As predicted, Liv has to remove me from my bed with a crowbar.

“Come on, Whitney, the bathroom’s open, it’s your tuuuuurn,” she complains.

“Gnrrghhh,” I groan. “Okay Google, snooze for fifteen minutes.”

“I don’t think that’s a spell, Whitney.”

“Bluh.”

“Also, Ji just finished running to Calfort and back to pick up your new clothes.”

“Fiiiiine,” I whine, and slowly slither out from my blanket-nest.

I take the pile of cloth that Liv hands me and shamble up the stairs to the bathroom. Then I shuffle back down, grab the little bag of toiletries from my backpack, and practically crawl back upstairs to finally get started on my day.

I’m vaguely functional by the time I finish scrubbing all the gunk off myself. This time I remember that there’s soap in my toiletries bag, along with a comb and toothbrush, so I actually feel clean when I’m done.

My new clothes are nice and comfortable, despite their complexity. Some kind of soft natural fiber, woven in a way that feels distinctly durable. The top has two layers, a very thin undershirt beneath a loose long-sleeve shirt. It’s looser than what I normally wear, but the well-fitted shoulders and waist indicate that that’s intentional. Disregarding the complete absence of creases and the weird material, the pants are basically just unusually baggy slacks. The whole outfit is in blue, darker on the shirt than the pants.

I do have issues with the underwear, which are basically knee-length cotton long johns. I’m particularly annoyed to realize that elastic doesn’t exist here. Instead, the underwear attaches to little strings coming off the bottom hem of the undershirt, which I now realize has some vertical reinforcements specifically so it can support the extra weight, making it something like a combination suspenders and pajamas. I guess I’ll just have to find better underwear at some point.

The real problem is the complete absence of pockets. I can see why they’re not there, admittedly. It’s probably more flexible to hang some pouches off a belt or something, and it’s not like people here carry keys, a wallet, a phone, and pepper spray everywhere. I still want pockets, though. I went to too much trouble finding en-pocketed clothing to be defeated now!

I finish up and head downstairs to find that I’m the last one up. Agnes is putting her armor on, Liv is stretching, Ji is meditating, and I don’t care what Bob is doing because he’s wearing an orange-and-blue jumpsuit that’s somehow even more hideous than yesterday’s purple velvet sweat pants. Heather’s missing, but her absence is explained only a few minutes later when she returns with enough eggs, sausages, butter, and toast to feed the whole team.

“I’ll go over today’s itinerary to make sure we’re all on the same page,” she says, setting breakfast down on the table. “Our current task is to transport Axelos to Stonehill for trial, sentencing, and likely detention.” She finishes handing out plates and goes to serve herself, continuing to speak as she does so. “We’ll move by foot to Calfort, take lunch there, and obtain transport to Stonehill. We’ll likely sleep one night on the road. Depending on available transport we may be required to offer our services as caravan guards,” she says, prompting a round of annoyed muttering. She sits down and digs in.

I’m quite pleased to learn that this place does have transportation other than dudes with high strength statistics. I was worried I was going to have to walk across the entire continent or something.

The end of Heather’s speech does prompt Agnes to raise a concern. “Do we not worry of a rescue attempt by the Sons?”

Liv, having served herself while Agnes spoke, has to leave a slice of egg-covered toast hanging so she can field the question. “Should only need to make sure they know that he defected,” she says, considering the situation. “I can use the leads we got from Dornink’s office yesterday to get a message into their network to make sure,” she suggests. “Heather?”

“Will you have time to do both that and negotiate our transport?”

Liv tilts her head, considering the question. “Depends on what the options look like, but I should be able to.”

“We’ll plan on that, then.” Heather looks at Agnes to confirm that she’s happy with how her concern was handled. Agnes seems satisfied as she sits down with her own serving of eggs on toast, which I guess is enough.

I go last so I don’t have to feel guilty about taking a bunch of the sausages. Ji doesn’t eat anything at all, interestingly. Would it be rude to ask him if that’s a cultivator thing or if he just already ate? Eh, I’ll split the difference by thinking my question very hard at Liv. She’ll enlighten me if it matters. As an unexpected benefit, this method means I don’t even have to stop eating!

We demolish breakfast in record time. Axelos, still insensate, is retrieved from his cell, checked over by Bob, and slung over Agnes’s shoulder for travel. We pack up and depart.

It’s just as beautiful a morning as yesterday was a bright sunny day. The air is crisp and refreshing to a degree that’d have been almost impossible back home. The only time I’ve ever had air this clean was when I was on vacation and went hiking in the mountains the Pacific Northwest, where there’s not a coal or oil plant for five hundred miles because there’s so much hydroelectric. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, enjoying the smell of grass and trees.

It won’t replace video games, but it’ll do until I reinvent them and teach the local artists who Zelda is.

Note to self: This time, those games actually will star Zelda. Link’s cute, but cute like a very small but determined puppy. Really, it’s only luck that they ever defeat Ganon; Link just bumbles around being a helpful cryptid until he rescues the holder of Wisdom and she does all the real work.

I also take a moment to check my guess about how the sun must behave given the setting’s planar geometry. As I’d expected, the sun’s already high in the sky despite the early morning. If I’d been back on Earth I’d have guessed it was somewhere around 10 AM, or even noon if it was toward winter. But if the sun was down for eight-ish hours like Heather suggested, and the local times lined up between my departure and arrival, and the length of an hour is the same, and the lengths of the days are the same- you know, I’m just going to stop trying to make a principled estimate, that’s way too many unknowns. I’ll just stick with saying that the air feels more like 6 AM air than 10 AM air.

Six AM is still barbarically early, of course, even taking potential horological pandemonium into account. At least I crashed hard and slept for what felt like ten hours, so it’s not too horrendous.

