“Quinlan isn’t here yet?” Sylph guessed, poking her head into the training room.

“Nope. It’s for the best,” Damien replied, standing up from his seated position. He followed her back into the main room.

“Hopefully she doesn’t show up in the middle of the night,” Sylph said, setting the bag down on her bed. She ducked down, pulling a change of clothes out from below it, then headed into the bathroom, emerging a few minutes later with the dirty clothes in her hand.

“I’m not spending all night training her, so she better not,” Damien replied. “I’m already exhausted enough. I don’t need a lack of sleep to that. What’s in the bag?”

Several sharp raps echoed through the cave as someone knocked on the door. Damien snorted and stood up, walking over to pull it open. Quinlan stood outside, wringing her hands together nervously. A small travel pack hung over her shoulder.

“We were just wondering when you’d show up,” Damien said, heading back inside and waving for her to follow.

“I got food,” Sylph said, pulling the pack open and taking out several small wheels of cheese, dried meat, and an assortment of fruit. “I thought you might not have eaten today.”

Damien’s eyes lit up. “Thank you! You’re right, I haven’t. Got caught up with practicing. It doesn’t help that every time I think of getting food, Henry suggests goats.”

He claimed some of the food for himself and started to eat. Sylph nodded to Quinlan. “You can have some as well, if you’d like.”

Quinlan shifted her weight to her back foot. “I don’t want to intrude too much.”

“It’s fine,” Sylph replied. “I wheedled it out of Dredd, so it isn’t my money. You’re not going to make very much progress studying if you’re hungry. Unless you’ve already eaten?”

“I haven’t,” Quinlan admitted reluctantly. She snagged a single grape for herself. “Thanks.”

“I won’t count this as part of the time I promised you,” Damien said, spreading some cheese on a cracker. “And Sylph is right. We aren’t going to make great progress if you don’t eat. I really should be eating more myself, but it’s just so damn easy to forget.”

Henry slipped out from his shadow, breaking off a small piece of the cheese with a tentacle and popping it into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully for a few moments. “Tastes like goat.”

“No it doesn’t,” Damien and Sylph said at the same time. Henry snickered and took a few pieces of fruit before retreating to Damien’s bed. Quinlan glanced between all of them, then slowly claimed a small pile of food for herself.

They finished the food off a few minutes later. As soon as the last morsel had vanished, Henry floated over to Sylph and prodded her in the shoulder. “Right then. Let’s get to it.”

Sylph nodded and rose to her feet. “Good luck. I’ll be back later tonight. Henry and I are going to the pool to train.”

“Likewise,” Damien replied. “Thanks again for bringing dinner. I’ll get it next time.”

Sylph gave him a quick grin, then headed out of the room with Henry floating at her shoulder. Quinlan’s shoulders slumped in relief as soon as the door swung shut behind them. Damien pushed himself to his feet and nodded at the training rooms.

“Let’s move in there.” He snagged a piece of chalk from his pack as they passed his bed.

“I’ve got paper,” Quinlan said, raising her own pack. “I also have a quill and ink.”

“We’ll get to that in a bit. I want to see the basics first, and there’s no point wasting paper when we can just wipe the chalk away. Why don’t you start by going through the runes you know? You can stick to the most common ones so we don’t waste too much time. I just want to know what gaps I need to fill in.”

He tossed Quinlan the stick of chalk. She chewed her lower lip, then knelt on the stone and started to draw. Damien looked over her shoulder as the older girl drew. His brow creased, furrowing more with every rune she made.

Two major problems immediately stuck out to Damien. The first was that her actual drawing skills were subpar. The strokes were shakey and her lines weren’t straight. That alone would have been a significant issue.

The bigger problem was that it took Damien several seconds to recognize almost all the runes. Only a single one of them even resembled anything basic. The rest were rather advanced and only meant to be used in conjunction with other runes that would stabilize them.

Damien stopped her after she’d drawn around a dozen runes. “Quinlan, don’t you know any more simple? You’re all over the place here. Only one of those runes is in the beginner’s alphabet.”

“What’s that?” Quinlan asked. “I just learned from my book. I’ve never heard about a beginner’s alphabet.”

“What book?”

Quinlan dug around in her pack and pulled out a tome trimmed with metal. She handed it to Damien, who flipped it open and paged through it. It was full of some of the most complex rune circle’s he’d seen. Some of them were so detailed that he wouldn’t have even considered trying them without Henry to back him up.

“Quinlan, where did you get this?” Damien asked, closing the book and handing it back to her. “You seriously learned runecraft from this?”

“I found it on an expedition,” Quinlan replied. “And I did. Why? Is that a bad thing?”

“Well, yes,” Damien said, scratching the back of his head. “I’ll be blunt. You’re worse than some of the little kids in my hometown at drawing runes. I don’t think that’s entirely your fault, considering you taught yourself using a book that was way too advanced for your level, but why didn’t you start with the basics? This book is insane.”

“It’s the only one I had,” Quinlan said, her cheeks reddening in embarrassment.

“…just buy a better one? They aren’t that expensive.”

“Mountain Hall wouldn’t let me,” Quinlan said with a sigh. “They don’t even know I have that book. We’re discouraged from pursuing anything other than combat magic. Strongly. This is the first time I’ve been away from Mountain Hall without supervision in years.”

“That’s just stupid.” Damien shook his head. “What are they trying to do, train a bunch of blockheads that don’t do anything other than fight?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. Well, they’re idiots,” Damien said. He pursed his lips and thought for a few moments. “Okay. I need you to forget literally everything you’ve learned. Your foundations are terrible, so we’re starting from scratch.”

“But that’ll take a lot of time!” Quinlan exclaimed. “We can’t do that. Can’t you just skip some of the information and get to the relevant stuff?”

