I was mediating a war between my head and my heart. A comfortable waiting chair. An antechamber. A door of wood.

A door whose outline I’d traced a dozen times with my eyes, wandering over the meandering pattern traced in wood. The way the grains flowed implied the door had been grown into shape.

I loved magic.

I hated my situation.

Every fiber of my treacherous being was telling me to leave. That I shouldn’t be here. That this was a bad idea. That I was only opening myself up to more pain.

My heart was a traitor.

My mind knew that this was the right thing to do. That seeing a mind healer - a therapist - was just what I needed to do.

No matter how I tried to face my fears, to let them pass over and through me, they stubbornly remained.

It was less fear, and more a raging ball of anxiety, worry, angst, and more than a little bit of anger and rage.

My self introspection was interrupted by the door opening, a polar bear in black robes ducking under and walking out on two legs. He stretched after the door, still confined by the room that now seemed tiny. He was missing the wizard hat entirely, but given his size, and how his head constantly scraped the ceiling, I could see why he’d skipped it.

You know what? Screw it, smart bear twice my height and twenty times my weight, sure. None of my business.

“Elaine, is it? Come on in.” A soft, elderly voice wafted from the door.

I bolted upright, ramrod straight, like one of the Ranger Academy’s Drill Instructors had yelled an order. Inspired, I imagined Quintis’s familiar voice yelling at me.

“RANGER ELAINE. YOU WILL MARCH INTO THAT ROOM. NOW!”

It helped me get through the door, but I teared up at the memory of the man, one of my mentors forever dead and gone.

Was there a single living soul who still even knew of him? Was I the only record of his memory? The only one who could still speak his name?

Possibly a little hyperbolic, as Artemis and Julius knew him. The Ranger community wasn’t that large.

He’d died the first time, but as long as I lived, a tenuous grasp, he hadn’t died for the second time.

“Quintis.” I breathed his name softly as I entered, keeping him alive in a small way.

The mind-healer was immediately apparent, a tiny, wizened woman in a chair, hair up in a bun as she busily click-clacked away with a pair of knitting needles and endless balls of yarn. A cozy fire smoldered next to her, a small table had a pile of cookies, and there was a somewhat squashed chair opposite to her.

The chair hadn’t been designed to hold a bear.

She looked up as I entered and marched over to the chair across from her.

“Oh. Oh my. It really looks like you could use a hug.” She put down her needles, gesturing me over. “Come here.”

She was like the avatar of grandmothers, warm and inviting.

I hesitated, not wanting to open myself up. Not wanting to bare myself in front of a stranger, not wanting to feel again.

She opened up her arms, making a small “come here” motion with her hands.

What was the point of being here if I was going to hesitate? If I wasn’t going to take the plunge? I’d forced myself to make the appointment. To come here. To march into the room.

One last step. One last risk.

I went over.

I unabashedly cried as she hugged me, letting her soothe me.

“Now now. Tell grandmother Linnet what’s wrong.”

“Everyone I know is dead. Twice. I want to help people, but it only feels like I kill them. I…”

I let my grief pour out of me, into her ears.

I checked over my array one last time. Not having any meta-skills was cramping my style, but I reminded myself that it was long-term optimal for having EVERYTHING.

[Something Doesn’t Look Right] was silent, but that was no excuse for skipping a thorough check of the array. One day I wouldn’t have the skill, and I needed to be in the habit of checking my work. If I leaned on the skill, I’d fall once I no longer had it.

This particular array was using three new runes I hadn’t used before. Akhulad, Fund, and Kewak. I cross-checked each of them against the reference book I’d checked out of the library, ensuring that each one was a perfect match.

[Repetition is the Mother of Learning] was another fantastic skill. After tracing each rune out a few dozen times, I was fully confident in being able to replicate it ‘live’. Not only was I confident in being able to replicate it now, but I had full confidence that I’d always be able to make the runes.

Now, knowing when and where to use the runes was a different issue. Properly picturing mandalas, and placing each rune in the right place, with the right neighbors, was tricky. Like solving a puzzle, although sets of runes that worked in one array would work exactly the same in another. Runes often impacted the runes next to them, creating a sort of language that I needed to speak.

It was difficult and awkward, but I could see that as I improved, it would come easier and easier.

[Learning Languages] didn’t extend to this ‘runic formulation’, but it had offered to evolve into a skill that would help.

