“You’re sure about this?” Faynel asked as she took up her fighting pose opposite Mason.

Leornal looked up from the story he was reading and then looked back to it. No blood meant no problem, and he’d have his turn to spar soon enough. The three of them had been training privately all afternoon, ever since Mason had laid forth the breakfast’s proposal in front of the representatives. It had quickly become clear that the Marrans would have to fight this out among themselves, and Mason had been glad to stay clear of that war.

He knew he was being used as a scapegoat, but it hardly bothered him. The proposal made sense, and he stood by everything he’d said or suggested so far. It was fine then for everyone to blame him as if everything was his idea. If the plans worked out, he’d be thanked for them eventually, and if they didn’t, most likely he’d be dead.

A few words had been pulsing through his mind for days, the same ones that had been burnt into the field when he first arrived in The Trials. Find strength. Guide them. He wanted to do just that, and the more he thought about that first message and what he knew about The Trials, the more baffling it seemed that New Marra had ever thought it could sequester itself away from the troubles of this world.

Find strength. Well, he had, hadn’t he? More than that, he’d found a form of power. People listened to him, and his suggestions and statements now affected the guidance of not just his own people, but three whole races. Sure, he held that position in a sort of de facto authority, but it was a form of authority one way or another. As the sole human yet to arrive, he represented a factor that couldn’t be overlooked. He alone held the weight of the possibilities humanity presented. And as long as the Biord and Marrans believed him, he was a very valuable bargaining chip.

But that power was only a fraction of what he was learning in The Trials. He had Sorynel’s teachings on the Source to digest, he had soul arts to master through the staff, and he even had the mysterious Tree of Memory to investigate. Even without these advantages, if he could keep improving his skills and appeasing the challenges in The Trials, there was no telling what abilities he could unlock.

“I’m sure,” he replied, breaking out of his reverie. He was unarmed against Faynel’s exposed blade, but he felt confident that he could defend himself.

Faynel stepped forward and Mason stepped back, and so their movements began. Without a weapon to defend with, Mason had to move quickly to keep out of her reach. She stabbed forward and he pivoted to the side, she cut horizontally and he moved back out of reach. Every time they sparred they grew more familiar with each other’s movements, but it was clear Mason was quickly catching up to her skill level. It would still be a long time before he surpassed her, but she couldn’t best him quite as easily as before, especially not with his new tricks.

By the time they were both sweating and panting from the constant motion, Mason was falling behind in their steps. Faynel planted and struck at Mason, and he was mid-motion with too little time to avoid her attack. But he was prepared nonetheless. The energy he had been building in his hands spread out in a glimmer of a sigil, and a barrier formed around his palm. It blocked the strike and the force it emitted wrenched Faynel’s arm back.

Mason didn’t hesitate to step forward, punching with his other arm. Faynel broke momentum though and twisted, grabbing his wrist and pulling him. He countered sloppily, and they tangled up, almost falling to the ground before they unwound themselves and backed away laughing.

“So you can activate it on command now, that’s going to be very useful,” she acknowledged as she stretched at a distance.

“He could just carry an actual buckler and achieve the same effect,” Leornal commented, hardly looking up from his book.

Mason focused and tried to form the shield in front of him again, holding it steady. It petered out in less than a few seconds and it took him a few moments to recover his strength. “You’re right. But spellwork has its own uses, and a buckler couldn’t deflect one of the Corrosi’s acid balls.”

“Fair enough.”.

“You’ll just have to find a way to make it useful,” she spun her sword around with a flourish and Mason saw a glint in her eye, “Let’s go again, but grab your sword this time, I’m not holding back.”

Faynel launched herself at Mason with hardly any hesitation, and he barely pulled his sword up in time to knock hers away. He stepped back and moved to counter another attack, and they fell back into their pattern of advances and counters.

This time, Mason felt confident that he could keep up with her pace, and he began picking out her weak-spots. Had she always paused for so long on that step? She caught one of his blows at the very last moment and if he had struck a little differently she might not have been able to guard at all… Yes, he could break her defenses. He began to push harder, varying his direct assault with a series of feints, striking lower or higher than usual.

Then she was gone. He stumbled as his sword crossed through open air, and to his eyes, she was simply gone. But his senses had expanded from the introduction of mana to his system, and he followed those then, turning all the way around and deflecting a strike from directly behind him. The force of the blow almost threw him off his feet, and Faynel abused the opening to land a decisive strike. Even as she laid him out she applauded him for his reflexes, and in short order they were setting up.

~~

While they refined old techniques and demonstrated new skills, the very war that Mason had anticipated was raging outside of the City of the Biord. News was spreading quickly and inaccurately about the proposal to begin enlisting the civilians to help fight, and pre-existing tensions made it simple for Mason to fulfill his role as scapegoat.

