I Swear I'm Not A Dark Lord!

Wokehaad

Originally, the idea was to spend a month at Wokehaad Farms training Alexis and Willemien to handle mana. Alexis was Taylor's sometime-apprentice. She had the Orchardist class, but he had failed to find a suitable class teacher for her. So Alexis was apprenticed to Nelis, the ancient arc who owned his orchard outside the town of Wokehaad, and who ran it as both a farm and a school. In return, Taylor promised to teach Willemien, Nelis's niece, how to handle mana.

In the half-year since then, the list of students had grown. Kasper came from Midway to join the lessons, and Blake came to keep an eye on him. Saria already had decent mana skills, but Premi, Jalil, and Tanya didn't. As a rule, spirits had some innate ability to sense mana beasts and each other, but sensing mana related to their class abilities was a difficult skill to obtain.

Taylor decided to teach all of them. Nelis, always a good sport, volunteered to put everyone up for the month and dedicate a room in his manor house to their training. Most of his students were at their homes during the winter break, so he had the room, and the old man seemed to enjoy the change of pace.

Like any good master, Taylor foisted as much of the work as he could onto his first student, Alexis. She had kept up with her exercises and greatly improved both her sensing and her handling. So Taylor set up a mirror (the old one) and supervised her work on Willemien.

"It's not fair. You have a whole six months on me!" Willemien eyed the chair and the mirror expectantly. Arcs couldn't get classes, so the only way to learn advanced skills was the hard way, by learning mana handling first. Plenty of long-lived arcaics never reached that point.

"It couldn't be helped," Alexis said impressively, "there's only one mirror, and it belongs to Taylor. Sit in the chair and look."

Willemien gasped when she saw her reflection. There was a void on the other side of the glass, and a pair of shining silhouettes floated in the dark. One of them, the brighter one, dimmed, nearly enough to extinguish itself. When Alexis donned bracelets to dampen her mana, she disappeared from the mirror completely, leaving one indistinct person-shaped blob of light in the mirror.

"That's your mana. I'm going to push it around until you feel something." She put her hands into where her classmate's mana should have been, but nothing happened in the mirror. "Ummm, Taylor? Is there a trick to this? Because nothing is happening."

"It's the dampeners. Focus on your hands, and make a thin, dense layer of mana like a second skin, or like you're wearing gloves."

After a few more tries, Alexis got the hang of it. Soon she was pushing Willemien's mana all over the place. Nothing much happened at first, but inevitably, the arc girl shot out of her seat.

"Whoa! What was that? It felt like you touched me!" She patted herself. "But in a place I can't find."

"That's your mana sense." Alexis spoke as if she had done this a hundred times and was very wise about the subject. "It's been sleeping, and we're waking it up. Are you just going to stand there, or can we continue?"

Satisfied that Alexis had things in hand for the moment, Taylor set up his new mirror, the one that showed mana in colors according to its place on the continuum. It was a bit of a mess, actually. The mirror was more sensitive to some bands of mana than others, and some kinds of mana that weren't adjacent to each other had very similar colors. The image was blurry, and the glass was brittle. Instead of an empty void, the background was a gently swirling mist colored black and ultra-black.

The new mirror was fragile, inaccurate, and a little creepy. But it showed taming mana and other types which the old mirror couldn't see. Kasper's mana was strongest in the taming attribute and Taylor worked on him until the wolfkin boy drooped with weariness. The exercise was harder on the student than it was on the teacher, even though the teacher was doing all the work.

Alexis and Taylor divided the work and got through everyone on the first day. They repeated the process every day during the first week, until the newcomers could move mana on their own. They couldn't do much more than slightly reshape their auras, but that was the first step. Some people spent their whole lives trying to get that far and failed.

By the end of the first week, Taylor was teaching them games. He gave them mana stones to fill and drain repeatedly. They went into the orchard and played hide-and-seek in the cold, the seeker's sensing ability opposed against hiders' handling. He gave them tools to test their emission speed and strength, and kept score. He gave them exercises that not only improved their mana handling, but broadened their range. There was only so much he could do in a month, but focus and intensity mattered.

