Several things happened in rapid succession. First, a team of orks in some sort of military uniform arrived and took the still quivering Stellana into custody, one of them binding her arms to her side with bands of shining light. Even when they pulled her none too gently to her feet, she didn’t regain consciousness. They gathered around with her in the center in one swift, obviously practiced move, and as quickly as they had appeared, they disappeared into thin air.

Sarge came over from where he’d been speaking to who I guessed was the commander of the unit—none of the insignia made any sense to me—and clapped me on the shoulder. “Good thing you sprung that bitch’s trap while you were still here, I’d hate to think what would have happened to you once you left the training grounds. I’m no MANA user, so I can’t tell you how it all works, exactly, but the Rangers’ Captain seems to think that the protections woven into this instance worked to empower whatever it was that you did, and the MANA rebound was enhanced, as well. I'd hate to have seen what kind of mischief she'd have made if that hadn't knocked her out.

“Which brings me around to: What the fuck did you do?”

“I…I don’t know,” I stammered out. “Seriously,” I said to his skeptically raised eyebrow, “I’ve never even thought about using magic before! It just felt like I was, I don’t know, like I was in a dream. Not even my own dream, someone else was dreaming and I just did what they dreamed.” It was pretty lame, as excuses go, and I knew about lame excuses.

Just then, someone else popped in. I guess ‘teleported’ in would be a better description, but I was way over my head down the yellow-brick road, by then.

“Ah,” Sarge said, dropping the subject and turning to face the newcomer, “I see our new arcanist has arrived. I’m sure things will go much more normally, now.”

I tried not to show the guilt I felt. Why should I feel guilty? I still don’t know what I did!

Guilt: out, Anger, in. Same old, same old.

The new arcanist was very different from the old. Whereas Stellana had looked like a typical human—except for her green-on-green eyes and, you know, the whole being dead thing, the new guy looked like one of those drawings crazy people made after they claimed to have been anally probed by aliens.

Not so crazy after all, it seems.

He was tall. Impossibly tall, and thin, like a rubber toy that has been stretched to twice it’s height. He made Sarge look of average height and the rest of us like midgets. The gnome guys barely came to his knees. He was dressed in a form-fitting suit of shiny gray that made me think of sharkskin. The suit blended almost seamlessly into the dull matte gray of his skin. His stringy arms hung down almost to his knees with long narrow hands that had only three fingers, but two opposable thumbs, one on each side, and all of them having too many joints.

An improbably large, and sharply oval bald head sat atop a long neck. His eyes were black-on-black and slanted upwards at the outside. In place of a nose he had two small holes in the center of his face, another two on each side of his head that I assumed passed for ears, with a lipless slit of a mouth over his sharply pointed chin.

“Alonzo,” the arcanist spoke, with a slight bow of his head towards Sarge. He talked without moving his lips, the sound emanating from a square speaker which he wore around his neck. “I have agreed to fill in until a replacement can be found for poor Stellana.” And both of them chuckled at the joke of that, one they didn’t share with the rests of us.

“Good to see you, Xix. (he pronounced it zieux) Stel finished giving the trainee’s their spells and was just teaching them how to pull from their pools to power them. I think we can assume that Tom here’s got that part down, so you just have these six.”

Then he beckoned me and the kid over to where he stood, closer to the table than the shooting range, while Xix moved nearer the others and took up where Stellana had left off.

“Okay, Xix will have the others sorted out in no time, so we can start on target practice, though I guess you’ve got that down, as well.” Sarge—I guess I’ll have to start thinking of him as Alonso—said, the last part directed my way.

I had a quick moment of calculated thought and before he could begin working with the kid, I spoke up. “Actually, I don’t know if I’m completely comfortable with this staff,” I lied, “it being all booby trapped and all.” Then I quickly slotted it into my inventory, “I think maybe I should choose something else to learn on, you know, just in case?” I made the statement into a question just so my butt would be covered if anything came of it.

See, I figured that the staff was soulbound. That meant that even if they wanted to, they couldn’t take it away from me, so whatever other weapon I learned, I’d still have it. I’d have the other one, too.

Mama didn’t raise no fool.

The amused sparkle in Sarge’s eye showed me that he knew—or at least suspected—what I was up to, but he went along with it. “Okaaaay,” he drawled meaningfully, “Go ahead and take a look at the weapons on the table and join us over there. I’ll get started with Rob here, in the meanwhile.”

As they moved away towards the firing line, I surveyed the choices that had been laid out for us. The first weapon I came to was a short bow made of hardwood. I liked the look and knew that they could pack a good punch—at least at mid-range—but you were limited by ammunition. Once you were out of arrows it wouldn’t even make a good club.

The same went for the long bow, and most of the firearms, at least those that used conventional chemical or gas propellants. There were a few that had bands of rings down the barrel that I kind of thought might be a hand-held magnetic rail type, but they still required specifically milled ammo. I hesitated at the ones that looked like energy weapons. Maybe they packed a bigger punch and the rectangular boxes that I guessed were power packs slotted in where a magazine would fit on a conventional firearm might hold more charges—maybe even able to recharge, over time—but again, something made me move on.

