With many coming up to celebrate, the underground was slowly emptying out. Not fully, but a number of Reclaimers were pulling back. They still kept the scouted areas near the spiral staircase mostly secure.

“It’s easier to hold them at these crossroads, so as the companies pull back, we’re moving back the barricades. People want to go up and celebrate, but not if it loses us this foothold. It’s not where we’d planned to expand to next." the man shrugged.

"But we’ve linked up to the edge we’ve been sweeping. Would be shame to lose it all, and have to clear again.”

The Scorekeeper looked like he was in his late 30s. Which probably made him much older. He had a copy of the maps, and directed them to some of the paths that still needed clearing, mostly side tunnels running between already cleared avenues. Clearing those was less a matter of loot, and more dealing with traps, which wasn’t as exciting. But it did pay better then guard duty, and if they did find something, the same looting rules applied.

***

As it turned out, Deli wasn’t terrible with a sling. And while her Skill wasn’t active, she still had skill with it. It couldn’t do much about Demon runes hidden in pits, or around corners. But those they could spot from a distance were much easier to deal with, with a ranged option. All she needed was to crack or chip the surface, and the trap would trigger.

It was of limited help, but it did make clearing the spaces somewhat easier. The unpleasant surprise was that, with everything in motion, some of the Bones had slipped by. So they had to deal with a few of those.

But it wasn’t terrible, all considered. Just work.

They did come across two different alleys where Wailing Woman were lying in wait, coming up from below. But while the scream was terrible, at least it was short lived. They didn’t like magefire. Frank didn’t spring for full on Frostfire, just made them go away with a burst of regular flames.

They could have tried to kill one, but it wasn’t worth the risk, not on this job. Not when these ones were willing to run back under the floor at the first sign of trouble.

Frank marked their positions on his map as a hazard, and moved on. They’d report them for now. Someone else could track down where they were hiding.

***

They weren’t down there long. Soon enough, the companies and barricades were done shifting, and actual scouts were free to sweep everything that remained inside them at speeds that put the two of them to shame. They’d still cleared a few side-passages, and gotten two coppers for their troubles.

Returning to the surface, they were free to do whatever they wanted.

Deli was looking better today. Not fully, completely recovered, but better. Frank didn’t mind settling down in the common room again, mingling a little. Spreading and gathering rumours, as had become habit here, while keeping half-an ear out for relevant news. Like Katri, or the auction.

Deli liked that, spending time among the other warrior women. Getting tips, sharing stories.

***

The auction would be tonight, and was held by the Scorekeeper. He kept track of kills and Deeds. For mundane matters of loot and tax, it was the quartermaster they needed to talk to. Frank wasn’t encouraged by the title.

“What does a quartermaster know of gems?”

As it turned out, quite a lot.

“Every Reclamation finds new things. The Demons, they spend years stealing and attacking nearby villages, and passer-by in the summer. They bring it all back here. The light, fast ones, they’re less a threat to hunters or warriors. But they’ll snatch something in a heartbeat, if you let them.”

He had a small jeweller’s monocle as he examined the gems.

“These would do well in a proper enchanting shop. They’re too small for anything else.” He told Frank. “Probably some trader or pilgrim that lost them on their way out. We’ve some fine silver smiths, around these parts.”

“Fine, or cheap. Even with everything, the cost of living was much lower in the Confederation. Starting with not having to deal with all the taxes every Noble and Guild piled on in the Empire. ”

Frank had a feeling that it had much more to do with this being an open market, to the Empire’s strictly regulated one. Their stores were dominated by a few trade guilds on top.

“That, and easy access to mines.”

“But that’s many days of travel from here, if not a few quarters. I’ll give you a fair price for them, about half. That comes out to eight silvers and four coppers.”

“Would that be for the tax as well?” Frank asked politely.

“Of course.” The hairy man rumbled in confirmation. He had a mismatched voice, it being deep like a barrel as opposed to his lean frame. “I’d be a right cheat to charge you tax at full price, and not be willing to pay it.”

Frank knew more than a few tax men who would have done just that. He hadn’t done the Bargaining with them, but part of how he got the Skill was learning from his Mercenary Captain who did.

He could try to Bargain here, if he was a fool. He didn’t need to check to know the quarter and paymaster of a Company like this would have the Skill to back it up.

“Eight coppers and four bone bits?” Frank asked. The tax rate was public, at 10%.

“Ehhh. You’re a Mageling. Those have expenses. Keep the bits.” The man waved him away.

