone,


    full force skin torn,


    blood splat bone crack,


    tries to pull back,


    one to the jaw and the tooth splits detached,


    a quick deflect to redirect the blow,


    but nonetheless his punches met her throat,


    Violet,


    why you always so quiet Violet,


    do you think I wanna do this Violet,


    in character she stays silent,


    say something Violet,


    silence,


    fucking say something Violet,


    not one word she stays silent,


    in London streets,


    painful beats,


    back in 2005,


    Violet''s rushed to Paddington,


    she''s fighting but might not survive,


    the doctor''s in a state of shock,


    see''s something here so very wrong,


    poor Violet,


    she was pregnant,


    and Violet,


    she was due next week,


    turning to the doctor Violet breaks the silence and she cries,


    if I''m to die right here tonight,


    my baby will survive all day,


    the doctor soon regains composure,


    calls the nurses to come in,


    as Violets world fades to black,


    the painful beats flutter and fail,


    in London streets,


    no more beats,


    back in 2005,


    a lady down in Paddington,


    has lost the fight to stay alive,


    a tragedy,


    and miracle,


    it happened on an empty street,


    two twins,


    alive,


    side by side,


    a girl named Jenny,


    and a boy named James."


    I let the notes fall off, bringing the story to a close. Zerrious was staring at me, shock smeared across his face. "That was terrible and amazing and. . . I don''t even know. The sounds followed the story and brought it here, the terrible, terrible story. Violet died, but her children lived, but we don''t know what happened to David. . . It was wonderful and terrible in the best of ways."


    "So it was. I don''t know where it came from, but if I can sing like that, then maybe I''m a bit better than I anticipated." Walking became far less tedious, the stories helped but it wasn''t until I started singing that it became almost fun. The next songs weren''t nearly as sad as the first, falling back on classic rock, rap, and even some pop music that I figured I could pull off, making the trip fly by, weeks passing in moments.


    I wrote my music down in my book, and when Zerrious asked what it meant I told him. "You can learn music?" he asked.


    "Of course, why do you think I can do it? I had to learn just like anybody else," I responded as a staff scratched itself into being. As notes found their way on the staff, I felt a burning as a new Name found itself on my body, a blanket Name that covered all of sound, marking me as the leading expert on this planet, and from that day on, Zerrious started to learn.


    Zerrious was clumsy on the strings, his fingers unused to moving without specific formulas for what was being made, instead learning to embrace the chaos of music. He learned quick, but it wasn''t natural for him and he clearly didn''t enjoy it. Nevertheless, he earned the same names I had, getting him closer to eternity.


    I was singing "Here Comes the Sun", a classic Beatles tune, when we finally made it to civilization.


    Tall stone walls surrounded a massive iron gate that stood open, traders coming and going from a road that wrapped around the forest, and by extension, Zerrious'' village. We stepped out of the tree line and onto the dirt road, making our way into the first city of our journey, hopefully a long and wonderous journey.

 Crowd Surfing

    The gates of the city lay open, inviting all to enter and allowing all to leave. Zerrious and I joined the flow of hunters, traders, and travelers moving into the city.


    "Stop for just a minute. You two traveling together?" asked a guard as we approached.


    "Yes, we wouldn''t want to travel alone," I said as Zerrious trailed off, not expecting this. There was no surprise for me, every movie and book set in these times had the heroes stopped by guards that they had to trick. We didn''t have anything illegal, and we didn''t have any illegal or even immoral intentions, but I was prepared for this in a way that my companion clearly wasn''t.


    "Yeah, not to dangerous out there but it''s best to be safe, you never know," the guard smiled back as he dug a small clear stone with gold scripting out of a pocket. "Any contraband or illegal intentions?"


    "No, of course not! We are on a quest for knowledge, we wish to make this world better," I told him confidently.


    "Breathe onto this for me?" I complied and Zerrious followed suit. Both times the rock lit up with a white internal light for just a moment. "Alright, your good to go. Good luck on that knowledge thing, hope it works out well for everyone." The guard held up a fist and I bumped it as we walked by.


    Not a few steps later I overheard the same guard say "see, I told you it would catch on," before we waltzed out of earshot and onto the busy main street lined with vendors and shops. Many were for mundane items, such as furs or shoes, but there were some buildings labeled with the enchanters Name and others with different schools of Magi, something that wasn''t in the small village we both hailed from.


    "We should spend a day recouping. I don''t know if I can afford a long stay in a tavern, but maybe you could help with that. Your stories should be enough for a while at least," said Zerrious as we paused to decide what to do.


    "Very well, let''s go in and hope it''s not too busy." The way to the tavern was relatively clear, and the tavern itself was fairly empty, only holding around six individuals that couldn''t find anything better to do than day drink. The man behind the bar was taking the time to teach several young men and a singular girl his drink mixing techniques, using the day drinkers as their practice. Apparently, mixed drinks were more common in a skill based society, who knew.


    "Ah, two knew costumers! Perfect! What can we make for you, and I swear on the gods themselves if you want an apple cider and whiskey. . ." he trailed off as we walked in, triggering the bell affixed to the doorframe. The drink sounded delicious, but it appeared very popular here as everyone seemed to be drinking it. I noted the mononym Amos before continuing on, though I still simply thought of him as the barkeep.


    "Bloody Mary if you have it," I told him, figuring I''d shake things up a bit.


    "Old Fashion for me," Zerrious piped up. I guess alcohol was called the same here as it was in my world, which I hadn''t considered before asking for a Bloody Mary.


    "Fine choices! You folks know what to do, get to work and I''ll see how you do!" said the man proudly displaying his various Names revolving around alcohol, which seemed to include exactly how different alcohol contents worked as an accelerant. I hoped that was just for mixing drinks and not. . . other things.


    Zerrious and I approached the bar, taking a seat on one of the wooden stools set nearby. "So what brings you folks into town," said the bartender as he absently wiped off the bar while throwing a glance over his shoulder at the kids slowly mixing drinks behind him.


    "My friend here is on a quest and we need somewhere to stay. Alas, we are short on money, however, I am a very talented musician and would love the opportunity to play in your tavern in exchange for a place to stay," I told the man. The man glanced at the Names running down my arms, noting that I had more than one that had nothing to do with music but that I was indeed a Named bard.


    "Why would I want that? It''s great to have music to drink to, but why would that be worth you staying here?" This man wasn''t aware of the common business practice from my world, it seemed.


    "Allow me to break it down for you. Back home it was a common practice for traveling bards to stop in taverns and play music in exchange for their stay. This brought in new people and therefore more revenue. People would come initially for the music, get some drinks, decide they like like the bar, and come in every week for a good time," I explained.


    He seemed to contemplate that for a moment before answering "I don''t mind giving it a shot, foreigner, but if it doesn''t work then this is the last night. Sound good?"


    "Sounds wonderful. Call me Sigurd, foreigner is a group of musicians where I''m from," My smile grew wide on my face.


    "I would like to apprentice under you. You hold several Names that I have not had the chance to gain and would be happy to offer any service I can in return," said Zerrious bluntly.


    "One of those types eh? Look, I don''t mind teaching you what I know, but I need something in return. It may not be the most useful skillset, but its still several Names," the barkeep responded. "One second," he said before either of us could answer as he turned to inspect the finished cocktails. He picked up some, others he dismissed outright, and finally he picked up one of each type and congratulated the student that made both of them, the young girl who clearly had a talent and looked very pleased. The drinks were set before us and Zerrious continued his proposition as I sipped the best Bloody Mary I had ever tasted.


    "I don''t have much, but I can offer my services in any way you may need. I am a Named enchanter, architect, and chef," he said, trying to sell himself but not being very good at it.


    "I can make that work." So the deal was struck.


    Zerrious got right behind the counter and started learning, absorbing information like a sponge as I took our things to our room and set them down. I slept for most of the day, happy to finally have a bed, so what went down at the bar went unbeknownst to me.


    When my eyes finally opened the sun was only an hour or two from setting and I had to get down the stairs to play a song. I ran down and started moving things around to make myself a makeshift stage area. I pulled a stool over to the center of the stage area and another to prop open the door. A few people milled in as shifts and work times ran out and I started strumming.


    Good riddance started pouring from me, my favorite green day song. Some people were surprised and most seemed to enjoy it, but as the rush came in, clearly not more than normal based on the barkeeps expression, my voice started to get lost in the din of rowdy voices.


    I closed my eyes and tried to force myself to sing louder, to strum just a little bit harder to get every ounce of sound out of the instrument as I could. It wasn''t enough.


    I panicked, but continued to play, even unheard. Something drew my attention to the fabric of reality that I had learned to ignore as it rubbed against my fingers, the Mana that bleed through that fabric, that bleed into me afterwards. I quieted my singing and felt at it with this awkward sixth sense, sending it into my voice and the strings out of pure instinct, coaxing the magic to resonate with the fabric that surrounds everyone.


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    Green Mana flowed around my guitar and causing the strings to glow, my throat lighting up with an internal light as I was suddenly loud enough to be heard, a new spell being forged as I entertained.


    Good riddance ended and I flowed directly into wanted dead or alive, the crowd jamming along. People heard the music through the open door and flooded in, packing the bar as much as it could hold, forcing me to jump up on a table to continue my song. I got more into it, bending over and swaying with the music, stomping on the hardy tables to the beat of the music.


    The song ended but I kept playing, leaning on my new spell with my mind and bending the sound to force a metallic wine from the instrument and started playing I love rock and roll, the entire bar going wild and singing along as a thrill shot through me like the Mana that was consistently used and replaced, electrifying my soul in a way I never had before.


    Soon that song ended and I made eye contact with the overwhelmed barkeep. I best be done, I thought. But first, there was always something I wanted to try. I jumped back first into the crowd, playing a song less guitar solo as people caught me and carried me aloft. I crowd surfed over to the back where I shouted "Thank you, and good night! I''ll be here every night for a while, stop by when you can!" before I shut the door and walked up to my room, resolving to talk to Amos in the morning, as I clearly wouldn''t be able to tear him away from his work tonight.


    The next morning I made my way down to the bar. I hadn''t had much to drink the day prior, but there was no harm in some drinking as I sang, music is an art, after all.


    "Morning to you! I''ve got to say, that surpassed my wildest estimates last night," said the barkeep as I opened the door to the stairs and made my way to the bar.


    "Glad to hear it. I assume that means I''ll be doing the same tonight?" I asked, taking a seat and popping my back, just as I always did.


    "No, I don''t think so. Stay here as long as you like, but let''s save your services for weekends. Better to do things on a day when work ends earlier for most people."


    "Anything to eat Sigurd? Maybe a drink?" asked Zerrious as he popped from the back where most of the alcohol was stored holding two bottles in each hand.


    "Food would be wonderful, thank you. You know me, I''m not picky," I responded to Zerrious. "Thank you for the extended stay, it''s an incredibly generous gesture," went to the barkeep.


    "Not a problem, you tripled my nightly revenue in only ten minutes!" exclaimed the burly Amos as Zerrious nodded and moved back into storage where I assumed food was made as well. Zerrious quickly returned with a plate of eggs, potatoes, sausage, and a drink of a type I didn''t recognize, the deep amber color transfixing.


    "For extra practice," Zerrious said in way of explanation before moving off again.


    "That boy''s already better than my top student. That kid learns quick, I tell you that," said the barkeep as I cut into the fried eggs and spread the yellow liquid over the rest of the food before mixing it all and shoveling bites of the mixture into my mouth. As always, the seasoning was perfect. A sip of the drink revealed that it wasn''t the type of cocktail I liked, being a bit of a coward when it came to alcohol, but I enjoyed it all the same, whatever it was.


    "You''ll be here all day?" I asked Zerrious.


    "Until I get the Names," he responded.


    "I might as well explore a bit then. I''m sure there''s something I can do, perhaps some spells I could learn, or maybe a bard collage I can visit. That''s a thing, right?"


    "You''re venturing out of my wheelhouse here," Zerrious told me.


    "It''s a thing. From that question that means you got the Names on your own? Impressive, but I understand why after that performance," the barkeep piped up.


    "Wonderful, much to occupy my time then."


    The tavern occupied what appeared to be the main street of the city, most likely under some sort of kingdom for protection. It wasn''t long before I came to a building that looked interesting, the sign displaying that the person inside was Named in abjuration magic. Not sure what that meant exactly, I walked in. There were various staffs and wands, and it looked like there were scrolls in a large glass case behind the man sitting at the counter wearing a sleeveless robe to show off his Names in various magical skills.


    "Hello sir! I''m not sure how to go about this, but I''d like to learn some bits of magic?" I said with a bit of question in the statement.


    "This ain''t the place for you fam, nothin'' flashy here. Y''all want evocation," said the bored man with his feet on the counter. His eyes never so much as opened.


    "That''s good, I''m not looking for anything flashy, just curious to learn a bit of magic is all. Seems like a good place to start as any," I responded.


    "Aight. Not near as common as it should be, but it''s not unheard of. How much gold you got?" he responded, his legs swinging down and his eyes cracking open.


    "Not much, about twenty with me."


    "Well, that ain''t no good. Magic''s expensive fam, twenty wont get you nothin''."


    "I have a spell I don''t think anyone else has. I could teach you for a spell," I offered. My quill blade wasn''t a great spell, but I might as well try to get something out of it.


    "I doubt that, but I''ll take that if I can see it. Whip it out," he told me.


    In response I feigned reaching into a pocket and pulled out my quill. The man had an expression of shock on his face, though he was clearly unimpressed. I spun the Mana in the patterns necessary and a quill blade sprung into being, a green flowing mess in the shape of a rapier that was, if nothing else, stable at the edges.


    "What the fuck?" exclaimed the man as he stormed over to me awkwardly holding the sword. "How the hell did you learn this? Just for discovering it should get you a Name! Is that why you''re here, already got the evocation Name? Embarrassed about how many you got? Is that why you cover your arms?"


    "What are you talking about? It''s just a worse Mana blade." I felt attacked but also a bit flattered.


    "It is not. How the hell did you harness the natural chaos of wild Mana in a tamed form? That''s impossible! I wouldn''t believe it if I wasn''t looking it right in the eye!" he shouted. "But you don''t know that. Look, I''ll teach you everything I know, I''ll give you my Names if you teach me this spell."


    "Sounds like a deal to me," I told him, dismissing the blade and following the man who had run into the back while beckoning me to follow.


    "Abjuration is the act of using your Mana to renounce things as they are. This is the kind of magic that makes shields, dismisses spells, and even banishing if you get enough Mana, although I don''t know of anyone that can," he said as I pushed the swinging door open and taking a seat across a large desk from the man. I listened attentively, although he quickly found that he had to teach me the basics before we could move on to anything.


    He taught me to breathe, to feel and see the Mana flowing from the Aether and into my core, and from my core out to the world around me. He taught me that breathing right could deepen the pool of Mana over time, and that I had to direct it to stay in my core rather than letting it bleed out into the world around me. I would never be perfectly successful at this, but that''s good, he explained, because that''s my impression on the world. Spells are a lot more difficult when you don''t already have a hold on the world around you.


    I returned daily and slowly learned until I could finally start work on abjuration rather than simple tricks that wouldn''t do much more than make me smell good before I shower, a useful ability, I admit. Zerrious earned his Names with the barkeep and started working to pay off the apprenticeship while I was learning, and continued to make me drinks to keep up his skill. I continued to play weekends at the bar, having fun but making an effort not to party too hard in fear of doing poorly with my lessons the next day. There wasn''t a religious day anywhere here, although a five day work week within the seven day total week seemed the standard even still. It seemed that worship was working on a craft, trying to better society as the gods told me was the goal on my first day here in the woods.


    One day, my teacher in magic was away on business and he told me to practice magic however I felt like it, but not to leave before he could get my spell. I laughed him off, obviously, but it still left me with a Wednesday (approximately) without anything to do.


    I wandered the city, deciding to skip the bard collage for the night, not wanting to add more work and skill sharing for the day, and found myself in what looked like slums. I got looks, but I remained fairly safe, walking around until I came across a large building that seemed out of place amongst the dirty alleys and ruined buildings that seemed inhabited nonetheless.


    It was a clean building, with dark walls and barren grass around the front and sides. There were voices inside, young and innocent, with the sounds of a woman, clearly older than the rest, telling them sternly to behave.


    "I can do some good here," I said to myself and turned to the gate of the orphanage.

 A Proposal

    I approach the gate in the short wall surrounding the grounds of the orphanage. My hands push the unlocked gate open easily and walk the short cobblestone path to the door, knocking nervously, not sure what I intend to say upon the opening of said door.


    "Calm yourselves now, there be someone at the door. You bes'' be hopin'' they stay long enough for me be forgettin'' you hittin'' ''im Stacy!" a woman yells from the other side of the door before it swings open about a foot, a beautiful woman in a dark dress blocking the gap with her body so none of the troublemakers behind her make a run for it. "Hello there, can I help you?" Her accent was vaguely southern, maybe a British undercurrent driving the drawl of half finished words falling from full lips.


    "I. . . I don''t know how to say this, but I tell stories. I figured these kids could use some imagination," I told her, stumbling over my words a bit as my brain scrambled for how to explain while reading her mononym, almost going ignored. I wasn''t even sure how to pronounce Nyah.


    "The kids don''t need more imagination, they''s creative enough in makin'' my life hell as it is. They don''t play, they be fightin'' wars," she said seriously, eyes reflecting past experiences of the "creative" tactics the kids have used on each other. I shivered at that look.


    "The kids just don''t know what to play, all they can think of is who has what and how to get it for themselves. They just need shape for that creativity." I had no idea if this was true, but it couldn''t be too far off.


    "Guess it can''t make ''em worse," she said, pushing children out of the way and opening the door to admit me, which I took quickly before anyone could escape. The door was quickly closed behind me. "The first room to your left''ll be best. Plenty of room and seats. I''ll go get the childer''." That was an abbreviation I hadn''t heard before.


    My feet found their way to a room with a large fire place, wood sitting unlit inside. One of the simple tricks I had learned while figuring out the basics of magic was to create a simple spark, barely enough to create a flash of light before dying out, but it was enough to light the wood in the fireplace, and I took the chair closest to the flame. Kids started filtering in, eyeing me hesitantly and filling in at the back of the room before some were forced to get closer to me by the bigger kids.


    When the woman in the dark dress returned she motioned for me to get on with it. "Kids, I came in here to tell you about my story, the adventures of Sigurd." I started. "I lived a normal life, going to work every day and going to bed early so I can wake up and go back to work every day. Nothing changed, nothing got better, nothing was interesting. Then, one day, I woke up somewhere strange, in a forest I had never seen before. I had been transported to a foreign land, completely naked with no idea what to do. So I started walking. I walked and walked, no idea where to go, so I went to the biggest tree in the forest. I thought, ''maybe I can get my bearings at the top of that tall tree'', but when I get there I see something terrible," I pull out my cane, pointing out the large spider at the top. The kids seemed interested now, scooting closer and leaning in to hear every word.


    "I saw this great beast and pulled my sword, saying ''I will defeat you and I will go back to my life'', and there was a great battle. I ran long the invisible webs big enough to catch an elephant and cut deep into the great spider, which tried to eat me as hard as it could. I slayed that beast, cutting it down and taking it''s body as spoils, making this cane from one of it''s many large legs." I said, waving the cane in front of the kids faces who went wide with wonder at the sheer size the spider must have been. The older kids clearly thought I was spinning lies like so many webs, but the blue eyes of the lone adult in the building were almost as interested in the story as the children were, perhaps sensing the truth in my words.


    "I go to the tree, looking for a way up when I notice that the spider had laid many eggs inside of the tree, which I found was hollow. I burned the tree, knowing that the spiders would kill many more adventurers that would take this path. The fire burned and I left the tree, still not sure where I was going, but walking away with the great body of the spider on my strong shoulders. I was found soon, by people I had never met. Strangers that took me in and helped me heal. I never got back home, instead wandering the world and trying to find new stories to tell, the excitement of my adventure still burning in my mind," I finish. It wasn''t as long a story as I thought it would be, at least when you take out the cowardly pieces.


    "Why are you here then?" asked one of the kids. The question was unexpected but was clearly echoed across the faces of the rest of the kids.


    Honesty is the best policy, I suppose. "I met a man, strong and honorable, keen to getting into interesting situations. I am following him as he rides through this city, the first stop on our journey, as it happens." The kids, eyes grow wide with wonder. "Is it true then? You actually killed the spider?" asked a young girl, her bright hair and dark eyes seeming unnatural at a glance.


    "Indeed I did. Anyone can be great if you try hard enough. The secret is kindness, to everyone you meet." Apparently the sentiment wasn''t overgrown like it was in my world, so some took it to heart. Some of the older kids even seemed to take in the story, although one scarred girl seemed angry at the story.


    "Do you have any more? Stories I mean," asked a little boy close to the middle of the room.


    "What kind of story teller would I be without more stories? Would you like to hear one?"


    The yes was resounding, vibrating the fire even as it raged. Snow white would do just fine.


    It was a much longer story, stretching deeper into the night as I took control of the magic around me even as it bled from the Aether. It continued to bleed from me, but I directed some of the bleeding into the flames, causing them to take the shapes of seven dwarves, a young woman, and acts out the story even as I tell it. It was a simple trick, one that most people wouldn''t have thought of, taking more stock in the powerful spells rather than perfecting simple control.


    I breathe, letting my magic grow and cycle throughout my body, uncontrolled but exactly as it was supposed to, according to my teacher. I let it flow and hoped my capacity would increase like the strength in a worked muscle, though it seemed like a strange thing to just breathe extra deeply and let it run for growth.


    My story finished, conveying the greatness of true love and the power of righteousness.


    The children clapped and I felt good, a different good than my nights at the tavern with raucous cheering, but more fulfilling in a way. "Another story! Another story!" the kids beg.


    "I''m sorry, but it''s a late night. I will write more stories, I will give them to you and you can learn to read them," I promised.


    "Right so, off to bed with ya," piped up Nyah as she seemed to shake off a trance. They seemed sad, and many complained, but didn''t fight too hard. Deep down they understood how tired they really were. Even the scarred girl seemed interested in the story by the end, and went up the narrow steps along with the rest of the orphans. "You did good here."


    "You think so?" I responded.


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    "I do. I liked your stories as much as the kids did. Original, and the cane was a nice touch. How expensive was it for just one prop for one story?" she asked.


    "Oh, it''s real. I didn''t lie, at least about the broad strokes. I did kill the spider, and this was made for me out of it''s leg. I will admit though, I tried to run instead of fight. I was backed into a corner so to speak," I confessed.


    "And Snow White? Is that one real too?" she asked, a bit amused by my clear fiction.


    "Oh, no. That''s an old story from my old home. Fantastical and with a good moral it stayed around long enough to be common knowledge."


    Now she seemed to be taking stock of me. "You do look strong, like you could fight off a beast with a sword perhaps. Under the right circumstances. I can''t believe until I see the blade that killed the beast. I''m sure it got lost along the way," she said playfully, but a little bit hopefully, hoping I could prove her childlike fantasy real as she drew closer to me.


    I simply had to give her what she wanted. The quill appeared in my hand and a green blade of energy sprung from the feather, a thin thing since I preferred a less violent weapon with more thrusting and less senseless hacking. She stepped back, a hand covering her mouth as she took in the sword.


    "It''s all true. . ." she muttered, meeting my eyes and biting her bottom lip. It was a rather attractive image, but I tried not to draw attention to it.


    "It wasn''t rhetoric when I said it was late I''m afraid. I do have things to do tomorrow, and I really should be going," I said, looking around nervously.


    "You could stay the night, I wouldn''t mind," she said, stepping closer as if to grab me, though her fingers seemed to be picking at her nails rather than trying to trap me, her eyes focused on the inane task her fingers had set out on. She seemed almost as nervous as I was.


    "I''m not sure," I said, unware of what to do.


    "You don''t have to, but it wouldn''t be a problem." This was getting drawn out.


    "Why not, I can make a bit of a longer walk in the morning," I conceded.


    Her smile could have lit the night. So I slept in a room separate from the large room the children all had beds in and still separate from Nyah''s room. I wasn''t sure why she had decided she wanted me to stay, but it felt good to be wanted.


    Over the next week Zerrious payed off his debt to the barkeep and started learning magic, starting with the more simple evocation since he had heard I was learning abjuration. It took another month for me to finally learn a spell, Reject Toxins and Disease. It took two more to finally become Named, getting four Names for Mana control, Mana purification, Mana storage, and then finally abjuration. Zerrious was having trouble with the ethereal nature of magic and practiced often, but he was far from being Named in any magic skills without my knowledge granted by Aetherwalk and my travelers Name.


    I spent a lot of time at the orphanage, moving my things in and writing books for the kids and spending time with Nyah, eventually a relationship taking hold. When I wasn''t with Zerrious, or Nyah, or telling stories, I was learning enchantment. I already had a firm foundation, and learning how to make things stronger seemed like a useful skill, plus, I was flashy enough without fireballs and ice storms.


    I earned my enchantment Name. The school of magic was different from the craft, although they went hand in hand most of the time. Enchantment spells were temporary versions of permanent enchantments, and some spells work on people. After gaining this Name, I got back to the orphanage and set my things down, Zerrious was away working on illusion magic, something I would learn from him eventually. There was a nice dinner set up, no children to be seen and Nyah working on finishing the last things for the meal.


    "Sigurd! You''re home!" I had started to view this place as home. I was happy here, but already getting a little restless. "I''ve been thinking."


    "What about?" I ask, taking a seat as Nyah puts the dishes in the sink.


    "About you. More specifically, about what happens when there is nothing else for Zerrious here." she sits down, taking a deep breath. "You have to go with him."


    "What?" I''m shocked, completely lost for words.


    "I''m not tryin'' to get rid of you, and you will always be welcome here, but this aint it for you. I can tell there''s more. There''s something about you. You got to go, I can''t explain it." What do I even do in this situation?


    "Marry me then." What the fuck am I doing? "Marry me so I have to come back to you, and I''ll bring tons of stories for the kids, and I''ll always have someone who loves me safe and sound." This was rash, it was the first city of many we intended to visit. Zerrious hadn''t gotten attached, why did I have to cause problems?


    "Sigurd, are you proposing?" she asked playfully in response.


    "I suppose so," I said.


    "Yes of course, I was thinking you would leave! This is wonderful!" She stands up and runs the short distance between us. We embrace, we kiss, and when Zerrious returns, I ask him a few more favors.


    Zerrious makes us rings, shiny platinum with gold scripting all around them. As long as we both wear the rings we will know if the other is alive, no matter the distance.


    "Marriage is upheld my magic here. I don''t know how it was in your world, but you will be bound by this covenant under penalty of death. You will both be stronger, but also more limited. Understand what you are getting into before you commit fully," Zerrious explains to both of us. Neither of us knew this, but we weren''t worried about it. We both already wear the rings, holding each other close. Nyah takes it upon herself to find a venue for the ceremony while I continue to work on transcribing as many stories as I can before Zerrious leaves and I have follow.


    The preparation takes as long as it needs to, Zerrious working on as many Names as he can. The plan was to marry a week before we leave, give us a honeymoon period, witch still gave us a long time, as Zerrious still struggled with magic. Nyah took the time to make this day as perfect as she could with what little money the two of us had.


    I took the time to finally go to the building filled with Named bards. I rapped on the door, not as much sound as I would have expected coming from the other side.


    "Come in," came the voice of someone behind the door. The gender was undefined, but it clearly meant that there was no sound proofing on the door. I walked in, expecting a sort of gathering place, or maybe a stage, but instead there sat a young. . . person. It was throwing me off that the flowing clothes and voice made the gender unidentifiable. I had heard of people that did this sort of thing back on earth, but I thought it was just a running joke in anime. "Can I help you?"


    "I think so. I''m a Named bard, so I figured I should come here and see. . . what other bards are doing. I guess."


    "Well, you can get registered, and then people will be able to find you when they want you. It''s more reliable cash."


    "Oh, that''s all this is?" I ask. Expecting more was clearly my fault as little stock was put into music in this society.


    "Yeah, it works for most people, although travelers don''t really get anything out of it. I''m assuming you''re a traveler?" he asks in return.


    "I suppose so. I guess I leave then." I stood there, awkwardly fidgeting for a moment while the person shrugged. Eventually I was back on the streets, not sure where to go. I didn''t need more schools of magic, the two I had served my purposes more than I really needed, and all for the cost of teaching the same spell to two people.