I finally stopped at a collection of slings and slingshots. At first glance, you might think that they had the same ammunition limitation, but as a kid shooting cats off fences, I knew that fresh ammo was just a stoop to pick up a rock away. Rocks were everywhere. Yes, I know that modern slingshots fire steel or lead balls specifically made for the purpose, and that the deadlier of them even fired arrows when fitted with a special mount, and that shot was much more effective when it was perfectly round, but worse comes to worse, you almost always have some kind of ammo within arm’s reach.

I picked up one with wide elastic bands, tall backwards-bending forks, and an arrow mount just above the base. The handle had an ergonomic grip and a padded arm rest; the whole thing hinged to fold flat when not in use. Yeah, this one will do just fine. If I need to kill anything big, I’ve always got my staff, but this looks perfect for rabbit and squirrels.

And don't forget rats. I shivered at the thought.

I grabbed up the slingshot and folded the fork under and up, and marveled at the ingenious swivel mechanism that placed the fork perfectly for aiming before locking it into place. Then I slipped my left hand through the odd wrist loop, grabbing the grip and letting the arm rest ride snugly along the inside of my forearm. I also collected a bag of steel shot and moved over to where the kid had just missed his first try, the arrow falling to the ground a good 10 feet from the target. His next one had the distance but flew wide and to the right.

“Okay,” Sarge—Alonso—said, “Looks like you’ve got the general idea, just keep working at it until you can hit the target with some consistency. You’ll know when, because you’ll get the notification for the RANGED WEAPON SKILL.” Then, seeing that I’d joined them, “Interesting choice, Tom. Not much good against large opponents at lower levels, but I’ve seen slingshots used against dragons to good effect by those at higher ones. Here, let me help you equip it properly.”

He gestured for me to extend my arm, and he put a finger and thumb to each side of the odd wrist loop, “Just here, to either side, you see them?” He indicated what I at first assumed were rivets or snaps arranged to each side of my wrist, though if I’d stopped and thought about it, neither of which would make sense in a loop of leather that short. Pressing them in concert, I nearly jerked my arm out of his grasp as the loop suddenly expanded and row upon row of iron plated leather strips snapped into place from wrist to elbow down my forearm, locking the slingshot securely into place.

“There, you see? Now you can unlock the hinges by pressing on each side of the grip in the same way and swivel and fold it under and it will lock against the underside of your arm when you’re not using it. I always thought this model might be a tad bit impractical for self-defense, but it gets high marks for design.”

I agreed.

I spent some time admiring the perfection of the design, unlocking, swiveling, and folding the grip and forks and snapping them snugly under, and then pulling them under and up and twist, and locking them in place again several times. I was even more pleased with my choice than before; I would have chosen the slingshot in any case, but this design made it just perfect.

“Okay,” He said as the elf girl joined us with her choice of a long bow, “enough playing around, it’s a weapon, not a toy.” Here he gestured and the dummy nearest to me moved even nearer to a point about 10 yards away. “Start there, that ought to be about right for small game, which is all you can expect to hunt with this at your level. Once you get your RANGED WEAPON skill, only long hours or practice and upping your STRENGTH stat will let you have any effect at greater distances.”

It had been quite a while since the alley cat shooting days of my youth, and while I remembered things in general, the specifics had escaped me. It took several tries and changing arms from left to right and then finally back to the left-arm mount position, then I had to work out whether I wanted to put the forks upright (as just seemed logical), or parallel to the ground (as I finally decided worked best for me), and then remembering where on my face to pull the pouch in order to fix my aim. In the end, it was quite a bit of work for what felt like precious little result.

In all, it took me a good hour before that *DING*[i] let me know that I’d achieved my goal. I regretted that feeling of superiority I’d felt when the kid had such a hard time hitting his target, but he was whaling away with bullseyes long before I was hitting anywhere on my dummy. I never got what I’d call a bullseye, which to me was hitting the dummy center mass or center face, depending on where I’d aimed, but I did manage to at least hit the dammed thing somewhere each time before Sarge finally called us all to stop.

“All right, trainees,” he shouted when we’d all come to a ragged stop, “this is where we say goodbye. We trainers have done our part to keep you alive, now it’s all up to you. The last part of the BEGINNER TUTORIAL will be in the crafting stations. Just follow that path,” here he indicated the softly glowing path where the previous group of trainee’s had exited the clearing what seemed like lifetimes ago, “and you’ll come to the next clearing. Good luck, and goodbye.

“Tom,” he added as we’d begun to walk towards the path, “a word.”

I stopped near where he stood, but he waited until the Blue Man, who was the last of the group, had passed beyond hearing distance before speaking. “SCHEMA contacted me while you lot were practicing, and I wanted to let you know what happened. They decided that Stellana was at fault, that she did break her vow to you, but not outright. On a technicality. Seems she did set a trap with that staff, but not specifically aimed at you. I don’t know any of the details of what they uncovered in her record, but whatever it was seemed to satisfy them.

“So, you’ll be getting something from her in compensation for what happened, but, and this is the important thing, while she’ll be losing something of her possessions to you in the judgment, she will not be losing her life.” He looked at me to see if I understood the implications of that.

“So, I might have got something of value, I’ve also made myself an enemy.” I said.

“Exactly.” He nodded. “And a powerful one. Her and her whole House.

“Watch your back.”

[i] CONGRATULATIONS! You have learned the SKILL RANGED WEAPONS