He could pay up immediately, but the party was doing alright. There was no reason to empty out his purse. Even after buying the axestaff on credit, they were doing their share, in patrols, fights. The bonuses for fighting in the company yesterday had yet to come through, but those should help with their obligations. The party was still in debt, but not by a lot. Just with patrols and watches, several weeks would get them out of it, at least before winter’s end. That was without him Carving runestones.

Deli gave up the cookbook and a few trinkets to cover her tax, keeping the other two books with a smile.

Frank decided to spend the rest of the day experimenting with his mana. To try and figure out what difference Channel two actually made, while watching Deli do some light exercise.

Well, it wouldn’t feel light to her, but it shouldn’t wipe her out like last time, either.

As for the gems, they were too small for him. He’d seen some enchanted items that used engraved gems. But even if he was willing to try and learn Engraving, which wasn’t Carving, he hardly had the resources for it.

No, he had another idea for them. If gems could hold mana, work as part of an enchantment? Then there should be a way for him to make use of them directly as a mage, right?

***

The trouble with only being able to store eight mana was that he could only do eight experiments at a time. At most.

So each one had to count. He’d probably be able to do more tomorrow, but each attempt was another runestone Frank wasn’t working on.

Still, it was time for real, actual Science. He started out by trying to feel out what was different.

Channelling a mote of mana remained a rush, every time he did it out of combat. There was something different in taking his time to do it.

He called on it, that familiar feeling, that moment of agony, in heat and light, with eternal empty cold just on the other side. Mixing memory and feeling, but it felt wrong. He’d been distracted, by battle, by the enemy, but that’s not what he was supposed to do.

Instead of losing himself in the memory of the fire, trying to move through it, past it, he reached down. Down into the burns, past skin and flesh, in a direction he hadn’t even known existed. No, not down. Inwards, into himself, and through… something.

He’d compare it to touch or sight, but none of it was quite right. Heat. More than anything, it felt like heat and cold, and deep in that place inwards, inside some kind of tepid pool there were small lumps of it. Lumps of blazing heat that felt like they would burn him if he touched them. They were buried in snow and ice.

So he didn’t touch them.

Memory, memory was the key. The trigger, the shape. He remembered fire, knew it. Frank pressed his Will as close to the embers as he dared while avoiding the ice, and through it, he became fire. Not the memory of it, but fire itself. His thoughts burned, his blood boiled and he got quite passionate.

Frank burned and thought a part of him panicked, the rest was surprised how right it felt. How could anyone live without knowing the fire, when every breath fed them?

When he opened his eyes, he held magefire in his hand. Instinctively, he knew he could hold it for but a single breath. Twenty ticks. It was crude, in its natural state, a spark from the heat of the embers within that caught on his mote of mana and set it alight.

But he could do more. While he held it, he could shape it. A ball, to throw and burst. A line, to reach and burn everyone it passed. A spray, to break a charge, or catch a party, but spent on the targets it struck. And each, with but a single mote of mana.

More, he could portion it.

The spray could be a single large burst, or a longer stream he could sweep around. The line, one long one, or several blasts of lesser power. Only the ball couldn’t be split, but he had a feeling that would change as his Skill rose, or if he used more mana.

For now, he tried the line, clamping down on it as best he could.

He got four blasts out of it. Three, two spellmarks long, and one only one. And each was as wide and tall as a mark, a wave of fire blasting away from him. Not so much in sharp lines, but in a twirling funnel.

That was a lot more fire than one of his stones produced when used. “Is there some kind of loss in using stones?”

No. They did the same. But they did it with sprays at random, didn’t they? Instead of defined lines, clearly limited by spellmarks, as they broke they went all over the place, with multiple smaller tongues of flame.

“It’s probably something about how they break, or I’m doing something wrong. If I'm right about it. I'll have to test it.”

His second attempt was at the ball, after he checked the marks he’d made in the snow with a stick cut to the proper length. It was seven. From the height, he’d released seven spellmarks cubed, from one mana.

Frank had chosen a place where the snow was nice and flat for the ball. Calling on the flames again, it was only once he held it, and was considering where to throw it that the options for shaping it came to him in a flash.

A comet, to strike and pierce. Fire at the back, driving it forward.

A shell, wrapped in his touch, his breath. To cushion, land and explode on impact.

Or a ball, airy and bright. Unstable and ticking away, to fly and burst in the air.

