"So, what do you know?" Varia said, brandishing a practice sword. From what Annabelle had heard, Varia was usually outmatched by whoever she was training, so she was probably going to enjoy being able to clobber a rookie for once.

"I'm not sure," Annabelle responded.

Varia lunged forwards suddenly. Annabelle managed to barely parry the first stroke, but the second stroke disarmed her effortlessly.

"Clearly, not much," Annabelle quipped.

Annabelle just used a bit of telekinesis to recover her weapon, and lunged in, only to be countered easily. She continued her assault, but her trainer parried every move effortlessly.

"Alright, here's what I think," Varia said. "You're trying to use brute force, and you aren't built for brute force." Even without telepathy, Annabelle could sense Varia's disdain for her.

The trainer began to demonstrate basic techniques, and Annabelle spent the next few hours going through drills. Thankfully, though she wasn't very strong, she had enough endurance to not be completely exhausted after the training session concluded.

Then, after getting dinner, she retreated to the Resistance's library, hoping to gain more information about magic. Maybe, if she was lucky, she might even be able to start casting spells herself.

She picked a book titled Arcane Fundamentals I, (the first of a 7-book series), skipped through the table of contents, and reached the first page.

It was nothing but gibberish. Okay, not quite gibberish, but close enough. Apparently, mages used their own system of writing, for seemingly no reason.

Annabelle saw a nearby mage snickering, and confronted him.

"Why are all of the books on magic written in a different language?"

"You're the third idiot this week who thinks he can walk into the library and become a mage in a week."

"I'm already a mage," Annabelle claimed. She manifested a purple orb of psychic energy in her palm to prove it.

"Well, this is interesting. You might be one of those rarities that spontaneously gains the gift without study. But even then, you should still be able to read mage writings."

Annabelle considered ripping the necessary information out of this mage's head. There were a few others in the library, so she would either need to lure the mage into a secluded area or hit him hard and fast before he could react. And, she suspected he'd have a decent amount of mental resistance, almost certainly enough to alert everyone before being beaten. And, once she extracted the information, she'd need to seamlessly edit their memory to leave out her pilfering without them getting suspicious. It was doable, but quite risky.

Or, you could just ask. He'd probably say yes.

"I come from a distant region," Annabelle claimed. "I learned differently. Why is it that the books here are in a different language anyways?"

"Magescript has a light innate enchantment that resonates with those who have the gift of magic, translating theory into function in a more effective manner."

"I might be able to translate it into something I can understand, but in order to do that, I'd need to briefly merge minds with you."

The mage backed up a bit. "I've got a better idea. The mage began an incantation, and waves his hands around a bit. Annabelle was busy trying to figure out whether or not the weird magic hand waving was actually a core part of the spell or just for effect when the spell's effect hit her mind.

She almost blocked the spell's effect on instinct, but realized that it was really only a surge of information. Namely, enough information to translate Magescript. It turned out to be surprisingly easy to translate, once you know which symbols matched which normal letters. She was now quite certain that the whole language was made up for the sole purpose of making magic harder for non-mages to understand.

"Now, I’m supposed to only use that on those who intend to become apprentice mages, but you’re already a mage, albeit one who can’t read our language."

"Where I'm from, we don't have a secret language just for magic-users." Primarily because the Earth equivalent of a magic-user had just been invented in the past year, but still. "It seems like you're keeping everything secret to seem more intelligent than you truly are."

"Just read your damn book." The mage stormed off, clearly irritated.

Annabelle read the first chapter of the book, titled Birth of a Mage. It seemed to detail how, exactly, mages gained their powers.

Every arcanist gets their powers from an Epiphany, an event that awakens their ability. The exact trigger for an Epiphany varies. For most wizards, an Epiphany is triggered after a year of research and study in the College, or a similar institution. However, there are also sorcerers, rare individuals who gain an Epiphany at a young age and develop powers spontaneously. Those who awaken through that method tend to have more raw power, but their lack of training limits the scope of their abilities.

The Epiphany is not a certain event. A few unfortunate individuals never gain any Epiphany, no matter how much they attempt to study. Further, approximately 25% of all who do gain an Epiphany suffer from a Burnout, a traumatic event that renders them forever unable to develop magic. However, for everyone else, the Epiphany rewards them with access to the power of magic, as well as an instant understanding of Magescript.

The exact nature of the event is unknown. All that is known is that an individual that gains an Epiphany briefly blacks out, and then re-awakens after a short period, with no memories of what happened to them during the Epiphany. Various theories have been put forward as to the nature of the Epiphany, but none have been confirmed. As a quarter of those who gain an Epiphany fail to gain magic, the current belief is that the Epiphany is some form of test.

So, if she tried to learn magic, it would take a year just to gain even the most minor magic, and that was if she didn't fail the test outright. Compared to how much she had been able to develop her psychic abilities in a comparable time-frame, it didn't seem like a worthwhile career path.

Annabelle returned to her quarters, mildly disappointed. It turned out that she wasn't going to develop magic powers herself, and the best she would be able to do in that regard would be taking control of an enemy wizard in combat.

