“Hey, why’m I riding with the kid?” Gideon complained.

“You’re the lightest,” Jet replied.

“Lighter than the girl?” Gideon replied.

The four of them rode along. Beautiful blue stretched across the heavens. A few sparse clouds floated along, and sunlight beamed down on them. It was a beautiful day.

“My Angie is old. She can’t take two riders,” Elly replied gently. She swayed with the horse’s step, in sync with her mount.

Gideon grumbled under his breath.

Leo glanced at Jet apologetically, then made to hop off the horse.

“Stay on. Gideon’s just whining,” Jet told him, shaking his head.

Leo hesitated, then nodded.

“Just whining? Just whining! I’ll show you whini—ow!”

Jet sighed. He turned his face to the sky, giving the sun a solemn look. Milord… when you said this was a difficult task… when you said I would face strenuous trials and nearly insurmountable challenges... is this what you meant?

Rather than give Gideon another chance to dominate the conversation, he nodded at Elly in the lead. Gideon rode sandwiched between the two of them, in case he got it in his head to run off. Not that he’s tried yet, but knowing the man, that doesn’t mean he won’t. “Elly, you’re a staff user. I haven’t often worked alongside priestesses. How do staves work?”

“A lot like tomes, right, Gideon?” Elly asked, giving their charge a winning smile.

No, fuck! Don’t drag him into the conversation! Jet put on a forced smile.

Gideon just nodded. He glared at Jet and pulled the collar away from his neck uncomfortably.

He’s pouting? Wonderful!

“Yes, staves work more like tomes than enchantments, but they’re somewhat the halfway point between the two. Like enchantments, you can only use a staff so many times before it burns out—it’s not a tome, with different spells. However, like a tome, you can channel more or less energy and heal more or less. Somewhat similar to how a tome mage can burn more pages to fire off a larger spell, a staff user can channel more energy and heal more grievous wounds.”

“Huh,” Jet said, nodding. “How many uses does yours have left?”

Elly glanced at her staff, then shrugged. “It’s hard to say exactly. If I have to heal wounds like yours again, I could probably do that another dozen times, but if the wounds were only at the level of Eric’s, I could heal twenty of those. If there were more severe wounds… the staff could burn out in as few as five heals.”

Jet blinked. “That’s… not that many.”

Elly smiled and nodded. “Like tomes, more skilled staff-users can do more with less—where skilled mages burn fewer pages, skilled staff-users channel less energy to heal more. I’m only a priestess of modest skill. The High Priestess could likely use this staff hundreds of times without running out of power.”

“Well, that’s the High Priestess. It’s not reasonable to compare yourself to her,” Jet said, waving his hand.

“It’s true, and yet, to travel alongside someone similarly skilled in the realm of tomes…” Elly said, glancing at Gideon.

Gideon perked up slightly at that, but still refused to speak, unwilling to break out of his pouting.

“In any case, please be aware that staff users, like tome users, need to recharge,” Elly said.

“A refractory period,” Gideon suggested, smirking.

“Er… excuse me?”

Elly pointed at his sword. “Enchantments can be used as quickly as a paladin can swing their sword, but they’re limited in terms of what they can do. Staves and tomes are unlimited and can cast any healing or damaging spell, hypothetically, but the caster uses more mana to cast. Mana can only be stirred so quickly. A staff or tome user needs time to draw in more mana between spells. Usually two casts are all a staff or tome user has in them before they need a few moments to recharge. Some mages can do four, but those are mages with extraordinary mana reserves, or unusual mana-absorbing abilities.”

“What about overall? Is there any limit on the number of casts you can do in a day, for example? An upper limit to your mana?" Jet asked.

Elly shook her head. “As long as there’s enough mana in the area, a staff or tome user can cast until their staff burns out or their tome runs out of pages. There’s no hard limit. Some claim to feel mana-sickness after a while, but… I’ve never felt it.”

“Me either,” Gideon agreed, adjusting his collar. He sat up straight and coolly fixed his robes, as if he’d never pouted in the first place. “Mana-sickness is for lesser beings.”

“Lesser beings?” Jet asked, already dreading the answer.

Gideon flicked dust off his shoulder and gave Jet a look. “Beings that aren’t me.”

Jet sighed.

“Of course, it takes concentration and stamina to channel mana, the same as it does to swing your sword. In the end, we’re only human. If we were to try and cast spells all day, we’d likely collapse, but because of our stamina, not because of some kind of magical limit,” Elly caveated.

Jet nodded. “You said tomes can hypothetically cast any spell?”

Gideon butted in. “It’s true. You can draw any circle in a tome. It’s not as if there’s some law forcing you to only fill a tome with one element of spell. Mages simply focus on what they specialize in, whether that be the noble pursuit of killing dragons, or… something else.”

Elly nodded. “It’s rare for a mage to specialize in more than one element, and when they do, they usually separate their spells into two tomes, for ease of use. You don’t want to flip to the wrong page and use a wind spell instead of water when you’re trying to put out a house fire.”

“Eh? Don’t the pages turn themselves?” Jet asked.

“Eh?” Elly asked.

Gideon sat up proudly. “Meta-casting enchantments! I put an enchantment in the binding of my tome so the tome will synchronize with my thoughts and flip to the right page.” He deflated somewhat, and waved a hand dejectedly. “Lots of mages do it. It’s not that exciting.”