Frank threw a shell, but as it flew he recognised something. That skeleton he’d blown up with his staff? That had been a comet. It left a fiery trail in the air, as part of the penetrating power of it came from the speed, as the mana pattern moved like a rocket. That was the line of fire he'd seen connecting them.

The shell had nothing like a comet’s speed, and unlike the comet, had weight, arcing and obeying gravity. It rolled for a moment, when it landed, raising faint wisps of steam from the snow. For a few ticks, nothing happened.

His current breath finished. Then it blew up.

The circle it made in the snow wasn’t big. Only a bit under two and a half marks across.

“Say, 2.4 spellmarks. So the sphere was… r = 1.2, so V is (4/3)πr3 , which meant that 1.2 cubed was 12x12x12 which was 144x12. That was 1440+288 and came out to 16, no 17 28. Cubed decimal so three, so 1.728 spellmarks cubed, times 4 times 3.14 divided by 3. So as a ballpark, that was 1.7x4, approximately. Which come out to 4+28, which is 6.8 spellmarks cubed. “

“Which is the exact same volume of the line. Almost. Huh.”

He knew the power of spells varied. That much everyone knew, it was the same for enchanted items meant for active use. Frank needed more data points, but he couldn’t remember off the top of his head the equation for calculating slices of a circle, to try the burst option. “Actually…”

Spreading his arms, he thought it could work. Frank drew a right angle triangle in the snow for his third attempt, and stood at the head of the right angled corner. Throwing his hand out, he channelled a burst, feeling the fire rise out of his burns.

“Is my arm looking better?”

A burst of flames went out of his palm, but after it was over Frank was focused on his hand, not the experiment. He’d taken his gloves of to see if they made a difference. So far, no.

The palm, the skin… “When was the last time I had to clean my shirt from blood seeping from the burns?”

After he’d been cursed, his wounds had wept blood for weeks, and he could still injure himself if he tried to use all his Strength. He guessed that was what the curse meant when it said his Strength was lower.

But the pulling on his skin was lesser than it had been, and some of the burns looked a bit pinker, healthier now. Frank was on what, 87%?

Reading that number was one thing. Seeing it, another. He wasn’t fixed, it wasn’t cured. But gently, carefully working his fingers, the hand, and feeling how it pulled on the rest the arm? It made him almost giddy with simple joy. It was pulling less. He had a bit more painless motion for each finger. That was all.

After months of slogging through the mud, rain and snow, it was progress.

Frank didn’t know how the whole curse removal thing went, or how long it would take him. But already, he had a fraction of his lost points of Agility and Strength back. And that was great news indeed.

***

It took Frank a while to come down from that high, while watching Deli practice, and just wiggling his fingers without pain. He’d gotten so used to it, Frank had forgotten what it was like for them not to hurt. He’d developed the Skill to just ignore it, if he could. All the time. Why suffer for no benefit, but to raise the Skill for managing pain? He didn’t need that, wouldn’t, after he was free of the curse.

Still, eventually, he had to go back to his experiment.

He’d been distracted by the skin, but the bursts had options as well. To adjust the angle of the burst, and its thickness. It could be a full mark tall, enough to sent enemies sprawling, or half that, only enough to bathe them in fire, but with more reach. He’d gone with the first, to keep the numbers simple. One mark tall, and the radius was… 3.1, or 3.2.

So the area would be r2π, so 32x32 for 900+60+64 to 1004.

“No, 1024, right, of course. So 10.24 x 3.14 to about… 31? 32 maybe? A quarter of which is 8.”

So it had come out to 8 spellmarks cubed. A bit more, but still generally consistent. So the limit on his fires, the limit on the mana, was the volume and shape he could make of them.

But what happened if he did it with two motes of mana?

***

Frank measured the four furrows in the snow. It was four again. He couldn’t divide it further, not yet at least. When he’d added a second mote, while holding the first during his breath, he’d felt it could go two ways. He could feed the fires, and they would grow. Or he could force the mana into the same space, make them more, hotter, stronger.

He’d chosen the first option, as that was something he could actually measure. Short of hitting someone with a spell, he didn’t have a way to measure the power of the magic itself. He’d need to know the damage it did to Health to compare them.

The result was: 5,4,4 and 2. And he had a feeling he could have put more into the first one. That was 15 spellmarks cubed. Or a 7 and an 8, he guessed. It multiplied. For each point of mana spent, the volume of fire he could call would grow another time. Skill? Skill felt like it let him get more out of what he had. Better focus, more shapes. It was Ability that probably dictated power, how much volume he could create.

