Zahn paused in his defense, holding up his empty hand. Ethan held back, stepping to the side as he recognized the plea.

“What’s up?” Panting to get his breath back, the Warlock stepped lightly around his opponent during their match.

Zahn waved his wooden training sword at him as he panted for breath. “So, why do we care so much about how we use these things? I can’t get sword experience from stopping your stick with mine.”

Ethan grinned as they paced around one another, “You should probably watch your word choice, but if setting yourself up for banter is the worst thing you say you’re pretty bland.”

The Custom extended a finger on his free hand, “You know what I mean. I can get the blunted axe or wooden hammer, but how is my skillset going to know that I’m training to use a long blade when we’re dabbling with sticks.”

“Well for one,” his partner shifted his weight and slid to the side, swinging his own weapon across his body. “They’re not sticks, they’re escrima.”

Zahn rolled his eyes as he lifted his own stick to deflect the strike. “Semantics, you aren’t answering the question. How effective is not using the weapon types supposed to be? These things even hit like shit.”

The blond fighter darted in, striking the tip of his pole hard on the other’s shoulder. “Hardly any excrement here, except maybe your defenses. Are you trying?”

The other Player scowled and rubbed at his sore arm, trying to see if the joint would continue working properly. “Aren’t swords supposed to be slashing weapons anyways?”

He laughed in the lowbie’s face, “And you’re what, immune to sharp points? Just because a weapon is supposed to be used a certain way doesn’t mean your enemy can’t surprise you with it.”

“That reminds me.” Zahn batted the other weapon away from his face and held his own escrima upright in a guard position. “Want to know something I’ve figured out the last few days?” He stopped circling, instead turning in place to track the other man. As he listened to the other fighter’s steps, he sent more mana into each leg in case he needed to dive out of the way. “If I hold it just wrong enough, I can get another skill up too. Or maybe instead, not like I’ve seen both level at once yet.”

“Having another sleepy day?” Ethan led with the jibe as he tried again to stab his student.

Zahn’s control over where the weapon went drastically improved, his light-fingered grip practically spinning the handle as he levered his arm to block and the staves let out a clash. The vibration from the hit rattled his fingertips and hurt like hell, but palming against the grip before bringing his stick about let the lowbie smack the incoming attack aside and rotate his wrist to bring the tool around again.

The blond’s eyes widened as he saw the counterattack, and he ducked low enough to catch Zahn’s foot as the Custom watched him dip and met him with a kick. The Warlock bent in half on the sands, wheezing as he tried to get his breath back. “Lucky. Hit,” came the high-pitched rasp as the higher level tried to regain control.

Improvised Weapons has risen to 9!

Swords has risen to 4!

You have learned: Counterattack!

The lowbie grinned as he blinked the updates away, making a note to examine his new attack more later. If I can even find the fucking thing. I’m just glad my leg was full. As the pair dueled over the last several days, Zahn had been practicing with his internal mana concentrations and where they rested in his body. If the other man’s word was good, his body could withstand any attack from a single tier and took less damage from a second tier, leaving a lack of ranking helpless against him. Once charged with mana, however, he could punch the blond prick hard enough to bruise and even held his own during a grapple.

“Like I said, new trick. Working on it.”

Ethan scowled up at him before twisting his face into another grin. “You’re never kicking me again, asshole. That’s not a trick, and you missed my balls.”

Zahn bobbed his head as he watched his opponent rise to his feet, “Nah, I meant to hit you there. Hard to wind you if I miss your solar plexus, and all that.” Presenting his stick once more, the lowbie adjusted his partial grip and tried to relax.

The Warlock studied his pupil for a long moment, his eyes flicking from the weapon to his stance. Stepping closer and shifting his feet wider, the Gladiator bent low to hold the escrima laterally between them. “Go.”

The Custom leaned back, trying to keep out of range as the faster fighter disappeared to become a blur of distorted shadow before impact. His available light all but disappeared as the incoming weapon reappeared overhead with its owner slowing down enough to be seen to the right. Zahn pivoted at his hip to lean left and kick out, trying to take the ‘lock under his ribs again.

-84 Health. Gladiator Ethan Warlock used Stab.

Before the lowbie could react, the incoming stick from above vanished and pain exploded through his leg. He collapsed screaming, eyes squeezed shut and body curling into the fetal position. Seconds stretched into hours as the agony coming from his leg refused to abate, and the pressure built its way up his thigh to grip his belly with ice.

