Unwieldy (Fantasy & Hammers)

[Sarius]

Chapter 20: The Sharah

The morning started with Mayer knocking on my door.

I was awake of course, I didn't need to sleep and found more solace in doing a sort of faux meditation now. It was basically as close as I could get to sleep without actually sleeping. Instead of the sweet oblivion, I thought all night instead.

I walked out into the main living area and found Mayer making himself breakfast. He offered to make some for me with a look, and I declined with a shake of my head. I honestly didn't feel hungry at all now. I still enjoyed the smell of breakfast and tea, but I didn't have to actually eat, which seemed like it would come in handy a lot.

It was only a few minutes and Mayer had finished his meal. Quite remarkable really, seeing as it was a full serving of scrambled eggs. But it sounds like the man was ex-military of some description, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was a bit of an acquired trait.

Then we were out the door, walking away from the town centre. Something that I hadn't done from Mayer's home yet. We didn't go into the forest but walked further into the plains that stretched seemingly forever. It was almost entirely barren of trees but had lots of plant life in the form of shrubbery. A large mountain loomed in the distance, but other than that, it was relatively flat all things considered.

I don't think that Mayer really had any specific place that he was taking me, just that he was taking me far out of the way of the town itself. Less onlookers I would assume. We walked for about forty-five minutes or so, there was a small flat area that had basically no shrubbery at all. It was then that Mayer turned around and addressed me.

"Summon your hammer." So, I did.

It was still a marvel to me, to be quite frank. The look of it summoning reminded me of CGI demos for liquid, but just really, really good. The way that it formed into the shape of the hammer was crazy, being moulded against the air with the strange metal liquid that was leaking from my hand.

It was strange sensation too. The metal leaking from my hand didn't feel like anything, really. But the solidifying of the hammer itself felt like it was adding a strange strength to my will. It is called a Soul Weapon, so I assume that is why. It's basically a metal weapon version of my soul.

After the weapon completed its formation, I looked towards Mayer.

"Just under a second." I took me a second to realise what he was talking about, but when I realised he was talking about how long the summoning took, I spoke up.

"I think I can do it faster. There is no way that it took that long when I was fighting the wolf."

"Unsummon it then try again." So I did. The unsummoning was much faster than summoning, it only took a fifth of a second or something close. This time, as I summoned, I paid little to no attention to the visuals of the summoning itself, pretending that I was preparing to actually hit something with it. This time I felt the liquid fill in the shape of the hammer far quicker than before. But I could feel a small strain on what felt like my heart, but was more likely my soul being put under stress from having to form something on short notice.

"About half a second. Try do it faster. Again." Unsummoning was even a tiny bit faster this time. However, as I pushed myself to summon faster, I felt an even stronger strain on my 'soul'. I summoned it a fair bit faster this time, more equal to the time I had used it to brain that forest wolf. Mayer simply nodded, signalling for me to do it again.

I unsummoned the hammer and repeated the summoning process, urging my soul to form faster than before. It was complaining about it but did it faster than before again, but it felt like it was tearing itself out of me. It felt like I was leaking fire from my hands. I grimaced, trying to ignore the pain, but in the end I let out a small whimper. The hammer formed and looked perfect, but it was a very unpleasant experience.

"That was faster. About a third of a second." I nodded, a little breathless at the pain to be honest.

"Yeah, I don't think I can go faster than that. It felt like pure fire was leaking from my hand." Mayer looked at me curiously.

"Do you think it's trainable?" I thought on that for a moment.

"I'm not sure. It has a lot more to do with my soul, and I don't know how trainable that is really. Would raising my Mind actually help at all with my soul?" Mayer looked thoughtful, but shook his head.

"No, the soul isn't controlled that way. Usage of the soul is a dangerous game. Not many dare to mess with shifting with the soul, but there are a few that do. They are totally different from regular shifting. Soul shifting doesn't even necessarily use ether at all."

"Well I guess it wouldn't hurt to try and train it. Thought I'm not going to summon my hammer that fast again for a good while."

"How about you try unsummoning the hammer and try summon it while swinging at me."

"Uh." I looked at Mayer incredulously, but he stared back at me with a raised eyebrow. "You sure?" His gaze continued, and I shrugged. If the guy wanted to risk it, then I wasn't going to stop him.

I unsummoned the hammer and got into the stance I had been using while hammering in the wooden posts. I held my hands in an approximate position and swung. I summoned my hammer, the liquid pouring from my hand, and filling my hands with cold Soul Metal.

I swung hard, but the hammer did most of the work really, not much of the force I was exerting was adding to the acceleration of the hammer itself but was more being used to keep the hammer on track. The hammer arced downwards until it hit the floor with a hefty thud. I looked up to see Mayer glance down at the hammer head, which was stuck in the ground, back to my face.

"What?" I asked, confused. He definitely hadn't moved, and the hammer had arced right through where he was standing. There was basically no way that the hammer hadn't hit him.

"The hammer head hadn't formed by the time that it had reached me. You are lucky that hit the wolf, kid."

I honestly hadn't even considered that to be an option. I flushed slightly, getting ready to explain that the wolf was closer to the ground, so the hammer had formed by then, but Mayer didn't give me a chance and waved away my argument.

"Try hitting me with it summoned now." I raised an eyebrow but complied anyways. I hefted the hammer up to my waist, then slowly lifted it higher. I shifted my stance ever so slightly and swung with all my might. That was the problem with this thing, there was no holding back. If I was going to hit something, it was going to receive the full brunt of the force basically no matter what I did to soften the blow.

The hammer swung towards Mayer with a ridiculous amount of sheer force behind it. I looked at Mayer, wondering what he was going to do. Would he move out of the way at the last moment? Would he try to block or deflect it? But Mayer lifted up his hand and placed it in front of the path of the hammer head. I felt my eyes go wide as the hammer struck his fingers and stopped like a car hitting a solid concrete wall. The unexpected stop to the motion of the hammer made me collide with the handle, knocking the wind out of my lungs. I collapsed to the floor, breathless and gasping for air. My hammer fell beside me with a mighty thud.

"It's heavy, but beside that, it has nothing to it. Right now, the only strength that your hammer has is its weight. Other than that, its totally useless. If you have someone that can deflect or stop your hammer in any way, you're dead." I looked up to see Mayer look down at me with a small grin on his face.

"Holy. Shit. You are strong" I said between gasps. Mayer snorted.

"Not especially. There are many much stronger than I. It's true that I am much stronger than you are, but if you had even half of my strength, your hammer would be far heavier than what I could block like that." I grumbled as I stood up, dusting off my pants.

"So how am I going to even be able to use that thing," I pointed at the hammer, "In actual combat?" I was a little peeved, not going to lie. Couldn't I have got a damn sword or something?

"No idea. But everything has to start somewhere." Mayer said, before taking a stance. I looked at him oddly for a moment, then got the idea and mimicked his stance as best I could. He waited a moment until he was sure I was ready, then started to move.

The difference between us was immediately obvious. His movements flowed as if he were water itself, whilst I jolted about like a fool, stumbling over my own feet at every chance I could get. It was embarrassing, but Mayer made no mention of it. The movements were based solely on the feet, legs and waist. The movements didn't touch the arms at all. I was curious as to why, but it was too demanding to both concentrate on the movements and think at the same time, so I gave into the motions.

After ten minutes, I realised that the movement patterns weren't repeating. Each pattern was unique, but consisted of the same, or very similar movements. The patterns, however, didn't feel similar at all. There had to be hundreds of unique movements, all working different muscles in my legs, all predicated to serve a very specific function. But the patterns were different, so different that it was difficult to predict what it was that we were going to do next.

It took me thirty minutes to get a semblance of a feel for where the movements would go next, but even then I found myself halting and desperately rushing to catch back up to where Mayer had gone with the pattern.

After an hour, my muscles were burning like all hell. I had no idea that there were so many muscles to burn in a foot. Though I pushed through the pain to follow with Mayer. I was still shit in every sense of the word, but it was a fun sort of game, to try and keep up with the man.

The most interesting thing about these movements to me was that, in all reality, you barely needed any musculature to pull them off. I'm sure that being well built and fit was going to be a good help in performing them easily, but even a child could pull them off. All that was really holding you back was your skill.

Each movement was calculated and was made to be able to flow into tens of other movements. I had thought earlier that there might be hundreds of different movements, but now I started to realise that you could probably break it down into half a hundred moves, and then break the variants down within that main move. But either way, that still added up fast. There were probably more like thousands of specific moves that could be performed.

The movements were a lot like katas in karate or any similar martial art, but a lot more complicated and more free flowing. We had been going for a few hours at this point, but Mayer simply continued on without even a hiccup, continually pulling off new combinations that I hadn't even thought possible to make look graceful. His eyes were closed, his face looked serene, as if he were listening to a symphony that only he could hear.

I started to wish that I could hear that symphony too. But at the moment, I was only able to struggle along, and imitate the older man as he moved unbelievably smoothly.

After three hours, I started to stumble a lot less, finding a good neutral point where I could re-attempt basically any move from was a big help. It also made me look a whole lot less stupid.

After six hours, I was following most of his movements, albeit poorly. There was a massive discrepancy with how both the movement's looked. My movements were mostly jerky, but every now and then my brain would have an epiphany moment, and most times out of ten, it would lead me in the right direction.

After eight hours, I could mostly keep on tempo with Mayer. He didn't go particularly fast or anything, but it was exceptionally difficult to keep a consistent pace. Keeping a consistent tempo kind of implied that you were able to follow along properly, but I fudged it and made lots of safe bets and wide movements, so that I could pick up specific movements easier when I had the chance to examine further.

Unfortunately, the ninth hour was the last. Mayer's movements for about thirty minutes had been slowly drawing to a close. I wasn't sure why if felt that way yet, but I was sure that I would find that out at some point.

When Mayer finally stopped, he did a quick stretch, then looked to me.

"You did good for your first time. A solid basis is being built for what everything will be built around." He looked at me, giving a small smile, then started walking off back towards his home. I was somewhat dumbfounded by the sudden change. I was still stuck in the final position hat Mayer had performed.

"Wait!" I called after him. He stopped and looked over his shoulder questioningly. "What's it called?" Mayer looked out into the distance, seemingly questioning if he should tell me or not.

"It's called the Sharah." He said, rolling the 'r' ever so slightly, giving the word a distinctly foreign note. Mayer didn't bother to see my reaction, not that I had any special reaction to the name. I wouldn't have been surprised if it didn't have a name at all. I stood there for a moment, thinking about what I should do next. There wasn't anything that I needed to do today, and there wasn't anywhere I could go except Mayer's place, and maybe to the town bar. So I decided to stay here and fumble through half remembered movements, hoping that I would understand a little bit more of the strange movements that Mayer had performed for me not minutes before.

It was a whole lot harder without Mayer there to guide me, but I carried on, despite the difficulty.

It was a long day of struggle.

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 21: Elation

The Sharah, as I quickly found, was exceptionally difficult to learn by yourself. I assumed it was the nature of the movements being free-flowing, and without a specific structure like the more rigid katas that I had performed in karate classes when I was a kid.

I did get the impression from the movements themselves that they were more about the basis of movement than movement in combat specifically. I wouldn't even be surprised if Mayer know other movements that were more specific to combat.

I stumbled around in the dirt for a few hours in the dirt, trying to remember Mayer's precise movements, but when you do something for nine hours it all starts to blend together. One thing that it did achieve, was a clear feeling of wrongness in my movements.

It just felt like I was faking, that I was just blundering along and that I wasn't truly grasping the essence of it at all. It was like anything I guess, but having seen Mayer, whose skill in performing the Sharah was so clear—it was a night and day difference.

The only thing that I had to go off was the sense of wrongness that I had in my head. If I did something that felt even slightly less wrong, then I would continue to do that until I could substitute it with something slightly less wrong.

During the time that I was bumbling along with Mayer, I had felt so much more capable and questioned things less. But now that I was alone, left to my own devices, I felt almost totally incapable of doing anything that could improve my performance of the Sharah. But I continued to do it anyway. I didn't really have anything else to do, just this or some other training style stuff.

I could run, or do push-ups or something of a similar effect, but if I were to be perfectly honest, strength and endurance training was horrifically boring with my body. I knew that much from the time on the Jothian's farm. I could run at my theoretical max speed for days and days and never truly have to stop. I'm sure that I would receive and massive boost in my agility, and maybe I would slowly get better at running itself, but other than that?

Nothing.

However, this… the Sharah. It was skill, a complex and intricate performance that used every part of your legs, forcing you to train your body to move in the correct patterns and positions. If I thought about it, it was like relearning how to move, how to walk. It wasn't exactly the most physically strenuous task in the world. But it was about learning to make every other task more achievable and more efficient.

At least that was what I thought. I couldn't possible fully understand at this point in time, maybe in the future.

