The next morning dawns heavy with the threat of violence.

Tem shakes me awake, one hand covering my mouth so I can’t cry out, and stretches out his other hand toward the forest. He releases me once I relax, and I nod slowly to indicate that I understand the need for stealth. Whatever it is seems to have Tem genuinely spooked, and that sets me on edge. He should be able to handle anything we encounter in the Silaraon region, short of a full-on Invasion. Together, we creep up toward the mouth of the cave to gain a better vantage point, careful not to make any noise with our movements.

Wraiths trudge about by the trees outside. I suck in a sharp breath before clamping my hand down over my mouth. They’re not actually phasing right through the trees, but the way their bodies drift about makes me think they’re not quite corporeal. How are we even supposed to fight an enemy that’s barely there?

“Drain your mana, Nuri.”

I shoot Tem a questioning glance, but the intensity of his whisper compels me to comply, although I don’t understand the reasoning. Immediately, I vent my mana into the air, warming up the cave behind us in a careful stream, trying not to boil us alive.

“All of it!” Tem hisses urgently. “They’ll notice us any second. If you have anything left in your channels, then they’ll burn you from the inside out.”

I nod, my breath coming fast and ragged as the horror of our situation hits me.

“Keep still,” Tem commands. “I’ll take care of them. This is a foe far beyond you.”

As soon as the last drops of my mana trickle out of me, warming the stone beneath our feet to uncomfortable levels, an absolutely massive shockwave of mana rips out of Tem in a single heartbeat. The force of it flings me into the wall, and I bite my tongue with a sharp cry, fighting to maintain consciousness. He lurches forward in the same instant, narrow blade drawn, and charges the wraiths without stealthing himself.

I gape at the display of power. Did he just follow his own advice and get rid of his mana in one go to propel himself into the fray? It sounds like madness, but if the monsters really can boil the mana within our bodies, then it’s likely the only sane response to their attacks.

I shudder, licking away the blood from my lips, and forcibly resist refilling my bone-dry mana pool. Clamping down on my channels is always a painful sensation, as I’ve learned from training with Ezio, but I don’t dare put Tem’s assertion to the test. Instead, I cram a basil leaf into my mouth and start chewing to stave off the mana-starvation headache. No coma for me.

Spine-shivering screams screech across my ears. I press myself down against the dirt and groan, my heart palpitating under the pressure of an enemy I can’t fully comprehend.

I can barely follow the fight. Their forms flicker in and out of my vision in disconcerting patterns, as though they walk a different plane of reality that just happens to bleed into our own. I have a terrifying suspicion that my description is actually accurate.

My head is pounding like Mikko took a mallet to my skull, but I can’t look away. Tem is a ghost in his own right, flitting between wraiths and dealing death. Their inkblot forms stain reality in disconcerting patterns. They howl and claw back at him with weapons of their own, but their outraged shrieks prove that his attacks are effective somehow.

An enchanted sword is the only answer. I want to make my own one day—but first, we have to survive.

The battle is going well, right up until a new wraith coalesces out of the mist, larger than the others by far. Its hulking shape looms over the conflict, casting everything into a deep gloom of preternatural shadows, and it roars in savage anger.

Tem staggers back as though the sonic attack hits him physically. Ripples in the air track its assault, and it flies by my hiding spot in the cave, passing harmlessly overhead. Even this far away, there’s a faint, oily sensation to the sound that I can feel deep in my soul, as strange as that sounds. It makes me shiver in fear. Again I press myself closer to the ground, hoping I won’t draw its attention. A single attack and I’ll die.

The huge wraith surrounds Tem with its amorphous, smoke-like body, and for once his sword does nothing in retaliation. The gleaming blade dims against the onslaught of shadows, and Tem stumbles to his knees with a pained cry. A massive bardiche swirls into being over his head, hovering menacingly like a headsman’s axe, and the wraith lord swings it down with a triumphant howl.

