“Mera?” Mom asked, gently knocking on the wood of my doorframe. I didn’t have a door, and this was the first time I was truly regretting that.
“Hi Mom,” I said.
“There’s news,” she said.
My head turned to her so fast I got a bit dizzy. She was holding a letter. I didn’t see it very often, but I thought the handwriting looked like Dad’s.
Mom handed me the letter and I snatched it like it was on fire. The first thing I saw was the signature at the bottom. Dad was okay. He was alive.
Naska,
There’s been an attack. We didn’t reach the rift. The Reid and I are okay. I was poisoned, and he is cut up like he fought a raccoon, but we are alive. We’re moving south.
There’s no easy way to say this. Mera has been declared missing or dead. I’m sorry.
I’ll do everything I can to find her. Somehow, I hope she ran away. I hope she made it home.
With all my love,
Joenal
Dad was alive. Reid was alive.
When I read those words, the sun brightened, and the clouds rolled back a little bit. I tried to hold back but suddenly there were tears in my eyes, and I was sobbing. I reached out, handing the letter back to Mom before I ruined it, before burying my face in my sleeve.
They were alive. They were still heading toward the Rift, and still stuck in the army, but they were alive. Dad… was clearly aware that Mom and I had left via unusual means but he wasn’t going to say that in a letter.
“Fucking hells… It was never supposed to be like this,” I hiccuped. “I was never supposed to be stuck at home waiting for news!”
Mom’s hand found my hair and slid down to pat my shoulder. “It’s the way of the world sometimes. Even when your foot is fully healed, I don’t think you should go back to the army. Even if the General has changed, better you stay here, alive.”
“Will… the town still accept me? If they realize I’m a deserter–!”
“Nobody resents a deserter who was drafted. Especially not here. This town loves you, in a way… well. In a way I haven’t seen in a long time,” she said.
I sighed. “I… sort of thought maybe I should go at the time. The need bubbles are mostly dark here. Yours still is, you know? That means you’ll still need to fight war trolls in the future. How am I supposed to grow into something like that… that woman if I don’t have enough people to craft for?”
“Growing to be like that witch is the last thing I want for you,” Mom said.
“Why not!? You have!!” I accused. “You were amazing! Your fire magic… it was like nothing I’ve ever seen, while I… did I tell you how useful my Networking skill was?”
“You did, and I’ll say now what I said then. That’s not a fair comparison, Mera. Networking isn’t a tool for the battlefield. You were as well equipped for that fight as you could reasonably be, and you survived.”
“Only because I was lucky! The war isn’t over, and we’re going to be attacked again. That means I need to get better. We need to be better and losing half our town’s fighters to the draft certainly didn’t help.”
“We’ve got barrels of the pepper paste, and we’re insulated from the rift now. No one can truly know the future. Perhaps the war ends and ten years from now I’ll be attacked on a trip to Denarla!”
I was about to argue again, when I paused. I wiped the tears from my eyes. What were we even fighting about? Networking hadn’t been as useful a choice as I’d hoped but so what? It wasn’t like I was going to stop growing. For now, I needed to get my foot healed, train up my fire magic so it could be half as effective as Mom’s and then…
Well, I’d decide what to do when I got there.
“That’s… possible. I don’t think even you believe it, but its possible,” I admitted. “Can you tell me what your Fire Magic skill level is?”
“Sixty two,” she said evenly.
“Sixty t–!” I cut off, realizing I was shouting. “Sixty two? You were able to do all of that with only sixty two points!? I thought you must’ve dumped two hundred free points into it!”
Mom shook her head. “The method of using fire magic in this book is different than what is taught at the schools. Fire, generated at a distance is surprisingly effective. I did dump my extra free points into it, but my talent is just rare. I had only banked thirty or so.”
Thirty… that felt so small by comparison. In a month and some change, I’d managed to rack up two hundred and fifty free points. That was certainly slowing down now, and I was around people who loved me, making it easy.
Still, If I could average one hundred points a month, that would be twelve hundred a year. In two years I’d be able to do everything that woman had done. Three hundred points in wind magic, three hundred points in sound magic, some ridiculous number of points in footwork. Perhaps there was a skill for dragonriding itself.
None of that would allow me to control rift monsters. Was flight truly just an extension of wind magic or was something else at play? The woman… hovered. It wasn’t as if wind was constantly buffeting her upward. Was she controlling gravity? Had she leveled up jump to the point where she just never needed to come down? Some other skill I didn’t even know about?
I didn’t know.
What I did know was that I needed to be ready if she ever came here. I needed to grow my skills and maybe even my level, if I wanted to pull Dad and Reid out of the army. After I did that, I wanted to have a safe place to return to, and even with a year or two of growth, I didn’t think I could fight Freyna.