    My feet mimic my mind, that is to say, they wander. There was nowhere specifically I needed to go, but I didn''t just want to go back home. I should have left a book on how to teach music, like I left in the orphanage. I only knew guitar, and from there only treble clef, but I never understood why we needed more than one clef anyways, so I didn''t bother trying to figure out the other ones. "I bet Zerrious would be willing to make a few instruments for the orphanage," I thought aloud, finally looking up from the cobblestone to find myself not four streets from home.


    As before it was a dirty place, the kind that would have most people checking their pockets every few minutes to make sure they weren''t pickpocketed by anyone. I wasn''t worried, what few belongings I had with me were in rings, and I assumed that they couldn''t be stolen from. I was wrong, of course, but I didn''t know that at the time. I started wandering home, making my way around the streets and noticing the various groups of adolescent thieves. One group I passed caught my attention.


    Most of the groups were barely noticed out of the corner of my eye, and gone by the time my gaze could fall on them. But this group had a boy much larger than the rest, and he clearly wasn''t used to hiding in the streets. He seemed to hold himself in a familiar way, and I didn''t know many people well enough to recognize their standing.


    "Must be a boy from the orphanage, fresh from safety," I muttered. Nyah never wanted her kids to end up on the streets, even though they did more often then not. I figured I could help him out, take him back to safety. I started walking that direction, slowly as to not spook them. When I drew close the kids scattered, disappearing into shadows of buildings, completely undetectable. One boy was slower on the uptake, and I caught a glimpse of his forearm before he got over a short wall and disappeared like the others.


    That forearm had a lot of Names on it. Names I recognized, because I had helped him earn some of them.


    Zerrious had taken to the streets.

 A Land Shark

    I pace the entry hall in the orphanage, waiting for Zerrious to return.


    "Sigurd? What are you doing, it''s late," says Nyah as she notices that I''ve finally returned but hadn''t moved from in front of the door.


    "Zerrious is on the streets," I told her.


    "He walks the streets every night on his way to learn something or other. What''s different about today?"


    "He isn''t walking the streets, he''s joined in with people on the streets. I hesitate to say gangs, but it sure seemed like it."


    "You don''t know it was him, plus, he''s got to have a good reason. That boy doesn''t do anything without purpose," she said, coming close and embracing me lightly.


    "I don''t know, he''s young," I said into her hair, leaning into her.


    "He''s an adult. Let him make his decisions, we all did dumb things at some point, at least he can take care of himself if things go bad."


    "I suppose you''re right. I''d still like to know."


    So we wait. It''s not long before Zerrious makes his way inside, opening the door and walking in, hood over his eyes and long sleeves covering his Names, different from when he left in the morning. We wait another moment, expecting him to say something, but he simply nods his head subtly in my direction and moves to brush past us as if we shared a class in middle school and nothing else.


    It may be that I was overreacting, this was the relationship we had. The two of us would do our own thing unless we needed anything from the other. Sometimes we would do something nice for the other, but it usually boiled down to a new song from me or a well cooked meal from him. Either way, it felt curt and a bit hurtful.


    "Zerrious," I say before he gets to far past us. "I saw you today."


    "I can explain," he starts, holding his hands up and facing us like wild animals.


    "Then please do, we were worried sick!" That phrase was a surprise from Nyah, but I suppose she''s been a mother much longer than I''ve known her, so it would make sense for her to have those phrases down pat.


    "I saw some kids in the street, they were fighting. It was a brutal thing and I went to help, but several more came out to stop me, telling me this is how things were, like a duel. ''This stays between them'' they said. Then one of the kids'' sleeves ripped, and I saw a Name I had never seen before. He was a Named thief, and in time, I found out that they were all Named. I needed training, and it opened my eyes to knew Names that I hadn''t thought of that I''ll need to get enough. So I''m training with them for a while. Don''t worry, I''m safe," Zerrious seemed to get more and more animated as he explained the Names he could get.


    It made sense. "Just stay safe. Oh, I just realized, I have something I''ve never used before. I need to remember how to do it, hold on," I say, finally remembering the other racial trait I had been randomly given. "This will help keep me at ease." I reach out with my Mana, speaking a simple incomprehensible phrase and twisting the Mana around until it forms the mark that I push into him.


    Zerrious'' eyes go distant and he accepts a prompt, allowing the mark to suffuse into his soul. What looks like a Name appears on the back of his neck, although the skin shines with an almost metallic sheen that marks it as decidedly different from a Name. The sigil is a book with words being written with every passing moment. Soon it settles in, looking more like a living tattoo, even though the skin still raises slightly, more like veins than the brands of Names.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    Zerrious has been marked by Human (American) racial trait: Eyes of the Watchful Scribe. All system notices will be visible to: David (Sigurd). Zerrious'' attributes will now be visible to: David (Sigurd).


    <hr>


    I was almost relieved to finally see the system messages, even if they had nothing to do with me. Like something vital in my experience was missing and now it was filled. A mystery that Zerrious would figure out, I was sure. I felt Zerrious standing there as a sort of sixth sense, almost what I imagined birds going north would feel, an almost draw in that direction that wasn''t distracting, but distinctly present.


    "I''m surprised you didn''t use it sooner considering we were traveling together. I would have thought you do that first day, but it''s a racial thing so I didn''t want to push," said Zerrious, now unable to hide his advancements from me. Not that he did, but if he got something really unsavory I would give him a stern talking to.


    "You should have, I needed a sort of push to use it." Now I had two lives in the back of my mind.


    Nyah smiled. "Now that you two have figured yourselves out, can we go to bed? It''s never a slow day when caring for kids."


    "Quite so, my love," I responded, placing my forehead against hers. A childlike smile found it''s way onto her lips and she bounded off up the stairs. I followed soon after, leaving Zerrious behind. He shook his head and moved along behind us, going to his quaint room next to the kids massive living space.


    The next day I eat a wonderful meal, left on the long dining table by Zerrious. The kids had been up already and had eaten likewise, a few of the younger kids stealing some potato pieces or bits of egg from my plate before I got down. I didn''t mind, there was plenty to go around. After eating there wasn''t much for me to do. Teaching kids music was always nice, but it had been overdone a little bit over the months I''ve been here.


    I figured I could see Zerrious'' attributes now, so might as well take a look. With a thought the dark screen appeared in my vision with numbers and descriptions.


    <hr>


    Zerrious


    Attributes:


    Strength: 23%


    Agility: 18%


    Fortitude: 34%


    Intelligence: 51%


    Wisdom: 16%


    Sociality: 3%


    Shown as a percent above average


    Names: 664


    Boons: 6


    Boon of Bodily Balance


    Boon of Speed of Thought


    Boon of Combat <u>Clarity</u>


    Boon of Endurance


    Boon of Extended Life


    Boon of Strength of Will


    A boon is earned for every one hundred Names earned, or if the gods have determined you deserving of a reward beyond a Name.


    Skills: 678


    Spells: 14


    Evocation:


    Fireball


    Ice storm


    Mana Blade


    Lightning Strike


    Burning Hand


    <u>Monstrous</u><strong style="text-decoration-line: underline"> Shriek


    <strong style="text-decoration-line: underline">Create Flame


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    <strong style="text-decoration-line: underline">Fog Cloud


    <strong style="text-decoration-line: underline">Send Message


    <strong style="text-decoration-line: underline">Warding Wind


    Illusion:


    <strong style="text-decoration-line: underline">Disguise Self


    <strong style="text-decoration-line: underline">Engulf in Shadow


    <strong style="text-decoration-line: underline">Phantom Strikes


    <strong style="text-decoration-line: underline">False Item


    <hr>


    Holy hell! Over six hundred Names? That kid was far more driven than I ever thought. He must have started when he was not three years old! I was just lucky the system had auto minimized it, because that list would have been ridiculous. I didn''t need to know every skill and Name he had, so I left it alone. What the spells were called were interesting, but again, I didn''t pry into what they did. I assumed it would start auto minimizing after he had every magic Name he could get in this city, otherwise it would take up too much space.


    Seeing these notices again made me want to see my own attributes, but I knew that would never happen. Imagine how easily I could have understood spells and skills if I had been notified of exactly what it did. Back on earth everyone wanted this game-like system in the real world, but most just assumed that magic would come with it, or that it would pop up with a snarky remark every ten minutes about something or other, but people here rarely got notices. The only times people would get a notice would be with the acquiring of a Name, skill, spell, or obvious potentially fatal disease, poison, or attack. People normally only saw twenty or so notices in their lives.


    Zerrious was an obvious outlier, getting a new notice at least once a month.


    Thinking about it, I was gaining skills and Names at an incredible rate too. The difference is, I grew up in a world that knew much more and only got here a few years ago so I had some catching up to do. All things considered, I was fairly average when the topic was given deeper thought.


    "Oi! We don''t bite, Stacy! Release! Release!" Nyah yelled from the other room, breaking me out of my thoughts with a high pitched scream to accompany her melodic southern accent. Walking into the room found me staring at a bleeding Kayden with Stacy in Nyah''s arms. Stacy was grinning like she forgot she was a girl and not a shark while Nyah unfortunately seemed to be going ignored. I went to take care of Kayden, who seemed to be taking the bite well.


    "Don''t want infection setting in," I said as bandages and a quick Reject Toxins and Disease spell was applied. It may not have been necessary, but it would make me feel terrible if it ended up infected when something could have been done.


    "Thanks," said the boy who seemed to be taking the attack surprisingly well.


    "Of course," I respond with a smile. The boy ran off, going to play with some other kids or to find a toy to play with himself. There were some here, but there wasn''t a ton of toys for the kids to play with. They seemed to get on just fine and were plenty happy without.


    "Stacy, ya can''t go bitin'' people when ya get bored!" Nyah said, shaking the grinning child lightly. She chomps her teeth twice in response which seems to infuriate my fianc¨¦e as her face twisted into a hard line and she cocked her head away from the child just a bit.


    It was cute, but it wasn''t going to help anything. "I''ll take Stacy and we''ll talk it out. You go watch the other kids, I''m sure they''d love to play," I said as I swept in and stole the child right from Nyahs grasp.


    "You sure? She''s a right beastie she is," she responded, the anger draining from her face as quickly as water from from bath with the plug pulled.


    "I''m sure I can handle it. I did manage to make it in the wilderness without you, how hard can it be." Very hard. That''s how hard it could be.


    "Now, why would you bite someone?" I asked her as we made our way to a corner of the house that went unused at the moment.


    "I''m a shark!" she shouts in response before trying to take part of my arm off with her teeth. I regretted telling the kids about sharks at that moment.


    "That doesn''t make sense, how could you be a shark? You''re on land."


    Stacy seemed to hesitate for a moment before hardily biting my finger and saying, "I''m a land shark" around my finger. A small squeak escaped my lips before I could stop it.


    "Did I ever tell you what sharks do?" I asked, making it up as I go but hoping it would solve my problem. It was a strange situation, no doubt.


    "They eat people what get to close," she mutters, staring hungerly at me. That had some cannibal overtones, but that can be dealt with later.


    "Why would they do that?" I lead her on, hoping that question alone would stop her.


    "Because. . . They like it!" she says slowly, bouncing on her feet and lunging halfheartedly for my hand which is pulled away quickly before her sharp teeth could find purchase.


    "No, it''s because they have to," I tell her. How does that make sense? Why would they have to eat someone? "They have to protect the people in the sea. As a land shark you have to protect all the people on the land."


    "I do?" She seemed less than thrilled at the prospect, but she wasn''t clacking her teeth anymore. Improvement. Painful, lie filled improvement.


    "Yes, that means you can''t bite anyone, okay?" I was hoping it would at least buy me a few days before she relapsed.


    "Okay, I only bite that bad people!" she yelled as she sprinted down the hall before I could react.


    "Oh no."


    I ran down the hall and quickly down the stairs to see Stacy sitting to the side of the room filled with children just. . . Watching. It was creepy, but it wasn''t biting, so I took the win. Washing the blood off my finger didn''t take long and I left it to heal without a bandage, no point in wasting resources the kids might need.


    "That''s impressive, you fixed her," Nyah said, coming up behind me while I muttered the incantation from Reject Toxins and Disease on the bite.


    "Oh, far from it. I just narrowed her target list and gave up. You''re a saint, I tell you," I respond.


    "Well, now it''s my turn to say far from it. I don''t have any Names at all. Most consider me worthless, but these kids need me. I do what I can." I turn towards her now.


    "Not a single Name?" She shook her head apprehensively. I wasn''t sure why I was surprised. She had little free time, and I had seen her naked, so I should have noticed the lack of brands on her arms but it still seemed more normal to not have Names than to have them. "Do you want one?" I asked. I would be glad to teach her anything I know. Magic would be useful for her, and so would teaching, and music.


    "I don''t have the time for that. I don''t have to be Named to be useful," she said, growing defensive.


    "I didn''t mean it like that, love," I said, moving closer to comfort her.


    "Of course you did, everyone does! People always looked down on me because I chose to keep this place, because I chose to have no time to master any skills, because I wanted to help these kids and no one else would!" She cried then, breaking down in rage and sadness, falling into my arms even though I''m the one who made her reach this point.


    "I didn''t get my first Name until I was at least thirty. Names are still a little bit new to me, even after these years to grow used to them. I don''t see Names, at least, not as much as most. I just figured, my life before traveling was as a teacher, so I could teach you if you would like. But you don''t have to, not if you don''t want to." She sniffed, her tears starting to fade.


    "Really?"


    "Of course," I said.


    "I want to learn that one spell you use all the time when the kids get cuts or when they get sick." I figured abjuration would be the way she leaned. She''s a protector, not a scholar.


    "Then that one spell you shall learn, and many others to keep our kids safe," I said, putting my forehead against hers and wiping the remnants of tears from her face. The kids were mine as much as anyone''s, so I claimed them as such.


    Over the next month I taught her, and she acclimated better than anyone I had ever met. She earned her first Name not two weeks later, mastering Mana Storage better than I did. The others were earned in to time. A prodigy if I ever did see one.


    During one of Nyahs late night training sessions I got a series of notifications.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    Zerrious has been Named by a master of his craft and has been acknowledged as his equal.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Name gained: Minuscil (Charlatan).


    Name: Minuscil is the profession Name for the following skills:


    Street Fighting


    Pickpocketing


    Theft


    Stealth


    Climbing


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Name: Minuscil is a profession Name and counts as a Name for every skill required to earn it plus one (6 total).


    <hr>


    So Zerrious had earned his Names. That meant that we wouldn''t have long until the wedding was due. Nyah stepped up preparations, setting things in motion soon after. That night Zerrious went to me to tell me to start getting the wedding set up, and I told him I already knew. I already wore the ring, something done as a proposal rather than the actual marriage which was a bond of souls and Mana. Zerrious had already agreed to hold the ceremony, having been trained by the enchanter back home years ago for this sort of thing. This was considered a sort of enchantment, even though it was markedly different, even earning it''s own Name, even if it falls within an enchanters purview.


    Zerrious went out to try and earn the last few magic Names, which would come with the learning and specialization of a few spells now that the basics were down. As soon as one magic was mastered the others were a matter of thinking differently while doing the somatic components of the spells. Theory was involved of course, but there was little known about how it actually worked other than being a diluted version of the Aether I had access to. In theory, Mana had to be diluted with pieces of this world in order to effect it, otherwise the effects would all occur in a higher layer that wouldn''t actually change anything on the layer we reside in. Each layer is intrinsically linked, I knew that much. I figured that if an energy became to "high" it would go to another layer to stabilize. This was as much as I had guessed and it seemed to hold water.


    Zerrious had the ceremony memorized, so that wouldn''t be a problem. One nice thing about this world is, once you had a skill, it couldn''t fade. Your ability to use the skill might, such as not enough strength to hold a hammer, but you would always know how to smith if you knew at one point. A ceremony would never be forgotten, and a pattern would never tarnish in your mind. Memories could be forgotten, and often were, but skills never would. A boon the gods made intrinsic in this world alongside Names.


    Over time notices started pouring in, informing me of skills gained and spells learned. Eventually the time came for the wedding, which we had set a date for and invited everyone we could. I wanted to extend an invitation to much of Zerrious'' village, but the postmen here had no idea it existed and I couldn''t describe where it was well enough to matter. Plus, the forest could be dangerous, especially for the students and former students I wanted to invite.


    The day came. Zerrious and I went out to party, drinking and bandying about town like teenagers. Apparently bachelor parties were one of many universal customs. The problem came with the terrible hangover my wedding day. I hadn''t seen Nyah at all, a custom that was common here. One was supposed to grow apart physically to grow our souls into one. I don''t know, but I got into the nicest clothes Zerrious could make and I waited, blindfolded in a clearing in the forest somewhere I hadn''t seen. Another strange custom, but Nyah wanted it, so who was I to judge.


    suddenly Zerrious touched my shoulder, and I knew something had started. It was a sort of reverb in the fabric of reality I constantly absorbed from like a sponge. I felt hands reach behind my head and I tilt my neck to make it easier for Nyah''s feminine hands to reach the knot.


    The strip of black cloth fell away from my eyes, and I was blinded by beauty and light, the perfect woman standing in front of me in a dress of electrifying blue, the color of her Mana signature just like my suit was the deep green of mine. Everything fell away for a moment, Nyah the only thing in the world worth noticing, even through the blinding light of the sun.

 Aether and Karaoke

    As the world resolves around me I see gorgeous flower arrangements in greens, blues, and whites hanging as if naturally grown from the trees, which seem to have grown into a perfect circle. It looked like there were repeating patterns in the wall of vegetation but it was hard to tell. We stood at the center of a group of people, many children and a few adults, all standing in a solemn circle around us. Even Stacy the land shark stood quietly without trying to bite anyone.


    Zerrious is among them, counting under his breath how many people were in each ring of the concentric circles of people. Prime numbers, I realize. It must have been much more complicated a ceremony than I initially thought.


    "Today, we gather in this moment, frozen in time, to make two one, to make a place in eternity for a love everlasting." The Mana in the area starts cycling, becoming a gold river running through the outmost circle of people. "A soul that cannot be bound by the mortal coil will be forged this day from souls who long for each other even in the most pleasant of moments, and in the darkest of times." Zerrious starts waving his hand, directing the river of magic to form floating sigils over the ever flowing river of gold. "One soul to rival the power of gods." The Mana flows, filling the second circle as well as the first. "One soul unshaken by the harsh realities of this world." Sigils form above the second circle with more waving of Zerrious'' hands, more complicated than the last. "Two worlds collide and make something new, something unshakable." The magic flows around Nyah and I, pooling in a gold whirlpool about our waists. "That these two shall no longer be two, we gather for the permission of Ensiar of bonds." A final sigil forms above our heads, pulling from the whirlpool of gold about us to create a maze of shifting lines in the sky.


    The concentric circles of people are gone, the rivers of gold are gone, all that exists is the forest and Nyah with no warning.


    "The words of the marriage bond have before been so true," I hear from behind me. Nyah looks over my shoulder and I whip around, preparing to pull a quill blade. A man stands there, normal, dark skin and hair, although his iris''s burn a vibrant gold, like the rivers that previously surrounded us. There is this sense of vastness to him, a quality that''s hard to place. "Two worlds indeed intend to collide today."


    "Ensiar of bonds?" I asked, taking a wild guess.


    "Right so. I''m the only god that people truly know to worship. They understand that I am not the only god, but I am the only god that takes a personal hand in the world through any means other than the system messages, which you don''t have. Not for yourself anyways," says the god as he faces me.


    "Are we supposed to appeal to you? I''m sorry, great one, but I don''t know how this works," Nyah says as she moves by my side.


    "Normally, I would congratulate you, bind your souls, and return you to your layer, but this is different." The layer did feel different, more. . . fluid. Things were solid, and the area around us wasn''t shifting at all, but I got a distinct feeling that this was due to outside influence, not inherent properties of the plane.


    "I''m different," I say, a stone dropping in my gut.


    "Yes. The travel from your world to ours fundamentally changed you. Your body has taken on an inherent etherealness. Not ghost like, more like an affinity for magic. That affinity, however, has made your soul more. . . physical in nature. By binding your souls you take on qualities of each others souls, which means your soul becomes less potent, and hers becomes more potent." We sit patiently, waiting for him to finish his explanation. "I simply don''t know what that would do to either of you. It may just do nothing, after all, you''ll now share Mana reserves, but it might cause unforeseen problems. Matter changing fundamentally can be catastrophic and then altering it further can be more so."


    "So you wont marry us?" Nyah asked, echoing my thoughts.


    "That''s not what I''m saying at all. I became the god of bonds for a reason, everyone that wishes to make a serious bond should get the chance. I propose something different. A weaker bond, one that doesn''t make your souls one, but instead binds you differently. It''s not as powerful, but it also has no chance of ripping either of you apart. What do you say?" This was a kind god, one that talked with people as if they were equals, even though nothing could be further from the truth.


    "Give us the normal bond," said Nyah. I was surprised, because the main danger was to her, but I buckled down and took her side, agreeing with a nod of my head.


    "If you wish. The difference in your makeup may cause something of a lightshow, but I will be able to contain it, so at worst, the two of you are the only people injured by this if you want to continue anyways. I do this for the foolishness of love, and that I find in you very strongly my dears," said the god, making a show of stretching and cracking his neck, even though it was common knowledge that gods had no body to stretch.


    Nyah grabs my hand and I squeeze it reassuringly, even though I was likely more scared the she was having an innate sense of the mass destruction possible when messing with souls and matter. We look at each other, and suddenly we start running into each other, like water thrown on wet paint. Suddenly we''re back in the middle of the circle, the final words of the ritual still echoing in the air. The river of gold has gathered around us and started forming an egg like structure around us. Before the top closed I saw the noon day sky go dark with two mimicries of worlds hanging in the sky, my world and this world.


    This world had similar continents, slightly closer together and more submerged, and a lot more miniscule islands. Then the egg sealed around us, gold suffusing the very air we breathe. "I love you," I manage before something pulls at me, a faintly familiar sensation that could only have come from my travel into this new place.


    Nyah screamed. What seemed like a stretch to my soul that had grown used to growth and change with it''s physical qualities was a tearing to the stable and as of yet untouched soul of Nyah. I held her as she fell to her knees, then there was a pop and we were thrown into the Aether.


    I pushed out with my mind, stabilizing a bubble around us, but my soul was starting to hurt now, an acidic burning that seemed to spread throughout my entire being. It had to have been worse for Nyah, who was struggling to breathe. I couldn''t help her, I was barely keeping my concentration enough to hold reality up around us. I reach out, grabbing the fabric of reality between my hands and pull with all my might, crudely ripping a hole in the side of the world and letting Aether spill out and reality spill in, both being eradicated in worlds with inherent properties antithetical to each other.


    The Aether whips out, lashing my eyes and causing me to scream out and loose my grip, forcing both me and Nyah to be ejected from the Aether and back into that golden egg, which has grown to a blinding crescendo. The egg starts to condense, growing smaller as the bond seemed to have been forged somewhat successfully and Nyah is finally able to start catching her breath, tears streaming from her wide eyes as she gasped for breath. I sit down, trying to recover mentally from the indescribable pain that made us one in this moment.


    The golden skin of the egg settled on our skin as we held each other, seeping into us even as we calmed down, falling into a deep slumber before the world could catch a glimpse of the now married couple.


    I woke up tangled with Nyah in our bed. Opening my eyes brought me a sort of nausea that forced me to squeeze my eyes closed. The Aether was visible, distinct from my sight of the regular world but visible at the same time. Like having my eyes looking in different directions at all times. Luckily the only thing in the Aether were patterns of Aether, so I was able to quickly adapt. Another odd thing was that my Mana seemed different. In fact, it didn''t feel like Mana at all. It felt more like. . . My Mana had been replaced with Aether.


    And my soul had been bound to Nyah. That meant Nyah also had Aether instead of Mana.


    There was something else too. That gold power seemed to have made lasting differences. The other changes seemed to be due to being in the Aether when our souls were combining, but the gold power had remained, something that Zerrious hadn''t warned me about.


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    I was prodding the golden power in my soul when Nyah woke up and asked "Sigurd? What happened?" I didn''t have answers, and she didn''t open her eyes, she just snuggled in closer, resting her head on my chest. We had both been changed out of our clothes and put into night clothes. I guessed it had been about a day, maybe less considering it was dark out.


    "That went worse than I hoped, but better than I expected." I recognized that voice, male and eternal in a way that was impossible.


    "Ensiar?" I asked. Nyahs eyes popped wide open and she sat up, looking to the corner of the room where a man of gold stood. She didn''t seem disoriented, so the Aether that hit me in the eyes must have caused my sight to change.


    "I was lucky enough to be allowed to speak with you after your bond to tell you about some of the. . . odd occurrences that appeared at your wedding." He moved forward, conjuring a simple chair, completely ordinary except for the radiant gold flowing from it. Nyah and I moved to the edge of our bed, sitting and patiently waiting for the explanation. I could Nyah felt weird and wrapped an arm around her. "The golden egg was obviously a barrier to keep the dangers inside, I told you I would do that beforehand. You were thrown into the Aether, and since that happened during your fundamental change in your souls, you both became very in tune with Aether. It shouldn''t cause any problems, but Aetherwalking should be easier for both of you, and yes, I''ve suppressed your system notices. You should get them when I''ve explained everything so it wont be a shock."


    "I sort of figured, continue," I said. It may have been a little disrespectful, but this god seemed pretty chill.


    He smiled and continued as asked. "That Aether experience would have been certain death if David here didn''t have the perfect skill set to bring you back-"


    "He is Sigurd. I know he used to be David, but he''s different now. He isn''t the same man that woke up on the forest floor five years ago," Nyah defended me.


    "I don''t mind, love. Both are me, so it doesn''t matter which one people use." It was a more recent bit of self acceptance, but it was understated enough that it hadn''t come up before, most people only knowing me by Sigurd.


    "Apologies. I do strive to call people what they wish but it gets hard to keep up. Eternity is a long time to have every mononym memorized." Nyah blushed, looking down at her lap where her hands sat. "Anyway, you managed to get back safely, although Sigurd took a blast of Aether to the face. Luckily, it only changed his eye color and gave him Aethersight. A good outcome if I ever did see one. Although, since the Aether started spilling out while you were forcing your way out, the little golden barrier absorbed a lot of it. Almost all of it, in fact. The barrier was intended to disperse, but it was too dense. Instead it got rid of itself by expending itself, closing in on you two and making the bond between you stronger than I thought possible. It''s a dangerous power though."


    The god paused as we both reeled from the complicated topics. It took several minutes for us to finally take stock of all the changes the god had pointed out. Only one thing was left. "What does it do?" I asked.


    "It looks like it made the bond physical as well as spiritual." I was confused. We didn''t share a body, but we did share a soul. That''s how the bond works, but if it''s physical then we share a body? Was this some sort of mental space in our combined body? "Let me explain. Normally, the bond allows you to exchange control of each others Mana and spiritual strength between two bodies. Now, that applies physically as well. If one of you needs to be incredibly strong or agile, they can draw on the strength or agility of the other. However, while one is strong, the other is weak. If one of you die, you both become debilitated. Mana is easier to share because having none isn''t near as debilitating as having no physical strength." I understood. We had a shared "pool" of every resource we had, and we could take from that pool to make ourselves more at the cost of our partner.


    "I understand," I said, meeting the gods flowing eyes.


    "You should get back, your friends are worried." The god flowed away like fall leaves in a gust of wind, leaving us still laying in our bed together.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    ERROR


    Zerrious has preformed a marriage!


    ERROR


    Zerrious has opened a portal to the Aether.


    ERROR


    Ensiar of Bonds has intervened.


    ERROR


    <hr>


    Oh god, that''s what Zerrious saw when he preformed the marriage? He probably lost his mind. I dismissed the notice and moved on to the next one.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    Marriage successfully preformed! The unique nature of: David (Sigurd) has had adverse effects on the marriage ceremony, but the adverse effects were counteracted by: Ensiar of Bonds.


    <hr>


    Well, that was better. The effects weren''t necessarily counteracted, but that was close enough to the truth to not matter.


    I could feel the bond between us, strength and Aether flowing freely between us as we read our notifications. She had more than I did, only having Zerrious'' notices. I focused on keeping both resources even and it stayed. Even when my focus left for something else it stayed where I wanted it, though I could tell it would easily flow if I wanted it to.


