I had stayed up too late trying to transcribe Mia’s boxes by candlelight. It was a foolish endeavor, but Mia deserved some measure of my appreciation for her contribution to our knowledge base. The consequence of such an act of endearment was how much I was yawning, body fatigued from a lack of proper rest. Not the best way to prepare for another training session with the team.

We woke up early, the sun having barely risen above the horizon. All the better to exercise prior to the sweltering heat of the mid-day sun. “You look like shit,” Alain said.

“I feel like shit.”

“Did you have trouble sleeping?” he asked, cocking his head at me.

“You could say that,” I grumbled, struggling to refrain from yawning moment after moment. The struggle was all too real, requiring my mouth to be obscured every other yawn, a real impediment to basic stretches.

But I had to labor through it. Rest was a privilege for those without objectives to complete. Ergo, no rest.

“We’re going to have you spar again, no holds barred before breaking out into our training groups. Got it?”

“What are the match-ups?” I interjected.

“I was about to get to that, Perry. Let me tell you this as your leader for this team. You need to learn a modicum of patience.”

I looked down at the dusty training ground, preferring to pretend that I wasn’t there and was asleep in my bed rather than acknowledge the admonishment I had received.

“As I was about to say, Perry, you’ll fight Alain. Let’s see how your defensive training holds against Alain’s new levels of restraint. Mia, you’ll be fighting Vera. Hopefully you’ll learn how to treat your opponent with the proper respect by now, Vera.”

“I already have it; can I stop being tortured by Amalarys? This is certainly against the doctrine,” Vera groaned.

“Less groaning, more fighting your dearest friend, Vera. We’ll consider changing your training routine depending on the results of this battle.”

The fear of having to listen to Amalarys’s lectures for even longer struck deep into Vera, her body tensed up. I could tell she was willing to do whatever it took to ensure she wasn’t subject to anymore of the captain’s lessons any longer. “Mia, I’m sorry, but you might die here,” she said, bowing to her best friend.

“It’s a good thing we don’t have the same level of stakes,” I whispered to Alain.

“Don’t be so pessimistic,” was his characteristic reply. I took a lot of restraint to not roll my eyes. Part of us potentially getting back to a better relationship was me trying to tolerate his rude behavior. If I responded kindly to his reaching out, masked abrasive behavior that it was, perhaps we could get to a better state.

“Enough lollygagging,” Javier said, interrupting my thoughts. “Get into position. It’s time to fight. It’s time to duel. It’s time to meet your match.”

I felt the ground’s uneven terrain under my feet, the trodden path to the heart of the training grounds, where I stared at Alain, meeting his cold gaze. He winked at me and summoned his second tier attributes, leaving me to do to the same. It wouldn’t do me any good to not treat him with the proper respect he deserved. I fished my brass knuckles out of my pockets and felt as ready as I would ever be when dealing with a powerful fighter like him.

“Go,” Javier demanded. On his mark, Alain dove into the shadows, knowing all too well at this point that my electroreception faired poorly when tracking him. Wherever he was within the shadows I couldn’t follow, at best noting where he was emerging as it happened. It was better than most people would be able to track, but I had become accustomed to actively tracking other participants while fighting. It could be believed that this made him the perfect counter to me, denying the primary advantages of my beast soul.

I threw up my Swollen Fur, trying to minimize how many angles of opportunity for Alain to act. The sun wasn’t too high in the sky, meaning that the primary shadows of the training ground were cast behind me, sitting along the few rocks that dotted the area and my own body. The question was whether he would try a sneak attack by launching from under my body, or whether that he knew I was aware of his window of opportunity,

meaning that he would seek an opening from my misplaced defensive stance. The advantage was wholly his. I couldn’t let my guard down in the slightest.

The trouble with assumptions was how easy it was to break them. A claw swiped out from underneath my neck, an uncertain lashing out, hoping to find purchase on my supple flesh. The shadow there was only but a sliver, but a sliver was enough for an arm to extend.

The attack missed only by good fortune alone, not by merit of my own actions, the angle of the attack not quite right to tear into my form. I tried to lift my neck to sever the shadow his arm emanated from, but he pulled back, narrowly avoiding answering the question of what would happen to him if the shadow that he emerged from vanished while he was using it.