I lurch to my feet, instinctively reaching for my mana, but there’s nothing in my pool. My lessons on mana control with Ezio have been too effective; I’ve cut myself off from magic, and now one of my heroes is going to die because of my cowardice. “Shatter this,” I growl, running out of the cave with my hands in clenched fists, prepared to fight alongside Tem, or die trying.

Except Tem is gone.

The massive wraith seems as confused as I am when its shadow axe cleaves a furrow in the ground but otherwise misses its target. Its foe has inexplicably fled, Tem disappearing right in front of my eyes without a single trace of mana.

“How,” I breathe out stupidly, only now realizing that I’ve dashed right into the middle of the melee without a single weapon other than my meager little belt knife. The gathered enemies turn their collective attention towards me. The gray mist of their elongated faces stretches and rips apart as they move as one in eerie synchronization. Macabre approximations of toothy smiles gash their faces like open wounds where their mouths should be, and as one they scream, producing a visible whirlwind of force.

Fear hits me like a wave of force, and I crash to the ground, clutching at my head and screaming. My body spasms uncontrollably as incoherent images assault my mind. Through the chaos and confusion, one thought stands out clearly: this is the end. I’m going to die here, torn to pieces by an otherworldly incursion.

Tem’s hand snakes out of the shadows. He clasps my shoulder and drags me sideways, out of the path of a rampaging wraith. Their fear-invoking curse of bewilderment falls away, and I flinch as ebon claws pierce the air where I stood a heartbeat earlier. The world around us blurs, stretching into impossible proportions and fading until all the color is gone, mutated into endless gray. The vengeful wraiths fade away.

I spin around blindly, trying to regain my bearings, but I can’t see a thing, just white wisps of fog in all directions, grasping tendrils that slide and slither around each other and obscure my vision. A high-pitched, dissonant whine drills into my head.

“Don’t die, Nuri,” Tem hisses, drawing me out of the weird not-existence with a scowl. We’re several dozen paces behind the wraiths, perched high on a tree branch. He shoves me down, and I cling to the tree instinctually. “Stay put this time!”

I nod rapidly, determined to listen, and clutch at the trunk of the tree to keep from falling. I stare, my mouth agape, as Tem hurls himself off the edge. He reappears next to the cluster of lesser wraiths, reaping them with his sword like a farmer cutting wheat, and dances away again before the giant wraith lord can land a blow with its long, wicked axe.

The last of the wraiths falls before his blade a few blinks later, and the miasma of terror dissipates, evaporating like morning mist before the fierceness of the rising sun. As the searing pain in my head slowly clears, I find that I can follow the raging duel below me with far greater clarity. Perceiving the true form of our opponent only heightens my horror, however. The wraiths have bodies after all.

No longer shrouded in shadows, his disjointed, scaled body blasts the area with arcane radiation, and my mana channels shudder at the echo of his aura blast.

I don’t want to know how agonizing it would be if I hadn’t vented my mana as Tem had instructed me. The sheer presence of the beast warps my vision, bending the world around us in a manner suspiciously similar to what Tem just demonstrated when he pulled me sideways into the strange passageway devoid of color and form.

Tem dashes forward, his sword in hand once more. No longer contesting so many vile auras at once, the weapon again shines like a beacon, far brighter than it has any right to in the harsh sunlight. His form blurs, and lightning-fast swings from Tem slice through the enormous monster’s defenses, spraying dark ichor across the forest. Each drop sizzles and melts away the earth where it lands, leaving ugly, burning scars.

The wraith lord leaps backward, propelled by huge, muscle-bound haunches. Its blood drips everywhere, and its body is covered with cuts. Without its slaves to power the obfuscation and shielding effects—I recall dimly that wraiths specialize in linked arrays—the wraith lord is now vulnerable to the shimmering, enchanted blade that Tem wields. Its corded neck bulges as it distends its jaw and screams in wrathful defiance.

