“How come you’re not joining her?” Sam asked Yvessa after Erianna had bid them goodbye, heading for the Web-Communications complex to talk with her cousin.

  “I already talked with Marin three times in the last week,” she said. “He’s helping me and Sarah with our artificery course. Well, he’s actually taking a similar course, so it’s more like we’re all helping each other. Then again, he does seem to have an easier time than we do.”

  “Wow…” Sam said and had to do a double take and scrutinize the thought that came into his head. “For some reason I was about to make a joke about using a communications room for a study group.” He shook his head with his eyebrows furrowed. “But obviously I’m be the last person that can joke about that.”

  “It’s also not like it’s anathema to the purpose of the complex. Honestly, I don’t think the academy has ever even questioned me about what I was using the rooms for. As long as I make an appointment and don’t stay after my time’s up. They don’t seem to care.”

  “Yeah, lucky for us that it’s not in such high demand, then.”

  “Lucky for us?” Yvessa raised an eyebrow. “I highly doubt that your meetings with Farris would be impacted one way or the other.”

  “True enough. But it would make me feel bad to know that my lessons are taking the spot of some poor patron-less student.”

  “And how are things going with your—do you actually call them lessons now?” she asked, and Sam shrugged acknowledgment. “Lessons with Farris? Erianna told me that lately you were just going on your own.”

  Sam nodded. “Yeah. For the last two or three meetings, we haven’t really talked about threads all that much, so Farris said that Erianna didn’t have to be there if she didn’t want to.”

  Yvessa laughed. “And she didn’t want to?”

  “I guess not. She’s spending enough time on me already, don’t you think?”

  Yvessa’s smile grew wider. “I wonder about that. Anyway”—she waved Sam off once she saw his confused look—“why aren’t you talking about threads all that much? Everything alright?”

  “Better than alright. That’s the whole problem. There isn’t really any feedback that Farris feels like he needs to give me, or guidance for Erianna on how to teach me, for the time being. I’m looking at three or four more months of just keeping as I am now; training and practicing the same things while continuing to read the books.”

  “I thought it was just one book.”

  “It’s technically three, but the last one is really just for exercise. But the other two have a lot of theory to supplement what Erianna’s teaching me when we’re not practicing. It’s not all that different from my tracing or patterns study with Dan if I’m being honest.”

  “I’m sure Erianna will be happy to hear that.” Yvessa smirked.

  “Well she was when I told her. You know how worried she was, and still is, about making sure that she’s a good teacher.”

  “Oh, definitely. It’s good to know that there’s one weight lifted off her shoulders, then. So what do you talk about with Farris during your lessons?”

  “The only part of it that’s constant is the catching up. The ‘what have I done since we last met and where am I in my overall progress.’ You know the deal.” Yvessa nodded. “But as to the actual lessons? I don’t know. I feel like he really tries to focus on the commander part of his role when we meet. Like, he wants to train me to become a general like him.”

  “Sounds good,” Yvessa said. “At the end of the day, just like with being a Ruler, Farris is a great general. Both on and off the battlefield. And it’s not like you don’t enjoy the military science part of our curriculum.”

  “I definitely do. Although with Farris it can sometimes be less military science and more like military paperwork. But it’s still mostly interesting. And we don’t really get a lot of staff training.”

  “I hear that. It’s what I’m always saying about our education as officers. They can’t both want us to become high-ranking generals with more than just tactical considerations, but at the same time only teach us how to conduct ourselves in battle.”

  “True enough. And when it comes to people like you and me, who will definitely have to become high-ranking because of our strength, I agree with you. But I guess it’s not really egalitarian to start showing preferential treatment from this early on.”

  “It’s why I said they ought to make the academy one year longer.”

  Sam shrugged. “Maybe they will once the war’s over and there won’t be such a constant need for manpower.”

  “If it’ll take till the war’s over, then they definitely will. Since by then we will be in the most important positions of power.”

  Sam laughed. “So you’re already slotting us as the would-be harbingers of victory?”

  “You’ve known Erianna for half a year now, no? Do you think it’s possible to grow up with her as your best friend and not imagine yourself as the generation who would win the war?”

  Sam smiled. “I guess not. Interesting to see that her self-assurance has rubbed off on you, then.”