    I start getting dressed, the night clothes not necessarily revealing but not for guests. Nyah follows, still reading a notice with a far off look while clothing herself. "Wait, I can''t use magic?" she exclaimed. I figured it would take some doing to get Aether to have the same effects as Mana.


    "Not necessarily, we just need to figure out how to make it work. Aether is too pure for this layer. I wont get into what that means because I don''t fully understand it, but its so pure that the world can''t be touched by it. We have to. . . dilute it, I guess." I start messing with it, blasting bits of Aether out. It remains for a second before bleeding back into the Aether.


    I could feel the world around me, the influence sort of building up on my skin as Mana gets filtered back into Aether by my body. I use my mind to open up a little, letting some of the corruption in. Or trying to. It didn''t work. My cane was leaning on the doorframe, and I thought that it looked a lot like a wizard staff from videogames. I picked it up and pushed the corruption into the staff. It flowed into the carvings as if were made for that purpose, seeping into the spider leg. The leg felt more. . . real than anything else. It had taken the reality that made Mana effective and shunted it into the staff. The reality from my skin was a deep Caribbean green, clearly a mixture of my green and Nyahs less plentiful blue Mana.


    I held the staff, pulling some reality from as I cast the spell and mixing it with the Aether as I spewed it out. It worked, the shield seemed weaker than normal though. Less reality so it could only effect this layer so much. It still worked though!


    I found that the staff was the only thing on my person that could actually store reality. It was an Aetherweb spider, so it must have been an adaptation to make survival more likely. I was able to walk with it normally and store reality as I did, and I tested this by taking a lap around the room. I had nothing for Nyah though, so her abjuration Name would go to waste until I found something for her. If I found something for her. It seemed that this was a one of a kind material.


    "How did you do that?" she asked. I told her everything. "I guess the Name you gave me wont be much use then."


    "It''ll see plenty of use, because I''m going to go find you something similar." I may need to return to the village in the woods for it, but she would get it.


    I couldn''t fight with the cane and a quill blade, so I found that as long as it was touching skin I could use it to store and use reality. It was a bit too long and rigid to put it anywhere touching skin, and I quickly found that it had to touch skin the entire time I''m using the quill blade or it''ll peter into Aether in moments. The spell continues to work, but it takes effect in the Aether instead of the physical layer. My shields should be enough to prevent the need for the blade, at least until I could jump into the Aether and get away.


    Nyah quickly gets herself ready, makeup not a wide practice here, and we go out to meet with our worried friends. "Oh shit, we left Zerrious with twenty kids in the middle of the day," I realize as we make it to the top of the stairs.


    "Oh no," said Nyah as she realizes the same thing. We both rush down the stairs to see Stacy glued to the ceiling with magic as she smiled and snapped her teeth at people while all the other kids play with toys. The few that didn''t want to play were learning to whittle from Zerrious. It was actually rather peaceful, and Stacy didn''t seem to be hurt or causing problems, even if it was an odd sort of time out.


    "They woke up, they woke up!" excitedly shouts a little girl as she spots us. All eyes turn to us, even the suspended Stacy looks.


    "Look who returned to the world of the living. You aren''t hurt, are you?" Zerrious stands and walks over, leaving the small blades in the kids hands. It probably wasn''t a great idea, but they were the older kids so I wasn''t as worried as I could have been.


    "We''re better than fine," Nyah responds, entwining her fingers in mine.


    "Good. We''ve got food, I''m sure your hungry. Don''t worry about the kids, I''ve got them for the rest of the night," Zerrious said, turning back to supervise the kids working on little wooden statues and toys. I met eyes with Nyah, knowing that we had come to the same conclusion.


    "Good luck," I said as we both sped into the kitchen to eat the steak wonderfully prepared by Zerrious earlier in the day.


    After eating we went out and partied, making sure not to drink too much so we could still function the next day. Apparently, I drank more than I intended because the next day while I was out buying fruit I found out that I invented karaoke in this world. I wasn''t sure how I had made that work, but now karaoke was a staple in Amos'' bar.

 Honeymoon of Sorts

    Zerrious was a quick learner, unfortunately. Nyah and I didn''t have the time together we had wanted, watching children and preparing for adventure taking up all of our time. We did have our moments of fun, forgoing sleep on several occasions to teach Nyah some of the. . . techniques from home.


    No, I will not elaborate further.


    I was packing a bag, filling each ring with rations while the rest hold clothing, soap, and shelter for the camping that would no doubt take place on more than one night, when I got the notice that Zerrious had mastered the last of the magic Names he had intended to earn in this city.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    Zerrious has been Named by a master of his craft and been acknowledged as his equal.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Name gained: Sangrial (Diviner).


    Name: Sangrial is the profession Name for the following skills:


    Coal Reading


    Bone Casting


    Palm Reading


    Fate Casting


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Name: Sangrial is a profession Name and counts as a Name for every skill required to earn it plus one (5 total).


    <hr>


    "So we leave on the morrow," I said while studying the prompts.


    "What nonsense you talkin'' bout now?" Nyah was not as interested in the melodrama as I was.


    "Zerrious earned all the Names here," I told her.


    "Why don'' you just say that? Ya don'' got to be so cryptic." Aye that the love of my life provide such perfect opposition in an effort of balance. "Wipe that look off your face, you''ll say somethin'' dumb if ya don''." She knew me too well, even in such short a time together.


    "You''re right, my love. As always." I stood up and planted a kiss on her lips even as her hands were busy folding her laundry, as mine was already packed. I would assume Zerrious was packed as well, though he was a big boy, I trusted him to handle it himself.


    I stole out of the room, wandering calmly down the stairs to say my goodbyes to the litany of children that had taken a rapid liking to me and my stories of a far off land. The children played as they always do, except for Stacy who was still off-putting to me as she sat and watched in a corner.


    "Sigurd!" several of the kids yelled, running and colliding heavily with my knees. "Do you have another story?" asked one.


    "Not this time I''m afraid. I actually came down to say goodbye."


    "What!?" was the cry as pandemonium spread throughout the horde of youth.


    "Tomorrow I will be leaving. I don''t know when I will come back, but I will come back." My shouts didn''t do much to calm the crowd. I felt a sudden and sharp pain in my leg, flinching back to see that Stacy had bit my leg with tear filled eyes.


    "I only bite bad people, and people who leave are bad people," she sniffled.


    Well that just wasn''t fair. These kids were breaking my heart far more than I thought they would. The more I thought on it the more I broke into gentle tears myself. Some of these kids would move on to higher places before I returned, and most would undoubtedly forget me.


    I dropped to a knee, reaching out and wrapping a hug around Stacy''s shoulders, her tears falling on my shoulder even as mine fall on hers. Soon every child had joined in the massive group hug, sniffling and some wailing echoing into the entry hall.


    After a long moment I heard the front door open and close. Looking up I saw Zerrious watching with a gentle smile on his face as he leaned on the doorjamb. "I assume you''ve heard the news?" he asked.


    "He has," said Nyah, who I hadn''t even noticed had joined the hug.


    "I am prepared to follow you, to the end of the known world and beyond."


    "I would hope so. We may very well need to before the end of our travels." That brought me up short. How hard could it possibly be to get the last three hundred something Names? He already had almost seven hundred, even at only just over twenty years old. It probably won''t take anything too crazy.


    "Well, I say it''s time for dinner. Why don''t we go have one last meal before bed?" I said, returning my attention to the children.


    Dinner was a sort of roast beef approximation. I wasn''t sure what animal it came from, and frankly I didn''t want to know, but it tasted just like beef, only a bit sweeter. The more I said goodbye the less I wanted to leave, but there was a pull that seemed to tell me that I had to go. I couldn''t explain it, but my journey did not end here.


    After eating the kids were sent to bed, each and every one giving me a hug before retiring with tears in their eyes.


    I led Nyah up to our room to spend one last night together, nearly dragging her up the stairs and through the doorway, planting a passionate kiss on her lips as I kicked the door closed.


    "Sigurd." A hand was shaking me from slumber, providing a jarring and rhythmic pressure to the soft bliss surrounding me. "Sigurd!"


    "Zerrious," I mumbled, moving an arm from around Nyah in order to roll and make sleepy eye contact with the chipper boy.


    "Good, you''re awake. Get dressed, I''m leaving soon."


    "What kind of asshole. . ." I muttered before carefully extracting myself from the bed without waking Nyah and getting dressed. I pulled on the armor and a simple cloak to keep the morning chill at bay, grabbing my cane and funneling reality into it as had quickly become automatic. Before leaving I ran a hand through my hair which had grown long since I hadn''t bothered to cut it since entering the city. I turned, planting a kiss on Nyah''s forehead and embracing her once more. "I''ll be back my love. I''ll write at every city."


    "I trust you love," she whispered, smiling and kissing me lightly. "Don'' die, I''d never forgive myself for letting you leave."


    "I promise, my life will be eternal if you so wish."


    "Go, I''m sure the boy''s waitin'' for you," she said, grinning lightly with shallow tears pooling in her eyes.


    "Sleep, love. One day when you wake I will be with you again, but for now I must leave for adventures unknown."


    With those final words I stole from the room, walking down the stairs and meeting Zerrious at the doorway. He holds up a sandwich as I approach, waiting for me to take it without a word and take a bite as he pushes the door open. We stepped out together, closing the door behind us and walking towards the gate surrounding the barren lawn.


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    I paused and looked back at the building filled with so much love. "I''ll be back, just give me time," I muttered before taking a deep breath and turning away.


    "I''ll make sure of it," Zerrious said to the building in all seriousness. It never ceased to surprise me how much he could perceive without trying. I took the boy in a one armed hug for a moment as we made our way to the gate set into the wall surrounding the city. The gate wasn''t a problem going in, and they didn''t really seem worried about people entering or leaving, more so about crime and contraband. Those were never activities I wished to partake in, although I''m sure Zerrious knew something about it after working with thieves.


    "Morning boys," I said to the sleepy guards keeping watch as we made our approach.


    "Leaving so early? Travelers are crazy. Are you leaving with contraband?" said one guard without lifting his head from his arms resting on a railing.


    "No, neither of us are," I answered for us.


    The guard held up an orb in response and I breathed on it just as I did upon first entering the city. It glowed white, but the guard didn''t even seem to look before waving us forward, back to the world outside of the secure walls that stand as much a cage for those inside as protection from those outside.


    The thought brought me up short. When had I started to view this city as a prison? Could my restlessness truly be so bad that staying put for so long is its own hell? That didn''t feel right, but it''s the only thing that made any semblance of sense. The thought made me angry regardless, that the home of my love, my home, would be viewed so unfavorably by none other than myself.


    A deep breath cleared all these things from my mind as I followed Zerrious blindly down the road. "Any plans?" I asked.


    "Not particularly. I''ve earned most Names that can be earned in a simple society once you''ve taught me what you know. The best way to grow now is to wander about until we find someone with less conventional knowledge."


    "It''s times like this I miss the internet. Anything you want to know would be simply explained by some Indian guy with four subscribers seven years ago."


    "Every time we speak I think I''ve got you all figured out until you say something like that and make me question everything. There is only one thing of you I have no doubt, and that is your unmistakable loyalty to those you care about."


    "You say that as if I''m an anime character. Sadly, I cannot fight with the power of friendship as I would like," I told him.


    "I''m sure if something like that exists we will find it and you can learn it. You will hold the supposed power of friendship as you call it," he laughed.


    "I''d like to see that. For the lols." Zerrious smiled and shook his head, unable to make heads or tales of the modern slang. We traveled down the road, deciding not to stray too far from the path yet.


    The road was surrounded by farmlands, the farmers living within the city walls and leaving to work the fields in the morning, most likely going out not far from the time of our departure. The rows of golden wheat and the pale green of corn growing along the path filled the air with a sort of freshness that undercut the strong scent of manure permeating the area. Walking to the beat of idle strumming on a guitar down the beaten dirt road took us quickly from view of the high walls.


    "I don''t know how long it will take to get to the next city, but I say we make this as productive as possible. Would you mind teaching me enchantment?" asked Zerrious just before we stopped for lunch, not much to hold us over but some jerky.


    "I don''t mind. Did you want to learn abjuration next? It does seem to have it''s own. . . intricacies that don''t seem to apply to the rest of the schools. It differs at least from enchantment," I told him, changing my grip on my cane which seemed to draw Zerrious'' attention heavily towards it without his conscious thought.


    "Yes, that was the plan," he responded, rolling his shoulders as if to prepare for a boxing match.


    "We will pause here. It isn''t easy to do this on the move without practice. I can do it, but it will be much more messy, the first of yours would explode with such instability," I said, laying the cane across my crossed legs. "Enchantment is a very powerful school of magic. The idea is to make a system of patterns that make something more than it can be on its own, not to change the thing itself as with. . . what do you call it? Transmutation? Regardless, you don''t change what exists into what does not exist, but make what exists more efficient, more powerful. Enchantment magic is how you may use Mana to leap over buildings and lift mountains. The problem is, that the more powerful it is, the more short-lived. Putting strain on the areas effected put strain on the magical matrix, and the more Mana that runs through it the more it will burn out. It will always burn out in time." I said as a preamble.


    "So you can''t fail a task if you cast the right enchantment?" asked Zerrious.


    "In theory. The matrix itself still holds a maximum, and yes, in the last moments the enchantment may provide a burst of power before burning out, but it will barely be more than the maximum at any given time."


    "I see. So like any spell then."


    "In a way. It uses ambient Mana, which may very well reduce your Mana regeneration while under its effects. The greatest part is that once it takes effect will remain so until the matrix burns out, and it is fairly cheap to place," I elaborated. "Allow me to demonstrate." I pushed Aether through my staff to convert it into Mana and then paused. "Allow me to try something," I said as I pushed the mana into a stable pattern that would -theoretically- increase Mana regeneration. The idea would be that the Mana filtered through the skin and pooled, some leaking out every once in a while on a normal occasion. In theory this would decrease the filtering properties of Zerrious and allow more Mana to push it''s way through his skin.


    The pattern was finished in a few seconds and I waited to see the results. I could feel that I made a new spell, but I didn''t know what all it did until I got Zerrious'' message.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    Zerrious has been effected by spell: Permeable Flesh. Spell: Permeable Flesh causes heavy bleeding, increased Mana loss, increased infection rates, increased Mana regeneration, increased effectiveness of spells, and decreased resistance to spells. As the first person to be effected by this spell Zerrious has received a one time short run down of its effects.


    <hr>


    Holy shit this was a nasty spell. It looked like it didn''t change anything as far as Mana regeneration goes, but increased effectiveness of spells was useful, but it had the double edged sword that made him more susceptible to spells, for better or for worse.


    Blood was leaking from his skin, pushing out in time with his heartbeat, and I could feel the Mana in the area reacting in great waves, pushing into him and rushing from him rhythmically like the tide on a stormy day. A quick spell banished the enchantment, shattering the matrices and returning the pattern to vapors of potential.


    "Zerrious! I''m so sorry, let me take care of this!" I shouted quickly, taking my cane in my hand and cleansing the blood from his skin to look for wounds that may have grown. Once clean he looked in good health, if very pale. I looked through my rings with my mind as I cast a spell to remove any disease that may have presented itself in his time of increased infection rates. I didn''t find anything I knew would be packed with sugar, but there was some bread that I pulled out and gave him. "Eat to regain your strength. I''m so so sorry."


    "That was uncomfortable. I can''t blame you for trying something new, but I would ask that you do it to someone else next time," Zerrious groaned out.


    "Don''t talk, you lost a lot of blood. Just eat. That''s it," I responded, breaking some bread and bringing it to his lips. After his color returned to his face I let him sit up, but I wouldn''t let him stand. "Someone has to stop you from killing yourself, and I''m the only one here," I told him when he tried.


    "I''m fine. You forget that I am much stronger than even you may believe, Sigurd."


    "Strength has nothing to do with it. The human body can only take so much, even with magic," I sternly told him. "We''ll stop here for today."


    "No! We need to keep going!" he shouted, moving to stand again. I pushed him back down on his backside, keeping a hand on his shoulder to prevent him from trying again.


    "We can keep learning here for the day. We still have work to do, remember?"


    "Yes. . . I suppose so." The reluctance was heavy in his voice, but I was not giving him many options.


    "Feel these patterns, try to memorize them," I said as I pulled a strength enhancing spell from the depths of my mind and muttering a short nonsensical incantation while weaving the spell through the cane. Zerrious closed his eyes, concentrating heavily on remembering the patterns. I would eventually help him mold the Mana himself, providing guidance as he tried, but it was easiest if he had a sort of familiarity with the spell to draw from.


    I let the spell dissolve before asking him to try to replicate it. He let small tentacles of Mana flow from him, twisting into knots and patterns that were remarkably close to correct. His experience with the other schools of magic were showing through, but he wasn''t quite aware of how to make a stable spell yet, most from other schools being designed to be unstable to produce a more violent, powerful, and immediate effect.


    "Let your lines sway with the Mana in the air, don''t hold on so tight. What makes an enchantment spell stable is it''s ability to bend without breaking, give it the slack to do so," I said. "Not that much slack!"


    Zerrious let go of the magic entirely, causing a violent explosion of Mana that knocked the wind out of both of us and pushed all the Aether from my body and directly back into the higher layer. This was interesting, shocking, and also far from my mind.


    "Try again, but don''t let go. Instead hold tight but feel the mana and let yourself flow. The Mana will naturally follow," I croaked out.


    "Of course. Allow me a minute to recover, that drained me of all my Mana."


    "Take your time, I suffered similar effects," I said, still lying on my back. I lifted my head a scant few inches to check up on Zerrious only to find that he too was lying on his back on the side of the road. I chuckled lightly before sitting up and waiting with crossed legs for Zerrious to be ready to try again.


    Without sitting up I felt Zerrious reach tentative tendrils towards me, weaving them in the knots again for another try at the spell. His memory was imperfect as any and I had to teach him to unwind the spell and try again. In no time at all he had created a waving tapestry of Mana that he gently lay on my arms.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    Zerrious has gained spell: Aura of Might.


    <hr>


    "Well done my boy!" I said, pushing myself lightly to my feet. "Now that you''ve learned one, the others will be easy!"

 Expression of a Soul

    It took some time but Zerrious quickly recovered from blood loss. I taught him a few more spells, each getting a notification as he successfully cast them. Enchantment was simple enough for Zerrious, it followed similar ideas as enchanting items, although the item you were enchanting was far less stable. Zerrious was able to help me learn more as well, giving me a minor foundation in enchanting items that let me grow more in my enchanting Name.


    It was curious that people with different Names never seemed to compare the similarities in the skills. I was a master at enchantment spells, but a minor conversation with an enchanting master grew my skill noticeably.


    "Focus on building up Mana again as we turn in for the night, we''ll be able to do more practice tomorrow," I said as I yawned.


    "The sun''s not even down yet," responded Zerrious.


    "Not all of us can be college aged, Zerrious! So what if I grew soft in my time in the city, I was designed for soft!" Zerrious just chuckled and shook his head, closing his eyes and actively pulling the ambient Mana into his center. Zerrious preferred a rigid lotus position for this sort of thing, but I found it easier to pull in Aether while I was comfortable, sending the reality stuff back to my cane.


    I let my mind drift down inside myself, feeling the roiling storm of Aether in my center. I was told to let it be a storm, that that was the best way, but it looked like it was fighting itself. What leaked out of my skin also remained violently uncontrolled, forcibly lashing out at the world to take control. It couldn''t be right, but I didn''t know what to do other than feed more Aether in.


    But people always found a better way to do things. Just letting it sit until it was used seemed so strange, especially since it wanted to move. I watched, crinkling my brow. My soul was a book, wasn''t it? That''s what my racial trait said, and I just had the ability to manifest it. This was probably different, but shouldn''t the magical wuju stuff in my center be at least similar to my soul? Feeling their center should be the closest most people ever come to seeing their soul, so maybe it just hadn''t been tried correctly. It made sense that it had to be the right shape, each person absorbed Mana at a different rate and stored it in varying amounts. The properties of Mana seemed to change per person too, acting like a liquid for some and others a sort of plasma or gas.


    This conjecture was getting me nowhere, so I jumped into the storm of Aether, trying to force the energy into the shape of a book. The Aether fought back, roiling and bucking in my mental palms.


    After making no progress I gave up, letting the storm fight itself a little longer. How did I move it? That wasn''t how I always cast, was it? I slapped myself in the forehead, bringing myself out of my reverie. "Of course! Why would I force it when I never did in the past?" I said out loud.


    "Sigurd? What''s wrong, you looked like you were trying to fight something. Was it a nightmare?" Zerrious asked, staring at me with concern.


    "Only my own idiocy! I''ll show you if it works, but it might be hard to explain." I threw myself back, dropping back down into my center with the roiling storm.


    With a light touch I guided the energetic Aether to make the leather bound cover of a great book, stretching from one side of my center all the way to the other. The Aether soon lost control, fighting to move again, so I guided it to flow in circles and angles to make shifting patterns across the front. The roiling Aether hovering over this great calm cover seemed almost. . . interested? It didn''t have a will, it couldn''t. It was like lightning, or fire. There was no will, only properties, that''s the only thing that makes sense. Right?


    I put it out of my mind, there was work to do. I guided more Aether into a single page, setting it into the cover and combining them. The page wasn''t content to sit, so I instructed it to turn. The page turned and melted into the cover on the other side, reappearing again in it''s original position and flipping again, repeating over and over.


    The remaining Aether was moving violently now, so I held the pattern of the turning page in my mind, and each page started forming from the Aether and flying into the book, each page making itself faster than the last. Soon my center was a book, pages turning eternally. More Aether funneled into my center, making the book brighter and brighter as I watched until enough Aether was gathered to make another page on it''s own, an infinite loop.


    I felt a warmth and opened my eyes, a huge grin on my face, only to see a white light fading from view. Then there was the burning, and I looked on my arm to see a new Name forming, Mirashda. Sculptor of Mana, seer of souls, and master of center efficiency. I felt a boon settle on my shoulders from the gods, something to make my spells cheaper. This was amazing because it changed my quill sword from an investment to a minor upkeep cost that''s almost unnoticeable.


    Then I felt a new spell settle into my mind. I wasn''t sure what school of magic it was, but I had to guess it was divination based on it''s effects. I could see into someone else''s center. It required consent, we had to be touching, and we both went blind and def to our surroundings, but it was massive for teaching.


    I guessed that if I used this spell in conjunction with my knew profession Name and enough familiarity with a person, I might be able to see what form their soul takes. I needed to get Zerrious in on this action.


    I looked up only to be confused. It seemed like late morning, as if the sun had finished rising not an hour prior. "Sigurd! Are you okay?"


    "What do you mean? I''m the best I''ve probably ever been!" I laughed out, stumbling clumsily to my feet. I could still feel the pages turning, and I felt good. Complete.


    "You lay down and didn''t move except for furrowed brows for almost fifteen hours."


    That was a long time. Now that he mentioned it, I was tired and hungry, but I was too exited to sleep or eat or even continue walking. My mind was racing.


    "Don''t worry about that," I said after a short time. I hadn''t noticed that we were both standing but I pushed Zerrious down into a sitting position. He didn''t resist, but he did look concerned. "Sit sit. We can''t move on, not yet. I figured something out!" This caught his attention, always trying to find more knowledge.


    I pulled a page out of my center and tore it up into a single strand that I infused with the reality stuff in my staff before spinning it into the spell form and pushing it through my fingers and into Zerrious, my mind automatically following the Mana into Zerrious'' center.


    Zerrious'' Mana looked less like a storm and more. . . it was hard to describe, motes of Mana zipped around and collided with each other with bright flashes of Mana that coalesced back into new motes of Mana to replace the old ones. There was a spinning orb at the center that seemed to drip the Mana motes in all directions rather than fling them like it seemed it should. His Mana was dark too, a faint red swirling like blood in his center, obsessive and sanguine as it searched for purpose, for guidance.


    "This is odd," I said aloud, surprised to hear my voice ring throughout Zerrious'' center.


    "What''s odd?" he asked. I felt his presence with me, it was required for the spell to work, but I also heard him in this odd liminal space. He couldn''t be seen, the only visible portion the Mana flying around inside him. While mine was more like clouds and a raging tempest his seemed more like a river with nowhere to go.


    "Your Mana just behaves differently than mine." I wasn''t sure if that was because I now had Aether, but I distinctly remembered my Mana acting the same as the Aether did, even if the Aether didn''t like to leave my body as much as the Mana did. More research would be required to get a definitive answer, so I left it at that.


    I peered around, trying to find any indication of Zerrious'' soul like I was expecting to find, but much like my own center, I found nothing. I couldn''t effect Zerrious'' Mana for him, but I asked him to guide that ball to open up and let me inside. He did, and a hole surrounded by swirling Mana opened for just long enough for me to slip inside the hollow orb.


    Nothing but more swirling Mana. "Where the hell is his soul?" I asked aloud. Then I thought about it. Finding someone else''s soul is probably a super tabboo magic. The damage that could be caused should someone find it. . .


    "Why are you looking for my soul?" Zerrious asked, opening the hole again and letting me out. "No one''s taken control of you have they?"


    "No! I''m trying to guide you to make your center better. Do you know what your soul looks like?"


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "No, should I?"


    "I think so. Most wont, but I think it''s important for scholars like us," I said, mentally patting him on the back.


    I know my own soul, but that was just a racial trait. I pulled up Zerrious'' stats, hoping his racial traits would help me. It took some navigating because I still wasn''t used to these system messages, but I found both of his racial traits.


    <hr>


    Racial Traits:


    System Message


    Openness of Mind


    <hr>


    Well that wasn''t much help. It looked like Openness of Mind made him better at learning skills? As a racial trait is was no wonder I was able to teach all those kids so fast, they were designed to learn fast. Unfortunately, that didn''t give my any indication of what his soul looked like.


    Well, what made my soul look the way it did? I was designed to tell a story, to record my life, to write. What was Zerrious made for, what made him different from anyone else, the thing that defined his existence? I reached for his Mana, knowing I couldn''t manipulate it but maybe the way it felt in my head would tell me something. Or maybe it would kill me, there was no knowing for sure, this was untraveled territory.


    The motes of Mana were energetic, the idea that learning of electrons in high school had inspired in my teenage mind. I jumped out in front of one, my perspective shifting just in time to collide with the ball of floating blood.


    What washed over me wasn''t just an obsessive search for purpose, it was an obsessive push to grow, to evolve, to become more than anyone thought was possible. There was almost a rage driving the push for evolution, to become better than anyone, to advance for the sake of advancing. He learns to advance, he advances to learn, forever circling himself in a drive for improvement.


    Then the moment passed and I was floating in Zerrious'' center, dumbfounded by the things I had felt in the bare moment of raging Mana.


    "I didn''t like that, what did you do?" Zerrious grunted, a pained sound that conveyed that he felt slightly violated. I thought I had glimpsed his soul, if just how it felt.


    A person must corrupt the Mana itself, or in my case the Aether, to be compatible, or perhaps to force the natural resource into submission? That had to be why Mana was different for every person, the process of collecting it fundamentally changed the energy to be compatible with the person collecting it. That had interesting implications, perhaps ways to force someone else''s Mana into another center to. . . Well I had no idea what it would do and I wasn''t incredibly jazzed to find out.


    This spell was similar, although the restrictions on it made it safe, or perhaps even possible without violent repercussions. It''s entirely possible that without permission Zerrious'' Mana would attack me and render me brain dead as my consciousness was on a single string of Aether right now, completely at the mercy of whatever defenses Zerrious normally had up against this kind of attack.


    "I''m sorry, it''s just, I think I felt your soul. I don''t know what it looks like though. This. . . This might hurt, but I have an idea, just. . . please try not to kill me," I said before jumping headfirst into the whirling ball of liquid Mana at Zerrious'' center before he could say anything to stop me. Shaping the Mana in your center had unlimited implications, things I couldn''t fathom and something inside me needed Zerrious to be apart of this newfound knowledge.


    I was almost overwhelmed immediately, but I pushed on, through the obsession, through the need for greatness and pushing to find every intricacy of his personality. Zerrious started pulling the Mana away from me, hollowing out the sphere for me again. "No! Just hold on a little longer!" I mentally yelled through the overpowering emotion and personality traits. I could feel the pain this was causing, but it would be worth it, I could feel it deep down. Zerrious'' Mana wanted me to do this, it sensed the purpose of the pain I put the host through and it determined it a valiant cause. I was so deep into Zerrious'' personality and emotional state that it was getting hard to tell where my mind ended and his began. I could feel I was close but the Mana was being peeled away from me.


