“Something really weird is up ahead,” Trevour announces several minutes later. He squints into the darkness, scratching the back of his head. “Lots of energy in it, kinda like the bitey bugs, but I don’t know what this big ole thing is.”

  I motion for them to huddle up. “Looks like the final variant of this species is lurking up ahead. Lucky for you, Trevour, it’s not a spider.”

  He shudders at that, creeped out by the possibility. I thought he’d act more relieved, but it seems the mere mention of spiders is enough to set him on edge.

  I clear my throat. “Right. If I’m Viewing its Skills correctly, it’s less likely to bite you and far more inclined to shoot jets of high-pressure acid at your face.”

  “Great news,” Klaarson says weakly.

  “How are we supposed to deal with that? You almost let us walk straight into it,” Marta protests in a strangled tone. She’s fingering her knife, as though she’s considering stabbing me for holding out on them, and glares at me in a rather betrayed manner.

  I just laugh at her, which is enough for her to let go of the knife handle in chagrin. She blushes furiously. “Sorry. Got a little scared, that’s all. How are we gonna deal with acid?”

  I shrug. “No big deal. Fear is appropriate sometimes. And don’t worry. I was about to call a halt before you all melted to death in horrific pain, but Trevour already noticed the threat. Well done, party leader!”

  Marta and Klaarson nudge their friend in the ribs, congratulating him quietly, and Club dips his head in a silent salute.

  Their easy camaraderie sends a pang right through me. I miss my friends, and working with a team that’s a mirror of us in so many ways only drives the feeling further home.

  “So, mister boss man [Mage], what’s the plan?” Trevour asks, twirling his new knife.

  “The plan? You kill it, of course. Marta looks like she’s ready to stab anything that moves right now, so she should be good to go,” I say with a laugh. When no one joins me in laughing at my joke, I let out a long and overly dramatic sigh. “Fine, watch this.”

  Pulling on my newest Skill, I bring a simple glass golem into existence. It’s bulky and squat, twice as wide as Klaarson, with an opaque body. Lacking visible legs, its standout feature is a tall shield of see-through tempered glass in the front to absorb impacts.

  “Uhh. That doesn’t look like any creature I’ve seen before,” Trevour says. “Where are its legs? How does it walk?”

  With my Domain, I levitate it into the air, then rotate the heavy construction so he can see the long double rows of tiny legs underneath. “I don’t have to limit myself to animals that already exist. Dreamed up this shield bug just now. Should be fast enough to keep up with you slow pokes.”

  “Ew! Looks like millipede legs. I hate those things,” Club says, shivering and taking a long step back and hefting his mace.

  Marta snickers and wiggles all her fingers at him like a bug crawling his way.

  Club lifts his heavy-duty, spiked club higher and glares at her hands. He doesn’t seem like he’s vicious enough to actually attack her, but Marta falters and stops teasing him.

  “Focus, team,” Trevour says, though he was suppressing a snicker right along with the rest of them at Club’s reaction. “Let’s hear what mister [Mage] meister man has in store for us.”

  “First, never call me that again,” I say, gagging at the nickname. “Second, stay behind the shield for cover whenever you sense a surge of mana. Trevour, since you have the most developed mana senses, it will be your job to call out the danger. This will be a good opportunity for you to rank up your mana sensitivity, and maybe earn a solid Skill, like [Manasight] or [Sense Mana]. Only strike back when you get a clear shot at the beastie.”

  “What if we don’t get a chance?”

  “You will,” I assure them. “Monsters aren’t that smart, not at this level.”

  Club wields his thwacker-stick with his right hand, smacking it into his left palm like he’s envisioning a good beat down on the boss. “Happy to kill it dead, but how are we supposed to get close if it’s spraying out acid everywhere?”

  “Great question. Phenomenal point,” I say, laying on the sarcasm a bit thick. My audience likely doesn’t appreciate the snide attitude, I’m too committed to the shtick to quit now, so I roll with it. “It’s too bad that you don’t have a way to hit it from afar. Oh, I don’t know, maybe some sort of fire attack? Think how great it would be to burn the bug to a crisp from behind the safety of your new mobile shield unit!”