  “It’s not just me. It’s also Marin. And it’s also her brother. And of course, it’s all due to Farris’ influence. Why, you’re telling me that despite being in both Farris’ and Erianna’s spheres that you don’t see us as being the generation who will end the war?”

  Sam cleared his throat. “Oh I don’t need Erianna or Farris’ influence to think that. My own sense of self-importance and delusions is enough.”

  “I’d be careful saying this around Erianna. If you think you’re beholden to delusional thought, then that must mean that so is she.”

  “Hm…” Sam pursed his lips. “I suppose one of us must be wrong, then.” And he knew perfectly well which one it was. “But enough about me. You got us onto this topic by saying how much trouble the artificery course was giving you, and I hadn’t even asked you how that’s going. Not OK.”

  “I’ve become accustomed to not expecting too much of you.”

  “As any woman should.”

  “Didn’t you spend half of last Saturday helping Sarah pick and design her level 4 patterns?”

  “I was just there for moral support.”

  “I succinctly recall that you and Erianna got into an argument about the best way for Sarah to imprint Body Protection.”

  “Did I say moral support? I meant morality support. As in making sure that the right thing was being done.”

  Yvessa smiled. “You lost the argument, though.”

  “Yes, but I won the war. Sarah ended up talking with Maurice and changed her plans for how to imprint the pattern. I obviously don’t have a solid enough background to come up with the right plan for the pattern, but the whole point was that I knew that Sarah’s current plan wasn’t the best. I just had to convince her of that.”

  “And you don’t think that she would’ve consulted with Maurice regardless of your intervention?”

  “Oh she definitely would’ve. She had already started before she even became level 4, like two months back. But where I came in was getting them to reexamine a blind spot that they both had. I think I managed to have some positive effect in the end.”

  “And how the hell did you even learn that Takens’ pathways might interact differently with the mechanism of the secondary trigger?”

  “Well it was actually Erianna that got me on that. Her family’s Body Protection pattern and method of imprinting is slightly different from both the Terran military version and the Sarechi one, which are taught in our respective academies. But Erianna just thought that the difference was because that her family’s version was made to be more easily modified as it was always going to be changed according to best suit each family member.”

  Yvessa nodded. “And it is.”

  “Obviously, but as I looked deeper, and saw the changes that the past versions of the pattern had gone through, and the differences between them and the current version, I realized that there was actually a change between the current version and the newer past ones, compared to the old ones. That difference, I believe, was due to the average high quality of pathways of the Ninae family, which resulted in a constant modification to the pattern that had nothing to do with making it more suitable for personal adjustment.”

  “Why didn’t you just say that? The whole argument could’ve been averted.”

  “Because I could’ve been wrong. And the whole point was to get the other people to think about what I said and to come to their own conclusion and whether it made sense.”

  “Obviously it did, then. Since Sarah adjusted her initial plans after she and Maurice discussed it.”

  “Yes. And after Maurice called some of his colleagues at both the military and civilian pattern research centers in Transit and they told him that this was actually discovered almost ten years ago. And that the only reason it wasn’t rolled out into the pattern instruction and doctrine manual was because it was still slowly going through the assessment phases due to a lack of suitable test subjects. Also, what I thought was the actual meaningful change to the pattern turned out not to be fully accurate. Anyway, it was already discovered way before me and much more accurately, and we Terrans weren’t even the first ones to discover it. It’s just that the number of people that it affects is so small, and the actual effect is so minuscule that… it ultimately doesn’t really matter.”

  Yvessa laughed. “I know very well that we all fall under the sway of ‘every little thing matters’ mantra, so it does matter to us. And especially to Sarah.”

  “Sure. A thousandth of a percent.”

  “Every little thing matters, Sam.” Yvessa quirked her lips. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t take that one-thousandth of a percent into account.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Of course, I would. But the whole point is that I got into the rabbit hole of researching this not because I want to improve by that tiny amount, but just because I want to improve at researching patterns.”

  “Even better. Honestly, Sam, I don’t get how you can be fine with taking credit for getting Sarah to change her mind but not with the research you’ve done in order to decide her mind needed to be changed.”

  “One’s a joke, and the other is actually something to be somewhat proud of, so it makes me embarrassed.” Sam shrugged. “Not that complex, really. But we’ve veered back to me again, is the artificery course that bad?”

