As far as I could tell Fox Maple did not queef even once during the night. The only interaction I had with her was that she blushed a red almost as bright as her hair when I introduced myself and refused to speak or even look at me for the rest of the evening.

At half past six in the morning by the giant clock at the entrance to the hall, I felt someone shaking me awake, I rolled over and saw Red Panda standing over me.

"You didn't set your alarm?"

"Alarm?"

"By the bed." She pointed to a set of knobs that I had wondered about the night before. "You turn the dials to the time you want to wake up, and when the time comes something jabs you in your sleep until you wake up."

"Really?"

"Nah, the bed just shakes. Now hit me with some of your magic mojo, this girl's gotta have a pep in her step. Then get ready. I'll meet you in the mess. If you don't hurry, you're gonna be late."

“Should I wear my sword?” I asked.

She shrugged and said, “If you want. This is a war after all. And it isn’t like you are a completely awesome fire mage like me.”

I got up and got dressed really quickly. There really wasn't enough time to take a shower, so I just threw on my uniform and did some quick grooming. Then I went to the mess hall to find Red Panda stuffing her face full of food.

"Careful or you'll forget to breathe," I said sitting beside her before starting to eat from my own bowl of oatmeal that the cook had included some sort of dried fruit.

“Mmm mmm mmm.” She said, which its own way sounded about as reasonable as anything she’d said so far.

I hurried through my own food. For military food it was actually good, though I was eating with the officers, I couldn’t imagine what the regular soldiers ate. When we were both done, we shuttled our dirty dishes to a cart that had been set up to hold them and then Red Panda led me out of the hall.

“Today I’m gonna just show you around.” Red Panda said to me. “You already know where the Mess and the Library is. I assume you know where the Lord General is since you had to report to her when you got here, so if you want we can skip all that. Since you got that sword, let’s go to the practice yard. A lot of the other runners like to drill there.”

We set off at a run across the compound to a part of the keep that had been set aside for weapon work. There was an armory and easy access to the barracks and the ramparts. It was still early morning, but unexpectedly a man was working through sword katas. Every motion was smooth and flowed gracefully from one move into the next.

I could have stood and watched him practice for hours because I was learning and improving my sword skills even from watching his slow, graceful movements, but of course, Red Panda would have none of that. At first, she coughed to try to get his attention. Then she started throwing small rocks. Then bigger rocks. I had to stop her before she began prying stones out of the keep walls to chuck at him.

Eventually, when the man finished his Kata and sheathed his sword, he turned to Red Panda at first in anger and then seeing who it was, in a combination resigned acceptance and humor.

“Red Panda, how many times have I told you to wait for me to finish,” he said.

“We have a newbie, Orr. Just wanted to introduce you. If I let you, you’d just keep going on and on, and nobody would ever get any work done. Orr this is Lynx.”

Orr sighed, “Let’s try this again. I am Lord Captain Orr Ocelot Fir, I also occasionally train the runners in sword work. Lastly, I appreciate not being disturbed this early in the morning since this is my only free time to practice on my own.”

“My name is Lynx Elm. Technically I am Seeker Squire Lieutenant Lynx Elm. I just got here yesterday. I would love to be able to train with you. My training for the last year has not focused on finesse.”

“And what has your training focused on Lynx Elm?”

“Honestly… killing people as quickly as possible.” I said.

He looked at me. Then said. “Let me see your sword.”

I unstrapped it and handed it to him. “It’s a new blade, I’ve never used it in combat yet. I broke my last one.”

Orr unsheathed it and looked it over. “It is a good blade. Dungeon core dust is in the metal. Not a very powerful grade of core, but still...” He sheathed my blade and handed it back to me. “Put it down over there and grab a practice sword. I already have my own.”

There was a rack of wooden practice swords. Testing them one by one until I found one with a balance I liked, I left my own sword in the stand and cautiously walked back to Captain Orr. I raised my wooden blade into a defensive position.

“You indicated that you have been trained to kill people as quickly as possible. Show me.”

“But I would like to learn more precision swordplay,” I said.

“Show me what you can do first.” He said.