Swirling in his private world of pain, Zahn was oblivious to the ring as Ethan straightened up, leaving his escrima in place and taking deep breaths to calm down. Tilting his head back and staring up at the bright blue sky, the Warlock listened to the ongoing wails and tried to refocus himself on his job. With the amount of practice he’d been getting against the lowbie his own fighting prowess had taken a hit, but at very least going through the basics with a student had let him refine his own strike patterns. Breaking eye contact with the sun, the caster looked back down at the source of incoherent cries and considered his next steps.

The endless scream began to draw attention from the other groups, with Four shouting that he should just kill the thing and end everyone’s suffering. Ethan waved a middle finger back at them before stepping in and retaking his weapon. The haft wiggled from his victim’s pulse and standing close required delicacy to avoid the blood pool, but once he had a solid grip the Player heaved.

With a sucking sound the wooden pole came free, dragging shards of bone out the hole as Ethan withdrew his escrima from Zahn’s leg and grimaced at the sight. More blood flowed, pumping out the circular gap through the fallen man’s femur and spilling out each side to stain the sand around him. As he pulled the weapon free the Custom’s everlasting wail warbled before he fell silent gagging on his own vomit.

Sighing at the sky again, the Warlock gestured at his opponent with a sandy bloody stick. “Shaman?” Without hearing an answer a green and yellow light bubbled up from below and wrapped around the Player choking on himself. Small mounds of color rose and fell like tiny waves before the spell blossomed beneath its target and rose to cover him like a magical hill. Observing the effects with Mana Sight, the ‘lock watched silently as the shattered bone’s shards were slowly pulled back into place and fused with the solid halves giving off more green than yellow light each time.

“Nice one,” came an unwelcome voice from behind. “What’d you do to the little shit?”

Turning to face Burnato, Ethan let his face drop into his normal sneer. “I stopped playing around, the kid can’t take getting stabbed. Why the fuck are you bothering me, douchenugget?”

“Watch it,” the bigger Gladiator glared down at him. “Just because we both have quests from the master around this trash doesn’t mean you’re clear, fuckhead. The day that lil’ cunt dies for good, you’re going right back in the rings. My boys are here to stay.” With the Fifth Position fighter’s promise still hanging in the air he turned and left with a smile.

“Fucker,” growled Ethan under his breath. Looking back at the sleeping lowbie, he slumped as he let out another sigh. “You could at least take the hit.”

* * * * *

Zahn woke up in a strange place and immediately panicked, sending mana all through his body as he tried to be ready for action. The ceiling was brown and grey, darkening over the middle and… it’s the commons. Taking deep breaths as he realized he was in fact laying on a couch, the Custom tried to understand what happened last. He was fighting against Ethan, he’d just tried using his new fighting style, he’d kicked out and… his memories stopped and his mind shied away from whatever happened next. Trying to remember the events felt like gripping a soap bubble, something slippery and delicate that kept slipping around his fingers. Shaking his head at the mess of memories, the lowbie sat up and tried to find his partner.

Ethan wasn’t in the room, and the softly bubbling iron pot on the coals of the center hearth told him dinner was already started. Glancing at his HUD clock he saw it was only halfway through the afternoon’s drills and for whatever reason he didn’t need to participate.

Zahn heaved himself to his feet, enjoying the momentum carrying him forward from the jump. He hadn’t been bouncing out of bed in well over a decade, and certainly never felt as fresh and solid as he did now. The weeks of running and dreadful weight training had finally started to pay off, and his body felt less like hauling around sacks than it had for years. As the lowbie stalked from couch to couch he enjoyed the feel of pull and counter pull in each limb - until he bent in half and felt his gut squishing around.

“Fuck.” Straightening up and brushing himself off, he gave up the goofing around and found a hole in his pants. He didn’t remember brushing against anything sharp but the tear at his thigh needed to be stitched before he’d be decent in public again. “What the damn?”

Zahn rolled his neck as he crossed the room, fetching a thread spool from the cabinet on the wall. He scrounged through two other drawers before finding a needle by the point and using its mount in his finger to thread the eye. “I wouldn’t be holding this thing steady in the real world,” he murmured to himself as his improved body held perfectly still. “Even without the pin. Maybe something about trembling, or control?” Asking the usual nobody, he crossed back to the hearth and shucked off his pants to fix them.

Running a thread around the hole gave his mind room to run, and each time he tried to replay what happened he found the same blank wall stopping him. Overhead, to the side, lean, kick, pain? What did I fuckin’ miss? The same events played over and over as he stitched the same inch of tear into a knot. Seeing his butchered work he huffed a sigh and tossed it away, opting to try his Tome instead.

Summoning the magic book and opening it to the right page, he flipped the drawn pages until he reached the part of chapter three he’d been focusing on lately. The information about Chaos was simple enough, even as it described the place and people as a single object. He turned inked page after page as he read over the first paragraphs and worked down to the change of topic to the Heavens. His furious page flipping started to bring a smoke smell to him, and only when his partially mended pants sparked a flame did he realize where he’d tossed the clothing.

