Mason felt rested and energized the next morning like he couldn’t remember feeling since he had first entered the Trials. The rune almost throbbed within him, full of his mana and pulsating as if to remind him that the force power was ready to be unleashed within it.

He had woken up early, most likely too used to not sleeping to stay asleep for any reasonable length of time, and decided to use his energy and excess stamina to make some more sense of his situation. If he was going to dedicate himself to this route after all he might as well take it seriously.

Digging into his system screen, Mason focused on trying to remember his challenges. He had a sneaking suspicion that there were a great many secrets buried in that part of his mind, and sure enough once he started focusing on his challenges, a whole screen came up.

There were four challenges still sitting there, waiting to be accomplished. Spellcraft, Scourge of the Rotten Gremlins, Footwork Mastery, and Walker of the Tree of Memories. A deep breath triggered his Focus, and another activated Analyze. He needed to see what the Trials weren’t revealing about these challenges.

Spellcraft: Tier 1 Rewards Unlocked.

Scourge of the Rotten Gremlins: Tier 2 Rewards Unlocked

Distinguished Footwork: No Rewards Unlocked

Walker of the Tree of Memories: Initial Rewards Collected, No Further Rewards Unlocked

He smiled smugly- it was if the idea had just popped into his mind as he woke up, and that simple screen had revealed a lot to him about how the challenges worked. But he had more to learn. Focusing on Spellcraft, he triggered Analyze once more.

Spellcraft: Tier 1 rewards can be claimed at any time, thus terminating the challenge. If you choose to continue the challenge, greater rewards can be collected as you advance, and when the challenge is ultimately completed.

This was good, useful information. He was a little grumpy that nobody had thought to share it with him thus far, but he wasn’t going to begrudge people for expecting him to help himself. He also wasn’t done pushing Analyze.

His attention centered on Spellcraft, but he dismissed the idea of the tiers and began to let his mind churn the concepts involved with the challenge itself. He saw the initial description flicker first.

Mana opens the door to a great many things, but can you step through the doorway?

But that wasn’t what he was looking for either. He needed clarity, and he had a strong suspicion that he already knew what the challenge was for, so he’d know when that mental system had given him a real answer. Pushing his stamina and a bit of mana into Analyze again, he reflected on the Spellcraft challenge.

Spellcraft governs the use of Runecraft, higher levels of Mana Manipulation, higher levels of Mana Tolerance, and other paths to invoking spells. Rewards are granted based on the uniqueness of spells discovered and the user’s degree of mastery.

He was breathing hard from the depletion of his stamina. Surely this little bit of information shouldn’t be so hard to come by? Was it that his Analyze skill was just low, or did the Trials really make it so hard to gain their assistance?

Wiping sweat off his forehead, he saw his stamina dipping down quickly. It would only take twenty minutes to restore it from empty, and he knew from experience that he could actually push it past zero if he were willing to hurt for it, so he poured himself into Analyze once more, knowing at the edge of his consciousness lay more secrets about this challenge.

Higher tiers of Spellcraft will unlock more skills associated with the challenge, and rewards include bonuses to Intelligence, Willpower, and Creativity, as well as Trial assisted improvements to the user’s spells.

He gasped as he let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. It had been a strain to push his Analyze that far, and instinctively he understood that he had pulled information from the system that he wasn’t supposed to access until he was much further along. But understanding what really lay down the road with these challenges would help him know what to focus on.

He collapsed backwards on the couch, panting and spreading himself out so that the air could evaporate his sweat and cool him down. Someday he would be able to do things like this effortlessly. He would cast spells, win fights, pull information from the depths of his mind and the Trials, and he would be a force to be reckoned with.

Maybe when he wasn’t a lowly level four.

Grinning, Mason noticed his analyze had risen two levels from that effort. If he could get that next endurance Focus Point to settle, he could do that every morning and probably push Analyze to the point that it didn’t drain him dry just trying to figure out the basics of what was around him.

