This morning is the last time we will be breaking camp, since we should arrive in the Capital by mid-afternoon. The day is cloudy and promises rain at some point. After breakfast we saddle up and assume our guard posts around the caravan. It is doubtful that someone would ambush us this close to the Capital, but we don’t want to drop our guard when we are this close.

When we crest a hill, the Capital comes into view in the distance. We are still ten miles away with the land between us and the capital carpeted with farms edged with trees serving as wind breaks. When we head over the hill the Capital is hidden by the trees. The guards begin to chatter in excitement with the trip ending soon. Everyone has already decided to eat lunch while in the saddle today. The animals will be fed and water when we get to the city. The dungeon group split our party this morning so Nora and I can discuss things privately. In party chat I asked Nora about the Capital.

George: I know you said there is someone you thought could get us to the Temple of the Seven Moons, where are we going first?

Nora: We should go to the Rider Guild get our pay and get a room at their Tavern. Then you will wait there while I go see about passage to the Temple.

George: Isn’t it dangerous for you to go by yourself?

Nora: I would prefer that you go with me, but the person I am meeting would be able to tell you are around and would not meet with me.

George: I am worried that someone will be watching for you.

Nora: The Silver Thorns swore an oath to protect my identity and the spells protecting me will still last a few more weeks.

George: Ok, but I don’t like it.

Nora nods and we both travel in silence for the rest of the trip. When we come out of the last line of trees about one mile from the city walls it really hits me how big this city is. The walls are eighty feet tall with circular towers topping out twenty feet above that. There are large crystals floating above each tower that Nora tells me project a shield over the whole city, which also blocks any teleports. Nora is not sure if it will block my shadow step too. I can see patrols on the wall with several sentries on top of towers, no doubt using skills and spells to watch all approaches to the city.

Hank leads us to pens setup outside the gates, where we unsaddle and say good bye to these mean-spirited mounts. After we hand off the mounts, we walk to the city gates and Hank pays the entrance tax for everyone. Then we all head over to the Rider’s Guild Tavern to get rooms and collect our pay. After we get our rooms, Nora and I talk to our dungeon party. This is where we will part company. They are all planning on heading to the city state to the south. I will miss them and if we didn’t have the quest for Poth, I would enjoy accompanying them. After hugs they collect their pay and head to the river to get passage on a boat heading south.

Nora and I go up to our room. Both of us have keep our hood up just as a precaution, which no one thinks odd with the mist and occasional rain we are getting. Nora says she should be back in a few hours and to wait here, either relaxing or training. We leave our party because Nora says her contact will be able to check that. After she leaves the room, I open the window shutters. Then I shadow step down to the end of the alley to the front of the building and activate my cloak of concealment. I wait and see Nora leave heading down the street. I have thought about this and while I won’t try to follow her into a building, I am not leaving Nora to deal with the dangers of the city alone. I guess I am just a little stubborn. After she gets ahead of me, I follow un-stealth, since remaining stealth would attract unwanted attention. My perception lets me spot her in the crowd easily. She walks through the busy streets for almost an hour before walking into a store. I duck into an alley across the street where I can keep an eye on the storefront. Nora is in there five minutes before I feel a sharp sting on my neck. I stagger and start to turn when my knees buckle and someone catches me as everything goes black.

As I start to wake up, I hear voices, one of which is Nora’s.

“He will be fine, it’s his own fault for sneaking around.” A male voice says.

“You are not making the best impression to a potential new student.” Nora says.

“Him, you would have to pay a lot to have me take him as a student.”

“Really? Then I guess you don’t have your edge anymore if you think he is not an interesting student.”

“Hmmm, well he is awake now so we can just see if he is interesting.”

I sit up and hold my head as the room spins. Nora is standing by a tall figure. He is six feet tall with deep blue skin. Otherwise he looks human except for his most striking feature which is a bald head and a face covered with long slim tentacle that resemble a beard, except this beard moves. He casually leans against a wall wearing loose pants and a short sleeve shirt. He is staring at me very intently. I get the same sensation I have felt before when someone is using one of the inspection skills, but this time I get a prompt.

Deck of Fate power discovered. Advanced Veil discovered. Advanced Veil while owner of the Deck of Fate. Blocks all information about the owner. Can only be pierced by Divine Sight or if Piercing Sight is used with an intelligence ten times greater than the owner.

Warning Piercing Sight detected and blocked.

“Greetings I am Krell and I will be your teacher.”

Nora is grinning, so I am guessing this is a good thing.

“Yes, I will teach you many things.” I turn and Krell is standing behind me. I turn back and forth and there are two of them.

“Is one of you an illusion?” I ask.