Jumping up and slapping at the trousers he plucked them from their bed of coals and tried to brush away the soot, successfully smearing the black mess all over the brown outerwear. His threadwork had completely burned through, leaving the slightly charred hole he’d been trying to fix before even wider. Zahn grumbled at himself, trying to find someone to blame and once again seeing he was the only one around. He grabbed for the needle to pick up where he left off and learned how hot a small metal pin can be without turning red.

“Fuuuuuuck!” Throwing the pants armed with a burning needle across the room, the lowbie nursed his singed fingertips and blew on them as if it would help. Surprisingly, he found small pink and orange clouds leaving his mouth with each pant, and as they fire mana touched his new heat source more of the energy bled away, until the freely hovering cloud of mana took on the image of a spark in its center. With his fingers cooled, the Custom forgot his panic and stared at his little accidental creation as the little blob of fire energy and heat wobbled its way towards the hot air above the hearth. Staring at the mass left him in a calm trance, as if whatever bothered him moments ago could be swept away and vanish into ash and soot.

He stood gawping at the invisible magic cloud long enough to be shocked when the mana found its hot air and rose, scattering from a multicolored cloud into a thin mist and losing its heat spark entirely. Zahn blinked dry eyes at his dissipating discovery and tried to parse what about it kept him fascinated. Rubbing his face brought back his finger’s pain immediately and with a bark he remembered. “Fire magic can take away heat. Fire can move heat around. Can I take someone’s body heat?”

The idea excited him, and he wanted to write it down before he remembered he hadn’t seen a damned pen since arriving. Scowling at his own realization Zahn began to pace around the hearth, trying to find a way to write down his new knowledge. Anything would do, as long as he could carry it with him and check when he needed to reference --

He blinked, slowing to a stop and glancing at his often-neglected map in the corner of his HUD. “Right.” Plucking the wooden-backed square of parchment from midair, he flopped back onto the nearest couch and scrolled his navigator to the north. After passing an unknowable amount of land, he halted the canvas and began to sketch.

First he drew a mock-up of his finger, trying to highlight an area labeled as a burn. Following the finger he attempted to draw moving clouds, only to smear the other lines and make a mess. Drawing has risen to 4! Dismissing the encouragement, he erased the useless lines and tried to sketch out the idea again. A dozen ruined drafts and another skill up alert later, he changed tactics and filled the region with ink. Trying to erase the right parts was just as difficult as trying to fill them in, and each time he lifted his hand he expected to find ink blotted all up his arm only to remember the map was magic. Bent over the square so long, he uncurled with a groan before taking another look at his work from a distance.

In the middle of nowhere sat a shapeless blob of shadow, slightly less dramatic as he considered the multitude of lines arcing away from the angrily scribbled mess. Within the darkness however, lay a sketch of clouds of light taking something shining away from a hill as swirling fog danced in the background. “Close enough.”

Wanting to toss the square back into oblivion he kept enough presence of mind to write in the context about Fire Mana being able to leech heat directly and his own observations of the resulting fragile cloud. After his one-or-two-sentence notes became a paragraph that matched the dark mass in size, he chose the Fuck It option and tossed the map back into his HUD as completed.

Standing and stretching, he saw almost an hour had passed since his nap ended and he still hadn’t fixed his pants. Finding them near his door he begrudgingly sat back on his couch to try and mend the damn thing again, pinching the layers over one another to hold this time.

Running the needle over in a loop he found his mind wandering again, this time to his least favorite project. Well, only project really. Until I crack this fucking form we can’t do much else. Each night since they began their experiment Ethan had lent Zahn his private map, scrolled to the specific drawing that the lowbie consistently tried to mimic. After he’d slept from ‘sleepy day’ where he’d taken more bruises than ever before, he’d tried to make sense of the torso-sized stone slab they were trying to Shape. He’d spun the thing and tried looking from each angle, but the Custom just couldn’t make sense of what the hell he’d been doing. Trying to follow the shape was impossible, looking nothing like the original and certainly nothing close to the simple gateway they needed to end with. He’d reset the image with Shape, smoothing the surface back down to flat in order to begin again.

Since that night he’d made definite progress and felt like he was close to finding something. The shapes repeated themselves and their angles wrapped around one another, but he was confident between the Tome of Magic and his own intelligence he could make sense of it. Comparing the stone image to his inked book, Zahn tried to find one of the many symbols that hid a complete rune needed to use the spellform. He knew from seeing a complete fire trap and from watching live spells be cast that even the simplest Shift spell hid over a dozen runes under its curve. It was while turning from one to the other he found something, but didn’t know what it meant for their work.