Power gathers around the beast, and Tem steps back warily, his sword in a high hanging guard. The [Expert Counterspell Scout] is breathing heavily and bleeding from his own wounds. His shirt and leather vest are torn to shreds, stained by his lifeblood, and his bare arms are trembling with the effort required to keep his sword aloft. The fight has taken something vital out of him, although I still don’t sense any mana expenditure—I don’t technically have a Skill for it, but most mana-users can usually at least tell when someone else activates a Skill. Tem? He’s completely devoid of mana.

Curiosity gets the better of me, and I loosen the seal on my mana harvesting for a split second. As the mana rushes through my channels, I direct it up to my eyes, willing myself to see what’s happening in the duel between two masters.

Instantly, the wraith lord whirls around, pinning me with a predatory grin. As weak as I am, my mana signature must still draw him like a vulture to a fresh corpse. He slavers, running a too-pink tongue across his jagged, needle teeth, and stalks forward with a burbling laugh.

I glare back in defiance, and refuse to release my mana. It can’t fight both of us at once, and this is all I have left to offer. I shout in anticipation of victory as Tem charges forward at the wraith lord’s back, lunging in a killing blow.

Blistering torment erupts beyond my eyes, but my willpower tightens down like a vise, and I refuse to let go. Every second that he focuses on me is a chance for Tem to end the fight without taking any further harm. And if Tem doesn’t succeed, then I’m as good as dead. This is all I can do to contribute.

Failure is not an option.

My eyes squeeze shut in concentration, and my fingertips dig into the rough bark of the tree trunk so hard that my skin splits open, but I can’t let go. The world is spinning around me, a maelstrom of misery, but Tem is counting on me. I can’t let go. I refuse.

Silver fire bursts through the center of the wraith lord’s chest, coruscating to my inner eye. With a bestial shriek of rage and pain, the monster bursts apart, and I slump forward on the tree branch, letting go of the meager mana I’ve circulated through my channels.

I pray that I have the strength to hang on until Tem can save me.

=+=

“We have to warn Silaraon. They’ll likely need my help once I recover, but they have absolutely no chance if they’re caught off guard,” Tem murmurs once he collects me from my hiding spot.

His black hair is matted with blood and plastered to his head, and he’s clutching his shoulder gingerly. “It’s extremely rare to encounter empowered monsters with direct attacks on an opponent’s mana channels. Wraiths like that will overwhelm the town. Your friend Ember can help against the shadow cats, but not against this kind of lethal threat. It’s too far beyond her, unless she’s prepared to pay the cost with her own lifeforce.”

I stare down at the corpse of the beast. “What are they doing in the middle of the forest? Did a Rift disgorge them? I figured we’d be safe this far away from the border. Shouldn’t the [Guardians] keep out extraplanar threats?”

Tem taps a finger on the top of his silver-topped cane. “A mystery indeed. I’ll look into it, that I can promise you. Best stay out of it for now. Now, watch me carefully while I activate this scroll, Nuri. It’s not easy, but if you can follow the threads of mana with your burgeoning senses, then you may be able to unravel the mechanism.”

Groaning with the pain of reaching down to his bag, Tem retrieves an ordinary scroll and turns it over in his hands. On the other side, a gold-embossed crest in the center binds the scroll shut. A faint resonance builds in my mind as he passes his hand over the seal, but otherwise the rolled up parchment itself appears rather unremarkable.

Raw mana manifests in his right hand, consolidating into a ghostly quill. Like Ezio, he’s a fan of creating a mana pen visible to the naked eye as a result of his formidable mana control. I vow that I’ll learn how to do that in time.

I’m tempted to ask what his mana-control tests results look like, but my guess is that it’s tightly-guarded, personal information. He touches the condensed mana quill to the parchment, and a dizzying array of energy explodes in my mind’s eye as he writes. Sorting through the flows of unfamiliar mana is equal parts puzzling and exhilarating, but I’m up for the challenge.

