The Darkest Night family, Mason, and the Roving Band all set out for the city of the Darkest Night. There was a lot to be discussed, and planned, with the council, and the city was several days away with a comfortable pace.

Mason sat next to Shay by the fire of the first night’s campsite, chewing heartily at a serving of fire boar that Shaywise and Treyjol had donated to the Roving Band. While he ate, he listened to Leornal, the band’s best archer, and the cook, Clearsay, discussing what they missed most about Marra.

“I just miss being able to hop down to a store and get any ingredient I needed. Meals and rituals both! I can’t even perform a simple Embellishment ritual on my cloak here without having to hunt down some strange root and then waste a whole batch of mana to purify it into a ritual component,” Clearsay complained, his cloak laid out in his lap while all he wore were a standard leather outfit.

“If embellishments are all you can think of, you’ve got it wrong. I’ll second you on the cooking ingredients though. This fireboar may be delicious but we’ve had some plant stews lately that made death not seem so bad,” Leornal joked.

“What’s an embellishment?” Mason finally decided to ask, having heard them discussed among the archers earlier in the day’s travels.

All eyes turned to him, and he felt suffocated by the amount of mana being pushed his direction as they tried to get a better look at him with their violet, Mana Sighted eyes. “How do you not know what an embellishment is? You have one on your cloak,” Clearsay questioned.

Mason took his cloak off and looked at it more closely. It was just black as far as he could see. It made him feel a little ridiculous to wear it, especially with the Demon glamour he’d developed, but it was warm in the nights and breezy during the hot days, so it paid its dues. Finally, he responded, “I don’t see it.”

Shayjol nudged him in the side, “Use Mana Sight, you child.”

Mason shrugged and flipped it on. With all of the mana that had been sent his way, and the presence of the mana-rich Roving Band, and the fireboar all around, Mason felt like his eyes were going to burn out from the intensity. He activated Focus and willed it to dull, and after a moment he was able to focus just enough on his cloak to see patterns in the light, before everything flared brightly again and he had to disable Mana Sight altogether.

“Is it just a painting of sorts on the cloak with mana? I really can’t look at it that closely, everything is very intense when I use mana sight.”

“Embellishments are like spell runes but for less powerful uses,” Leornal started.

“They’re decorative, largely,” continued Clearsay. “You perform an Embellishment ritual when you want to do something elaborate and permanent, but a decent skill manipulating mana can go pretty far if you just want to decorate. It’s what makes each of us stand out. You can always read someone’s mana signature, but in a crowd of people sometimes it’s just easier to look for the right embellishment.”

“Not to mention it’s much less invasive to avoid probing too deeply with your mana against someone you don’t know very well,” Treyjol explained, walking up. “The embellishment Shaywise put on your cloak is simple. It represents the outsider who is made welcome. We have an old tale we tell our children about that, and we will have to share it with you later. But for now, Torysen would like to see you.”

Mason nodded and got to his feet, wrapping the cloak around himself. He went over to Tory’s tent- no larger than any of the other tents in the band, but marked by an extra flap of fabric above it that Mason now assumed carried an embellishment.

When he found her, Tory was sitting cross legged beyond her tent, and though her eyes were closed, she seemed to know her company had arrived. Speaking softly, she said, “I want to speak with my brother.”

He grimaced, “I can’t help you with that. He’s within me, but I don’t think I can let him speak. At least, I don’t know how to. All of this is very new to me, and honestly, he is the one who is showing me how to develop those skills.”

Tory didn’t look angry, but there was a certain sadness to her features, one that did not look fresh. “I should kill you for what you’ve done to him,” she said impassively.

“It seems there’s a lot of reasons I should die, or should be dead. But I’m just not ready to go that way yet,” Mason replied.

“You say my brother is helping you, his killer, grow strong?”

“I’m not his killer, and yes, he’s helping me. But whatever his opinions are of me, or what his goals are, I don’t really know,” Mason avoided her eye, uncomfortable enough with these circumstances without facing the sister of one of his captured souls directly.

“He was fond of saying, ‘Whatever circumstances you find yourself in, all you can do is respond.’ I can only imagine that’s why he’s helping you,” she closed her eyes tightly, as if fighting back a headache.

She was more sullen than she had been when Mason apologized. “I resented the Trials for a long time. I just wanted things to be like how they used to be. Mowry though... he seemed to accept this place immediately. That’s why he volunteered to scout so far ahead by himself. It was brave, but ultimately worthless. He wasn’t strong enough, just more sure of himself than anyone else. It’s been a long time since we’ve let anyone scout by themselves.”

Mason said nothing, unsure really of what could help. But Torysen continued, “I want to execute you. I think you should know that if you’re going to begin training with me. We will not use training blades, and though I will do my best to hold back, if you die while we spar I won’t shed a second thought about it.”

Her expression brooked no argument, and she waited for him to acknowledge what she was telling him. Instead, Mason looked at her bewildered, “What? Train me?”

“Mowrytal is within you teaching you whatever he can, and helping you is the only way I know to help him. So I’m going to teach you how to fight so you can’t ruin whatever is left of my brother’s plans. This is non-negotiable.”

“Then I guess I accept,” Mason said, suddenly very afraid of the rest of their journey.

Their training would start tomorrow at dawn with some simple exercises that he would be expected to practice while travelling for the following day, Torysen warned. But for now, Mason had an evening to pass, and he decided to give the rune another go.

Obsess over the rune, he thought, and considered the implications. It had been on his mind all day, those twisting motions and the never straight lines. The more he tried to nail down what it looked like, the less he felt like he understood its form, and he found it slightly maddening.

