Training Day

~ Alexis ~

"I'm sorry I fell asleep so early last night. I don't know why I was so tired."

"Long day, full of new experiences." The paper screen was up again, and this time, he took up most of the room. The legate's backlit silhouette bent over a table and worked with a tool, but the shadows didn't reveal enough to tell her what was going on.

"Have you been up all night?"

"Almost." She could hear a high-pitched scraping sound, followed by soft thumps. "The mirror arrived after you fell asleep, so I've been working on that." A sack of copper coins sailed over the divider and landed in her lap. Having stuff thrown at her was going to get old fast. "Go get some food. Anything you like. Just bring enough for two."

He didn't say anything else while she got dressed and left the room, coin purse in hand. "And a Herald, too!" he shouted behind her. Soon, she was nearly through the Sunglaze's doors, but doubled back to the concierge desk.

"Could I have one of those message cards, please? And something to write with?"

"Of course." The man on duty was older, but didn't mind directing her to a small writing desk nearby, equipped with everything she needed. Nervously, she penned a note to Sisbert with her availability for a date. The card folded neatly in thirds on pre-creased lines, showing the Sunglaze Inn's name and address on one side. On the other side, she put Sisbert's name and copied the address from his card. The concierge smiled approvingly, checked the address, and pasted a foil seal over the edge to keep the card closed. He put the note into a box for the next delivery.

Back home, people sent messages verbally if they were short, or wrote on whatever they had if the message was longer. Actual letters were rare and tended to be long, multipage affairs from distant relatives. This was her first time using the city's card system, and the first time she arranged a date with a strange boy. She left the inn feeling very grown up.

The mirror wasn't done when she returned with food, but the legate paused his work long enough to eat and answer a few questions. She wanted to ask why demis didn't have a statue of Knexenk in their temple. Even if the goddess favored humans, and demis couldn't get classes, she was still the most important god. But the legate was touchy about demis (Arcaics!), and she had other questions to ask.

"So, your tutor got you a meeting at the bank and helped you get letters of recommendation. You're going to make statues for the bank's temple, so they'll give you a special kind of account. And then the bank will refer you to a master for me? Is that what we're doing?"

"Yes. But this prospective master might be reluctant to take you on. There's a chance we'll have to do something for them."

"That seems like a lot of steps."

"It is a lot of steps. But that's the way quests are."

"Wait. I thought you didn't have a class."

"You don't have to have a class to go on a quest. Anybody's allowed to go questing. It's not like you need the Giving Goddess' permission." Suddenly, he reminded her of her older brother when he talked down to her. She could even hear him snickering behind his screen.

"So what are we doing today?"

"Depends. Let's see what the first mail delivery brings us. Shouldn't be long now. If you're feeling impatient, you can go to the lobby and wait for the mail. Take a book. Pretend to read. Watch people."

It was clear he didn't want to talk anymore after that, as he returned to etching glass, and she didn't want to hang around while he ignored her and made unpleasant noises. She went down to the lobby and read Glory until the mail came. People of all races went in and out, some with luggage and some without, and Alexis made up stories about them in her head. That's what people watching was all about, according to her mother. But most of the stories she came up with were less interesting than what was already happening to her. She was on a quest to find a master, even though the only item in her quest log was the unaccepted Mage's Path. Maybe, if she accepted the quest she had, her first subquest would be something like Seek Out The Reclusive Tree Mage.

The delivery girl came and went, cards got placed into slots, and the nice concierge man (his nametag said Alban) brought her the legate's messages on a wooden tray, fanned out for easy identification. There were half a dozen folded cards, including two from the governor's palace. She thanked Alban and ferried them upstairs.

D'Mourne was sitting in the sunlight, mask on (thank all the gods!), reading the Estfold Herald. (Headline: Is The Restoration Doomed?) Reading was his favorite activity, that was clear. He couldn't play team sports or go out to parties all the time, could he? A tall rectangular object, she assumed it was the mirror, leaned against one wall, covered with a sheet. He opened the messages and nodded when he was done.