“I’m not fighting in no Demon’s army! This is exactly what he’s wanted all along. If only I had buried that knife a little deeper in his gut,” sneered Councilman Manlen’s son- the same that had attacked Mason after his first night in discussion with Sorynel. “He led the Corrosi right to our walls, and now he’s going to enslave those of us that are left, I’m telling you now! Soon enough he’ll be wanting us to fight alongside goblins.”

He sat around a burnt out pit which held the nightly fire for this part of the camp. The thugs he allied with looked sickly and injured, several sporting scars from poorly healed burns or makeshift slings from where they had fallen in their flight from New Marra. Few enough had seen Mason in person, but to hear tales of him, he was the greatest threat to their livelihood.

“He’s got half the council under his thumb. That girl, Faynel? I heard he seduced her and possessed her by binding his soul through dark magic. That’s how come she’s such a brutal fighter. She’s got the strength of the cursed,” insisted one of the thugs she had beaten handily.

“It’s true, I saw her eyes glowing with dark mana and she sent spirits to slow us down so we couldn’t avoid her! I won’t let that happen to me, I won’t!”

The thugs were scared, it’s true, but much of that fear came from the same stories they made up. It was beyond them to reason that they simply were untrained and ineffective. No, they had faced down evil itself, and it was only the strength of that corruption that had so shamed them.

“We should march up to the leaders and demand Demon’s head! I hear Valree’s force almost got him too, but he rallied his Corrosi slaves to defend him and escaped at the last minute. But there’s no way he can protect himself if we all agree he’s too dangerous, right? Then we can take this damn city and live in peace. I hear there’s food and mana as rich as a mine down below us.”

“What, really? Can you sense it?” asked one of the younger girls. “What if we just start digging? Maybe we can find a source of mana and we can start our own city!”

A couple of the boys looked nervously at each other and one chimed in, “We’re tough, but what if the Demon enslaves all of our families and sends them against us? No way, we can’t run. We need to get the council to declare war on the Demon, and the Biord too! I’m not gonna trust those things if they’re making us sit out in the open waiting to get attacked.”

Everyone nodded sagely at that. Of course anyone who wasn’t willing to hand them everything they wanted had to be an enemy. Sending the Defense Forces and Roving Bands to wipe them out was the only safe thing to do.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in camp, the adults were making a very similar amount of sense.

“You will not send my children to fight, Leenel! My son was almost killed by the Demon himself in the city streets, and now you want me to send him to battle the Corrosi on the word of that monster?” shouted Manlen.

“You are letting fear cloud your judgment, Councilman. We all know what really happened that night with your son, and considering the power Mason holds in our current negotiations, you are lucky he has not chosen to bring up either of the attacks on his life that somehow are both conspicuously linked to you.” Her tone and expression made her seem every bit a warrior as her daughter or her mother.

“I-but, you have no evi-”

“Be silent, Councilman. Does your family not lack enough honor without you throwing deceit on top of treachery?” Eldran asked from where he sat at the corner of the tent, a handful of small fruits in hand. He looked ready to throw them. “Your crime aside, I must say I too am hesitant to begin arming civilians. Would we want ones such as his son mixed up with our more valuable fighters? They may lose their lives over a sack of grain.” He shot Manlen a look as the councilman moved to argue. “Further, though I will gladly honor my word and offer some of my family’s secrets to help strengthen our alliance, I do not wish to be assigned a place on the battlefield by the whim of another. If I see a need for my whip, I would like to use it where I may.”

Hoatner, one of the council-members who had sided with Mason at his original trial, raised a hand quietly, and spoke when Leenel nodded in encouragement, “One way or another, I think we’ve learned clearly that we lack the strength to properly defend ourselves. I’ve seen what’s available to us in the Biord city and it’s not enough, but any deeper they say there are more unknown enemies awaiting us. If you’re all so opposed to us enlisting fighters, what exactly is your plan?”

“If I weren’t older than most of your parents, I’d be the first one to take up a sword to defend the city,” claimed the oldest of the council-members, Solvar. “As is, I might not have much a say in who does or doesn’t fight, but I’d say you’re all damned fools if you’d rather we just roll over and die. I don’t see much comfort and safety in hiding ten-to-a-room in those tunnels, so if learning a few spells and some swordplay gives us a chance to have something better, why shouldn’t we try?”