She would just have to settle for being the strongest psion known across two worlds.

As she slept and thought about the events of the day, Annabelle came up with an idea. If she applied telekinesis in the right way, she should be able to swing a sword with enough force to deliver a devastating blow, overwhelming an opposing warrior’s defenses. However, if the force wasn’t applied correctly, it could easily cause her to rip her arm out of its socket. And, if she was in a position to use it, she was in close proximity to an enemy who was likely more skilled than she was in a straight swordfight.

**********

Annabelle almost overslept her next training session. She blamed the shorter day here. This planet seemed to rotate faster than Earth, enough to reduce each day to twenty hours. While the natives were used to it, she would need some time to adapt.

Still, she had enough time to get out there to test her theory.

After a few warmup swings against a wooden practice dummy, she put her experiment into practice. She focused some of her telekinetic energy around her sword, and as she swung forward, she pushed with telekinesis as well, accelerating the blade to a high speed.

She hit the dummy hard enough to jar her grip, leaving her sword stuck in the wood. As she shook her hands out to recover, she realized that she would need a better grip on her weapon if she wanted to hit hard without disarming herself.

Before she could try again, Varia arrived. "So, the mage is actually serious about being a foot-soldier."

"I don't exactly want to be defenseless in close combat," Annabelle responded. "I've got pretty limited reserves, so I need a backup plan in case they run out."

"Never heard of a mage running out of energy," Varia commented. "But still, let's begin."

After her remark, Varia got into the day's training. This session seemed to be significantly more difficult, but Annabelle pushed through. At the end of the day, Annabelle had managed to grasp at basic techniques, and had actually managed to disarm her opponent in a sparring round. She retired to her quarters, thoroughly exhausted.

The next day, she managed to wake up early enough to take an hour to work on her own techniques. After taking a few minutes to exercise her psychic abilities and swordplay, she came up with a new approach.

Instead of just trying to put all of the force into the weapon, she instead distributed the telekinetic force throughout her whole body. changed her swing from a wild slash to a powerful but controlled blow, allowing her to land a hit without losing control of her weapon. She made a few runs of it, and almost managed to slice a target dummy in half.

During her later sparring sessions, she decided to pull a surprise on Varia with her new ability. As she engaged in a series of parries, she activated her ability and then swung hard. Varia, completely unprepared for the strength of her blow, was disarmed easily, but before Annabelle could stop herself, her wooden practice sword smashed through her block and nailed Varia in the head, hard enough to launch her airborne before she landed in the sand.

She didn't appear to be moving, and Annabelle went from joy at pulling off her technique to panic from a potentially lethal training accident. Sure, killing was nothing new, but she did realize that it would be hard for the Resistance to trust her after such an incident. Even considering resurrection potentially being a possibility.

But before Annabelle could even figure out how to help her, Varia recovered, and got back to her feet as if nothing had ever happened.

"Sorry," Annabelle said.

"Cheater," Varia muttered. "As much as using powers in training can get one over on your trainer, that isn't the point of this exercise. So, can we get back to playing fair?"

"There's no rules in a real fight." However, Annabelle knew she was ultimately right, and finished the training session the hard way.

**********

Three days after his rescue, Raiks led the resistance's council for the first time in a year. He watched as the other members of the council streamed in.

The first member to arrive was Turb. He appeared oddly young for a wizard, which Raiks attributed to illusions. He was a bit brash, and at some points seemed to lack wisdom but his magical aptitude was enough to qualify him as leader of the Resistance's arcane assets. Raiks still wished for the presence of Aurim, but the last archmage had died from his age sometime after the creation of Sanctuary.

Next came Derrin Fire-Spear. The old man was Raiks' second-in-command, and had been forced to take command after Raiks was captured. He had been picked as the second-in-command primarily due to his low tolerance of risk; he could be trusted to leave the resistance in one piece when he took charge. He ran the lesser operations of the resistance, mainly scouting, spying, and infiltration.

Then, the Hammerblade brothers, Faris and Varn, arrived. The two dwarves were the quartermasters, and they were probably the two most important members of the resistance. The magical items they created were crucial to the success of the resistance's operatives.

Like most dwarves, they were completely bald, and their skin was tough and heat-resistant, adapted to handle the heat of forges and underground environments. When Annabelle had first heard of them, she thought the dwarves had beards for some strange reason, which was a laughable idea. Beards were a liability in a forge.

Lastly, Lunima arrived. She led the infirmary and the church of Sanctuary, and was one of two priests in the resistance with the ability to resurrect the fallen dead. She looked like a mess from all of the long hours she had put into rehabilitating the Blacksite's prisoners, and seemed to be struggling just to stay awake.

Missing was the soldiers' representative. The men under Raiks' command were given the choice of appoining one of their own to the council meetings to give the council the perspective from the ground level. But, given the reorganizing they were doing, they simply didn't have anyone they were willing to send.

Once he was sure their representative was not arriving, Raiks began the meeting.