    "It hurts!" he yelled through gritted teeth.


    "I know, just trust me," I muttered. I knew he could hear me, and I reached out to the Mana around me with my Aether strand and sent a jolt of my emotions back, desire and sorrow mixing to form a regretful drive to finish what I started.


    Zerrious didn''t say anything, the Mana just snapped closed around me and I was met with the full weight of Zerrious, everything that made the young man who he was. I trudged deeper through his center, my thin Aether strand being buffeted and nearly absorbed by the storm of blood red Mana around me. Although. . . more colors were snaking their way through the blood, different aspects of Zerrious that had been overpowered by the dark obsession and the red drive to succeed.


    Then colors started fading, being driven out and becoming a pure white light that was blinding to behold, even without physical eyes. I pulled on my Aether, pulling more and more so I could just make out the shape of the soul before me, the pure brilliance every soul was truly made of behind the simple maters of the nearby layers.


    Eventually, I could make out a shape. . . and it was changing, growing, becoming more every second and shifting to meet every need, growing an armor as I looked to protect from the pain of someone getting so close to the soul. This wasn''t possible to make, I could feel it, but I knew where to start, I could feel where Zerrious'' Mana wanted to be.


    I started drawing back away from his soul, started to trek back to safety. Or at least I tried to. I tried to move back but I had drawn on my Aether and the thread that had connected me to the outside had grown so thin that it had been absorbed by the strength of Zerrious character this deep in. "Zerrious! Help, I''m stuck!" I tried to scream, but the words were torn from me by the whirling Mana and completely absorbed, I knew he couldn''t help me.


    I gathered all the Aether I had left, condensing it into a shell to protect against the Mana that threatened to consume me alive. This was a much deeper process than my soul had been, my body was probably very angry at me right now. I shaped the shell into a bullet shape and shot my will forward, trying to get far enough out of the whirling ball of Mana that Zerrious could help me. I pushed and pushed, the white giving way to the many other colors of Zerrious'' personality, then eventually fading to the dark blood red I saw from the beginning. I pushed forward, too focused on staying whole to cry for help.


    Eventually I made it out of the swirling ball of Mana and dodged the flying motes of energy, speeding back to my own body, to safety. I rushed out to my hand and immediately dissolved to open my physical eyes once again, the flows of Aether swirling in my vision. My stomach growled insistently, I was dehydrated, and I could barely see from exhaustion, but I was alive and no worse for wear, other than, obviously, the neglect that Nyah would have killed me for.


    I looked to see if Zerrious was as hungry as I was, but I looked up to see him hunched over, his eyes still closed and a thin trail of blood running from his nose and pooling in his lap.


    "Zerrious?" I asked, slightly panicked. "Zerrious!" I rammed my fingers into his neck and finding a strong pulse, then I felt under his nose and found airflow in the nostril that wasn''t still freely flowing dark blood down his face. I calmed down, laying him flat and sticking some spare cloth up his nose to stop the blood flow and picked up my cane, channeling a spell to clean the blood from his clothes. I sat down next to him, digging further into our supplies and drinking some of our clean water and eating some food, just enough to keep me alive while I waited for Zerrious to wake up and do the same.


    I noted how dark the sky had gotten, how we''d wasted entire days just sitting here in this spot with our eyes closed. Although, it did look different than it had when I started working on my center. . . I also noticed that everything was in a different place than it had been but I''d been to exited to share my findings with Zerrious to notice. The kid must have picked me up and moved me, and all my things, while I was focused on my center. I would have done the same, but I didn''t have the same strength or endurance he did.


    Nothing to do but wait. The sun was close to rising by the time he finally stirred from his slumber, pulling the cloth from his nose and groaning as he slowly sat up. "What happened?" he asked.


    "I have no idea," I said, getting to my feet and offering him some food and water. "But, I did learn what to do with your center."


    "What do you mean? It''s common knowledge that you don''t do anything with your center, it just does it''s thing until you need something from it." I hadn''t explained myself to Zerrious yet, of course!


    "Damn it, I didn''t tell you what I figured out! Zerrious, you need your center to look like your soul to make it more efficient and do a bunch of other things. I don''t even know all the possibilities this has, but I know for a fact it''s good." I wished I could show him my center, but we only had his to work with. "Yours might be a bit more complicated than mine. . ." I trailed off.


    "I believe you, but. . . We wont have to do that again, will we?" he asked hesitantly. I could see in his eyes that he would continue either way, but there was a pain even in the memory.


    "No, we wont. I have everything I need, though I will need to be there to guide you, so if you don''t mind," I said as I sat down next to Zerrious and grabbed his hand, searching with my Aether. He closed his eyes and my mind flew down the strand of Aether and into his center.


    I gazed upon the swirling motes of blood zipping around the nucleus of his center, still magnificent even after diving so deep into the boys soul that he had almost consumed me. I reached out with my mind, hoping that I could help guide the Mana myself but it wouldn''t budge.


    "Alrighty then. Zerrious, I need you to gather all of these motes and make two strings, very thin, as thin as you can," I directed. Zerrious did, clearly straining to keep the Mana where he wanted it. "Let it move a little bit, there you go. Now connect them as many times as you can, like a ladder."


    Zerrious guided the Mana to connect, already looking like a ladder, the Mana even providing new colors for each of the rungs of this ladder, combining in different ways to create a rainbow of colors along the blood red strings. "Now twist it like this," I guided as he finished making the motes into the ladder and formed myself into the double helix he needed to emulate as a guide.


    "Okay, now just. . ." I trailed off as I saw Zerrious syphoning off from the swirling sphere in his center to make the spinning strand of DNA longer, and longer, and eventually it condensed enough that there was a simple sphere in his center, all of his Mana gone into making this one nucleus full of moving chromosomes made up of even smaller spinning double helix formations. This was the automatic part now, his center would evolve more the more Mana he had, and it made me a little jealous that his center was a living thing while mine was just a book.


    The pattern had been set, the Mana knew what to do from here, so I withdrew and opened my eyes to see that yet more time had passed. I didn''t have long to process that as several notifications slammed themselves into my view.

 Tales of Before Gods

    <hr>


    Notice!


    Zerrious has learned a new skill: Mana Sculpting.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Zerrious has learned a new skill: Center Efficiency.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Zerrious has learned a new skill: Soul Sight.


    <hr><hr>


    Mana Sculpting:


    Zerrious has learned to see the natural ways a persons Mana desires to move and has learned to incorporate that into his use of Mana.


    <hr><hr>


    Center Efficiency:


    Zerrious has learned that letting Mana run rampant in his center is a wasteful storage system and has found a new way to maximize the storage and effectiveness of his Mana in his center.


    <hr><hr>


    Soul Sight:


    Zerrious has learned to see the shape of his own soul and has gained a deeper understanding of himself and he now has a much easier time seeing deeper aspects of others from this experience.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Zerrious'' center has taken the form of his soul, a unique shape with unique inherent properties that he will need to find on his own. No two people are the same and the benefits could be anything.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    New System Message tab unlocked: Center Abilities and Properties.


    <hr><hr>


    Center Abilities and Properties:


    Unknown.


    <hr>


    So there was more to the shape of the center than just efficiency. I was right! I sat for a moment longer after reading through the messages, waiting for Zerrious to get through the same messages. I could see him read several of them over and over again with more and more excitement on his face each time. I knew what he was thinking, this was worth a hundred times the pain it took!


    "How did you figure this out?" Zerrious asked when he finally dismissed the last notification.


    I shrugged. "There wasn''t really a process, I just looked at my center, went ''this can''t be the best it can be'' and started moving things around. I got to grow up in a world where we were taught for years about people who were told something couldn''t be done or something was the best it was ever going to be but they went and improved things anyways. I think I remember a quote from back home, I can''t remember who said it though, Sun Tzu probably. ''Don''t let what''s possible get in the way of reaching your potential.''"


    "Was Sun Tzu a scholar of your world?"


    I stopped to consider. "Kind of. He was a general, and a philosopher I think. He wrote a book called ''The Art of War'' some hundreds of years ago and it might be the most quoted book ever, though it was written in some kind of Chinese, so damned if I could read it," I told him. It wasn''t strictly true, there were translations, but that sort of stuff just seemed so boring at the time. Those "boring" texts probably would''ve been extremely helpful in this new world, but I supposed I was doing well enough for myself even without them.


    "I understand. Coming from a world with so much wisdom taught to everyone, must be amazing," Zerrious said as he stood up. "Come on, we need to get moving. We''ve lost a lot of time here."


    I had to admit, it was quite amazing. The world I came from, the casual way we bent the world to our whims on a daily basis. It was incredible, something you have to leave behind to see in entirety. You never knew what you had until you lost it, as the saying goes. "It was," I said wistfully as I stood up and finished packing my things. I had mostly gotten everything put away anyways, so it wasn''t long until we were back on the road and I was recording my findings in my book that I summoned. I decided to make a sort of pseudo-character sheet for myself, a list of skills, spells, and Names I had earned.


    I had to admit, it looked rather wimpy next to Zerrious'' monster of a character sheet, almost seven hundred names strong and more to come I was sure. "How many Names do you need? Are you trying to get all of them?" I asked. It occurred to me that I had never actually asked what all these Names were for. A kid so motivated to learn, even skills he didn''t like, had to have some goal in mind, especially since he was doing this instead of exceling back home where he could be rich and do whatever he wanted, or even just stay in the city and build some kind of legacy.


    "I need a thousand. . . I forget you don''t know everything sometimes," Zerrious chuckled as we made our way down the nearly empty dirt road. "Back in the Days of Power there were no Names, and magic was aloud to reign supreme, if you were stronger than someone they were your slave. The magic available then was far stronger than it is now, it wasn''t separated into these schools of magic like they are now, and there were no Gods to rule. The world was ravaged by war, mages fighting to prove that they deserved a territory more than another mage, most of the time ruining the lands on both sides in the process, leaving an empty territory. So everyone took more and more and more, never satisfied with what they had, with the power they had, never caring about the blood on their hands. Very few survived those days, only the men and women mages thought worth keeping alive, mostly as. . . toys to carry out their sick fantasies. To say things were bad is an understatement."


    "I''d say. No Names? Different rules for magic? That war reminds me of what we''ve accomplished back home, probably very similar actually, though we needed to work together, we didn''t have one person with that kind of terrible power." I shook my head, picturing how it would have felt to be a regular citizen in those times, the hopelessness and terror racing through my mind empathetically.


    "With all due respect, I don''t think you understand the scale of these battles. I don''t think anyone can, what we see is just too small." Zerrious glared at a plant for a moment before walking forward more.


    "Did I ever tell you about the world wars back home?" I asked. It was a tragedy, just talking about it made me sad, let alone explaining the horrors to someone who could barely comprehend the scale of true world war.


    "World wars?" he restated questioningly.


    I took a deep breath. "There were a lot of countries on my world, easily over a hundred, and there was a country that was loosing power when their leader was assassinated. From their they declared war on the country responsible, and that country called on alliances with other countries which lead Austria to call on their own alliances, and soon almost the entire world was involved, sending thousands of men, boys really, to fight and die. Trench warfare came about, people digging trenches and hiding in them while shooting at people hiding in their own trenches. Eventually my home country, the United States of America joined the battle, and only a few years later the war was ended, that was the first world war. The problem was, someone had to loose the war, and Germany was given the short end of the stick. It ruined their economy, it broke them down and set rules for everyone."


    "Germany? I thought you said it was Austria or something that started the war?"


    "Austria didn''t exist after that. Now some years pass and Germany isn''t doing too well. A sick young boy, Adolf Hitler, was rejected from a Jewish art school and he decides to pursue politics. Soon he becomes a ruler, kicking everyone else in power out and becoming what''s known as a dictator and forming alliances with the USSR. Then he tries to ''purify'' Germany by killing everyone not of German descent, mostly Jewish people. He put them in camps, forcing them to work until they died or just pumping poisonous gas into rooms filled with them, even burning them alive. Hitler was expanding Germany at the same time, he was taking territory as his own and no one was stopping him because they were afraid of another world war, until eventually he grew too powerful. He took over much of Europe and was spreading fast, using poisonous gas, fire, disease, and even giving his soldiers drugs that would kill them but make them stronger in the short term. Germany had a loose alliance with a small series of islands called Japan, home to some of the fiercest warriors in the world. Japan decided to fly over to one of the United States naval ports and drop bombs, containers that would explode when they hit the ground, all over the island. The United States hadn''t joined the war yet, and this became known as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the point where we joined the war. We sent men out to fight against Germany and the USSR, but what ended the war was was the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The United states had created a new type of bomb, a nuclear bomb. Do you remember when I told you how hot the surface of the sun was?"


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    "Vaguely, why?"


    "Because the power of one nuclear bomb is the same as dropping the surface of the sun, and after the heat and shockwave fades it leaves behind something called radiation, just being near it makes your body fight itself from the inside, a disease called cancer. There is no cure. We dropped two nuclear bombs, one on the island Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki, both populated civilian cities. It was three days before the radiation cleared out enough to be safe to enter again," I explained.


    "I see. . . I suppose that is the right scale. . ." Zerrious trailed off, shocked at the barbaric nature of our political struggles back home.


    "After that the Geneva Convention got together. They signed treaties and created rules for war that everyone would follow, including weaponizing disease, chemicals, targeting civilians, and giving drugs to soldiers. These were things that would destroy the entire world if used in warfare, so it had to be made. Hitler fell from power, Germany was beat back, and the next biggest threat was the communists in the USSR, though that war didn''t involve any battles," I finished. "So yes, I understand the scale of destruction people are capable of."


    "You''re right, I''m sorry. Where was I?" Zerrious asked, put off by the story I''d told him.


    "Sorry, there was a terrible period of war, everyone fighting?" I lead with, slightly sheepish. I never wanted people to assume that with progress came peace, I knew first hand that that simply wasn''t true, people would always fight, over nothing if need be.


    "Yes, everyone with any semblance of power was fighting for territory. Someone young, a young girl, only six years old did something unthinkable. She called upon a magic that doesn''t exist anymore and something called back. No one knows what that magic did, but it gave her the power to kill the mage over the territory she was in, the largest territory in fact. Everyone turned against her, hoping to take advantage of her youth to take over large swaths of territory. Every single one of them was killed so quickly that no one was sure there had even been a battle. For the first time in over a hundred years there was a battle between mages that didn''t destroy the landscape. She didn''t expand, she just let the mages attack her and die until she controlled everything. She ruled with an iron fist, anyone who couldn''t do magic was executed, if you ran you died, if you dared so much as think against the Child Empress you died and everyone forgot about you. There was peace, but it was born of fear and oppression," Zerrious whispered, barely audible before stopping completely. It sounded like some pretty basic fantasy world lore, old forgotten magic, wars taken over by a dark lord, pretty textbook for this kind of thing.


    "Is that the end? Is that how things are now? How did the Names start, was that her? And the Gods, you said this was before them, how did they come about?" I asked. Things weren''t lining up, the world he described was much closer to mine, even with the addition of magic. I couldn''t possibly see how it could become the near utopia it was now. Sure, not everything was great, but people helped each other freely, no one was trying to control everything like they were back home, or even back then. I didn''t know what kind of economic system we were running on now, probably a barter system, though even then it was all about improving yourself and others, there was no pushing others down to get on top, because people recognized that people can push you higher than you can climb yourself.


    "No, it''s just a lot to think about. After nearly fifty years of the world under her rule six of her generals got together and decided her time to rule was over. Together they created a new kind of magic, something that shook reality itself to its core. They worked together, hand in hand, to preform a spell that changed the rules of the world. They separated the magic into the schools that exist today, they created the Names, and they defined what we are, giving us our racial traits. The Child Empress was never seen again. She seemed to disappear into thin air, and with the power of these new Names power was put back into the hands of the people who rose up against the powerful and created kingdoms run for the people by the people. Channeling all this power elevated them, and turned them into the Gods we have today. Later the Gods gave us knowledge, telling us that anyone who earned a thousand Names would have channeled enough of their power to become a God too. No one knows what the process is after that, but legend has it it''s been done before. By Ensiar of Bonds actually," Zerrious finished. That didn''t make much sense at all, it wasn''t a rebellion, but a series of scholars that decided to change physics that us here?


    "Interesting, so you want to be a God?" I asked. I figured that the story was riddled with inaccuracies, but anything would be after. . . How long ago had it been? "Wait, how long ago did this supposedly happen?"


    "Supposedly? This happened almost seven hundred years ago, it''s a fact." Zerrious smirked, thinking he''d gotten the better of me.


    "Zerrious, in seven hundred years my people went from completely unware of an entire continent to sending people to walk on the moon. The amount of things that can happen in that time is incredible. The earliest reliable history we have even on my world was only four hundred years in the past, stories and records change too much with time to be any kind of accurate, especially a story like that," I lectured. "Do you remember my lecture on historical context?"


    "Sigurd?" Zerrious asked kindly. It seemed off base for where this conversation was going, be here we were.


    "Yes?" I responded.


    "Stop talking."


    "Why?" I whispered, looking around to see if there were bandits or-my newly justified phobia-giant man eating spiders.


    "Because you''re wrong," Zerrious whispered back like he was talking conspiratorially to a child. It brought the clear image of a parent saying "don''t tell mom" after giving candy to the kid they weren''t supposed to give sweets to.


    I let the tension fall from my shoulders and I glared in his direction as we beat our way further down the dirt road. "Why do you want to be a God?" I asked after a few hours of silence had passed.


    "It''s. . . I guess I just want to prove I can. Someone from some backwoods village in the middle of nowhere being the first to join the Gods since Ensiar himself? Even after these Names have grown so far above what they were back then? It would prove that anyone can do anything if they try hard enough. . ." Zerrious trailed off. I could sense more story under that motivation, but I didn''t push. It wasn''t any of my business anyways.


    "As good a motivation as any, I suppose," I said after a moment, looking around us at the thickening forest. "Say, where did all of the traders that were entering the city when we got there come from? I haven''t seen any for a few days."


    "Most would have taken one of the paths that branched off from here to go to neighboring cities, but we need to go farther so we can get some skills this area wont have," Zerrious explained to my shock.


    ". . . The path branched off? Multiple times? I didn''t see it once!" I said, each sentence getting higher and more panicked at my own ignorance of my surroundings.


    "It''s hard to see, traders are often worried about thieves learning where their families are so they make the paths to their cities purposely difficult to see from the main road. That way they can slip into the woods and get to another city and back home without worrying about his family being robbed in his absence," Zerrious explained. That made sense, and I''m not entirely familiar with ancient trade but it would made sense if that was something subtle people did back home when this kind of trade was still common.


    "Clever," I said, pulling out my guitar and strumming aimlessly, good sounds exiting the instrument but no real song forming from the notes.


    "Hey, didn''t you get a Name for doing your center stuff?" Zerrious asked suddenly.


    "I guess I did. . . Oh, I forgot to give you the Name! You know as much as I do, and you''ve read my notes on the subject," I said, grabbing Zerrious'' shoulder. After a few moments there was a light as the new Name was branded onto his skin.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    Zerrious has been Named by a master of his craft and been acknowledged as his equal.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Name gained: Mirashda (Sage of Inner Sanctum).


    Name: Mirashda is the profession Name for the following skills:


    Mana Sculpting


    Center Efficiency


    Soul Sight


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Name: Mirashda<em style="font-weight: bold"> is a profession Name and counts as a Name for every skill required to earn it plus one (4 total).


    <hr>


    "There we are!" I said as I dismissed the notices. "One step closer!"


    He took a deep breath, a smile stretching across his face. "I am close, I''m so close to my next boon I can taste it." That brought me up short. He could predict when he got boons?


    "Next boon?"


    "Oh, you don''t know. I keep forgetting you didn''t grow up with Names. Every hundred Names you get the Gods give you one boon, I''ve got six, almost seven now," he said nonchalantly, like most of my boons hadn''t been obtained through incredible work and near death experiences. I felt partially cheated by that, although I had two boons and much less than a hundred Names, so I supposed I couldn''t complain too much.


    "Oh, that makes the boons I got kind of rare huh?" I muttered to myself.


    "You have a boon?" Zerrious said, eyes going wide and turning slowly around to face me.


    "No. . . boons, plural," I said sheepishly, almost a little scared by his response.


    "How? How could you have possibly gotten one boon, let alone multiple and you only have, what, twenty Names?" Zerrious asked, almost accusing me.


    "Well, I got one when I was transported here, it let me understand the language," I started. This calmed Zerrious down considerably. "And I got one from discovering the center mastery stuff."


    "And?" Zerrious asked, waiting.


    "And what? That''s it, I really have nothing to hide," I said defensively.


    Zerrious glared at me for a few moments, almost sizing me up, analyzing. "Alright, I believe you," he said after a long moment of us just staring at each other in the middle of the road that had continued to grow smaller and clearly less used the farther we went as evidenced by the overgrowth forming along the path.


    I strummed hesitantly on my guitar after that, slowly picking up the pace to make a cheery tune to abate the oddly confrontational conversation. I had thought we were past that, we''d been friends for years at this point, though I guessed it could be frustrating to have someone know everything about you and then find out something major about them that they thought just wasn''t important enough to share.


    "I''m not a very good friend," I whispered under my breath, making sure the sound my guitar drowned the words out by making reality vibrate along with the strings a little as I did. "I guess I''ve still got a long ways to go myself."

 Cant Figure It Out

    "Stay light on your feet!" Zerrious yelled as he smacked the wooden sword into my side, knocking the breath from my lungs and sending me sprawling on the ground.


    "Why are we doing this?" I rasped, gasping to pull more air into my lungs. Tears blurred my vision but brought a hand up to not so subtly wipe them away before getting back up, my breathing still labored.


    "A couple of reasons, like I just said. I need to stay sharp, and we''re going to need more and more rare Names, which means it''s going to get dangerous. I don''t want to have to worry about protecting you when our backs are against a wall," Zerrious explained again, giving me a chance to recover from his last blow, a luxury he reminded me in no uncertain terms I wouldn''t have should I actually need these skills.


    I went in for the attack, making a jabbing motion at his right kidney. He knocked my blade aside with his own and pushed forward, although with a longsword being his preferred weapon of choice he was at a disadvantage as close as he was. He''d knocked my sword down to the left, leaving the arm holding my sword draped across my body where I could easily pull back and block if I needed to, but Zerrious'' last words had stuck in my head, I had barely moved my feet at all, standing completely still like this was a fencing match with only a short line to work in, not a large dynamic battleground that we actually resided in at the moment.


    I danced left, following my sword and pushing forward, closer to Zerrious where his longer blade would be harder to use effectively. He grinned slightly and fell back, trying to buy space to use his longer blade. I knew he was faster than me, so I too fell back, backpedaling directly into the thick forest and hiding among the trees.


    That''ll shock him, I thought to myself with a smile, trying to stay as still as possible to prevent myself from giving away my position. What I failed to remember is that Zerrious is a master at tracking in the woods, and he knew exactly where I was. There was barely a rustle of leaves as warning before I saw a wooden longsword swinging at full speed for my chest. I ducked down and brought my sword up on instinct, barely managing to redirect the blade over my head where it impacted the tree I hid behind with a resounding crack that echoed all throughout the forest. If the sword had been bladed there was a chance that it would have caught in the tree, but as it was it just bounced off, leaving me crouched in the dirt with a sword above my head.


    He swung at my side as my head was well protected in this position, easily ready to stop an overhead blow. It was cramped, but I managed to smack his sword into the ground where it buried itself in the soft earth. I took the moment he needed to pull the blade from the ground to stand up and get back in my dueling stance.


    "You''re getting better," Zerrious remarked as he watched me squirm. I was waiting for him to advance, or make a surprise attack but he just watched me try and catch my breath with every muscle taught and prepared to fight.


    I didn''t respond, he new I got distracted talking and he''d beat the bantering habit out of me with a stick a long time ago. I knew Zerrious was better than me, faster, stronger, more technical. He knew swordplay at a level I couldn''t even fathom and he had the physical prowess to back it up. Zerrious stood relaxed, but I knew how fast that could change. Suddenly, just as I had predicted, Zerrious snapped his blade at my side with the speed of a coiled viper, his one hand better able to hold the two handed weapon and still cause a devastating attack, even at the loss of control and power.


    I threw my sword to the side, hoping to push the wooden sword into the ground again. It didn''t work, not entirely anyways. Instead of hitting my vital center mass as he had intended my parry brought his sword down where it hit the side of my knee with a resounding crack I could feel all over my body, bringing unbidden tears to my eyes.


    It was hard, but I pushed my brain through the pain to consider this situation. I had about a third of a second, but I had my blade on top of his, he was defenseless for this bare moment. Without stopping to consider what I was doing I went in for the kill, swinging my wooden blade up all the strength in my right arm and grabbing on to the body armor Zerrious had on with my left so he couldn''t dance away from the strike.


    There was a bare moment of surprise on Zerrious'' face before my wooden blade made contact with the side of his neck with a meaty thud. I let Zerrious go as he dropped his sword and gagged violently as he turned away from me and leaned against a tree.


    ". . . Are you okay?" I asked after a moment. Zerrious held up a hand, palm forward and ring finger down. Commonly referred to as the "unapprenticed" it was sort of like the middle finger from back home. Although, I suppose it was much more mean spirited as it signified someone was unteachable, although it had changed into a simple insult that didn''t truly bare much weight.


    I nodded and picked up the wooden longsword from the dirt, which had considerably more heft than my rapier. I made it over to our bags and tents set up off just off to the side of the clearing we were practicing in. I favored my right leg heavily, but the soreness would subside quickly, I was sure. Zerrious wasn''t shy about hurting me, but I trusted that he wouldn''t actually injure me.


    It hadn''t been long since I helped Zerrious get his center in order, maybe a week at most, and we hadn''t had time to really sit down and see what unique properties the shapes of our souls gave us when realized in the shape of our Mana. So far I had just been able to set my spells up with a page value, determined by how many pages it took to cast that spell. My most expensive cost five pages, but a near impenetrable shield was well worth the cost. All the reality soaking into my cane at any moment was plenty for my spells, in fact it pulled some of the stuff from around it on it''s own, although feeding it what was filtered out of my Aether was far more efficient.


    It wasn''t long after I had everything put away from our little training session that Zerrious joined me near the tents where we had set up a ring of stones for a fire to reside within, along with a small pile of wood we''d gathered that sat near our tents. I looked up as he approached, catching the already bruising line on his neck even as he turned it away from me. "I really am sorry, I didn''t mean to hit you so hard," I said, the regret and sorrow nearly dripping from my voice.


    "Don''t be, I got cocky and you showed me the error of my ways. Honestly, I should be thanking you. Helped remind me that people can be dangerous even if they aren''t particularly skilled or Named," Zerrious said as he dropped to his rear next to me. I was a little bit insulted, but didn''t voice it. He was right, of course. He almost always was in his frustrating jack of all trades way. I knew way too many people at work who were kind of the same way, they had their claws in just about anything anyone could possibly take interest in, so I got used to being out of my depth in just about everything. Didn''t mean I liked being called unskilled, but I could accept it.


    "Very well," I muttered as I got up and started stacking wood. I was a city boy, but I''d been camping enough times to know how to build a basic fire, it wasn''t that complicated. Soon Zerrious had a fire burning bright. His Names made him much better than I was, but I could get the basic shape and make things a little bit easier for him. All he had to do was poke and move peices by inches to get optimum airflow, something I couldn''t fathom knowing how to do.


    "We should try to figure out our centers more, that''ll burn for a long while and we could use any bit of knowledge we can get if you''re to become a god," I said as I sat back down, leaning back against my tent for more comfort. I closed my eyes and took Zerrious'' silence as agreement as I dove into my center, seeing the brightly glowing book turning endlessly, the blank pages nearly screaming for. . . something.


    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    I wasn''t sure what to do with them, they just seemed so blank and plain, especially since the cover was so intricate it just felt wrong to leave all those pages without anything in them. I didn''t want to just write nonsense on them, or even drawings or notes from whatever I could remember from back home, that was in my actual soul, which was far easier use as a notebook.


    I also wasn''t sure how many things a center like this would effect, would it just have passive effects? Active abilities? Was there a set number of abilities a realized center could have? Did it depend on the person? What kind of abilities would a book grant anyways? Faster reading speed?


    I laughed internally at that, though I didn''t dismiss the idea entirely. It may be functionally useless, but it could be something. I watched the Aether gather and form more and more pages before my eyes, thinking, considering. What could I possibly do to find out what abilities this would give me?