A knock at his door drew his attention from where he had begun studying his rune, so Mason scrambled to his feet and went to see who was there. He never really had settled on a plan for the day, leaving most of the arrangements to Torysen and Leornal.

Opening the door expecting to see one of their two faces, he panicked a little when he didn’t immediately recognize the Darkest Night outside his door. “Umm,” he started to say, before it clicked in his mind who was there. It was one of the scouts in Torysen’s band that he hadn’t really talked with at all.

She looked at him expectantly, and it took Mason a moment to realize that was because his mouth was still hanging open in confusion. A little awkwardly he asked, “Do you want to come in?”

Her eyes narrowed as she studied him, and he sized her up in return. She was short for a Darkest Night, which meant she was very close to his own height, within an inch. Her hair was violet like her eyes, and she seemed young as well. Her face was narrow and smooth, and her controlled expression gave it a look of elegance.

Her appearance probably had a factor to play in Mason’s sudden onset stupidity. She was the closest to an attractive woman he had seen in the Trials save for Torysen, who he honestly pictured as something too terrifying to be attractive.

“You’re not from a very polite world, are you?” she asked, her voice ringing with innocence that put Mason on guard.

“I was expecting to see Tory or Leornal, honestly. Maybe even Shayjol? Um, what can I do for you?” Mason asked.

“You can get dressed, for starters,” she gestured to his bare chest and glanced appraisingly at his thin, cloth pants. “I’m supposed to show you around town, and I would rather you be as covered as possible. If I have to deal with curious or suspicious civilians all day then this will end up being a very short tour.”

“Do you want to come in?” Mason asked, opening the door wider.

She nodded and came in, and walked past him straight to the cupboards on one side of the room. Rummaging through them, she pulled out a tin of something Mason hadn’t yet investigated, and then something resembling a kettle and several mugs. “Do you mind if I make tea?”

She showed no sign of caring what his answer was.

The indifference bordering on coldness did little to faze Mason at this point. He was used to nobody knowing what to make of him, but being dismissed by such a pretty face did serve as a reminder that he was not really in the right place to be focusing on anything more than the essentials of growing stronger and ensuring the survival of his people.

“Sure, I guess,” he muttered as he went into the other room to pull on his rough leather outfit and dark cloak. He came out of the room with the hood upturned to obscure his face, and he tried his hardest to activate his Glamour to make him seem more like a Darkest Night. His default settings for the Glamour seemed to be either looking like Demon, or looking like Mowry, so he did his best to try and shuffle the characteristics.

When he came out though, the woman laughed, “Who do you think you’re going to fool with that?”

Mason stifled a blush, and the Glamour fell quickly. “What? I didn’t want to look like Mowry, but I wanted to be more like a Darkest Night.”

“A Marran,” she corrected, walking over to him with the telltale flicker in her eyes that Mason was beginning to recognize as a sign that she was focusing with her mana sight. “Your mana was so screwed up and garbled that you looked like you had a disease. Let me see your glamour with Mowrytal’s appearance.”

Her certainty and confidence kept Mason off-guard, so he obliged. “How do you even know about my glamour?”

“Well I’m not an amateur, for one. Unlike most of the people in this town, I actually studied magic, among a great many other things. Also you may not have cared to talk to any of us, but the band definitely spent a good deal of time talking about you. The captain said she saw you in the guise of her brother after the fight with that big nasty warrior,” she explained while she made a variety of gestures that made no sense to Mason.

There was mana at her fingertips, and she seemed to be using it like a magnet, pulling his own mana around his body. As she pulled down his hood and stood close to him, moving her hands just a fraction of an inch from his body, he grew nervous, but she seemed to see nothing odd about it at all. Her every movement was confident, and her face betrayed almost no emotion.

“There, do you feel where I pulled your mana? Activate your glamour as if you were Mowry, and let it circulate to those points. It’s not going to be convincing if anyone looks closely, but with any luck, nobody will.”

Mason did as he was told, feeling like a child, and he felt something strange, like the spell sort of clicked into place along the points she had dragged his mana. “How did you do that?” he asked.

