— Aster —

I was being led to start my training. I was not in any shape to do it, even needing help through the halls. Walking through the halls with Instruction I realized all the halls were the same smooth, white walls, each hall ended in a cross intersection with two plain wood doors on each side. Instructor took me on a twisting path to our destination. I think we may have made four right turns at some point. I knew there would be no way for me to make my way back.

He ushered me into a large room that smelled of dirt, contained a straw dummy, a mattress, stone walls, and an impatient-looking woman. She wasn’t attractive, yet she wasn’t ugly. The only term I can give for her was nondescript. Someone you wouldn’t look twice at on the street. She had long brown hair tied in a braid, with deep brown eyes that were currently glaring at Instructor. “Took you long enough. So this is my student?” So he isn’t my teacher?

Instructor placed his hand on my shoulder. “Yes. Jane, this is Aster.”

I waved. “Hello.”

Jane paid no attention to me. She was glaring at Instructor. Instructor became visibly flustered under the glare. “Ok. Well, I have the stuff to do. A busiest month after graduation you know.” He quickly left the room slamming the door on the way out.

Jane glared at the door for a few more moments before letting out a long sigh. “Ok. No time to waste, since he was so late. Let’s begin. First how much do you know about skills?”

“That you will be teaching them to me.” I knew next to nothing about skills, or even what they really were. I had always thought they were just levels of knowledge in doing practical things, but the way everyone was talking made me think they meant something else.

It took her a moment to register what I had said. Personally, I think at this point she thought I was an idiot. “So nothing.”

Shrugging, even that action made me wince. “Pretty much, no one has covered this.” I bet it was covered in the classes I couldn’t join. I was tired and wasn’t sure how much of this I would even be able to do.

Shaking her head, she seemed annoyed. “Most places give the basics, but it doesn’t seem like your place did. So now I have to give you a lecture.” She began to pace the room, taking on a lecturing tone.

“Where to begin… Skills are essentially passed down from teacher to student as you might expect. Except, instead of constant training it only takes two days to fully learn the skill, and get the pathway program installed. The first day is the basics. The second is to learn to control yourself.”

“What do you mean, to control me?”

“That will make sense later. Now the basics.” Walking up to a stone wall with a chalkboard on it, she began to draw. “First skills are divided into levels one, two, three, so on, and so forth. You can easily learn a skill without a teacher, but leveling is much slower.” She had drawn three circles on the wall labeling ten, twenty, and thirty. “Now every ten levels in a skill new knowledge is unlocked for that skill. As you are then qualified to learn it. Simply put, you have to master everything every ten levels, then you can continue. Think of it as self-paced training. You will find yourself slowing down closer to the tenth level.” She filled the first circle. “Then a quick surge of levels after crossing that threshold.” Drawing an arrow to demonstrate. “The extra insights will always depend on the level of your teacher. So if you get a level twenty, the minimum level to teach, also considered top human level of skill without mana. The extra insights and benefits will not surpass the teacher’s level. Simply put after you surpass the teacher, you're on your own.”

“So what level are you?”

She ignored the question. “However, if you are taught by, say a level sixty in any skill, you will learn faster and enjoy benefits longer. As you will benefit from their experience. Now, let's start your training. I will show you a skill.” She gestured toward a bag in the corner of the room. “I will be explaining everything I am doing, which will…well you’ll see. Then after you get over the headache, we practice. If you don’t practice right after it is easy to forget.”

“Just like anything else.” Why is she rushing through this?

She smiled. “Yes exactly. Now as a side note. Yes, it is true you cannot use this method to go to other guilds to learn skills. However, it is still possible to learn their skills. It is just much slower and a lot harder. You will have to figure out how to use your pathways to create the same effects. Not many try and those who do have mixed results.”

“Why?”

“Simply put, becoming a Rogue change us, and the way we move energy. Joining a guild does this to everyone. So their method doesn’t work, since they have their own methods while we have ours.”

Consideringly, I asked. “So I can do the training, I just won’t be able to use it?”

Jane had a thoughtful look from my comment. “That’s a good way to put it.” She then grabbed the bag in the corner. “Now that’s the basics of skills. For us, we have five basic skills all rogues need. Lock picking, stealth, pickpocketing, trap making and disarming. You will also learn combat, sleight of hand, and stagecraft.” she placed the bag down in front of me and began to rummage through it. “There will also be a special skill you will learn for our specific guild.”

I tried to lean over to see what was inside the bag, but all I saw was darkness. “Ah. Here it is!” She pulled out a small leather bundle. “First is lock picking.” She handed me the bundle, then pointed at the door. “Let’s see what you can do. The door is locked, now unlock it.”