“No,” Damien replied in a flat tone. “Runes build off each other. You’re lucky you haven’t blown yourself up yet. Trapping and drawing power out of something is really complex. There’s no room for an error. If you make one, the best case scenario would be killing them. Is that a risk you’re willing to take?”

Quinlan shook her head. Her hands clenched at her sides.

“I’ll try to go as quick as I possibly can,” Damien promised. “It depends on you. If you pick things up quickly, I can accelerate. But I’m not going to help you kill yourself. We’ll stick to the promise I made earlier today, but it isn’t going to be easy. I’ll be assigning you practice to do once you go home.”

“I can handle that,” Quinlan said, holding out the piece of chalk to him. “Please start.”

Damien took it and sat down beside her. He brushed some dust out of the way and a simple rune consisting of a circle with two jagged lines through its center on the ground.

“We’ll start with this. Draw this rune.”

Quinlan took the chalk and scratched out a jagged copy of Damien’s rune just below it.

“No good,” Damien said. “Your lines are too sloppy. Draw slower and concentrate harder. Rush it and you’ll just end up drawing it a second time. Even small variations in the rune can cause it to be completely useless.”

Quinlan bit her lower lip and narrowed her eyes, drawing it again. Her second attempt looked considerably better than the first. The circle was a bit wobbly and the lines weren’t quite as straight as the should have been.

Damien pointed out the mistakes and had her draw it again. On the fifth attempt, he gave her a slight nod.

“That’s passable. You need to keep that speed for everything you draw. Don’t let yourself accelerate or get impatient. Rune crafting is about precision. Remember what you’re working for. A mistake when you’re drawing a rune circle for light will either just make it fizzle or fail. A mistake when you’re linking two living beings could end up killing someone.”

“I understand,” Quinlan said.

“Make sure that you do,” Damien said. He took the chalk back from her and drew ten more runes on the floor. “Do these next.”

The next hour passed by in a blur. Damien and Quinlan ground the stick of chalk down into a tiny nub and covered almost the entirety of the training room floor with drawings. Quinlan was a quick study, but they had a lot of material to cover.

When the quality of her work started to drop, Damien dragged her to the bathroom and had her hold her hand under the shower water. As soon as she could handle the chalk properly again, they went right back to work.

Damien had only planned to spend an hour or two, but nearly four had passed by the time he started to feel exhaustion starting to creep up on him.

“That’s enough for today,” Damien decided, putting a hand on her shoulder. “There’s only so much your brain can absorb.”

“But–”

“I also need to sleep,” Damien added. “I do want to help you, Quinlan. But not at the cost of everything else. Go home and practice all the runes we covered today – but do that in the morning. If you show up exhausted tomorrow, I’m sending you back home. You can’t learn runes when you can’t think.”

She nodded reluctantly. “Okay. I’ll review them in the morning. Do you have a sheet I can reference?”

Damien smacked himself in the forehead. He grabbed one of her papers and plucked the quill from her bag, quickly drawing the basic runes they’d covered onto it. After blowing on the ink to dry it, Damien handed it to her.

“Here. You can take what’s left of the chalk as well.”

“Thanks,” Quinlan said, pocketing the nub of chalk and taking the paper gingerly from Damien. She slipped it into her travel pack. The two of them headed back into the main room. Quinlan reached for the door, then paused. “You’re taking this seriously.”

“Of course I am,” Damien said irritably. “I said I would.”

“I know,” Quinlan said. “But I didn’t think you actually would. You don’t have any real reason to help me.”

“Aside from the fact that I promised I would?”

Quinlan studied his expression, then shook her head. “You’re strange. This isn’t what I was told Blackmist was like. You don’t match your companion at all, either. He’s… terrifying.”

“And what am I?” Damien asked with a laugh.

“I’m not sure yet,” Quinlan replied. “Thank you, though. I needed to learn runes very badly. I can’t explain why, but thank you.”

She pushed the door open and slipped into the night. Damien watched it swing shut, then turned and headed over to the bathroom to get ready for bed. Once he’d finished and was sliding under the covers, a shadow flitted across the room and Henry’s presence returned to his mind.

“How’d it go?” Henry asked.

She was just as bad as you said. Where’s Sylph?

The door swung open and Sylph walked inside. Her clothes were cut up and she was covered in dirt. She grunted a greeting and staggered over to the bathroom.

Eight Planes, what did you do?

“Training,” Henry replied. “Her body really didn’t take to the Corruption that well at all. All things considered, though, I don’t think anything would. I’m just unraveling all the knots and optimizing all the wasted energy. It’s not easy on her, but she’s getting stronger.”

That’s good. Is it possible her low Magical Energy could be fixed?

“Probably not. That’s a problem with her core, and expanding it even further isn’t realistic. There’s only so many times you can break and put someone back together before the shards become too tiny. She’ll just have to live with it and make up for the weakness with her other strengths.”

Damn. I was hoping you could fix that somehow. I know it really bothers her. Do you think that one artifact in the Treasure Pavilion would help much? The dagger that she was looking at last year.

“It might make a tiny boost, but not anything too noticeable,” Henry said with a mental shrug. “She’ll be more than dangerous enough, don’t you worry. Especially once she starts utilizing the Corruption properly.”

Sylph trudged out of the bathroom a short while later, her hair soaked and plastered to her skin. She flopped into her own bed. Damien frowned and sat up.

“What’s wrong?”

“Too tired to dry my hair,” Sylph replied. “It’s cold.”

Damien hopped out of his bed and slid into Sylph’s. She was right – her hair was cold. “I think I’ll survive.”

Sylph let out a small laugh. Henry grumbled and put up a barrier, blocking the two of them out. There really wasn’t much need, as Damien and Sylph both fell fast asleep within minutes.