Nic cultivated in solitude for hours. His fists struck the water, making it tremble; he drew out his new blade and drilled until the weight and balance were second-nature, a natural extension of his arms. Practice, meditate, practice, meditate…

And so on for hours. The last fight in the chasm, where he’d faced off against the whole of Rakdhat’s expedition, was occupying his mind. He’d been outmatched by Old 13…

Surprised by the reappearance of the undead Patriarch Blackleaf…

And ultimately, allowed the ogre priest to escape into the water, where the wretch had killed him and erupted into D-Class…

Nic had survived because he’d kept thinking on his feet, shifting his approach to meet the constant chaos of the battlefield. But if he’d been just a bit faster…

Just a bit better…

In his mind he replayed the events, enmeshing them with the calculations and cold logic of his crystalline eyes. He could precisely recreate the strength and speed of his opponents, remembering the scenario without flaw; what his opponents would actually do when he changed his own reactions, was less of a certain quality. He could only guess.

But it was a very strong simulation. He could feel himself getting better, finding tiny places to change his approach and scratch out minor advantages.

If he met Old 13 again, Nic though he might have a fighting chance.

But by noon, he had exhausted the situation. There were no more improvements to be made in his form, his reactions, his plan. He’d followed every obvious branch of the scenario and was beginning to feel cold frustration set in.

The only way to improve further was to do just that; improve. The current him truly couldn’t go any further.

In his best result, he’d been left fighting Rakdhat and Old 13 together…

Not a very hopeful outcome. Past that, the simulation-dream was untrustworthy. He simply had too little information on how Rakdhat fought and what kind of last-ditch tricks he might have.

That was the limit of this kind of mental ‘training’.

Reality could always surprise you with a punch to the jaw.

Sighing, Nic swam back up towards the surface and shook the water off his back like a dog. The city was settling back into rhythm after the violent disruptions of last night, although a frantic energy remained, an uncertain edge to the air…

Nic made his way to the canteens, getting a bowl full of noodles and rich, mushroomy soup from the new cook. He’d miss Kiana’s cooking, honestly, even if the whole Settlement was better served by having her as an alchemist…

As he sat down at the dining table, people made room for him.

Uncertain glances lingered on his new shape.

But if they thought that was unusual, their jaws dropped when Nic casually said,

“Trying out a new look.”

Something about his voice made everyone instantly stop what they were doing. He’d restrained the killing edge of the Old Speech, but still…

There was something impossible to ignore about his words. An electric force they carried that shocked the soul and drew all eyes to him.

It also made humor almost impossible.

“So… You can talk now…” Elisa said, hesitantly.

“Maybe you can solve a dilemma for us then, boss.” Kang-Dae cut in. The bald man was still recovering from burns that covered almost his entire body, but surface level damage was easy enough to heal; the spiders had him pieced together as soon as they ran out of more desperate cases to attend to. Now he was pink and shiny all over, like he’d gotten a terrible case of sunburn.

“Oh god.” Elisa groaned.

“Did you have noodles on your home world?” Kang-Dae asked, leaning forward like this was the most important question in the world.

Nic dug his chopsticks into the broth, twirled up a load of heavy, dark-grain noodles, and said, “Yep.”

“See! See? Noodles. Are. Universal.” Kang-Dae’s hand banged the table to emphasize the last three words. “Every world has them, I bet! There’s just no better way to cut up dough to boil with soup, and soup, everyone’s gonna invent soup the moment they invent fire.”

“Oh come on. First of all, nobody cares. Second, dumplings are going to be invented before noodles, every time. Noodles take way more work than just adding uncooked bread bits.” Elisa snapped back, and Nic genuinely couldn’t tell if she was irritated or enjoying the argument. Maybe both.

“We had dumplings too.” He added, happily stirring the pot.

“Coming through.” Pushing her way onto the bench alongside him, Nadine sat down at Nic’s left side. The saber-woman had a rough, angry air to her otherwise cold and brittle features; Nic sensed guilt mixed with genuine fury in the way her aura swirled around her.

