By the evening of the first day on the boat, his uncle could not contain his curiosity over the skill he saw Tercius use when they infiltrated the house of the il’Buls, and started pestering him with questions about it.

What does the skill do exactly? How much Mana does it drain? On and on the question went and Tercius finally decided to get something back in exchange.

"Let's make a deal, an answer for an answer. We stop with the questions when someone is unwilling to answer. Deal?"

His uncle popped his head from the bottom bunk and looked at him with narrowed eyes. Tercius was laying on his side, one hand propping his head, the other keeping his pet warm against his chest. The little creature fit perfectly in his palm when she curled up to sleep.

"Deal or we stop?"

"Deal." his uncle finally said, and retreated into his space, reminding Tercius of a scared turtle and the thought drew an audible laugh he could not have stopped.

"Then I will go first considering I answered a few already with no charge."

"Go on then." his uncle's voice reached him.

"First question." Tercius made a sound as he thought over what he wanted to ask. "When we were at our friends' house last night, how come no one outside heard anything? That creep was so loud my ears kept ringing after each of his screams."

"…My cloak." his uncle shared.

"That’s not enough. Uncle, if you don’t want to continue just say so, don’t boycott it with half responses."

Tercius heard a sigh. "It has a feature that it can extend this…bubble, is probably the best word for it, around me. No sound can get out while it's used. I don’t know how it works, so I consider this a full response. Now it’s my turn." his uncle said. "How did you get this skill?"

"I used another I have, that is very similar, as a blueprint of sorts and with quite some time and persistence it came to me."

"How much time are we talking about?" his uncle asked.

"Somewhere around a cycle of tries, daily," he answered.

"Ah ah. My turn." Tercius said when he heard his uncle start with another question. He only allowed the follow-up because he felt that his first answer too short.

"Other than the bubble of silence what else can the cloak do?" he asked, remembering how at times the guards looked their way, yet not one spotted them.

"…it can change color. It has some sort of spell that mirrors what is in the back to the front, so it can blend in almost perfectly, and it can block my Mana from being seen."

"But I saw your Mana the night you got into our house," Tercius said with some confusion.

"…It old by now, the enchantment probably failing as time goes by. Who knows how much longer it will work."

His uncle went quiet for some time after that, the silence gaining a dimension of its own, and Tercius remembered what his father said about his uncles' cloak.

Not for all the money in the world. But good eye, spotting that.

He thought about telling his uncle what his family knew about the Energy, but he could see that even though Lux did not agree with everything the upper echelons of his family decreed, he still honored it.

Tercius did not know if this information would change the way his uncle behaved, and in darker thoughts, those that bordered on paranoia, it occurred to him that maybe his uncle would be forced to... solve the leak. Namely him. But it was all wild guessing.

The man did have a side he kept to himself, but who was he to point fingers? He had a secret that he was sure would top any his uncle could come up with, and he was not sharing.

Maybe he was foolish for even considering this, but he felt that he had a good grasp of the man. Tercius used Mana Sight to observe his surroundings.

"Uncle?"

"I'm not going further with these questions Tercius."

"It's not that. I wanted to say that I trust you."

"..."

"Do you trust me?"

"..."

"Let me ask you something. If these Elders of yours order you to take my head, would you do it?" he asked and jumped from his upper bunk to the wooden floor eliciting a cry in protest from the up until now sleeping lioness.

"We know each other for over a cycle now uncle. Would you do it if they asked?" he repeated and looked the man straight in the eyes. Even though he did not have a skill for telling lies apart from the truth, he trusted his gut feeling.

"What's with these questions Tercius, where are you going with this?" his uncle asked, a disturbed expression etched on his usually stony face.

He took the small dagger from his backpack and placed it on the bed near the man.

"What would you do if someday these Elders of yours order my death and send you to do it?"

Tercius did this for Lux, for he knew the answer.

"Would you take it?" he said pointing at the dagger.

"…" his uncle kept silent, but Tercius still got the confirmation.

"I am going to tell you something now, so activate that enchantment of yours."

Tercius entered into a staring match with Lux, where the elder man lost when he saw that his nephew was not making a joke. Lux got up from the bed, placed the cloak on his shoulders, and after a moment nodded his head.

"It's activated?" Tercius asked, getting another nod in affirmative.

"I found a way to get new skills and level the existing ones at much greater speeds than normal. This way also allows for another way of going over the barriers, it does not require another skill as fuel."

He watched his uncle, the older man's stony expression unreadable.

"And I can share it with others."

That does it. Tercius celebrated internally as he saw the mask crumble. His uncle saw down on the bed, his eyes staring at the wall, unfocused.

