Rufus calmly turned to face her as she stepped forwards to confront him.
“Yes,” Rufus said. “I am trying to traumatise your son. During the field assessment, I could see clearly the training he had been through. His skills are exceptional, but it was equally evident you have coddled him to the point of a critical deficiency. The reason I failed him isn't that he lacks the ability. It's that he doesn't understand the duty of being an adventurer. You taught him to handle killing, but not how to handle failure. He hesitates in critical moments because you've taught him to be too perfect.”
Jason watched Humphrey’s forlorn figure through the glass. He agreed with Humphrey’s mother that Rufus’s training was essentially emotional abuse, and thought his speech sounded suspiciously like a pot critiquing a kettle. From what he could tell, Rufus and Humphrey had similar upbringings. He wondered if Rufus had been through the same exercise himself.
“He'll stop to look for the optimal path when what he needs to do is act,” Rufus continued. “If you want Humphrey to act quickly and decisively, he needs to understand the price of not doing so. I can let that slide with the other adventures in this city, but you wanted him to meet my standards. These are my standards.”
Danielle was a head shorter than Rufus, but she got right up into his space, tilting her head back to glare at him.
“Is this how you treat people in your famous academy?”
“Yes. It is.”
Rufus turned back to the control table and reopened communication.
“Get ready, Humphrey,” Rufus said. “We’re going again.”
Jason watched Danielle, seeing she was on the edge of stepping in to stop it. In the end, she took a step back. Inside the dome, a small boy appeared next to Humphrey.
“What about Ellie?” Humphrey’s voice came from the control table.
“Ellie’s dead,” Rufus said coldly. “She was torn apart by monsters. This is Ben.”
Jason winced, looking once again at Danielle. She was looking sternly at Rufus but didn't say anything.
Humphrey's real body stirred on the wooden platform, the runes under him fading. He swung his legs off the side and sat up, face pale, eyes wide and shaking. He had failed to protect every new child Rufus had placed with him.
“How was that?” Rufus asked.
“A nightmare,” Humphrey said weakly. “An endless, inescapable nightmare.”
“Not inescapable,” Rufus said, devoid of sympathy. “You had the power to protect those children. It was your hesitation and doubt that doomed them. You need to understand that sometimes the best action is the immediate one. You’ll do better tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” he asked weakly.
“And every day, until you stop getting the children killed.”
“I… I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Yet you think you’re ready to do it when the people are real?” Rufus asked. “Adventurers aren’t hunting monsters recreationally, Humphrey. We are the shield for those who can’t protect themselves. Yes, there are adventurers who only care about money and status. But the real ones — and I know you want to be one of the real ones — care about duty. You have the heart for it, but until you have the mindset to match, all you’re going to do is fail.”
Rufus placed a hand on Humphrey’s shoulder.
“Only you can decide how much you’re willing to go through to do the right thing.”
Rufus and Danielle sat in the shade with a pitcher of iced drinks on a picnic table. Danielle had suggested Humphrey lead an enthusiastic Jason in the direction of the orchards.
“I’m sorry if you feel I went too far,” Rufus said. “You’re a good adventurer. You know the things he’ll be facing sooner or later.”
Danielle nodded.
“My father always said I shield him too much from the realities,” Danielle said. “But he was always such a good boy. It’s like there’s something inside him that makes him want to help people. I didn’t want to break that.”
“Did you consider something for him other than adventuring?” Rufus asked. “There are other ways to help people.”
“Not in our family, there isn’t. Gellers are adventurers, with all the good and bad that comes with it. And he has talent.”
“He does,” Rufus said. “If he can get past this obstacle, he could be one of the greats one day.”
“You have similar hopes for your friend, Jason, yes?”
“I’m sorry about him,” Rufus said. “He has a habit of saying whatever pops into his head.”
“No he doesn’t,” Danielle said. “You should pay more attention.”
“What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you noticed the way he seizes control of a conversation? The way he provokes people out of their comfortable patterns? He has a very political mind, but he applies it quite unlike anyone I’ve met. I hope Humphrey can learn from him, a little.”
“You want Humphrey to be more like Jason?” Rufus asked incredulously.
“Humphrey is too straightforward a thinker for that,” Danielle said. “I’d just like him to understand that things are more complicated than he realises. Social survival training, if you will.”
“I think you may be overestimating Jason. You might be conflating unpredictability with cunning.”
“Perhaps,” Danielle said. “I will acknowledge he’s hard to predict. You know, I heard an interesting thing while you were off doing the field assessment.”
“Oh?”
“A god appeared in Divine Square.”
“They do that all the time,” Rufus said.
“There were a couple of interesting quirks in this particular instance.”
“Which god?”
“Hero,” Danielle said. “Interesting god. Did you know he’s the only core deity not to have subordinate gods?”
“I did, actually.”
“That’s right,” Danielle said. “Your uncle is a member of Hero’s clergy, isn’t he? How is he doing?”
“Very well. I’ll tell him you asked after him.”
“Please do. What really caught people’s attention about Hero’s appearance, though, was that when everyone kneeled before the god, one man did not.”
Rufus put a hand over his eyes, groaning wearily.
“Jason has something of an issue with religion,” he said.
“I did hear some rumours about that priestess you were working with,” Danielle said. “She has some unkind words about you, by the way. But you can see why I wasn’t startled at Jason’s lack of formality. What is the deference due an aristocrat when you won’t bow to a god?”
Rufus narrowed his eyes at Danielle.
“You seem to know a lot about Jason for someone who just met him,” Rufus said. “It’s hardly a surprise for someone of your influence to hear about the Divine Square incident, but you were certain it was Jason. You’re investigating him, aren’t you?”
“I am,” Danielle said. “At your father’s request.”
Rufus groaned. “Thousands of miles away, and he still can’t let me chart my own path.”
“He’s concerned about the man arresting so much of his son’s attention,” she said. “A man who seemingly fell out of the sky. Imagine my surprise to discover he did almost exactly that.”
“You know he’s an outworlder.”
“I do,” Danielle said. “Very exciting.”
“How?”
“It was a fanciful guess until I met him. He's so obviously a man out of place. The way he talks, the way he thinks. The way he looks at things. He doesn’t fit.”
“The way he looks at things?”
“Like a man who doesn’t expect to recognise anything.”
“Have you told my father what he is?”
“I did,” Danielle said. “It won’t be hard for anyone to put the pieces together once people start looking for them. Which they will, when they realise you’re training him.”
“It’s inevitable, I know,” Rufus said. “I wanted him to reach the point where his skills at least weren’t an embarrassment. Jason doesn’t seem to embarrass, though.”