“Nice view from the top, huh?” Erianna said as she sat down next to him.

  Sam nodded but kept quiet for a few seconds, lost in the dense sprawl of New Alexandria, spread out before him. Despite being “founded” as nothing more than an afterthought to New Point Academy, the city had grown considerably since those early years of human habitation on New Terra. It was still most closely associated with the academy, of course. But it was akin to how Transit was most closely associated with the portals—an integral part of the city’s identity but far from the whole story.

  But despite its urban beauty; the carefully planned yet still dynamic layout of the city; the vibrant and unique culture and style, Sam had only actually visited three locations in the city itself. All three of them, far from wholly unique to the city. He hadn’t visited any museums—and he knew there were many—he hadn’t immersed himself in anything the city had to offer in terms of leisure, tradition or art. Ensconced within the secured fences and walls of the academy, he had managed to avoid coming face-to-face with this new world that had emerged from the destruction of his old one.

  And why was that? Why did he—“Sam?” Erianna nudged him on the shoulder.

  “Hmm?” Sam shook his head and turned to look at her, the remaining cobwebs of introspection slowly dispersing as he focused on her worried eyes. “Oh, sorry, Erianna. I was just busy… thinking about stuff. One of those instances where you’re half aware of your surrounding but still fully focused on something, you know?”

  “Everything alright?” She crossed her legs as she shuffled backwards on the bench they were sitting on.

  “Yeah… just… got honed in on a particular train of thought, I guess. So what’s up?”

  “I’m the one who gets to ask that. How are you feeling?”

  Sam gingerly massaged his left leg as he slowly raised it to show Erianna it was in good order. “Doctor’s patched me up, should be able to go back to exercising in just two or three days. Pending Maurice’s approval, of course. It was nothing too serious.”

  Erianna rolled her eyes as Sam lowered the leg back to rest on his bag. “First time I’ve heard of a non-serious injury that required a person to use crutches…” She gestured to the two on Sam’s right.

  “Nothing too serious with magic.” Sam shrugged, trying to feign indifference. “And immediate care from a level 8. Besides, I’ll only need the crutches for today. I’m bringing them back tomorrow, so I’ll appreciate it if you could keep this from the rest—especially Sarah.”

  Erianna raised an eyebrow. “First, aren’t you worried Maurice will tell her?”

  “No? Doctor-patient confidentiality. Besides, I asked him not to, and he agreed.”

  “Alright. Second, how are you going to hide the fact that you need crutches? Or that you won’t be able to join our workouts for the next couple of days?”

  “I’m glad you asked that.” Sam gave her a saccharine-sweet smile. “That’s where you come in, my dear and wonderful, Erianna.”

  “Save the sweet talk for someone who appreciates it, dear and wonderful, Sam. What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing much…” Sam lowered his hands in a gesture of promise. “Just for you to provide—be—my excuse for nonappearance.”

  “Huh ah. So you’re asking me to lie on your behalf.”

  “My amazing and caring benefactor, I had already asked you to lie on my behalf. A lie by omission is still a lie.”

  “I think we both know how stupid that saying is.”

  Sam gave an exasperated grunt. “Look, are you going to help me or not?”

  “I might… I’ll hear you out first. Then we’ll negotiate as to what I get out of this deal.” She smiled sweetly.

  “Perfectly acceptable, Your Highness. Good cooperation always involves both sides benefiting—”

  “Making you happy is not a benefit for me, just so we’re clear.”

  “Tsk. Fine. What I need from you is simple. Just say that we have… I don’t know, a really important topic that we need to cover or something. You don’t need to give them any details—after all, threads are for me and thee but not for they, yeah? So just say that we must have lessons and those lessons prevent us from joining our friends during their workout sessions. Simple enough, no?”

  Erianna laughed. “Alright. Obviously you must really want my help because you didn’t make a single joke about me needing to suffer more time with you.”

  Sam crossed his heart with a nod. “Things are that dire. So, would you be my willing accomplice?”

  “I’m leaning towards it. But you’re going to have to drop the stupid spy-act.”

  “Sorry.”

  Erianna nodded as though in a deep contemplative thought. “Alright, here’s what I want: You need to come with me to the Museum of Television in Transit. Then, since we’re already out and about, you need to take me out for an expensive meal. Ooh, and I want to go to an arcade as well.”

  Sam narrowed his eyes at her, then turned on his Sight to make sure the protective weavings Farris had created for him were still in place. “What spurred this on?” he asked eventually.

  Erianna narrowed her eyes back at him. “Why are you asking?”

  “Just seems… very sudden.”

  “Is it? I’ve spoken plenty of times before about wanting to visit some of the Terran museums—including the Museum of Television. Why are you so defensive all of a sudden…?” She tilted her head in suspicion, dangerously close to the mark. “What were you thinking about when I got here?”

  Sam looked away and cleared his throat. “Nevermind that. How the hell are you going to enjoy yourself going around Transit with a full gaggle of bodyguards? Or are you going to petition Home Command to assign one of their Rulers to watch over you again?”

