Miro was awoken at dawn, ushered into the inn’s small dining room for a bowl of hot oats and loaded up onto the departing fishing boat before he could safely say that he was fully awake. He did have the presence of mind to fire off one fireball into the air before he reached his maximum mana level.

It was a prudent decision, as the first thing Hima said when she found him on deck that morning was, “What’s your mana level?”

“Ten.”

“Good,” she said, and Miro thought he heard a sense of relief in her voice, as if she was expecting to have the same conversation with him that she had the day before. “We’ve got three fireballs to work with, then.” She looked around, leaned over the edge of the boat, and then looked up. “I guess we can practice on those gulls.”

Miro looked at the birds circling overhead, imagining each of them falling charred and burning to the water below. He felt his stomach turn, which was not helped by the fact that he was back on the water, the Faithful Shoal hopping up and down on that morning’s chop.

“Is there no other way we can do this?” he asked, hearing how wretched he must have sounded.

“There’s only so many ways we can train fire powers on a wooden boat, Miro. Now hurry up, you’ll be doing the fish a favour,” and when he made no response she added, “I bet they’ve dreamed of the day the tables would turn since they were fry.”

“Okay, but is there a way to just … not cook the birds? Maybe fire it into the water instead? Luck will have it we might fry a fish and that could maybe satisfy that bloodlust of yours.”

Hima blinked at him a few times and rubbed her eyes. “Well I’m glad you and your three Charisma points are feeling all better now.” She waited for the smirk to be wiped off his face and he was surprised to find that she was patient when she wanted to be. “Any time you use your skills, your skills improve, I’m sure even you’ve gathered that by now. And under ordinary circumstances, that might be enough. Someone in their infinite wisdom, though, possibly due to generations of marrying exclusively into the aristocracy, decided that you don’t have that kind of time. You need to make sure that every single mana point is used as efficiently as possible. Any time you aim for a target, you get a bonus. Anytime you hit your target, you get a bonus. Any time you injure or kill your target, well, I think you understand by now. I don’t want the seagull to die any more than you do, but the way I see it – it’s either the seagull, or us. So choose.”

His three Charisma points wanted to make some snarky comment about how her face moved less the angrier she got, but his two points of Intellect chose silence and he fired off his remaining fireballs at the circling seagulls. He hit only one, without even giving it a chance to let out a final screech. Hima had been right though (it was her most annoying quality) – the increase to his skill level was perceptibly better than for the fireball he’d fired off aimlessly that morning. In fact, he found himself not that far off from reaching the next fireball level, which momentarily took his mind off the legions of cooked seagulls that were in store for him in the near future.

“You had three fireballs. You should have hit three targets,” Hima said, ever eager to be the ray of sunshine in Miro’s life. “‘As efficiently as possible’ does not mean flailing around like the tail of an ass. How about next time you actually take a moment to aim and concentrate?”

Miro let out a long breath through his pursed lips.

“Uh-huh,” Hima said, her patience clearly frayed to naught, “Just don’t hyperventilate, okay? I’ll see you in a couple of hours.” She turned to walk in the direction of the cabin and found Nydra walking her way. “He’s all yours,” Hima said, and even though he couldn’t see her face, Miro could hear that she was smiling.

“What?” He asked as Nydra stood in front of him.

“‘Vot’ is a city on the coast,” she responded, “What I’ll be doing is teaching you how to handle a sword.” She pulled a sword from behind her back and presented it to Miro with a broad smile on her face.

“But I’m a mage, what will I ever need a sword for?”

“Ha! I may be a little bit prejudiced here but I find that when mana tends to run out, a good sword doesn’t.”

“Not unless I melt it down with my fire powers,” Miro said and immediately felt the sting of the flat of the sword smacking him across the face. He held up a palm to his cheek, but he was more startled than hurt.

“Good news then,” Nydra said, “I’m starting you off on a wooden sword.”

“I can set that one on fire.”

“And why didn’t you?”

“No mana,” Miro grumbled, hanging his head.

“That’s what I thought.” Nydra thrust the wooden sword into Miro’s hands. “Now quit your moping, lad. Chin up. And get into you first stance.”

Their training continued all morning, by the end of which Miro was sore all over but no closer to feeling like he wouldn’t be skewered in the first three seconds of a real sword fight. Still, he tried his luck.

“So when do I get my own real sword?” he asked as Nydra put her own sword back in its scabbard.

“When I can be sure you won’t cut yourself unsheathing it.”

“Well that’s … not going to be very soon then.”

“You’ll get there.” she said, mussing up his hair with her gloved hand. “Now give it here,” she added, pulling the sword out of his hands.

“Oh come on. I don’t even get to keep the wooden one?”

“Especially not the wooden one,” Nydra said over her shoulder, walking back to the cabin.

“What?”

“You know.” She held up her hand and wiggled her fingers. “Pshhh.”

He looked at his hands and then was struck by a momentary panic before seeing that his mana was nowhere near maximum. “Oh yeah.”

“Go get ready. I’m sure your stomach will be happy to know we’ll be disembarking soon.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant by “getting ready”. The grand total of his worldly possessions was already on him and it didn’t amount to much. These people better have been who they said they were because at this point he was relying on them completely.