    Eventually I just opened my eyes and gave up on finding more. What would happen would show themselves eventually, I was sure. I hoped Zerrious had had more luck than I did, but he always struggled with the more esoteric stuff, so I didn''t expect much. I hadn''t been in my center for long, probably not more than an hour, though the sky had started darken to the deep blue of night, pinpricks of stars already visible in the sky.


    "I''m so glad they haven''t invented pollution yet, the sky is so clear," I muttered as I gazed past the trees. Zerrious was still deep in his center, his brow furrowed like I was sure mine was just moments before. I threw some more wood on the fire and relaxed, gazing into the empty Aether and watching the flows of power move in ribbons and sheets and I couldn''t make sense of it.


    I hadn''t been into the Aether since my wedding, I''d never really felt the need to. And honestly, I was scared. It was scary, the chance that I would simply cease to exist in a layer where physical reality couldn''t exist. I could feel it instinctually, how irrevocably terrible it would be to exist in the Aether without physical reality superimposed on it.


    But I kind of wondered what it would be like to be in the Aether after my eyes got changed by the stuff. I mean, I had grown closer to the substance since then, I had a book made of it sitting in that odd liminal space between physical and cognitive reality within my body for crying out loud! Zerrious was still sitting in his rigid lotus position and probably would be for a long while, he was never one to give up without trying everything he could think of.


    I reached out with my hands, something that I wasn''t sure was strictly necessary, but it helped me visualize as I pulled the fabric between the layers open and closed it around me as a sort of bubble that created a sort of pseudo physical reality around me. It didn''t strain me near as much as it used to, and everything seemed both more and less stable than before. Everything changed as soon as I wasn''t directly observing it just like it did before, but I was able to see how this physical reality was effecting the Aether and vice versa. I could see the energy fighting against this physical form.


    I finally understood why things kept trying to change here. It wasn''t something I noticed before, in fact I was always much more worried about keeping this bubble around me than actually seeing what was around me. Now that it was almost reflexive, like taking an extra deep breath, not difficult and almost automatic, but I still had to make the conscious choice.


    My center was absolutely overflowing with power, drawing in more and more Aether, so much that I couldn''t convert them to pages fast enough and they hung around the book like a violent cloud, trying to join the other pages but there was just too much. I was sure Zerrious would have a similar reaction, in fact we should retreat here to practice our magic from now on, and maybe even to rest. As long as I was awake this was the safest place in the world, I just wasn''t sure if I could bring others with me. I couldn''t remember the original prompt, or if it even specified.


    I walked around for a long moment, pondering, just feeling the world around me, alive with energy until I bothered to look, or touch something, then it seemed so calm. I could still feel the Aether fighting, but it wasn''t difficult to keep it under control, and you couldn''t tell just by looking at the plants.


    If it wanted to move so much, why not let it? In fact, why not guide it to become what I need it to be the moment I observe it? The thought hit me like a train and I grinned a stupid grin. This would probably be one of the most useless skills to cultivate but it sounded so fun, especially if I wanted to try and drag Zerrious in here.


    I stared at the large leafed fern sitting in front of me, relaxing my hold on the space around me and trying to convince the energy to take the form of a tall willow instead. I continued to relax my hold on physical reality until my vision started to get blurry, but nothing changed in the plant. I pushed and pushed with my mind as hard as I could to just make a willow tree until eventually I gave up, tightening my grip on the world again.


    "Of course it wouldn''t work," I sighed defeatedly, turning and walking directly into a tree. Where before was an almost garden like area, plants and grass coming out of soft soil, but now that soft soil was marred by an extremely dense forest of trees. Specifically, tall willow trees.


    "Well then," I said, rubbing my forehead with one hand and gazing in triumph at the dense forest around me. The trees were so close together I couldn''t move through them, so I turned in the direction of the fern where it was still a sort of garden only to be met with more willows.


    "Oh, I may have miscalculated." I suddenly wished that I had asked the Aether to become an empty field of sunflowers, but it was too late now, I had no idea how to control it. I turned again to see an endless field of sunflowers.


    "So it''s whatever I want as long as I''m not looking at it when it changes? This is amazing!" I exclaimed as I finally got it. I couldn''t explain why I couldn''t be looking at it or touching it for it to change, I had seen Mana and Aether take on numerous shapes and change fluidly before my eyes back in physical reality. It didn''t really matter, it was definitely a skill worth practicing, even if for no other reason than it felt cool to command the shape of he very world around you.


    "This is so cool," I said as I pulled myself back into physical reality, stepping in something warm and soft. Not just warm. . . Hot. Increasingly hot. Burning hot.


    I looked down to see that I had stepped directly into a pile of burning embers on the edge of our campfire.


    I let out a very manly yelp and hopped out of the fire, batting at my now flaming pant leg and boot in an attempt to quell the flames, although my panic only fanned the flames. Luckily my sudden yelling had brought Zerrious out of his deep meditation and he was able to put out the fire quickly.


    "Sigurd? What did I miss?" Zerrious asked after he put out the fire, looking around for potential threats.


    "I. . . Nothing, I accidently stepped in the fire," I admitted sheepishly.


    Zerrious just shook his head, disappointed but not overly surprised. I was the guy that did ill advised things that just so happened to work. Sometimes. I like to call them learning experiences.


    I let Zerrious look at my leg. It didn''t feel like I was burned too badly, but I let him cast his spells to disinfect the area, painlessly I might add. I loved magic, that medicinal sting wasn''t a necessary evil in this world. He wrapped my ankle in bandages and carefully put my boot back on to hold the bandage in place, tying it extra tight to prevent rubbing. My boots and pants were only a little singed, so it wasn''t a problem that I kept wearing them.


    "Thanks," I muttered. "Any luck in figuring anything out?" I was hopeful we had more success than I did, though his center was as hard to figure out as mine. His soul might be easier to understand, but it kept adapting, it kept changing so it was hard to tell what kind of abilities it could possibly have.


    "No, I keep trying things but it''s just not revealing anything new. I say we rest, I''m sure we''re both sore and mentally tired after our journey so far, plus we aren''t far from the next big city by my estimation," Zerrious said.


    "How do you decide where we stop? You said we passed a bunch of towns and cities, why are we stopping here?" I asked. It didn''t make any sense to me, but maybe he had his reasons, he was definitely the kind of kid to do his research.


    "I just go until I feel like there might be some new Names available. I have all the Names most cities can offer anyways, from here we''re going to have to find some uncommon or even illegal Names."


    ". . . Names can be illegal?" I asked quietly. I had to shove aside the fact that he was just moving by gut feeling, but if I could trust anyone''s gut it was this genius of a kid.


    "Oh yeah. Don''t worry, you don''t have any, in fact, even I don''t have any. Illegal Names are things that are truly terrible, things I can''t even describe. You know when you get an illegal Name, the system warns you about it," he said.


    "And. . . What if I don''t get system messages?" I asked. I didn''t want any illegal Names, I still had to live in this world after Zerrious became a god. That was really the only case I would be in trouble, as I imagined I wouldn''t survive anything that would kill Zerrious.


    "I. . . I guess we find out when I get the Name," Zerrious said.


    "That''s not concerning at all," I muttered as Zerrious scoffed and walked away to sleep for the night.


    I lay back, feeling deep inside for my connection with Nyah to help pull me into the land of dreams.

 Experiments Were a Resounding Success

    In our time in the last city I had grown accustomed to sharing a bed with my wife, Nyah. Being far away was hard, that physical connection that holding each other as we slept was a hard thing to loose. Luckily, the marriage ceremony here was more than just a religious or legal experience, it was a ritual that bound each other together, linking their souls together no matter the distance between them. It let us hold each other in our sleep in a different way. Less satisfying, but it gave us a sense that we were still together, even as the distance grew.


    I held onto that connection, holding her with my spirit, I could almost hear music it felt so right. Actually, I could hear music, gently pulling me from my slumber. A guitar tune, something gentle and slow, no words just the inherent beauty of the acoustic guitar. I gently looked out of my small tent to see Zerrious sitting around a fire with my guitar in his hands. I wasn''t sure when he had started the fire back up, or when he had picked up my guitar, but I knew I had Named him a bard for a reason. I didn''t recognize the song, especially not this early, but it was something like a folksy lullaby that I greatly appreciated.


    "What are you doing up so early?" I asked, lightly stepping up so sit next to the young prodigy.


    "I should ask you the same," Zerrious muttered playfully, his fingers never stopping on the guitar, just like I taught him.


    "Your playing woke me up. I don''t mind though, I slept plenty for one night." I gazed into the blazing inferno at the center of our little camp, mindlessly watching the flames curl in on themselves, going up and up until they they fade to smoke, always shifting, always moving.


    "Sorry. I just couldn''t sleep. This special ability stuff, it just feels so important. I''ve gotten all my Names from following those feelings, chasing the any skill I could see and any I couldn''t I followed my gut to find. I followed it all the way to you, I followed it through all my Names, but I just don''t know where to go from here. I need to figure this out, but it''s just not happening," Zerrious said, each word growing more frustrated than the last, bordering on a meltdown as he finally stopped playing the guitar and set it down.


    "Zerrious, listen to me. I know how you feel, I know how important things feel, I know it feels like if you don''t master it soon you never will, I get it. I came from a world where from the age of five you were told that if you failed here it would ruin your life, if you didn''t do well on this test you''d never make it in the world. The secret is, it''s not near as important as anyone says it is. I didn''t do well in any of my classes, I got a really low score on the SAT, and in the end I was still able to go to college and get a job that would pay for what I needed. Not so say none of those things were important, they were, but our bodies have a way of convincing themselves that things are much more important than they are." I reached an arm around the distressed boy, bringing him close like I imagined a good father would have done. "What I''m saying is, listen to those feelings, but do it with the knowledge that they aren''t always as smart as they think they are. Zerrious, you have your entire life ahead of you, I could be your father and I have confidence that I will live to see you become a god, even if each skill takes a year, two years, even five years to master. Plus, finding those abilities wont come with Names, we''re already masters in the relevant skills," I said lightly, rocking him a little bit to convey the light tone of the last sentence better.


    I could tell that the words of encouragement weren''t enough, not right away. He was still riding high on the emotions he was just experiencing, he couldn''t come down from that fast enough for mere words to be enough. My cane was leaning against my leg, still syphoning the reality stuff from me, but also leaving it available for spellcasting. I wasn''t quite sure what I was doing, but I knew that the center was the pathway to the soul, and I could get into his center. Sure, it required permission, but if you weaved it slightly differently, just sent intent instead of my entire being through, finding holes in his defenses. . .


    My Aether created Mana that then flowed from my arm and washed over Zerrious'' center with a calming feeling. Zerrious calmed down quickly with the help, even if he didn''t notice it at the time. After calming down the young man fell into the single arm hug and leaned on me, his head making itself at home on my shoulder.


    "Thank you," Zerrious croaked quietly, drying remnants of tears marring his face.


    Now, I may have been perfectly fine comforting him when he was in a crisis, but now that the crisis was averted this position had grown rather uncomfortable.


    "Okay, so we''re both up, why not get to that next city as soon as we can?" I said loudly, extricating myself from the bundle of emotions.


    "Yeah, okay," Zerrious said, joining me in standing around the fire while nodding and pulling himself back together.


    We got to work packing our things in our bags of rings, quickly putting everything in tight bundles with the efficiency only constant practice can achieve, finally lifting our packs and making our way out of the clearing and back onto the road where there were two other men getting a head start on their travels in the predawn morning. We didn''t exchange more than a glance before continuing our separate ways, both of us too tired to make small talk this early, especially since we weren''t running on as much sleep as we were used to.


    I strummed lightly as we walked, copying the tune Zerrious had played this morning. When it came to a close I repeated the song, the last note leading perfectly into the first as if that was how it was intended to be played, as a circle with no beginning, no end. Something that could be easily repeated until a baby fell asleep I thought with a silent grin.


    It wasn''t long until I got sick of the song repeating endlessly, so I cut it off, letting it fade into nothing in the morning air. I didn''t start another song, just felt the Mana in the air as we walked by, each of us pulling it into our centers, mine being filtered as it did.


    Zerrious was worried about finding the rest of his Names, as he rightly should be. He had Names for skills I didn''t even know existed, and he was still short by several hundred? I couldn''t fathom how we would do this, but I was excited to find out. I put my guitar away, instead summoning my soul in the form of a book and quill to write our journeys out, as well as my discoveries in the Aether as well as some theories I had on the mysteries of so much of this world. I couldn''t do much with the history of this world, but I could ruminate on it''s apparent lack of a creation story.


    It seemed that as far as history or religion went was "chaos before the gods rose to power" which doesn''t tell us much. All I can guess is that the world was simply ruled by regular physics with the odd addition of magic until then. After that apparently not much happened. A few countries split off and now they pretty much just rule everything in relative peace with few to no disputes between them.


    I lost track of my surroundings as I muttered under my breath, quill scratching quickly across each page that then turned on it''s own for me to continue my writing. Suddenly I was stopped by Zerrious'' hand pulling my collar too keep me from running into the wooden gates which sat closed in front of us, stone making up the rest of the wall, each brick cut precisely so that nothing was needed to bind the stones together, they just sat in perfect sync with each other. Expert carving I had only heard of back home.


    "Ah, sorry. When do the gates open?" I asked.


    "No idea. Get comfortable, hopefully they allow tourists," Zerrious said as he moved off the road to sit on the ground and lean back against the wall for a moment before getting into a rigid lotus position and closing his eyes.


    Well, if he was going to be like that. . . I pulled at the fabric of reality and stepped into the Aether, willing a relaxing beach environment into existence before I opened my eyes to observe the sand and water around me. Just being here was filling my center faster than I could handle, so I decided to practice willing things into being while I was here.


    I had figured out that as long as I wasn''t directly observing anything in some way it was malleable and would bend to my will. So I tested with a slightly scary prospect. I fell back, trusting full well that there would be a comfortable chair waiting to catch me. Luckily I was right, the soft cushions breaking my fall painlessly. I closed my eyes and willed a drink to appear on the armrest of my chair, served in a coconut, of course. I snatched the drink off my armrest without opening my eyes and took a sip from the straw that I had full confidence was there.The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    The drink slipped into my mouth only to dissolve into Aether and go directly into my center which was already flooding with the stuff. "That''s disappointing," I muttered to myself as I set the drink down, letting it disappear as I looked about the beach.


    "I think the secret is to just do everything without looking with confidence that it will work," I muttered. Falling over in hopes that a chair would catch me was something I could barely get past the anxiety of, but it worked, so maybe I had to go a little bit harder. . .


    I got up from my seat and walked over to the water, keeping my eye on the waves and wading in until I was waist deep in water, then I backpedaled out with confidence that my foot would reach dry sand with every footfall. And it worked, as I packed up I saw that the water had met a barrier just beyond where my vision sat and dry sand stood everywhere behind that point.


    "Here goes nothing," I said as I closed my eyes and ran up with full confidence that there would be solid ground to meet my feet no matter how far I ran. It worked, I was running up with my eyes closed, getting higher and higher into the fake sky. I opened my eyes to see an endless expanse of nothing ahead of me and a set of narrow stone stairs behind me with no guard rails.


    "Time for the moment of truth!" I screamed as I closed my eyes and fell backwards with confidence that there would be a cartoonish bouncy castle to break my fall at the ground. I was maybe thirty feet up, so I hoped with all my heart that this didn''t go terribly.


    I hit something soft and was flung back up ten feet into the air, causing my eyes to pop open of their own accord. It had worked! I bounced a few more times before deciding I had more or less mastered this skill. If I could memorize where things were in physical reality I could travel through walls or defenses if I needed to. This was going to be an incredible skill to have! I jumped out of the bouncy castle and directly into another comfortable chair, willing a pair of sunglasses to fall into my waiting hand and putting them on, closing my eyes and diving into my center to try and figure things out from there, as my experiments with the Aether had been a resounding success and I was riding that high.


    I stood in that odd liminal space where my center resided, just watching the cloud of Aether stir as pages were formed at rapid speeds, the book flaring brightly with the overload of Aether, shining through the blueish green cloud like a light tower on a foggy day, flickering quickly with the rapid turning of pages. This felt like a day for discovery, but I still had no idea where to start.


    I took a page with my mind and tore it out like I was going to use it for a spell, but instead of letting the Aether fall back into a cloud to follow my directions I let it stay a piece of paper. I wasn''t sure what my plan was, or if I even had a plan, but I took some of the Aether from the cloud around my center and willed it into the page, and just started drawing with my mind. It wasn''t very good. I figured drawing was all about hand eye coordination which was eliminated in this scenario, but I was wrong.


    There was a technical element to it, you had to know where to put each line, how much Aether to use on each line, exactly how things had to curve to add perspective, and I just couldn''t do that. It looked like something a little kid would draw, all simple shapes and lines, but it was the best depiction of my wife I could manage. I didn''t destroy it, even though it made me a little sick at how bad it was. Instead I put it back into the book, where I could tell even as that page melted into the back cover and came out the other side the picture was still intact. That page had a bit more Aether in it, so it was a little more powerful, which is a fun thought, though it wasn''t very useful because using more pages didn''t really effect me in any way. It felt like a start to something, I just wasn''t sure what.


    That cloud of Aether had grown incredibly thick in the time I was drawing, almost enough that I couldn''t see the brightness of my center through the thick haze. I just wished I had somewhere else to store it. . . Like another center connected to mine.


    I mentally slapped myself in the forehead for forgetting one of the most important parts of the marriage ritual. All the Aether my center couldn''t process fast enough went streaming into Nyah, being pulled off into a hole that didn''t exist before, or I supposed it existed everywhere all at once always but couldn''t be observed until it was needed. Centers are weird.


    I then remembered something else, Nyah didn''t have a center that could properly store large amounts of. . . anything, so all that Aether would just leak out into the world around her. It''s not like it would do anything, but it felt like a waste. I watched the Aether flow through that hole, wondering what I could do.


    I still needed to find something that could hold the reality stuff so Nyah could cast the spells she knew, and I also had to help her see her soul and shape her center accordingly. I could write a letter and try to explain the process, but it seemed like something that she would need the help of someone experienced to accomplish. But I couldn''t just leave Zerrious because I wanted to be able to store more Aether than I rightly should. Maybe I could convince him to try and hunt another Aetherweb Poisoner, but before I killed one no one even knew they existed, so I wasn''t hopeful we would find one.


    I could try to replicate the effects of the material of the chiton, but I had no idea how to do that synthetically, I never had to do that kind of work. I worked in programing, our catchphrase was "nothing works and we have no idea why". It was an art, not a science like synthesizing magic bug skin.


    "Why did you put me here? An engineer would have dominated this world in thirty seconds and solved all the universes problems," I muttered. I was pretty sure whatever gods there were couldn''t hear me, as I was both in my center and in the Aether, but complaining made me feel better, so I did my whining and opened my eyes to the beach experience, wind against my skin and sun hot on my skin.


    I had no way of telling time here, but it had probably been way too long since I was in reality. My only problem was, I had no idea where I was in relation to the physical world. I didn''t remember much from the early days of my arrival on this world, but I did remember one warning about stepping out of the Aether and into an object that didn''t sound fun.


    I stood up, steeling my nerves for the potential of accidentally killing myself and everyone I loved by ripping a hole in the side of the universe before I reached out with my hands and pulled the curtain keeping the Aether and the physical world separate and stepped through. Luckily my feet hit soft grass and I didn''t explode or stop existing, which made me so happy I couldn''t even describe it.


    "Sigurd! Where were you? I thought you had been kidnapped or something! I looked all over for you!" Zerrious yelled from the tree line close by where he had gone in search of me.


    "Sorry, sorry. I was just practicing one of my skills, I should have told you," I said sheepishly. The kid had clearly been in a panic over my safety, even though he had told me he wouldn''t worry about my safety at all. The big softy.


    "Ugh, come on, the gates opened almost an hour ago," he said, shaking a little bit and grabbing me by the sleeve to drag me though the gates.


    I knew this was a time where I deserved to be in trouble, but I did have a way out of it, even if it wasn''t strictly "good". I mixed my Aether with the reality stuff and weaved the Mana into the calming spell that I guided into his center. The ribbon traveled into his center just like before, but this time the Mana fizzled out and Zerrious'' Mana shot up through the middle of the string, causing a feedback and shocking my center with a heady jolt, blasting several pages out of my center.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    Center Property discovered: Adaptive Defense.


    <hr><hr>


    Adaptive Defense:


    Zerrious'' center is designed to learn and evolve with experiences, the same trick will never work twice! Whenever Zerrious'' center is accessed without his consent or knowledge his center takes note of the experience and builds defenses against threats of the same kind, not only preventing attacks of the kind but offering an automatic counterattack to protect Zerrious!


    <hr>


    Fuuuuuuuuck me.


    "You were rooting around in my center?!" Zerrious growled under his breath.


    "Okay, I can explain-" I tried, but I should have known that was the wrong thing to say, it was never the right thing to say, why would I say that?


    "Oh no, you can''t. What am I just some big experiment to you? Do you just try things out on me just to see what''ll happen? I''ve been forgiving about you trying new things, I''ve even let you see my soul! If you wanted to see my center you could have just asked! I would''ve let you!" Zerrious yelled. It was drawing the eyes of traders and guards, they were getting interested, especially with this talk of centers. Most of them would have no idea what we were talking about, but it was definitely the wrong kind of attention to be getting in a new city.


    "They were calming spells, I used it to help calm you down last night, and I tried to calm you down just now," I whispered.


    "I can''t trust you anymore, I don''t know what to believe, I don''t know what''s true or not!" Zerrious yelled, completely ignoring that I was trying to keep us under the radar.


    "I''ll teach you the spell, just calm down," I whispered.


    "Fuck you. Fuck you straight to hell," Zerrious growled, no longer yelling. I thought my attempt at peace had failed. Well, I had wanted to go see Nyah again, though it hurt my soul to consider abandoning this quest, even though it wasn''t my own. "Fine, teach me the damned spell and maybe I''ll believe you."


    "You wont regret this, I promise. Let''s get a seat in a bar and some drinks, then I''ll teach you there," I said, quickly stepping behind a trader who was breathing on the orb to be admitted into the city.


    "At least I found out something my center can do," Zerrious muttered under his breath as he joined me with a glare, keeping me at arms length. I guessed I wasn''t supposed to hear that, but I did and it healed a little bit of the regret I was feeling.


    "I really am sorry," I said quietly before the guards started talking to us.

 Work the Rumor Mill

    "It''s too early for this shit," said one of the guards upon seeing the drama between us. It was mostly nonsense to him, but emotions were clearly running high and he did not want to deal with it, this was supposed to be one of the easiest jobs in the military. I wasn''t sure what country we were in, and I wasn''t really sure it mattered. People were allowed to move freely between kingdoms and laws stayed pretty much the same across borders, the only thing that changed was where taxes went, which wasn''t much of a concern among the common folk.


    His friend nodded in agreement, the dark circles under his eyes telling all the story we needed.


    "I''m sorry, it was just a misunderstanding is all," I said. Zerrious glared at me, but the guards almost seemed eager to take it at face value, which didn''t make much sense to me. That type always wanted to hear about everyone else''s drama because they never got any of their own. Soldiers are a gossipy breed, to my understanding.


    "Makes sense. Any intention of breaking the law?" he asked, holding up the orb. The problem was, we were on a search for potentially illegal Names, so yes we did intend to break the law. I really hoped this orb broke. In fact, I considered "accidentally" knocking it out of his hand in hopes of it shattering on the ground.


    "Neither of us intend to break the law at any point in our lives," I said into the orb. A flat out lie, but something in the air seemed to resonate with truth, like the very Mana in the air was agreeing with me. White light started to flow from the orb, indicating truth. "Just out of curiosity, what does it look like when someone lies?"


    "Well, I definitely don''t know about Gerald''s mistress he''s been hiding behind his wife''s back," one of the guards said with a rye grin and the orb close to his face. Darkness flowed from the orb like smoke from a forest fire. Gerald did not seem happy that that particular secret was out in the world.


    "Don''t worry, your secret''s safe with me," I said, laying a hand on Gerald''s shoulder as I walked past with Zerrious just a few steps behind. "Thank you boys for your kindness this morning, hope to see you once more before we leave!" I said, making my way down the street and finding the Name above a shop that would get both me and Zerrious drunk.


    My calming spell might not work on him anymore, but alcohol was the calming spell that worked on everyone. He kept a safe distance while still staying close enough that he wouldn''t loose me. I still had information after all.


    I sat down at a table, and motioned for Zerrious to sit across from me, motioning for the barkeep to "surprise me". Zerrious got some cocktail that he later described as a "sweet and sour whiskey bomb", whatever that meant. Frankly I was scared to find out, but we sat down and I tried to be as normal as possible. We were talking about magics that no one, or at least very few, people knew about, we needed to prevent drawing attention as much as possible.


    We waited in silence for our drinks, and then when they came, mine a bright blue that had a sort of cotton candy and cherry quality to it that was well contrasted with a sort of nutty kick from the alcohol. I was pleasantly surprised, and Zerrious did nothing but sip and glare at me over his drink.


    "Okay, I need to gain your trust back, I get that. I''m going to open myself up to you, I''m letting you into my center," I said, holding my hand palm up on the table for him to touch to make the connection. I guided him through the thought process and pattern he had to move the Mana in, then he sent the string into my center and I closed my eyes to join him at the brightly flaring book that turned endlessly within me.


    "That''s it?" Zerrious asked. I was a little bit hurt. Sure, it didn''t adapt to things, and it didn''t change, but it was mine, and damn it I made this discovery on my own.


    "Yes that''s it. Is there a problem?" I said, maybe a little too defensively.


    "No, it''s just. . . It doesn''t change? What kind of abilities could this possibly give you? I got defense, and you got. . . another notebook?" Zerrious asked, maybe this time pitying me a little bit. Pity was a step up from the anger that bled from his voice before, but I took it.


    "I don''t know. I guess. . ." I thought back. Zerrious'' ability had come from outside stimuli, it was just an inherent property that we had to notice to get the notice about it. Maybe mine was the same way. The way I lied back there, that hadn''t been normal but it just happened without me thinking. "I got it!" I exclaimed in the odd liminal space.


    "It?"


    The information started flowing into my head as soon as I realized it. The book in my center essentially "convened" with the ambient Mana and made it so that the world around me with just naturally back me up, essentially, I''m incredibly hard to read, my words are essentially law, unless they are so obviously false, of course. I could convince someone they were dreaming, but I couldn''t make gravity reverse by saying it confidently enough. "One of the abilities it gave me, I can lie, and my stories will seem so much more impactful because the world tells them alongside me!" I exclaimed excitedly.


    He did seem mildly impressed at that. There wasn''t much else to do, so we stepped back into our bodies and I taught him the pattern for my calming spell. He rendered me nearly high using it on me. I was so calm already that it lowered my inhibitions to a dangerous level, especially when we were supplementing it with alcohol. Delicious alcohol too, a dangerous prospect. I''d keep drinking it and get worse and worse until my liver was fried.


    I held my drink close, clumsily sticking the straw in my mouth and slumping against the wall, quickly falling asleep while still sucking on the straw and consuming my drink.


    It wasn''t long before the drink was wrestled from my grasp and Zerrious was waking me up, pulling me upright and looking in my eyes. I was very okay with him grabbing me and moving me around, seemingly nothing could break me of my relentless calm until Zerrious held up a hand and weaved a spell to banish the intoxication from my bloodstream.


    "Sigurd?" Zerrious asked, and I could finally comprehend his words rather than being too beyond caring to listen.


    "Yes, yes, I''m okay. I just wasn''t expected that to be so. . . effective," I said back, finally recovering from the calming spell as well now that all the alcohol was out of my system. Unfortunately, now I needed a replacement for the drink that was no longer giving me a good time, as the previous one had been finished in my sleep.


    "Good, I. . . I really don''t want to do this alone. Honestly, I trust you, even though you just told me that you can lie like nobody else," Zerrious said, the last part muttered under his breath.


    "A master of bullshit indeed," I said, which earned me an odd look, but not a desire for explanation. It seemed they had cows, but hadn''t made the distinction between bull and cow, just male and female cows. Really it was my home world that was odd for giving them completely different names.


    I ordered another of the same drink, this one simply to enjoy while we talked about what our next move was. We needed Names, uncommon and potentially illegal ones to fill out the rest of Zerrious'' god resume.


