[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]

After the excitement of the first twenty-four hours with Tem, every bird call or rustle of leaves in the trees has me jumping at shadows. As much as he doesn’t want to admit it, Tem tenses up at the same sounds; the fight with the wraith lord has taken something vital out of him. Still, he’s a veteran of scouting and survival, and his training keeps us both on track.

“Steady, lad,” he murmurs, his eyes scanning the forest ceaselessly. “Keeping watch is wise, but you have to pace yourself. Reacting to every little thing without discretion will wear you down fast. Don’t defeat yourself in your own mind before an enemy even appears. I promised to teach you to hunt and to fight, and despite my earlier teasing, I won’t let you die before you can stand proud on your own two feet.”

I forcibly drag my attention away from the treeline and meet his eyes, smiling although I don’t feel like it. “My teachers all agree that it will take me a long while to gain competency, so I’ll take that as a sign that we have a lot of living still to do.”

“I like your interpretation of things,” Tem says, cracking a slight smile. “Let’s push on for a while longer. There’s a meadow in a cleft between two foothills up ahead, if my memory holds. We’ll camp there for the night. Assuming all goes well, we’ll practice weapons and combat after dinner. A good workout will help clear our minds and prepare our bodies for rest.”

We soon reach the campsite, and it’s as well-suited for our purposes as Tem recalls. Steep, obsidian cliffs on either side of the grassy meadow obscure us from view and provide some shelter against the wind. A storm is picking up, and even though the [Scout] assures me that it won’t be severe, I’m grateful for something to break up the wind. I’ve had enough discomfort lately, although I can banish cold with a simple flex of mana.

After a quick dinner, Tem rolls his shoulders and begins to warm up, stepping through basic forms with fluid, practiced movements. He’s calm, precise, and faster than anything I have fought to date. I’m not sure how he’s recovered so quickly, even with the potion for accelerated healing, but it must be much higher grade than anything I’ve seen before.

“Ten attacks, and then we’ll analyze your methods. Don’t expect to actually hit me; I am extremely adverse to taking damage. You probably couldn’t lay a finger on me even if you had a movement Skill, so don’t feel bad about it. Just do your best, and don’t overcompensate to try to score a cheeky blow. It’s not going to work, so don’t bother.”

“Got it. I don’t have to worry about hurting you. You’re basically a training dummy.”

“Close enough,” Tem chuckles.

I join him in laughter, then explode forward without drawing a weapon, jabbing at his jaw with a straight right. Immediately, I launch a low kick at his leg, and follow up my jab with a cross and then a third punch. He flows out of the way like it’s the easiest thing in the world for him to avoid my desperate punches and kicks, and simultaneously slaps me on the back of the head just hard enough to send me tumbling into the mud.

“Good instincts, attacking before you’ve drawn your knife. Against someone around your level, that might be enough to knock an opponent over and then end it with a blade. But this isn’t about winning, Nuri. Tonight is about assessing where you’re at with your fighting. Don’t confuse training with testing; you need to learn through repetition over time.”

I step back and drop my hands to my side. I nod seriously, wipe the sweat off my brow, and take up a more traditional stance with my hands guarding my face.

“Wait. Let’s get you a suitable weapon,” Tem says, picking up a stick from the firewood we’ve collected for the night. He snaps off a few stray twigs, then tosses the makeshift staff to me. “There. Sword or spear; up to you. We’ll practice both before the night’s over.”

I activate my [Lesser Manasight] as we spar, hoping to glean some key insights into the way mana empowers Tem in speed and agility. But no matter how fast he evades, he doesn’t light up in my senses. A rising sense of excitement wells up within me. Before, I couldn’t be sure, since I didn’t have any mana sensing Skills yet, but now I’m certain that he’s moving without using a single drop of mana. It matches the way he moved previously when he dragged me through that odd, shifting, monochromatic un-reality. Is he tapping into an alternate energy source? If not mana, then what?

A glimmer from the far end of the meadow catches my eye, and I falter in my attack. I blink, clearing away distractions, and limber up to continue our spar, but the nagging sense of adventure never stops. I have no idea what natural formation or phenomenon would shimmer in my mind like this.

“Nuri! Your brain freeze up?”

I shake off my distraction and bring the staff Tem cut for me back into an offensive stance, angled across my chest. The next three thrusts all miss, his body bending in ways that don’t seem possible, but I slide my back foot forward in a semicircle and unleash an overhand strike that almost connects.