But as the sun slowly dipped below the horizon, I realised that I could be working on multiple things at once here. My hammer was still laying in the dirt a few meters away from the well won patch of dirt that I had been drawing circles in for the past fifteen or so hours. At the start of the training session, I had tried summoning that thing as fast as I could, but it ended up feeling like fire was leaking out of my hand. So, I was somewhat nervous about trying to train the summon and unsummon process.

First of all—out of pure curiosity—I tried to unsummon the hammer from a distance, and that didn't do anything at all. I thought as much. Being able to unsummon your Soul Weapon from afar would be incredibly useful. It would also mean that you could never lose your Soul Weapon, and it could never be taken hostage. Which was sad, all things considered. It meant that I was vulnerable, and also that a physical manifestation of my soul could potentially fall into the wrong hands.

I walked over to the hammer and unsummoned it. I walked back over to my little circle and started to do my best mimicry of the Sharah again. As I did so, I summoned the hammer, facing its head towards the ground beside me where it wouldn't impede on my next few movements. After I had done those movements, I then turned around and grabbed the hilt and started to unsummon it.

I immediately stumbled over myself and had to restart.

Thinking as well as trying to perform the Sharah was extremely difficult for me. Mayer could literally do the Sharah with his eyes closed, but I wasn't nearly so practiced.

I tried the same movement over and over again.

I had decided that there was effectively no way for me to imitate Mayer's performance of the Sharah in all its ever shifting and infinitely complex glory—so over the past few hours, I collected all the main movements that I could clearly remember and slotted them haphazardly into a kata of sorts. It looked and felt stupid, and even more unprofessional from the start, but it was the best I could do with my little experience.

What I was trying to do was fit the summoning and unsummoning into a 'cycle' of my Sharah kata. So, I decided that I would unsummon the hammer at the start of the cycle and summon it again at the end of the cycle, but I had to make it fit somehow.

It was really difficult, and sometimes even thinking, 'Okay so in three more steps I grab the handle…" would make me mess up badly enough that I felt better restarting.

It took me maybe thirty tries to unsummon correctly and have performed the Sharah well enough to move on to the next part of the cycle. It would only be in the middle of the third quarter of the kata that I was able to place it where I had unsummoned the hammer from.

The whole idea was to make it so I was able to repeat it—and on top of that, the more naturally and the faster I could unsummon and resummon the hammer, the smoother the Sharah would flow.

Killing two birds with one stone I would say, if I could actually pull it off in the first place.

As good as it is to have someone as obviously amazing as Mayer as reference, it sure makes you say 'Well, Mayer can do…' or 'Well, Mayer does…', only further making you feel inadequate. Maybe its also the other Champions. They are purportedly super intelligent and stuff. How long would it take for them to pick up this stuff? If they were anything like some of the main characters in stories I've read, they would pick it up so fast that even the seconds were meaningful lengths of times—shocking every man and their dog in the entire city, or something equally as ridiculous.

But I was only a regular dude, trying my best to do this weird dance thing while summoning and unsummoning a massive hammer made from my soul.

I've let that sort of thinking stop me from doing lots of things in my life. 'Well I could never be as good as this person.' It was an excuse in a way. Sure, sometimes I said that because I genuinely wasn't interested, but sometimes it was because I looked at those people and realised just how much work it would be to get that good at it.

But here? Here I had no choice. I couldn't give up like that anymore. If I did, then I forfeited the right to survive in this little competition that God had set up. I would never go home—I would never be anything other than a regular dude in the midst of all the geniuses.

So, I continued to try.

I didn't manage to summon the hammer again well enough, and I had to restart from the beginning again. It was another ten tries until I managed to unsummon the hammer well enough to continue, and I failed again.

Over the course of the next two hours, I managed to get my success rate with an unsummoning to one in three, but I still wasn't able to get it to summon quick enough and seamlessly enough to be able to continue to the next stage and then to the next cycle.

It was extremely slow going. I had repeated the same few steps leading up to the unsummoning possibly thousands of times now, and the steps leading up to the summoning at least a few hundred times.

Another hour went pass without being able to summon the hammer again. I had been close a handful of times, but it was so incredibly difficult.

The reason it was so difficult was because of the extra weight that I suddenly had to manage somehow, whilst still performing the steps of the kata. The weight didn't stay the same either, it grew until the head was completely formed, and only then were you able to place it down on the ground, because otherwise the hammer head hadn't formed fully, and the surface was uneven and would fall over onto the ground, making it impossible for you to circle back around and easily unsummon it.

So began the arduous process of trying it again and again until it worked.

I was confident in my ability to pull it off, but the weight of the hammer was so massive, that holding it up in the air while doing complex footwork for just over a second, which seemed to be about as fast at unsummoning as I could achieve while doing the Sharah.

It was painful, my legs burned, my feet burned, my arms burned almost every muscle burned. It was horrible, but It only made me more stubborn.

Stubborn was something that I had never really been. I don't know what it was exactly, but I had always viewed stubbornness as overtly bull-headed. I always saw examples of the 'I'll be right' mentality, and I grew to hate it. I paired it with irrationality. But this? This was exactly the situation for stubbornness. It was then and there that I performed my first true act of stubbornness.

I tried over again. I could do a few hundred tries in an hour now, and I was able to pull off the unsummoning seven out of eight tries, an extremely large improvement over when I was initially trying to first get the kata going.

I had quickly come to the realisation, however, that I would have to be able to perform the lead up to the summoning perfectly every time until I had a reasonable chance of successfully pulling off the summoning.

It was because, even though I was able to perform the movements leading up to the summoning most times out of ten, even if one thing were to put me even slightly off kilter, then I would basically be unable to bear the weight of the summoning. The weight was so huge that it required an extremely solid dispersion of weight between the feet, if it wasn't basically perfect, then I would immediately almost fall over, or drop the hammer because I can't hold it well enough.

So, hours and hours pass of me failing over and over. But I come to care less and less about actually achieving the goal and start to really try to make my movements flow like Mayer's did. It was a mixed bag at first, some movements were easier to pull off with the same floaty, almost ethereal flow that Mayer's every movement exuded, but the overwhelming majority were awkward.

Now that I was performing the movements in a set kata, I could repeat the movements as many times as I so pleased, so adding a new element, like the flow and the hammer, was much easier, because now you could think about your next step instead of haphazardly following along with someone else's movements.

My kata was clearly butchered in comparison to Mayer's performance. There weren't anywhere near as many moves, and not as many combinations, but I had to make it manageable for myself.

Implementing the flow set me back a few hours worth of work, making me fail the unsummoning one time out of four. It was a big blow to my confidence, but I pushed ahead, determined to get back to where I was before I added in the flow of the kata.

Over the next few hours, I felt the kata slowly evolve to more than what it was before. It was still obviously amateurishly made, but as I added in the flow, and changed some of the moves ever so slightly, the movements began to fell far more solid, more natural than they had been before. Whereas before, my movements were shaky, I was trying to keep up with a tempo that I had set myself, and I would rush some steps to make that possible.

This flow suddenly stressed the consistency of movement. While tempo is important, you can keep tempo and still move badly. But to both keep tempo, and to keep a consistent flow, you had to move properly and solidly, otherwise everything would crumble and you would be forced to start again.

It was the introduction of flow that made me fail more in regular sections of the kata. Beforehand I would stumble through them, but the flow was an unforgiving and cruel mistress.

Over and over and over I tried. I was deep into the night, maybe even in the early morning. I could almost assure you that everyone was asleep. It was freezing cold, but I didn't even notice it. My body was warm and buzzing with a strange energy that was totally detached from anything to do with my physical form. It cut through any tiredness that I had and made me forget that pain ever existed in the first place.

I was close.

I swear that I could feel it. My movements now felt seamless in comparison to what I was doing before, my movements all staccato and off kilter. Now I felt solid, and my movements felt meaningful.

More hours passed, and you could start to even see the licks of sunlight peek over the edge of Orisis. But I was absorbed. Time flew by me like a light breeze, almost undetectable. My mind turned off entirely, simply repeating the movements over and over. I wasn't trying anymore. I hadn't given up, but I wanted these movements to be so ingrained in me that I couldn't possibly fail or mess them up.

Time flowed as smoothly as my movements, surprising me in a way. There was a great deal of wrongness in comparison to Mayer, but as I felt myself move it felt so seamless and melodic. As if my joints themselves were singing to me, my body creating a resonating sound within itself, each muscle talking to another all singing a song of combined movement.

And it was there that it happened.

My steps against the ground were firmer than they had been before, it was as if the earth was hugging my feet, holding them and releasing them upon my every movement. Each movement flowed into another with a slow precision that I had been practicing for hours now. The unsummoning went easily, I barely even noticed as my hand moved out to grab the hilt, making the large hammer liquefy and return back into my body. Each step felt light and easily performed, and each planted foot felt as solid as stone.

Then came the summoning. My hand reached out, and the hammer started to slowly form from the liquid spilling from my hand. The weight grew greater and greater until a point into the kata where it was possible for me to angle my upper body so that I could use both arms to hold up the ever-increasing weight.

However, this is where the difficult part began. The section that had made me fail every single time. Doing the Sharah while the hammer head formed was like walking around with a water tank filled with liquid metal. But this time, my stance held, and despite the strange shifting of weight of the forming of the hammer head my movements remained unimpeded.

Then I performed the final steps, placing the hammer on the ground and then seamlessly doing the last minute or so of movements, that despite not having done them many times in comparison to the beginning section, I nailed. Then I returned to the beginning position of the kata.

Then I let the built-up elation soar across my body.

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 22: Blasphemer

It was soon into my unadulterated happiness that I heard enthusiastic clapping from behind me. I quickly spun around to see Rethi wide eyed and clapping like a man possessed.

I was surprised, to say the least. I looked up at the sky and realised that it was almost midday. Meaning that I had spent a few hours more than a full day on just practicing the Sharah, including creating the abomination that is my kata.

I looked to Rethi seeing his face clearly, he looked a little rough around the edges—some bruises and cuts still obvious on his form—but he looked a whole lot better than only a day or so ago. I sighed with relief, forgetting my triumph in a moment.

"That was so cool Master Maximillian!" Rethi said, racing up to me with all the energy of a young boy.

"Well yes, but I've only managed to pull it off once so far." I wasn't ready to receive compliments on anything I had done quite yet. Rethi, however, had moved his interest to something else. My hammer. I looked at him oddly as he was intently staring at it—scouring the light silver with his eyes in awe. To be perfectly honest, I was a little amused. He didn't seem to be aware of me staring right at him, so I lightly coughed to pull his attention. His head whipped up to look at me, and embarrassment crept up onto his face—as clear as day.

"Oh! I'm sorry, I… well I couldn't help but look." The boy said, shuffling awkwardly in the dirt. I laughed and looked quizzically at the massive hammer that was head down in the dirt.

"What do you think of it?" I asked. I hadn't really discussed the hammer with anyone but Mayer, I didn't know what just a common person thought of the thing. Rethi looked at the hammer, and then back at me.

"Well… it's beautiful. It might be all one colour, but the detail to it is strange. I haven't seen anything even remotely like it before. I've seen a few of the weapons that mercenaries or warriors wear when they walk through town. The one or two times I've seen it happen, anyway." Rethi shook his head emphatically, "But they look nothing like this. The craftsmanship that went into something of this size, and with this much detail? It's incredible. I would more expect it to be a showpiece on some rich man's mantle than be used as an actual weapon."

And there it was. If I were to be perfectly honest, I didn't really think about the hammer all that hard since I had been handed the thing. I just used it and got on with life, a tool of necessity. But Rethi saw it entirely different. I knew what it truly was, but to Rethi it was a mystical weapon that could be summoned and unsummoned. I nodded to myself slightly before turning to the boy and patting him on the back.

"It's a decent hammer if I do say so myself. It does the job, and I am forced to try and handle it properly." I laughed and walked over and unsummoned the thing by lightly grabbing it by the hilt. Rethi watched in wonder as the hammer rapidly melted into liquid and was absorbed into my hand. It wasn't really any faster than it was before at unsummoning, but it felt slightly smoother somehow, if that made any sense at all.

"Are we going back?" I asked Rethi, who was still gawking ever so slightly. I don't know how well he had caught me summoning and unsummoning the hammer beforehand, but he seemed engrossed this time around. Seeing it unsummoning up close must be different than from afar—the metal leaking into my hand where I touched it. Rethi nodded sharply, waking himself from his stupor and then started to walk quickly in the direction of Mayer's house.

I walked in the same direction, but a great deal slower. I wasn't about to run all the way to Mayer's home, too high energy for me right now—even if I technically always had the energy. Rethi quickly picked up on it and slowed his pace to match mine perfectly.