I wanted to keep working on my natural language acquisition. I wasn’t happy with my current language abilities.

Satisfied that everything was in place, I started to draw the three-ringed array, aiming for one of the simple target dummies in the firing range. I wasn’t trying to bust through shields or penetrate armor, or do anything particularly fancy. I just wanted to make a water jet.

Technically, I could do it without a three-mandala array, but the point was to test my array knowledge, not to do something fancy.

I took out my wand, and started to trace the sigils and runes in the air in front of me.

First came the three circles, neat as could be. Dexterity was a surprisingly useful stat for wizards.

Three interlocking runes let the rings “know” that they were in an array. A few more runes were needed to connect between each ring, letting mana flow, modulating rates, letting the runes communicate with each other, and more.

Then I placed each rune into the correct place, infusing the ones that needed mana with the proper amount, building a few little ‘mana batteries’ into the array. The mana nodes would spread out, feeding the runes their power in precisely measured amounts. Some runes required careful handling, while I could flood the main circuits with as much power as I could feed it. The more power, the bigger and badder the water jet I’d summon would be. I continued to trace the runes, glancing back at my sketches and practice pieces to make sure I was staying on track, and not doing anything -

I made a mistake. A dumb one. I slashed my wand through the growing array, a cancel command forcefully dispersing the growing runes. I could simply let the skill ‘go’, but that was more dangerous than using a cancel command. No telling if the poorly written mana-charged runes would actually say something in the runic way, and cause an effect.

Highly unlikely. It’d be like shredding a dictionary, picking out a half-dozen words at random, and expecting it to be a complete sentence. It was possible, but not likely.

More likely it’d just explode. Poorly. If the explosion was any measure of powerful or deadly, ‘failed arrays’ would be a top-tier, heavily used weapon. The fact that people still went through the effort to build out full circles for particular effects spoke to the relative weakness of the mana used to explosion size.

When it came to the really big arrays that were eating hundreds of thousands points of mana, exploding as an ‘only’ 60,000 mana detonation was still significant, and could kill the poor wizard casting it.

I hadn’t made any such mistake though. No, I’d made an amateur mistake, one born from simply not growing up surrounded by wizardry.

When I built the mandala, I hadn’t cared too much about the direction, one being just like the other for puzzling out how everything needed to fit together. As a result, when I was drawing it just now, I had it pointing towards me, not towards the target dummy. I would’ve given myself a full-body blasting if I’d completed and activated it.

I totally could’ve skipped laundry day if it went off though…

With the old array safely dispersed into motes of glimmering light, like dozens of fireflies fading into the midday sunset, I sat down and sketched out the entire thing again, this time mirrored. I was fairly confident that I could simply mirror it and go now, but that type of thinking bred hubris and bad habits. It was more time and effort, but I was going to do things right.

I did only trace it out twice though, flipping everything over. There was a difference between being cautious, and flat-out wasting my time.

The second drawing of the real array went swimmingly, the lines and runes coming together in front of me, somehow hovering and staying still.

I put my wand on the central focal point, the area that took in and accepted my mana, and started to pour magic into the array.

I expected an immediate effect, and it only took me a quarter of a second to realize something was wrong. A quarter of a second of pouring mana into the array.

“Mango worms.” I swore as I grabbed my hat and threw up a shield in front of me, right before the entire array detonated in my face.

I trudged over to Lathor’s office, delighting that I actually had the time to experiment with arrays, make mistakes, and head over to the professor’s office to ask questions about it.

No matter how much I looked over my array, it looked right. Even the mirrored version seemed to have everything in place! [Something Doesn’t Look Right] wasn’t pinging in the slightest, which helped confirm that, to my knowledge, I’d done everything properly.

The array exploding in my face suggested that reality didn’t agree with my assessment.

I knocked on Lothar’s open door and peeked in, squinting as the light caught the endless ornaments hanging from his antlers and reflected them all over the room.

“Hey Lothar, got a minute?”

“Hrmmmmmm. Elaine. Yes.” He pointed at a chair in front of him, which I gratefully sank down into. “What can I do for you?”

“I’ve got this array that went poorly for me…” I quickly explained what happened, while showing him my notes and preparation.

“If only every student were as diligent as you were in preparing new spells. My job would be significantly easier. I’m more than happy to help, you’ve clearly done your legwork. Please give me some time to review.”