Pulling his Grimoire closer, he touched the shape again and marveled at the complexity hidden in his simple paperback book. The Magi text layered behind the Elvish words matched the ideas, if not perfect sentence structure within the language. The biggest difference he could see was a break in the almost cursive lines of Magi, the same break around the same symbol each time in the third chapter. When he tried to smooth the page and see it more clearly, his singed fingertip pressed against the corner of the strange triangle, and he shape moved.

He watched with a growing smile as the Magi rune for Chaos spun in place, the nine lines of its edges overlapping and crossing one another freely as the three dimensional drawing slowly lost momentum. “Chaos,” he whispered as he tapped the moving symbol and felt something change. The warm air of their commons felt cool, as if a winter breeze rushed past a broken window. The comforting warm red light of the coals dimmed, stretching out the shadows as they danced and flickered in the air. The hairs on his arms and neck rose, gooseflesh covering his skin as the formerly warm room began to feel decidedly hostile. Zahn spun in his seat, kicking his partially fixed pants aside once again as he tried to find the source of his new discomfort.

Panning the room and finding his normal commons, the lowbie finally settled back down in place and looked into the Tome again. The rune for Chaos no longer spun, but he could clearly see it over the Elvish word for the same and could even find each other rune easily. The word Chaos was used over and over in the chapter, and each time it came up the smooth joined lines would break to display the rune apart only to form another set of lines afterwards. Now that he knew what to look for, the symbols for Chaos were obvious and practically jumped out of the pages at him.

Setting his Grimoire aside, Zahn blinked up at the sooty ceiling and tried to keep his vision straight. Each time he thought he saw the outline of a square or triangle in the lines of the roof he’d see an instant of the same flipping shape, lasting just long enough for him to realize he wasn’t seeing it at all. “Well that’s going to get annoying fast.”

Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, the Custom tried to center himself on the task at hand as he lifted the thin tablet into his lap. Opening his eyes again, he found the entire spellform to be made of hundreds of the Chaos rune, repeated indefinitely in a long complex loop that wrapped around itself more than once.

Ethan opened the double doors in time to hear the clash of shattering stone, reflixively ducking back out to the arena. He stood and listened at the partially opened doors for a minute, noting with the broken seal of the doorway he could clearly make out the curses Zahn kept spouting and decided the noob needed more words than ‘fuck.’ Shaking himself and trying to regain his solid composure the Warlock opened both doors fully and kicked the broken slab of stone out of his way.

“Well.” Zahn looked up at him under his brow and grunted in reply. “Looks like you broke something. Where are your pants?” The blond stepped over the rubble and carefully closed the double doors, sealing out any listeners. “Something go wrong with the spellform?”

Zahn dropped his head back into his hands, “No.” Rubbing at his face he didn’t see Ethan rescuing a single fragment of the stone and pocketing it, “I figured out what was already wrong though.” He stood, dragging his hands away from his face to deal with life. “It’s a lot simpler than we thought, and I really need to use your book for it.”

The other Player cocked an eyebrow, “Not like this you can’t. You’ll need to beg the Shaman for another slab, maybe tell him you went nuts with Sever?”

The lowbie waved his question away, “No, it’s irrelevant. Shape fixes it, doesn’t matter. I know what we did wrong, and I need the source to see it. I can do this,” he promised as he tried to stare convincingly into Ethan’s eyes and remembered Mind Battle.

The Warlock looked back skeptically as his partner looked everywhere but him. “You’re not getting my Grimoire tonight. Probably ever, but who knows. First and foremost, I’m starving, you’re naked.”

Zahn growled at him, gesturing with a balled fist at his own book. “Look I know we can do this, I just need a little of yours and a little of mine and this shit can work. I learned something like a minute ago, and now that I can see the Chaos rune it’ll be a snap.”

Ethan eyed him as he approached the dinner pot, keeping the hearth between them. “You said you’ve learned the ‘Chaos rune’ then? What’s it look like?”

The Custom dropped back onto his couch, tossing a hand in frustration. “It’s stupid. Straight lines, triangles and squares. Once I spun the fuckin’ things they became obvious, and I keep seeing the stupid things! Seriously, one’s right there. No, wait. There. No. Fuck!”

The blond nodded as he watched, stirring their dinner without expression. “Well. You’re not doing it tonight, and you’re not doing anything until that’s fixed.” The other Player grouched but nodded, staring at his new gravel with a grudge. “And before even that,” Zahn looked up at him with a question in his eyes, “seriously, where are your pants?”