It took a while to reach Mayer's little house, but the walk was worth it. I needed to let myself rest, even if it was totally superfluous. It helped me readjust from being in a mode where I was crazily repeating the same actions over and over again, with no concept of time at all—into suddenly being a normal human again and having to deal with social encounters. Massive difference.

I barged on in through Mayer's artfully crafted wooden door and took a turn into the living room.

"Morning." I said, not really referring to time all too strictly, and plonked myself down in the seat that has been claimed by me. Mayer took a sip, eyebrows raised amusedly with eyes that peaked over the cup and wrinkled ever so slightly at the sides. Rethi quickly sat down in another spare chair that had been set out what must have been only recently.

"Good afternoon boys." He said half into his cup. "You've been out for a while Rethi. Did you run some errands before you went and fetched Max here?" I looked pointedly towards Rethi.

"N-no sir. I found him out there doing a strange dance. I didn't think I should have interrupted him at the time, so I just waited." The young boy shifted uncomfortably in his seat under the pressure of the combined gazes of me and Mayer.

"How long did you wait, Rethi?" I asked lightly.

"Three hours." Mayer answered for him. I looked at Rethi and sighed, the boy himself looked down at his hands, fiddling with his fingers nervously.

"You were right that I was in the middle of something, but next time just call out to me." The young boy nodded sharply—his much cleaner sandy blonde hair bobbing with the motion. Rethi turned his gaze away from me and I moved my attention away in kind. It wouldn't help to put any weight on the boy, it wasn't like he did anything wrong. Personally, however, I would appreciate it if someone would alert me when Mayer called on me—he was someone that I would stop even the most important of things to go meet, just on the odd chance of something serious arising.

"It's fine, I will tell the boy when something is urgent or not. In this case, there is no real urgency. Otherwise, I would have gone and fetched you myself, after a short while." Mayer chuckled as he saw a small flash of relief in Rethi's face but continued. "It seems that your little plan went pretty well." Mayer said, looking at me. I tiled my head to the side slightly, an unspoken 'How so?'

"My mother was sent a letter of written apology by the Jothians." Rethi said, happily but with a tinge of sadness in the fringes of his words. I raised my eyebrow, waiting for the 'but'. Rethi took a deep breath and sighed it out.

"But my mother found out about it. About me being a beggar." His eyes dropped to his hands again. I could hear the tears simply from that emotional, strangled sound in his voice. I had feared that this would happen. It was almost inevitable that Rethi would be found out at some point, whether it was now or in the future was almost irrelevant.

"What happened?" I asked. It wasn't really a question; I know what happened. Rethi didn't speak for a while, before managing to squeeze out a few words.

"I don't think I am welcome home for the time being. Or maybe ever." He said solemnly. I nodded, looking back to Mayer and gesturing towards the room that I had slept in for a few nights, offering it to the boy instead. He nodded back affirmatively, though I could tell it was already a given in his mind. I didn't need the room at all, really. I could just as easily sit where I was all night and do nothing here, it wouldn't change anything.

I got up and beckoned for Rethi to follow and showed him to the room. After that I showed him around the place; a quick tour of all the amenities, the bathroom right across the hall, and a quick warning to not touch anything hanging on the walls in the hallway—and then I left him alone in the room for a bit. The kid probably needed some time himself, at the very least to process the rapid change in his life.

I walked out into the living room and sat opposite Mayer again and sighed.

"Knew that one was coming?" He asked, and I nodded lazily.

"His mum is pretty hardcore. She was unhappy about me giving them money for perfectly legitimate reasons, I can't imagine the fit that she had when she found out her son was a beggar himself." I could just about hear the hurtful words of a deeply wounded woman being screamed from here. Mayer nodded.

"She is apparently quite the bull-headed young lady." I could just about feel my ears prick up at that.

"You know her?" He nodded, but didn't elaborate, so I didn't pry—even if I was curious. He took a long sip of his cup, slowly drinking the tea with his eyes closed. He waited a moment before opening his eyes again.

"She has never allowed herself to take any of the support I tried to give her over the years. I've tried many different things from small to large, but nothing ever worked. I haven't tried in a few years now." He said, tapping the side of his cup, making the ceramic ring ever so slightly. "I'm somewhat surprised that you managed to convince her to take that money in the first place. I hadn't so much as been able to make her take firewood for a particularly nasty cold season."

"I think it was all about timing, it was more about her son that it was about her. And I was also pretty forceful about it, with all the grace and subtlety of my hammer" Mayer exhaled softly and nodded but waved his hand as if clearing the air of a dirty smell.

"Anyway, enough of this depressing conversation. What about your training. Rethi seemed impressed." He said, eyebrow raised amusedly. I laughed awkwardly.

"Well, after you left I couldn't really do the whole dance the way that you did, so I decided to break it into a smaller set of steps that I could repeat easier." Mayer's eyes widened behind his teacup and he quickly swallowed, holding down a choked surprise. His eyes went from shock, then horror, then overwhelming amusement.

"You abridged the Sharah? How blasphemous of you! I guess that's my fault for not telling you that you shouldn't." He said, delight emblazoned across his face. Between the somewhat ominous wording and the delighted way he said them, I was left with a confused smile. Mayer got up and started making himself another cup of tea while practically giggling to himself as he did so. He offered to make me one, and I agreed—still thoroughly confused.

He delicately handed the teacup to me and laughed delightedly as he sat back in his seat and took a sip.

"Why are you so happy about this?" I asked carefully. I honestly wasn't really sure that I wanted to know. Mayer looked at me and grinned.

"The Sharah is a very sacred thing to the Sharah'hin." He paused a moment and thought about something then just said "Sharah'hin just means People of the Sharah. Anyways, they really hate it when you do abridge or change the Sharah in any way. Big sore spot to them." Mayer giggled to himself, a joke I probably couldn't possibly understand.

"Well, now you are both a Champion and a Blasphemer. The Sharah'hin would really hate you now." Then Mayer gave a great big belly laugh, so hard that he almost spilt his tea.

Almost.

A/N: Another day, some more content. How are your day's going? Working hard or hardly working?

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 23: Search

The Sharah'hin? I hadn't heard anything of them yet. Mayer seemed to smell the question on me as he pre-emptively answered.

"The Sharah'hin are an old race that are quite secretive and closed off from outsiders. It is rare to encounter a Sharah'hin away from home when you are not directly engaging in a war with them." Mayer chuckled and took a sip of tea.

"So, the Sharah is their big thing?" Mayer laughed at that.

"Definitely. They teach it to all of the Sharah'hin, but very, very few outsiders. I just so happen to be one of those outsiders." Mayer shrugged.

"So why am I so blasphemous then?" Changing around some of the moves can't be that bad right?

"The Sharah is effectively their religion, though they hate it being referred to as that. They like to say it is a way of life, or the only correct way of living and such, so I just count it as a religion. If you change around the moves to the Sharah, you are obstructing the correct pattern that it is to be performed in, and thus obstructing the proper course of life." Mayer shifted in his seat and took a sip of tea, "Always thought they were full of it, but just complied with them."

"You don't believe in all that?"

"No not really, I went along with it because they wouldn't teach me otherwise. But I don't know if they care all too much if you actually believe, and more if you practice the Sharah in a way that they approve of." He looked thoughtful for a moment, sipping his tea, "It's not like they are spewing bullshit, they have their own wisdom that they usually try to communicate through the Sharah, but I don't really subscribe to it being the optimal way to life or anything."

"So then why do they hate Champions?" I asked. Mayer just looked at me, eyebrows raised.

"Everyone hates Champions." He scoffed slightly, then quickly amended, "Anyone old enough to remember hates them." I nodded slowly.

I was about to ask further, but there was a sound from the hallway, and a few plodding steps. I turned to see Rethi standing there, his eyes a bit red but doing better than I would have thought. I was expecting to not see the kid for a few hours at least.

"What's up?" I asked. Rethi looked awkward for a moment but seemed to find something within himself and stood up straight addressed me head on.

"I need to go get someone to take care of my mother. I can't be gone for a long period of time again." I nodded, suddenly aware that I had kept him from his mother for three odd days when he had been helping me work on the Jothian's farm.

"Are you going to go hire someone?" I asked. Rethi nodded, but with a little unsurety.

"I'm not quite sure where I should even go, really. What do I even look for?"

"I guess being a nurse wouldn't exactly be a common profession around here would it?" I said, looking towards Mayer, and he raised an eyebrow with an amused look on his face, electing not to answer.

"Well, how about we go see Master Gram and see if he can help you out?" I said placatingly, and Rethi thought on that for a moment. I couldn't really guess what he was thinking. In the end he nodded, and I laughed slightly, relieved that the boy would let me help him with this at least. I was slightly afraid that he might try and clam up on me, but it seems my worry was unfounded.

"Alright then! Let's get this show on the road!" I said, raising myself from my seat, but Mayer stopped me. He brought out his pouch of coins and started digging around in it, a slight clinking of coins rubbing against each other as his fingers pushed them around within the small, corded bag.

"I owe you boys two smah each for the work on the Jothian's farm." I saw Rethi wanting to argue, but Mayer give him a glare that stopped him dead. He shut his mouth with a slight click, and the coins were given to us without any argument. He sent us on our way shortly after, returning to his comfortable chair and tea.

That was something that I had grown to respect about Mayer. He might seem like it, but he wasn't always no nonsense. We have had our share of emotional or semantical conversations over the past days, in quiet moments between anything important happening. But when he decided that he didn't care for an argument, then he was quick to let you know.

So, we were walking through town head held high. Everyone that we passed gave us a wide berth, not out of fear, but maybe because they were uncomfortable—unsure about our exact spot in the little town's social hierarchy. I wasn't too concerned about it, but Rethi might feel different.

We made quick work of the distance between Mayer's home and Master Gram's shop. I was getting pretty good at walking long distances now, which was handy because before this would have left me puffing, but now I still felt fine.

We approached the windowed storefront of Master Gram's medicine and surgery shop, and I brazenly walked up the steps and swung open the door.

A little bell jingled and Rethi quickly walked in behind me as I strode through the open doorway.

"Good day! I'll be with you in just a moment!" I heard Gram's distinctive nasally voice from behind the door into his surgery room. There was a minute or so of mad shuffling until he bustled through the door, being extra careful to not reveal the contents of the room to us.

"Oh! I haven't seen you boys in what, a week?" Gram laughed jovially, and quickly came out from behind the counter, grabbing a hold of my shoulders, "You seem to have gotten a bit of a name for yourself around here all of a sudden! Mayer's nephew is a big title to receive around town." Gram took note of Rethi as well, "And you too, young man. You've really gotten up there with the big players haven't you!" He walked over to the young boy and patted him roughly on the shoulders. Rethi was adorned with a massive grin, a confirmation of Gram's earlier statement. I guess I felt pretty lucky to have met Mayer as well, let alone be associated with him.

"So! What can I do for you two today? Got some issues you want fixing?" He said, putting on a bit of a salesman voice, almost in jest. I laughed, playing along.

"In a way, Master Gram." Gram's eyebrows flickered up slightly, "Rethi is currently busy working for me, and because of that he is unable to properly take care of his Mother."

"I see." Gram said thoughtfully, "So you wish to find a person who can take care of her?" Rethi nodded enthusiastically, it seems that Rethi was about to launch into a spiel of some sort, but Gram held up a hand.

"I'm sorry lad, but I don't really have the time to be running around. I can't really be away from the store that long, too many flesh wounds to mend or infections to take care of." Rethi looked a little defeated, but I quickly cut in. I wasn't about to just give up that easily.

"Do you think there would be anyone in town that was capable of taking care of Rethi's mother? We are in dire need of a carer at the moment. They don't necessarily need to be learned in the medical sphere, just capable of taking care of a sick woman." The doctor looked just about ready to say no when he paused—just for a moment. I jumped on the chance.

"You know someone?" I asked, not letting him weasel out of telling us. Gram was still for a moment, then scrunched up his face in an expression of distaste before sighing.

"Alright, alright. I know a person that could probably help you take care of your mother," he said looking towards Rethi, "But she's not all that active nowadays. I wouldn't want to disturb her more than she already has been. Plus, I can't say that I like actively driving business away from my own store." Master Gram sighed heavily. But that tune quickly changed when I started digging around in my pocket. I pulled out one of the iron smah that Mayer had given me not ten minutes ago.

"You can have this iron smah if you tell me the name and place." I said plainly.

"Well then, how gracious of you. The name is Arren Smithe. She lives not too far from here. I'd imagine that Rethi would know her house, actually." I looked to Rethi and saw his face fall slightly.

"Thank you very much, Master Gram. We better get going." I took the man's hand and placed the iron smah into his palm and walked out the door with Rethi in tow.

Rethi started automatically walking, presumably in the direction of this Arren Smithe, but he looked markedly more dejected now.

"Rethi?" I prompted, but I was met with silence for a long while. I could see the boy mulling the thoughts over in his brain, and I was desperate to know what it was that he was thinking. But I left it.

