The entire area dissolved into madness as each of the eight Roving Band members drew their weapons and began warding off attackers. Mason drew on his Mana Sight now and could identify the swarm by their weapons. Each of them carried a club or a dagger, but they all glistened with mana reinforcement.

“Bomb!” someone shouted, and Mason saw an orb of mana arc into the sky and into the center of the band. He didn’t waste a moment rushing away from it.

His escape was blocked by a small, green creature with a club half the size of it, and Mason slashed out quickly with his sword to try to pass it by. To his surprise, the creature was nimble, and batted back his cuts.

Mason pressed on, and a blast of bright energy illuminated the area. Through washed out vision he saw nearly a dozen of the green creatures, and each of his friends engaged. He blinked as the area grew dark once more, and stepped back hesitantly while his vision returned. The creature in front of him was still pressing forward with the club, so he knocked it aside and tried to kick forward with his foot.

Kicking worked, and the beast stumbled back, but before Mason could pull his foot back another of them had moved in and slashed at it. He hissed at the pain but just lashed forward with his blade, returning his injury with a cut on the second creature’s shoulder.

His mind worked in overtime as Focus came on, and he realized that if he had been able to see nearly a dozen of these creatures, there could be double or more that number surrounding them. This was a full ambush.

Arrows flew and he saw several meet their marks, and off to the side he saw Torysen causing a swath of destruction with her impressive blade and powerful force spells. Nearer to him, Faynel was running in between the creatures, stabbing and slashing at them from their weaker sides and sending many of them into a chattering frenzy.

The noise of the battle was deafening. His own band was shouting and grunting from effort while the beasts shouted and hollered for their own fun. Mason kept attacking, and managed to force back two more clubbers and stab a third right through the chest- almost on accident.

He saw more arrows fly, and wanted to cheer at their effectiveness, but then a sharp pain wrenched his shoulder back. “Slings!” he shouted, noticing a goblin in the trees aiming him down. A second later it fell back from its branch, gurgling from the shaft through its throat.

Another pain made Mason spin as something cut at his leg, but by the time he had finished the revolution Faynel had removed that attacker’s head. Pivoting back, Mason deflected another club, received a hit from a second, and kicked and slashed at both of them. His attack had been so ferocious that the two scattered back, but even as they ran, Mason saw more approaching.

He took a deep breath and reinforced Focus, and with the moment of hesitation between melees, he put his attention on his Force Rune. He had used it once that night to good effect…

It took a great deal less time to cast, and he freed the force energy ahead of him, pushing several of the goblins onto their butts or backs. Faynel and the swordsman he didn’t know well fell upon the downed brutes and began finishing them off before they could recover.

Another stone flew past Mason’s head and he ducked around a tree to break the line of sight. A goblin had been cowering behind it, disarmed, so Mason kicked it in the face, chasing it away. He leaned back against the tree and took a deep breath. Swearing internally, he focused on the rune again and prepared it for casting.

He stepped out from behind the tree and felt the energy building up within him. Three casts today- that was pretty damn good, he figured. He held the energy as his eyes darted over the battlefield, looking for somewhere to aim. Finally he found a stretch of newly engaged goblins that he could strike at without hitting any of his allies. He put his hands in front of him and tried to pour the energy in that direction.

Then a club struck him in the back and he cried out as the force energy within him ran amok. Rather than projecting outward, it erupted like a cluster bomb all around him, and he was battered by it. The force threw him back and forth and he felt his arms twisting around him, then finally was shoved into the tree where he slumped awkwardly to the forest floor.

Both Faynel and Leornal were upon him in seconds, clearing a space around him as he tried to regain his bearings. He had fucked up, but he wasn’t going to go down pathetically again. His body ached all over, and he felt a strange disconnect between his mind and his mana, but he righted himself on the ground and picked up his sword from where it had fallen.

He was shaky, but he was standing. He took a step forward and chopped down on a distracted goblin, not quite cleaving its skull but disabling it nonetheless. He almost faltered with his next step as he engaged a clubber, but with each passing moment he felt adrenaline pushing him through the pain.

That’s right. He was growing. He was stronger now. A Demon doesn’t fall.

One of the archers had though. When the battle was finally won, everyone had sustained heavy wounds, and an archer that Mason had only talked to twice before had died from multiple stab wounds. Many of the group expressed their remorse, and even Torysen’s eyes seemed to glisten a bit.