In an astonishing display of self-control, Alexis had kept her promise about her class. She took her basic level-ups and default ability enhancements, but hadn't spent any skill points or bonus ability points. As soon as they were alone together, the first question out of her mouth was, "Why do I have ten ranks in Appraise Plant when I'm only level five?"

"Because levels don't matter," he said honestly.

To which Alexis laughed, "Of course you would say that! No, really! Why?"

"Well, how did Maestro Nelis teach you to appraise plants?"

"Study. Observation. And there's some mana handling, too. I was kind of surprised he knew how to do that."

"So, you don't have to shout 'Appraise Plant' and pose with your hand thrust dramatically forward? You don't need a wand or a cape or anything?"

"You don't have to make fun of me. He said I should learn the skill without the class's help."

"So what he did was teach you to appraise plants, without using the class skill. Those ten points didn't come from your class. They came from you learning how to do something honestly."

"So what are skill points for, if we don't need them to learn skills?"

"They're for cheating, of course! Think of them as borrowed power. You can apply points to a skill to increase it, up to your level. But if you were to lose your class, you would lose that part of the skill. To my mind, the best use of skill points is to buy a skill you don't have another way of learning. You then use the skill enough to learn how it works and what it requires, and then advance the skill without spending points. The points are there to help you open new paths, but they're no replacement for truly knowing how to do something.

"In fact, I'm pretty sure that improving a skill into a tier beyond your level changes its name to 'superior'." He showed Alexis part of his own skill list, with several superior skills. "When I got my class, it took Knexenk two days to decide I was level thirty, but I still have a slew of magic-related skills in the fifties."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"What the heck is Undeclared?"

"My class. Any other obvious questions you'd like to ask?"

Alexis glared at him, but without any real heat. "What about ability points?"

"I want you to use them, but I want to observe the process."

"I get it," she smirked at him. "You want to learn to improve your ability scores without spending your own points, and I'm your test subject."

"Very good. I knew you'd understand eventually."

"But why not just spend your points if you have them?"

"Because, when you stockpile unused points, you end up with something called Potential. There's not a lot of research into high-potential class holders, so I'd like to keep mine for a while and see if it's doing anything."

Taylor was able to spend five afternoons observing Alexis as she applied her ability points, and learned how Knexenk forged different aspects of people's bodies and minds. Taylor had tried observing spirits when they leveled, but spirits were too different. Watching Knexenk work on a mortal was highly educational.

There was an impressive amount of mana involved, and, although the process could be painful, it was executed with a delicate touch. To do the same, he would need to build an apparatus and find a strong mana source. Fortunately, he was a skilled artificer in a world that had too many strong mana sources.

In the evenings, Taylor often ended up in Maestro Nelis's greenhouse, where they performed small miracles for each other. Nelis presented Taylor with unlikely products from his collection of unique plants, while Taylor made small divine figures or minor magic devices for the arc.

Nelis had given up one of his workbenches for his guest's exclusive use, and Taylor covered most of it in drafts for a new disk course called Tanglewood. The primary hazard on the course was spatial distortion: he would tie the physical space into confusing knots and whorls that had to be navigated. Stone paths would provide a sure way in and out of the course. Otherwise, people could get stuck inside and starve to death.

Nelis was trying to convince the town council that it would make an excellent tourist attraction, and let him build it in forested land owned by the township. But Glider Golf wasn't widely known yet, so it was slow going.

One night, Nelis handed Taylor a battered cup filled with cider and told him, "A stranger in town is asking around about a young boy wearing a mask. One of my people happened to get wind of it. Is this something I need to be aware of?"

"Not that I know of." Strangers asking random people about him didn't feel like a promising development. When they arrived, Taylor and his spirit posse had gone straight from the train to the farm without passing through town. The station was so poorly manned that no one noticed them. But Wokehaad Farms was a big player in the local economy, and it functioned as a school. Plenty of people would think of looking there.

"One person suggested the stranger was a paladin."

"If it's a paladin, and they're here on church orders, then there's no problem. I'm untouchable, as far as they're concerned." Nelis's eyebrows shot so high they practically disappeared into his hairline. He was old, even for an arc, and had lived through more than one religious purge. Nelis's childhood memories were ancient history to humans, and a large chunk of that was bad history.