It took two whole minutes for the boy to speak again.

"Mrs Smithe's husband died from the same thing that my mother is sick with. Rhy disease." Rethi looked down at the dirt under her feet. "They say that she is so heartbroken that her soul died along with him, leaving her body as a soulless husk." I raised an eyebrow but didn't comment. Rethi didn't continue to speak, just walking in the direction of this person's home.

It wasn't long before we were there.

It was obvious which one it was. It was a total mess of a home. One of those houses that you would walk by on the streets, its large size and structure made from what were once nice materials indicating that it was a good house. Now though, it was shabby, dirty, and just downright falling apart. It was similar to a few houses next to it, though those houses were well taken care of, giving just a hit as to how the house ahead of us used to look.

"This is it?" I asked, knowing the answer.

"Well. It's our best bet." I said. Rethi nodded dejectedly, but I ignored him. I walked towards the door, head held high and standing straight. I rapped on the door and waited.

The sound of my knock seemed to echo throughout the house, signifying the complete emptiness inside. For some reason it sounded like it would be cold inside the house, despite it being relatively warm outside.

It was a few minutes before anything showed a sign of coming to answer the door, but I held steadfast. My knock was easily hearable, and even a person sleeping lightly would be able to hear it. I didn't look back at Rethi, imagining him to be either waiting nervously or totally unenthusiastically.

But after those minutes had passed I heard a slight shuffle against the wood flooring and before I knew it, the door swung open almost violently, revealing a young woman who looked like she hadn't slept in a year. She was tall, probably around six foot, but looked malnourished and extremely, extremely depressed. You could just about feel it radiating off of her in waves. That could possibly be her smell as well. It seemed that bathing wasn't necessarily in the list of her priorities.

Her hair was long and on the verge of being matted, unruly and unwashed, bright blue eyes striking against her darker brown hair. Her hair framed her long face, which only seemed to be made longer by the sunken cheeks and sallow features.

She looked up at me, eyes squinted and then lazily moved her gaze to Rethi.

She stood still for a moment, her eyes looking Rethi and I up and down, over and over again.

"Hello, I-" I began, but she turned around, and abruptly banged the door behind her, leaving me and Rethi standing outside like fools.


A/N: Hey there! Some exciting news, as of today I 'technically' finished stocking my backlog chapters for my other stories and the new ones of Unwieldy. That means that it's really only going to be a little while before I get to start showing off the other stories I've been working on and such, which is pretty exciting for me!

I hope you are all having a good day!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 24: Talks

I looked to Rethi, eyebrow raised but he could only shrug—disappointment practically etched upon his features. It seems like he knew what was going to happen, or at the least had a good idea that it wound. I waited a moment, thinking the course of action I should take.

She made it obvious that she wasn't too pleased with having visitors, no matter what their purpose was. But we also needed this carer, really badly. There was no time for me to spend on playing games like this, not only would I be jeopardising the mental health of someone I was directly responsible for, but also putting his mother in physical danger. So, I sucked in a deep breath and knocked on the door loudly once again.

This time it took Arren Smithe about half the time to get to the door. The ruddy wooden panel swung open violently, revealing a scathing gaze directly pointed at me. I was given a death glare, rivalled only by Shae herself. We locked gazes for a moment, her eyes boring into my soul—trying desperately to wound me with her eyes alone. But, despite the raw anger in her eyes, I felt nothing.

This was one of those times that I definitely knew that something was different about me. Now that I had been transported here, anyway. This was beyond the simple, 'I can stay awake for an indefinite time period'. That was far more tangible. But this… I was staring an infuriated person right in the face—usually you would feel the heat climb up your neck, your body automatically preparing itself for aggression or incoming physical harm.

But here I was, cool as a cucumber, as tacky as it sounded. It was strange, I was acutely aware of this, yet those emotions and the physical response I expected never came.

"Good afternoon, Mrs Smithe." I said calmly. Her death glare increased in intensity, somehow. She looked about ready to spit on me but she seemed to think better of it. She then tried to slam the door.

But as the door closed, I stuck out my foot, catching the door. The door wasn't heavy, and my shoe and relative bodily resilience stopped it from hurting. But as my foot abruptly stopped the door, Arren's body was harshly flung in my direction.

I would have easily been able to catch her in a hug, but that sounded like a poor idea. I can't imagine she would take too kindly to that. So instead of a hug, I stuck out one hand that quickly collided with her shoulder. I firmly grabbed a hold of the woman's extremely bony frame and easily stopped her from falling any farther towards me, or towards the ground.

She was very unsteady, the only anchoring point that she had keeping her upright was my onw grip on her shoulder. Turns out that I was really damn strong, and I could basically hold most of her bodyweight with one hand at an awkward angle. One of the most surprising and also most stark displays of my newfound physical prowess.

Problem; she didn't like being held. Not that I blamed her, but the moment that I let go I could tell that she was going to fall over. So, I did the only thing I could think of and I held her there awkwardly like you would hold a cat by the scruff of their neck—hoping desperately that they'd get the clue and calm down and not go mad and scratch up my hands.

The moment that she had found adequate footing, I let go immediately. She looked up at me, scowl on her face. She didn't need to say anything, the look told me everything I needed to know. I powered on anyways.

"Mrs Smithe. We have a situation that is quite important, and it seems that you are the only person that is qualified to help us." I said, playing it general. She retreated back into her doorway but didn't immediately slam her door on us. That was a good sign, I think.

"Find someone else." She said, scorn dripping from her voice like poison on a razor-sharp blade.

"There isn't anyone else that can help us. The only other person that could possibly help has the rest of the town to attend to." She looked at me quizzically, scorn still present but curiosity winning out in the end.

"We have a lady that needs to be cared for quite heavily. At the moment, the person who normally takes care of her is unable to do so due to his work requiring his presence. This means that she is going largely unattended at the moment, which also means that she's dangerously alone and without support." I looked at her deep in the eyes, trying to examine what she was feeling. I could sense more inquiry within her but let her manifest it before I pushed further.

"Taking care of someone? I'm hardly qualified. Go talk with Master Gram." She said shortly. She seemed about ready to close the door on us again, so I quickly interjected.

"He told us to come to you." I said, stopping her in her tracks. I could almost see her ears prick up as she turned towards us, eyes sceptical. "I have been led to believe that your late husband had the same disease that this lady has. That is the only qualification that we need."

The woman stopped cold—I had hit a nerve obviously. It was basically impossible to not hit one, so I wasn't surprised when I did. There was silence for a moment while her face whirred with minute expressions. Not a word was spoken between all of us, but I didn't dare look away from the woman in fear that she might just decide to disappear into her house. I managed to glimpse Rethi out of the corner of my eye, looking extremely worried—his body language fraught with anxiety. He was wringing his hands nervously and silently shifting from foot to foot. He didn't seem nearly as dejected anymore, but now I had his hopes up.

"Why would I help you?" The silence was broken. Her voice was raspy now, devoid of emotion. It was cold and callous. I imagine that this was because I mentioned her husband. But I only shook my head.

"It isn't me that you are helping. It's him." I waved my arm in the direction of Rethi, who was suddenly put on the spot. His eyes went wide as the woman's attention was suddenly turned to him. He didn't know what to do with himself. He looked to me, as if he were begging me to save him from her attention, but I simple smiled. It took him a moment to realise that I was asking him to tell her about his mother. He looked down to his hands, not confident enough to meet her eyes.

"My mother… Shae Orsen. She got Rhy disease a few years ago. It wasn't so bad at the start, but it got worse and worse, now… she can't even eat properly anymore. Even if she does, it's like it does nothing" He paused heavily, implying that there was a whole lot more than just eating that she had difficulty doing. He soon picked up again, his voice rough with emotion, but almost a little hopeful, "I finally managed to get a job that will allow me to support her, maybe even be able to buy treatment if there is any that Master Gram can get. But I can't take care of her and work at the same time, I need someone to help me." He slowly began to look up from his hands, a slowly began to meet the gaze of Arren Smithe.

There it was. The real kicker. Crying beggar boy asking desperately for help. I don't mean to make it seem like I was forcing Rethi into this uncomfortable encounter to scam some lady into helping his mother, but damned if it wasn't a good marketing tactic.

"Please?" He asked with all the sincerity that the world had to offer.

"I-I…" The woman was extremely flustered. It seemed that her emotions had come back full force, forcing her to battle with both the situation at hand and the emotional tornado inside. Crying beggar boys tended to have that sort of effect I assumed.

But what I wasn't expecting was for her to say, "I'm sorry!" And to then close the door on us, right in our faces.

The reaction was almost immediate. Rethi's mood instantly spiralled into deep sadness. I was a little dumbfounded, but I was still basically emotionally untouched, if a little perplexed. I wrapped an arm around the boy and started to direct him away from the door.

I felt terrible, but there wasn't much that I could really do. The only way to find someone was to do this and the unfortunate consequence of being rejected was this. Tears and sorrow. But the real problem was that there were no more options. There was no other person to turn to. I couldn't cheer him up by saying that the next one could be it, because there was no next one.

"Master Max…" He said, practically sobbing. I pulled the kid closer to me as we reached the road in front of the house. With his head resting against my chest, he sobbed. The pain in each of those terrible, wracking sobs was almost immeasurable. I could feel the helplessness exuding from him. He had no choice. He couldn't stand by and watch his mother die from neglect, but he couldn't take care of her and also work at the same time. Not to mention that it was likely that Rethi's mother wouldn't take kindly to Rethi showing back up and trying to help again.

"I– I think that I might have to quit, Master Max." He said, his voice muffled by my shirt. I waited for a moment but ended up merely nodding. There was nothing that I could say, and nothing that I could do. This is what they meant by being stuck between a rock and a hard place, I guess.

We stood like that for a while. Rethi's sobs slowly became nothing more than mere whimpers. It was heartbreaking. But I had big things that I needed to do, and I won't be able to help Rethi more than I already am. Something that I deeply regretted.

I peeled the kid away from me and grabbed a hold of his shoulders. Looking him deep into the eyes, I could only smile. He was a smart kid, smarter than most. He didn't have many ways to show it, but you could see it in his eyes. Just that little glint of intelligence that you can't find in everyone. I wanted more than anything to see that glint turn into a raging inferno, just like I know it would.

"Alright, kid. Let's get moving. No use hanging around here." I said, pushing gently against his back. We moved down the road towards Mayer's home once again. This time there was a distinct air of melancholy. I guess even Champions had to have bad luck every now and then otherwise-

"Wait!" I heard a loud bang of a door slamming open and then the distinct sound of someone running on the gravel road behind me. I turned my head, momentarily surprised. But when I did, I couldn't help it. I felt it rise up from my stomach and into my throat. It burst out of me with more force than I've ever experience before.

I laughed. I laughed a delighted, gleeful laugh.


A/N: Posting in the middle of the day because I'm tired and wanna sleep at a good time tonight. Just taking a good old chill day to rest. Hope this chapter finds you all well!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 25: A Boy's Musings

Rethi had let all those words, all the feelings, flow out of him in that moment. They felt far away now, despite being only a few hours ago at best.

But there he lay, in a comfortable bed that he was still unsure if it was truly his to sleep in, looking towards the wooden ceiling. He didn't have anything left in him anymore. He had said all of his words, and it all came cleanly to an end. Mrs. Smithe had agreed to take care of his Mother for two iron smah a week. It was expensive really, but it was a hard job, so he happily agreed. It seems that she knew where Rethi's home was, which was almost surprising seeing as no-one had been there in at least a few years now, especially since monsters had raided that part of town. She had asked a few questions before nodding and leaving towards his home. He didn't know how that was going, if his mother was accepting help or not, but he could only hope.

Rethi felt hollow now. Not unpleasantly though. But in the sort of way that your mind doesn't really care if you stare at the ceiling for a few hours. His mind barely created coherent through after the day he'd had, except for one thing. One person.

Master Maximilian.

He was a strange man; Rethi knew that from the moment that he'd met him. At the time he was standing almost too straight and looking like he didn't have a single clue about where to go. Rethi thought that he might be just a wanderer, but I had heard the news from the town folk whispering that Mayer had brought in a boy a night or two before.

Rethi remembers looking at the man and thinking 'He looks very un-boy-like.' He stood tall, much taller than most he'd have ever met, only a few truly freakish people were taller than him around here. Rethi had wondered if he were a mixblood of some sort at first. He looked too different from Rethi, in his own opinion. Too clean, too pale. Master Max ended up offering money to Rethi. Only to guide him around the town.

He offered far too much for simply being shown around town. Rethi had been suspicious at first but fell to temptation anyway. That money could buy him a decent amount of food for himself and his mother for at least a week.

And then he was thrown into the deep end. Suddenly he was working for Master Mayer and Master Max, he was assaulted by the Jothian boys, Mayer sent out a letter, his mother learned of my begging and he got kicked out. Now he was here.