"We have time for your first lesson. Stand in front of the mirror." He took a necklace from his pocket and put it on.

"What does that do?"

"It suppresses any mana I don't intentionally release." When he saw the blank look on her face, he added, "It erases my aura."

"Aura?" She stood in front of the covered mirror. What could this possibly have to do with her training?

"You'll see." He yanked the sheet off with his healed hand, and what Alexis saw wasn't herself, not like she expected to see, but something else, like looking into a doorway to a vast space without walls or floor. It was dark, but not empty. Something stood in that void, faint but human-shaped, made of light. The emptiness on the other side made Alexis nervous.

"You can touch the glass. It's safe."

She reached out with one hand, and the girl made of light on the other side did the same. "Is that me?"

"That's you. The mirror reflects mana as visible light. Do you remember the introduction to Sense Your Way To Glory? What's the hardest part of controlling mana?"

"Learning to sense it."

"Well, now you can see it. This is how we get to the start of your journey without wasting months or years on guesswork. This next part is going to feel strange because you've never felt it before, but it doesn't hurt. A few people, very few, feel nauseous." He placed a large bucket at her feet. "You probably won't need it, but it's here just in case."

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The excitement in her climbed, tingling in her limbs. "What are you going to do?"

"We're going to wake up your mana sense, like learning to move a muscle you didn't know you had. I will touch your mana with mine and push it around some. We won't join mana, that's a much more intimate exercise, but you'll feel something. Ready?"

Alexis nodded, more excited than ever at the thought that maybe the pint-sized legate could do everything he said he could. A glowing arm reached into the mirror's blank background, slightly brighter than her aura, and brushed against her. True to his word, her aura moved away from his.

"I don't feel anything."

"Patience. It can take a while." A second ghost hand appeared, and together they gave her aura-self a thorough pat-down. If he had touched her that way physically, she would have kicked him for being lewd. Instead, she waited. The hands worked their way from her head to her feet, getting every square inch of her. Then, they ran up and down her whole frame in long, continuous motions.

That felt like something! It startled her so badly that she yelped and jumped away from the mirror. She couldn't tell where in her body the sensation had come from, but she had definitely been touched, like being squeezed between two other people. Two very big, very strong people.

"Weird!" she accused him. "That's weird!"

"I warned you." He sounded amused instead of insulted. "Again, but much lighter this time. Let me know as soon as you feel something." They did the squeezing exercise again and again, until he barely had to touch her aura at all for her to feel it. After an hour, her hands were shaky, and she broke out in sweat. Even though she hadn't done anything except stand there, it felt like hours of hard work.

"Take a bath. I'll bring food." He covered the mirror and left the room before she could ask what the mirror showed him when he didn't wear his necklace.

She did as she was told and visited the detached building where Sunglaze's patrons bathed alongside customers of nearby establishments. When she washed and rinsed, Alexis lowered herself into the hot soaking pool. She felt alone in the muggy air, separate from the chatty women around her, her class interface shining with a light that only she could see. The Mage's Path. "Unique rewards." She knew enough now to take the risk. She accepted the quest.

This time, she felt it: the tiny buzz of quest activity, like a tiny insect on her skin beating papery wings too fast to see.

Quest: [Better Opportunities] Aid your mentor as he searches for a teacher who won't control your mind or work you to death. This quest ends when you accept an apprentice position or give up looking.

Quest reward is a new master.

There is no penalty for failing this quest.

She accepted, and felt another brush against her new senses as the quest was written permanently into her log. There were other sources of mana around her, too dim or distant to make out with her paltry ability, just a vague sensation of things she couldn't see. She knew the pool was heated by magic, and two of the women present were wearing engraved hairpins. Attempting to focus on them tired Alexis even more, and she had to leave before she fell asleep in the tub.