So I attacked, I sent my sword blade flying at his chest and at the last second sent a kick to knock his feet out from under him. He managed to block my blade with his own and avoid my kick, but I stayed balanced and dodged his retaliatory sword strike by hitting it aside with my own practice sword.

I still had mana so I dumped a bunch into speed and strength and flew at him trying to get under his defense, strike after strike, in random directions, and with as much unpredictability as I could manage, but it didn’t matter. Even though I was going about the speed of an Olympic athlete, he managed to match me and beat me back.

As my second of speed wore down, I tried to move backward to circle him until I could power up again, but he followed me, still going at a blazing pace, even matching me at my fastest and I couldn’t keep up. With three quick strokes to my head, chest and legs knocked me to my knees.

I lay on the ground dazed for a second, before sending a wave of healing runes through my body and healing the concussion I’d gained.

Lord Captain Orr held out his hand to me and said, “Not bad. Not great but not bad. Your form needs some work. But I can see how the fighting style works for you. You’re more of a brawler than a precision fighter. And if I had to make an educated guess, I would say that you have some sort of a body knack too.”

I reached up for his hand assuming he wanted to help me up. It was then that I felt a mass of my stored mana rush through my body, up my arm and into him through my hand. I hurriedly pushed his hand away.

Captain Orr smiled. “I’m a Ghoul,” he said. “I can take life energy and mana from anybody I make skin contact with. I also have a minor body knack for speed, strength, and fortitude.”

“Now, I am assuming that you aren’t a Ghoul. But that brings us to a problem. You have a body knack, and sometimes minor body knacks are accompanied by life knacks. Ghouls are tolerated by society. Sort of. But most life knacks are not.

“Let’s just assume between, you, young Red Panda here and me that you do not have a life knack since, frankly, I am not in the business of outing anybody. But let me set you straight on one thing. If you start feeding on any of my soldiers, I will hunt you down and kill you.

Captain Orr punctuated his last statement with a ferocious glare. Then he pulled out a pair of gloves from a pocket, put them on and offered me a hand to help me up.

When I was on my feet, Captain Orr said, “Now let’s talk about your Body Knack. How much mana can it take? How much improvement does it give you? How long does it last?”

“I’m not entirely sure I’m comfortable telling you that,” I said.

“I completely understand. We all like to have our little surprises in a fight. I will, however, swear to you that whatever you tell me will not go any further than between me and maybe the Lord General. And if you are honest with me, I can try to come up with a training plan to maximize your effectiveness.”

I thought about it for a second and then lied. “You pretty much saw all of it. I can speed up, make myself stronger, and even make myself tougher like you saw, but only for one second. After that, I have to wait at least 30 seconds before I can do it again.”

Captain Orr thought about it. “Not the best body knack, but you did seem to run out of oomph after that one strike. Hmmm… if that’s all you’ve got, you probably don’t have a major life knack. Which is for the best. Still, not bad in a straight up fight.”

I watched or as he talked to himself.

“Come back and see me with the other runners who come to me for training. We will see if we can give that brawler in you some technique. It will be hard since you’ve picked up a tonne of bad habits but we can work with that.” Lord Captain Orr said eventually.

“I also offer more specialized training to the five other people in the army with body knacks. We meet once a week, I will send someone to get you.” He said.

“Five other people,” I said shocked.

“Knacks are rare, I’m actually surprised you know the term, but body knacks are the most common. There are fifty-thousand troops gathered here give or take a few. Seven people out of those fifty-thousand have knacks, all of them body. I also have a greater Life Ghoul knack, and there is a Sargent with a greater life Zombie knack. The four other people are like you with only minor body knacks. Don’t worry, you’ll meet with them and practice with them. Plus it is nice sometimes not to feel so alone.”

“Now run along, Red Panda is getting antsy, and if you don’t immediately focus all of your attention on her, she will likely throw rocks at us.” Captain Orr said.

I walked over to where my sword was leaning against the sword rack and exchanged it for the wooden practice sword I had been holding. It was nice to feel my own weapon’s weight strapped around my waist.