A moment later, I gasp in excitement. The challenge was rewarding. Literally. At long last, my hoped-for moment finally arrives. With a soft chime, the swirl of mana within my soul coalesces into a new crystalline shape, providing form and structure for a Skill. My new Skill.

My second Skill, after so many years of hoping and waiting, almost doesn’t seem real.

Not even the “Lesser” modifier can dampen my enthusiasm this time. I know that I’ll be able to rank it up with enough dedication and practice.

“[Lesser Manasight]” reads the banner in my inner world. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful before.

A light smack to the back of my head sends me tumbling out of my soul contemplation. I can’t muster up the energy to get mad, however, when I see Tem’s stern face covered in fresh blood; the exertion of walking over to smack me is too much for him right now. He staggers and has to steady himself against the rock cliff face. He grunts, sits back down on a rock, and takes a deep, calming breath.

The light of battle fades from his eyes as he digs through his pack and withdraws a flask that glows like the sun in my new [Manasight]. Several long swigs from the high-grade healing draught seem to help him stabilize enough to get out of the danger zone. Tem nods toward me. “So? Skill any good?”

“[Manasight],” I reply immediately. “It’s another ’lesser’ version, but I strongly suspect I can upgrade it soon with hard work.”

“Good lad,” Tem says, all too quietly.

“Everything all right? You don’t look good.”

“No,” he growls. “I likely just saved everyone in Silaraon, but we’re not out of the worst of it yet. Need to get back, and you’re too slow to travel effectively.”

A chill crawls up my back. I figured that as long as I was with Tem, we weren’t actually in any danger. Moments like these remind me of the gulf between us. I have to get stronger if I’m going to have a chance to protect my friends. I swallow hard, nodding. “Apologies, Tem. I’m grateful. Truly. I have good friends back in town.”

He heaves a sigh. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry, too. Stress seems to follow me wherever I go. So much for a nice, quiet jaunt through my old stomping grounds.” His eyes grow soft, almost misty, and his voice cracks with wistful nostalgia. “I used to play in this cave as a kid. Good memories here. Thought I might escape any serious violence for once in my life. At least it’s sorted, and the message sent. Now we’ll see if I get dragged back into the mess.”

“At least I got [Lesser Manasight],” I say hastily, growing more uncomfortable by the moment as he pours out his life’s story. I’m not the sentimental sort, most of the time. But after sharing a near death experience, and seeing my favorite childhood hero bloodied and broken, I’m unsteady, too.

Tem shakes himself. He rubs his temples with the palms of his hands, then nods at me in acknowledgement. “Fairly rare to unlock it before your First Threshold. Good growth potential. Plays well with other Skills, especially if you have training in mana control. Unfortunate ranking, getting the lesser variety, but at least you know how to raise it over time.”

“I would never dream of getting out of more practicing,” I say with a wry little laugh.

“And you never will! It’s the nature of life. But back to your [Lesser Manasight]. You have passing familiarity with the popular control theorems, I presume, thanks to Ezio?”

My face twists into a grimace, not wanting to revisit the sheer agony of the mana tests, which earns me a knowing smile from my latest hired teacher. Why do they always put me in bodily danger? Is it some sort of rite of passage?

“Good. Saves time. I’ll walk you through using both Skills at once, as well as having you observe enchantment activation. That should help you get a solid start.”

A thought occurs to me, and it finally dampens my enthusiasm. I lick my lips twice before giving voice to my doubts. “Are we returning home, or carrying on? Any further encounters could be deadly. Another incursion is possible, and I’m not much of a fighter yet.”

Tem snorts. His gaze lingers on the treeline, and for a long moment I think he’s forgotten about me entirely. He shifts in his seat and spits to the side, then heaves an aggravated sigh. “If two incursions hit in one week, we’ve got realm-shaking problems. I haven’t had a fight like that in a few years, and rarely without my team. Probability suggests we’re fine. Prudence demands we return. It’s a coin flip, but at the end of the day, you’re the one who charted the trip, and you’re the one risking the most if we stay out here. What say you?”