Of course he did. Her squad had been left behind to tend its wounded, and she had missed the fighting.

“When are we going after them?” She asked.

And it was the question everyone had been waiting for.

A murmured round of ‘Yeah’ and ‘When’ passed down the table.

Nic slurped up his noodles, swallowed and said, “One on one, those assassins were stronger than any of you. And not by a little. But they fought stupid; they came to our home turf and they took us head-on. So they lost.”

“I know.” Nadine said, anger bleeding through in her voice. “I know we can’t take them head on. You don’t need to tell me that, I’ve seen for myself. Still. I can’t help but think…” She paused for a moment, fingers tapping against her elbow with arms crossed, her soup ignored. Then she said, “What if we set up an ambush? Waited for them to leave their territory, waited until they were outnumbered, then attacked? We could set the conditions fo the fight…”

Nic considered for a moment. And then a moment longer, so it wouldn’t seem like he was dismissing her out of hand.

He understood her anger.

But it was leading her down the wrong path.

“In the end, it’d still be risking your life for almost nothing. It would only work once. If it worked at all.” Nic answered. “They can turn invisible, you know. They could be watching you the whole time while you set up your ambush, and then, when you think you’ve closed the trap…”

He clenched his right fist, and then slapped his left hand down around it.

“The real trap closes on you.”

She was silent for a moment, until someone in the crowd said, “But we have to do something.”

“Yeah.” Nadine said. “We do.”

It sounded like a challenge. But before she could go further, a pale, slender hand clapped down on her shoulder.

“Careful, my friend. Careful. It’s not your call to make.” Shakes said, his voice calm and collected like the point of a blade.

Nic allowed himself a smile, hidden beyond another noisy slurp of noodles.

The cavalry was here. Tarquin had arrived.

“You gotta understand…” Tarquin slid into place on Nic’s right. His right hand. “People, you gotta listen. Nic and me… We got the shit kicked out of us plenty. We got grudges left and right. And yeah, we lost people. Good people…”

“But there’s two kinds of anger. One is quick and hot and bright, and it makes you want to do stupid things, but it burns itself out fast. People with that kind of anger… They talk a big show and they curl their fists but in the end… They forget and they move on with their lives.”

“The second kind? Mean and slow-burning. You don’t forget. But you do keep moving. You keep moving because if you keep going, you’re going to find the moment, the golden moment, to pay that anger back ten-times over. You’re gonna get stronger and you’re gonna find yourself looking down on your enemies, ready to crush them without even trying.”

It was a good speech. Nic found himself nodding along, and Tarquin quietly slapped his back, prompting him to pick up the torch as Tarquin slipped into silence.

“Exactly.” Nic still remembered the bad days. The times in his youth he’d been helpless, forced to swallow back his anger at the injustice of the world. Those moments still burned in his soul; they kept him sharp. “That’s the anger you need. Mean and slow. If you really want revenge, really want it, you’ll want it just as bad in a month, a year, when we have the chance to really make them pay.”

Nic let a tiny thread of power slip into his voice with the final words, and for a moment, the light seemed to dim. For a moment everyone felt his anger; felt the threat aimed at the dhampir in his voice.

They fell silent.

“It’s easy to be angry now. Be angry tomorrow, when you show up for practice. Be angry in a week, when you’ve got your Secondary Shards. Be angry, but don’t let it make you stupid. That’s the hard part.”

That ended the discussion. Slowly, other talk crept into the silence left behind, like grass growing where a wildfire had cleared the ground; Kang-Dae went back to arguing about noodles with Elisa. Nadine sighed and ate her soup. Shakes vanished, but Nic suspected he was around…

He was like Tarquin’s shadow, these days.

Nic turned to his friend. “Hey Tark.”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s go on an adventure. Find a dungeon, kick it over, see what creepy-crawlies come out from underneath.”

And Tark grinned. “Sounds like a plan.”

Things were just simpler with Tarquin around.