  “No need.” Erianna smiled victoriously. “A Sarechi Ruler by the name of Mavirun Lashei is coming to New Terran on official business for a week starting this Monday. I’m sure if I ask him, or have Farris ask him, he’ll be willing to come a bit early in order to act as my watcher.”

  “First I’m hearing of this.”

  “Why would you hear about the coming and goings of Sarechi Rulers that you don’t know?”

  “Fair enough. So it looks like you have it all figured out, then. Good for you. Just one question: why me?”

  Erianna rolled her eyes. “Don’t be an ass. I already applauded you for not making those ‘can’t stand me’ jokes.”

  Sam shrugged apologetically. “Not quite what I meant, but I deserve it. However, the question still stands. Why not ask Yvessa? Or the group as a whole?”

  “Because they don’t want to go to the Museum of Television?”

  “Right… no, that makes sense. And you don’t want to force anyone who doesn’t want to go there to go with you. That’s fair.”

  “Besides, this way, we could also practice your Threadsight. And hey, if you want, we can make a detour at the portals and see what your color is.”

  Sam held up his hand. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll need to pass through the portals eventually; no reason to rush to see them.”

  Erianna shrugged. “You’re the one who didn’t want Farris to show him externalized magic.”

  “Don’t you worry about who I am or not. My motivation and reasoning are perfectly valid, I assure you.” Sam waved her off before a thought occurred to him, and he sighed. “I’m assuming that you want me to take care of all the minutiae of planning the outing…”

  “You assume correctly.”

  “Including buying tickets to the museum?”

  “Yep.”

  “Making reservations at a restaurant to your liking?”

  “Hmhm.”

  “Looking up where you can find arcades?”

  “That’s like half a minute of a google search.”

  “Bah!” Sam threw his hands upwards, which caused him to twist his left leg a little, and he winced in pain as he readjusted it and the bandage compresses around his calf.

  “You alright?” Erianna asked as she supported him by the shoulder.

  “Yeah, just moved too much and too fast. It’ll pass by tomorrow.”

  “I’m sure it will…” Erianna said and looked at him questioningly.

  “What?” Sam asked after a few seconds passed and she kept staring at him.

  “Are you sure you’re alright?”

  “Look, we can go ask the doctors if you’re so worried. Or wait until I leave and read it off their release papers. If I weren’t fine, they wouldn’t have let me go up here by myself.”

  “I’m not just talking physically, you know…”

  Sam twisted his mouth as he purposefully made to look far off into the distance. “What’s that supposed to me?”

  “Please don’t make me spell it out for you. We both know each other too well to know what I’m talking about.”

  “I… I’m fine.” Sam grunted.

  “Are you? Then what am I worried about?”

  Sam grumbled. “That because it’s a leg injury, I’ll be affected psychologically due to my past trauma.”

  “And are you?”

  “I already said I wasn’t!”

  “No, you said you were fine.”

  “Yeah, because I wasn’t affected by it.”

  Erianna let out a half-exasperated, tired sigh. “Sam, I know you of all people would understand why I might be… not even worried, just… through when it comes to asking you about these kinds of subjects.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Sam looked down, shamed a little. “You’re right, you’re right. I know what you’re getting at and why you’re asking this. It’s just… I want to think of myself as someone who’s no longer beholden to suffering from his old emotional ailments; those fears and worries and anxieties.”

  A silence hung in the air as both of them avoided saying anything else for a minute until, out of nowhere, Erianna burst out laughing. Sam gave her an exaggerated, accusing and incredulous look, which caused her to wave her hands in an apologetic gesture and say, “I wasn’t laughing at you. Obviously.”

  “I didn’t think you were. I’m just wondering what could be so funny that you’ve chanced upon it from the topic in question…”

  She pointed at herself, then him, and back again. “Doesn’t it sometimes feel like a ping-pong of mental aid we’re giving each other? One time you make this emotionally vulnerable confession about a topic or opinion that we both know is untenable, and you shouldn’t feel anything negative about it. Then I do the same—revealing some of this or that deeply held belief. And so on and so on.”

  “Well when you say it like that, I suddenly feel self-conscious about showing myself to be emotionally vulnerable.” Sam crossed his arms.

  “You know that’s not what I meant. I just found it funny how quickly adapted to taking turns talking the other one down off the figurative cliff. A cliff we’ve climbed just because it helps us ground ourselves by focusing on something in our mental state that we’re not happy with.”

  “You make us sound like we’re an old married couple who’re going to die within days of one another.”

  Erianna shrugged. “Once again, I am awed by the power of your imagination and by the absurdity of your thought process.”

  “Look, you’re the one that brought up this really poignant point about how we’ve been playing foil to one another’s tide of insecurities and self-obsession. And I mean tide in the literal sense—well, the literal, figurative sense.”

  “I know what you meant. Anyway, you done dodging my question?”