How did people not know about this? A simple-looking magical device, a mirror, changed how she saw the world. She knew from reading Glory how coveted her nascent ability was. If a magician school had that mirror, would it revolutionize the practice of magic? Would the empire suddenly be filled with copies of Bilius d'Mourne?

She felt it again …

Quest: [Glory For Everyone] The mana mirror is a major advancement in magic training. Take the mirror to an imperial official. This quest offers extraordinary rewards, plus additional rewards if the mirror becomes widely used to train magicians throughout the empire.

The mirror's guardian is an accomplished combatant and may kill, maim, imprison, or otherwise punish the questor in a multitude of ways.

There is a time limit of one year to complete the quest.

The penalty for failure is class death.

Class death?

"How are you?"

Bathed and fed, Alexis felt alive again. "Better, thanks. The food helps. Can I ask questions?"

"Go ahead." He was behind his screen again, still reading the paper. She was relieved he couldn't see her.

"I read a term I didn't understand. What is class death?"

"Your class is erased, and you lose all your skills and bonuses. You might keep some of your stats, though. It depends. Supposedly, the highest priests in the Knexenk religion can impose class death on heretics. Some quests use it to punish failure. I don't know if you can get a new class after class death."

Her next question was touchier. "Do you think we're supposed to take all our quests, like an act of faith? Or are we supposed to pick and choose? Like, when I didn't take Mage's Path right away, did that make Knexenk mad at me?"

"No! No, no, no. That's not how it works at all. We're supposed to pick and choose. That's why you have a decline button. You're supposed to choose your path, not just take everything on offer."

"But Kistur said we have to do what the goddess tells us to."

"Kistur is the wrong person to listen to about all kinds of things. Doubly so for scripture. Triply so when it comes to morals." The legate heaved a sigh three sizes too big for his body and moved the screen. He cancelled Riverstone and faced her with just his mask, green eyes showing worry. He pulled up a chair across where she sat on the bed, very close to her, knees almost touching.

"I'm going to tell you something difficult to understand that won't make complete sense right away. Then, I'm going to give you a piece of solid advice you can use right away. Are you ready?"

"I guess?"

"Mortals can never fully understand the divine." He sat back in his chair and spread his arms wide, like he was talking about everyone: humans and demi-humans alike. "We have a hard time just getting to know each other.

"Even if someone had a direct line to the gods, they still wouldn't know the gods. The divine is beyond mortal comprehension, or else it would not be divine. If anyone says you have to do something to glorify a god, or that doing something diminishes a god, they're talking about what they want you to do, not what the gods want.

"Gods do care about stuff, but the things they care about are so huge that nothing one person says or does matters. And if they do want you to do something but you fail to make the right choice, they have millions of other people to do those things for them. Them being angry at us as individuals makes about as much sense as you being angry at a specific bee."

"But scripture says Knexenk's quests are commands."

"Is that what the priest at the temple says?"

"I think so? It might have come from my uncle. But he's been going to the temple for a long time."

The legate fished in his bag and pulled out a thick book. He laid it next to her on the bed. "Second, more concrete, lesson. If you're going to make decisions about your life based on scripture, then you'd better read your scripture. Never let other people tell you what it says without reading it yourself. You can find isolated verses to justify anything if you pull them out of their stories. Either read scripture yourself, or else don't base your decisions on religion. Given the urgency of this conversation, I think you should stop reading Glory for now and focus on The Evangel's Gospel. It's not long, and I've bookmarked it for you."

He pulled a folding cot from his bag and started to position his screen. "I'm going to take a nap. You have about an hour before we need to leave."

She took the thick tome of scripture and saw the bookmark, two-thirds of the way through. "You knew we'd have this conversation?"

He yawned. "It's an inevitable topic. I gave Kistur a similar speech about the time he got his class. I told him he didn't have to be awful just because he got a quest to do awful things. I doubt it stuck, in his case."

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