“Thank you,” Mason whispered as he helped the swordsman lift the body on a makeshift stretcher.

Mason received several solemn but appreciative nods when he volunteered to help, and the swordsman even struck up a conversation as they resumed their march. They hadn’t done anything for the goblin bodies save loot them for what little they carried.

“He volunteered for this mission, you know.”

Mason looked across the stretcher, “You all know a great deal more of what’s going on than I do. But I’m grateful. Really. This is what my people call above and beyond.”

The swordsman nodded, “I don’t know if helping you is the right thing, but I’ve heard Leornal talk about what you were like in the underground, and I’ve seen you sparring. You’re honorable. I see no reason you should be a martyr.”

They were talking quietly, but still they were loud enough for several people to hear them. Mason saw Leornal shift uncomfortably at mention of his name.

“I don’t get many compliments like that, so thank you. Um, would you tell me your name?” Mason asked sheepishly.

“Senkar. No real relation,” he gestured to the captain.

Though Mason didn’t completely understand it, he recognized that names were passed down in pieces somehow to children. This seemed like the wrong time to ask about it though.

He glanced over at the other archer whose name he didn’t know. He’d have to get that at some point. It mattered now that it was clear these people were willing to risk their lives for his safety.

Every bit of Mason’s body ached, and it felt as if the wounds ran even as deep as that soul place within him from which his mana came. His shoulder especially hurt from the force of the sling, but he felt lucky that despite some blood loss and a great deal of bruising, he walked out of a pretty dangerous fight.

The whole party was morose. Worse, they were on edge. Nobody had said it, but an organized attack like that so close to the city, and well within Roving territory was unusual. Goblins were known for gathering into tribes, but how had a tribe of that size gone unnoticed?

Whatever mysteries lurked, they were not enough to force a deviation from the plan. The group walked on for some time, gradually drifting off to the east where the cliffs began to encroach on the forest.

Their destination turned out to be a long structure behind dense, staged foliage. It was wooden at its core, but reinforced with the Marran tar that Mason had grown to despise the sight of. From a distance, it was barely visible, but up close it was impressively large for an outpost.

Torysen ordered that the place be surrounded before anyone could enter it. They set down the archer on a stretcher, and the remaining formed up around the building and began to pour mana into it. Sentir made some unusual movements that Mason had learned to ascribe to a form of magic, and then they waited.

Some time passed, and then Sentir announced conclusively, “It is safe.”

Torysen then stepped up to the black tar, and even without Mana Sight intentionally activated, Mason could see flashes from where she undid some sort of enchantment or barrier. Then the archer Mason couldn’t identify stepped forward, and together the two of them moved a section of the tar away from an entrance.

Senkar did something to the fallen archer’s body, and covered it with some uprooted shrubs.

Even Faynel seemed reserved. She met Mason’s look for a brief moment and then looked down, right before the group filed into the shelter.

The shelter itself was cozy, albeit extremely dark. Leornal quickly went over to a pile of firewood and began to spark a fire, sprinkling a dusting of mana into it so that it would provide better vision to the Darkest Night as well. There was a small food preparation area in one corner, a small table in another, but the majority of the building was taken up by rows of beds, or small storage chests.

Clearly this shelter was not meant for any sort of luxury.

Several people broke into small groups and talked quietly amongst themselves. Mason saw them gesturing, sometimes at him, sometimes outside, and oftentimes in the direction of their fallen comrade as they talked. He felt like he was intruding, and he also felt guilty in a way he hadn’t experienced over many things in this world.

The archer had died really only for one single reason. Because he was trying to protect Mason. Yet Mason didn’t even know his name.

Since no orders were forthcoming, and nobody was coming to talk to Mason, he picked a cot far away from where most of the others were mingling and laid down. As he got settled, he saw Leornal off to the side, looking intensely at a small orb, consumed with a novel. The thin shift of a blanket didn’t do much to warm him, but he knew that with a fire burning and seven bodies it wouldn’t be long until this well-insulated building was balmy.

Sleep didn’t seem to have any interest in Mason, even though he was fairly comfortable and his body was exhausted, and his eyes were closed tightly. He laid there and tried to not hear anyone speaking. Even his own thoughts seemed quiet.

A dull insistence from within made him vaguely aware that either Mowry or Geralt wanted his attention, but he was too tired to care, and definitely too tired to fight with them. Warmth built around him like a cocoon, and the noises of the fire and the quiet conversations blurred into static in his ears.