"I had a contract with the Giving Church," explained Taylor, "sealed by Chowgami. The church broke it, and the gods punished them. Harshly." He briefly explained the Cadmius situation. "I think I'm safe from the church, but I can't vouch for zealots or fringe religions."

Nelis contemplated his cup. "I have people to protect."

"And I would never knowingly bring trouble to your door. If you want me to leave, I can go right now."

"You misunderstand me, my friend." Nelis's eyes gleamed with the fires of old battles, forgotten by most but not by him. "I don't mind trouble: I want to know about it in advance. Some of my defenses have been sleeping for a hundred years. They take time to wake up."

Early the next morning, Taylor stood in the drive and summoned the ghost butler. The feat required an elegant quill, with which he drew a rhyming quatrain in shining Spellscript ideograms. He spoke the words in Old Orlut.

Elegance in form, elegance in grace

I call to you through time and space.

Appear from whence all spirits inhabit,

Come Hermes! My Army adjutant!

Alas, Taylor had written a better one in Mi'iri, but since he couldn't use that language aloud without people asking uncomfortable questions, he had to settle for the lesser version.

Hermes was almost solid-looking when he appeared and bowed, a masterwork of low-key humility that teetered on the edge of mockery. It fairly shouted, "I hang around you only because I'm having fun." He looked elven, but Taylor never asked what his true form was, or if he even had one. It wasn't that kind of relationship. Considering Hermes was able to obtain meetings with greater spirits in under an hour, he wasn't someone Taylor could treat lightly, even if the spirit was named on his roster.

"What is the will of Twilight's General?" Oddest of all, he liked to speak in Old Orlut instead of Arcaic.

"I require twenty spirits for a short escort mission, with forms suitable for moving around a mortal town. Nobody should be larger than Tanya. I have a meeting with someone, and I don't know their purpose. I doubt there's anything to worry about, but I'm feeling cautious."

"You wish to be prepared. I will form a detachment within the half hour. If I may, where are we?" He looked around briefly at the building looming over them. It was a fine, old house.

"The manor at Wokehaad Farms, in Blaxland. Does that mean anything to you?"

"Perhaps. I believe the spirit of this land is known as Sakeasi and is quite powerful. He might appreciate an introduction to the mortal who lives here."

"As long as it's a friendly meeting, then I can make it possible. I'll ask Maestro Nelis if he's willing. Anything else?"

"The proctors would like to meet about Army business, at your earliest convenience."

"Tonight," Taylor decided. "I'll have to get back to you about the time."

An hour later, Taylor and the Army of Lightness paraded down the streets of Wokehaad, with a vanguard of animal spirits and a rearguard of elementals. Taylor and his little army filled the street. People parted for them and looked on in wonder at the masked boy leading so many summoned creatures.

Wokehaad was a compact town made primarily of three and four-story buildings supported by thick, dark-stained timber frames filled with lightweight brick coated in white plaster. The town fit snugly within its walls and had an orderly street plan. The few blocks west of Town Hall were set aside for traveler hotels and an outdoor market.

According to Nelis, their target was a guest at one of the hotels, and that was precisely where Taylor found her, halfway through breakfast, fork suspended in midair with a slice of sausage stuck to the tines, steaming. Her mouth was open, gaping at Taylor in his battlesage's robes and guarded by four nearby spirits, with twenty more taking up posts outside.

"Squire Briallen, wasn't it?" He nodded at the Army of Lightness, and they occupied a table at the edge of the room. He estimated she was high in the first tier, so he wasn't overly worried. Taylor sat down at Briallen's table uninvited. "Please, don't let me interrupt. Unless you've come here to fight, in which case I'll ask you to step outside the city walls to conduct our business, and the victor gets to finish your breakfast."

She put her fork down. "I see you got your bag back. How's the hand?"

Taylor held up the regrown member. "Restored. Is that why you're here? To check up on me? Because you could have just sent a letter."

"No, I came here to warn you. I think Otis d'Mourne is coming for your head. And he won't be alone."