Elly ducked her head apologetically. “I’m not a mage, after all, I’m a priestess. I don’t know the finer pieces of tome-casting very well.”

“No, no. It’s understandable,” Jet allowed.

“How dare you. Everyone should know everything about magery. In fact, I’m insulted,” Gideon said, putting his hands on his hips. For once, he didn’t actually sound insulted.

Jet reached for his pendant.

Elly laughed, shaking her head. “Right, right. That’s fair. It’s not as if you know anything about being a priestess.”

“Why would I? Mages are the strongest beings there are,” Gideon said, taken aback.

Leo’s shoulders shook. Quiet snorts of laughter rang out occasionally.

“You know, I’ve been wondering, Gideon. Why do you hate dragons so much?” Elly asked.

“Why do I hate dragons?” Gideon took a deep breath. He frowned and stared up at the sky. A slight flinch ran through him, as though he remembered something painful. He shook his head and twisted his lips.

“You don’t have to say, if it’s painful,” Elly said gently.

Gideon shook his head. He held a hand out and took a deep breath. “Once, I… looked up, at the sky. A dragon was flying up there, high up above me. A good friend of mine was right there at my side. She pointed it out, actually. That dragon.”

Elly nodded, concern twisting her brows.

“That dragon… looked down on me with such a smugness in its eyes. Such complete and utter smugness. In that moment, I knew, I could no longer suffer dragons to fly above me! I must drag them all down to earth, so I can look smugly down on them!” Gideon declared heroically, clenching his fists.

Jet took a deep breath and rubbed the bridge of his nose. I don’t know what I expected.

“Oh,” Elly said, frowning.

Jet shook his head. He nodded ahead. “We’re almost at the next city. We should see it coming up any moment now.”

An arrow slammed into the street in front of Elly. Angie bucked under her, startled. Elly pulled in the reins and patted her neck, comforting the beast.

Jet reached for his sword. Gideon put a hand on his tome.

A girl’s laughter rang over the road. “Aha! Beware of thieves, haven’t you heard? This is a stick-up! I want all your gold!”

“No,” Gideon said bluntly.

“Then… your lives!” Another arrow burst out of the trees, impaling itself in the road between Angie’s hooves. Angie half-reared, then slammed back down, panting and tired.

Elly murmured words of comfort and petted the old horse. She glared fiercely into the woods. “How dare you. Angie’s an old girl. You might hurt her joints, startling her like that.”

“You think a master thief like me cares about a horse like—ah!”

Lightning sparked into the tree, thunder rattling after it. Almost simultaneously, a blast of ice hurtled into it, glowing faintly blue-white. A girl a little younger than Leo fell out of the trees, her bow encased in a block of ice, dressed in layers of ragged green and brown. A hood half-hid her face, and she wore trousers rather than a skirt. She jumped to her feet, glaring around at them. “I’m the mighty thief who haunts these parts. Give me your money or your lives!”

“Still threatening us?” Gideon raised his tome.

“She’s just a girl,” Elly said, frowning at Gideon.

Gideon glanced at her, then shrugged and put the tome away.

Jet sighed. He hopped off his horse and offered the girl a hand up. “Are you hungry? We have food.”

“I need no charity! I’m the terror of Bramble Road, the ghost of—”

Jet held out a piece of hardtack and a bit of hard cheese. The girl’s stomach rumbled.

“—thank you very much!” She snatched up the food and gobbled it down, bow forgotten on the road below.

“Come on. We’re already taking one kid to the city. We can take you, too. Get you both settled somewhere safe,” Jet said.

The girl glared. “Not the orphanage. I won’t go back. You can’t make me.”

“I mean. We can. In fact, we’re legally obligated to,” Gideon pointed out.

Jet glared at him.

Elly smiled. “How about the church? You’re old enough to start serving. If you have talent with a staff, you could even become a priestess.”

“I don’t want to be a priestess! I’m a thief!”

“Have you tried being a priestess?” Elly said.

The girl hesitated. She shook her head.

“Then how do you know you don’t want to be one? Give it a shot, first!” Elly beamed, tilting her head.

The girl turned away slightly, shy. She tugged her hood down to hide her face.

“Come on. How’d you end up out here all alone, anyways?” Jet asked, patting his horse for her to hop on.

The girl glared at him. “I won’t tell. I’m a scary thief. Leave me alone.”

Jet reached into his pocket and held out another piece of cheese. The girl scrambled up onto his horse and snatched the cheese. As she gnawed it, she muttered, “Everyone in my family died of sickness. I’m the last one left. Had to take care of myself.”

“Come on, let’s go. I’m bored,” Gideon complained.

“Sorry my pain bored you,” the girl shot back.

“Hey, hey. Don’t respond to him. It only feeds him,” Jet warned her.

“Pain is super boring. Come on. No one wants to hear about it if it’s painful. Tell us a better story. Make up a happy past, or something,” Gideon said, shrugging.

“Make up a happy past—” the girl gasped, her cheeks reddening.

“Hey. What’d I say? Ignore him,” Jet reminded her.

The girl crossed her arms and puffed her cheeks, incensed. She harrumphed.

Jet nudged Bluebell back into motion. Angie walked on, and the little caravan began to move again. Jet nodded ahead of them. “Not long to the city.”