"Does this change anything? Uncle?" Tercius snapped his fingers in front of Lux's face, bringing the man back.

"Your skin looks fine, and your hair is all there. Tercius, did you ever bleed from your nose or ears or eyes? Maybe spent months chained to your bed exhausted?"

"No. Why?"

"Never? Are you sure? Maybe when you were younger? I will need to ask Septimus when I get back."

"No uncle, I am sure something like that never happened."

He remembered every wretched boring day of his baby days, not in great detail, but he was sure something exciting as a head bleed would not slip by unnoticed.

"Did Sep-" his uncle started clutching his chest, folding over like a soggy paper would, making choking sounds and Tercius ran to the man.

No more than a meter separated them, and he was there in an instant, but Lux was already better, waving him away.

"My tongue slipped," he said pointing at his chest.

"Same as father's?" he asked remembering the black dot he saw on his father's chest.

"Quite similar, only I can talk about it, just not with someone who does not have clearance. Please, ask no more." his uncle said and closed his eyes, his whole body shivering and sweating. It took his uncle over half an hour to get back into a sitting position, and even then he saw his fingers, and eyelids twitch from time to time.

Tercius went to the ship's cook and asked him if he could get something hot and liquid to eat or drink, and had to pay extra to get it right away.

"Oh Gods, I do not want to go through that ever again." his uncle complained as he ate the soup.

"Let me reset the enchantment."

They talked about his skills, how he exactly went about to level the skills, how he figured out how to share them, the talk went deep into the night before they had to stop because Lux almost ran out of Mana.

He transferred Energy to his uncle who skeptically observed until the rush hit him. He used a measure he came up with after almost a year of transfer to his family, it was just below where the point where physical activity was required of the body.

You just felt more awake and sharper in some way. And if you practice your skills in this state, they would experience a large increase in the speed of leveling. If you practiced something that you did not have a skill for, you had to spend far less time before a skill showed up.

"I do have an idea about getting you something like Mana Sight, but I will need to level my skill at Mana Manipulation to a higher level first, so far I can only manipulate it within my own body. But if I get it to a higher level? Who knows." Tercius said to his sitting uncle, just before the man dropped the silence bubble.

They lapsed into silence once more, each with more to ask or tell, but they knew the wooden walls were thin.

Sleep came like a warm blanket on a cold night.

***

Tercius woke up with something gnawing on his nose. The whole thing was wet and dripping and he saw the culprit immediately.

Her amber eyes stared back at him.

She stopped what she was doing as soon as she noticed that he was observing her, from where she started to press her cold smooth scales against his face.

Wiping his nose with his sleeve, he thought about the name of the little one. He had to give her one.

"Why just one?" he murmured. "They are all yours. But I will call you Amber. It suits those eyes of yours."

"Amber. Hey Amber, come here," he said patting the place near him and the little girl ran immediately to his hand. "Who's a good girl?"

Then he remembered that he was not alone in the small confine of their cabin and stuck his head over the edge to see if his uncle was still asleep.

But the man was not there.

The bed was made perfectly, everything straightened, the pillow even looked fluffed. For a moment he thought that his uncle just ran away, but then the rocking of the vessel reminded him where he was.

Jumping off the bed, he went to the two pots that were fixed to the wooden floor after one man pointed out that if he just left those on the floor, he would probably have to clean up the mess within minutes. But the captain offered to fix two buckets to the floor in which he placed the pots and packed the empty space with straw. Apparently, many of the crates on board were filled with stuff and three handfuls were easily found.

"Here you go Amber, breakfast is ready," he said as he snapped a few branches off and gave them to the little creature. Amber immediately forgot all about him as her flat teeth crushed and ground her treat.

He waited until she finished then picked her up and went out in search of their missing party member.

He found Lux gambling with a few sailors on deck, surrounded by a small group that observed the spectacle. He just waved at the man when Lux saw him and went to the side to observe.

The salty smell of the sea was carried by a warm wind that helped them along their journey to Tripatis. He observed a few ships in the distance going the other way, the flock of birds that circled the ships, and he raised his head and saw that even they had the same company flying above.

Other than that it was all open sea.

Walking to the other side, he saw a few ships that went in the same direction as they were, and most importantly he saw land. From end to end, as far as his eyes could see he saw straight cliffs onto which large waves crashed never ceasing. He judged the distance at around three kilometers, making him remember what his mother said about hugging the shore. He could see that the plateau above was flat and green and that was about it.

"How do you find the journey so far little one?" a voice asked from the side, and at first he ignored it, thinking that by now everyone would have stopped calling him "little" considering he was close to 1.55, but then he connected the voice to its owner and then the owners' impressive height came to mind.

