Trust in your gifts, always.

Wisdom of the Ancients, Book 2

I messed up, Moore realized, but too late. Should have added it to the previous one.

He was trying to complete Mark Kunst’s build, squeezing the last bits of XP. The man seemed to get more of the daily XP drip or had been lucky with the fights. Or both.

Mark Jochum Kunst

Male human, 27 years, 7 months

Ranger

Level: 6 (13000 XP needed)

1/199 stamina (+14/hour)

1 unallocated skill point

XP: 3607

STR: 14

AUT: 13

AGI: 16

Steady Shot (54)

PER: 17

Gauge Endurance (40)

Fast Aim (57)

DEX: 16

Piercing (38)

EMP: 14

54% less fatigue

38% thicker skin

57% faster acceleration to running speed

Perceive levels up to 13

The last skill he’d picked for the build, Kinetics, was a 16 Strength, Level 6 skill, but he could not allocate two points of Strength to the Ranger with a single Settings Scroll. He needed to do it in two steps.

And, of course, Johanna could use a scroll. Up to now, he’d never had a situation where one of the four channeled a scroll that fit them since all included skills for which they did not have spare points or proper stats. But a mere Strength scroll required only 1000 XP on Johanna’s part, and she did have them. He was intending to raise it when at the next level, but not now. It would be a waste of books.

That was the first time she’d felt the “waiting” sensation everyone else had reported when holding a parchment for them. It was a bit different from the “unintended” one she always had, but she could recognize the same wordless impression, waiting for her decision this time.

“For you?” Tom asked.

“I’m confused. We don’t need those…” she said.

She showed them the scroll’s writing.

“What’s going on?” Mark asked.

“We don’t need parchments of power. We gain powers… in a different way. Up until now, all parchments were made for a specific person.”

Mark reached, and she gave him the scroll. The light briefly blinked off when they both held the paper square, then resumed its lazy circuit as soon as she relinquished it.

“We both can use it?”

“Maybe?”

“Can I?” Peter asked.

The Strength parchment remained inert. It only lit up again when Laura picked it up. Petra could also use it, but when Tom got it, it turned off and stayed unlit.

“Why can we all use it, but not Tom or Peter?”

“Can’t be Heroes,” Tom noted.

“No. If Mark can use it… unless Ranger falls under a different classification?”

“Does classification matter? Is it even correct?” Peter asked.

Johanna crossed her arms, furiously thinking. That wasn’t the first time she’d thought that maybe Heroic Talents fell under the same umbrella as magical ones. Laura was already proof that the frontier between Saints and Sorcerers was not a perfect one.

“It’s all labels we invented, true. And sometimes they’re wrong, as I know from those spell names. The label on the parchments isn’t what the Society guessed… But no. I’ve never been able to see any of your skills in action, while I usually can see beasts, and could at least for some of Laura’s.”

“Which leaves the question of what this specific piece is for. It doesn’t seem to have a Talent on it,” Peter noted.

“We’ve seen Talents without qualities, but never qualities without Talents.”

“Well, so far, we’ve seen all kinds of combinations. Talents, with or without level, with or without qualities, with or without… designations? Why not the reverse.”

“All combos are possible, you mean?” Johanna asked Peter.

“Looks that way to me. It’s not as if we’ve seen that many.”

Mark and Petra watched the exchange, letting the “experts” discuss. They were trying to figure out the arcane discussion between the four.

“You were making parchments for Mark,” the Earth Shaper finally injected.

“So… you take it?”

“Okay,” he replied.

The parchment burned away, and Johanna picked the next hymnal, watching carefully the light dance above.

Strength. Again. But with Kinetics as a Talent name this time.

She relaxed when the scroll lit up in Mark’s hand.

“And five. Whew.”

“Five?” Mark asked.

“Five Talents seem pretty big. I’m pretty sure we all have five, although it’s hard to say with Heroics.”

“How many Talents can a Hero have?” Mark asked.

“We don’t know. For instance, up until last year, the biggest, most talented sorceress had three Talents in total. I had three as well, then four… then five. There is no reason you can’t have more.”

Although she wondered why only four for Catherine. Was there an individual limitation, one that was raised by… what? Level?

Mark got two Levels granted. Is that it? A maximum of three Talents for normal people, even archmages, and the Skeleton then adds to the “level? We started with two or three, right?

“Let’s see.”

They were burning through hymnals fast, but the church had quite a few, and half of them seemed intact. Lines swirled, and the next sheet dropped. Strength – again? – and Jagged Stone. Mark picked it up and frowned, as it stayed inert in his hand.