I understood the basics of how a lock worked, but I had never tried picking a lock. Opening the toolkit I saw many different sized and shaped picks. Picking up two picks that looked like they might fit I tried the lock. I think I heard a click at one point, but after a few minutes, I knew nothing happened. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“That is clear. But if it makes you feel any better, you chose the right two picks and even got one of the tumblers for a second. Better than most.” I’m not sure if she was humoring me or not. Even so, a small feeling of pride began to swell. “But that’s not saying much since you are still incompetent.” That feeling of pride slipped away into embarrassment.

“Don’t be too disheartened. It's rare that someone actually already knows how to do this.” She pulled out another leather bundle. “Ok now watch me.” In less than a second, the door was unlocked. I didn’t even see her use the pick at all.

“How?”

“Practice.”

Practice? I don’t care how much I practice. How in decay, am I going to be that quick?

“By the end of the training, you’ll be able to do it in less than a minute. And a little longer for more complicated locks. When you really learn your pathways, you won’t even need to touch some locks.” She gave the door a look, and I heard a click. “Like so. Now sit down so we can have your first lesson.”

The only place to sit was on the bed. I sat and almost fell over when my butt hit the bed. Jane pulled over a large brown satchel. “Ready to learn lockpicking?”

“Yes?”

“OK let’s begin …” A blue screen appeared in front of me once more.

New Pathway found..

Program Compatible with pathways…

Permission….Granted.

Installing Rogue type Pathway Program “Lock Picking”...

The screen disappeared. I’m not sure what happened next. I fell into some kind of trance. Everything Jane showed me seemed to blur together along with all her words. She demonstrated and lectured all about lock picking. She would hold up a lock, and after a few seconds, I would understand intricately about the lock itself, until I understood how it worked, and how to unlock it.

I was shown how to mold my mana to feel the lock and tumbler. This one thing made me realize how she opened the door. This all happened so fast, that I wasn’t even sure if a minute or an hour had passed. Finally, the final lock, locked by magic, clicked open falling to the ground. As the lock made contact with the ground, the world snapped back into focus.

Installing Rogue type Pathway Program “Lock Picking”...Complete

I jumped up, looking around in a panic. “What was that?” My heart was beating out of my chest. I couldn’t do anything. I was trapped watching from inside my own body as she taught.

Jane was walking around cleaning up the items she used in the demonstration. “Teaching a skill, now here comes the headache.”

I was confused for only a second before my brain tried to explode out of my head. I fell back on the bed, as my head pulsed.

“It will pass in a few minutes.” She was setting up a folding table in front of my bed. My head hurt too much to even question where the table came from. She placed a bunch of locks and some picks on the table. “When the headache is gone, or tolerable it’s time to practice. This is the critical time for properly learning the skill.”

After a few minutes, I felt the pounding in my head had turned into a dull throb. My body moved on its own as I sat up and moved toward the table. My hands automatically began to move, grabbing the first lock, a small padlock. At first, I could barely move my hands or remember where to start, but as I began to examine the items it felt like old memories of unlocking hundreds of these locks began to flood into my mind. Soon the lock clicked open.

“Good. Now do the next one.” Jane pushed another lock towards me, this one a deadbolt for a door.

This one was harder. My hands felt dumb. I knew what to do, as I had done it a hundred times before. I paused at the thought knowing that wasn’t right. This is the first time, but why do I feel I’ve done this before? I extended my energy to surround the lock. Wait...When did I learn this? My hands slowly remembered the feeling of this lock. Soon the lock clicked open. “Why do I feel like I’ve done this before?”

“It’s part of how the skill is passed on. Now unlock them all, it will be best if you can.” I knew she was deflecting the question, but I didn’t try to dig into it. Looking over the impressive array of locks, I slowly began the process of opening each one...even the magic one. That took almost five hours on its own.

Now about that magic lock. Every time I tried it, I would get shocked. I could not remember the trick to this one. After a while of repeated shocks, Jane began to laugh. “Now, this one is the trickiest. You have to coat your pick in magic, or mana, or energy, or whatever you want to call it, while also moving energy through your eyes. Ah, that reminds me. You should always be moving your power through your eyes, as it allows for better control and understanding.”

Taking Jane's advice, I calmed myself and directed the mana back into my eyes. The tingling sensation of energy slowly pulsed through my eyes until I created a circuit. The feeling of swelling was there, but it was much easier to ignore. I began to open a new channel around my hands, the power moved like a rushing river not needing an extra push. I realized this must have been the new pathway.