“He kicked your ass.” Said Red Panda.

“That he did,” I said.

“I mean he really kicked your ass. Usually, the other boys circle him slowly and smack at each other with their wooden penises for minutes before he kicks their ass. You were out in like seconds. You must suck. Still, I guess you moved pretty fast.”

“You’re right Red Panda, I suck,” I said.

“If a practice sword is a wooden penis and he handed you your ass, does that mean he pegged you on the field of combat?” she said, “I’m just asking for a friend.”

“Where to next Red Panda?” I said exasperatedly.

“Let’s go to the doctor!” she said.

We then went to the hospital. Tilde wasn’t at work yet, but a woman who’d apparently been briefed about me showed us around.

“We don’t do a lot of the surgery up here,” she said. “We have an emergency ward down below closer to the battlefield. Lynx Elm, these room is mostly for medium-term care and recovery. We also have separate private rooms for the nobility and officers. They, of course, are always given short-term care.”

“Short-term care?”

“A full healing spell from a qualified healer, and then rest in one of the beds for a week. To be honest, we’ve tried to limit what qualifies as wounded to keep malingering to a minimum. Otherwise, we would have nobility coming in here with complaints of hangnails and laryngitis just to take a few days off.”

We thanked her, and she said “If what Tilde says is true, I expect I’ll be seeing you around Lynx. We can always use another healer. Even if you can only be available part-time. I’m Hil, it was nice to meet you.”

“It is nice to meet you too. I don’t know how much help I can be, and I don’t know how full my schedule will be, but I would be glad to help out as much as I can.” I said.

The next place that Red Panda took us was inside the keep to a massive room where there were maps of the valley all over the walls, and a scale model of the valley complete with miniature soldiers filling the center of the room.

Red Panda seemed surprised that the desk in front of the door was unoccupied but she only pushed her way in as if it were second nature.

“This is the War Room, Lynx Elm,” she said. “Sometimes we have to bring emergency messages here. Most of the time, though, because all the people in here have Platinum status’ they can send messages to one another through their mental interface.”

“Should they be in here?” One of the women in a Lord Captain’s uniform said.

“Relax Cinta, it is just one runner showing another runner around. They need to come in here sometimes.”

“Well, I don’t like it. Someone should always be on duty. They could be spies. There should be protocol. Where is the guard at the door? They should have just handed whatever message they had to that person, and then that officer should pass the information on to us. What if one of them gets captured. They would know all of our plans,” the one called Cinta said.

“What plans. We’ve sat here doing nothing for three months! I say we make a move! Press forward when they are least expecting it.” yelled another officer.

“Umm gentlemen, try not to fight in the war room… besides, we’re veering off topic. And we definitely don’t want to discuss that in front of the children. Red Panda and Lynx Elm, thank you for your visit, please don’t repeat anything you have heard here. It seems we need to talk about bathroom breaks and keeping runners out.”

As we left and after the door closed, Red Panda giggled. “I’ve always wanted to go in there. Never got a chance until now. Always someone blocking the door.”

“Do you know what other chat functions you get with your Status interface?” I asked out of curiosity.

“Ummm… Group chat, Raid Chat, Private Chat, Family Chat, Guild Chat, Lynx is a dumb ass Chat, maybe more I think. It isn’t something I pay attention to.”

“And only Platinum status gets it?’

“I think I’ve heard that Gold status can read messages they’ve been sent, but can’t send messages. Who cares, we’re both gonna get Platinum so who cares what kind of a mental midget everyone else is.”

“Isn’t it 10 platinum? While my family is rich, I can’t imagine every noble family dropping that much on all their kids.” I said.

“Legacy, Lynx Elm, legacy. If both your parents have a certain status, you get it for free. You only have to pay if you want to move up in the ranks. And if you come from parents with mixed status, you get one status less than the parent with the higher. So let’s imagine your case and your platinum status mama screws around with a peasant with a copper status — because everyone knows your mama gets around — their kid could choose to be anything up to gold status without paying.”

Red Panda then took me upstairs and introduced me yet again to Sambon, Lord General Aram Heron Sequoia’s aid. The Lord General was of course too busy to see us.