He picked up my notes, and I was happy to let him look over them. It was much easier to build my own spell, than to read someone else's.

Now, using someone else’s spell without knowing what it did? That was easy.

“Here. Your Akhauld rune is improperly drawn. You’ve got an extra line in the rune.” Lothar pointed to the rune, indicating the additional line that didn’t belong.

I scrunched up my eyebrows. I was sure I’d practiced it properly. I pulled out the reference book, immediately using the bookmark to flip over to the rune.

“You’re the professor, but… are you sure?” I showed him the rune in the book, exactly the same as the one I’d draw.

“Hrmmmm. Yes. This book is incorrect. A student-scribe copied something over improperly, a [Prankster] added in that extra line, or something else. It doesn’t matter. If you don’t mind, I will take the book and destroy it, so that nobody else comes to harm.”

I opened my mouth in a silent scream at that, my face twisting and contorting at the sheer level of blasphemy suggested. My mind raced in overdrive as I considered other possibilities and alternatives.

“I work at the library, and I checked the book out of the library. Why don’t I take it back? It’ll let them know there’s an issue, and work on correcting it.”

Lothar shrugged and handed the book back to me.

With a few further pleasantries, I left, mentally cursing.

Practice didn’t make perfect. Practice made permanent, and I’d just extensively practiced a rune incorrectly. Fixing it would take three times as long, as I tried to unlearn a bad behavior, and I had a perfect memory, making it all the harder to unlearn it.

It was also why [Something Doesn’t Look Right] hadn’t twigged to the issue. As far as I knew, everything had been correct. The skill was limited.

The entire incident simply reinforced what I already knew - knowledge was power.

I didn’t know nearly enough biomancy. Fortunately, I knew enough to know I didn’t know nearly enough, and that was a blessing and a half. If I knew less, I might be tempted into thinking I knew enough, and make some dumb, dumb decisions.

Like class up too soon, and try to make the changes to myself too quickly. That’d be a particularly interesting and elaborate way to commit suicide.

The most obnoxious part about designing for biomancy was how integrated and interconnected everything was. I couldn’t just give myself eyes that saw in the dark, oh no, I needed to make sure I had the entire supporting structure for that, and that none of the supporting structures screwed with each other.

It was no wonder Night’s description of creation had been so chaotic, why the species seemed to mostly be copies.

That, combined with what the elves had said about portals, made me wonder if there was a plane of existence filled with orcs and the like.

Still! Full-body biomancy mods were difficult, not impossible.

Right now, the only thing I got was I still wanted to look elvenoid. Becoming a monster was out of the question, and straying too far from the elvenoid template, or even the human template, would lead to a lifetime of strange looks, nasty whispers, and general ostracization. Being social was hard enough with all the advantages I currently had, shooting them all in the foot was a bad idea.

It didn’t mean that I couldn’t, say, get scales, but if I did I’d probably want to go full dragonling, then I’d need a tail, and all that entailed with that.

Now, subtle modifications like a layer of entirely clear scales over human skin? Possible, extra so since it could look like a skill was doing it.

The other thing I knew for sure was I wanted a full-system upgrade. I wanted everything improved, starting with my senses. Being able to see in low light settings. Sharper hearing. A nose like a bloodhound.

I was aiming for similar things with my bones, muscles, skin, organs - everything. As a compromise, I likely wouldn’t have one aspect be the absolute pinnacle of what it could be, in exchange for a holistic full-body improvement.

Cranking everything up 10%, instead of making my skin impervious to arrows, at the cost of only being able to eat a single type of grass, or something like that.

The other item I was eyeing up were redundant internal organs. I’d still look human with three hearts instead of one, and the added redundancy could save my life.

Remapping the entire circulatory system to accommodate three hearts wasn’t easy, on top of wiring in the proper nerves, and that was before adding in more organs.

Hearts might be a poor example. A second heart was good - if someone speared me through my first heart and kept their skill-reinforced weapon there, I’d survive. A third heart was pointless. The situation where someone magically managed to hit two of my hearts but not the third one, and I managed to somehow survive anyways just because of the extra heart, wasn’t worth all the costs. Like storage space! I only had so much room in my body to cram organs.

Backup brains, or a distributed brain system, was super high on my list though. That was the only organ I didn’t know if I could survive being destroyed.

