Book 2: Chapter 39: Called to Duty

The second week hit like a spell-maddened rhino. The kind with reinforced tusks, explosive runes, and a bad attitude. What had been simple sparring and boot-polish drills now transformed into something more sinister, “Specialized Instruction”.

Which, in military terms, roughly translated to “You survived the first frying pan. Welcome to the fire.”

Alex stood on the stone balcony overlooking the open-air training yard, arms crossed, watching the others below. The morning light painted sharp angles across the sandstone walls, catching on the flickers of glyphlight and half-shouted commands.

They were adapting.

Really adapting.

From where he stood he could see into the medical tent tucked far off at the back of the training field. Inside where various scripts and glyphs plates set up on fake beds. Each of them projected an illusion of an injured soldier with a random injury. Triage and medicine was practiced there, not just for healers, but for everyone. Right now there were only two people inside. Allie, and Cole.

Allie crouched over the visage a half-dead soldier, she had one hand already glowing with warm light. Her other hand was steadying the man’s head. A triad of healing runes bloomed above her like petals unfolding, layered triage, Alex recognized. Taught fast, and meant to be applied faster.

From his position on the balcony, he saw her lips were moving. Muttering something, her healing spell no doubt.

Cole was nearly beside her, his eye looking over the plate displaying the triage results, Lying next to him was a line of potions, powders and salves. All with different uses, and all needed to be selected carefully and quickly at the same time.

A month ago, the two of them didn’t even know how to stabilize blood with aether essence.

Now? Each was a field medic mage in their own right. Fast., focused, fire-eyed.

Allie didn’t even flinch when the “soldier” coughed blood in her face. She just wiped it away and kept working.

Alex nodded to himself. “She’s going to save a lot of lives.”

Further down the yard, Devon looked like he was losing an argument with geometry. No, not geometry. Something worse, runic calculus. He stood in front of a spell-array instructor, arms flailing as he animatedly debated glyph-load balancing and mana-surge thresholds like a man who’d turned arcane engineering into a blood sport. They stood in front of three different and distinct anti-seig constructions, none of them fully built as pieces lay about with the enchantments exposed.

At one point, he watched as Devon stomped his foot so hard the chalkboard behind him sparked. The instructor just blinked at him like a confused deer.

Alex almost smiled. Yeah I feel you on that one, Devon can be a handful when he’s one of his crazed projects.

Eventually his attention went to the immense inclosed pen in the middle of the field. Here was where the many arcane beasts were stabled and cared for, as well as the area where prospect beast-riders would make their attempt and bonding with the beasts. The last couple days, he had noticed Garret spent almost all his free time there.

He could even see him now and Garret was… laughing?

Yes. That was definitely laughter. The deep, uncontrollable, belly-rattling kind that didn’t bode well for anyone.

He was crouched next to a beast the size of a garden shed. It had tusks, it had glowing eyes, and it was… nuzzling him. Garret scratched it behind the ears with the same look a child had when handed a very sharp sword and dubious permission to use it. The handler standing next to him looked pale, like he was watching someone casually defuse a bomb using bubblegum and paperclips.

“Of course he bonded with the monster,” Alex muttered. Because of course he did, it was Garret. He could probably manage to make friends with a barrel of water.

The others were more spread out. Lance and Peter were off at the smithy once again. Henry, Kate, Zach and Eric stood at the sparring pits. They watched the duels, and the squad fight that the soldiers were put through. All of them observing, silent, and hungry-eyed. Their attention wasn’t just on the drills, it was on the movement between the movements. The subtle twitch of a shoulder before a feint. The curve of a step, that led into a new step, which led into death.

Kate tilted her head slightly, no doubt tracing imaginary cuts with her rapier in the air. Her mouth was tight, tense, focused. Zach didn’t move, he just watched. An expression on his face like an empty well. Henry leaned in and whispered something to Eric. The older man nodded.

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And Alex?

He turned from the balcony, the weight of the scroll in his pocket a dull reminder of everything he wasn’t catching up on fast enough.

He walked alone through the inner yard and entered the immense beast chamber, an arena-sized sparring ring warded by spells strong enough to shatter stone and cauterize flesh in a flash. Inside, at the center, waited his opponent.

A six-legged bug-like thing, covered in chitinous armor. Its breath reeked of burnt copper and stale ozone. Its spine crackled with static, arcane energy humming with unspent fury. Alex exhaled, rolled his neck once, and activated his bracer. Runes ignited down his arm and aether sparked in his palm and up his forearm.

“Okay,” he whispered to himself. “Let’s try not to die today.”

The beast lunged, and the world narrowed to survival.