We then went on a tour of the ramparts and battlements, Red Panda took special care to show me where all of the latrines were. Given that this was a feudal empire in a war zone the bathrooms were surprisingly modern, with hot and cold running water and even showers.

“Baboon Fig says that they have a water elemental that makes its home in the cistern that they feed runners who don’t carry messages fast enough.” Red Panda said. “He’s a liar. Obviously, they feed runners who don’t run fast enough to the slimes that eat the waste in the septic system.”

After exploring the entire keep, except for the dungeon “Who wants to go down there, it’s yucky?” And the officer’s quarters — Red Panda’s clever trick of just barging in didn’t work this time. And the quartermaster, who happened to be out and had his door locked. We headed down the hill to the actual war.

The rocky road ran down the face of the mountain. The sides of the path were walled, and there were a separate rampart and tower system that stopped and started along the road down to the valley. The whole pathway up into the pass was set up so that an invading army would have to take it in sections, while a fortified army could withdraw to the next higher better-fortified position above while raining down spitballs and hellfire on anything approaching from below.

Positioned against the battlements was a gallows. The corpses of three men hung rotting in the sun. There was additional space for five times that number.

Down in the valley, there were patches of grass here and there, but most of the ground was mud or rock. Most of the well-trod paths were covered in packed in gravel and the remaining root system of long cleared plant life.

Red Panda and I jogged along the road occasionally getting out of the way for troops performing maneuvers or moving from one point to another.

In the valley, buildings in the valley were a combination of earth mage constructed walls, sandbagged fortifications, trenches, and significant buildings that had been excavated into the cliff faces.

The first place that Red Panda took me too was the valley’s command center. Unlike the relatively relaxed atmosphere of the keep, headquarters in the valley was pulsing with energy.

Red Panda was asked no less than four times to identify herself — even when it was apparent that the guard knew exactly who she was — and they also kept asking her the password of the day “Oliphant,” which “Oops… I should have shown you where to find it, but Cham writes it every day on the main board in the main room.”

We did a quick tour of the headquarters. There was even a room for runners to rest and wait to be dispatched.

“We only carry messages between the golds and occasionally high ranked silvers, since the platinums have their own way of sending messages. We mostly are assigned to carry packages for the platinums though.”

“Packages?” I asked.

“Anything from, ‘Red Panda, carry these top-secret battle plans to the Lord General’” she said speaking in a fake a deep and authoritative voice while holding a finger under her nose pretending it was a mustache. “Or ‘Red Panda, I hear they are serving pasta for lunch in the Keep. It is important for the war effort that you bring me those noodles before they run out or they get cold. Run fast little girl, run fast. The state of our Empire depends upon it.’”

“We don’t carry packages for the silvers or the golds?” I asked.

“Fuck no. I ain’t running to bring no silver his lunch. He can go to the mess like all the others. Speaking of which, are you hungry? We can go to the soldiers' mess next.”

So we went to the soldiers' mess next. Built directly into the mountain the mess was both one of the most fortified places on the valley floor and equally the easiest to enter and access. There were plenty of doors in, and unlike the headquarters, nobody asked either mine or Red Panda’s names or passwords as we entered the building.

There was a chow line with a buffet style serving. Most of the foods were beans, preserved meat, and bread based. But there was a smattering of fresh seasonal vegetables, and the food appeared to be hearty and well cooked even though it was not as fancy or as abundant as the food in the keep.

Several hundred soldiers sat around at the picnic table style tables underneath the domed stone ceiling. Some were playing cards, some were reading, but most people were merely talking among themselves. There was a group of musicians in uniform quietly playing in one of the corners.

“The food down here ain’t bad. And sometimes it is a lot better than up top. Think comfort food versus fancy food. Us runners get around a lot, and we pass the word around where the best grub is during the day to those who want to know. This ain’t formal but its what some of the officers use us for.”

All of the buildings she showed me had latrines, but there were also stand alone latrines placed in very prominent locations, especially closer to the front.