“Not bad. You’re still fixated on something, though. What’s eating at you?

I gesture with my chin. “Something’s lighting up like a bonfire in my manasight.”

Tem snickers. “That’s the oldest trick in the book. You think you’ll actually get me to look behind my back?”

“No, although I wish I’d thought of that. I’m genuinely worried. You haven’t noticed it? Aren’t your scouting Skills legendary—[Eyes of the Panopticon], or [Detect Threat]?”

“Cold tracks,” Tem swears. He sighs. “Tough to pull a fast one on you. I forgot you read my book and know some of my basic Skills. I see it, never fear. It’s a Rift, lad. Looks recent.”

“A Rift? Here?” My voice squeaks, but I don’t care.

“Yep. Try not to pass out in excitement.”

“We have to tell the city guard! First a wraith incursion, and now a Rift? How can you be so calm? This is the craziest day of my life!”

Tem lifts one palm up in the air in a helpless half-shrug. “This is normal for the Scouts, Nuri. Expand your horizons.” He blows the air out of his cheeks. “I hate paperwork. What do you say that we just pretend it doesn’t exist?”

I almost drop my staff in shock at Tem’s casual suggestion, and my words come out too fast, spilling over each other as my heart rate spikes. “Isn’t failure to report a national threat, uh, you know, treason?”

“Yep. Guess we’ll have to let them know eventually. But there’s nothing that says we have to report it to Silaraon for investigation today. I’ve already used up my scroll, and I’m not double-timing it back to the city tonight. I’m tired.

“You mean, you’re dragging your feet because you don’t want to get involved,” I accuse.

“You should be thankful for that,” Tem replies quietly, and there’s a contemplative note in his tone that shuts me down instantly. “I’m still making up my mind if you’re likely to survive if we delve the Rift.”

What little backbone I’ve started to develop disappears, and I sink down to the ground to squat on my haunches. I clutch at my cloak, pulling it closer to my body, suddenly feeling very small and very cold. “Delve an unknown Rift with a party of two? You’re insane!”

“So are you, by your own admission. That’s what makes us a good pair. Rifts might be dangerous, but they’re great resources, too. Who knows what we might find down there?”

“Death,” I breathe out. “We’re going to find death.”

“Stop acting like a sniveling wuss. Just because you’d die on your own doesn’t mean it’s any real threat to me. I kept you alive against a wraith lord. Do you really think a little old Rift will pose much of a threat?”

“What if that’s where the incursion came from?” I protest.

“Nah. Mana signatures are totally different. This is unrelated, although . . .”

“Yes?” I prompt Tem when he trails off, a frown on his face. “This is where we start to worry about the proximity. There are no coincidences, and all that.”

He rolls his eyes. “Do you want to risk it all and possibly make your fortune, or are you really content to languish away in obscurity your whole life? This is it, Nuri.”

I squint toward the Rift, as though focusing might let me see more clearly. It’s still a blur in the distance to my natural eyes, but the glow in my Manasight keeps growing stronger. There’s probably more treasure in the depths than I’ve ever laid eyes on before.

Tem starts to pace. He tosses his pack over his shoulder, a gleam in his eyes now that he’s warmed to the idea. “You want to dare to do great things? You want to walk as an equal in exalted circles you can only dream about right now? Then forget about the training exercises or any teaching contracts.” He flings his arms out wide and shouts. “Let’s have an adventure!”

I kick dirt over the campfire, stuff my bedroll back into my canvas sack, and pop up to my feet beside him. “I want an even, fifty-fifty split.”

“Ha! Not a chance. We both know I”m going to do all the heavy lifting down there.”

“Yes, and we both know that you’re still technically under contract right now for our joint training exercise. You wouldn’t even know about a new Rift if I didn’t hire you. By Silaraon law, I have rights to anything we find during this excursion as the chartering party. But I’m willing to go halves with you since you’ll have to work overtime to keep me alive.”

Tem’s jaw goes slack. He blinks at me a few times, then throws back his head and roars with laughter. “You’ve got some fire in you, Nuri. I like that about you. But you do realize that if you don’t make it back, I get the full share.”

I step forward, my eyes locked onto his, and suppress the urge to run. I don’t think he’s threatening me, not truly, so I stand up to the challenge. Sweat pours down the back of my neck as I look into the eyes of a killer. “A partner at your back is only a good thing if you can trust him. I think you’re tired of working with people you can’t trust.”