He dodged the first swipe, if only barely, then rolled under the second. His aether flared up instinctively, launching a [Flare] just as he threw a punch that slammed into the creature’s shoulder with a satisfying crack. The creature stumbled a step, it hissed. The room trembled.

Another attack, another counter, another flicker of movement, faster this time, the thing starting to learn Alex’s flow and adapting to his timing.

He shifted stances in the Demon Asura, changed his rhythm. Raised both fists, aether surging up and down his body, and he thought of the scroll Sylvaris had given him, buried in his memory like a locked door he didn’t have the key to.

He had only skimmed the surface of that scroll. Just enough to know it was old, deep, full of layered knowledge and half-whispered warnings. But the principles? The basics? He was starting to feel them now. Channeling energy through his will, redirecting through the stance of his body. The result building the strength of his aura and to store force in the coil of his spine and release it through his punch.

He moved, the beast moved, their strikes clashed like rolling thunder.

Three minutes later, the beast collapsed. Not dead, just stunned, its limbs twitching and smoke curling from one of its chitin side plates. Alex stood above it, chest heaving, shoulders burning.

“That’s… sort of progress,” he muttered.

“Barely,” Obby replied in his mind.

Alex smirked. “I’ll take barely, over dead. But you’re right. I haven’t figured out the rest of the scroll yet. I can barely boost the [Burning Strike] by… maybe size percent. The power behind my blows and the speed of my movements if better, though its something I’ll have to work on. I just don’t know how well I can keep up the aether patterns in my body, the Demon Asura stances, and cast my spells at the same time. Feels like I’m juggling too many things.”

He sat down in the blood-smeared sand and started sketching glyph sequences in the dirt beside him, shapes from the scroll, ideas he barely understood, mixed with thoughts of his own and guided by Obby. There was a plan coming together somewhere in the mess of sigils and runes, he just needed to find it. And he would, one way or another.

Because the others were getting stronger and he refused to be the one dragging them down.

“Next,” he called out.

A squad of soldiers ran out into the arena to removed the unconscious monster. Within minutes, the arena was clear and Alex could her glowing and scratching coming from one of the large gates on the east side. He looked over to see the darkened silhouette behind the gate, four glowing eyes watching him from behind.

As the metal gate began to rise, Alex grinned and flexed his arm, aether gems on his bracer flashing brightly.

***

Alex leaned against a post at the edge of the courtyard. Sweat covered his brow and his muscles flared angrily from the constant combat training. His aether was low, the aether gems in his bracer spent. He was debating whether he’d earned dinner or just a quiet collapse into bed. That was when the gate opened.

His arrived with no fanfare, and no shouted announcement. Just the quiet sound of boots.

Malric Vaunt, still dressed in his formal Arcanuum white. Not a speck of dust marred his appearance, and not a wrinkle disgraced his coat. He strode in like someone who’d already been there and was simply checking to see if the furniture had been rearranged without his permission. He held a scroll case under one arm.

Alex pushed off the post and met him halfway across the yard. The others, spotting the movement, began to drift over as well. Eric, Henry, Kate, even Devon, who still had bits of chalk dust on his clothes and the kind of look you usually only saw in freshly electrocuted engineers.

Vaunt didn’t speak at first. He opened the scroll case with practiced precision and handed Alex the parchment. The wax seal snapped like dry chicken bones under his thumb. Inside was inked calligraphy containing only, one sentence.

“Your presence is now required beyond the northern reach.”

That was all, no mission briefing, no flowery and poetic language. No list of glorious honors or death disclaimers. Just one line. Alex read it twice before handing it to Eric. Eric passed it to Henry. And so the scroll made its silent rotation, like a cursed party invitation no one could decline.

Behind them, Ilvien Halstrad appeared like a storm cloud, her arms folded and her expression somewhere between disdain and detached professionalism. She read the situation at a glance.

“You’ve had two weeks,” she said. “Hope you learned what you needed to.”

Alex looked at her. “We tried.”

She sniffed. “Try harder. The northern reach isn’t a training ground. It’s where the Kingdom sends people it can’t afford to lose, or really hopes to.” She grinned at him.

Kate cracked her knuckles. “So… vacation, then.”

Halstrad turned and stared at her. Then spun about to go. “You leave at dawn.”

They all stood there a while longer.

Save for the faint echoes of earlier drills and the dying hum of magic in the air, they sat in an empty courtyard. Alex folded the scroll and tucked it into his bracelet. “Guess that’s it,” he said softly.

“Next stop,” Garret muttered, “North-of-Nowhere.”

“Beyond,” corrected Lance absently.

“Exactly,” Garret grinned. “Beyond nowhere. Sounds fun.”

No one laughed. Alex looked north. The horizon was already dark. Clouds loomed low like crouching beasts. He exhaled slowly. “Sleep light, everyone. We move in the morning.”

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