Nora answers. “Krell is a Flinat, which is a very rare race. His species splits while in the egg. In Krell’s case he split into five before he hatched, which is on the high side. So, there are five of him around. He likes to train unique abilities. He is exceptionally good at figuring out how to use abilities in new and exciting ways and will not charge for the training if the ability is unique enough. He has trained several members of the Empresses family in the past being a long-lived race, which is how I met him. There are rumors that he has some unique skill that is leveled by training unique abilities, which is why he does it for free.”

Krell doesn’t seem offended by what Nora says, but doesn’t comment.

“So, what does it mean to get training?” I ask.

“That will depend on your abilities. Since you have the ability to block my viewing them unaided you will have to show them to me.” Krell says while his facial tentacles are quite agitated.

“We still have some negotiating to do before that happens.” Nora says.

Krell throws up his hands. “What else is there to discuss. I will train him.”

“You will also train me as well.”

“You have no unique skills and I am guessing no money to pay me.”

“He is more than unique enough to be worth training both of us.”

“So, you say. If that is true let me examine his character stats and I will be fine with training you if what you say is true.”

“Come George, he is not really interested.” Nora gestures toward the doorway and I start to follow her when Krell shouts. “Wait!”

“You and your family are a real pain. How you ever came to power I will never know. Fine, I will train you both.”

“Your word on it.”

“You have my word insufferable woman.”

“Very well, George you can share your stats with him.”

I look at Krell and share my character stats. I can see Krell’s eye darting back and forth and glancing over my shoulder I see he body behind me is doing the same. Looking back and forth they seem to be reading different things at the same time. Krell would be a fearsome opponent. After about ten minutes while I watch Krell’s tentacles twitch and wiggle, which would be distracting if I were to fight him, he sighs.

“You were right Nora.” Krell says with a very predatory look in his eyes as he stares at me. I don’t look, but I am sure the one behind me is also staring at me. Very creepy.

“How much time do I have to train him?”

“Three days.” Nora says.

“What??? That is nothing. I will need weeks, even months to properly train him.”

“We have a quest chain to fulfill, which is part of what made him so unique.”

“So, he will get even more unique than he is?”

“That is quite possible.”

I didn’t think Krell’s stare could get any creepier, but I was wrong. I almost took a step back, but I knew he was behind me too.

“Very well, if we only have a few days then we will focus on things that will let you kill and defend yourself against much higher-level opponents.” Krell says.

“That sounds great to me.” George says.

“Come with me and we will start your training. Nora will remain here and start her training.”

“Before you go be aware both of us just completed a one-shot dungeon while channeling XP into the Deck of Fate to complete it, which we did right before getting to the Capital. When we next level expect a much higher than usual attribute point award.” Nora says.

Krell appears thoughtful. “Thank you, I will take that into account during the training. Follow me.”

I follow the Krell that has been talking and I see Nora head toward the one behind me. I end up going down the hall to a door and then down some stairs to another room. The room is a cube fifty feet on a side. Assuming we are still under his store Krell has a huge training area here. While the walls and ceiling are made from stone the floor is made from something a lot like rubber. Krell walks out into the center of the room and sits cross-legged in front of me and gestures for me to do the same.

“Our time is short, so this training will be intense. I am going to help you expand your Shaper Abilities to improve your chances of surviving against higher level opponents. In some cases, this will mean you can kill them. In others it will mean you can get away from them. Do you have a problem with either?”

“No, I hope I just recognize the situations where it is smarter to run.”

Krell nods. “Your ability is now focused on the six domains, but as you found with Dark Fire these domains can be combined. However, that will take too much time to do right now, but it is an area where you need to focus in the future. For now, we are going to build out your skills with general shaping and learn some more spells.”

“Learn?”

“Yes, we will use your shaper ability to learn new spells.”

“I am all for that, but it took me a long time to learn Air Jump and the Air Step spells.”

“Describe when you took the first step in the air and how many hours you did it before you received the skill and spell.”

After describing the training, I did the last day before arriving in the Capital Krell was smiling. “So, it only took a few hours.”

“But I have cast lots of air shaping.”

“True, but you were not using them to perform a specific task. General shaping is fine, it will improve your overall skill, but focusing on repeating an action with focus on a desired result is key.”

“Now let’s get your Air Step and Air Jump up to Beginner. I will create a small glowing area in the air and you will create an Air Step there and then do an Air Jump until you run out of mana. I will continue to creating new glowing areas and you will keep jumping between them. It should be easy.”