  When they trade bewildered looks, I smack my forehead and shift to plain instructions. “Use the flames I bound to the knives. You haven’t even tried them once so far, but they’ll give you a devastating ranged attack. Which you lack currently, as I’ve pointed out.”

  “We get to set it on fire?” Trevour asks, grinning in anticipation and showing exactly zero shame at not remembering the fire magic imbued into the knives.

  Marta at least hides her face in her hands, groaning as she connects the dots. “I’m even the one who asked for fire so I could deal with the rats in the caravan! How embarrassing.”

  I smile at her beatifically.

  Trevour steps in between us before Marta decides to use me as a practice dummy. “No sense rehashing the past. Let’s get in some training with that fire magic before we tackle the big bug. If we’re good at it, maybe we should name our team Flamestrike or something awesome. C’mon, we got this!”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Everyone agrees to the plan, minus the edgy name, so they take a few minutes to get comfortable with strikes powered by immolation, the upgraded version of my old fire concept. I wonder how many other concepts I can advance. Probably nothing right now, until I develop more connections and deeper understanding.

  I walk them through the basics, teaching them how to connect with the magic. “Imbuing fundamentally changes things. I transformed your knives from simple glass blades into eager hosts for the concept of fire, ready to be unleashed on their enemies. All you have to do is draw on the latent ability by triggering it with your mana and providing a target with your intent.”

  No one manages a massive firestorm like Nicanor did, but that’s probably for the best in such a confined space. Soon, both Club and Trevour manage small gouts of flame that warp the air and force their teammates to shield their faces and take a step back—definitely hot enough to do significant damage.

  Marta has the best success, however, as I suspected, since she already has a Class and Skills that are somewhat fire-aligned. After only her third try, she’s flinging bolts of superheated, blue-white fire into a nearby rock formation and blasting off chunks of stone the size of my fist.

  Cackling maniacally, she swings her knife in erratic, rapid slashes, reducing the boulder stack to a field of slag. Chunks of half-melted rock pile up in front of her. Twisted patterns emerge from the rock, which is flowing in strange shapes and no longer solid after the onslaught of oppressive heat.

  “Take a break. Preserve your mana before the fight,” I suggest. “Until you practice how to filter it for a while, absorbing the mana from a wild Rift is tricky. They’re not like established Rifts, with purified mana from a pacified core.”

  “I didn’t know there was a difference. Neat,” Marta says, tilting her head thoughtfully. She sheaths her knife, patting the handle happily.

  I find myself pitying the rats around the caravan. They probably don’t deserve the full scale genocide coming their way. Unless they’ve been getting into my favorite sweet rolls. If they so much as touch the box those are stored in, then they deserve all the fire and wrath they’ve brought upon their miserable, furry little backsides.

  I force myself to relax before my rage over their theoretical spoiling of the sweet rolls leaks through my Domain and scares everyone into releasing their bowels into their pants. That would be even more embarrassing for me than for them, if they knew why I was upset.

  I pull things back to an explanation about the differences in the quality of mana in wild and pacified Rifts. “The theory is pretty esoteric. I barely understand it myself. Densmore rose to power due to discovering how to purify naturally-occuring Rifts, which enabled its citizens to safely harvest more mana than other nations. Ancient history now, but we’re still a powerhouse thanks to the unique advantage the [Mage] guild carved out for us, or so I hear.”

  Glazed over expressions tell me that my audience is missing context. A lot of context. I clear my throat to cover the awkwardness. “All that to say, it’s in your best interest not to dip into your reserves right now.”

  “You got it, mister [Mage]!” Marta plops down next to Trevour, chatting about how many totally amazing stories they’ll have to tell when they get back to camp.

  Club just looks between his knife and his club, as though weighing which weapon will take him further in life. He doesn’t seem upset at expanding his repertoire, despite his Class.