    "Well, step one is to just look around, see if there are any openly practicing Names you don''t have yet, and then we work from there. If you need to spend some time to get a more common Name then so be it, in fact, that would be wonderful! Meanwhile, we are not doing too well on cash. Yes, I understand that you can essentially print money by enchanting things, but that takes time we need you to be working on earning Names. The longer this takes the more money it''s going to cost, so we need you focused on that. I can try to get us somewhere to stay, but we have to be prepared to spend a while on the streets," I explained, my mind racing through what we needed to do. Unfortunately, I had no experience learning illegal skills in a medieval setting, so all I could do was guess from what I''d seen from videogames.


    "Alright, I''ll look around. While you''re finding us somewhere to stay keep an eye out, yeah? Best to have both of us at least partially looking," Zerrious said before finishing his drink in a quick swig and leaving the table. I stayed put a little longer, taking my time with my drink and listening around me. Hunters, farmers, guards, all came in here to relax, and most importantly tell stories.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    I knew a lot of guys at work who were big into the whole dungeons and dragons thing, and the way they''d explained it one of the best ways to find information was by listening to what the townsfolk said. Sometimes they would just eavesdrop, I''d heard a number of tales about failed perception or stealth checks when trying to slyly gain information, but most common by my reckoning was just to walk straight up to the barkeep and ask him.


    The barkeep was the guy that heard everything, he was always there to hear the men and women drunkenly boast their tales, or slur as they quiver in fear at some horrific rumor that would keep them up until the alcohol forced their brain off. Meanwhile he was usually sober throughout all of it, so he would have all the most important stories stored within his memory.


    I picked up my drink with one hand, leaving my other on my cane and awkwardly pulling my backpack on with both items in my hands. There was assuredly a better way to do that, but it was too late now. I made the short trek across the room and sat down at the bar, setting myself down on the taller stool that stood there and calmly sipping my drink. It really was lovely.


    I let the man make his rounds, giving people their drinks and talking to the waitresses and such before he came back over to the bar where only I sat. Part of me was worried about breaking some sort of unspoken rule, but I was fairly confident that I was in the right. If nothing else I was sure my mistake would be forgiven as a newcomer.


    "Rough day, traveler?" said the man, his mononym appearing above his head and revealing him as Lucifer. My gut reaction was to make a Satan joke that would fly directly over his head, but I opted out and instead tried to get more information.


    "Not the best day, I will admit. I definitely wouldn''t say today was a total wash though, good things happened. No, I''d actually like to ask you about something. You see, I''m doing some research on local rumors in certain areas, by my experience the man that makes everyone''s drinks is the best place to start," I said, the air around me pushing the words to make them seem more innocent, make him more likely to help me.


    "I''m not sure what you mean. I''d be glad to help, but this takes a lot of time from my day, I can''t go doing favors for every newcomer that wanders in here," Lucifer said.


    "No, no, I''m not asking for anything but a few moments of your time. What I''m looking for is rumors of people with incredible or odd powers, or perhaps beasts that shouldn''t exist, or maybe even just people you suspect might tell stories of the sort," I explained.


    "Oh, I get it. Well, hunters always tell tales of beasts no one has seen, but everyone knows it''s pretty much just boasting, though every once in a while there seems to be real fear. Never stops them from going back out there, eh? Oh, and Dave keeps talking about a lady without skin that keeps stealing his sleep unless he leaves a broom by the door. Otherwise, if anyone has anything really interesting they''re much better at hiding it," He said. That gave me somewhere to start. That last one sounded familiar, and I let him leave to keep doing his job while I wracked my brain for what that creature could possibly be.


    "A boo hag!" I muttered under my breath as I finally remembered. I wanted to say it originated in Georgia with slaves as they would sleep and wake up without feeling rested, so the story of the boo hag, a lady who at night would take off her skin and sit on your chest as you slept at night and suck the rest from you while you slept, and if you woke up while she was there she''d take your soul. From what I remembered the way to stave her off was with a strainer near the door because she would be compelled to count every hole until morning when she would have to go and put her skin back on. I guessed that the broom served the same purpose, making her count every piece of straw or whatever was used in brooms in this local.


    I wasn''t sure if this one was real, but it was interesting. It might even have a Name in it, but the hunters might be a better place to start. Perhaps we could chart everywhere they had spotted monsters and find some sort of nest or something. Might be something there, a monster killer Name or something.


    I got up to go find some more useful information than than potential rumors before realizing that I hadn''t even mentioned a place to sleep. It was fine, I figured I''d try to bring Zerrious into the Aether anyways, might as well try and push that to tonight, then at least he could sleep well, and maybe he could find somewhere I could sleep before too long.


    I went outside, and just started walking the unfamiliar streets, keeping track of my path as best I could so I could return at nightfall to meet Zerrious and discuss our next move. I walked about, the busy parts of town bustling and the quiet parts silent, nothing of note happening, no unfamiliar Names presenting themselves to me.


    It wasn''t long at all before I was promptly lost, wandering unfamiliar and mazelike streets that seemed heavily reminiscent of western European construction, a city within a wall with farmlands outside the wall that farmers would travel to to work rather than living on the farmland itself which happened a lot more in America if I could remember correctly. Not that it really mattered, though perhaps "Otherworldly city design" was a Name out there somewhere. I snickered lightly at the thought, though something like that probably existed. In fact, I should probably sit Zerrious down to go over some civil engineering type stuff. I wasn''t well versed in it, but I had to have some casual knowledge that would be a wonderful addition to this world that seemed so stuck in their ways.


    I started going over city designs in my head, planning out layouts for various terrains and building designs based on climate. All I knew is you kind of wanted things close together that were similar and you wanted laborers close to their workplace but far away from things that would produce waste or bad smells, like landfills and sewer treatment plants. You also had to take into account the kind of weather was in an area, like if it snowed a lot you didn''t want flat roofs because the snow would get too heavy and cave it in, and if it rained a lot you didn''t want a lot of valleys for the rain to pool.


    I looked around at the haphazard arrangement of buildings around me and realized that they most likely didn''t have any sort of sewer or aqueduct system, and most likely these buildings were just thrown together in the aftermath of the Child Empress falling with a wall constructed around them much later. In fact, it answered a lot of questions about how things were organized in the last city as well that people just threw buildings into an area and figured it out from there, which is why I was so thoroughly lost in this maze of streets.


    All that realization didn''t help in the slightest with how lost I was, though I did feel more confident that I wasn''t going to find my way back anytime soon. "You know what would be useful? Tracking magic. Or at least some sort of breadcrumb spell so I could retrace my steps would be wonderful right about now," I muttered under my breath as I wandered aimlessly. I wasn''t any closer to figuring out where I was or where I was trying to go, and with the sun cresting the sky I knew I was quickly running out of time to get there.


    I remembered that Zerrious had a message spell, and I cursed myself for not bothering to ask him about it before now when I could really use a hand. Maybe I couldn''t cast a messaging spell, but perhaps I could figure out some kind of approximation. I could feel a connection to him, and though it was created with my racial trait it was kept up with ambient Mana, Mana that connected our centers. I tried to send thoughts down that line, but I didn''t feel anything change. I tried to send a pulse of Aether down the line, then a pulse of Mana, but neither one seemed to do anything. I did have an idea of where Zerrious was, but that wasn''t much help when the city was so poorly designed.


    "Nothing to do about it now," I said as I started wandering more in the westward direction where I felt Zerrious. I didn''t know if he wanted me to be where he was, but I was just sick of being lost with no new information, even though I had thought of a new skill, or set of skills, to teach him. I mean, if we felt like it would could just build our own city. That sounded like a commitment we didn''t want to make though, we couldn''t spend years building up infrastructure when we still had so many Names to earn, especially since each one will be harder to earn than the last.


    I probably should have just waited in that bar for some of the hunters Lucifer had told me about to show up and I could do some chatting with them, but it was too late now. I made my way through side streets, ending up at the periodic dead end and turning around until I eventually found Zerrious looking about as disappointed as I did in the lack of new skills in this city, though at least he didn''t look as lost as I felt.


    "Zerrious, I found you! Got any good news?" I asked, a hint of hope creeping it''s way into my tone.


    "Afraid not. Seems like pretty much every other city," he responded as we got closer, meeting in the middle of the street. From the position of the sun, which I was not trained on so I had to guestimate to the best of my ability, it was about four, so we had been out all day, and most likely through most of the city. "How about you, any leads?"


    "We could talk to the hunters, they''ve been talking about strange monsters in the forests, and there''s this guy Dave who seems to have a boo hag problem, and if I remember the lore right he shouldn''t be the only one. If he''s not crazy he''s probably just the only one willing to say something," I said. It really was a few decent leads all things considered. Especially as a newcomer on their first day in the big city.


    "I suppose that''s where we start then. I don''t know what a boo hag is but that seems like the more pressing issue if it is an issue, so we''ll talk to Dave once we can find him, but for now I think we find somewhere to sleep," Zerrious said, turning and looking about him. I had mistaken his frustration for the lack of new information for confidence in position and now saw how truly lost both of us were.


    "Actually, since neither of us know where to go for a nights sleep, there was something I was going to teach you that might be useful. Might even give us a more secure place to sleep," I said.


    "What did you figure out this time? I gotta say, you''ve had quite the productive day today, Sigurd," Zerrious said coyly.


    "Oh, no I''ve been able to do this for years, I just never figured out how to teach you. At this point I just need to try, who knows, you might find it easy," I said before I started leading him off and describing what it felt like to pull the Aether open.

 Ethereal Descriptions

    "So imagine your in a nice bed, but it was really hot that night so you threw the covers off and you were just wrapped in the top sheet," I said, trying to analyze what it felt like as we walked. "Or, maybe that''s not quite right, because it''s kind of tight and loose at the same time. Hm. It''s sort of a curtain that is everywhere but actually nowhere? Or, do I just call it a fabric? It''s just a thin film that separates the. . . I''ve been calling them layers and I think that''s right, but this film only leads to the Aether. . . Why doesn''t it connect to any other layers? Why can''t I go to. . . I don''t know, a cognitive mind layer between dreams and waking? Why just Aether. . ?"


    "Um, what?" Zerrious said simply. He was a genius, certified certainly with his litany of Names, so it had to be a genuinely terrible description or a stupid complex topic to confuse him.


    I wasn''t sure exactly how I did it though, I just kind of. . . did. "Hold on, I need a moment," I said, slipping into the Aether and paying close attention to how I did it. I could feel the Aether on both sides responding to me reaching to the other layer, as I slid my hand through the Aether on my side of the cloth it was coated in the energy and I was able to pull at the fabric, but it didn''t look like I was pulling, more that it just felt that way, even as space contorted around me trying collapse into the void I had just opened and forced to stay in place with my ability to stabilize the reality in the Aether to pull physical reality with me.


    I didn''t fully understand how I did that either, but one thing at a time.


    The Aether on the other side of the cloth gathered where my hand was trying to pierce the veil and it was consumed as I pulled open the curtain and stepped through, forcing physical reality to follow me, although this time I recognized that whenever I interacted with the fabric of reality my hand was coated in Aether. I tried mixing in the reality stuff that still needed a name to make Mana and tried to use that to interact with the fabric dividing Zerrious and I, but it didn''t work, I couldn''t touch it. I could feel it, but I couldn''t interact with it.


    That led to the question: What is Aether? I combined it with the reality stuff and I could cast spells, but if I didn''t it wouldn''t have a real effect on the world like it would with Mana. If I left it as Aether than it could interact with the fabric of reality, but it couldn''t if I mixed in the reality stuff. Yes it''s just the properties of the stuff, but why?


    As my science teachers always said, the only question in science that really matters is why.


    Aether was lighter, I could feel that. Mana felt more visceral, wild, prone to action. Aether was kind of the same, but it felt more controlled, more. . . thoughtful? I couldn''t tell what the difference was, not in words, but I could feel that they were different in the ways they moved even if they moved the same ways.


    Ugh, all these opposites happening at the same time were starting to hurt my head on top of holding up reality around me in this odd place of. . . "Hm. There is no reality here, I''m bringing that. But something is here, this place has a purpose without me coming here. There''s Aether here, but my world doesn''t have it bleeding into physical reality and making Mana, and I was quite sure the physics were exactly the same otherwise, and I had heard of this layer stuff back home, but there it was an unprovable theory because. . . I don''t know, they were too far away? So here the Aether is just closer. . . Or maybe not just closer, but almost touching, hell, maybe they are touching and that''s where the bleed is coming from. Still doesn''t help me. Maybe Zerrious can figure it out a bit better."


    So, now I had to somehow teach Zerrious how to separate his Mana into Aether, which I also didn''t actually know how I did that back when I had Mana, and now it''s just automatically filtered out of my center. I didn''t think it was something you could just do by focusing, but this was more firmly on the magic side of things, even if, at it''s core, this was just energy which I was the leading expert on. Oh god how sad a world it was where I was the leading expert in. . . anything.


    I gathered the Aether back on my hand and pulled aside the fabric separating the two layers, and as I stepped through the veil, I could feel it. These worlds weren''t touching, they weren''t separated at all. It felt like the layer was poorly grafted on, like someone lost a hand and a cadaver hand was used in place of the original, an ugly scar separating two clearly different fleshes. I had no idea how it happened, but I could feel that it did, and I knew that this weird fusing was why magic existed on this world.


    I finished stepping through and took note that sun had fallen in the sky a little more. Time was hard to tell when reality was so fluid, it could be lit however it needed to be there no matter the time of day so I tended to loose track. I had gotten a step closer to understanding what this strange layer was, but I hadn''t made too much headway on actually being able to teach the skills I had in this area.


    "Did you figure it out? We kind of need to figure something out. I''ve noticed that there are a few gangs territories we passed through. I don''t want to be caught here after sundown, even if we can fight them off," Zerrious asked nervously as he glanced at the sky which was quickly darkening as dusk approached at speed.


    "Uh, I think so? We''ll stay there either way, but I think I figured out how to open the way. I want you to coat your hand in. . . actually lets start by trying to separate your Mana. I want you to pull a strand of Mana into your hand and focus on it, then I want you to try to pull it apart. Let me see if I can show you," I said, rambling slightly in a whispered tone as I tried not to give away all of my secrets to anyone who just so happened to be bored nearby.


    I pulled the Aether from my center, using just a single page and mixing it with the reality stuff to make Mana. I held it in a small ball that spun in my hand with the green that marked it as mine, which also seemed important to understanding all of this. Why was Zerrious'' Mana a dark red while mine was green? Obviously mine had changed some after marriage, but that was more to do with a combining of souls than the innate properties of Mana.


    I tried to just focus on separating them in my palm by pulling with my mind, focusing and trying to find a mental grip that would let me separate the halves but I didn''t know how to do it without a filter like my body. I thought of other ways people would separate things after a few moments of fruitless effort. I knew if you let things sit they would eventually separate by density, and I knew that even as technically equal energies reality stuff had a greater magical "density" in the physical world, though it seemed more nebulous in the Aether. Unfortunately the nature of Mana kept it mixing itself constantly so that wouldn''t work.


    There was another way though, a faster way people used. It was more in the realm of science than I was used to working, but I remembered if you spun something around fast enough it would naturally separate, even these forces would at some point, right?


    "One second, sorry. I''m still trying to figure this out myself," I said as I started to spin the ball in a slow circle around the palm of my hand, slowly picking up speed until eventually the energies sprung apart. It didn''t feel like I lost control, but the Aether flew off in a cloud only I could see and the reality stuff made the air seem heavier for a moment as it dispersed and I was left with a small sphere of a third energy. "What the fuck?"


    There was a deep green ball spinning slowly in my palm. It seemed to have similar properties to the reality stuff but it was definitely different. First, I had way more control over this stuff. I admit I was decent at weaving Aether, Mana, even the reality stuff, but this was way easier, and it really wanted to go back to my center.


    I let it seep back into my center and I could feel my control over what was in my center grow for a moment before another page was added and equilibrium was brought back to my center. I had a feeling this was the, well, to keep consistent I called it me stuff, that would give me control over the energies I used. That explained why each persons Mana looked different, they had a unique energy mixed in that made each persons Mana theirs and theirs alone. While that was cool, that just made it harder to teach Zerrious to use Aether, because now he had to separate it while leaving his me stuff in at least the Aether, which I could feel would be the hardest part to keep mixed together.


    I tried a number of times but the Mana either didn''t separate or it separated too much and left me with a sphere of me stuff that I couldn''t do anything with. I made a note to experiment more, but at the moment it left me with no way to teach Zerrious. Unless. . . If he could make a sphere of his me stuff (damn I needed a new name for that too, this was getting ridiculous) and I supplied the Aether without any of my me stuff mixed in, he could probably take control of it and use it. I''d teach him how to open the fabric first, then I''d try to give him some Aether to hold and try it out. The sun was starting to go down, but if this didn''t work I would just hold open the fabric and bring him in myself.


    "Okay, I''m going to teach you how to open the way to the Aether first, then I''m going to try to give you the Aether to do it. For some reason this only works with Aether, not Mana," I said, finally breaking from my experimentation to look up and see an increasingly nervous Zerrious watching me with interest but silently begging me to hurry up. "This wont take long I promise. Coat your hand in Mana, don''t use any spells or any sort of specific weaves, just put it on your hand like water."The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Zerrious complied, having to restart several times as his Mana kept trying to form patterns around his hands. Mine didn''t do that, must have something to do with his me stuff, each persons seemed to be unique after all. After he managed to get an even coating without any knots or weaves I told him to simply reach out and try to feel the scar between the layers.


    "I can feel something, but it doesn''t feel like a scar, more like a sheet, or a cloak," Zerrious said, his worry at the time clearly forgotten in his wonder at this unheard of skill.


    "Right, I called it a scar because. . . Well it kind of feels like that''s what it is? It''s hard to explain because I don''t really have any theories that make sense yet, but. . . Yeah I should have just called it a sheet like before. Doesn''t matter what I call it, you can feel it?"


    "Yes, but I can''t grab it like you said. Earlier you said you just kind of pull it back?" I didn''t see the Aether gathering on the other side of the scar so I knew nothing would happen of this attempt, but feeling it was the hard part. Actually, once you got used to feeling it you kind of couldn''t stop feeling it, so that wasn''t really right. "Actually, I can kind of feel it all around me now that I know what I''m looking for. It''s not as obvious, but I can pick it out, like a breeze on my skin." What a wonderful way to put it. I was going to steal that if I ever taught Nyah, or anyone else. It seemed unlikely, but it was entirely possible I''d want to teach more people.


    "Right, now that you can feel it let''s try to get you some Aether. Unfortunately you can''t do this on your own until I can figure out how to separate it right, but I can help you learn. Get a ball of the red stuff that you get when you separate everything out," I said, making a ball of green Aether above my own hand as the red seemed to bleed and grow from his hand like a sanguine flower while mine just kind of unfolded into being. He separated his out and ended up with the useless red ball hovering above his hand. I brought my Aether close to his and started spinning it around his ball. Since the Aether was lighter it would separate inward and since it wanted to spread explosively at least some of it would collide with Zerrious'' me stuff and get mixed in.


    When it separated Zerrious fully understood the assignment and trapped the Aether in a bubble of the red stuff and it quickly became more airy, like a particularly heavy raincloud. His stuff seemed way cooler than mine, I got wispy paper, he got evolving blood, this seemed incredibly unfair. Regardless, it worked perfectly and Zerrious had to carefully coat his hand just like the first time and he pulled at the scar, violently ripping open a hole into the layer beyond physical reality. I instinctually reached out with my mind to stabilize the reality beyond, but I forcibly let my mind relax. I''d be okay, I''d fought the Aether on my wedding day, this was a calm way to learn comparatively, though I stayed on edge in case Zerrious was too slow.


    "Okay, now''s the hard part!" I shouted over the howling of reality and oblivion warring in front of us. "You need to let go of the cloth and hold it with your mind! Then all you have to do is stretch the reality through the opening and hold it!" That was confusing. There wasn''t a good way to put it to words, you just kind of pulled the reality with you, and you kind of had to force the Aether to be okay with that too. Shit.


    "Oh is that all?" Zerrious yelled gutturally as he tried to do as I described to no avail. I gave him a bit of a nudge, stabilizing the area in front of him some to give him an idea what it felt like. After that he clumsily followed suit, making the Aether just stable enough to exist in without ceasing to be. I went through with my superior practice and better connection to this layer and rounded everything off. It seemed Zerrious had pictured a system of caves with glowing rocks that seemed to dance like flames. It was very ethereal, kind of how I described the properties of the place. I guess I hadn''t quite gotten to describing what reality was actually like once it was here.


    "That was hard," Zerrious said. I could feel he let go of the reality around him, and if I wasn''t there he would have been gone just like that. I let it go a little unstable and he panicked, placing his mind firmly on the area around him.


    "You can''t stop making sure reality stays around you here, that''s why I haven''t slept in here yet, I need to stay awake while I''m in here. You can sleep while I hold this up, but this doesn''t seem very comfortable. Something I failed to tell you about was one of the main perks of this space. This place is super malleable, and since we are the only ones here and we are the ones sort of making this place, it can be whatever we want. Close your eyes and imagine we are standing in a cabin with the most comfortable beds you can imagine."


    I closed my eyes and let my control over the area drop, letting Zerrious take full control of the area which seemed to want to move a lot more as soon as I took my hand off the scale. When we opened them we were standing in spots of stone from the cave but everything else was different, redwood floors and walls with a massive bed tucked to one side of the room, a big cozy chair by the fireplace that cracked like lightning, and a window with light rain outside. That last bit was a nice touch.


    I took full control and settled into the big chair to try and think about the natures of the odd energies I had found and analyzed prior. "You can sleep, I''ll keep this up and we''ll head back out in the morning," I said. Hopefully I''d have more figured out by morning.


    "Where will you sleep, you said someone has to stay awake, right?" Zerrious asked innocently.


    "I wont. I have some more stuff to think about and you''ll need your strength for tomorrow if your going to go hunting for more Names," I responded lightly, sitting down and already starting my contemplation.


    Zerrious hesitated for a moment, staring at the look on my face before just climbing into the bed and falling asleep almost immediately, easily succumbing to the comfort of a bed after all of our time in the woods. I was tired too, especially after all the time I''d been awake and trying to figure out the mysteries of the universe, but my mind was still racing. I had no idea where to go with this train of thought, I just felt like I had to think.


    I used a few pages of Aether from my center which was quickly replenished tenfold and considered it, watching the flows of the energy, both the stuff under my control and the Aether flowing freely about this layer, gathering and clumping up before dissipating and growing thin in places. The energy did seem drawn to certain things, kind of like it was drawn to me when I was pulling open the Aether. I reached out with a hand coated in the energy and brushed the scar between the layers, and the free flowing Aether gathered about me as I channeled the energy around my hand, almost like it was begging for something to happen there.


    Maybe it wanted to escape into physical reality. It was restless, it wanted action but there was nothing to act on here, so it had a taste for action as Mana and desired to return to that state where things could change, where action could exist. That made sense to me, an energy that wanted to be used as all energy was. It could not be created or destroyed but always wanted to be consumed, to change states and shapes and it wanted to move.


    Zerrious had explained that the basics of Mana was that it was the energy of change, it was the means by which everything changed, but that wasn''t true, I knew that wasn''t true. Things changed all the time back in the world I was born in and there was no Mana to speak of. The Aether surely exists, but it can''t mix in with the reality stuff like it does on this world. Maybe he meant that Mana was the energy of unexplainable change, but that doesn''t really make sense as a base philosophy to teach, especially if they have an idea of what Mana is already.


    I pulled my hand away, letting the Aether I had coated my hand in seep into the environment which was overrun with the stuff. I watched the Aether for a long time, watching as it gathered in clumps and then moved away to some other place, seemingly without pattern. It was everywhere always, but it seemed odd that it wanted to clump up like that. Generally from what I knew energy wanted to spread out as evenly as possible, energy didn''t really clump up in a void like this, not without some outside influence. If you heated up an empty room you wouldn''t get random flames popping up in random spaces in the room, the entire area would heat up mostly evenly unless something was there to draw the heat in, to force it to clump up in one place.


    So what was drawing in the Aether? It wasn''t on this side of the scar, at least I didn''t think so. I hadn''t found anything other than the odd energy on this side, just like I hadn''t seen anything other than physical reality on the other side. Sure, it was a bit more complicated than that, but at base it was all just physical reality with influences from other layers. So, if other layers had an influence, like with the Gods, or with perhaps the mind, with these layers so closely interconnected, so intertwined, what effect did they have on each other? It had to be far more pronounced here than it was where I was born, and not just with the mixing of energies and the possibility of magic, something more, but not that much more or I would have noticed it before.


    I would probably have to figure more out on the other side of the scar and I was incredibly tired with how eventful my day had been. I yawned heavily and pulled up Zerrious'' system messages that I had ignored when they first came up. I had noticed things try to pop up in my vision several times throughout the teaching process but had dismissed them in leu of more focus while I was trying to figure out how to actually teach the skills.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    Skill gained: Aetherwalk.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Skill gained: Energy Component Separation.


    <hr>


    Sometimes it was nice to see Zerrious get system messages from skills I taught him, it helped me know that I also have that skill, even if a Name doesn''t ever manifest. That second ability seemed interesting. From the name of it it would be a much more general skill than I used it for, but upon further inspection it could only be used on energy formed of components and the only thing I knew of that truly fit that description of different types of energy mixing like that was Mana, as confirmed by the system.


    I relaxed into the chair, looking over to the bed to see Zerrious awake and watching me with interest.


    "Morning sunshine," I said awkwardly as he pulled himself from the folds of the covers. "Sleep well?"


    "I did. I think we should find somewhere for you to sleep now, you look exhausted," Zerrious insisted.


    "No, I think it''s time to go find Dave."

 Cities Are Not That Complicated!

    Dave was not as easy to find as I had hoped, even with my racial trait helping me cheat by showing what everyone was known as, this city seemed big enough that I could wander around all day and never find him.


    "I probably should have asked where to find him. . ." I muttered to myself, looking around at the many faces as the streets grew more and more crowded as the sun rose in the sky. Unfortunately Zerrious was a monster and heard me clear as day.


    "You didn''t think to ask for more information on our only lead?" he asked quietly, minor frustration creeping its way into his words.


    "There was a lot going on," I responded weakly, the few nights of not getting much sleep starting to catch up to me now that we were moving again. I should have taken Zerrious up on that offer to find somewhere to sleep, he needed his full strength to do. . . Whatever he had to do, but I needed my full strength just to be able to follow him around.


    "Do you know anything else?" Zerrious asked, exasperation mixing with my exhaustion making the words seem much more mean spirited than they should have been.


    "Not really about Dave. The hunters have stories about monsters that might go somewhere. . . if we can find them." I really hadn''t thought this through.


    Zerrious nodded and we started walking, making our way through the increasingly packed streets as we tried to make sense of the mazelike series of building lined streets that grew harder and harder to navigate as more people left their homes for whatever reason. It was all I could do to keep up with my student as he weaved expertly through the natural rhythm of the crowd. I considered just stepping into the Aether to avoid the crowd altogether but once I was in the Aether I couldn''t see out of it, and I still had that warning about trying to come back in the same space as something else and creating a black hole blaring in my head every time I stepped into the energetic realm.


    As we walked, my pace growing more and more frantic to keep up, my mind started to wander as my eyes fell on the strands of Aether weaving through the crowd, actually far more dense than I had seen it without a spell being actively cast. It wove in a thousand ways, but none of them were the complicated knots I knew from watching master spell slingers work. It was interesting to watch regardless, and soon I stopped chasing after Zerrious altogether, instead wandering forward slowly as my sleep deprived mind followed the twists and loops of the natural flowing of the energy I had come to know so well. Every movement seemed to effect the Aether, causing new paths to form, some more defined and others more faint, all moving and shifting with the people. It was hard to see when there wasn''t much going on around me, but the Aether reacted to the physical world, and it reacted hard. One step created a thousand new paths the Aether flowed in and I couldn''t make any sense of it.


    Soon I felt Zerrious grabbing my arm, looking incredibly concerned as I finally focused back on the physical rather than the metaphysical that most people would never think about let alone get lost looking at. "Are you okay?" he asked, gazing into my eyes and trying to find something.


    I didn''t have a great response, especially considering my only defense essentially amounted to "ooh pretty colors".