“This is likely my only chance to learn from someone like you,” I reply without a second thought. “We continue. No risk, no reward.”

“Yep. You’re as young and eager. Just as I thought,” Tem says. He coughs, wiping away bloody spittle. “Fine, then, we’ll continue the hunt. Your funeral if it goes wrong.”

I pull my blanket up around my neck, hunching down like a turtle pulling into its shell to ward off my embarrassment. If Tem thinks poorly of my decision, then why give me the option? “Failed your test, huh? Sorry to disappoint.”

Tem fiddles with his pocket knife, trimming his nails with quick, jittery movements that seem more motivated by long habit than out of any real need. “Not judging you. I’ve made a career out of stupidity. Lost my career because of it, too.”

My excitement runs ahead of my brain, and I blurt out the burning question I’ve been wrestling with since I first heard Tem was coming to Silaraon. “Did you really get kicked out because the king is jealous of your Skills and popularity? Is that why you’re not with your old Mage Bane brigade anymore?”

“That’s what they’re saying about me?”

“Sounds more plausible in my head,” I admit. “But, yeah, that’s the rumor.”

The royal [Heralds] must be working overtime. They wouldn’t dare tell the truth.” Tem snickers.

I lean forward eagerly, my heart suddenly racing in anticipation. “And what is the truth? Why are you in Silaraon right now?”

Tem arches an eyebrow. “We’re not old drinking buddies yet, Nuri.”

“Sorry, I’ll stop prying.”

“Don’t bother. It’s amusing. Why don’t you tell me the rest of your theories while I finish healing. It will take my mind off the itch of getting my muscles restitched. Hate those potions, even though they’ve saved my life more times than I can count.” Tem’s eyes go soft again, as though he’s transported back through time.

“Don’t they cost more than you charged me for this expedition?”

“Nah, you could afford a couple at my rates. The difficulty is finding an authorized dealer way out here.”

I scrunch up my nose and give him a sidelong look. “Why would something like that be restricted? Saving lives is a good thing.”

“So is making sure the bad guys don’t get their hands on them. Imagine fighting a gang that keeps coming back as good as new, all topped off after each encounter unless you kill them all outright.” He shudders abruptly and breaks off the story, rubbing his shoulder absently as if remembering an old hurt. “These are much higher-grade than what you’ve seen before.”

“Fair enough. But who gets to decide who the bad guys are? And what if they decide that you don’t count as a good guy anymore?” I ask, although I know I’m still prodding.

Stony-faced silence is my only reply.

Sometimes, I don’t like being right. I’ve poked a still-sensitive wound, and Tem isn’t in the mood to indulge me. I file the information away for later, but I don’t have any plans of letting it go. This could be important, and if I ever want to become a bigger player in the world, this sort of intrigue could be my ticket to greater things.

“Am I going to regret practicing two Skills at once? Every time Ezio suggested that we try a new idea, his eyes sparked with an unhealthy sort of excitement. I think watching me squirm in pain gave him great satisfaction. I probably deserved it for all the ways I annoyed him.”

“Shocking,” Tem murmurs.

I laugh at the barb. “Fine, I probably deserve that one, too.”

He rubs his chin. “I won’t lie to you. Practicing like that won’t be pain free, if that’s what you’re hoping for. I can’t promise that you won’t find it aggravating. But you didn’t get this far by giving up at the first sign of hardship, Nuri. So, if you want to continue, then I’ll walk you through the process. I’m not feeling up to demonstrating just yet, but my voice still works fine.”

I bite back the snarky retort that springs to my lips. Mikko would have a field day on this expedition, fighting monsters and bandying about jokes. He and Tem will get along, I hope. I’ll have to invite him, Lionel, and the Linas out for a drink and a bite to eat when I return so I can regale them with the story.

I take a breath, steeling myself for what’s to come. My familiar refrain leaps to mind. “I’m ready to learn, Tem. After all, what’s a little pain?”

I’m really starting to hate that phrase.