“Before I start learning more spells and doing research,” I say as we leave Caulfield, making sure I ask before Liv and Ji range out ahead, “What do you all think I should be working on? What capabilities should I develop, what would be most useful for you?”

The fields and forests are exactly the way they were yesterday, so I don’t pay much attention to them. I do note that there are a lot more farmers on the road right now, though, presumably on their way to their fields to start working.

“Defenses,” Heather and Liv reply simultaneously. They look at each other and Liv motions for Heather to continue. Heather nods and takes the lead. “Agnes and Ji can take hits,” she elaborates, “but the rest of us are fragile. We depend primarily on a high-pressure assault to suppress the enemy. We use mobility to evade any attacks they remain capable of mounting.”

So, get inside their OODA loop using Liv’s perception/dexterity build and Ji’s speed, cripple the enemy before they can do anything, and dodge whatever they throw at you. I can see why they operate like a SWAT team; they’re operating with the same dynamics that’re imposed by automatic firearms and infantry body armor.

Heather continues, ignoring my internal analysis. “This is partially to overcome our lack of utility and partially to deny targets a chance to destroy evidence,” she explains. “We will need additional survivability mechanisms as we progress and are assigned higher-end threats.”

“You also need personal defense ASAP,” Liv tells me.

“The defense of another requires greater skill by far than the defense of one’s own self,” Agnes adds. “I concur.”

“No offense,” Liv finishes, “but you’re by far the squishiest person here.”

“No offense taken; your points align well with my own analysis,” I say happily. Mmm, it’s always gratifying when someone with more expertise reproduces your evaluation. “The grimoire has a shield spell in it, so that’s an obvious choice, even if I don’t yet know how durable or tactically viable it is.”

“What kind of shield?” Heather asks. “Bubble, skin-tight, planar, skeuomorphic, more complex? Stationary or controllable? Momentary, sustained? Casting time?”

“Projects a rectangular plane with configurable size,” I answer. “I suspect it’ll be attached to my finger the way Find Spellcraft was. All of those properties can probably be tweaked once I get some R&D work done, but I don’t have a solid timeline for that. A few weeks, probably, twenty days or so,” I guess. It’s never good to make estimates that you can’t back up, but with Read Mana under my belt I wouldn’t be surprised if it only takes me a few full days to figure out the system’s basic operating principles and a few more to disassemble the whole spell. Of course, it could end up taking six months too, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. “Casting time should be ten or twenty seconds once I’ve got it really nailed down, which is too slow. The grimoire has a spell that allows me to pre-cast and ‘hold’ another spell ready for immediate deployment, though I can only hold one at a time.”

“If there aren’ any issues w’ holdin’ a spell, y’should be doin’ it all th’ time,” Bob says.

“I agree,” Heather adds. “Also, the general properties you describe are satisfactory. Bubble shields and skin-tight shields tend to have problems when produced by Hard Magical Gifts. At the entry level you want manual control so you can optimize more tightly.”

“Sounds good, so that’s my immediate objective set,” I conclude. “What does my timeline look like after that? Do I have enough breathing room for basic research, or are tactical capabilities urgent enough that I should focus on memorizing spells from the grimoire and learning to use them in combat?”

“We’ll start including you in drills as soon as you have your shield spell,” Heather says. I see nods going around the rest of the team, agreeing with her. “That will tell us how to balance immediate development versus future development. Time pressure is primarily due to the need to pause grinding until you’re up to speed.”

I really hope that I enjoy drills and sparring. I always liked laser tag and the like, at least when I wasn’t getting all competitive and stressing out about my performance, so hopefully I’ll have a good time?

“Okay, exploration-exploitation regime for you too. That sounds reasonable,” I say. “I’ll try not to slow your grinding down too much.”

“Do not be worried on this humble cultivator’s behalf,” Ji intones. “My cultivation would in truth benefit from a period of consolidation.”

“An’ I got some stuff I been meanin’ to fin’ time ta snort fer a while now,” Bob says, “so same fer me.”

I look at the cultivator warily. “Do I want to know what you’re planning to put up your nose?”

“Probl’ly not!”

Liv and Agnes laugh. Ji’s expression flickers between indignation and revulsion and settles on resigned exasperation.

“Right,” I say dryly. “Okay. I think that that’s a reasonable plan all around. I’ll get started on the shield spell, then we can start training to get an idea what our needs and timeline are like so we can continue planning.”

“Correct,” Heather says.

“Cool. Bob,” I say, “mind holding the grimoire for me again?”

“’Course!”

I decide to try running Read Mana while I learn Shield for One. It’ll more than double the time required per attempt because I’ll have to recast it every time, but I hope that being able to inspect the spell more closely will help me debug mistakes.

Read Mana takes me a couple tries. It pops up in front of me, just like last time, and it strikes me that I don’t know how it’s following me as I walk. It’s not attached to my hands the way Find Spellcraft was, otherwise it’d have moved when I reached for it last night. It’s not attached to my head, since I can move to get a different perspective. I slow down momentarily to test if it’s just continuing to move the same way it was when it was cast, but no, it slows down to match my new pace. I step to the side and that does the trick, the cube slowly migrating over to take up position in front of me again. I turn so I’m walking sideways and the cube again slowly slides and pivots to regain its position in front of me. So it’s attached to some reference point on my torso but with some smoothing on both position and velocity. I start doing some more tests to see if I can figure out exactly what part of my body the reference point is attached to. It’s not anywhere on my head or neck, it’s not my hips, it’s-

“Please tell me you can dance better than that,” Liv interrupts me. “If not, I’m staging an intervention.”

I huff. “It’s not dancing, it’s science!”

I carefully do not admit that my current scientific endeavor is probably better than what it’d look like if I actually tried to dance.