Tem slowly extends a hand, and we grasp forearms. “Well said, Nuri. A team, then. We’ll share whatever we find in the depths.”

“Sounds good. But don’t even think about dying on me. I ain’t hauling all the loot back to town by myself.”

We take off for the Rift as the night falls around us, chatting and laughing, our spirits high even though my hands are shaking like an old man’s. Tem talks me through what I did wrong in our sparring match, gives me pointers on how to avoid traps, and promises to turn back if we encounter any monsters beyond Palladium-rank.

And then, just like that, we reach the Rift, and we both go silent as we stare in awe.

=+=

“Is this normal?” I whisper, unsure if it’s fear or reverence that steals my voice away in the face of eternity. We stand perched at the precipice, gazing into an abyss so profound that I cannot fathom either its scope or meaning. I sink to my knees, bereft of strength, and forcibly wrench my mana senses away from the intoxication of possibility. Worlds without end unfold below us, around us, above us.

Tem lifts his trembling hand toward the shimmering, opalescent portal guarding the void between us and the Rift. He hesitates, his dark fingers poised like cast iron keys ready to unlock the mysteries of the universe, and breathes out an oath.

“Maybe this was a bad idea after all,” I say, shifting backward while still kneeling in the dirt. I’m no longer simply terrified of monsters. I’m shaking with guilt at the thought of desecrating holy ground.

“It’s so beautiful,” Tem says wistfully. “How can the unraveling of the world hold such allure? Or is it the birthplace of potential? The womb of reality? The Origin itself?”

He trails off and folds his legs beneath him, staring at the glory made manifest. We share a hushed, solemn moment before Tem abruptly stands up and kicks me. “Show’s almost done. Prepare yourself for when it’s time to enter. The roiling energies of creation spawn creatures thick and fast. Be on guard.”

True to his prediction, the portal pulses like a living thing, like the beat of a heart, and the ripple clears away the iridescent light. A dark, shadowy path opens up before us, yawning like the maw of a magnificent monster, threatening to swallow us whole.

Tem draws the narrow, elegant blade hidden inside his cane, grips my arm with his free hand, and plunges into the opening. He drags me through the portal before I can scream that I’ve changed my mind, and the darkness closes around us, cold and hungry and unyielding.

Then we’re through, stumbling on uneven rocks the color of old rust, and Tem immediately pushes me down to the ground and covers my mouth, signaling me for silence.

An utterly enormous shape rumbles by, careening off rock formations and scoring deep grooves in the ground with its massive slabs of razor scales, each larger than the entire glassworks studio. Its carapace gleams a dull red, like most of the surrounding area, but it doesn’t seem to reflect any light, instead emitting a visceral, fiery warmth from within.

I frown, glancing about to take in more surroundings, and try to figure out how I can perceive anything at all. I don’t see any illumination around us, but the entire place is pulsing with life and detail. I’ve never been so hyper aware of the world before, and it finally hits me that I’m flaring [Lesser Manasight] to supplement—or replace—my vision.

“Steady,” Tem admonishes. “Drop your mana use and wait for the behemoth to pass. You’ll need it before the end. Nothing anyone can do against a monster of that ranking.”

“B-behemoth? They’re real? Should we turn back?” I suggest, thinking of his promise about threat ratings. There’s no way that Tem’s entire team could even begin to fight such a monstrosity. They’re mage-killers, not premier monster-hunters.

Tem gives a curt shake of his head. “They won’t attack unless provoked, although it could inadvertently crush us, instantly killing us without realizing if it strays too close. Stay still and hope it moves on soon.”

I swallow, trying to get rid of the lump in my throat. “We’re not a dozen paces inside. Don’t Rifts become more warped and dangerous the farther in you go?”

Tem keeps crouching down, but he turns to smile at me in a sad, knowing way. “Define ’farther’ in, though. The problem with measuring distance is that it requires a starting and stopping point. In here?” He breaks off, his voice growing strangely thick and hoarse with emotion, and slowly gestures around us. “Things lose their meaning. Distance stretches and compresses. Time spirals out of control, too; you never know if you’ll come back out the same year, let alone the same day or week. Rifts are just as dangerous to the mind as to the body.”

“You could have warned me earlier,” I reply more calmly than I feel. A suspicion worms its way up from the recesses of my consciousness, and I grip his upper arm, turning an accusing stare at Tem. “You knew this Rift would form here, didn’t you? There’s no other explanation for why we headed into the deep wilderness for my first training mission. You need something from inside here—and you need my help to get it, or else you would have scared me off. What aren’t you telling me?”