I think to myself, sure it will be easy, that’s why you just told me we would be doing intense training. I stand, while Krell remains sitting. The first spot is five feet in the air two feet in front of me. After that first jump Krell led me around the room gradually gaining height until I was thirty feet up then he created one against the wall, which almost caused me to fall. Krell says. “Look at the orientation of the spot.”

I looked at my feet and see the illuminated spot is parallel to the wall.

“Now let’s try again, but this time watch the orientation of the spot and create your air step to match.” Krell says, still maintaining his seat on the floor and from here I could see his eyes were closed.

“But I will fall if I do that.”

“Will you? So, you are the teacher now?”

“No, teacher, I will try.”

“No!! You will give it your all. I doubt you managed to get where you are by just trying, now do it!”

Another spot appears ahead of me oriented toward the floor. I circle the room again before he switched the orientation again and I almost fall, not because I slipped, but because of what happened. While I am standing sideways sticking out from the wall it feels like gravity has switched to point to the wall instead of the ground. In fact, as I look up at Krell above me on the floor, which is now a wall I feel dizzy with vertigo. Krell says. “Why have you stopped?”

I look and see another spot now leading along the wall. I jump to it and now Krell has me jumping along the walls and then ceiling and floor interchangeably. I can’t help myself. I laugh out loud, this is so amazing, but then that of course is when I ran out of mana and smashed into first a wall and then the floor.

Krell is standing over me. “What happened?”

“I ran out of mana.”

Krell poked me with a staff he suddenly had in his hand. “What does that have to do with anything? You should have been able to halt your jump and jump back to your previous position to get to the ground. Your air steps last for one minute and air jump does not need mana, so you should be able to get to the floor easily. Also, even without that you could of air stepped using stamina to make the floor in one jump. Now sit and recover your mana. After it is full, we will continue.”

I sit and after my mana is recharged, we continue. Krell has me jumping from one wall to another and forming air steps when I get close to the wall. Also, with my agility I can do simple gymnastics with no problem. I can jump and flip in midair landing on a step. This is simply amazing. I can now appreciate more what Frank could so with the more general Jump skill. After a few hours going faster and faster with longer and more complex jumps we take a break. Krell begins to summon Air Elementals. They are blobs of mostly transparent air. I realize my high perception is paying off, because I can spot them easily even though they should blend in with the surrounding air.

“We will now continue your training, but the four Air Elementals will try to stop you. You are not allowed to fight them. You can create additional steps as long as you end up in the spot I mark before the mark fades. Ready?”

“Ready.”

The first spot appears and I am off. The Air Elementals don’t seem to do anything, but I feel something from the closest one and my step disappears. I manage to summon it back before I get to the spot and now the elementals continue to dispel my steps, so I start creating them just before I get to where I need them and jump to the next spot before they dispel it. After a few minutes of failing to stop me they change their tactics. Two continue to dispel the steps, but the other two begin to move and create focused blasts of air. This is harder to counter, because when in the middle of a jump I can’t change direction. I try several different moves, but all of them involve taking more shorter jumps in zig zag patterns to avoid their attacks.

All this dodging depletes my mana quickly. Krell seems to know when I am tapped out, but he still expects me to land gracefully. We keep doing this and he adds more elementals. After we hit twelve, I must burn through mana like crazy and still take a lot of air blasts. There are just too many directions to focus on. Then suddenly I begin to feel the air blasts as they approached. It is still a lot to focus on, but now I no longer need my eyes to do it. This feeling continues to get stronger until I could feel the air elemental forming an air blast and I realized something that almost made me fall. The air blasts and even the elementals were mana infused air. I tested this on the next air blast, which I jump on. It was squishy, but it held my weight. When I jumped from it the air blast was defected. I wondered, I could not attack an elemental, but I think this may not count. I had to time it right, but on my fourth attempted I deflected an air blast into an elemental which damaged it.

Krell didn’t say a word, so I continued, even getting more ambition and jumping off an elemental. That was different. It was more like a balloon and bounced me off nearly out of control. It took a long time to finally kill one of the elementals. They healed nearly as fast as I could defect an air blast into one. Also, it was hard to keep avoiding them while defecting blasts into just one. When I finally managed to kill one Krell called a halt to the training for the night. Looking at my clock I see it is almost midnight.

“Come we will eat and get you to bed.” When Krell mentioned food, I realize I am starving.

We get some food from a pantry with cold food already prepared. Then he takes me to a small room with a shower and after a long hot shower I am ready for bed. We will start training again in the morning. Looking at my notifications I have reached Advanced in both Air Step and Air Jump. Also, I discovered a new skill Air Sense that allowed me to sense mana infused air, which must be what allowed me to sense the air blasts. I am too tired to go over my character sheet right now, maybe in the morning. I quickly fall into an exhausted sleep.