The next few days were almost idyllic. The crew went from one patty to the next, carefully planting precise rows of rice. The water that flooded the fields was warmer than the air around them. The patties were kept warm by the hypocausts their father had lit a week ago. Thankfully, their design didn’t require smoky air.

Hugo continued to play the idiot son, and Milana showed off her knowledge of the business. There were occasional monster attacks. Milana took care of all of them. Up on the foothills, there was nowhere for the monsters to hide as they approached. She speared them with shafts of light well before they grew close enough to threaten anyone.

They were sitting around a fire, tucked away in a cave near the rice patties, when Hugo decided tonight was the night. He was going to make his move.

“What do you miss most about Mount Lian?” he said.

Ana-Marie sighed and said, “Lots of things, friends, status, mana. All the hallmarks of a civilized life, I guess.”

“In a few days, father is going to return with the good news. Golden rice for the Baden family. Then he will leave, to go to his friends, his status, and his mana rich environment. The only thing keeping you from joining him is me,” Hugo said.

She narrowed her eyes and said, “What are you getting at?”

“We both know that I am not fit to lead this company. I don’t know the business, I don’t know the people, I don’t even know the names of the people we sell the rice to. It will literally take you years to get me ready to lead the company. And we both know I wouldn’t do a good job of it,” Hugo paused and said, “On the other hand, your oldest child is brilliant. She knows most everything about this company and would be an excellent leader. You could walk away tomorrow and know that Baden Rice is in good hands.”

“Baden Grains,” Milana said. “The name of the company is Baden Grains, not Baden Rice.”

“See,” Hugo said and gestured, “I didn’t even know that.”

Ana-Marie looked surprised, “Why would you give up the agribusiness? You have talked for years about how you wanted to lead the company. What changed? Did she promise you something?”

Hugo shook his head, “Nothing changed, mother. You have heard me ask for the power and the money that comes with leading a company. In my entire life, have I ever said anything that indicated I wanted responsibility?” He looked at her expectantly. It was a bit of a risk since he didn’t know how Florin lived his life, but he had a pretty good guess.

“No, I guess not,” she sighed. “Do you really want your sister to run things? I thought you hated her.”

Hugo shrugged, “I want the company to be profitable, and I know she is the better choice. Don’t you agree?”

Ana-Marie nodded to herself, then said, “It doesn’t matter what I think. Your father would never agree.”

“Father loves you. It absolutely matters what you think. He may be misogynistic, but he does love you and cares what you think. If the three of us come to him with a plan, I think he will listen,” Milana said.

Ana-Marie shook her head, “He might listen, but he wouldn’t agree. He won’t let his only son be outdone by his sister.”

“That’s why we redirect him. We make him think that running things here is second prize. We don’t go to him with the plan of Milena running things. We go to him with the plan of me creating golems. I am going to go to him with the idea of focusing on creating golems to sell, and we have Milana focus on the boring rice business. I already know a runic mage that owes me a favor so we could get the runed bodies for cheap,” Hugo said. He really was excited about creating golems, it would be fun.

Ana-Marie didn’t say anything. She sat there and stared into the fire at the mouth of the cave. After a few more minutes she said, “I don’t like the idea of going behind my husband’s back like this, but I agree that it would be best for everyone. I will help you.”

Milana and Hugo looked at each other and quietly celebrated. They spent the rest of the evening discussing plans and strategies.

The next morning was their last one on the foothills. The workers quickly finished planting the final rice patty and then it was time for the ritual. Mage Danik had placed a ritual circle under the water in each of the sixteen rice patties. Now it was time for him to activate them.

Carefully, Mage Danik placed offerings on the master ritual at the base of the mountain. First were the fresh fruits, oranges, mangosteen, plums, and blackberries. Next were a variety of flowers, bright and vibrant. Hugo didn’t know the names of any of them. Finally, Danik placed a variety of grains on the ritual nodes, wheat, oats, barley, and rice. He took some time getting the placement just right.

Since he had experience with oblate, Hugo noticed the moment he started using the spell. Mage Danik sent mana into the ritual as he danced around it and sang.

“Demeter, gracious goddess who grants us the gift of grain,

whose might it is that brings the trees to fruit,

whose hand we see as buds become blossoms,

who taught to men the art of the seed,

whose blessing we beg,

whose wrath we dread, goddess, I pray to you,” he sang.

Hugo bit his lip. Mage Danik had looked so silly dancing around and singing, that it was genuinely difficult to keep himself from laughing.

Then the mage turned around and sang again as he danced around the other direction,

“Essential Demeter, friend of the farmer, by whose power do we survive,

I pray to you, show to us a fruitful season,

bless us with an abundant harvest,

food enough to bring us through the long winter.

For your goodness and your kindness we thank you, Demeter;

for your favor we pray to you, O bountiful goddess!”

The ritual started glowing and the sacrifices turned to dust and flowed through the air to touch the other rituals. Soon every single rice shoot was glowing faintly. As they watched, the rice grew two feet.

They packed up and left then. They would let the rice finish growing naturally from here on out. It would taste better and be healthier if they didn’t rush the final step of growth.

...

“You need to walk before you can run, Florin,” Polina said, “And that means more practice before you attempt to heal.”

Hugo groaned and said, “It’s been three days, Mage Polina. Three days of moving my health points around and around, not really doing anything. Can’t you see that this exercise is endangering my sanity?”

She shook her head, “One more day at least. You are just lucky that you find yourself uniquely suited to the life domain. Many of my students take a week or longer to get the exercise right.”

Hugo frowned and got back to it. The life mage tutor, Polina, had arrived shortly after they returned to Tallinn. She was an excellent teacher and had taught Hugo a lot about his new domain.