“You read too much, kid.” He slips out of my grasp like smoke between my fingers, and I’m left empty-handed several paces away. The weird, alien way that Tem seems to slide through space suddenly doesn’t seem unnatural at all, and another piece of the puzzle snaps into place for me.

Tem must have seen the light of recognition in my eyes, since he holds a finger over his lips, inclining his head toward the behemoth floating far overhead. “Later.”

His simple response holds the weight of promise, so I nod and sit back down against the rocks to bide my time.

The behemoth is in no hurry to vacate the premises. It rotates lazily through the air, but it’s not truly flying; up and down are hard to quantify within the Rift, and it’s not using wings to hold itself aloft. Rather, the magic of the worlds seems to bend to its will, carrying it hither and thither at a whim.

I lace my fingers together and count my breathing, just so that I’ll have something to do to keep my mind off how much I want to track its movements with my Manasight. How often will I get a chance to observe a being of pure arcane mastery? I could learn secrets that Ezio can only dream of, peering into the dizzying depths of magic. But drawing the attention of the giant beast will likely prove fatal, so I let go of my disappointment and remind myself that I’m a crafter, not a mage. I’ll have other opportunities.

The minutes bleed into hours, at least in my perception. I don’t truly have a way to track time inside the Rift. But just as I fear that I’m going to die from sheer boredom-induced insanity, the behemoth lurches forward, crashing through stone and creating eddies of void in its wake, burrowing straight through what appears to be a solid mountain of granite.

Tem slumps down next to me and hisses sharply through his teeth. He slips a flask from within his cloak, pops the cork, and gulps it dry. Only now do I notice how hard his hands are shaking. “Congratulations on surviving, Nuri. You’ve received a glimpse of primordial powers not of this world. The number of people I’ve met who can say the same thing can be counted on one hand, and I don’t mean using [Scout] signs.”

“Hooray for us,” I say weakly. “But what else lurks down here?”

“Treasures unimaginable,” Tem replies brightly, stowing his empty flask and standing up in a smooth, confident motion. “Come, young apprentice, let’s make your fortune.”

I scramble to follow Tem’s light, steady strides, which eat up far more ground than they should. He’s moving just like Ezio, sliding across the ground like a skater over a frozen lake in winter. Again the similarities between the two strike me, and I file away the information to dig into later, when it’s safe.

Assuming I survive that long.

“How do you know where we’re going?” I finally ask in between gasping for air. I’m in moderately good shape these days thanks to my training with Ember and Mikko, but this is the power of Skills. What good is bodily training when magic can propel you across the world more easily?

“I’m an [Expert Scout]. Do you really think I’ve made it this far without picking up a Skill that alerts me to treasure? I don’t fancy risking life and limb for the pittance you’re paying me. So, I make up the missing pay by cheating.”

“You’ve been in a lot of Rifts. Which came first: the Skill, or the practice?”

Tem turns to flash a dazzling smile at me. “I’m not untalented like you. I’ve got Skills for days, Nuri, and I barely had to work for them at all.”

At my crestfallen expression, he breaks into soft laughter. Even with the behemoth gone, neither of us have dared to make much noise. “You’re so easy to mess with, kid. I earned them.”

“But I waited years before I got a new Skill!” I protest, but Tem throws up his hands in the air and cuts me off.

“Stop fixating on the mistakes of the past. You wallowed in self-pity and got nowhere. But look how quickly you picked up [Lesser Manasight] once you switched your focus to training yourself. Untold number of mages have searched for shortcuts to power, ways to circumvent training and mastering mana . Guess how many found them?”

“None,” I say woodenly, since it’s the answer he wants to hear, but my heart isn’t in it.

“Smart, for once. Now look sharp; we’re about to find what I hope is only the first of many valuable resources in this Rift. My Skill is pinging me incessantly.”

Nothing visibly changes in the barren landscape. We’re still surrounded by rust-red and . mottled grey, a muted vista of the detritus of cast-off, decaying worlds. I tap into my new Skill, always excited to see that it’s still there, and a rush of golden, white, and blue fires burst into beautiful patterns in my sight. They pulse with untold possibilities.

I release the Skill, panting at the tug on my mana, and reconsider my judgement about the desaturated, dull world of the Rift. Perhaps what I’m seeing here isn’t death; perhaps it’s the promise of nascent worlds and endless growth.