It was strange. You'd swear that life couldn't change that fast, but it just continues to prove him wrong every step of the way.

But one thing stayed constant for all of it. Master Max's unwavering support.

Honestly, Rethi couldn't see what Master Max saw in him. He couldn't understand what he really wanted from him either. Rethi used to think he might be a mixed-blood of some sort, but his stamina is endless, and he can summon and unsummon a hammer from thin air. He'd never heard of a race that can do that before. He surely couldn't be human.

What would someone capable of all that need from Rethi, the beggar boy?

Master Max is strange. He carries an air of mystery with him, but he doesn't even seem to notice it. If he does then he ignores it so completely that you'd swear he was unaware. He carries himself in a weird way. He felt stiff when Rethi first met him. But over the course of only a few hours at a time, he seemed to evolve into an entirely different person.

He went from being stiff like a mannequin at the start of that day, to being able to convince Rethi's mother of allowing him to be his employee. Signing bonus included. All in one, single day.

Maybe Master Maximilian truly is Master Mayer's nephew, and is a noble of some description. It would explain why he was giving away money like candy, and why he is such a good speaker. But Rethi was starting to find it doubtful. He has suspicions, but everything is so wishy washy that he wouldn't be able to tell either way.

Ever so slowly, Rethi had come to realise that he respected him. Not false respect. Not respect for your seniors or superiors. Real respect, admiration even.

It was easy to say why. He was charming in a way that Rethi had never encountered before. Sometimes you could swear that he looked past your façade and right into your true emotions, into your soul. Sometimes all it takes is a little look from him, and suddenly your feel as if your thoughts are open to him. It feels like he can read you like a book sometimes. But it was never scary. It was never unpleasant. It wasn't violating.

It was… liberating, in a way. It was as if the words that I really wanted to say were heard by him whether or not you said them. Rethi didn't think that Master Max knows that this is how it feels to talk to him. It's like baring your soul, making yourself vulnerable.

That's why Mrs. Smithe came running after us. I could see it in her eyes, it was like they had become windows into her soul. He had blown the way so wide open that she was forced to take his words in, regardless of if she wanted to hear them or not. His words were strong, direct and coated with silver.

But before she had come running, Rethi had believed it was all over. He believed that he had missed the one chance that he had been given to make something of himself. He felt it all crashing down around him, and Master Max just held him.

It was then that Rethi felt like a little boy. He felt like he knew nothing and would amount to nothing. How could he even begin to compare to someone like Master Max. Even Master Gram was so much smarter than He. Rethi am only a babe, fresh off his mother's teat in comparison.

And then Master Maximilian looked at Rethi in the eyes.

Maybe it was then that Rethi realised why it was that Master Maximilian's words were so effective. Maybe it was then, when Rethi stared into his eyes and he saw myself, potential fully realised.

In that moment Rethi was a Doctor, healing the sick of the world, one patient at a time. He was a Mage of unparalleled intelligence, protecting the world from threats unseen. He was a Warrior, fighting for the people who'd lost hope.

Rethi was everything and anything he could ever want to be.

It was then that he realised that the reason that Master Maximilian could speak to someone's soul, was because he was speaking from his, baring it to anyone who would listen.

So there Rethi lay, looking at the wooden ceiling in a comfortable bed, remembering a smile of a man whose eyes shone with his belief in him.





A/N: This is more of a short interlude chapter, created to serve the purpose of revealing more about Rethi and how he feels. It's hard to convey this sort of stuff without hearing them think themselves or whatever else, so I thought I'd but something here. It's short, but at the time I wrote this, I was relatively proud of it.

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 26: Growth for a Young Mind

After managing to sort out Mrs. Smithe—the woman who was capable of being a nurse for Rethi's mother—the next few days were rather demure, all things told. I mostly spent my time training in my bastardisation of the Sharah. Every day, Mayer would invite me to train with him in his genuine practice of the Sharah, and I would do my best to follow along and correct my self-teaching. My own katas were progressively becoming more fluid and increasingly difficult to perform as I added more and corrected past mistakes in my form and foot placement. As well as adding extra points to my kata where I summon of unsummon my Hammer. Something that I both hated and loved for different reasons, both calming and secretly infuriating. Though I have to say, it was becoming easier for me to incorporate movements and ideas, even if it was more technically difficult than ever.

It was quite a process and, before I knew it, it had been well over a week.

That was an issue, I found. Now that I was capable of staying awake indefinitely, I had become great at burning time practicing, and otherwise studying the Sharah. It was a point of interest to me all of a sudden. Of course, the allure of learning how to efficiently move was compelling, but not compelling enough to spend well over forty-eight hours straight at one point simply repeating the same motions over and over.

No, what was truly capturing my intrigue was that I had yet to receive an achievement for it. I could feel myself improving so definitely, so you would think I would have received an achievement at least for Agility, maybe even Might, with all the stress and weight I was putting on the muscles in my legs and arms from constantly summoning and unsummoning my hammer and doing complex movements in general.

So why was there no achievement?

I had consulted Mayer on this, and he had told me—helpfully—that he wasn't sure. He could see that I was improving steeply, and that I was well on my way to being able to be considered at the level of a novice practitioner of the Sharah. But not having received an achievement for it was odd. I distinctly remember asking what Ryan had done with the Sharah, and Mayer told me that at the time, he didn't even know the Sharah or the Sharah'hin existed.

This could mean any number of things really. It could mean that the Sharah was outside of the purview of the 'system' that the Champions can take advantage of, or maybe the conditionals are locked behind being a Sharah'hin or being accepted by them. It wasn't something that was useful to ponder right now, but it did manage to convince me that I needed to work on more than simply the Sharah. I wasn't getting any increases in raw ability from it, so I moved to other forms of exercise at first, trying to find where the best results came from. Even if I so deeply wished that I could do the Sharah and naturally increase my physicality buy just doing that, but woe is me with my sort-of broken system.

I had some help from Mayer and Rethi—who was surprisingly astute at finding ways to make training more effective—three heads seemed to be better than one, of course. It seemed that the best course of action was to make simple and repeatable exercises more difficult. So, running became running covered in weights through a field with odd terrain and trying to accurately, and safely, navigate through it without falling over or injuring myself.

It seemed to work really well, even if it sucked and was about as anti-fun as you could get.

Strength was also pretty simple to train, simply doing hardcore farm work did wonders. Farm work had a lot of the things that is effectively weightlifting just with objects that are hard to grip and are almost always on weird angles and in weird situation. Putting up fences, commandeering livestock, working primitive farm machinery like ploughing instead of using a horse or a bull, grinding large amount of grain and other similar processes. I even tried my hand at butchering livestock when it came time to do so, and I managed a half decent job—even if the butcher was incredibly nice and attentive to make it work. I found the experience was good from a skills perspective, but I didn't really use my body all too much—even if it was pretty physical work—but it was definitely using my brain more than usual.

Though the simple farm work was losing its effectiveness and quickly, the simple achievements being completed. The screen really didn't like repetitive actions, valuing new and strange processes over traditional training. It forced you to ignore actually building skills and instead just try a wide array of things to potentially gain an achievement out of it. Which made no sense in my opinion, just putting a hard cap in how useful it'd be to become a true master of any one skill other than actually having the skill itself.

That made me realise that I wasn't really working on my Mind stat. It was an easy thing to forget after being confronted with the dire need for physical prowess, but after a long night of training in the Sharah without any additions to my stats, I realised that I needed to go with a holistic approach for now.

To put things simply, I had a tonne of problems without answers. One of the most pressing was that my hammer was the least useful part of my arsenal at the moment, despite being the only thing that allows me to be competitive with my Champion peers. It was something that I could barely lift, and even if I got really good at managing its weight in comparison to my strength, which according to Mayer would remain roughly the same, it was still effectively useless. It might be good at smashing something into the ground in one hit, but that's if I can hit it at all—and that was seemingly becoming more and more unlikely with just using my raw physical strength. Maybe if I were taller, it would allow me to take more advantage of leverage and some other trickery, but even if I were taller the hammer would likely be taller, staying at its current height proportional to me.

I didn't have an answer for this right now. I didn't have any reasonable solution in sight. So, as the morning sun shone over the nice field that I had spent the night performing the Sharah, I decided that I needed to find an effective way of increasing my Mind stat.

After a few more hours of the Sharah, I went to Mayer's home. I walked into the lounge room to see both Mayer and Rethi sitting in their chairs, both drinking tea and relaxing. It seemed that Mayer had really warmed to the kid, and he seemed to teach the kid a lot about the practical world that surrounded him. Rethi had stopped coming outside during the nights to take care of me, after quite an argument. The boy didn't seem to care too much for regular working hours and simply wanted to wait on me day and night. It was almost infuriating really. He was too polite, and too willing to do more than I asked. I had gotten used to it by now, allowing him to try his best to imitate servants and butlers that he had no doubt heard stories of—those that waited on some of the most powerful men and women in the city, country or even world. Mayer actually encouraged him, teaching the boy proper manners and speech, how to set a table and proper decorum. Surprising, coming from Mayer himself.

The boy worked tirelessly to make sure that he properly served me, and that he learned all that he could from Mayer. Many times, I have considered asking the boy to stop it, and just act normally. To stop calling me Master Maximilian, and just treat me like an equal, but even as I entertained those frustrated thoughts I knew that it was simply a farce.

What would happen if I asked the boy to act normally? To let me make my own cup of tea—like the boy was quickly getting up to do right now—to stop dressing the best that he possibly could at all times, even with the poor clothing options that he did have, he made sure that he was immaculately washed and hair was cut and styled correctly. The answer to that question was simple.

The boy would feel useless, that he wasn't valued and that he couldn't provide adequate services for the coin that he was being paid. And he would be right too, he was already being paid far more than what he was worth, and he was trying to desperately make up for it in any way that he could think of.

I sat down in my seat, sitting right across from Mayer himself. He watched Rethi as he made tea and told him off for ten things he did that apparently weren't good enough. It was surprising, Mayer never really seemed like the man who would know all of this, especially not at this level of detail. He was lecturing Rethi on the incorrectness of his hand movements when he caught my look of mild amusement and blew me off with a half sneer.

I chuckled lightly, but only a minute or so later, after Rethi was done being chewed out, I managed to get a nice cup of tea and I thanked Rethi with a smile, which seemed to please him.

I sipped the tea delicately before Mayer spoke to me.

"So, what brings in our ever-training Champion? We haven't had you for morning tea for what seems like weeks now." Almost two weeks actually. I nodded at this and took a moment to swallow the tea and think on my response.

"Well, I have been working towards training my Agility and Might quite effectively recently, I have a total of thirty-eight Might and twenty-seven Agility. A considerable increase in my raw ability." Mayer nodded, "But, my Mind has only increased minutely since I arrived here, and I'm beginning to think that it is possible that answers could lay there for me." Mayer shrugged, he was rather non-committal when it came to finding a way to make use of my Hammer, he just gave me options and it was my choice whether I took them or not.

"I was thinking," I started, "that you could teach me some shifting and that-" I was cut off by Mayer shaking his head.

"No, that won't work." He said. I was confused for a second.

"What won't work, you teaching me to shift?" I said, somewhat worried. Shifting being totally off the table would be really disappointing in all honesty.

"No, you are perfectly capable of learning how to shift ether, but it won't help you with your Mind stat, not as well as you would think anyway." Well, that was a relief.

"Why not, isn't shifting all about using your mind to control ether, or whatever, to become what you want?" Mayer closed his eyes, scratching the side of his aged face. Before sighing and opening his eyes again.

"Another of Ryan's pet peeves with the screen and stats. Frankly, as you have started to discover, your physical statistics are stagnating. Even with you practicing the Sharah almost endlessly, you aren't seeing the increases of strength that you'd be seeing if it gradually effected your strength. In short, even though you have gotten far more powerful over the past weeks, if you were able to progress through physical exercise you wouldn't see this stagnation."

"Why would it be made like that? It seems counter intuitive and having to go around trying different things to only potentially get an achievement is infuriating." I grumbled, thought Mayer chuckled.

"Either way. Ryan found that, much like with the Sharah you practice, shifting gives little to no rewards, aside from something he called 'breakpoint' rewards." I quirked an eyebrow questioningly.

"A breakpoint reward is something that, 'the screen gives you to try make you not hate it as much'," he said in monotone, "at least that's how Ryan would put it anyway. He had this issue with shifting, and he'd receive big rewards when he hit a breakpoint, but they'd never scale well—always giving you a big hit early on but really lacking when you hit the next one"

"Wait, what was his Mind stat anyway?" I asked.

"Ryan's Mind stat began at thirty-six, it was difficult to understand the differences between his absurd natural state and the increase in proficiency due to his Mind stat."