    "Sigurd! Seriously, you''re acting super weird, what''s going on?" Zerrious said, shaking me and inspecting me more fully for. . . I don''t even know what as he moved my arms and spun me around, completely ignoring the fact that we were in a very crowded space and starting to accrue odd looks.


    "Sh! I. . . I think I''m onto something," I said, looking back at the the Aether and the flowing patterns now moving around Zerrious and I. No, not Zerrious and I, just me, as I stood stock still the Aether didn''t have any major patterns, just faint ones that I could only see if I really focused in and looked. Zerrious on the other hand kept moving in a circle about me, thick patterns of Aether moving about the young man.


    "Sigurd I think you need to sit down-"


    "No, caffeine, I need caffeine. I''m close, I can feel it, I just need the little mmph y''know?" I said almost frantically.


    "No, I don''t know, you need to sit down, come on." Zerrious led me through the crowd by my arm, pulling me and causing the Aether to spring to life around me, twisting and turning about in simple paths in a myriad directions, making small twists and loops as I was (perhaps more forcefully than necessary) pushed onto a bench, which, in hindsight was very nice and comfortable for a public accommodation. "Close your eyes, just relax for a minute."


    "No, no I''m close to something big!" I stage whispered.


    "I''m sure you''ll figure it out after you get some rest," Zerrious said calmly, running his fingers over my eyes to close them, after which I couldn''t fight to open them back up.


    It wasn''t long before my breathing deepened and I drifted off to a dreamless slumber while Zerrious watched over me. "I knew you should have slept earlier," he said as I lost my final grasp on whatever I was so close to figuring out. I guessed it would have to wait until I noticed whatever it was again.


    . . .


    I felt the heat of the sun warming my skin as I slowly drove my brain from slumber, opening my eyes and squinting against the sun and looking around in minor confusion. Right, I had started acting weird and Zerrious pushed me to go to sleep, that''s why I was sitting on a bench, although the streets seemed far more crowded before, now they seemed more normal. It must have been some kind of rush to get to work, which really made me think about the poor city design and the narrow streets not being able to handle that kind of rush.


    Regardless, I knew Zerrious was nearby because I could feel him from my racial trait but I wasn''t sure exactly where. Actually, if I trained that trait. . . I pushed that thought aside, I wasn''t sure that those sorts of things could be trained at all and we had more important things to worry about.


    I looked around through squinted eyes against the noonday sun to see Zerrious talking to someone close by. They were gesturing down the street and seemed to be giving directions with a big smile and she seemed a good deal closer than she needed to be to convey the information with a hand on his shoulder. Unfortunately he did not seem to notice what was probably the most obvious flirting I''ve ever seen.


    Actually, now that I thought of it there was probably a Name for picking up women. As I watched I noted that that was a Name Zerrious probably wouldn''t get. I hoped he wouldn''t need it as he glanced my direction and noticed I was awake. "Sigurd! You''re awake! Come here, Lucy was giving directions so we can find our way around here," Zerrious said, turning to me which sort of forced the girl to back away from him. I noticed it wasn''t intentional but she still seemed disappointed as she looked at me with a look of minor annoyance.


    "Actually, I''ll leave you two to talk for a bit, I think I need to write something down," I said with a knowing smile and a subtle wink to Lucy who seemed to stand up a little straighter and smile a little as I pulled my book out alongside the quill and started with drawing larger shapes for cities to try and educate Zerrious about how things would need to be built. He was a smart kid, so he would probably surpass me pretty quick, but this consumed time to let the girl have her fun and Zerrious to get a bit more information about this particular city.


    "Alright," Zerrious said. He seemed a bit confused and still a little worried about me and how weird I was acting earlier, but he turned and continued his conversation.


    I started with drawing a few basic shapes and explaining the advantages of each shape and the best sort of places to put each shape of city. First was circular which is nice for the interior of the city walls (which I would get to later) and the defense was decent because there weren''t really any blind spots which made this kind of city good on an open field. Next was square which was my least favorite as it naturally creates four fronts that need defended and tend to have less visibility at the corners, which means this style of city really only makes sense on a cliff or perhaps in a valley where nature defends several sides so that it doesn''t need to be actively guarded as heavily. Then there was a triangular city which I found. . . odd. It was defensible on three fronts so it was a little better than a square city but it didn''t lend itself well to natural defenses, which meant you would do this only if you have one side defended or perhaps one side would be backed up to a lake or ocean.


    Then came more drawings with the interior design of cities. It was harder to put to drawings than I had thought, and I was sure I had missed some very vital parts of a city, but I knew you wanted a sort of marketplace in the center where it would be relatively easy to get to for everyone, then you wanted housing around that where they were close to jobs and the market, then you wanted public property, stuff like parks or city hall or whatever, then factories or other workshop type things that didn''t directly sell anything but instead supplied for markets, then you wanted stuff like sewage treatment and other unsavory tasks that needed to be done, then you wanted defense on the perimeter for obvious reasons. Farmland could be kept between sewage treatment and factories, or kept outside the walls depending on how much interior space we work with or how much you want farmland to be able to expand.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Or you could have a pie like system instead of one made of concentric rings like I had already described, each section taking a slice of the city, public property and markets around housing, factories close by and unsavory necessities as far from that as far as it could be on the other side of the pie. Defense would still need to be a ring around it, but this kind of design made a lot more sense when importing was more important which doesn''t seem to be the case in most cities, which I could only guess was a holdover from very long ago when each city had to be self sufficient in case the mage that took over their country decided not to help them in any way. A sad reality but one that made some strong people, I had to say.


    Circles made it easy to divide into sectors, but it made it hard to sell land as not every plot could be perfectly equal, while a square made it easy to divide the city into sectors and sell equal plots of land, but the triangle didn''t have any of those problems, but it did make for a good "spectacle city" as I called it, where it was more focused on importing and tourism with whatever was in the center being very easy to get to, the first thing to come to mind being a central coliseum where the main commerce of the town was trapping monsters and betting on which one would win, or perhaps a commerce built on execution for whatever they were loyal to.


    From my guess about the historical reason for current city design I didn''t expect spectacle cities to exist, and if they did they would be very rare. Maybe Zerrious could make one to get some sort of governing or founder Name. That would take forever, I wasn''t sure I would live long enough for him to get that kind of Name. As I drew this out I felt a new Name buring itself onto my back. So I was definitely on the right track as I made the final few touches on the (admittedly bad) drawings.


    I looked up to see Zerrious waving bye to Lucy, who had a big blush as she waved back and quickly scampered off. I wasn''t sure what had happened, and I really didn''t care to know. Zerrious deserved to keep the personal things to himself, even if I did kind of agree to track his every move on his journey to godhood.


    "So, anything new?" I asked lightly.


    Zerrious blinked a few timed before looking back at me with a little blush of his own before answering. "Yeah, I uh." I gave Zerrious a second to organize his thoughts. "I''ve got a rough idea of where Dave tends to hang out, and a few places the hunters frequent and uh. . ."


    "And?" I asked as he trailed off. This kid was adorable.


    "That''s it," he said, shaking his head at the look on my face.


    I laughed and dismissed my quill, holding out the book for Zerrious to read. He took the leatherbound soul in his hand and studied the pages. I had written it in his language as I had Named him a master of mine, but it was clear that there was some wiggle room in the Naming process. To be Named an equal you could be slightly worse, which is why so many skills had fallen off in power, people would gain the Name and stop working to improve. I chuckled a little more, this time at the idea that the gods had built a system to try and facilitate skill growth just for that very same system to backfire. It was such a human mistake that it was hard to imagine beings like Ensiar doing that.


    "What''s this?" he asked, looking at the diagrams that didn''t have a ton of context. He could figure out, but I was ready for a bit of a lecture.


    "We''ll walk and talk. Lead the way to Dave!" I proclaimed and pointed down the street. Zerrious then grabbed my hand and pointed it the exact opposite direction. "Way to kill the fun," I muttered as we started walking and lecturing.


    I introduced the topic, referring him to the diagrams when necessary and answering his clarifying questions as we continued on, explaining the different shapes, the different locations each one makes sense in, even going as far as explaining that you want a street system that could be easily followed to help facilitate trade, tourism, and just general welfare. I did note, however, that streets could be made intentionally difficult to navigate if there was something that needed the extra layer of protection in the middle, preventing armies from just marching in and taking it over by pure virtue of them having no idea where they were at any given point. That sort of city didn''t make much sense in this time of relative peace unless they were protecting something important. Or preventing something dangerous from getting out. Both were equally possible in this world, but I didn''t suspect either to be here, and back home with Nyah had felt much the same in design, though it seemed a little better planned than whatever was happening here.


    It wasn''t long before I didn''t have anything else to add to his knowledge base, touching his shoulder and transferring the Name over.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    Zerrious has been Named by a master of his craft and been acknowledged as his equal.


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Name gained: Seedni (Civil Engineering)


    Name: Seedni is the profession Name for the following skills:


    City Design


    City Defense


    City Construction


    Cartography


    Structural Design


    Structural Construction


    <hr><hr>


    Notice!


    Name: Seedni is a profession Name and counts as a Name for every skill required to earn it plus one (7 total).


    <hr>


    I had to admit, that was a good chunk, it wasn''t too common with the weirder Names like that to get more than four Names out it. Glad I thought of it, covering for a seven Name gap would be annoying in the future, I was sure. There were probably more like that now that I thought about it, but I couldn''t think of it at the moment. There were probably more engineering subspecialties to learn but I didn''t no much about that beyond what I''d already taught Zerrious.


    I let it go as we approached the bar Lucifer worked at and walked in, scanning the room for anyone called Dave. I didn''t see any, so we sat down and kept an eye on things as they unfolded, Zerrious relaxing or writing in a journal I had encouraged him to start keeping early in our relationship. I never looked at it, but from how his hand was moving I guessed he was mostly doodling, but that was his prerogative, I encouraged him to keep his thoughts down so he could make sense of them later no matter how he put the thoughts down.


    I then realized that I hadn''t been as good as I should have about keeping track of my own thoughts. I''d write down what happened every few days or so, but I almost never wrote down the things I figured out or the things I was still trying to work out. I pulled out my book and quill and started writing down the new information I had gained on the Aether, looking up frequently to make sure I didn''t miss Dave if he showed up that night.


    Writing it all down highlighted the massive holes I had in my knowledge but I''d hit a sort of wall and couldn''t figure it out. I supposed it didn''t really matter, I already had the Name, and it probably wasn''t one I could give to Zerrious because I had really earned it by getting straight up summoned by a bunch of gods. There might have been a different Name in there. . . God I had no idea what did and didn''t have a Name, we''d probably tear ourselves apart trying to follow every lead, so we had to keep to the task at hand and find the boo hag. I wasn''t sure what was next or what skills we''d learn, but if nothing else we''ll help someone out and that was plenty enough for me.


    I put the quill away and started flipping through the pages of my soul, mostly watching the bar folk while skimming the scrawling on the pages that oddly enough got much more neat as the tale went on. Looking back and actually reading the words I realized it''s because that''s when I became a teacher and had to have my words legible for children, in English and Kaldar.


    Zerrious got up several times throughout the night to get drinks, his seemed a much more. . . alcoholic variety than I was given but I didn''t complain, I liked the mixed drinks, they were sweet but still had that little bite at the end that reminded me not to drink too much lest my liver give out and I needed to be saved by Zerrious.


    I had dismissed my book and taken to doodling in Aether on the pages in my center, which was much easier than regular drawing once you got a hang of it, when Lucifer himself walked up to our table.


    "Alright, it''s late and I want to go home to the wife. You two either need to get a room or go find somewhere else to stay," said the large man. I wasn''t about to argue, the guy that provided alcohol was most definitely the guy you wanted on your side.


    "Right. Um, Zerrious do we have money?" I asked with a nervous glance across the table.


    "No, you said I couldn''t steal-" he cut himself off as he finally noticed that I was not the only one in this conversation. He wasn''t sure how to fix it so he just went silent and let me handle the conversation.


    "Well, I guess we''ll just go then," I said, hopping up and pulling Zerrious with his notebook, quill, and inkwell roughly packed away into his ring on his belt, hopefully without spilling.


    "See you around!" Zerrious exclaimed as I pushed him out of the door while pulling reality open with my mind. As we entered into the night I pushed him into the Aether and stepped in after him, pulling the hole closed behind me as we stood in a well furnished cabin.


    "I guess we''ll just find Dave tomorrow," I muttered as I slumped into a nearby chair.

 Practicing Magic

    Zerrious sat down on the plush bed in the corner, a little bit smaller than before with a lot more colors on the blanket, and I sat in the armchair near the fire which burned a beautiful green though I didn''t expect there to be copper in the odd fuel less fireplace. Neither of us were really tired, it hadn''t been a particularly long day for me and Zerrious had a boon that made him need less sleep than the average person, so instead of either of us trying to sleep we sat down and went back to, essentially what we were doing before, but this time without the alcohol, though neither of us were completely sober which was likely why the cabin seemed so much more interesting and colorful this time around. Generally I preferred camping to staying here, usually because we could both sleep when we were just holed up in here somewhere had to stay up to make sure we didn''t cease to exist.


    Being drunk was probably unsafe, but that didn''t really matter, I was master of this space with no equal. I looked at the glowing doodles of spiders and swords and various other things as the pages turned, somehow able to fully see and study each and every image even though it turned faster than most people could even make out individual pages, let alone what was written on them. My thoughts were drawn to a drawing of my favorite form for my quill to take, a rapier with a stylized feather design at the base of the blade and a simple handle with a sharp nib at the pommel under a long thin blade. Zerrious told me that what I had thought was a rapier was actually a smallsword, the difference being that the rapier that I preferred had a longer blade and had an edge all the way down the blade where the smallsword just had a point at the tip. That meant you could slash with a rapier but it was still best suited to stab than anything else which required the least amount of strength to do effectively which was why I used it instead of the longsword Zerrious preferred as the most adaptive sword style.


    There seemed to be something about the way the page was glowing that mesmerized me a bit. There was a way that the Aether shifted under the outline and attempt at shading that had the page glowing insanely bright as the book did it''s best to absorb all the Aether, though it was flowing in so densely it almost couldn''t take on a green hue fast enough to not have wild Aether rampaging about my center. It was incredible to watch the Aether saturate everything in sight. It was weird to feel how solid the Aether seemed while walking through its own realm and to come to this odd liminal space in my center that seemed to barely shift at all between layers, maybe becoming more dense in the Aether than in the physical reality, but still almost no difference other than intake.


    There was a similar glow to the other drawings, more so the ones I drew of spells I knew, or had seen cast. they weren''t great drawings, I really wasn''t that kind of artist, but the Aether almost seemed to flow underneath the drawings in patterns of their own. It almost reflected the right patterns to cast the spell, but it wasn''t quite right. I thought it was a fun addition to the pieces even though it was really only me who could see them, even if I was the only one who could see them. Maybe Nyah could, but a combined soul was a little bit different than a center, even if we could send it back and forth, they were still separate.


    Actually, how did having my soul combined with Nyah''s effect things like my center, and the manifestation of my soul? Now I was curious because I had conformation that my soul was still a book, so was Nyah''s also a book? Or was it somehow different without changing mine? A combined soul would be some kind of hybrid of both but mine was still just. . . a book. I would need to dive into Nyah''s soul to figure it out, and that probably wouldn''t be until after Zerrious either died or became a god, whichever came first.


    I just made a note to use the pages I drew on as spells first, which would be nice because they already had more Aether than the blank pages. I wasn''t sure why the pages couldn''t just hold more per page without drawing on them, but it was one of those weird things about souls, there was no standard ruleset for them or their centers. Some things worked and others didn''t, that''s all there was to it.


    I opened my eyes to the Aether to see Zerrious sitting in a rigid lotus position on the floor with his face scrunched up. I wasn''t sure why he felt the need to focus so much to draw in Aether, or I supposed he had Mana, but even before my wedding Mana just flowed in and I could focus on weaving and making changes far better when I was comfortable, especially with something like this that was more an art than the pseudoscience Zerrious treated it as.


    "Zerrious?" I asked, making my way over to him and lowering myself to the floor beside him.


    "Yes?" he asked, opening his eyes to see me sprawled in front of him.


    "I''m more just curious really, but I noticed you always sit so proper when you''re working with your Mana. Isn''t it uncomfortable?"


    "Sure, but I need to focus on getting the patterns right, and it''s touch work to make sure my center grows right," he said. That gave me momentary pause. Make sure it grows right? He didn''t just let it do it''s thing?


    "Zerrious, what do you mean by that?" I asked suspiciously.


    "Exactly what I said." He seemed confused.


    "Zerrious, can I see what you''re doing in there?"


    In response Zerrious held out his hand for me to grab, which I did as I set my Aether through his arm and into his center. What I saw was shocking. He had an adaptive center but he wasn''t giving it the real freedom to do it, so his Mana was weak and trying to fight the form that was forced on it.


    "Zerrious. . . No," I said as I studied the perfect cube of rigid cells, each a mirror image of the last, his Mana spinning about within each cell exactly the same in each one. It was an affront to the shape of his soul. "Zerrious, I need you to trust me, but you''ll be a lot stronger if you just let it go. Whatever you''re doing to hold it in place, just stop doing it and let your center grow how it wants to."


    "But, magic is a formula. You put it into specific patterns with exact elasticity and perfect-"


    "No, it''s not. It''s an art, you fold it and weave it like a tapestry, you guide it to make the shapes and patterns so you can work together. Do you know how many pages I actually made?"


    "Well-"


    "Two. I just let my center take care of the rest, and you should too. It''s an automatic process and it will work with you better and be happier to be with you if you let it be happy," I cut him off.


    "Happy?"


    "I guess that is misleading, it''s a force so it doesn''t really have feelings, but you remember how there were conductors? How energy was transferred through them better? Well it''s like that, the shape it takes make it function better and it naturally moves to that shape, so if you want it to function right you need to let it."


    Suddenly each cell of Mana started going wild, growing and absorbing other cells until they finally reached a sort of equilibrium, cells floating about and some grouping together and becoming what seemed like crude multicellular organisms. He might have a god damned ecosystem by the time it fully developed. Now that was some bullshit. I didn''t even get a fucking library and he got a full ecosystem?


    "That is a lot easier," he finally admitted, breaking me out of my angry reverie.


    "Of course it is, it should be a lot easier to make natural systems work than to force something," I explained. "You really thought magic was a formula?"


    "Well, yeah. It makes sense, you have certain symbols or patterns that need to come in a certain order. You need to make it with precision, especially as it gets more complicated and you start mastering schools."This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    That made sense, especially with his first real foray into magic being enchanting which I understood to be very different in terms of how it worked. I didn''t know much but I knew there was a magic element and a carving element, but I didn''t have the know how to explain anything but the spellcasting version which was quite different.


    "Anyways, you should get some rest, we''ll probably find Dave in the morning," Zerrious said. I was okay with the idea, but I wasn''t sure I trusted his hold on the Aether.


    "I think we should exit the Aether before I try to sleep," I said. He understood, he was nothing if not pragmatic, though I still felt bad saying it aloud.


    "Right," he said. Though the idea of the Aether consuming me alive did give me a rather. . . drastic idea. I would never do it though, not unless I had a way to make sure it was safe.


    "You might was well either sleep or do some practice with your spells. You wont ever have more Mana available to you than here, and it wouldn''t be a bad idea to try some new stuff with spells. I know I made a spell, though I would never use it on another person, there''s got to be other spells possible that no one has made yet. If you use some of the enchantment principles with the other schools you get something like my quill blade that''s much more adaptive than usual, so if you start mixing ideologies than I''m sure you''ll find some incredible knowledge that way," I advised right before I pulled out of his center and lay on the ground, now consisting of an endless field of the most beautiful flowers of all colors, some even looking like an oil spill as they shimmered in the Aether sun.


    "This place is disorienting," Zerrious muttered as he blinked the light from his eyes and took note of the field we sat in. "I never know what to expect, it makes me kind of dizzy."


    I vaguely remembered something like that, but it was a thing of the past now. Probably another part of the wedding complications.


    "Hmm. I''m not sure how to fix that other than practice. Why don''t you go try to run out of Mana while I watch you experiment, remember, try new things, create new schools of magic," I told him. He sighed lightly and got to his feet in a quick hop. It made me think about the gods. They created a system that supports learning as many skills as possible over learning one skill as much as possible, which meant that it encouraged creating new skills with regularity more, which seemed a dangerous concept if there were illegal Names. Especially if there wasn''t a clear idea of what made a Name illegal in the first place. It couldn''t be arbitrary, or Zerrious would have already gotten them with his thievery escapade. I supposed I''d know when he earned one. Or when I earned one.


    I sat up, watching Zerrious stand and consider. I saw the Aether start weaving into a spell before he even raised his hand to start and that surprised me because not only had Zerrious just started, but he had very minimal control over the Aether as of yet. I took note of it and watched him attempt to create a fireball and fail. I could see the snag, he had tried to make it malleable to outside influences like my quill blade. The problem is, he made it malleable and the effect is one of brute force.


    "Zerrious, try combining that with something else. . . Maybe conjuration to make the flames more solid, or abjuration to make flames that reject certain things," I noted. Reinventing these spells had as much to do with understanding the idea of the spell as much as it did the ideas of the different schools.


    "Why not enchantment?" he asked, pausing. As I said it I looked harder at the Aether. I was really only watching the big flows and strands before but there was always more, and what I saw shocked me. It was like when NASA pointed that camera into an empty patch of space and found hundreds of stars that were invisible to any other telescope. The complexity of the patterns was maddening, so I let some of them fade into the background and I saw a bunch of different patterns that looked like variations to the fireball Zerrious had attempted earlier. I could tell right off the bat that most if not all of them wouldn''t work, but it was an interesting development that I took note of, even taking the time to sketch out the overlaying patterns I saw in my notebook.


    "Because it''s an instantaneous spell, making it adaptive doesn''t do much. You want something that will have an immediate effect and I can''t imagine something like divination to do much with a fireball," I said as I recoiled slightly from the sight I had focused on directly next to Zerrious. I didn''t let myself stop as I noticed Zerrious nod consideringly and raise his hands. One of the patterns got brighter as the larger flows of Aether started taking it''s shape and the other patterns faded almost to nothing, but they remained in the background with the other impossibly many patterns.


    I could tell he''d combined it with abjuration to make a fireball made of purifying flame even before the notice even popped up to confirm it. He tried a few more combinations, moving from abjuration to conjuration, divination, illusion, and transmutation, although the only two that didn''t work were enchantment and divination. Conjuration made the flame so dense it was almost a physical force, illusion made the fire seem a lot hotter than it was, and transmutation made the fire contagious as it started turning anything it touched into fire, which made for a dangerous spell that was hard to put out.


    As he started messing around with more spells a light started coming from his back as a new Name burned itself onto his body.


    <hr>


    Notice!


    Name gained: Sephnal (Spellsmith).


    <hr>


    It just looked like one Name, but every one counted. That put him up to 698, a good place to be, not far from a boon now that I thought of it. The Name looked like it was about combining different spells to create new effects, which I was shocked to find wasn''t already something people had figured out, but clearly the magic wasn''t near as developed as it rightly should have been. Back home this stuff would have been picked apart as if a pack of rabid hyenas had gotten to some fresh meat.


    "Oh, I actually wasn''t expecting that," Zerrious exclaimed as he read the notification for himself.


    "Combining skills and professions to make new ones is exactly how you grow, and it''s the best way to become the strongest you can be. The downfall of this world is that it doesn''t reward you for expanding your skills after you''ve gotten the Name, so people don''t think to innovate like this which means the world stagnates," I explained, perhaps pointlessly. "When the world stagnates then things don''t get better for people. My world was like this once, but now everyone has tablets that they can use to message people a world away, there''s people in space, disease isn''t a death sentence and the life expectancy is as old as a hundred in some places! There''s countless skills and things to learn, things that can''t exist in a world that isn''t actively trying to better itself. That needs to be the difference between you and everyone else, Zerrious, you need to work to grow, that''s the drive that''ll make you a god." I got off my proverbial soap box and flopped onto my back, letting the flowers make their attempt at cushioning my fall, which they failed at miserably.


    "Your world sounds incredible," Zerrious lamented as he approached me, his muscular frame silhouetted against the brightness of the sky in a rather striking image.


    "Everyone sees another world and thinks it''s better than his own, but the only difference between mine and yours is that you have magic. Everything my world has and more can be yours if you work hard enough to make it." I wasn''t much of a philosopher, but that was a pretty common idea. I pulled out my guitar and started strumming, bending the sound into an electric wine and then pitching it down deeper to play Enter Sandman, or at least the opening riff I could remember.


    "You''re the smartest man I''ve ever met, Sigurd."


    I laughed at that, stopping my tune and meeting his eyes. "Zerrious, there is a difference between education and intelligence. I am disgustingly educated as far as this worlds standards go, but I am not very smart. You on the other hand are one of the most brilliant people I have ever heard of, everyone else on your level has been in history books as the smartest people of their time," I explained as my chuckling died down.


    "I don''t know, you''ve figured more out about magic than anyone here, and you had never heard of Mana before ending up here."


    "Well, that''s not true. It was just a thing of fiction for my world."


    "Still, you found secrets after just a few years here and now your teaching me when it should rightly be the other way around based on how many more Names I have than you. You''re really incredible."


    "Just a new perspective is all. No misinformation to color my view," I said, sitting up and looking at the sky. "It''s not very easy to tell the time here is it? You should invent a watch, it would be very useful with how much time we spend in places that seem removed from time."


    "A watch?" he questioned.


    "Just a geared device that helps you keep time. The size of the gears changes how long it takes for each to move around, and then you just get it set up with these arrows so that one turns every second, another turns every sixty seconds, and the last one turns once every sixty minutes. From there there would be twelve hours on the clock that would restart at midday and midnight and the hands would point to the numbers to show you what time it was. I''m not sure how it would be powered here though, I kind of failed to invent electricity," I said sheepishly.


    "I can do that," Zerrious said, shocking me thoroughly. "It''ll take a while though, a few months at least, plus I need materials."


    "I can do that!" I exclaimed. "Do you think the places we can get these materials are open yet?"


    "Depends on what time it is. You are forgetting we don''t have money, right?"


    "I''m sure I''ve got a service I can offer in exchange. I''m a pretty useful guy," I said while opening the veil between worlds. "Ladies first."

 Finding Dave

    Zerrious stepped through the open wound in the universe and onto the cobblestone road, looking around him as I followed behind and noticed that we were still a good hour from sunrise at least. "Any idea where we can find these tiny parts?" I asked Zerrious hopefully.


    "Not a clue," he responded lightly, glaring at the space around him. His vision was better than mine, although I supposed he couldn''t see into the Aether like I did he saw things in the physical realm far better than I could ever hope to with a fine attention to detail, picking out important pieces like a prospector panning for gold.


    "I hate walking around aimlessly though," I wined lightly. It wasn''t too dignified of a grown man to whine to a teenager, but it really was ridiculous how much we had walked to find things that we had no idea how to find. "Isn''t there some kind of spell you can cast to find shops, or make some sort of map or something?"


    "Not that I know, or the divination specialist that taught me knew. So unless you have some way to make or find that kind of spell, we''ll just have to figure it out."


    I stopped to consider that for a moment. We''d already determined that combining schools worked, even if it was sort of wasteful as far as Mana went it was able to reimagine spells for new effects. Maybe by combining conjuration with divination he could create a sort of birds eye view of the city, or at least parts of it.


    "What divination spells do you have?" I asked leadingly after a short moment of consideration.


    "Remote viewing, augur, and detect intention. Divination doesn''t have much because it rides terrifyingly close to old magics that don''t exist anymore."


    Um, push the spells to the side for a moment, entire functions of magic that straight up don''t exist? How is that even possible? "They don''t exist anymore. Like, it''s lost knowledge or the magic was straight up changed to make it impossible?"


    "Uh. . . Both? The Gods removed it from the world, or so it''s said. There are people that still search for it, but that''s widely regarded as a bad idea. It''s either because it''s dangerous or because it''s a waste of time, but no one is really sure which one."


    "No one is sure huh? Sounds like something you should be sure about," I muttered under my breath. "Either way, try combining remote viewing with conjuration, focus on making an eye high above the city and making some parchment with what it sees in your hands. If you can make it more vague which should get us what we need while still keeping the Mana cost manageable, especially with your Spellsmithing Name."