  Yvessa smiled and slowly finished her drink. “Not that bad, no. But it’s definitely the hardest course I’ve ever had to take. The most I’ve… had to spend thinking about the material before I managed to understand it.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Different strokes for different folks.”

  “Easy for you to say. So far, all the material you came up against stroked you just fine.”

  “Eh. It’s just a matter of time. If it is even true. Still, I’m sure that there aren’t that many other students in the course who are having an easier time than you.”

  Yvessa nodded. “Sarah doesn’t manage all that badly. And one or two others as well. But besides them… not really. Which makes a lot of sense: for the people who are most suited for artificery, New Point isn’t really the best place to study. Rehniars’ is much better at combining both combat instruction and artificery studies.”

  “Most artificers aren’t inclined to combat anyway.”

  “Maybe. But it doesn’t mean that most people who are inclined to combat aren’t inclined to artificery. Could be they’re just more interested in combat and so never even tried their hands at artificery.”

  “Right… the age-old dilemma of elite workforce allocation. I’m not even sure whether a military setting is better or worse than the free market for dealing with it. So how did Marin discover his affinity for artifice?”

  “I don’t think he would say that it’s so much as affinity as much as he’s good with some aspects of it. As for discovering it…” Yvessa shrugged. “Guess it was just chance. He didn’t show any particular proclivity for studying artificery when he was at Maynil.”

  “Well the important thing is that he’s discovered it now and that he’s able to help you.”

  “That’s a selfish way of looking at things.”

  “I’m selfish,” Sam said and pushed his tray away from him. “Alright, we’ve spent enough time here already. Ready to go?”

  Yvessa had already finished eating a minute or two prior, so she simply nodded. Once they were outside, she asked, “Any luck with finding a ritual or habit to help your muddling?”

  Sam twisted his lips. “None so far. I think I’m just going to stop looking. I don’t really need the help, and it’s not like the idea of helping it along with some mumbo jumbo that no one knows why it works appealed to me that much.”

  “I mean, we’re pretty sure we know why it works.”

  Sam shrugged. “No one’s been able to prove it. Saying that it needs to be a recurring activity or habit that has to do with using magic to complete it doesn’t really explain it all that well. After all, our entire day is filled with activities that we have to use magic in order to complete.”

  “You could at least try tending to plants.”

  “Never! I’m not going to be a person who keeps plants. I’m happy that it works for you and Sarah. But I’m not going to give up my principles. At least not for this minor a reward.”

  “Why do you take a stand against the most random things?”

  “It’s not random at all. It just as to do with the way I was raised and the place I was raised in.”

  “You could just go Felix’s route and use shaving.”

  “I’m honestly not sure that it really works for him and that he doesn’t just trick himself into thinking that it does. Besides, I’m not going to waste all that time on tracing something that’s so overtly long-winded if it doesn’t actually help me practice my tracing. And at this point, it doesn’t. I’m just going to stick with working myself into a headache every couple of days. The only method that actually proved to work and produce a quantifiable difference. If you ask me, all this ritual muddling thing you guys have got going on is a lot more like sailors’ superstition than anything scientific.”

  “But does that mean that it doesn’t work?”

  “No. It just means that it’s not guaranteed to work. And with my luck, it won’t for me. That’s what’s so great about empirical science. Reproducible results.”

  Yvessa shrugged. “I think you’ll just end up finding your own superstition that you like doing in the end.”

  “Maybe if there were magic to make all stray cats be friendly to me. But, who knows… At the end of the day, muddling is the least of my worries.”

  “What a blow to Erianna.”

  “Eh. She sees a block of gold and she thinks it’s worthless cause she’s used to diamonds. We both know she’s perfectly OK at muddling. It’s just that it’s the only thing she’s ‘only’ good at.”

  “That and dwarven patterns.” Yvessa smiled.

  “No comment,” Sam said as they reached Sarah’s dorm building and started heading up the stairs.

  “It’s open,” Sarah called once they knocked on her door. Sam and Yvessa stepped in to find her burrowed half between her notebooks and her laptop. “Just a minute. I need to finish this.”