I lost focus on the lock and found myself tracing the path of these new pathways. It was easy to locate them, as in these areas my mana would smoothly flow out on its own. I found them going through my arms to each of my fingers. They also went through my legs spiraling down to each toe. I found a few small paths circling my heart, and something had changed about my skin, muscles, and bones. I'm not sure what all this did but knew I would probably find out.

Picking the lock back up, I began to focus once more on molding my mana. This was different than when I was using it to feel the inside of the lock. I was making it solid around my hands. I could see the mana flow around my hand dissipating off into nothing. I tried to move the energy around the picks, but it seemed to flow away.

I didn’t understand why it wasn’t working. It was like I opened a hole in my mana, letting it drain out. Stopping the flow, I stared at the pick.

Why don’t I feel drained when I move it through my eyes? Is it because it never leaves, since it circulates back? I decided to test this opening the hole once more. This time I concentrated on moving the energy through the pick then back into me as though it was part of me. At first, waves seemed to flow off of the pick, but slowly it stabilized creating a transparent aura around it. My energy was still decreasing, but at a rate, I could handle.

I decided to try to pick the lock. As I touched it I panicked losing focus letting the aura fade. “Blight”

“Keep going.” Jane was encouraging me. Not sure if that’s a good sign or not.

Taking a breath, I concentrated on working on the lock. I found it was a lot easier to work on when I didn’t panic or get electrocuted. Still, the lock was frustrating as every time I moved one tumbler the, other would immediately slam back down.

After an hour of repeating this, I got frustrated and just shoved most of my energy through the pick. Noticing the mana reached past the tool I began to wonder if I even needed the pick. She did saw I would learn.

I began again, this time shaping the aura around the pick. With this new skill, it still took more than three hours for me to figure out how to shape the mana into a pick, and another hour for me to hold it in shape. At first, I could only hold it for thirty seconds. This was enough, as the magic lock popped open. “WHOOOO! I DID IT!” I jumped in the air celebrating and immediately fell on the bed exhausted. Actually, how did I even last this long with my body like it is?

“Now do it all again.”

“What?” I don’t think I heard her right.

“You need to do those three more times before you can sleep.” Jane picked up the sack of discarded locks. I heard all the locks re-lock themselves.

“Seriously?”

She pushed the table back towards the bed. “Yup. Now start. You are going to need sleep.”

Groaning, I accepted my fate. I picked up the first lock again and found it only took one try before the lock popped. “Must have learned something from the other ones.”

Each one I opened took less and less time, taking just an hour or two. For some reason, the magic one still took twenty minutes. It was still hard to shape and hold the aura around the pick.

After all this, I was so tired of using up most of my energy. I just wanted to sleep.

Finally, I went through the last set for some reason I was slowing down. The knowledge was not coming to me like it was before.

When I made it to the magic lock, I didn’t have the energy to form a new pick. “SCREW IT!!” and proceeded to pick the lock without magic, while being periodically electrocuted. After two minutes of intense shock, I succeeded and even found it was easier to pick than with magic.

Jane laughed after I opened it. “Normally I have to coax people to do that.”

“That’s what I was supposed to do?”

“Yeah. It’s to show that even magic locks, can be opened without magic. In fact, sometimes it’s the only way to open them. Oh, and I switched the locks each time.”

“When?” Staring at the locks on the table they all looked the same as the ones I opened previously.

“When you would unlock them, I would switch them. Anyway, you’ve also noticed the fatigue of constant mana use, and your body is still not used to the eyes.” I had forgotten I was circulating through my eyes. I let the flow slow, the world began to go slightly fuzzy, and the swelling feeling left. Honestly, I didn’t like not having man flow through. My eyes felt deflated, so I focused the energy back through feeling the swelling once more. "Once you get used to your eyes you will see some interesting benefits. Mages never get over it. It’s thanks to how much mana they use when trying to use their skills. In fact! They go blind after a few seconds of use.”

Blind? Maybe I should cut back on the flow. “Why don’t they trickle a small amount constantly then?”

“They try but they can’t. Has to do with the amount of mana from their surrounding. Hard to control a river in such a small area.”

“I did not understand that at all.”

“They pull mana from the environment and through them, instead of their internal supply, thus their internal supply is almost nothing.” Jane was grabbing the bag of locks and removing the table.

“Don’t really get it.”

“Simply put there are two types of energy use. Internal, and external. Internal use internal energy to use their skills. External uses external mana for their skills. Of course, there is much more to it. Which you will learn about since we are kind of a hybrid.” She put everything in a nice pile in the corner. “Lesson’s over.” She stretched her back and moved up to leave. “Now get some sleep.”

After she closed the door I placed my head on the pillow, passing out.

That night I dreamed a strange dream of opening locks, in every scenario you could think of as a rogue. Even being smaller than the lock and crawling inside.