    "I. . . Don''t know that that''s a good idea. By adding a new school it fundamentally changes a part of it, it doesn''t add to it. By adding conjuration it would probably just make floating eyes or something. Plus, I don''t know if messing with the magic most closely related to lost magic is a good idea. I mean, it was lost for a reason," Zerrious said. He did make some great points. Coward points, but great points all the same.


    "Well, do you have any other ideas?" He didn''t, but we also agreed that it probably wasn''t a good idea to get too close to something the gods made disappear. Turns out, I didn''t want to disappear as well, so on that front we wanted to play it quite safe indeed.


    "I''m sure we''ll find something. There''s got to be a blacksmith that can make gears and the like somewhere," Zerrious finally said after a long moment of stretched silence.


    "Um, these gears need to be like, super precise and really small. Is that really in the blacksmith wheelhouse?" I had no idea exactly how precise it had to be, but I was assuming the more brute methods of blacksmithing weren''t going to work.


    "Blacksmithing isn''t all hitting things with a hammer," Zerrious said with a slight laugh in his voice. "How precise does it need to be though?"


    "I don''t know, but you need enough to make one turn of the hands take twelve hours, or twenty four if you want to make a military watch."


    "Why does twenty four hours make it a military watch?"


    "Not sure how that custom started back home actually," I said after a moment to consider.


    "Doesn''t matter, I''m sure I''ll figure it out." This was a complicated task, one I didn''t actually think I could do with the knowledge that I have of it, someone making it up as they go would have a very rough time once it actually got started. Sure he knew all the basics of how it worked, but theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge are two very different sides of the same coin. I decided to let him believe that, but I didn''t think this would be as quick a job as he seemed to think.


    We walked for a little longer, looking at the various Names hung above buildings and even the buildings without any signage in case there was something we would miss by not inspecting them. Eventually we decided to take a break as the sun came fully over the horizon and people started flooding the streets in the morning rush I had almost gotten lost in the previous day. We sat off to the side of the street, leaning against the wall with our packs on our laps, the many loops jingling with each slight motion.


    Zerrious seemed to think for a moment before pulling reaching into his pack and emerging with a set of tools. Enchanters tools, the same ones he had used before when crafting magic items as well as some blank sheets of metal. They looked like iron, they didn''t have the same shiny quality as steel, but still tough all the same. I started to wonder how much he actually had in the pack of his. Plus, I actually wasn''t sure I was the one bonded to all the rings in my pack, was he using me as a convenient pack mule?


    You know what, I had used him as a guinea pig and I didn''t intend to stop, so this was pretty harmless.


    He held the sheets firmly and started cutting a small circle with an odd knife looking thing that he seemed to have used Mana on to make it able to cut the metal a bit easier, though it was clearly still no easy task from how heavily he was straining. I was curious but I didn''t speak up and break his concentration as he precisely measured the circle with small tools that he kept pulling from the bag and placing back in. He finished the small disk, then cut a thin strip from the same metal and bent it around the small disk, using another tool that burned with a blue light that fused the pieces together. He brought the small item close and pulled out another tool, making intricate engravings on the inside of the ring. When he finished the circle he set a small gem that he pulled out of his bag and set it in the middle, using the same tool as before to fuse the pieces again, then he cut a second disk and fused it on top, sealing the engravings and gem inside. He cut another small symbol into the outside which flared blue before a few numbers appeared in a glowing green on the face.


    "I was right! I didn''t even need to go to the blacksmith, I know how to make a magic one that will never be wrong!" Zerrious said triumphantly as he held it out to me. I had to admit, I hadn''t considered the obviously more simple solution, even if we had been sitting here for two hours as he muttered to himself and slowly applied glyphs, each one taking forever as he decided which one would actually get him the desired effect.


    "That''s awesome! How does it work?"


    He took no time hesitating to explain. "Ambient Mana is pulled in and stored in the center, and then it is fed into the scripting on the inside which tracks how many hours it''s been since sunrise based on the connection to the person that bonds it and their position and space in time! This is brilliant!" he said as he held up the tiny cylinder that now sat blank. I winced slightly. I didn''t fully understand it, but it worked based on Mana and it heavily relied on me being on this layer.


    "Ah, it is!" I said. I couldn''t take this from him, it was a genius workaround to a problem that I had given him.


    Unfortunately he sensed the hesitation in my voice and pointed it out. "Well, it works on Mana."


    "Right, no need to wind it or find some other way to turn it." He seemed to think I didn''t understand what he was talking about and how good it was.


    "And it works based on my position in reality, with the spin of the earth or whatever."


    "Exactly! It will always-oh. The Aether doesn''t have ambient Mana, and it doesn''t have a physical position. Shit." He moved to throw it away but I stopped him.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "Wait! Maybe it wont work for us, but we can give it to someone who it will work for. Zerrious, it really is brilliant, and I never could have come up with that. So what if it doesn''t do exactly what we need, it will do what someone else needs."


    Zerrious stopped for a minute, looking at the circle of blank steel. "I know what I want to do with it," he said after a long moment of me staring at him as he considered. It had started to get uncomfortable for me.


    Suddenly, fast as a coiled viper he struck at me, making a small cut on my elbow with a small knife made of Mana before backing off and wiping the blood on the small symbol which flashed green before the numbers appeared on the face once more.


    "What the hell!" I yelled more than asked.


    "Sorry, it''s a gift. An apology for stealing you," Zerrious said as he put it away and ripped a page out of his journal and started writing on it.


    "What does that mean?" I asked, now curious rather than angry.


    He finished whatever he was writing and stuffed it into his pocket with the watch. "You''ll see."


    Well that was needlessly cryptic. He walked off, looking at the Names above buildings once more while I started scanning the mononyms of people that we passed, looking for a sleep deprived Dave. We continued walking, eventually coming to a building that looked like a post office, or the equivalent in this world.


    "I should write to Nyah, I''ll join you again in a moment," I said loud enough to be heard over the dull roar of people as the morning rush died to a heavy trickle. To my surprise he followed me in, grabbing a small bag and placing the watch and torn page inside.


    I didn''t ask where it was going, that was for him to figure out, but I was curious.


    I quickly wrote my letter, putting the necessary information to have it delivered to the right person and put it on the desk which was currently empty. I didn''t have money to make this delivery happen, so instead I left a letter asking really nicely to do a stranger a favor. If it got delivered, then good, if it didn''t, then thee wasn''t much I could do about it.


    I left the building with Zerrious close behind and asked where to go. Unfortunately, before he had a chance to answer me something caught my eye in an alleyway down the street.


    "Well-"


    "Follow," I said hurriedly as I took off down the crowded street as fast as my old body would carry me. I hadn''t seen Dave, but I thought I had seen something better.


    If I remembered correctly, boo hags were supposed to be indistinguishable from really old ladies, but I had an advantage, I could see what people were called. Now, it wasn''t too hard to fool, a simple disguise would usually do it, but there was always something legible.


    Not this, it looked like several mononyms had been layered on top of each other above her head to the point where I couldn''t make out any of the letters. Now, I wasn''t sure what could do that, but I figured wearing the skin of victims had some kind of adverse effect on identity, which I could only guess was how this racial trait worked.


    I sprinted between people, falling into the sword stances Zerrious had taught me, flowing through any breaks in the crowd at a full sprint. I couldn''t keep it up for long, but I hoped that I would be faster than the mythical creature wearing a strangers skin. I was still much slower than Zerrious who was at my side in a moment, though he wasn''t sure what we were after so he couldn''t race ahead of me. She had disappeared around the alleyway before I got there, but I could only hope that it was a dead end.


    I exploded into the alley, Zerrious just behind me in a hand to hand stance I recognized but didn''t know personally. I realized that I was also in a combat stance, but mine was because I needed to move quickly, his was because he noticed my stance and thought there would be danger. I didn''t think boo hags were a danger during the day, but the alley also wasn''t a dead end, but a side street that lead to another street. I felt quite safe in assuming that I had lost her down there.


    "Fuck," I swore, standing up straight and catching my breath. "We lost her. Zerrious, whatever that was, it wasn''t human. I think we need to put off our little clockwork experimenting. Dave needs to take priority, he''s in serious danger if he isn''t dead already."


    "So how do we find him?" Zerrious asked as he nodded.


    "I think we need to ignore the dangers. Let''s experiment with divination," I said gravely.


    "I don''t know if that''s a good idea, what if the gods-"


    "Fuck the gods. Someone is in trouble and if they wont do anything about it, we will. Plus, we don''t know that the gods will strike us down or anything."


    Zerrious was still obviously trepidatious. "Sigurd, spiting in the face of gods is a terrible idea. I get that people are in trouble, but us trying to be a hero isn''t a good idea. You''re a brave man, but I''m not sure I am."


    "Zerrious, Emerson, a man from my world, once said something we need to live by if we are going to do what we came out here to do. ''A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer''. Frankly, I can''t be a hero, but you can. Be brave five minutes longer." I wasn''t even sure that was the right quote, and I sure as hell wasn''t about to actually go against the gods. But, I''d convince a better man than me to do it.


    "Five minutes longer, huh? Do heroes die a lot in your world?" Zerrious asked, taking a deep breath and resolving himself as he raised his hands.


    "No, those heroes live forever, Zerrious. They live through the people they helped, no matter what."


    He took one more steadying breath, and then I saw the Aether twist into a pattern for a spell all around him, and as Zerrious wove Mana through the pattern the knots shifted and changed, moving along the strands of ambient Mana more and more until they seemed more like a serries of fly away hairs than a weaving.


    "It''s not working," Zerrious said, still concentrating on holding the spell in place. I could see he had mixed it with enchantment, a smart move, make it more adaptable. The problem is, he hadn''t specified a target. It could adapt, the problem with the original spell was that it couldn''t move or see anything that you didn''t already know was there, better for surveillance than actual scouting, while this one could show more, move around, and most importantly, find a target.


    "Tell it to find Dave, find the identity calling itself Dave," I said excitedly. We hadn''t offended any gods yet, so I assumed we were safe to finish the spell.


    "Dave," Zerrious muttered, to no effect. "Find Dave." Again, nothing.


    "Zerrious, spells don''t speak Kaldaran. Lace your voicewith Mana, and keep feeding it until you get what you need."


    Zerrious took a deep breath and muttered the word again, this time carrying a weight that hit the spell and caused it to start flailing a vibrating. Zerrious scrunched his face and raised his hands higher, trying to hold the spell.


    "Let it go," I said simply, walking up to him and moving his arms down. "Let the spell work." he dropped his arms and relaxed.


    "I don''t think-" one of the strands flared with Mana and the others quickly wove into that strand and Zerrious went glassy eyed, nearly falling over as he lilted to one side.


    "Shit, Zerrious, are you okay?" I asked. Maybe the gods had decided to kill him. This was not the kind of death I was expecting from divine judgement.


    "I''m fine. . . I found Dave. He looks bad."


    "Where is he?" I asked, breathing a sigh of relief that my best friend was okay.


    "He''s walking around across town. He seems pretty paranoid. We might get there by sunset, but he will definitely be somewhere else by the time we get there."


    "Alright, well, you just lead the way and keep an eye on if he goes anywhere."


    "That''s not how it works, I either see where he is, or I see where I am." Shit, I hadn''t considered that there would be drawbacks to magic.


    "Alright, keep an eye on him, and I''ll follow your magic," I said simply, even though going across the city alone would be awful, let alone trying to follow an invisible light across the sky.


    "You''ll just leave me here?" In complete honesty I was going to, but that did seem fucked up now that I thought about it.


    "Of course not," I said, leaning down and picking him up. I was glad for our training and hiking, it had made me quite strong, more so than most people my age back home, and made it so I could shift my backpack to my front and get Zerrious situated on my back in a piggyback ride. I hoped he didn''t get dizzy with me moving and his sight not, but I really didn''t want Dave to have to either endure the boo hag again or go another night without sleep now that we knew it was real.


    I moved at a quick walk, struggling to look up and follow the pulsing line of Mana against the sky, making slight adjustments as we moved and walking down the maze of streets for hours, working to catch up to Dave. As the sky grew darker the line of Mana got harder and harder to see, and it moved continually, making bigger shifts as we got closer to the other side of town.


    Zerrious was continually pumping Mana into his spell and I could feel him greedily sucking at the ambient Mana more and more as he slumped against my back, still holding on but obviously growing weaker as Mana sickness got to him. It had been a long time since either of us had come close to running out of Mana, especially since our centers were so efficient at packing it in.


    It was past dark, I was still trudging along, growing tired as the line of Mana was completely lost to me, the red and black just not standing out enough against the darkness of the sky.


    "Is he close?" I asked.


    "I don''t know, should I drop the spell?" Zerrious croaked with his head buried in the back of my neck.


    "It''s not doing me much good anymore, recover some Mana, we should be close enough."


    Zerrious moaned in pain as he dropped the spell. I remembered the headache using so much Mana gave you and it wasn''t a fun experience. I kept him on my back as he pulled in any Mana he could to recover himself as I walked in the direction the spell had been going when I had lost track of it. I turned left to move around a building and moved around it, watching the Aether twirl about me. It had an unpredictable pattern, but it was always calm until something came and messed with it, so I figured it would be as good a way as any to see any living things moving around corners.


    Zerrious finally lifted his head and looked around. "Oh, this is where he was earlier today, he''s just down this street," he said as he hopped off my back and took off down the road.


    "I''ll let him take care of that, I''ll catch up." I said. I hadn''t gotten a ride from my amazing teacher all the way across town, after all.


    I walked calmly until I saw Zerrious in a stand off with a man who had what looked like a poker for a fireplace pointed at him, his bloodshot eyes darting around and his long hair matted with dirt all over what seemed like normal work clothes that had been worn for far too long with sweat stains clear in the armpits and around the collar. He held the poker out defensively with his yellowed teeth clenched, saying something I couldn''t hear.


    Above his head read "Dave".

 Sleepless Dave

    Dave, one of the only two leads on Names available in this city, and neither of the leads had anything concrete, this one probably less than the lead on the monsters the hunters told tales of, though this one seemed more immediately dangerous. From my understanding a boo hag would sit on a person while they slept, taking their rest until eventually it could take their soul. I wasn''t sure what the threshold for soul stealing was, why it needed to take souls, what it did with the souls, or anything else, but what I had guessed, and seen confirmed when I caught a glimpse of the boo hag, was that after it took their soul it would take the skin of their victim and wear it, because the natural visage of the boo hag was that of an old woman sans skin, muscle pulled over bone, none of the fat and folds of skin that makes it recognizable as human, eyelids, fingernails, the only thing that remained was a dark mess of ratted hair atop its head, growing wiry locks directly from the muscle stretched over a stark white skull. Or so I remembered from the legends of my home world, though I expected little to be exactly the same, even if the basic building blocks were the same, the addition of Aether as a fundamental force made massive changes, to life, to reality, even to innovation. What was a legend before was able to become a reality with the suffusion of magic, though why just simply adding magic to a habitable world would have that kind of effect was a mystery far beyond me.


    Either way, the sleep deprived man waving a poker at my friend with clear intent to harm was probably the most urgent matter to attend to, even if I trusted Zerrious to not be in any real danger from someone that clearly didn''t know much about combat based on how the tip of the instrument wavered inconsistently.


    "You get away from me! You come with a different face but I know what you are, I''ll kill you! I''ll kill you!" Dave was raving as he shook violently in front of Zerrious twitching and looking every which way but seeming to not see much as his brown eyes skipped right over me like I was little more than a pile of gravel, which hurt my feelings a little bit to tell the truth.


    "Hey, hey, I''m not going to hurt you, I promise. Let''s talk, okay? Let''s put the poker down, and let''s talk. I''m here to help, I really am," Zerrious said calmly, crouched and ready to move out of the way if the frantic man suddenly decided to lunge at the boy and his hand out as if he were trying to gain the trust of a friends dog.


    "It''s alright, we''re here to protect you. We can fight the monster together," I joined in, my words seeming to have a much more profound effect than when Zerrious had spoken. While he had sown the seeds of doubt, a few words affirming their truth caused them to take root and blossom out like a field of lilies reaching for the sun.


    "Can you help?" he asked as he dropped the tip of the poker to the ground where it ground against the stone like a faint scream in the silent street. He''d said the words with a bit of a sob, as if he''d lost hope and knew that we were in over our heads, which did not bode well for us.


    Regardless of my true feelings on the subject, I projected confidence as I said in a firm voice "we''re here because we can help."


    He shook and stepped forward, the circles under his eyes just seeming to grow more and more prominent the closer he got to me as he seemed to simply ignore Zerrious much like he had me just moments prior. "Please, I don''t know how to save myself," he sobbed quietly as I watched hope worm its way into his soul and expel the despair that had laid it''s eggs inside when he became "Crazy Dave, the guy that claims monsters are after his soul". Hell, if I hadn''t seen the boo hag myself I probably would have been ridiculing him alongside everyone else.


    "I know, it''s okay. We''re here now. Come on, let''s get you home, okay?" I said as I came around and put an arm around the distressed man, placing myself at his right where he held the poker so he couldn''t easily bring it up and take me out with it.


    He immediately went back to his combative side, pushing against me to try and get enough distance to bring the poker up between us. "I knew it, you didn''t believe me! You just wanted me out of the streets, right back into its nest. You never believed me, no one ever believes me, you lied to me! Lieslieslies!" He was hyperventilating now and on the verge of a panic attack.


    "Hey, no no no no, we didn''t lie, we believe you, I swear-"


    "That''s what they always say, say what the madman wants to hear and at least he''ll get out of the way, right? No! I''m not going back, not at night, not ever, never never never!" He was shouting now, starting to make a scene that would surely have someone on us eventually, and that would send Dave over the edge.


    "Dave," I said calmly, trying to get through to him through the panic. Nothing. "Dave!" I called a little louder. It was as if I wasn''t there. I wound my Aether with reality stuff from my cane and sent it into the middle aged man''s center, forcing him to calm down. It worked a little, he started breathing more regularly but this wasn''t really a spell, or even anything exact, I could push down, but it pretty much pushed everything or nothing, but having him feel less of everything right now was exactly what we needed as Zerrious slowly approached behind him, waiting for me to tell him to subdue the man. "Dave! Listen to me!" I commanded loudly, forcing him to focus on me for just a few moments, but that was all I needed to get him back on my side. I was the master of bullshit, after all.


    "I''m listening," he muttered, holding eerily still as he spoke.


    "We wont force you to go back there, we didn''t know that was its nest, no one told us. But, we are here to fight it, so we''ll keep watch, why don''t you get a good nights rest and we can investigate after sunrise, how about that?" His left eye twitched but nothing else moved, he stared as if a focused statue given color. This guy was starting to freak me out. "We will keep watch, and you can get some rest, alright?" I asked again, this time eliciting a response.


    Dave blinked twice and shook himself, his eyes moving from me to the floor. "Some rest. . . some rest sounds nice," he said quietly.


    I looked to Zerrious, silently asking a question. He nodded and I slowly approached the disturbed man, noticing offhandedly the erratic patterns in the Aether around him as I prepared to pull open a hole into that area of pure magic. I didn''t have time to ruminate on those however, I had to convince this man that jumping into the hole that would lead most people into oblivion was somehow safer than staying on the streets at night. Yeah, I was in for a challenge no matter what my abilities were.


    "I haven''t told you everything, Dave," I started. "My friend behind you, he''s a mage, and one of the strongest warriors I''ve ever heard of, in stories or in real life," I said as I saddled up next to him, holding him close like a dear friend and whispering conspiratorially. "Don''t worry though, we work together. You see, it''s my job to find the monsters, to find out how to kill them, to know everything about them, and it''s his job to keep me safe, and kill the monsters before they can hurt anyone else," I said as I slid around him, whispering into his other ear like an anime villain, an approach anyone from home would have recognized in a heartbeat and rejected whatever I said outright on principle, but there was a reason the villains did it in the movies, because it worked wonders combined with the world itself agreeing with me.


    "He protects you. . . you help protect everyone. . . I should have heard. . . but. . . no, people don''t see it like me. . ." he muttered to himself, clearly trying to work out his logic through an addled mind.


    "I''m sorry, Dave. No one believes you because of us. Ours isn''t work that makes us heroes, it''s work that makes us fools. Most people never see the monsters we hunt, so they call the ones that do see them before we can get to them crazy," I lied through my teeth, truly feeling bad for the guy because I''m sure something like that really was happening, some kids out doing the good work with no rewards. Every society had them, the true saints to combat the despicable aspects of man.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    "Right. . . They never know. . ." he said, still slow and almost like he was under a spell, but I couldn''t see any weavings about him and my spell that forced calmness had worn off already, so I could only guess that he was finally letting his exhaustion catch up to him as he came to terms with us being able to protect him.


    "Well, do you know much about magic?" I asked, hoping he wouldn''t so he couldn''t tell that I was about to lie right to his face much more straightforwardly than I had when I mentioned that we kill monsters, which we at least planned to do.


    "No. . . It does what it needs to. . . I think. . ."


    "Well, my mage friend here, he goes by Zerrious, he has a spell that makes a sort of sanctuary, a place we can go that will always be safe, somewhere no monsters can get to," I said. The only truth there was that nothing would be able to get us there. I was sure. Pretty sure. Okay, I had no idea, but nothing had before so statistically it was one hundred percent safe. Even though statistics lie like a rug.


    "I can sleep there," he said, leaning into me and letting his eyes half shut.


    I grinned in victory and pulled the curtain between us and nothing opened, and forced the world through into the void. I wholeheartedly expected a treehouse in the middle of a rainforest, so I got a beautiful treehouse, nonexistent birds chirping faintly in the distance and the sky permanently resting just after the sun went down, the sky lit with pinpricks of light and a faint blue light outlining the endless expanse of trees on the distant horizon. Interestingly, the light was even across the entire horizon, as if the sun had set in every direction at once.


    "Get some rest, we''ll slay your monster when you wake," I said as I walked in, holding the door open for Zerrious before disconnecting this bubble from the physical reality it had originated in and letting us float in the nothing that was the Aether.


    Dave wasted no time, falling immediately asleep on the large bed under a window in the corner.


    "That was impressive," Zerrious said as he walked up to me, the first time he had spoken since I had started talking to Dave. "You were so persuasive I was worried I''d ruin it if I''d tried to help."


    "He should be a bit better after he gets some rest. People are unpredictable when they''re in survival mode for that long," I said as I collapsed onto a plush chair on the other side of the small house where another was right next to me for Zerrious to sit in. "I will admit, that was intense though." I laughed a little as my heartrate started coming down from the high stakes bullshitting.


    "You''re exhausted." Zerrious wasn''t asking, he was telling me. He knew, there was no question.


    "Fill up your center, we have no way of knowing what we''ll need for this monster." I avoided the question, but Zerrious understood.


    "I should tell you something. There aren''t very many combat spells." That was surprising, but I wasn''t sure why it mattered. "It''s kind of a taboo after the Child Empress. Unfortunately, I''m going to need more, what I have wont do much for me if push comes to shove. People are still afraid of mages, but we don''t really have teeth any sharper than anyone else. I can do both, but I have a feeling that wont be enough in the times to come. Maybe for this, but what the hunters are dealing with?-"


    "Just make more," I said, cutting him off as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.


    He laughed. "I know how smart you are, but spells aren''t easy to make, not from scratch."


    "Than stitch parts of other spells together to make new ones. Or, spend time and make something completely different, trial and error. And if you don''t want to do any of that, than find new ways to use the spells you already have. Make new weapons. You aren''t stuck with what you have, no one ever is. I should know that better than anyone. I was stuck, I thought there was no way to go up, and then I came here and I met the next god." I stopped for a moment, considering. "That watch would be nice right now."


    I hadn''t intended to be rude, more just talking to myself with the last sentence, but he seemed not to take it that way. Oops.


    "Oh," he said, pulling out his notebook and he started writing. I guessed he was working on a watch, and I recognized him writing numbers down but I wasn''t sure what the calculations would be for or what kind of calculations he would need to do. He wrote a lot of numbers. Big numbers before he swore and scribbled them out. "There has to be an easier way. . ."


    He looked at me for a long moment, more specifically staring at my wrist then nodding and writing some numbers down. That unnerved me a little bit but I ignored it as he made and remade what seemed like the same calculations again and again. "I can''t do that. . ." he seemed dejected as he slammed the book shut without letting the ink dry.


    "I''m going to practice magic and let that rest. Thank you," he declared and stood up, tucking the notebook away in one of his rings.


    In moments I was alone with a sleeping man as Zerrious swung down the tree to the ground far below. That left me with all of nothing to do. That was far from ideal, I would much prefer an obvious task, I was starting to get sick of staring at the maddening twists and turns in the Aether. Not that there was much else to do. Perhaps actually take the time to find a proper name for the reality stuff? I was sick of calling it that. Maybe I could find a way to separate it better for Zerrious.


    I tried to remember how I did it before my wedding mishap but I couldn''t for the life of me recall how I actually did it before. It was more instinct than anything else and instinct was hard to study after the fact.


    I closed my eyes and dove into my center, staring at the book turning eternally as it struggled to absorb the Aether fast enough. Fast. I had figured out that people don''t have control of Mana, or Aether. Not naturally. Or, maybe it was natural, even I had it and I wasn''t born here. But, not everyone can control all Mana, they can only control their own. And I''d found that when you separated it, a persons Mana had three parts to natures two. The first two were the same, Aether and reality stuff, but then there was the third thing, the me stuff as I''d been calling it. That was what people could actually control. When it mixed with Mana or Aether it gave the person a measure of control over that, but it doesn''t work with anything else, it''s a function of higher energy, or so I guessed, so Mana, Aether, and reality stuff were really all it could work with, unless some other higher energy form was found.


    I wasn''t sure where to start though, I could spin it, but it would just be filled with more Aether and nothing would change. It had to be done in a place without Aether, Mana, or reality stuff unless there was some way to isolate it, or keep it from mixing with other energies. I couldn''t do it with force of will, really it was just because of how Aether was absorbed into my center, there wasn''t a space where the Aether wasn''t being pulled from all directions into the book at my center, which had grown quite large with a massive number of pages. I guess I wasn''t casting much these days, and spending so much time in the Aether had made my center good and plump. I had to be reaching a limit soon, it was already far more dense than it ever had been before.


    I tried it a few times but quickly confirmed that it wouldn''t work, just like I''d guessed. After a short moment of staring at the book struggling to absorb the storm around it I opened my eyes to the imagined world I had been forcing to exist offhandedly while I did some failed experiments. I hadn''t gotten any system messages, so I guessed that either Zerrious was unsuccessful in making new spells, or he was just working on incorporating his magic into his sword fighting, or just on using his magic. Either way, he didn''t make any massive leaps so far. Or maybe he did and it just wasn''t unprecedented like so much of what we did.


    The two of us together was starting numb my ability to see skill growth in a normal way as I either invented a new branch of study, or Zerrious learned and mastered a skill so quickly that it seemed like mastering was the bare minimum for having a skill rather than the highest goal of a skill. It was scary to think that Zerrious probably wasn''t even unique in his rapid mastery, although I was quite confident I was unique. The gods said something about not being able to pull anyone else or something. It was hard to remember that long ago, there was a lot going on at the time.


    I wasn''t sure how long we''d been here, but Dave was still sleeping soundly and I didn''t want to wake him up, he''d clearly gone a long while without and needed it, but I didn''t want to try and find the boo hag at night where it was (probably) stronger. Though I knew it moved around during the day, I also knew it was a night hunter, so it probably stayed in its nest for most of the day, which if Dave was to be believed was in his home. That had to suck, can''t be there at night, can''t be there during the day, and on top of that no one would do anything about it.


    I heard Zerrious making his way back into the treehouse, sweaty with soot stains about his person. I had hoped he didn''t start any fires, but I quickly realized it wouldn''t matter as none of this would exist as soon as we left. Regardless, it started raining outside at my command, though no clouds marred the sky.


    "Go wash off, that''s gross," I said as I looked at the young man.


    "Right." he walked out on one of the tree limbs and started scrubbing himself with the water.  "We should probably get back, it''s probably close to morning by now." Zerrious made a great point, even though I could barely hear him through the rainfall.


    I nodded, more to myself than to him. "Dave!" I shouted, much louder than the rain. He shot upright, instantly awake, though not necessarily aware. "I think it''s about time to hunt the monster. Are you ready to take us to it''s nest?" I asked, this time a bit more calmly.


    "Yeah, let''s do it." The words were much less manic, now just tired, like a high school student during their first period class. "Let''s finish this."