The town at the end of the lakes that they disembarked at could hardly have been described as such, but it did have the requisite main street lined with reputable merchants – a dry goods store, a blacksmith and a stable which they’d walked right by as Miro eyed the beasts of burden with longing.

“So we’re still not doing the whole horse thing?” Miro asked when they were well and clear of the busy part of town.

“I told you, we need to stay inconspicuous,” Nydra said, with much more patience than Hima would have done.

“Right of course, what could possibly be more conspicuous than the common horse?” he groused and if he hadn’t known any better, the sound that came from underneath Hima’s cloak almost sounded like the grunt of a closed-mouth chuckle.

They continued down the one road out of town for a few hours, until he was sure that they were well and out of the Lake Country. The land that opened up to them was vast, mostly flat and dry, with only the occasional gentle sloping hills covered in tall colourless grasses as well as odd rock formations in the distance jutting out of the ground at arbitrary angles. Animals grazed in open pastures nearer to the villages that lay on either side of the road they travelled, which occasionally led them through groves of trees with silvery trunks and thin light-green leaves. As they passed through the trees, the air would be filled with the high-pitched buzzing of insects that stayed hidden in the foliage, though the groves did provide a break from the winds that roamed the planes, not quite cold, but not warm either.

When the day started to turn to evening, they neared a small town, and traffic on the road grew thicker with those travelling on foot and horseback. Their party took to smaller offshoot roads until they reached a homestead on the outermost limits of the settlement.

Nydra knocked on the door with an authoritative gauntleted hand, the kind of knock one could expect from a tax collector – an “ignore at your own peril” knock, yet it still took almost a minute for someone to answer. A pale man in his early thirties, who may have even been handsome if not for his scraggly dark beard and unpleasant expression, opened the door and grunted in a lazy attempt at a greeting.

“Kind stranger,” Nydra started in her most humble voice, “We are but weary travelers passing through these parts and were hoping to rely on your generosity for food and lodging tonight.”

The man stared blankly, and then made another similar grunt, although this one was likely meant to be a laugh. “‘Weary travelers’? Let’s see, we have an archer, swordswoman, a cloaked … something, and their page.” The man grunted again, like there was something in the back of his throat that constantly bothered him. “I’ve seen worse, I guess.” Miro meant to open his mouth but decided that there were far worse things than being called a page and chose silence over verbal violence. “Got any coin?” the man asked, still leaving the door open only wide enough for part pf his face to appear in it.

Hardly hesitating, Nydra pulled two coins out of a pouch around her waist and held them out in an open palm. “How does two King’s Copper sound?”

“King’s Copper,” the man seemed to taste the words in his mouth. “How about three?”

Nydra closed her fist over the two coins. “Well now, if the smell from inside your house is any indication, three would seem to be well worth it.” She added another coin to the two and practically shoved the coins through the opening in the door. The man looked at her hand, hovering under his nose and then opened the door all the way and beckoned them inside.

“Thank you for your generosity,” Nydra said, coming in, “Does our kind host have a name, by any chance?”

“Host?” The man stepped aside and headed for the stairs. “Name’s Sgobor.”

As far as Miro could tell, Sgobor lived in the house alone, which was not surprising given his disposition, but unsettling given the house’s size. Each of their group were assigned their own room by the general waving of a hand in the direction of a door. Some older paintings of stern ancestors on the wall indicated that Sgobor was either the final withered branch of a rich tree, or someone who had the real owners of the house stuffed into barrels in the basement. Miro wasn’t sure how well he was going to sleep that night.

Good news was that the three King’s Coppers at Sgobor’s dinner table took them pretty far, even if Miro was reminded of those children’s tales where the disobedient brats were fattened up before getting cooked by the evil goblins masquerading as a travelling troupe of musicians. Sgobor himself did little to dispel any of his fears. The man preferred silence, and it felt rude overruling the host on dinner etiquette, so they themselves all ate quietly.

Going back to their rooms at the end of dinner though, Miro was determined to go on record about his apprehensions.

“So … none of you are even a little bit worried that they’re not waking up in the morning?”

“Be nice,” Nydra said, peeling off towards her room, “Sgobor’s a loner, but he’s no killer. And even if he was, I sleep with both my swords under the pillow. So if anyone feels like getting a jump on me, they’re welcome to try.”

Miro looked to Peteri next, but the old archer only smiled wearily and said, “I sleep with one eye open.”

“Of course you do,” Miro muttered, “I’m surprised it’s not both eyes.”

His last hope was Hima, and since her room was adjacent to his, he followed her down the hallway of the second floor.

“What about you, Hima? You seem to have disdain for all humans and all things human-related. Are you seriously going to tell me you wouldn’t prefer to sleep under the stars tonight?”

“Me?” She asked, stepping into her room and putting one hand on the door. “I think I’ll be fine.” She closed the door on him, and the moment she did so, a layer of thick frost formed around the doorframe, sealing the room shut.

“That’s just perfect. So what am I supposed to do? Set my room on fire?”

“Knock yourself out,” came the muffled reply from within Hima’s room.

Miro went to his own bed with his belly satisfied and his mind unnerved. He remembered though that the health bar over Sgobor’s head was yellow, which wasn’t ideal, but it was a far cry from red, and if it wasn’t red, then things couldn’t get that bad. With the wind whistling over the pale prairies stretching out into forever outside his window, Miro fell asleep.