I guess he can call anyone "little" if he wants to. For him, it's probably always true. he reasoned.

"Very pleasant. Honestly, I expected something more... rough and tumble from the stories I read and what I've been told. This has been... a smooth ride."

"Oh boy, you shouldn't have said that." the giant captain said from up high, his voice reaching him as if they stood in a cave.

"What? Why? Why did you ask then?" he asked, wondering if his words somehow offended the man.

"It's bad luck. Bad luck, I tell you. Now a storm is as sure to hit us."

"That just baseless superstition," Tercius said, dismissing it but then he remembered that skills existed, magic existed, creatures that grew to the size of a small one-man plane, and his back grew cold.

"Close that mouth of yours before you tie a few more stones around our ankles." the large captain started spitting overboard and he saw some of the crew do it.

Multiple times.

"Spit." the captain commanded. "Spit!"

He was sure that these situations where he grew afraid of someone larger and taller than him would fade as he grew up, but it would seem that he wrongly assumed.

He gathered anything that contained a hint of moisture in his mouth, and the so gathered blob hurled over the wooden railing with a loud explosive sound.

"There, all done," he said as tried to wet his parched mouth.

"Good, good. We may yet see our destination." the captain gave another glob to the sea. He almost rolled his eyes but thought better of it.

"If you don't mind me asking, what do you transport?" he said wanting to change the subject. He saw that the whole lower deck was tightly packed with stacked crates.

"Not at all little one, everything I take on my boat is perfectly legal, why would I not answer?"

Tercius smelled something fishy and it was not from the sea around.

"We have some luxury items made in Spheros, a few pieces of specially made furniture and such. Then spices that only grow in Sogea, I sell these for a pretty dweta up north, you see. And on my way back, I mostly get tar to sell to these southerners. The ships need tar to coat the wood, you see, it keeps the water out. Barrels of the thing sells for almost the same price as the spices." the man explained.

"It's only these taxes they set up... They eat half of my profit. Greedy bastards. " he whispered to Tercius.

Tercius knew what the man was talking about, and he had to agree with the man. When you work and someone just comes and takes almost 3 parts in 10 you have earned? It tastes like shit.

"And how long have you been doing this?"

"Almost fifteen cycles now. Started small, then grew and grew until this baby came along." the captain said as he patted the wooden railing. "Since then she and I share our fates."

One sailor came and called the captain for some reason and they left Tercius and Amber in peace to observe the rising waves.

***

"Come here. Come here, girl. Amber."

"What are you doing?" Lux asked perplexed.

"I am training her. Look." Tercius said then turned towards Amber.

"Sit," he said, sapping his fingers and pointing the index finger towards the floor. She plopped her little butt right on the floor.

"Stay," he commanded, extending his palm vertically while slowly going to the door, all without her moving.

"Come." he invited her with his fingers, but the little creature did not move a muscle, and he repeated it a few times but the result was the same.

"Well I guess two for one afternoon are good enough," he said, as he rewarded Amber with a small branch.

While he trained her, he felt skill Teaching come into effect, making a connection of sorts between them, giving her a feel for what he wanted of her.

The skill proved instrumental when he taught his siblings anything. Some of the subjects Aurelia flew through and he attributed that to two factors, her intelligence in large part and his skill in a smaller but undisputable part. With little Leo, it worked wonders, making the little boy light-years in front of his peers, at least in not shitting his pants department.

I wonder what they are doing now? he thought.

"I have activated the enchantment." his uncle said. "Did you and your parents talk about this much?"

"We did, and they advised me to keep quiet about it. To tell no one. I think grandfather even thought that I made a mistake by telling them in the first place."

"Smart man that Ciron, and you are probably the luckiest kid alive. Tercius, you have told me about this and I know what I am talking about when I say this. Do not! Ever! Say a word of this again. Even when you get to the top, you will still have weak points. Your family, your friends. I can’t say why, you will just have to trust me, you foolish foolish child." Lux chided.

"I know your family probably repeated this to you, but there is a reason for that, you can’t just go around saying this to random people!" his uncle reasoned.

"You are not just anyone, uncle," Tercius said, but the man ignored him and carried on.

"I had some thoughts about gently persuading you away from this goal during our trip, but now…" his uncle said. "We will have to try to get you a skill of some kind for protection against mental attacks, I think that is your biggest weak point at this moment."

"When you say the phrase gently persuade, what exactly does that entail with you?" Tercius asked, quite curious.

"Never mind that now, give me some more of that Energy, my Lie Detection went up during the game and I am itching for at least one more until the journey is up."

"Split 50-50?"

The man's stony visage did not change.

"40-60?"

Not a muscle moved.

"Uncle, I am not going below 30."

"Deal."