"Thirty-six? Really? God damn." I hung my head in mock shame. There was a little bit of disappointment at that number, to be perfectly honest. I had worked pretty hard for a few weeks now just to be able to reach similar stats in my Might, but he had that brain back on Earth. It was almost monstrous, having that level of intellect on Earth.

"Don't think about it too much, boy. They are freaks of nature. But I'll tell you what," Mayer grinned a toothy grin with a conspiratorial glint in his eye, "Ryan never really stopped sleeping, he would sleep at least 6 hours every other day. So, you have him beat there. You have your own upsides." I grinned as well, feeling just a bit better about knowing that the other Champions were likely to be nearly four times more intelligent than me at base.

"Even so, I need to raise my Mind stat, I can't neglect it and stay as dumb as I am if I really want to be able to compete with the other Champions in any way, shape or form." Mayer nodded, but then also shrugged.

"But I also don't really have all that good a way to teach you to raise your Mind stat. It was the one stat that Ryan had under control completely. He gained Mind stat from reading really complex stuff and storing it in that crazy brain of his. But you and me both know that you can't do that." Mayer said, chuckling into his tea as he surely remembered something that would probably always stay private to him.

"Master Maximilian, if I may?" Rethi said. He had been standing by my side for the duration of the conversation, standing straight and holding a dishcloth, ready to clean any mishaps made. I looked to him, eyebrow raised with interest.

"If you are interested in learning, I would go ask Master Gram. He is likely the most intelligent person in the village, and I would suggest asking him for tutelage perhaps?" He spoke with forced elegance. It was definitely better than what it was the first few days that he tried, but now it was starting to actually fit the boy. It was actually a bit shocking, but I knew that it wouldn't be long, especially under Mayer's direct tutelage, before he was going to be qualified to be a proper servant of high-class nobility. It had only been two weeks since abject poverty and now you would easily mistake him for a middle-class child.

I considered his proposal and found merit in it. Master Gram had been one of the first men I had met in the village, and he ran an Apothecary. It also seemed that he was capable of surgery, and from what I remembered, his surgery room behind the main business area seemed relatively modern to my world, in the grand scheme of things anyways it was basically a surgery room from 200 years ago on earth. But the man was clearly learned in medicine, and if there was anything that got you thinking, it was medicine.

I nodded to him. "I think that's a pretty good idea, I also need to learn magi- err shifting sooner or later. It could be something that I find great use in. For now, though, I will have enough on my plate learning the Sharah to a decent extent and also possibly working under Master Gram to some degree." Mayer nodded in agreement himself.

"Learning to properly shift is an involved process. Much like how the Sharah is for you currently." I took a large gulp from the tea and swallowed in quick succession and managed to down the tea very quickly.

"Rethi, what is the time?"

"About seven hours into the morning, Master Maximillian." He responded almost instantly.

"What time does Master Gram open for business, or would he be comfortable having visitors at this time?" Rethi nodded at me.

"Both, Master Maximilian." I got up, and was about to pace out the door, but paused for a moment.

"You don't have to call me Master Maximilian every time, Rethi. You can just address me as sir or something similar." But Rethi shook his head.

"No, Master Maximilian. Sir is used for people whose status you are unaware of or are simply older men of around your father's age. Master is used for those who are high born, of a similar status or are accomplished." I sighed and flapped my hand in Rethi's direction.

"Alright, alright. I get your point. Thanks, Mayer. I'll see you later to learn more of the Sharah." Mayer nodded, an amused glint in his eyes.

I walked out the door with Rethi following behind, quickly and quietly shadowing me at the polite distance that a servant holds between him and his Master. Infuriating, but in a way, I was almost proud.

---​

I opened the door with a jingle, walking into a smallish room with lots of glass cases holding many different herbs and medicines. I had no real way to tell if any of them were legitimate or not. Maybe this world had magical herbs and stuff. If all went to plan, then I would probably find that out.

Rethi walked in behind me, making the bells half jingle before the door shut properly. He then assumed his position, his pose carefully manufactured to be respectful and ready to deal with any possible problems that could arise.

I walked up to the counter and stood there for a while. Waiting for Master Gram to get ready if he needed to. But after a half minute or so, it became obvious he hadn't heard me.

I called out once, and then for the second time after a similar amount of time, but there continued to be no response.

"I'm going to have a quick check to see if he's in that back room there, if not we can just go." Rethi nodded and started to move forward to open the counter's flap for me, but I just gave him a look that stopped him in his tracks.

"I can open this myself, as you well know." I moved behind the counter, lifting the hefty piece of wood that was the openable extension to the counter with effectively no effort.

I moved just up the small hallway and saw the door. It was closed tight this time, no small crack to see through, so I knocked.

"Master Gram? It's Maximilian. I'm wondering if you'd entertain a short talk?" There was a moment of dead silence. But it was the sort of silence that you could feel something odd in. It was just ever so slightly too silent. Then I heard a crash behind the door.

Before I knew it, my hand was on the knob of the door, swiftly opening it, and I heard Rethi make his way to my flank in a moment.

What I saw was… interesting. There was Master Gram, dressed in what I could only assume was a facsimile of scrubs, a fallen wooden table with an assortment of metal tools scattered on the floor, hands covered in grime, and with eyes that looked like a deer caught in the headlights. The reason for this look of pure terror written on his face?

The dead body lying on the table next to him.

Now, I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but one thing that I do know is that people in this sort of era of medical understanding aren't a massive fan of the whole 'cut open a dead body' thing. And if the look on Master Gram's face, the grime on the body and Master Gram's hands said anything to me, then I have a little bit of a hunch that the body wasn't exactly given willingly.

I felt Rethi at my side strain to get a look into the room. He hadn't seen anything yet. I pushed the boy away gently, not allowing him to see into the room and begun to talk.

"Ah! Master Gram, I hope that I didn't interrupt while you were doing anything important, would it be too much of a hassle if you and I could speak for just a moment?" I said, putting a great deal of gravity on the word 'important'. Master Gram couldn't speak, so he quickly began to nod, and I pasted a friendly smile onto my face. I turned to Rethi.

"Rethi, would you please man the store for Master Gram. If you are unable to help with any requests of the customer just advise them that Master Gram will be occupied with important business and has been asked to not be disturbed for a while. I will come fetch you when we are done."

Rethi's face flashed a worried expression before quickly regaining himself and did a neat half bow and wordlessly moved out of the hallway and into the storefront.

I turned to Master Gram who was still exactly as shocked as he was beforehand, and I walked into the room, gracefully closing the door and grabbing a stool that was right near the door. I pulled the stool out and sat on it, quickly crossing my legs and making myself look as much of a proper noble as I knew how.

"Now, Master Gram. Would you be so inclined to explain yourself?" A smile growing on my lips.

This was going to be fun.

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 27: Causa Mortis

My eyes locked with the bespectacled doctor. He looked as if he were a guilty child, about to be whipped bloody.

"What is it that you are doing here, Master Gram?" I said with a voice that a stereotypical noble would use. The sort of voice that conveyed friendliness but spoke of cloaks and daggers.

"I-" Master Gram stammered, but I cut him off before he could continue.

"And don't try to fool me, Master Gram. I may not be from around here, but I'm not an idiot." This line wasn't really all that necessary, but it did do a good job of making the man's face drain of blood and become a sickly looking grey. In this sort of conversation, dominance was everything.

"Well, I…" He began before sighing, his body slackening, "I am a man of medicine, Master Maximilian. It is a difficult profession, especially around these areas. There are so many injuries to fix, diseases to cure, most of them that I've never even seen before nor my father. I have five generations of comprehensive medical knowledge and notes, and none of it even references some of the illnesses that people are coming to me with!" His voice began to raise in frustration, his smock waving emphatically with arms. I watched on in amusement when the man finally got to the end of his sentence and he realised he had been yelling. His eyes went wide, and he seemed about to apologise but I waved it off.

"Go on." I said, face still a mask of friendliness. He hesitated for a moment but nodded and continued.

"There are many different ways that you can learn about an illness, and study it, but one of the more useful ways that I can learn about something is a… direct examination." The final words came tentatively.

"The direct examination of someone's corpse. A post-mortem." I said plainly. His eyes widened in shock, and a little excitement.

"You know of it?"

"Not quite, but I am aware of a few pertinent procedures." I answered truthfully.

"Then you must understand the necessity of a post-mortem! You must see why I am doing this!" I dropped the friendly façade.

"Understanding is very different than agreement when it comes to an argument of ethics, Doctor," I could see the chill run through the man as I gazed deep into his eyes, "I am an outsider. The way I view the world is vastly different than the townsfolk that live here, and even yourself. However, nothing that I know can properly excuse your actions, not ethically."

The man visibly began to panic. I could see the words rushing through his brain, trying desperately to find the golden words that would make this mess go away. He wouldn't find those words, of course. Things like this aren't easily brushed under the rug for too longy. Someone always fucked up, and someone's head always ends up on a pike. I paused to let the man panic for a while before I spoke, letting the man sweat for a bit.

"Are you a moral man, Master Gram?" I steepled my fingers on the legs that I had crossed, back straight. To a man like Master Gram, I must be the one of the most intimidating men he's has probably ever had to face, at least in this moment. Which is sad in a way, because I am a small fry when it comes to intimidating people. Mayer could have probably made the man wet himself by now.

"I– I believe so, Master Maximilian."

"Then you are wrong, Master Gram." I said stonily. The middle-aged man's face contorted in fear for a split second before I continued.

"You are a grave robber and a corpse thief. A moral man will never even think of doing such a depraved thing. Exhuming a corpse that has been laid to rest in the comfort of the soils?" Words sprouted from my mouth while I stared into the man's eyes. They were words that spoke directly to the man's guilty conscience. It was so obvious, in fact, that I swear that I could feel his guilt myself. "So, I ask again, Master Gram. Are you a moral man?"

I let the words hang in the air as I stared into the man's eyes. I saw more panic, which quickly became what I almost suspected was anger. I don't know whether it was at himself, me or maybe even the corpse that laid on that table. But it soon quelled into resignation and sadness.

"No, I am not Master Maximilian." He spoke the words in almost a whisper.

"Good. Then at least you understand that much. However, Master Gram, do you believe yourself just?" The man's eyes flickered up to mine, and without a second's thought, he spoke.

"Yes, yes I do." I smiled.

"I am of a similar mind to you, in that fashion. I am aware of the heights that medical understanding and technologies, and possibly even shifting, can take us. Within a mere lifetime I've seen wonderous developments begin in the most unlikely of places, or possibly even with the darkest of depravities." I stared into his eyes, trying to convey the gravity of what I meant by the 'darkest of depravities'.

What I meant of course, was the human experimentation done by Nazi doctors during the Second World War. While the information gained from the torture—that Nazis wrote down in books and called science—may be questionable, the data there was pertinent enough to at least have a moral argument about using it after the fact. Historically and scientifically disputed as it may be, it found its way home in Master Gram's heart. As Master Gram looked me in the eyes, I knew that he had something come to mind as I talked about atrocities.

Good to know that there are downright terrible people everywhere. Very homely.

"Now, let's speak of what we shall do about this." I stood up, lightly brushing myself off for effect, and moving over to the body that lay on the table, quickly examining it. It was the corpse of a young man, probably not even thirty—although death seems to have an aging effect. The body was somewhat damaged, probably from being buried for a few days, but was in otherwise reasonable condition. The doctor hadn't actually started a procedure yet but was likely in the process of cleaning the body as best as he could.

"Why have you taken this specific body, Master Gram?" The man paced up to the other side of the table and stood across from me.

"Derno was his name. He became ill quite suddenly and before long, he died. I cannot tell what it was that he had contracted or developed, but he started getting many sores that wouldn't heal on his back." Master Gram rolled the body onto its side displaying gaping wounds that had been filled with dirt and other grime. For some reason, I didn't feel any revulsion at all. I know that I would have when I was back on earth, but right now I was starting right into those dirt filled holes without a hint of a gag or thought of looking away.

"Quite nasty," Not letting emotion into my voice, "Did you try to convince the family to give you the body for your testing?" The ensuing silence was answer enough.

"Have you ever tried to convince someone of this idea before?" The man nodded, but with a grim look on his face.

"It was a bad idea. I think if they hadn't told me to leave and never come back that day, I could have been thrown out of the town for it. It's an extremely touchy subject, Master Maximilian." I nodded, understanding but with an eyebrow raised.

"This wouldn't have happened to be right after the person had died, would it, Doctor?" His face went through a few emotions before he nodded ashamedly.

"Not the best at bedside manners, it seems. They may be extremely resistant to the idea in the first place Doctor, don't get me wrong. But they are also capable of changing their ideas and opinions like anyone else. However, right after a loved one has died is not when they are going to do so. You and I think of this process in a very different light than they think of this. They think of this as a sort of sacrilege, where you brutally chop up their loved one's body and defile their remains. You have to convince them that this is not the case, and that there is merit to what you are doing. Something that this," I gestured to the body lying on the table, "does nothing but hurt. The moment that this is found out, they will have your head." I walked back over to the stool that I had pulled out and sat on it again, assuming my earlier pose.