“Well, your glamour isn’t a spell, so it’s pretty vulnerable in general. It’s like your mana just followed Mowry’s memory- you were mimicking him, basically. So when you tried to mess with that yourself, you just jumbled up the flow,” she stepped back and smiled for the first time since she had shown up, admiring her work. “So I gave your mana a new path to follow that isn’t too far off from what Mowry’s own pattern, but was just different enough that nobody should feel like they recognize you.”

“Are you going to call me an idiot if I say I have no idea what that means? I can see and feel the mana flowing, but I don’t really understand how one of you would identify someone by that flow,” Mason admitted sheepishly.

She actually looked shocked, “Of course I’m not going to call you an idiot. I’m surprised your mana flows properly at all, if the stories are true about you. I’d say you’re doing fairly well.”

The compliment made Mason blush, and he had a sudden urge to turn away before he remembered that she couldn’t actually see what he looked like, and might not be able to realize he was blushing. “Well, thanks, I guess?”

She nodded and looked to say something, but the sound of the kettle whistling caught her attention. “Oh great! Have you had any of our tea before?” she asked, moving swiftly around the room to prepare their cups.

“Um, no,” he admitted. “Hey, can I be honest and admit I’m a bit of an asshole?”

She stopped what she was doing and looked at him with what looked like a bit of subtle curiosity on her typically reserved face, “That’s a strange thing to admit, but if it makes you feel better, I guess.”

“No, wait,” he realized the misunderstanding and nervously expounded, “I meant, I feel like an asshole because I don’t know your name and you’re supposed to be escorting me and now you’re making me tea and teaching me more about mana than honestly anyone other than Shaywise since she had to explain to me that you guys can’t see light.”

“Oh, that. I am Faynel, daughter of Leenel. You met her, if you forgot that too,” she handed him a mug and sat down on the couch. “And if you’re wondering if she sent me to spy on you on behalf of the council,” she considered for a second, “Okay, I was picked to watch you on behalf of the council. I figured you probably actually wouldn’t puzzle that one out on your own.”

“What are they worried I’m going to do?”

“Lead our enemies into the city, steal the souls of our children, and generally just sow chaos and danger wherever you go,” Faynel explained as if listing the worries that everyone would have in this situation.

“Well, it’s nice to more formally meet you, Faynel,” Mason said, extending the hand that wasn’t holding his tea.

She looked at it warily, “You’re not going to pull my soul from my body with that, right?”

“I need my staff to do that, and it’s still in the other room. But I appreciate the suggestion.”

Her laughter was quick and sudden, and she shifted so she was sitting on her own legs, and looked up at Mason amicably, “I’m not actually worried. I talked to Leornal before coming here and he assured me that you wouldn’t be able to harm me if you tried.”

“I wouldn’t?” Mason asked, tempted to challenge her confidence in the matter.

“I might not be able to take Torysen down in a fair fight, but I could probably evade her long enough to leave her exhausted. I’m not a member of the band for nothing, after all.”

Mason considered this while looking closer at her body. Though she wasn’t taller than him, her legs were still long and thin, and most of her movements did suggest a certain grace and strength. But there was a better way to evaluate her actual abilities, “What’s your agility then?”

Her eyes widened and then narrowed, and she looked conspiratorial, “Very few people in New Marra will talk about the stats so directly. I’m glad they haven’t infected you with that nonsense yet. It’s thirteen, by the way. I’ll let you wonder whether or not that’s my highest stat.”

Mason gawked. Her agility was nearly double his own. Even if their strengths were comparable and all of her other stats were low, she’d likely be able to outmaneuver him endlessly as well.

“Impressed?” she asked.

“Very."

“You’re lucky we’ve been forbidden from training today, or I’d have to demonstrate just how outmatched you really are,” she teased with a hint of fire in her eyes.

Her energy for combat must be infectious, because Mason’s muscles ached with desire to try his hand at fighting Faynel that very moment.