Instead, he popped out again from behind my legs, dropping them down into the darkness. I threw an Electromute at his arms, hoping to lock him in place, while I charged up a Direct Current and circulated it around my knuckles. It didn’t matter if my legs were stuck if my upper half of my body could move properly. It would be only fitting to return the kind greeting Alain had given me moments before with an equal force.

With my current level of proficiency with my Electromute, it was easy for my knuckles to connect with Alain, the crackling noise of the discharge traveling down into the shadowy abyss. His arms dislodged from my legs, and his body was ejected from the shadows, roughly landing a few meters away. He rolled with the dirt, groaning from the impact. “You’ve been taking those hits, Javier?” he groaned.

“Yeah, and you were supposed to do an attack that was reasonable for Perry to dodge, not try something new. We’re here to train, not maim.”

Alain was slow to get to his feet, body still shaking from my applied technique. “If training isn’t the right place where is the right place, Javier?”

“Training… when we plan for it. You should know better, as should you, Perry. That wasn’t quite defensive.”

“I thought it was merited given his swipe. I think a counterattack counts.”

A heavy sigh floated by, Javier un-enthused with our banter. “You’re lucky the girls are taking the training seriously.”

I stared over at the other combatants, given it seemed like our bout was put to a stop. With my attention no longer mandated to keep an eye out for Alain, that made it easier to notice the background noise of physical contact emanating from the other part of the training area.

Whatever suffering Vera had gone through had seemed to fill with her inspiration. Her body was covered in gales of wind, not unlike the ones she normally siphoned to her horns, but this shell wasn’t meant to explode. As fast as Mia was moving during her Two Heartbeats usage, her knives couldn’t pierce the winds, the air acting like a sheer barrier.

The fight was reflected upon optimal positioning, Mia trying to find an unguarded entrance for her knives while Vera did her best to ensure not a single hit would land upon her, always moving so that her curtain of breezes would eat the impact. In a way, her technique wasn’t unlike my Swollen Fur, although I wondered how it would hold up when a suitable attack broke it on impact. How much of the force would travel through and how much would disperse into her body?

It was a question we wouldn’t answer at this time, given Mia had never been a creature of overwhelming force, her strategies always focused on finding a place of weakness. Even now that was her endeavor, looking for the angle Vera had left unguarded. It would be cheating to use her third tier’s capacity to siphon strength, given that was a tool for an overwhelming victory, not to defeat others in a casual sparring match.

The other issue was we weren’t sure if Javier could tell that we had achieved our third tier, so holding back on capacities related to that seemed for the best. We never knew who we could trust anymore, not after the revelation with Lord Nonan. Thus ensuring the fight we had before us, Mia struggling to fight against Vera’s forged defenses, made in the struggle against being forced to listen to Amalarys rant for hours on end.

“Evidently being talked to for hours does a girl good,” Mia said, twirling a dagger in her offhand. Her Two Heartbeats was canceled given she slowly circled Vera, the other combatant warily watching, body adequately ready to respond to the slightest stress.

“The doctrine preaches peace, Mia. I have known no peace under Amalarys’s gaze. I will know no piece if I don’t show you what it means to be powerless. I’ll have to pray for forgiveness later, because I’m afraid I must sin towards you.”

Vera’s words were weary, but the gales she gathered around her outstretched horns were fierce, the siphoned currents taking seconds to aggregate before condensing further than before, two ball points sitting at the ends of her horns. The orbs, if one was close enough to peer into their depths, contained a microcosm of a storm, currents struggling for dominance, the precarious balance threatening to break with the slightest external input.

“Impressive, Vera, but you’ll have to hit me with that for that technique to mean anything,” Mia scoffed, pouncing at Vera. Her body shook intensely, The Thrum evidently activated. Her vibrating body clashed with Vera’s wind barrier, the intense shaking of her form eroding the air, the trapped currents escaping around the pair. It was as though a hissing serpent was on the prowl.

Vera snarled, but wasn’t deterred by the erosion of her protection. She cast away the rest of her gathered winds of protection and hunched over, compressed storm orbs lined up with Mia’s shaking form. Her hoofed feet gripped into the ground and she pushed off, body launching at Mia.