  Klaarson, meanwhile, is standing apart from the group, glaring down at his knife without a single spark to show for his efforts. His face is turning dusky red as he concentrates so hard on making the magic happen that he seemingly forgets to breathe.

  He’s been conspicuously silent ever since I brought up using the fire attacks, and it hits me that he needs a little extra training. I know the imbuement worked, and the others had no issues creating dangerous flame attacks, so the problem must be unique to Klaarson.

  I’m about to make a joke, attempting to bond with him over the situation, when I recall his desperate pleas to help with his blockage.

  Oh. Good thing I didn’t tease him. He’s probably pretty upset right now if he can’t use mana at all.

  Nonchalantly as I can, I walk over and wave hello to the big man. “Hey Klaarson. Need some help?”

  He grunts and chucks the knife at the ground, burying it to the hilt in the stone right by my foot. I yelp and jump back, making a show of reaching down and feeling to confirm all my toes are still attached.

  Klaarson snorts, but he doesn’t seem amused. When he speaks, his bitterness comes through so intensely that I can practically taste it through my Domain. “Dunno why I even bother. I should have known better than to try magic.”

  I drop the goofy act. “I know this is important to you, so I won’t lie and lead you on. I can try to see what’s happening internally, if you want, but I probably can’t fix it. Do you want me to give it a shot anyway?”

  “Yes,” he replies instantly.

  “No promises,” I remind him.

  “I know. I don’t care. Any chance is better than no chance. At least I’ll know what’s going on, even if there’s no hope for me.”

  “Hey, none of that,” I say, trying to sound both gentle and stern, but he just rolls his eyes. “It’s probably not a big deal. Keep your chin up.”

  “I’m not a child. I can handle the truth.”

  I puff out my cheeks and let out a breath. “Nah, listen. I’m not good at talks like this. I wish Melina were here instead of me. She’d know what to say. But you can’t just give up.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re an incredibly powerful [Mage],” he mutters.

  “Ha! If you saw me last year, you’d be shocked at how far I’ve come.”

  “Oh, still struggling with Silver spells?”

  I ignore his sarcasm, studiously keeping my face neutral—mostly because I don’t know how to break it to him that Silver isn’t that strong without crushing his spirit. I’m trying to help him, not send his soul to the abyss with an ill-timed brag about my shiny new Iridium Skill, which should be impossible for me to earn before the Second Threshold.

  Ahem. Focus, Nuri.

  “Look, I know it may be hard to believe, but I spent years with a broken core and cracked channels. I thought I’d never regain normal use of my Skills again, so I found other ways to keep moving forward. There’s always hope, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time.”

  “How’d you survive?” he asks softly.

  “Almost didn’t.” I frown, thinking back over painful and unpleasant memories. “My friends helped a lot. But in the end, I had to be willing to find a different path. I had to make my own way in life. I can show you how to do the same thing, even if I can’t fix your problems.”

  Klaarson nods slowly, seeming deep in thought. “All right. It does sound hard to believe. But you’ve come up with one miracle after another today, so I guess I trust you. Take a look.”

  “You got it,” I say, grinning.

  My smile dies on my face at his somber expression. I’m about to begin when he holds up a hand to stop me.

  “Just . . . whatever you do, don’t lie to me. I’d rather have the simple truth, no matter how deep it cuts.”

  The pained sincerity on his face makes my heart ache, because it reminds me of the odd mix of crushing despair, bruised dignity, and absolute desperation I felt after my own injuries. It must seem impossible to Klaarson, but I probably know how he feels better than most people do. I hope he finds healing.

  Taking a moment to meet his gaze and show I’m not all talk, I project confidence and honesty through my Domain. I hope he can pick up on the resonance between us. After a while, I nod, and he nods back, seeming to believe whatever he finds in my expression.

  “The truth. Wherever it takes us,” I promise him, and hold out a hand. He shakes it with a small, grim smile on his face, and our pact is forged.

  I call on my legacy Skill and rotate my mana, activating the Viewing technique. Guess it’s time to take a deeper look at what Klaarson has been struggling with for so long.