"Since my capture, this resistance has turned from an actual opponent to such an incredibly weak force that I suspect it only survived due to its meaninglessness."

Derrin raised an objection. "I tried my best, sir. We didn't just lose you, we lost almost a quarter of our soldiers and two-thirds of our equipment in that mission."

"You don't need to give excuses," Raiks said. "It was my fault for launching that operation, and my fault for joining the mission personally despite the bad intel. In that bad situation, you did the best that you could."

"But that's in the past," Raiks continued. "Right now, we've been given a second chance. One that I intend to take every advantage of."

"I think we should look at the reason for this 'second chance' first," Lunima interrupted. "Can we trust Annabelle?"

Raiks considered that. "Her motives are unclear, yes, but for now she's working on our side."

"How do we know she isn't Daraken's double agent?" Derrin said.

"Preposterous," Raiks said. "As far as I can tell, Daraken was outright ignoring us after my capture for not being relevant. Why would he waste resources to reinvigorate his only enemy, just for a chance at potentially destroying them later?"

Derrin was going to object, but wisely dropped the objection.

"Although, Annabelle is a wild card," Raiks continued. "She's not on Daraken's side, but I'm not clear on her motivations. Or, for that matter, her capabilities. For that reason, I don't feel comfortable sending her into the field just yet."

"A wise decision," Lunima said.

With that out of the way, Raiks continued with his original points. "Right now, we've got a massive influx of soldiers, but little if any equipment for them. We need a large amount of supplies to support this. Turb, what have you found?"

Turb, who had been given orders earlier to look for targets, listed out some results. "I've found three locations. The thing is, they were easy to locate with just simple divination. Too easy, I'd say."

Turb did a few motions, and pulled up a map on the command table. "The first site appears to be an isolated supply stash, in the middle of a forest. I say 'appears' because given the fact that it's out in the middle of nowhere and seems effortless to seize, there's no reason for it to exist outside of trying to bait our forces."

"Either that or it could be a hermit," Lunima tossed out. It wasn't a serious comment, but it could be true all the same.

"Or it could be a secret stash," Derrin added.

"If it was meant to be secret," Turb replied, "it wouldn't be so easy to find. Unless the wards failed..."

"We could very well ignore this," Raiks said. "But I believe Darius should be able to scout the site out safely. I'll send him alone to the area."

Turb switched to another section of the map, highlighting a second target. "This watchtower is just outside the Lost Jungle. It's in a bit of a grey area, but it's only lightly defended. We could probably get away with a snatch-and-grab."

"I wouldn't touch it," Derrin said. "Whether it's a defensive position, or a staging ground for an assault on the jungle, we should leave Daraken alone with dealing with them."

"I agree," Raiks said. "We don't want another enemy."

Turb attempted to defend his choice, stating "We would not be launching a direct attack against the Jungle's denizens. If we happen to open up a line of attack that they take advantage of, the threat is Daraken's to deal with, and we would be able to utilize the opportunity."

Raiks considered the proposition. In theory, giving the Jungle's denizens an open opportunity to strike would give Daraken another enemy. But in practice...

"It. Is. Not. Worth. The. Risk." Raiks said. "At best, it's a minor inconvenience to him, one that takes a few minutes of his time. At worst, he could use the attack to convince the orcs to join his forces. For all we know, Daraken could be holding negotiations there, and us interfering could give him an enemy to direct them against."

Though, he would later tell Turb to keep an eye on what was going on there.

Then, Turb revealed the third target. The map homed in on the city of Furion, a large coastal city on the eastern edge of Daraken's domain. "This city is plagued by a corrupt ruler. Out of all of the resources devoted to the city's defense, he's taken much of it for himself. He's probably traded half of them away to traders in the Otherlands, but there's still plenty left to take. This action has also left the city's defenses understaffed, underequipped, and low on motivation."

Derrin brought up an objection. "If we hit here, Daraken's cleanup and recovery will eliminate the corrupt regime, bringing in more effective rulers."

"If he hasn't dealt with the corruption by now, it isn't significantly impacting him," Raiks said. "The benefits for us from the raid on him will outweigh any effects he might gain by rooting out corruption."

"Also," Turb added, "the corruption here is bad enough that clearing out all of the corruption would be costly for him. Even if he simply kills everyone he appointed, he'll still have to find others to control the town."

"What resources are available?" Faris interjected.

"There’s a large supply of crystals," Turb said. "As well as a few magic items bought using said crystals."

"Good," Varn said. "We could use some extra enchanting catalysts." Raiks still wasn’t sure on the details of how that worked. He originally suspected the Hammerblade brothers were making that up to get more money, but they were able to prove that, somehow, the primary currency of the realm was also incredibly useful in enchanting. Admittedly, they didn't exactly have a purpose for money anyways, since most of the Resistance would fight without pay to stop Daraken as long as they had food, shelter, and combat equipment.

"Alright, that settles it," Raiks said. "We're launching an operation in Furion. Turb, I'll need details on its defenses."

With that, the discussion changed from discussing targets to planning out the assault.