The only problem was that she insisted on an ungodly amount of practice. Now that he had the life domain, he could move his health points within his body. It felt similar to the way he moved the mana around his body. She had him swirling the life essence around his body, concentrating it in certain areas, spreading it out, and condensing it.

When the practice got to be too much, she switched over to anatomy lessons. They were working on human physiology for now, but she promised they would get into nox and riese physiology soon. She even promised to teach him about fairy and gnoll anatomy if they had time. She was only here for a month, so they could only cover so much.

Hugo wasn’t in the mood to do either right now, so he brought up something unrelated, “I have been wondering about something for a while. You have been teaching me to heal someone. You mentioned that the specialties just make me better at healing different body parts. The whole domain revolves around healing. So how does creating golems factor into this? Isn’t that an entirely different branch of magic? They just seem so different.”

Polina thought about it for a moment and then said, “Your life mage skill is called mend, right?”

“Right.”

“That word is a lie. Mend brings to mind images of a kindly mage fixing what was broken. We don’t do that. Life mages have the ability to move life force around. That is it. We can push our own life force into someone else’s body to heal them. But unscrupulous life mages can also pull that life force, killing with a touch. Our domain takes life and grants it. Golems are not mechanical creations, they are metal that has been given life. Life force animates and controls them. It’s the reason golems require constant maintenance. Life mages need to continually top them up with health points,” Polina said.

“Wow, so I can push health points into inanimate objects and bring them to life? Can I make my toy soldier walk around?”

She shook her head, “No, it is a bit more complicated than that. Golems need to be constructed out of a combination of metal and ceramics. Then they need to be runed so the system will accept them as a valid receptacle for health points.”

Hugo nodded along. It sounded fairly simple. With his combination of domains, he should be able to make his own.

“While you are answering questions, I had another one for you. How should I allocate my points when I rank up? I know one will always go to regeneration, should I just throw the other into resilience?”

“That’s a good question. Many beginning mages realize that they are using health points in their magic, so they want more of them. This is good, to a point. But then you quickly run into the problem of having more health points than mana. You can’t heal someone else if you are sitting there without mana, no matter how many health points you have left,” she said and started pacing around the room.

“But that’s not all! You need a high intelligence to remember how the body should work when you direct your life force. You also need a high wisdom to better control the process and be more efficient with your healing. Perception is useful when triaging injuries, and if you add points to charisma, I won’t tell anyone. Everyone likes a friendly healer. Strength and dexterity are the only stats you don’t need,” she said.

Hugo nodded along, “So should I just put one into each and rotate, or is there an established ratio?”

Polina deflated a bit and said, “Well, yes. You want to just put one point into each stat as you level. First resilience, then intelligence, wisdom, and regeneration. Then start over. You can add a point in perception every eighth rank. I won’t tell you what to do with charisma.”

“Well, I can’t wait to rank up and start assigning my points. I am only rank two for now,” Hugo said. No one needed to know how powerful he was right now. His mother would think it suspicious that he had gotten this high already.

“Yes, your mother said she would take you harvesting in a few months. I will be gone by then, but feel free to send me a letter. My fee includes consultation for a year,” Polina said.

They went back to practice after that. She was impressed with his anatomy retention after only a few days of practice, but he pretended he had been studying for a year, knowing it was a skill life mages needed.

That night, he lay down and ranked up. He went all the way up to rank twenty-two. It was far more than he had ever gotten from a stint up on the wall. He suspected that part of it was just that he killed many more monsters this time. The other part was that queen antlion. She had to be responsible for a great deal of his ranks.

He didn’t take Polina’s advice when he was assigning points. He respected her opinion, but he already had several points in wisdom and intelligence. He would start putting extra ones in those categories later. For now he put fourteen points into resilience, three into perception, and three more into regeneration.

Some of the choices within his domains were easy to make, so he went ahead and selected runic languages he knew, barrier frequencies, and his favorite metals.

Florin Baden [Domainless]

Strength 22

Dexterity 19

Resilience (23)

Regeneration (35)

Intelligence 24

Wisdom 20

Charisma 12

Perception (13)

Rank 22

1451/2300 Points

Health 10/(94)

Mana 192/(240)

Skills: Mana Sight, Inscribe, Fabricate, Solidify, Oblate, Mend

Lingua: Isibhozo, Zintathu, Choice available

Frequencies: 400-700, 1016-1032, 8-200

Elements: Mithril, Titanium, Choice Available

Pact: Disciple of Acomar, Choice Available, Choice Available

Specialties: Choice Available, Choice Available, Choice Available

Some quick math showed that his health points didn’t work the way he expected. Last time around he had gotten five points of health when he put a single point into resilience. This time after adding a total of thirty-seven points into resilience and regeneration, he only had ninety-four health points. He wondered why. There had to be a different relationship between the stats than the one he had been expecting.

He needed to read a book about how that was calculated. He was sure someone had researched the exact relationship. He went to sleep and wondered how quickly these changes would take effect.

The next morning, the mansion received an unusual delivery. As Hugo was walking downstairs after finishing breakfast, he overheard a conversation.

“I don’t know what to tell you. They are paid for, and this is the right address,” the delivery girl was saying.

The head butler, Martin, was standing at the door, refusing to take the crate, “But why would anyone here buy that? Why would anyone buy that many?”

“I don’t know. I am literally just the delivery girl. Please sign here and I will let you figure things out,” she said.

Just then, Mage Polina walked out of the dining room and said, “Is my delivery already here? Excellent. That was sooner than expected.” She took the crate and said to Martin, “Be sure to tip her for timely service.”

Hugo followed his tutor into one of the sitting rooms. “What’s in the crate?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Polina said with a big grin.

“Of course I would like to know. You are being all mysterious about it,” Hugo grumped.

“It’s part of your lesson today,” Polina said, “And since you are here and curious, let’s get started right away.”