With Mia’s errant vibrating mass, a collision seemed all but certain, if not for Javier’s massive tongue pressing Vera aside. “Cut it out, cut it out. You both pass. Let’s not get that dangerous again,” Javier demanded, tongue sliding back into his mouth.

The two slid apart, second tier attributes fading into nothingness, cheeky grins sitting upon their faces. “Yes, no more Amalarys lectures!” screamed Vera.

She danced around the area, lost in her jubilation. All the suffering she had gone through was over. No longer would she be trapped for a tongue lashing, Javier’s not included.

“Well, that was great. Thing it’s about time to cool down with everyone’s favorite activity, a nice jog and no, don’t you groan at me. Stamina is one of the most important things you can have when fighting a spike feeder or a person. When you run out of energy, that’s when you make mistakes, and a mistake exists to be capitalized by another entity.”

“I don’t know if we’ll have to fall into that window of suffering anytime soon, Javier. It looks like we have a messenger coming,” Alain said.

On the other side of the field a familiar shape hastened forward, running with a stack of papers in her arms. “I wish I could tell this to anyone but you, but Amalarys was insistent that you’re the ones to hear this research in preparation for your next task,” Brunhilde said, frown etched into her forehead.

Pronounced dark circles sat under her eyes, her presence introducing perhaps the only person in the area that was more tired than I was. No matter how her hair was pulled back from her face, her demeanor still looked overcast. She looked paler than before, body angled away from the sunlight that threatened to filter into her eyes. Being outside was clearly a trial for her.

“What is it then?” Javier asked, cutting past her dismissive demeanor.

“We think we’ve made a breakthrough from our assembled ruin materials, although it’s not the one you would expect.”

“I didn’t expect anything, so I welcome whatever explanation you have, Brunhilde.” He waited with an expectant gaze, motioning for her to continue her explanation.

“So I don’t know how much you know about your beast souls—”

Vera and I shared concerned glances, tense for her coming words.

“—But these are not natural abilities you wield. They’re personalized magic signatures that are expressed based on a schema governed by the beast soul, but even that is flexible. What is not so flexible is a spike feeder. Spike feeders are still uncertain in origin, but their magic signature is similar, even across time, which is what the samples from the ruins confirmed. We dated those back for quite a few centuries— don’t ask how, mind you. You don’t want to know. It took a lot of work and Alois was somewhat traumatized from doing so.”

I turned my head at her, not sure what was happening anymore. By her flushed cheeks, it looked like that was a universal experience in the area. “Anyway, methodology aside, with our confirmation of the constituent particles, we referenced those against the particles emitted on a culling night, taking note of the patterns reflected. We believe we took measure of a crude translation of the effect, which is targeted at all spike feeders, broadcast everywhere the moon touches across the continent. What it exactly means is uncertain, but that should be deduced in due time. What it does confirm is that the spike feeders swarming is connected to the moon, of which we could only speculate was the cause before.”

She paused to breathe in, excitement getting the best of her before setting off to finish her explanation.

“So your mission derives from the culling night signals. There’s another signal running in the background, normally obscured by the ones sent during culling night. If we didn’t get a reading for culling night, we wouldn’t have been able to distinguish the other signal when taking a measurement to compare against. It points spike feeders towards the ruins of Old Titan City.”

“Excuse me? Old Titan City?”

“Perry, did you not observe the structure of Titan City?” Mia interjected.

“What am I observing? It’s a city. It has layers to it. Doesn’t make me aware that there was an Old Titan City.”

“Perry you ignoramus, Titan City was built into a mountain. On the mountain’s lower levels sits the old city. It was abandoned after being razed in former city wars centuries ago. It certainly isn’t supposed to be safe to go there, and definitely would not be if spike feeders are constantly amassing there for some reason.”

I blinked my eyes rapidly, trying to take in Mia’s rapid-fire words. “It’s what?”

“Ugh, pretend he isn’t here. I take it the task is that we’re going to have to go and investigate the ruins?”

“That’s the command from above, Mia. You better get ready. It won’t be an easy trip to go into the heart of Old Titan City.”

With a smirk on her face, Brunhilde departed, leaving us behind to ruminate on what we needed to do next.