Instead, I needed a way to protect everyone I loved, and I couldn’t do that on my own. I’d never been able to do anything on my own.
“I’ve earned over two hundred and fifty free points since getting my talent, Mom,” I said.
“I wondered if it was that high,” she said.
I added it up and sure enough, I’d earned exactly two hundred and fifty points. I had twenty free banked right now, from Burnom’s need bubble and from my level up.
“Mom… I want to make this place safe,” I said.
“Okay,” Mom said. She smirked as she took on the tone of a teacher and lecturer. “You have a goal. What are the steps to achieve it?”
I snickered too. Mom had taken this tone with me hundreds of times while growing up. Somehow, it felt easier treating this as a lesson, or just a problem that needed fixing. “I want everyone to have weapons. Lots of them. Preferably ones that don’t require contact with the enemy.”
“Bows. Magic,” mom replied. “We’ve already begun doing that. Edra and I can start teaching magic to everyone. Perhaps Normuran would be willing to start a healing school. Heavens know he needs some help.”
“Okay… that's a step in the right direction,” I murmured. I debated bringing up guns but discarded the idea. I didn’t know enough about gunpowder to attempt it, and I wasn’t even very sure it would be effective with all the magical abilities, skills, and talents Enoran’s had. “I want more though. I want roads. I want communications. I want supply depots and backup bunkers that we can run to if we need to. I want training for everyone, and armor, too. If Eschal, rift monsters, or worse, that woman attack this place then I want a wall of arrows between us. I want every last one to be as enhanced as Reid’s were. I want swords that can sweep war trolls aside like butter if they somehow get through all the magic and arrows. I…”
I realized with a sinking feeling what I was describing, before turning to Mom and looking her in the eyes. “Mom. I want to build an army.”
Mom grinned. “So do I, little Onion.”
“Do you… have any idea how to get started?” I asked.
Was this ludicrous? It was almost treason. People wouldn’t just join a brand new army out of the blue. Soldiers would need pay, and we didn’t have any money. All we had was a cause, and a flimsy one at that. Everyone in Pemolar thought they were safe now that the army had blown through.
We weren’t really in any position to begin building right now. Food would be a problem no matter what we did. I blinked as I remembered Dobretin’s need all of a sudden. He’d needed something to track food. Well. Now I knew why.
We needed something more organized than a few patrols. I didn’t know anything about training an army but I wondered if Nemmikel might. He was a veteran after all, and he was far from the only one in town.
“I have some ideas,” Mom said. “You’ve actually already been implementing some of them, without ever knowing it with your stories.”
“My stories? What do they have to do with this?”
“Stories are powerful. People are moved when you speak, Mera. I could never do anything like what you do at the bar. I was never one for the spotlight. I honestly have no idea where–!”
She cut off abruptly, and looked away from me. “Ah. I suppose, perhaps I do finally know something of where you learned your taste for the stage.”
I flushed.
“April… she wanted to be a… stage performer, I suppose, is the closest equivalent. She adored the attention. I think it rubbed off on me,” I said.
“Will you tell me about her? Her world?” she asked softly.
There was no mocking. No worried glances like she thought I was crazy. Perhaps, I’d been worried about nothing.
“I’d like that,” I said.
“Oi! Storybitch!” came a sudden call from outside.
I blinked. I hadn’t expected to see him for a while.
Mom stood up and opened the door.
“Burnom,” Mom hissed as she beheld the man before her. He jumped, as if he hadn’t expected to see her. “I have always been somewhat fond of you, in the exasperated way an owner is fond of a puppy who keeps rolling in the mud.”
“Uhh. Well, that’s probably deserv–!”
“But,” Mom interrupted. “If you call my daughter that one more time, I will make sure you never have another ale in this town again.”
Burnom didn’t flinch like I thought he would.
“Ahm… well. About that,” he said. “Uhm. Apologies, of course. Didn’t mean no disrespect. I just don’t know if I’ll have much time for drinkin’ for a while.”
He was holding the stone statue, and the pedestal was cradled under his left arm.
“Burnom?” I asked.
“It’s… well, it feels like there’s going to be rain, and the sand ain’t no place for…” he stumbled over his words.
Mom looked between the drunkard and myself, noticing the sculpture and the pedestal.
“Mera?” she asked.
“Could… you maybe hold onto this? I’ve… got to build a proper house for it, but until then, it would be a damn shame if it were damaged by the rain,” he asked, proffering the sculpture.
Burnom… was going to build a house?
“I’d be glad to,” I said.
“Thank ye,” he said. “And sorry about yesterday.”
I snickered.