Gills were circled three times in red. Drowning was a fear of mine, and gills were easy to incorporate. The humble lungfish was an example of using both, giving an easy blueprint of how to merge the two systems.

A secondary stomach that could eat wood and dirt also occasionally made it into my notes, with lots of question marks around how I’d know which stomach to funnel food into, and how it’d reconnect with the rest of my digestive track. Would I need another liver? Small intestine? Did blood screw with it at all? Did…

Lots of question marks.

Busy, busy…

“Hey Elaine, you busy tonight?” Iona asked me.

I pointedly glanced out the window, with the sun still blazing bright.

Iona rolled her eyes at me.

“You know exactly what I’m asking.”

I didn’t have to think too hard about it. I had time now.

“Yeah, sure, got ideas?”

“The student center! There’s tons of things to do there!”

I shrugged. Iona was the social one, and had a better idea than I did what was fun. My work schedule had also been shuffled around to a more reasonable hour, and my evenings were free again.

We arranged a time and a place to meet, and I tackled my homework with renewed vigor.

An outing! A fun time! With a totally cool gal to boot!

“Brrrpt?”

“If you want, but no burning anything.” I told Auri.

She looked at me in disgust.

“Brrpt!!” She darted off, and returned a moment later, fumbling her hat with one [Mage Hand] while a second one carried a charred lump.

“Oh my! What’s this?” I asked Auri, gratefully accepting it.

“Brrrpt!” I reminded myself to be encouraging, that it was all too easy to smother the embers of interest in the cradle.

“A muffin! Oh my! How… tasty looking…” I took a bite.

Mmmmm. Burned on the outside, batter on the inside. She was improving!

“A most excellent snack, dearest Auri. Perhaps more time in less intense flames?”

“Brrpt…” Auri was thinking about it.

“Brpt!” And with that, she flew off.

I chuckled, licking the batter off my fingers. Honestly, cooking most baked goods was such a waste when the dough was so tasty in the first place.

“Tell me how this works.” I eyed the large table in front of me doubtfully. There were miniature mountains, streams, forests, deserts, towns, the whole works, splayed out on the table. We were in a room with a few other tables like this, a couple of them in use by other students, with a few spectators watching each game. We had a few spectators starting to eye our game up as well.

“Right! This is a wargame. It’s well done enough that [Strategists] can level playing it.”

That was pretty cool. A game that could level people up? I wondered if there were any medical games that could help with leveling.

“The makers had all sorts of complicated words describing how it worked that went in one ear and out the other.”

Iona grinned at that, and I rolled my eyes at her.

“The long and short of it is, you have your towns and civilians, and I have my towns and civilians. They all make different resources, gems being the big one, and we spend those gems acquiring units. Some units take a long time to get, some are fast, and they have different levels of strength. We then send them at each other, and try to take over all the towns. As units do things and survive, they’ll level up, and civilians who survive fights also level up. There’s tons of other options.”

“Are there, like, turns and such?”

Iona shook her head, her blonde hair swaying with the motion.

“Everything keeps going at the same time, but it’s slow, in a way. Oh! Monsters and the like might also attack civilians, so you’ll need to protect them. Can’t make a gigantic army and send them over.”

Sounded easy enough. Iona - and a few helpful students - showed me the controls, and we were off!

The game required a good amount of focus and attention, mostly because everything was new. Securing our own territory was first, before we could launch any attacks, and I elected to make a few roaming squads of moderate to high level people to fight off monster attacks.

Hey, it had been a valid, working system for centuries.

Iona elected to get fewer, higher-leveled warriors, and send them wandering around.

And, well, this was a game. A fun game. That called for smack-talking.

“I’m totally going to kick your ass.” I teased Iona playfully, making a few more moves. Trying to sneak some marauders into her territory.

“Oh yeah? Can your foot even reach that high?” She bantered back, grinning all the way, focused on the board. She spotted a number of my marauders.

“Wouldn’t you like to find out?”

She locked eyes with me.

“Yes.” Her words struck something deep inside me.

That didn’t stop me from letting one of my high-level marauders unleash an ‘earthquake’ on one of Iona’s cities though.

“Hey!” She yelped, getting back into the game. “No fair!”

“All’s fair in love and war!” I declared, sending a second wave of attackers to harass Iona’s territory.

She shot me a quick glance.

“I’ll remember that.” The playgirl mischievously growled under her breath.