  “Take your time,” Sam said as he sat on the bed, letting Yvessa have the chair and trying his damnedest to avoid seeing anything wrong with that. However, it seemed like Erianna’s best friend wasn’t going to let him get away with it as she glanced over to him with a raised eyebrow and a smile.

  “Done.” Sarah pushed herself away from the desk a couple of minutes later, which Sam had used to finish a few cycles of cultivating.

  “What were you working on so hard?” Yvessa asked. “I thought you had already finished configuring your patterns..”

  “I did. This doesn’t have anything to do with that. Just working on an essay for my physical improvement course.”

  “You need to write an essay for that?” Sam asked. “I thought the course was mostly practical.”

  “It’s half and half. You need the theory for the practice to make sense and, more importantly, so that you can continue to develop on your own later. I’m not like you guys. I don’t have the best body for physical combat. I’ll need to constantly work on strengthening myself.”

  “Don’t make this about having to do anything. You’re a Taken. If your body isn’t good enough for combat, then most other people aren’t—”

  “Most other women, you mean.”

  “The whole point of magic is that the difference doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “It doesn’t exist only because the magical effects which build upon the physical state allow us to overcome the gap between our physiques. Not because the average woman has the ability to match up to the average man in physical strength.”

  “So how come you included me in the same list as Sam?” Yvessa asked with a smile.

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Because I’m not blind. Don’t forget I studied biology and physiology. I know very well what my body’s physical limits are. And they’re not as high as you two. Sure, Sam is a guy, so—”

  “Now hold on a moment.” Sam raised his palm. “Just because I’m a guy doesn’t automatically make my body’s upper limit is higher than you two. I assure you, if we were talking about my old body—and I don’t mean after the accident—you guys would tower over me.”

  “Alright.” Sarah held her hands up. “The point is, I’m writing an essay about the best routines for maintaining maximum nourishment and physical status during deployment to the front. And it’s going to end up around thirty pages because there’s just so many things I need to cover. But I finished my work for the day, so can we actually start?”

  “Fine with me,” Yvessa said, and Sam shrugged.

  “Alright.” Sarah turned back to her laptop. “Let me just open up the map and the additional information. You guys remember where we left off?”

  “We pretty much finished with the exercise,” Yvessa said. “Just had to cover some minor points, but we decided that we might as well just move on.”

  Sarah slapped her forehead. “Right. I totally forgot. It’s because I keep thinking we’re still on last week.”

  “After tomorrow, last week would be two weeks ago,” Sam said.

  “I know… I’ve just been so busy.” Sarah sighed. “Alright, here it is. So what are we on to now?”

  “It should be a strategic scenario,” Yvessa said. “Something in the east.”

  “Right. Holdworld behind the front lines. ‘An Epirak holdworld has managed to sneak behind the dynamic front line of the east and is currently situated one world behind the front. We have total control of the forces in the east, and we must take care of the rogue holdworld while making sure that the front line holds.’ Sounds simple enough.”

  “It doesn’t sound simple at all,” Sam said. “Who’s the idiot that let a holdworld through? You need just the one Ruler to anchor it in place.”

  “The status on all the front worlds is stable,” Yvessa said. “So it couldn’t have been a battle.”

  “Guys…” Sarah held up her hands. “Let’s not get bogged down in the background of the scenario again, shall we? It’s an exercise. It’s not supposed to be realistic.”

  “But it can be,” Sam moaned. “Just have to present it as a surprise breakthrough.”

  “Maybe the Epiraks have made some new discovery; they found a way to send a holdworld from a different direction. That’s possible, right? So can we please focus?”

  “Alright, alright. So do they say if we need to delegate roles like last time?”

  Sarah looked over at the screen, scrolling down to read further. “Seems like it’s up to us.”

  “Meaning we can just skip it,” Yvessa said. “That part is mostly relevant when you’re actually conducting a war game, and not just doing it with your friends.”

  “I agree.” Sarah said as she grabbed her laptop and set in on the floor. “So can you guys get in here so that I won’t have to relay to you every piece of information?”

  “I don’t know…” Sam said. “Could be an interesting exercise doing it like that.”

  “Just give it up, Sam,” Yvessa said as she moved her chair away before sliding down to the floor.

  Sam let out a small grumble as he joined her and huddled on Sarah’s left side, all three of them looking at her laptop.