"I think it is possible that I could help you in this regard, Doctor." Master Gram's eye opened wide with shock, but then narrowed with trepidation.

"Why would you possibly choose to do that? Your reputation could be irreversibly harmed through doing something like this, and you are currently the town's bona fide Lord. Or at least the nephew of the Lord." I laughed but kept it short.

"Maybe so, but I came here today for something and while it might not be what I wanted, I think I got an alternative that was possibly better." I grinned a wide, devilish grin. The man across from me gave a nervous one in return, I laughed deeply and got up and patted the man on the shoulder in a friendly way before I gripped onto his shoulder firmly and let my joviality drop away to seriousness.

"I advise you, Michael, to get rid of that body as soon as you are done with it. It would serve you well to never do this again. Clear?" If the usage of his first name bothered him, he definitely didn't let it show. He nodded tersely and I nodded back without further fuss.

"I'll leave you to your devices, Gram. I will be back later today to speak with you more about acquiring bodies for proper post-mortems." I didn't state explicitly that I was setting somewhat of a deadline, but I think it was made pretty obvious anyways.

"Good day, Gram."

"Good day, Master Maximilian."

I turned, opened the door and walked out without a hitch in my stride. I was, however, careful to move through the doorway in such a way to block the view of the insides and closed the door immediately after exiting, which turned out to be an idea that I was extremely grateful for.

"Hello." A small voice said from the hallway beside me. I casually turned, not frightened by the voice like I swear that I should have been. There was a small girl, standing there. Black hair that was likely the same colour as her father's, before his had well and truly become various shades of grey. Her frame was extremely slight, so much so that you'd think that she was maybe only ten or so years old, but with one look into her eyes, you could tell that she was older. Maybe Rethi's age, maybe even a bit older than that.

"Good morning. My name is Maximilian." I said, regarding her professionally. I sensed that it was the best way to address her.

"I know who you are, your name is the talk of the town Maximilian. My name is Alena." She smiled gently, but also didn't use the title. An issue with authority it is then. That is when a thought hit my mind.

"Do you happen to know Rethi all that well? I believe he mentioned you at one point." Her face lit up with recognition.

"I do, he is here quite often looking for treatments for his mother. How do you know him?" And I laughed, politely of course.

"Seems that you aren't entirely informed then. He is currently employed under me." Her eyes shot up in surprise, it looked a little comical on her small face, but I saw the apprehension set in on her features.

"He is just in the other room, if you'd like to come talk with him?" I asked, pretending to not see the mix of emotions of the young girl's face. Maybe hearing that a friend was someone's servant wasn't exactly a pleasant thought.

I strode out to the storefront area to see Rethi standing diligently behind the counter, awaiting any customer that might come in.

"Rethi!" Alena said loudly. Not quite a shout, but also not a normal tone of voice. She rushed past me, quickly pulling on Rethi, who looked shocked, but seemed compliant enough to her will. I chuckled to myself quietly. Seems like this little girl might be a bit of a storm in a bottle.

I strode past the two who had huddled themselves in the corner, quietly whispering to each other, Alena with a look of worry and anger on her face and Rethi with a look of utter bewilderment.

I opened the flap at the side of the counter and made my way to the door, and as I opened the door the bells jingled. I saw Rethi's gaze move to me and I smiled impishly and mouthed, "Good luck." He scowled and I laughed a little too loudly, causing Alena's gaze being turned to focus on me. I grinned at her, probably infuriating her all the more and left the storefront and into the street, walking slowly down the path to Mayer's home.

It took probably 10 minutes for the boy to finally catch up to me, with a slightly depressed and bewildered look on his face, but I left him alone. I had a sneaking suspicion that at least one of the two had romantic inclinations towards the other. This wasn't really something I wanted to chime in on all that much, especially without the express request from Rethi himself.

Ah, young love.

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 28: Hooray for not Being Crippled

It didn't really take all that long for me to return to the doctor and discuss methods of actually procuring a body for use in post-mortem testing. I, thankfully, found out that it wasn't a point of religious interest. It was very possible that some believed that defiling the body in death transferred to damage to the spirit of some sort, and I was infinitely glad that it didn't seem to be the case here. Maybe the belief of Arun, the Death God, was the chief reason for this. Though I don't know much, if anything, about him.

I quickly brought up the fact that it might possibly be easier to convince someone of this if they were offered compensation of some description. The knee-jerk reaction was to offer payment in actual coin, but I shot that one down pretty quickly. Judging by the reactions I've received from simple payments and other monetary reimbursement, paying for a corpse seems like it would ruffle some feathers big-time.

So, there came the idea of offering mortuary services as reimbursement. Gram wasn't entirely understanding of what I meant when I placed the idea on the table, but before long he was on board with the idea.

The dead here are treated with a level of disgust, simply because the people of this world, and possibly the other world as well, don't have a widespread method of preserving the body—at least not reliably or well. So, the body is generally buried soon after being found dead, with very little time for the family to come to grips with the death of the person. Gram explained to me that this was likely because of a fear of disease or a miasma like effect on the surrounding people.

So, simply, as a small reimbursement for the use of the body in post-mortem tests, Gram will clean and prepare the body for being viewed by the family. There would probably be extenuating circumstances where the body was irreparably damaged, either during a post-mortem, or from injury or disease that killed the person in the first place. Other things could likely be done in the place of mortuary services, possibly transferring into health check-ups for the family that Gram would usually charge for.

This conversation only took maybe an hour to work it all out, and now we had a clear idea of what we could give in return. I was oddly excited to convince people of post-mortem procedures; I was beginning to feel confident in my ability to do so, strangely.

After another few days of simply repeating the Sharah and learning with Mayer in the mornings, the time finally came for me to go do what I had signed up for. A man named Renit was going to die of a disease or infection that Gram wasn't able to identify. I walked to the man's house, finding him surrounded by family, but all at a distance except for an elderly lady who was tending directly to the man laying bed, half comatose. It made me smile a little. Looks like Grandma didn't care one second for her kin not being treated well, especially not because of a little infection.

A few seconds into the conversation, it became clear that both him and the family understood that he was going to die. It seems that they were still in the process of accepting that in its totality, but the man himself was actually resolved about it. He exuded a sense of calm dread at what was happening to him, but he didn't seem like the sort of man that would bow his head in front of death.

He was perfect.

Words flowed from my mouth like nothing else I had every really experienced, the other few times only being close. I soaked up how they felt about every word I said and, depending on the reaction to that, I would use the next to tinker with the atmosphere—releasing calming words when bad emotions came to the forefront of their minds, and saying empowering things when defeat was written on their faces.

The man himself was easily drawn into my world. I spoke to him of duties that only he could carry out. That his contribution to the world would be far, far greater than anything than he could possibly know.

As his attention began to focus on what I was proposing, there was a slight hesitation, before he quashed it mightily with all his will. I explained to him the possibilities that could arise from such testing and told him that there was no way that the information gathered would ever be truly useless. It might not always come to fruition immediately, but in the next generation it could save lives in numbers that we couldn't truly comprehend.

And so, the man was sold. Tied to a sense of duty that was greater than his instinct of preserving, his body, and the piece of mind that it would offer him to keep them intact. As I walked through the dirt streets only a few minutes after the conversation, a pleasant feeling tickled my mind, and something popped into my mind.

[Read a Room: Flexing your uncanny ability to read a room, you handled an extremely difficult topic with absolute grace. +2 Mind]

I couldn't help but grin. This is what I had hoped would happen. Learning anatomy with Gram was my first choice initially, but mostly because I didn't see any other way I could realistically raise my Mind stat. Now it was different—I could do this for Gram whenever it was needed, make myself available for mediation between people and patients, and my Mind stat would steadily increase.

It had been so long since I had received a stat increase that I had almost forgotten that they should be more of a priority. Not as if there wasn't reasoning for the other things that I was doing, though.

Firstly, the Sharah practice was endlessly helpful in control of my body, but didn't inherently increase my Might or my Agility. Maybe the Sharah and other fighting skills fell outside the purview of the screen, or millions of other possible answers for why I wasn't receiving stat rewards from something as physically demanding as the Sharah.

In recent days, I came to the realisation that my mindset from the very beginning of my transportation had completely shifted, and rapidly too. Originally, I was thinking in an extremely game oriented way, but when I saw people and spoke with them—Mayer, Rethi and his Mother, Master Gram and his daughter Alena so on and so forth—it became strikingly clear that they were real, and genuine. There was nothing NPC-like about them. Mayer, as typical as you could get from 'old man is powerful and teaches wayward child', was still different than I would have expected. His hand never forced me into situations I wasn't comfortable with—he was open and willing to converse, rather that telling me to sit down and be told how the world is. In fact, I feel like we've both informed each-other about how the world works, rather than just one of us pulling back the veil over the other's eyes.

The more days I pondered on likening this world to a game, the more I realised that it wasn't going to be so convenient for me. In a game, you would be swept into a series of events that you weren't able to stray from—not really anyways. But here I was, maybe only two weeks and some change into my stay here in this world, and I was already effectively master of my own time, with enough reputation to sink a battleship in this tiny little town, and the ear of a very powerful man.

So, what else was there? What was I doing here?

What were my true goals, and what would I need to achieve them?

My feet met the wood of Mayer's doorstep, and I walked in, sitting on 'my' chair across from the man who seemed like he was eternally sipping tea and reading. Retirement, I guess. One look at me and I could tell he knew that I wanted to have a heavy conversation. Something that happened far more than I'd like to admit. He sighed and closed his book, placing it on the table beside him and crossed his legs.

"I don't know how to say it without sounding like I'm full of myself, so I'll just say it." I paused for a second, "I am way, way too good at people. It's only started becoming really obvious recently, but now it's getting to the point where I can't ignore it even if I try."

Mayer's face didn't change but I could feel that things were clicking for the man.

"I can feel it. I know something is clicking for you." The man's eyebrows shot up. It wasn't really surprise, but the feeling of an entire picture coming into view. The man was stock still for only a moment, before he gently placed his cup of tea down, and looked at me in the eyes. A seriousness in his countenance that only really appeared ever once and a while.

"Well," he started hesitantly, "wou are a natural empath. An extraordinarily rare trait. In fact, I believe that the only other human natural empaths that have existed are Soul-Seekers, though they are considered Long Dead now." It was my turn to raise an eyebrow.

"Uh, being 'Long Dead' doesn't seem like something I really want to be." Mayer nodded.

"Some you really don't want to be. A Long Dead is simply a title for a human variant that has been either eradicated in its entirety, or just stopped appearing altogether. Though I doubt that you could actually be considered a Soul-Seeker at all. Being from another world entirely and all."

Well, that was easy to understand then.

"You are a natural empath. Effectively, you are just naturally able to use your soul to do what an empathic shifter does with shifting. Usually at the cost of being able to shift ether altogether." I thought on that for a moment. A natural empath. So not mind reading level, per se, but just able to sense feelings then. That seemed to line up, at least a little bit.

It was maybe a few weeks ago when I noticed it, unexplained flashes of 'I swear I can feel what they're feeling', but nothing on the level of what I was feeling now. Now, I was getting clearer signals, like scrubbing through the radio waves on a long car trip, in the middle of a nowhere-road, and then finally managing to hook into a radio station. It started fuzzy and indistinct, and maybe that was where I am now. Maybe it'd even get stronger with time?

"Will I not be able to shift then?" Mayer waved his hand dismissively.

"You are a Champion, that in and of itself overrides that limitation. Though whether or not that restriction applied to you in the first is up for debate. It was likely that your natural empathic trait began to awaken only recently, since coming here where the ether or other, more nebulous energies, reside to power it." I nodded.

"Is being a Soul-Seeker, or just a natural empath, all that strong? I understand that I can…" I hesitated find the right word, "convince really well. But I don't understand how I would be able to beat someone that has a similar alignment towards anything combat or otherwise." Mayer gave me an incredulous look.

"I thought you were smart. The answer is that you don't match up against them, you get someone else to do that for you." Mayer laughed and continued regardless of my eyes rolling, "Empathic shifting is extremely powerful. Many of the most powerful leaders to have ever existed were extremely potent empathic shifters. The most legendary were Soul-Seekers or from races with natural empathic abilities. Instead of being good at hitting things real hard, or the shifter equivalent, you are able to walk into a room with some of the most powerful people alive and convince them that your cause is worth fighting for." Mayer shrugged and I nodded stiffly, seeing his point and trying to discard my preconceived notions.