Manlen looked ready to explode, and he spat as he stood and shouted over the table, “If you’re all so ready to throw yourselves into battle then be my guest! You can’t make the rest of us fight. That damned Demon has hoodwinked you into his bloody-minded ways, but I remember civilization! Society! We can move into the Biord city and dig our own damn tunnels if we need. We were already going to mine for mana, why not for shelter? If we block out the surface entrances who will ever find us down there? And if the Biord don’t like that then I say we take the fight to-”

The heavy man silenced himself for once when he saw the looks he was receiving. He sat back on a chair and it creaked under his weight, and continued shifting noisily under him as he huffed and glared around him. At the least, he knew nobody was on his side about offending the Biord, but he couldn’t see why. Didn’t they understand that sacrifices had to be made to defend the civilized races?

“Is it possible that you’re too fat to fight, and afraid we’ll use you as bait if we ever confront the Corrosi again?” Hoatner jabbed.

Leenel put a hand on the man’s shoulder and with the slightest bit of strength kept him seated in his chair, “There’s no need for insults, this is a serious issue we are discussing and it is not unusual for us to have differing opinions. That said, Hoatner brings up a good point. What other option do we have?”

“Ah, yes. We’re left with no option but to arm our children, our wives, and our fat politicians. Such a bright day for the Marran race. Next you’ll suggest we kill our firstborn for some more powerful spells.”

All eyes turned to the remaining council-member, Gornan. He had hardly said a word since the evacuation of New Marra, but this sudden dark turn was unexpected. His family, passed down through the name Gor’, was a respected one, albeit without the reputation of the family El’.

“Gornan? Do you have something more constructive to add or were you just sulking? We’ve respected your silence since the attack because we know what you lost-” started Solvar.

“It’s not about what I’ve lost you shrivelled old man. It’s about what the Councilwoman,” he somehow made the word sound insulting, “is suggesting we give up. Manlen is right. Let’s cut the head off this Demon, tell those fucking birds to submit or die, and we’ll go underground until we’ve got a better plan. I’m not going to put swords in the hands of children just to send them off to get killed.”

“No, you just want to hide underground, kill the representative of one race, and enslave the rest of our allies in their own homes. I never thought I’d see the day the family Gor’ was run by a coward!” Hoatner drew his blade and advanced on Gornan, but once he had closed half the distance he paused awkwardly. Gornan remained seated, arms crossed tightly.

Even Manlen didn’t seem to want to speak up in Gornan’s defense, despite the close alignment of their goals.

Eldran broke the silence, “This is a matter that should be brought to the people. We need more fighters, but if we just start arming Marran’s who either don’t know how, or don’t want to fight, we’re going to end up with a people sooner willing to turn on one another than to march against a foe. But I think I might repeat Captain Torysen’s words to Captain Coltren- anyone who threatens violence against one of our allies will be cut down. I have dedicated my time here today to debate what the right thing to do is, not which of the worst things we are willing to tolerate.”

Several people made exasperated noises around the room, but nobody moved or spoke immediately. The thinly veiled violence had made its impression upon all of them.

~~

Mason, Leornal, and Faynel all sat on his bed eating and chatting casually about their training. Not one of them had walked away without revealing their share of surprises, and consequently each of them had won and lost enough bouts to feel content and challenged in equal measure.

“Do you think we’ll be ready to lift the seals in three days, really? With what we discussed this morning, I’m a little worried there’s going to be some pretty high tensions. Maybe we should have been less hasty,” Mason fretted, trying to imagine how he would have responded on Earth if his governor had announced that everyone needed to drill for war. He’d probably have tried to dodge the draft.

Faynel seemed unconcerned, “After everything that’s happened in the last week? For all we know, the Corrosi are matching further south as we speak. We have to be ready for anything, and I think people will see that. Most likely, they’ll be begging to fight, especially if Eldran really does start handing out magic spells.”

“I think you’re being optimistic, Faynel,” Leornal said, “I remember the first time you tried to attack someone that wasn’t attacking you first. You looked ready to wet yourself. New Marra was a soft city full of soft people. I don’t think they’ll be able to change that overnight.”

“You’re a cynic, and I was a little nervous but I fought anyways! I almost beat Senkar, too.”

“He was going easy on you.”

“He was slow.”

Mason grinned as they fought about each other’s early prowess. Nobody was really ready for what The Trials required of them, it seemed. But all he’d seen were people who had gone beyond expectations to make something of themselves, and he could admit to being optimistic to a fault but… he thought the Marrans might be able to pull it together.

At least, he had to hope so. Because if beings made of pure magic couldn’t rally to defend themselves properly, he would have a lot to worry about when the human race was plopped right in the middle of the inevitable war.

As they mused on the question of their future, Torysen barged through the door of the training room looking harried. Two Biord guards rushed around her and tried to push her back and out of the room, shouting that Bazy had ordered that nobody could be allowed to interrupt Mason without her direct consent, but the powerful Captain ignored them.

She sighted down Mason and fixed him a stare that sent chills down his spine and then asked simply, “Mason, can I have a word?”