“Mason,” Mowrytal said quietly into the sleeping boy’s mind.

In the soulscape, Mason was cradled by the illusion of a warm cloud. Mowry’s voice dug into him, but his fatigue staved it off.

“We need to talk, Mason.”

He had done so much talking and thinking and training lately. Tomorrow was likely to be another battle, or more training. This was a time for sleep. He didn’t need to talk while he slept.

“Let me do it,” Geralt growled. He pressed a hand against Mason and a surge of energy charged through the boy even in his soul.

Mason woke with a start- only in this soul place- and swore as he looked at the two standing over him. “What?” he demanded. “Let me sleep.”

“No, boy. There are matters to discuss. Mowrytal believes that you are in a great deal more danger than your band realizes, and we need to discuss your abilities before you take too many more knife wounds.”

Rolling out of the cloud, Mason rose to his feet and took a deep breath. At least, it felt like one. This place that wasn’t a place seemed to behave oddly. “My abilities?”

Mowry stepped forward, “You might have been gravely injured by the backlash of that last spell if I hadn’t pushed out the energy on your behalf, Mason.”

That got his attention, “You did that?”

“You think you managed to save yourself? Your magic is unstable. Your casting is amateurish. You have no awareness of the battlefield!”

Mowry put out a hand to silence Geralt, “You should see something.”

With a gesture, Mason’s attention was drawn to the distance of the soulscape. There was a space which might have been a wall, off to the side of the trickling font which Mason seemed to derive his mana from. In that space was the fundamental force rune, but when Mason looked at, his mind went elsewhere.

Suddenly he could picture the tower from Sorynel’s tale. He could see the way the edifice was built to contain that pure and brilliant energy. Ripples of it spread like the tide into the land itself, and the energy carried beyond that region, into and throughout the world on a spiderwebbed matrix of veins.

What he saw honored there was both similar to the rune, yet infinitely more complex. He had the awareness that the fundamental rune wasn’t all encompassing of the powers of force, but more like a root. His mind reeled at the possibilities. He could…

A hand on his shoulder pulled him so that he turned away from the rune, and now he saw Mowry and Geralt looking down on him. What had he been thinking about?

“Faynel explained to you how many mages cast spells. They create a spell rune, and through it they pour their mana until it transforms into the desired magical effect. Do you notice anything odd about your rune?”

Mason looked back at it and his eyes widened. He saw the snowy mountain peak and the way the force shook the air, turning flakes of snow sideways or upwards, pressing them away from one another or crushing them together. The force moved them and changed them. How close was that power to almost any other power?

Again he was turned away, and Mowry shook his head. But Geralt got to the point, “You’re not supposed to seal the rune into the fucking wall of your own soul!”

Mason blinked. He wasn’t what? “I just cast the spell the way Mowry showed me.”

Mowry’s head continued to shake slowly side to side, “You hold the image of the rune before you, not within you. It’s not unheard of for a great Source Magister to imbue themselves with the runes. That may very well be why Sorynel is able to produce such terrifying power herself.”

“But you’re not a great anything and you sure as hell weren’t trained to do this.”

“We don’t even know how it’s been done.”

“So… what does that mean?” Mason was lost, and his exhaustion wasn’t helping. He felt a strange compulsion to look at the rune, to study it.

“You have to be careful if you are going to continue using this rune. Casting a spell can be dangerous if you lose control of the energy. But this rune is inside of you. Any energy you create with it will also come from inside of you. If you lose control…”

“Then I have a bunch of energy inside of me ready to rip me apart, got it.” Mason pinched the bridge of his nose and tried not to scream. He felt certain if he did, the scream would pierce through to his real world body and wake the whole band.

Mowry looked uncomfortable at the signs of the boy’s distress. “We want you to survive. We’ve discussed it at length. Whatever enemies you are finding for yourself, do not count us among them. It may be possible to turn these unusual circumstances into a gift, with our help.”

“Oh really?” Mason rolled his eyes. He could see plainly that Geralt was less certain about his role in this. “How do you plan to do that?”

“We have not solved that problem yet.”

Geralt stomped away and began to fade from sight as he called back, “But we’re working on it. In the meantime, check your damn status when you wake up. We see all your notifications in here, and you’re letting some pretty important things fall by the wayside.”