Though there were extremes on all ends. There was probably another man who could walk into a room with exactly the same people and wipe the floor with all of them. I guess that just meant that I'd have to convince that person too. And those that can beat them or gather enough allies to beat those that could never be convinced. The social power games were already hurting my head and I wasn't even involved yet.

"When you put it that way, it seems like something extremely powerful. Maybe even overly so." Mayer shrugged again, picking up his tea and sipping.

"Yes and no. In this world there are just about an infinite amount of ways you can tackle a problem. People develop new ways of tackling those problems all the time. Shifting and ether are just blanket terms—people utilise ether extremely differently across civilisations and continents. To put a long story short, yes you have a very powerful asset, but it isn't like there aren't others that have assets just as good or greater than yours. Just because most people that are Kings and Emperors have access to empathic shifting of some description, doesn't mean that all that have access to empathic shifting are Kings and Emperors, or even nobles and merchants."

"Well, at least I have that going for me. At least I can claim that I wasn't total cannon fodder for this Champion War." Mayer gave a short laugh and I smiled along with his grin.

"You are also probably the strongest naturally empathic human to live, seeing as none of them would have been able to naturally train to the state you're in physically, even now. So that is also an upside." I laughed along with him this time, relaxing a little now that I knew that I wasn't going insane from delusions of grandeur. Though I guess that still didn't make me a genius, like the rest of the Champions. My natural empathy could only be used as well as my smarts would let me, and if I didn't use it well enough, it'd be exactly like I'd never had it in the first place. It was just another tool in the toolbox, right alongside the Soul Hammer.

I sighed deeply, only to return my gaze to Mayer, wry grin growing on my face without restraint.

"Hooray for not being crippled, I guess."

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 29: A Whole New World

The next few days were somewhat aimless, if I were to be honest.

Don't get me wrong, I was productive. I trained in the Sharah with intense fervour, and I flexed my Soul-Seeker-esque capabilities literally whenever I could, to maximise the gains in my Mind stat. I managed to gain four more Mind stat, usually from convincing people of things. Turns out that there are a lot of people dying around town, and Gram wants all of the bodies he can get.

I succeed around eighty percent of the time, and usually the reason for failure is more the family's wishes rather than the person who is actually dying.

On the other side of things, I still wasn't seeing any rewards for the Sharah. I was relatively proficient now, Mayer had even gone so far as to tell me so, but I still didn't gain anything. I knew that I gained a lot of control over my body, and a solid foundation for building strength, but the total lack of reward had me somewhat worried.

I was gaining too much from practicing the Sharah to stop, even allowing me mediocre control of the hammer in certain situations. I pushed the thoughts from my mind and continued my routine of practice.

It went from morning to afternoon to evening, then suddenly it was midnight. Resigned as I was to my total lack of need for sleep, I continued my training in the dead of night. The Sharah pseudo kata that I was performing was many times more elaborate than the first iteration that I had once created, and because of my seemingly endless stamina, I was able to increase the length and the physical strain required of my body to perform it.

But still, no rewards.

In a way, I knew I was being ridiculous. All this time—easily hundreds of hours worth of training—could have been spent on increasing my Strength or Agility, or even Mind stat through simpler training. But the Sharah sucked me in like nothing else did. I couldn't help but truly think that there was more to the movements than simply moving your body proficiently and efficiently. If that were it, then this probably would have been a total waste of opportunity and time.

So, like the idiot I am, I doubled down. Training so hard that I could feel the burn in my muscles and my joints and bones creaking from the massive amount of strain—quite a feat in a very hardy body. All the while doing this, I was continuously training my ability to summon and unsummon my hammer, as well as doing basic tasks, such as picking it up, putting it down, switching it to the other hand.

I was so wholly absorbed that when a blade came slicing down upon me, it was almost instinct. My mind didn't even have time to panic or think of anything else, except for moving. It was like my brain hit overdrive, and I was suddenly acutely aware of my surroundings, and the person that stood in front of me.

The blade that had attacked me was of extremely poor quality, not that I profess to be an expert in anything bladelike, but it looked like it had been dunked in water and left there for a few years. Pock-marked and rusted, the blade was even fairly crooked, but there was enough shine in the metal for the remnants of light bending around Orisis to glint and reflect onto the wielder—illuminating him.

I hadn't ever seen this man. Or maybe boy would be a more accurate description. He was older than Rethi, maybe by three or so years, making him maybe seventeen.I was about to open my mouth when the boy yelled some jumble of words all mushed into one sound, and he charged at me again, poorly stabbing at me with the sword. However, a sword in the hands of someone truly untrained could be dangerous, and I wasn't willing to risk doing a ballsy move like trying to catch the blade or even disarm him.

I might be stronger than him and have a little bit of training in the Sharah, but I was far from a combat genius. I could theoretically run away from the encounter, but that seemed like a stupid idea. This was obviously someone from the town, and I needed to understand why they were attacking me.

The boy was now wildly slashing at me while yelling obscenities, as I simply just backpedalled away, out of his reach. His face grew increasingly red with rage as he raced after me. But you can't really beat someone with effectively infinite stamina this way.

Weirdly, though, I was still scared of the boy. Maybe I was more scared of the weapon that was being swung around. Even so, I couldn't quite find a way to stop the boy without either hurting me, or braining him with my hammer—neither of those things were what I particularly wanted.

So I played the long game and continued to run from the confrontation, hoping the boy would lose his steam and calm down to a degree. That turned out to be the wrong decision, when something caught the boy's eye and an even deeper rage burned across his face.

"I'll fuckin' kill you, you damn beggar!" The boy raced passed me before I could look and see what it was that the boy went after. When I saw who it was, it became painfully obvious who the boy with the sword was.

One of the Jothian boys. I had never actually seen them myself, but when the boy went after Rethi, screaming about beggars in a fit of fury, it was made obvious for mey.

Unfortunately, this just makes this situation even more complicated. The Jothian boy raced after Rethi, and Rethi ran from the boy, wide-eyed in terror. My immediate instinct was to go bash the kid's head in while he was going after Rethi, but I wouldn't be able to catch up with the boy before he grabbed a hold of Rethi and possibly did some serious damage. I was fast, but I couldn't cover enough ground before the boy's blade reached Rethi's flesh.

I felt helpless. No matter if I ran as fast as I could, the boy would reach Rethi before I reached him.

My eyes soaked in the situation as I futilely ran with all my might, the boy wasn't that far ahead of me, but he was much closer to Rethi now, and it was all flat ground—there was no escape route for Rethi to find.

The bigger boy's feet pushed against the ground, launching himself into a lousy dive, with his rusted sword outstretched, slicing towards Rethi's skin.

Then it was as if time had stopped.

I could see the minute detail of Rethi's terror filled face as the blade threatened his life, and the rage of the boy who wielded it. The sword was held poorly, almost as likely to fall out of his hands than it was to actually cut Rethi.

It would only take the tiniest bit of force to snatch that sword right from the hands of the Jothian boy.

A strange instinct took over me as I planted my feet and moved ever so slightly, following a pattern of the Sharah. It pulled on something within me, and my legs and arms strained unnaturally hard for the simplicity of the movement.

As the movement continued, the pull increased, as well as the strain on my body. As soon as my foot hit the ground once again, there was a snapping sensation inside, and a force ripped out of me. The boy's sword flew out of his hand, landing a few meters away, allowing me to continue running and quickly grab the sword before anyone else moved.

Then I simply stood, staring at the two boys. Rethi quickly scrambled to his feet and ran to my side, his pants and hands dirty from being pushed down into a muddy patch of grass. He didn't quite stand behind me, but it was close. The other boy, however, didn't move at all. In fact, he stood, staring at me with comically wide eyes. They were filled with terror.

He knew.

I had 'shifted'. I don't know how, and I don't even know what it was that made the connection in my brain not seconds before. But now the floodgate was open, and I could tell there was a bit of ether connected with my every movement.

I looked down at the boy with a poker face, not letting him see the mix of surprise and exhilaration, along with a sprinkle of apprehension that coloured my thoughts.

"Do I need to bother to ask why you attacked my employee, or is it as stupid a reason as I think?" I said, my voice flat, imitating Mayer to a degree.

The boy's face faltered, shame and terror washed over it, before a weak but smouldering look of rage smeared itself across his mug.

"No one will trade with Pa, we're gonna starve and it's all that damn beggar's fuckin' fault." He drawled out, words thick with an accent similar to Rethi's own light one, but far more unrefined.

"And so, your bright idea was to try to kill me, then to try kill Rethi?" I looked at him, disgust was written on my face, and I knew it.

The words the boy was formulating died on his lips, and the shame returned. The boy looked down at the muddy grass he was lying in, averting his eyes. It was then that I found it prudent to look into the boy's emotions. Something I was beginning to get a true grasp of.

It was turmoil supreme. There was fear, but far more than I had elicited with my meagre showing of shifting, no there was fear far larger than that. I couldn't tell exactly where it originated from, or from what idea, but I had some theories.

It was fear from possibly becoming something he had scorned, like a beggar. Or it was a fear of his father or mother, maybe even one of his brothers.

Either way, it would be stupid make a big scene of this. It sounds like the Jothians are pretty screwed anyways, and exposing this would probably get this kid killed and the rest of his family cast into exile or something just as drastic.

So I decided to play around that consequence.

"You know what you did, and you know the cost it would incur, yes?"

Fear washed over the boy even further, flaring like a beacon in my mind. I waited a moment, letting the fear stew to give the most impact.

"Killing people or having them killed is not something I especially aspire to. So I will give you a deal. You go back to your home, and you get ready to go find work somewhere. I don't care what that work is, whether it be serving drinks at the pub, or cleaning out stables, but you will find it. If you aren't doing something in a week, then I will release another note detailing what happened today." Confusion washed over the face of the boy who had probably expected to be killed or be dragged into town and be chucked in a pit somewhere, as they do with criminals out here—but instead he was given an odd request.

There wasn't much reasoning behind doing this. Just that I knew that he would go out and do something other than terrorise and injure with a sword. Plus, it would probably do well for him to be away from his home. Something tells me that home isn't a particularly kind or warm place.

The boy nodded vigorously, and after a moment he got to his feet, and scrambled away—only giving a backwards glance to the sword I was now holding. I watched him quickly move out of sight, in the direction of the town, taking the long way around so as to not pass by Mayer's home.

I turned to the boy next to me, who was staring intently at me, his blue eyes piercing.

"What? You're being very quiet." I asked, jokingly mocking. Rethi's face remained serious.

"You shifted." He stated plainly. I nodded after a moment, a demure confirmation.

"I think so, yeah." I paused for a moment before adding, "What's wrong?" The boy's face contorted, becoming a look of disbelief.

"Are you serious? Nothing is wrong! You just shifted for the first time, this is huge!" The boy grew excited, completely forgetting he had just been mortally threatened by a blade. I raised an eyebrow questioningly, the boy had a talent for flitting through emotions like a hummingbird between flowers.

"Mayer shifts all the time, is this that big a deal?" Rethi's eyes grew confused, then became clear again, and he began laughing.

"Sometimes I forget you're from another world. Mayer being able to shift is a big deal, but he's Mayer, y'know?" I laughed at the description and nodded before speaking again.

"So how common is shifting really? Mayer makes it seem really common."

"I don't know where Mayer is from, but I think I have only ever seen one other shifter in my life. They were in a caravan of a hundred or so people passing through, or the ones that survived the trip from the south. I don't think they were strong though, or they would be part of an army. I was told that they were the only shifter anyone living in this town had ever seen."

Well, it made sense that Mayer would know a lot of shifters, seeing for strong he was, at least physically. Before I could speak again, Rethi butted in excitedly.

"What did it feel like?" I thought on the question for a moment before spitting out an answer.

"Odd. It felt as if I were moving through mud, then there was this strong pulling sensation in my body and then a snap, like a rope breaking and it was done." I said, I was devoid of constructive ways that I could explain the sensation.

Rethi's eyebrows furrowed in thought. Before his eyes lit up again. I checked his emotions and felt an overwhelming sense of wonder and excitement.

Looks like I'll be answering questions for a while.

I laughed while the boy peppered me with questions when an overwhelming amount of information hit my brain.

[A New Sensation: Somewhere inside you lurked a power you didn't know existed. To tap into it caused a whole new world to open itself up to you. Where will you go, now that you've found it? +5 Mind]

[The Blasphemer of Prophecy: Unlocking a secret long kept by the Sharah'hin, you have stumbled your way into a prophecy that has been forgotten by naught but a few of the Sharah'hin themselves. +5 Mind]

[Wielder of the Sharah: The truth of the Sharah has presented itself to you, and you are now at the start of the journey along its path. Once you learn more of its secrets, and travel further along its path, you may perhaps become a True Wielder. +10 Might, +10 Mind, +10 Agility]

I was dumbstruck.

I turned to Rethi with a flabbergasted look on my face.

"I need to talk to Mayer."