As channelling was under Instinct, that was three. So what calculation produced 7s and an 8 from a three? None he knew. Math tended to be static. An equation could have multiple solutions if it was solving for X, but usually it only had one.

There was another mechanism that created semi-random results. One far more associated with games and RPGs. Dice. They created random ranges. And his Ability either let him roll more of them as it grew, or better ones. Or both.

“If that’s how it works at all. It’s a theory, but I need proof to support or disprove it.”

He didn’t have proof of it, not yet. He’d need at least thirty samples, thirty spells measured, to work out some kind of distribution if he was right. But if he was, it should tell him what he was working with. Which was something of a relief. He’d already spent five mana on this, and he wanted to keep two in reserve. Which meant he only had one left.

Frank tried to make the fires hotter with that one, to sacrifice volume for power, as he could with a second mote, but it didn’t work. The line was the same, only 9 spellmarks cubed, this time.

It was somewhat frustrating, but also exciting. He was finally getting to apply his hard won Skills on the world itself. On magic. He’d figure it out yet. Maybe try some runes tomorrow?

“See how Logic measures up. What difference a four makes to a three, and if I can figure out what the loss mechanism is for enchanting. Maybe figure out how that whole ‘use the staff to channel mana’ thing works. It’s a staple of games, and seems to have some practical applications here too. At least, since I’ve gotten my hands on a staff made from the Eternal Tree.”

Somewhat unsure, he hefted the staff around. It didn’t feel special. But people said it was stronger against spirits and bodiless dead, and he did remember it lighting up that one time he’d channelled mana into it. It had lit up green when he’d thrown that comet at the Bones, on their first patrol together.

Sweaty, but not fully wiped out, Deli joined him as they walked home. “Happy with your snow blasting?” she teased.

“It’s Science.” He told her, using the word his Lifecord did. She looked at him in confusion.

“Academia?”

No recognition.

“It a learned thing, that mages and elders do, sometimes.” He explained for the third time.

“If you say so. Looked like a damn waste of mana to me.”

“Well it wasn’t. I learned a lot.” He defended, firmly.

She glanced at him. “You’re not just saying that. Got a Skill for it?”

He looked around them for anyone close enough to overhear. It was a mental Skill. But Deli was a party member, and sworn to him besides. “Logic.”

Her look cleared up. “Like with planting! Trying things, to see which seeds grow best?”

“Something like it.”

“Well then, I wish you a fruitful harvest, Frank.”

Somewhat bemused, he replied: “And I you progress with your exercises.”

Deli laughed, and threw her arm around his neck. She speed up, pulling him along and singing as she went.

“There once was a maiden fair,

maiden fair, maiden fair.

She danced on the table almost bare,

almost bare, almost bare.

There she sang of a man with hair,

man with hair, man with hair.

Who danced better than her, showed his ware,

showed his ware, so beware!”

It was a tavern song, that some picked up in passing as she sang. She ended it chuckling softly at the foolishness of men.

Well, if there was one thing that was true back home and here, it was that most men didn’t like looking at other men’s dicks.

Except for the ones who did, of course. Frank didn’t judge.

But if a pretty stripper was replaced by her male colleague, he wouldn’t stick around to watch.

Looking at her as she released him and laughed, he figured Deli would.

Which reminded him: he hadn’t visited Quel since Deli started her training for real. Frank gave her a look that she read with ease.

“Oh fine. We’ve time for it. At least I’ve a book to keep me company while you rut her, you animal.”

Frank grinned at her.

“I’ll have you know, I’m not the one making all that noise.”

Deli scoffed. “You don’t have to tell me that. I’m a maiden, not deaf.”

“You know, Quel isn’t the only professional there…” He mused.

After all, he’d heard enough about Quel to know she had a male partner that handled the female part of the equation.

“Not interested.” she told him.

“Not even a little?” Frank teased her.

Deli blushed, but shook her head. “Maybe a little. But not enough to try it. I can’t carve to pay for it, unlike you. And I’d like my first to be real, not an act.”

He’d give her that. Frank considered himself an adequate lover. Not good enough to make Quel moan and mewl like she did. But like any good professional, Quel knew how to read her customers, and give them what they wanted.

Without overdoing it and ruining the mood.

That was always nice, enjoying the attentions of a competent professional. It was almost as good as a round with an enthusiastic amateur.

Like the one next to him.

.

He’d get over it.

…

Eventually.