  “We should probably do it in Sam’s room next time, right?” Sarah said.

  “Why? It’s not like I can move the monitor to the floor.”

  “We can just ask for an extra chair.”

  “There won’t be room enough for two more.”

  “Cheer up, Sam.” Yvessa smiled. “I’m sure Erianna wouldn’t join every session.”

  “Are you still on about her sitting on your bed?” Sarah laughed.

  “She doesn’t just sit there.”

  “So? It’s not like you have a problem with anyone else lying on your bed.”

  “You guys have manners. You ask. She’s a spoiled royal whelp. She doesn’t wait for permission. Besides, Felix will be able to join us in a couple of weeks, anyway. We might as well just move to the library or something. One of the study rooms will work better.”

  “We’ll have to put it to a vote.” Sarah smiled.

  “Assholes,” Sam grumbled before turning back to the matter at hand. “Alright, so it looks like we can’t actually move any units away from the front.”

  “Not units, no,” Yvessa said. “But it should remain stable if we take smaller parts. Around a battalion’s worth, I’d say.”

  “Well Lernok is embroiled in heavy fighting, so we can’t take from there,” Sarah said. “And Tarrui and Fonon have just recently seen a full engagement. So the forces there are probably weary. It’s a risk to take from them, and it might not even be worth it.”

  “Let’s assume we can take about… six-hundred soldiers from the rest of the front worlds, yes?” Yvessa opened a notepad on the laptop to write the figures in. “So roughly, we should have a force of about… let’s be very conservative and say six-thousand, alright?”

  “Agreed.” Sam nodded. “Considering we should be able to take fully from all the ningani contingents, this might make the force about equal in effective combat power to a division. Now we just need to find Rulers.”

  “That’s easy,” Sarah said. “We can call on at least a dozen from both the Empire and Nezak. And let’s not forget that both the Empire and the Clans can raise additional forces to help contain the holdworld.”

  “Not immediately, though,” Yvessa said. “The only forces that can immediately react to the holdworld are the extra Rulers and the six-thousand we peel off from the front line.”

  “And we also need to assume that some of the Rulers will be needed to reinforce the front,” Sam said. “So let’s say that we have about six actual Rulers to send along with the six-thousand? That way it’s symmetric.”

  “Might as well. So the question is how do we actually contain a holdworld with only a division and six Rulers?”

  “Assuming we can mobilize our forces before the holdworld is able to attack our front from the back—not all that useful for them considering the bordering front worlds can be commanded to temporarily close down the portal—or in any case, to take control of the area around the portals. Our best bet is to just act as though this was a front world and defend the portals’ area. The portals in all the worlds around the eastern front are already situated in defensive positions, anyway. So we just need to make sure we can set up camp before the Epiraks have a chance to move on. Keep them stuck there.”

  “It’s a big if,” Yvessa said. “The secondary defensive line—especially in the Empire’s half—is not much to write home about. But you’re right. If they can hold on long enough, it’s pretty obvious that we should do just that. The Epiraks wouldn’t be interested in wasting one of their holdworlds in engaging a single world. So they’ll definitely want to pull it back. Matter of fact, we probably end up as the winners in that case, as long as they don’t control any of the bordering worlds we can just keep the holdworld stuck there.”

  “Hold on a moment,” Sarah said. “Are we not even going to consider fighting the holdworld itself?”

  “You can’t attack a holdworld with only six Rulers and one division. I doubt that six Rulers are even enough to force the holdworld open.”

  “But what if we try and goad the Epiraks to attack? Try and get them to leave the holdworld undefended.”

  “Then we’ll have to split our forces. Leave enough to both defend the portals and to attack the holdworld? Seems wishful to me.”

  “Sam?” Sarah asked.

  Sam shook his head. “I agree with Yvessa. Anyway, since it’s a strategic exercise, it’s obvious that the focus should be on what we need to do if we can’t contain the holdworld straight away. In that case, attacking it head on is the least of our worries. We need to minimize the harm it might do to our supply lines and the home front.”

  “We should probably still prepare a contingency of how we would plan to attack the holdworld if we believe we had the right opportunity.”

  “Alright. It makes sense, I guess. Gotta prepare for all eventualities, right? Even those that won’t happen.”