“Is something wrong? It feels wrong, somehow,” he said.

“Maybe your limit is five indeed? Stone seems more … earth-related? Petra?”

The former bartender held her hand, and the sheet instantly lit when she held it.

“Looks like it’s your turn. You got only three Talents, it’s time to finish gaining spells.”

The parchment flash-burned, and Johanna clapped her hands slowly.

“And congratulations for surpassing the archmage rank.”

“We need a name,” Petra said, laughing lightly.

“Be my guest.”

“Archmage?” Mark asked.

“That’s the traditional designation for sorcerers with three Talents. Which is the highest ever recorded, at least in the Union. Petra now has four and I think that might be it for her. You only got one Level granted, and Mark got two. So, I don’t know, your limit might be four while he can have five?”

“You don’t know,” she said.

“Well, we haven’t done it often enough. We’re still guessing.”

“So what are you waiting for? There are still some books there.”

Johanna threw her hands in the air in defeat, and picked another book, discarding it immediately as it was torn. The next lit up again and dropped a new, more complex parchment.

Level. Authority. Fire Shaper.

She slowly blinked, confused by the sheet.

“So?” Petra asked.

“See for yourself.”

The parchment refused to light up in her hand, making her eyebrows rise.

“Who’s that for, then?” Petra wondered.

The parchment was handed to everyone in turn, yet failed to activate. Johanna collected it again.

“It looks like your designation, Petra, rather than some bizarre Talent name. But why? We all have…” she trailed.

She put aside the square paper and picked a new hymnal.

Nothing happened. She checked the incomprehensibly written booklet for damage, but it was intact, save for discoloration on the cover.

“Tom?” she asked, hesitating.

Her husband took the book, and lines sprang around, twirling until the new parchment appeared. It was a triple again, Level, Strength… Specialist Battler.

“Peter? Laura? Can you pick a book each?”

The two shrugged and sorted through the diminishing pile until they found intact hymnals. Blue lights played out, yielding two triple sheets.

Level, Empathy, and Combat Fixer for Laura’s book. Level, Dexterity, Improviser in Peter’s hand.

“What are these for?” Petra asked again.

“I think… they’re not for someone. They’re us.”

“What?”

“Shaper looks like sorcery to me. Earth for you. Fire for me. Combat Fixer, that describes you, Laura. You fix us in combat. Tom’s a Battler, a Specialist Battler. And Peter is an Improviser.”

“Simple, elegant, clean. Love it,” the small man joked.

“But why would we get parchments for us?” Laura asked.

“Because until now, we didn’t know what we were. We know Petra is an Earth Shaper. Mark is a Ranger. We had a simple Shaper and a Guardian. But us?”

Petra was contemplating Johanna’s parchment

“Does this mean… you can turn someone into you?” she asked.

She blinked in surprise, looking again at the sheet that listed things that might be the base of her Talents.

“I don’t know. But you’re right. It could be. Elena said we were breaking all the rules, but maybe we aren’t. Maybe we’re following whatever rules do exist.”

“And normal people without direct access to their full capacities just fall short of what they could be,” Petra said.

“Which makes us look better in comparison,” Peter said.

“Well, Mark’s probably your equal now, if he has five Talents,” she replied sweetly.

Peter rolled his eyes and Tom grunted.

“So… if we got the right parchments, with the same Talents, someone could do everything I do,” Laura mused.

“Well, that answers a question I had,” Petra said.

Johanna looked at her, and she pursued.

“I was wondering if you could make parchments for others, or if you need them to be there, like me and Mark.”

They tested that idea immediately. Most of the remaining hymnals were moldy or heavily damaged, but there were a few still intact enough to be convertible into parchments.

After the four listing of their specialization, Johanna made a stand-alone Level parchment, then one listing just Authority, and another single quality one. The surprise came when Tom started picking the discarded hymnals to put back on a shelf. For a few, blue lines unexpectedly sprang, and additional stand-alone parchments were created.

“It looks like the stand-alone sheets don’t need as many pages as the ones with Talents,” Johanna realized.

In the end, they found themselves in possession of the four parchments listing their respective bases, and eight stand-alone without Talents. Johanna found out that you could roll them tightly despite the stiffness, provided you didn’t try to roll more than four at a time. They immediately returned to their flat, semi-rigid square form when left alone.

They left the church after cleaning up. After turning the hymnals to what Johanna hoped was a good cause, she did not feel like it would be good to loot it further.