“Rufus told me that just being an adventurer opens every door.”
“Yes, well, Rufus may not be the best authority on what life is like for the average adventurer.”
“The ones not born with talent, looks, wealth, privilege and influence?”
“Exactly. He grew up in one of the most prestigious adventure preparatory schools in the world, with kings and the children of heroes as friends. He’s a great guy, but he’s oblivious to what the rest of us go through, sometimes.”
“So, to him, adventuring is just a parade of people telling you how great you are and handing you sacks of cash.”
“Exactly. I’m not saying the rest of us can’t get there, but Rufus never even saw the low rungs of the ladder. The things we’re teaching you now, he was learning from the womb.”
“Then if I’m going to catch up, we should probably get back to the lesson,” Jason said.
“I like the ambition,” Farrah said. “First, let me take you through the process. As I said, we start with projection to learn the basics, then move on to restraining. Once you can do both of these to an acceptable level, we introduce more sophistication. Things like focusing on one person or hiding aspects of your aura while projecting. That culminates in projecting and restraining at the same time.”
“How does that work?”
“Well, for example, just say you’ve hidden yourself, but you want to use your aura. So you blanket the area with your aura ability, but hide your presence within it.”
“Sounds like a good intimidation tactic,” Jason said. “They know you’re around, stalking them, but can’t find you.”
“Or you could just blow one of them up,” Farrah said. “I find that intimidates the survivors just fine.”
“You’re a very aggressive person.”
“There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your work.”
“There is when your work is killing people.”
“I was talking about monsters,” Farrah said, her tone lowering with disapproval. “They’re just globs of magic.”
“But they can still feel fear and pain. They still suffer.”
“So do the people they kill once they've been around too long and gone berserk,” Farrah said. Her relaxed mediation pose was becoming rigid. “You haven't seen a truly berserk monster. It's like they can feel their inevitable demise and want nothing more than to take as many living things with them as they can. Putting them down before they reach that state is a mercy.”
“But mercy shouldn’t be fun.”
Farrah normally kept her feelings hidden behind a veil of amusement, but Jason’s attitude had stripped it away.
“It’s easy to moralise when you aren’t even an adventurer yet,” Farrah told him, pointing her finger. “You don’t understand the price of what we do. I want to see how you feel a year from now. How many monsters will you have killed with those powers of yours? How many people? Your abilities are all about slow, horrible death.”
She got up, glaring at Jason as she brushed down her pants with her hand.
“That’s enough training for today,” she said. “Put away the mats.”
She marched out of the yard through the gate in the wall, leaving Jason sitting alone.
“That turned heavy, fast,” he told himself. “Good job, idiot.”
41
Vulnerable and Exposed
Jason apologised to Farrah the next day when she arrived at Jory’s clinic for his training.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realise until afterwards that I was accusing you of being callous. I can sometimes let my mouth run off on me without thinking it through or considering the other person’s perspective.”
“That’s very clear,” Farrah said. “You weren’t completely wrong, I guess. Mostly, but not completely. You do have to be a little callous to do what we do.”
“Maybe,” Jason said, “but I shouldn’t be judging you when I don’t know what you’ve been through. The one thing I do know about this world is that I’m ignorant about all of it. It’s just that… in my world, I’m not a person of consequence. Being one of the faceless masses isn’t terrific, but there is one luxury the powerful don’t enjoy.”
“Oh?”
“When you’re just a face in the crowd, then you can hold an ideal without being required to live up to it. But here, my decisions can be life and death. My principles are being put to the test, and I’m forced to confront what it means when they bend, or even break. Like anyone, I liked to think of myself as someone who would stand tall under the pressure. Now I’m really under it, standing up is harder than I thought. I have my own values, from my own world. They’re the only thing I was able to bring with me. And sometimes, most times, it feels like this world wants to eradicate them. But if I let it, then what do I become?”
“I can’t answer that for you,” Farrah said. “Being good is easy when the choices are easy, but adventurers don’t sign up for easy choices. Being a good person means being good when the choices are hard, and there’s a price to that.”
“Rufus told me something very similar.”
“He might have his blind spots,” Farrah said, “but his family have never been shirkers. When the time comes to stand, they stand at the front.”
“Again, I’m really sorry. You were right that I don’t know the things you’ve seen.”
“I was, wasn’t I? But sometimes I forget how adrift you must feel, in a world you don’t know.”
“Adrift is about right,” Jason said. “All I have to anchor myself is who I am. It feels like if I lose that, then I might never find a way home.”
“You realise that doesn’t actually make sense, right?”
“I’ve been in this world for three weeks,” Jason said. “I’ve been getting by on throwing myself into everything like a maniac, because if I stop moving I’m going to completely lose it. I’m one bad day from cracking like an egg.”
“So you cling to whatever you can. I can understand that. But the world isn’t going to stop and wait for you to get ready for it.”
“I know.”
“For now, concentrate on the training,” Farrah said. “Perhaps some routine will help you keep it together.”
Even before Farrah’s prompting, Jason instinctively understood that staying busy would keep him from flying off in every direction. He threw himself into training, from early mornings with Gary to afternoons with Farrah.
Every afternoon, when his training with the others was done, he would make his way to the balcony of his personal suite. Every day he would practice the one essence ability that he was most excited to master yet had failed to successfully use. Each power he awakened brought with it the instinctive knowledge of how to employ it, but something about this one ability was holding him back.
Ability: [Path of Shadows] (Dark)
Special ability (dimension, teleport)
Cost: Low mana.
Cooldown: None.
Current rank: Iron 0 (00%)
Effect (iron): Teleport using shadows as a portal. You must be able to see the destination shadow.
The ability to teleport fired his imagination in ways his other abilities couldn’t match, yet it eluded him day after day. Every afternoon he would sit under the awning on his balcony, trying to disappear into its shadow. His instincts screamed that it should be easy and natural, but there was something alien about it. That feeling came from his essences, which were part of him now, but a new part. They didn’t entirely feel like a true part of him yet, and every day the sun would set on another failure.
His personal suite wasn’t on the ocean side of the building, so his balcony instead overlooked one of the guild district’s wide boulevards. Sitting cross-legged in the shadow of the awning, he would try and sink into it for hours on end. As time went on, he became more frustrated. He could feel success was tantalisingly close, as if it brushed against his fingers, only to slip away.