Tem squats down next to a huge chunk of rock that seems indiscernible from the rest of the Rift, even when I pump additional mana into my Manasight. He arches an eyebrow, waiting for me to stop being stubborn, and pats the top of the stone lovingly. “Nuri, say hello to wealth beyond your wildest dreams. This is the biggest chunk of Rhodium ore I’ve ever seen.”

I still don’t see anything despite dumping nearly half of my mana pool into [Lesser Manasight]. I drain myself of mana too quickly and have to release the Skill, still annoyed that I haven’t been able to push it past the “lesser” variety despite harrowing circumstances. “What’s so great about Rhodium? I’ve never even heard of it.”

“That’s because you’re a [Glassworker], not a [Metalworker]. This is the rarest and most valuable metal around. By the time it’s smelted and refined, we can sell it off bit by bit to Master [Alchemists] and [Jewelers] at exorbitant prices—it’s over five times as expensive as gold.”

I nudge it with my boot, and the rugged boulder doesn’t budge. “How are we getting it out of here if it’s as heavy as gold? Or are you hiding more Skills from me?”

“I have my ways,” Tem says mysteriously, wiggling his fingers at me like a two-bit village charlatan.

“Is that why you move like a void beast when we’re sparring? You’re using some sort of spatial manipulation, but I can’t see or track the mana. Is it just a difference between our levels, or are you fueling the movements with something else instead of mana?”

Tem drops the act, but his satisfied smile tells me he’s still up to something. “What do you know? Ezio was right. You’re a lot sharper than you look under that goofy exterior.”

Whatever snarky response I’m cooking up dies on my lips as the ground starts to vibrate beneath us. Clicking sounds, like a pack of dogs running across a wood floor, wash over us with such volume that I clap my hands over my ears for relief. It doesn’t help.

Tem grabs the boulder and lifts it up from the bedrock. It’s only a few inches, and his slender body is straining under the weight, but I still stare like I’m witnessing a miracle. No one should be that strong. His body is shaking with the effort. Grunting, he pushes on empty air, and the gigantic rock disappears with a faint pop.

He grabs my arm and takes off sprinting, dragging me far faster than I could ever run on my own. “Don’t stop!” he screams, as though I harbor any foolish intentions of getting up close and personal what’s making the horrendous sound.

All around us the world is twisting, spiraling in on itself as the space collapses in sparks and static, but Tem leads us true. He dodges around falling stalactites, glides across the broken earth like a surfer on the waves, and knocks aside chunks of nothingness that manifest in our path and emanate a terrible, visceral hunger.

“Need to take cover! I can’t keep up this pace forever, not if I’m going to bring you with me.” Tem shouts in my ears, but I can barely hear him over the rush of wind. We angle toward an outcropping and crest a tall hill that springs up out of nowhere, and he flings us both down to hide behind a gnarled mass of rocks.

I lean to the right and peek down the cliff face, curious what creatures are pursuing us. I suck in a breath and press into the shallow lip of the rock that’s covering us, trying to process what I’m seeing. Crimson Crabs are pouring forth like a flood of thick, chitinous blood, sweeping over the ground, breaking apart the rocks as they ramage. The angry, churning mass looks like they’ve spawned straight from the mouth of the abyss.

Some are small enough that I could probably pick them up in my hands, but many are as big as bulls. Some of the crabs loom even larger than the glassworks itself, however, and they snap up the smaller ones with their huge, knobby claws, cracking them open and devouring the soft pink flesh with savage bites.

“What are those things?” I whisper tersely to Tem.

He just shrugs. “I’m a [Scout], not a [Zookeeper]. But it doesn’t take an expert to know that they’ll kill you.”

I grunt in agreement, watching in equal parts fascination and horror as the crabs smash their way through the landscape. Their jagged armored carapaces bash through rock spires with ease, and I breathe out in relief as the stampede veers away from us, demolishing hills in a wide swath to our left.

Once the noise fades away and the ground stops shaking, Tem pops up from our hiding spot and saunters along a switchback path, heading down the sheer cliff face.

“Tem!” I hiss. “Where are you going? What if they come back?”

“You see the size of those legs? I reckon a crab’s a crab. Bet they make good eating.”

I laugh and start the treacherous trek down the hill to join him. “You’re more and more like Mikko the longer I know you. How many people get to see this side of you, Tem?”