Mowrytal must be laughing, Mason thought. He had kept the rune presentable within Mason’s soul for a full day, and yet he couldn’t even grasp its basic shape. It started with a long sloping curve up and then folded back into the distance only to return and curve again….

With or without mana manipulation, he couldn’t track with the rune. He considered just pumping mana into it and seeing what happened, but a small piece of intuition told him that was a dangerous idea. Even though pumping mana in unhealthy doses had worked to solve most of his problems up until this point.

He activated Focus and mana manipulation and wore himself out repeatedly trying to make sense of this single, supposedly simple, rune. He wondered if this came easy to the mana-born races. He drifted off to sleep with Recovery active.

Still tired from focusing on the rune, Mason woke to a rough kick in the side from the tall and dark Torysen. Looking up at her from below, Mason took in her appearance like he hadn’t been able to in the busyness of the last few days. She was thin for a Darkest Night, but even so her build leaned toward strong shoulders which, paired with her angular features and height, gave her the look of someone very capable in a fight.

“You don’t look ready to fight, which means you must be ready to die,” Tory drew her sword and pointed it at Mason, “What if I were an attacker? Would you continue to lay there and gawk at me?”

“Well if the attackers were strong enough to get past your watchmen without them even raising an alarm, my odds aren’t very good anyways, right?” Mason joked.

She kicked him again, “Get up, idiot.”

Mason rolled away from her and hopped to his feet. He wasn’t wearing much since even the evenings were warm in this place, and he felt rather safe in camp. Looking at Tory, he saw her looking him up and down, and imagined the she was making guesses on his strength, or just assessing her first time seeing a human body. He would have been self-conscious if not for the fact that the sparse diet and exercise of the last few days had left him in better shape than he had ever achieved on Earth.

She stuck around as he scrabbled into his clothes- rougher than cotton but sturdier as well- and grabbed his three blades and his staff. Picking each of them up one at a time, he was grateful for his improved strength in the Trials. It would have been annoying to carry so many items with his weak Earth self.

Seeing that he was finally dressed and ready, Tory walked out of the tent and addressed one of her archers, who pointed off a ways. The two combatants moved that direction, and along the way Shayjol joined pace with them with a quiet, “Good morning.”

In a mostly level area, Shayjol stepped off to the side as Tory pointed at a spot on the ground and commanded, “Stand there and defend yourself,” before walking about 10 yards away.

She turned back toward Mason, who stood awkwardly with his staff in his hands, and drew her sword.

The next thing Mason knew, he was on his back, a sword to his throat and Torysen crouched on top of him. He had hardly seen her move.

He coughed as his chest processed the impact and shoved her off of him, scrambling away and back up to his feet. Torysen stepped forward and slid her leg under his, pushing him gently and sending him face first back into the dirt.

Shayjol laughed from the side, “Our great Demon, brought down by a sweep of the leg from a simple Roving Band leader.”

Mason spat out dirt, “What the hell? Is this training or revenge? You didn’t even move that fast when you were fighting Geralt!”

“Geralt responded to my movements because he was a great warrior. You might be qualified to carry my bags. Get up,” She spoke roughly, grabbing Mason’s cloak and pulling him to his feet.

“Let’s try something different,” she suggested. “Hit me with whatever weapon you think you can.” Tory had her weapon put away now, and stretched her arms out wide, leaving herself unbalanced and open to attack.

“Alright, fine,” Mason said, back on his feet. He watched her carefully, unsure where to strike since every bit of her looked like a weak point in that silly stance. Finally he just planted his feet, and swept his staff out, aiming to smack her in the face with it.

Tory’s body coiled in tightly, her feet sliding in the dirt as she reached out to grab the staff, yanking it toward herself and pulling Mason into a stumble. Her knee came up and caught him in the chest, and he wheezed as he double over, having let go of his staff completely.

“This is a waste of my time. You may have my brother’s soul, but you do not have his strength, or his skill.”

Mason’s eyes were watering and his chest ached terribly, but he stood back up and grabbed his staff from Tory’s outstretched hand. “Hit me again,” he managed through the pain.

“It’ll be my pleasure.”

After several more rounds of Torysen trouncing Mason, the skin on his face was raw from hitting the ground so many times, and he was certain that the bruising in his chest would require medical treatment, even with his improved vitality.

Nonetheless, he stood up everytime, and Shayjol would occasionally give him suggestions of ways to adjust his stance or hold his staff in a way that would allow him to defend more gracefully.

It may have been over two dozen tries later, but this time when Torysen stood at a distance, Mason willed all of his stamina into Focus. He didn’t need to be able to put up a fight, he just needed to be able to see her move, and maybe even counter her somewhat.

As if time were moving a fraction slower, Mason saw the moment where Tory stepped forward. He realized her step was powerful enough that she almost bounded across the distance to him. That was why he couldn’t see her move- it was almost a single rapid motion, rather than the multiple steps it would have taken him to cross the same distance.

He planted his feet and lowered his body, and by the time Tory made it to him, he was midswing. A small amount of mana began moving into his staff in the minute second that it made contact with her, but her speed and force wrenched the staff backwards out of his hand even as Mason went sprawling backwards into the dirt. He laughed out loud, exhausted, but exhilarated by the miniscule progress he had made.

The training had improved staff specialization by two, and Focus had improved by two.

Tory looked at him where he lay and though he didn’t notice it, she resisted the urge to kick him while he was down. “A fair strike, but weak. At least you managed something today. Shayjol, begin walking him through the basic fighting stances while the rest of us pack up the campsite. We leave shortly.”