“You don’t want to know what the soldiers in the trenches way up in the front do when they need to go to the bathroom. I hear that before they had runners. They used to have kids our age with buckets running back and forth in the trenches. They would call them poo boys and poo girls. Can you believe that? What a horrible duty.” Red Panda said.

“I am familiar with the concept,” I said.

“I mean talk about disgusting. You have to stand there watching as somebody you barely know calls you over, drops their pants, poops in the bucket you are carrying. Then you hand them a towel or something. When they are done, you have to run off to clean the bucket and wash the towel and wait for the next person who needs to poo.”

Red Panda was gesturing wildly now and wasn’t really paying much attention to anything.

“Can we change the subject,” I said with some impatience.

“Or if a couple people have to poo. Sometimes when the cook in the mess makes beans, and everyone has to go, the latrines are full, can you imagine what the job of a poo boy or girl was like back then. You are this poor 12-year old whose parents have sent you to the war for experience, and now you are running around with a bucket full of shit, and it is slopping all over you as you run, and you got this towel in your hands that is stained with the track marks of…”

“Why don’t we go see the hospital,” I said.

Red Panda looked at me, “Don’t you think it is horrible. If we’d come just ten years ago you and me might have been doing that. That’s what my older brothers told me. My brothers said that runner’s carry the copper poo for a whole year to build character. They even gave me a bucket and wanted me to practice with our servants and guards. But I refused. For some odd reason, my father kept laughing when I told him about it.”

I sighed, and then repeated, “Why don’t we head over to the hospital.”

“I suppose.” She said.

The hospital was on the other side, and a short walk away from the mess hall. There was a triage place out in the front, where all of the stone was as smooth as a mirror, and couple dozen metal gurneys lined up in neat rows. I was shocked when I saw that the symbol of the hospital was a giant red cross on a field of white, but I did not say anything.

As we were standing there, a team of four soldiers ran up to the triage area carrying a stretcher with a soldier who was screaming in pain on it. I could see one of the people lifting the stretchers was casting life runes on the screaming soldier, but they were weak and barely sufficient.

When the team carrying stretcher got the triage area, a group ran out to meet them. I noticed that everyone was wearing white armbands with red crosses on their uniforms.

One of the people in the group that ran out to meet the stretcher began calling out instructions, and then I saw more life runes come forth out of him, not into the wounded man, but into the two other people who’d come with him. Acting together their spellcasting seemed to flow between them before the runes flowed down onto the man.

Then he stopped screaming. He wasn’t healed, but I could see the magic sink into him, and it seemed to hint at reinforcing the body’s own healing.

The magic withdrew, and the medics who had brought the stretcher placed the man on a gurney, and some orderlies and some more people in uniforms with that same white armband and the red cross came out and guided the wounded soldier into the hospital.

I turned to Red Panda, “That red cross on their arm? I’ve seen it before.”

“No shit. It’s like the universal symbol of life magic and healing. And you call yourself a healing mage,” Red Panda said.

Then she said, “Wanna go introduce yourself.”

I thought about it but realized I really didn’t. Not right now. “Naw… you’ve still got stuff to show me. If I get sucked into there, you’ll never get me out.”

“There really is only one major place left to show you. I need to take you to our local Inquisitor Lord Samdi. Just between you and me, well you seem nice, but Samdi is a creep and a jerk face and a pervert. Never eat any food there. I can’t tell you enough. Never eat or drink anything he gives you.”

“Why?” I said.

“He likes to play with toys. So he drugs anything he offers to visitors. It is doubly dangerous for a runner. Because we ain’t been tested yet for our status, as an Inquisitor, his word is all he needs. In the two years I’ve been here, I’ve seen three runners, trapped by him, and he’s said each and every one of them was a twice lived. One maybe. But three.”

“What?!” I said.

“His word. He’s the inquisitor. He takes care of the Twice-Lived we have in camp. And he likes his toys. The Lord General says, that if Lord Samdi were one of his men he would hang him, you saw the gallows on the way down. But he is an inquisitor. They are outside the command structure. And he is useful. So whatever you do, don’t eat or drink anything Samdi gives you.”