“Not many,” he admits. “I have to play the mysterious detective, the lethal assassin, or the dignified courtier. Nice to just get away and mess around for a while.”

We pick our way down the hill, but the longer we climb, the farther away we seem to get. I finally clear my throat and bring it up to Tem, but he simply shrugs and keeps walking like it’s completely normal. “Can’t rush things in a Rift. We’ll get there—or not.”

“Meanwhile, we’re rich, if that big ugly rock is as valuable as you claim. Why not just get out now, while we still can?”

Tem misses a step at last. He turns to face me, uncharacteristically grim. “What makes you think that we can get out?”

“You’re saying we’re trapped in here? When did you plan on telling me that? Don’t you think that’s important to know! This entire trip you’ve been hiding things from me, and I’m sick of it. What’s really going on here?”

My voice grows louder and more agitated until I’m screaming at Tem. I know I should shut up and not attract any monsters, but the fear of never escaping the Rift and the adrenaline of our recent near survival are a toxic combination, and I can’t stop myself from hurling more accusations. “This is about the king disbanding the mage-bane brigade, isn’t it? You’re looking for a way to get revenge, and dragging me into it!”

“The world doesn’t revolve around you,” Tem snaps. “You’re not special, Nuri. I’m here to clear my mind, and as a favor to Ezio, I agreed to take you on for a quick training run. So stop imagining conspiracies where there are none! I’m just an old man who wants some peace and quiet.”

I snort. “Like the kind that you find in the middle of a Rift?”

A dull, heavy mass slams into the rocks beside us, kicking up a cloud of dust and saving Tem from further replies. We spin to face the new arrival, and Tem shoves me out of the way a second before thick jaws split the air where I was just standing.

Yellow, vertical eyes gleam dully from within a huge square head. Spikes and ridges jut out from all over the red and black striped lizard, and when it opens its mouth to roar, a purple tongue lashes back and forth like a barbed whip.

I tumble backward, putting distance between us, and draw my dagger. There’s only one of them, and Tem’s got his sword out, which means it’s time for us to fight instead of flee. This time, I’m going to prove my worth. I’m tired of being useless.

The lizard screeches and flares an enormous yellow and purple frill around its neck. Its tongue lashes out again, spraying drops of sizzling poison, but Tem bends out of the way with one of his trademark, reality-warping dodges. He ripostes as soon as he’s clear of the impact, stabbing the tongue and retreating in one swift, fluid movement.

I draw deeply on my Skill, although my mana is only back up to around three-quarters of the way full. The air around the lizard glistens as residual moisture flash-freezes, and it recoils from the coat of rime building up on its nostrils and eyes, shaking its head and snorting out tiny sparks of lightning and fire.

“Good! Freeze its legs if you can, and I’ll dispatch it,” Tem directs, sounding cheerful at the prospect. He dashes in, scoring a stab on the muscular foreleg. Bright purple ichor spews across the ground, painting the drab rocks in a colorful array of violence.

I immediately turn my attention to the open wound, dropping the temperature in a tight, controlled area around the puncture. The energy flows in the Rift are sluggish, as though they’re far away and barely able to hear my voice, but the training with the heat-resistant glass orbs pays off when the wound freezes over and the creature’s leg gives way.

It collapses into the dirt with a pitiful shriek, and Tem flashes forward, slitting its throat with a single, smooth draw of his blade.

“Excellent control! Mana manipulation isn’t easy in a Rift—particularly not with a lesser version of a Skill. You’ve earned the core on this one.”

My mind blanks for a moment. “A . . . a core? I thought they only formed in Platinum ranks and above? You said we wouldn’t run into any down here!”

Tem shrugs helplessly. “Oops. Sometimes life has more exciting plans for us. I didn’t set out to lie to you.”

I cross my arms and glare. “That’s the most bald faced lie I’ve heard all day.”

“I can one-up it with an even better lie if you’d like,” Tem offers cheerfully. “Did you know that I have a Skill for throwing people off track?”

“It’s not a sign of virtue,” I protest.

Tem frowns. He looks up from cutting into the gory, bright-purple carcass, sniffs at me with haughty airs, and wipes his hands on his pants. “But it could be! A facile mind never stops imagining!”

“Yet the ability to tell imagination from reality—fact vs fiction—is what separates men from boys. A toddler who makes up stories is cute. A grown man who does the same is pathological.”

“I prefer practical. Or political.” He winks at his own low-hanging joke.

I stick my tongue out at Tem, going with five-year-old tactics since the venerable [Scout] is inexplicably acting like an annoying kid. “Doll it up all you like. You intentionally misled me about the threat level.”

“Telling the truth is likely to earn trust. My method will earn gold. Which do you prefer?” With a soft, squelching sound and a spray of purple blood, Tem tears away an already-rotting chunk of fat and tissue, tossing it aside where it sizzles on the red-rock ridge.

His words echo in my mind: Time works differently in a Rift.

Humming to himself in satisfaction, Tem digs around inside with his blade. He pumps his fist in triumph when he taps the end of his sword against something solid. “Tada,” he sings, and drops the weapon to reach inside the body with both hands. A moment of grunting and tugging later, and he pulls a dull, misshapen rock from deep inside the lizard beast and presents it to me with a flourish.

I scrunch up my nose at the steaming pile of viscera wrapping around the supposed core of the monster. “How do I know this is real?”

Tem tosses it to me, and I grab it reflexively, yelping at the hot, corrosive touch. The core is shockingly heavy, but I hang on despite the scorching pulses of power. Tem snickers at my uneasiness, and even has the temerity to wink at me . “A gift for when you learn to imbue with mana.”

I shrug off my cloak and wrap it around the still-smoking core. Even without activating my [Lesser Manasight], it’s clear that it contains potent concentrations of mana. “Imbuing sounds exciting, but I’m not sure that will ever happen at this point.”

“Knock it off, Nuri. You’re young and reasonably talented. Fake self-deprecation ain’t a good look after assisting with a Platinum-ranked monster takedown in the middle of a Rift. You handled yourself well just now. Freezing the battlefield offers intriguing possibilities.”

“It’s not a put down,” I protest. “I’m just not sure that I have the patience to keep working on my crafting skills after watching you dismantle monsters over the last two days. It feels like a waste of time. Fighting is more fun.”

Tem wipes off his blade, shifts around his gear, and plops down on a rock. Somehow, he manages to make the stone look more like a throne than an awkward perch.“How many old men have you seen in adventuring teams?”

“Not a lot. Everyone knows it’s a young man’s game.”

Tem points toward himself. “Ah, news to me!”

“The strong survive,” I mutter, not meeting his eyes.

“You’re half right,” Tem says. His voice grows contemplative. “Some of my friends, more talented than I am, didn’t make it. I don’t have anyone from my original team left. But how many older workers are at the glassworks studio?”

“A dozen or more,” I admit, already annoyed with where he’s going with the comparison. “But it’s not a guarantee. My own parents died off when I was young. They picked up the plague when it swept through the region, and by the time the [Healers] synthesized a cure, it was too late for them. Safe professions didn’t keep them safe from the rest of life.”

“Still better odds,” Tem says mildly.

We both grow quiet for a moment, lost in our worlds of regret and hopes. I stuff the core into my bag, more excited than I’m willing to admit at the prospect of using it to craft a powerful artifact. Combined with Ezio’s proposed glass armor, I could probably get into a guild with lowly standards even without a combat class.

“If survival is your own goal, sure,” I allow. Tem looks up, his dancing brown eyes intense and hawklike, tracking my every movement as though he can see straight through me. “I’m not cut out for a boring existence. I want more than glass and the daily grind from life. I’m not afraid of work, but I’m terrified of insignificance.”

Tem snorts. “You’re what, twenty years old?”

“I will be next summer.”

“Commit to one thing for a few years, Nuri. Hit your first threshold. Improve your mana control. Evolve your Class and add to your Skills. And whatever you do, don’t give half-hearted effort and then complain that it didn’t work out after all.

“If you put in work—real work—and Ezio and Ember sign off, then I’ll take you under my wing and help you gain a combat Class. You’ve fought hard at every occasion, despite making mistakes and almost getting yourself killed three or four times. I admire your grit. Most artisans wouldn’t have come out here in the first place, let alone helped against the wraiths or entered a Rift. You’re all right, kid.”

“Shouldn’t I switch as early as possible, though? A few years of training could make a big difference.” I falter and trail off at Tem’s dubious look.

“Making your own tools is an underrated talent. You don’t have to worry if you can trust your gear, or wonder if someone sold the information about your supposedly secret weapon or escape plan. Plus, you’ll have an opportunity to sell to people like me. You want to play the long game? Stay the course with your crafting. I promise you won’t regret it.”