  Sam tsked and looked away. “Alright, alright. I’ll admit to almost having a panic attack as it initially happened. We were close to the end of the lesson, and out of nowhere, I suddenly fell and felt this—sharp doesn’t even begin to describe it—pain, and my mind obviously went first to… you know. But, I managed to gather my wits quickly enough, and Lin was there to prop me up and administer first aid and pain-suppressors. Then… it was just a matter of reining in my catastrophizing—you know, like, maybe my nerves suddenly atrophied and died somehow—and just letting the doctors and the chemical and magical pain-killers do the work.”

  “And now?” Erianna asked with a nod.

  Sam slowly exhaled. “Now I’m mostly fine. More angry and annoyed than anything else, really. Thankfully, I’m not in pain…” He stopped and contemplated his next words for a few moments. “But I’ll probably have to take a more direct approach towards dealing with my past trauma, I guess. I don’t want to throw out and acronyms, but it wouldn’t hurt to address my hang-ups in the matter in order to make sure it wouldn’t hamper me in the execution of my duty.”

  “How mature,” Erianna drawled and inched closer following Sam’s gesture so that he could punch her shoulder. “How long do you need to stay here?” she asked after Sam re-balanced himself.

  “About two hours.”

  “So more or less the time slot of our lesson?” Erianna’s lips quirked in a sardonic smile.

  “Just about. Dan said he’ll come to my room for our lessons after… Which is going to be pretty weird.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It just is.”

  Erianna shrugged. “Alright, I’ll come over bearing dinner after you two finish, but I trust you to craft the deceitful message to the group.”

  Sam winked. “Fear not, I’ve already written it.”

  “And you think that’s going to make him happy?” Sam asked Erianna as they entered the private practice room.

  “Sure, why not?” Erianna shrugged. “If I had a younger sibling, I wouldn’t like to be reminded of the fact that they’re a higher level than me. Much less think about them making Ruler before me.”

  “But you are a younger sibling.”

  “Yeah, but my brother isn’t me, and he doesn’t think like us. He’s not a soldier. He doesn’t care about his own strength beyond doing the bare minimum to ensure he’ll make it to Ruler plenty of time before he has to succeed Mother—and I guess for some semblance of self-defensive ability. Plus, the gap between me and my brother, in both years and talents, is much greater than between Lin and his.”

  “You forget the most important part. Lin’s a Terran, and we’re all proud, nationalistic folk who scamper after the most meagre of scraps that will allow us to preserve our dignity in this magical world where personal strength triumphs all.”

  Erianna roller her eyes. “Who are you even trying to stereotype with this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And in any case, all of us should be happy that there’s an extra Ruler on the scene, Terran or not.”

  “And I’m happy because I was told that Luke Haffer donates most of his money to animal sanctuaries, and it makes me happy that good things happen to good people… Well, that good people manage to do good things… for themselves…” He grimaced. “I really butchered that one.”

  Erianna fanned her hand magnanimously. “You’re happy that good people succeed in life.”

  “Wow, you’re articulate! Who’d you study rhetoric with?”

  Erianna laughed and made a half-hearted attempt to flick Sam’s ears which he easily dodged just as Lin entered the room. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “How are you feeling, Sam?”

  “All good.” Sam gave him a thumbs-up. “Got the go-ahead yesterday allowing me to fully go back to my regular activity. Just need to drop by for a quick check-up every couple of days for the next two weeks.”

  “Great.” Lin nodded. “But we’re still going to follow the revised training plan for today. Especially since Mi—Erianna already joined us. So I’m going to take a backseat for this lesson for the physical portions, and only involve myself in the theoretical parts. Only if I feel there’s anything for me to add, of course.”

  “You definitely will,” Erianna said as she gestured for Sam to stand opposite her in the middle of the room. “Just because we’re using threads, it doesn’t mean the fundamentals of our fighting are any different—it’s just one extra layer to consider. And since you’re still the best fighter out of the three of us… It’s important to make sure that both Sam and I have a restarting force preventing us from pigeonholing on the threads side of combat too much.”

  Lin nodded. “That’s a very healthy outlook. But I’ll still try to stick to the sidelines unless I feel fully confident that I have something to add. So best just to consider me a studious spectator.” He gave a slight smile as he went to sit by the wall.

  Erianna shrugged and turned back to Sam, still speaking to Lin, she said, “We’ve already warmed up before you got here—and despite what he might say, it’s best for Sam to still take it easy.” Unperturbed by Sam’s sour face, she addressed him. “So we’re mostly going to focus on slow, methodical fighting; trying to read the other’s intentions and not worrying all that much about reacting to them.”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “Easy for you to say.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, it is easy for me to say, isn’t it? Must be all those years of practice to your none.”

  Sam smirked as he settled down in a fighting position. “Poor historically illiterate Princess Erianna… Since there’s no year zero, that must mean that there’s also already a first year for me practicing; ergo, one year of practice.”

  “Poor socially impaired Sam… Doesn’t realize that the more he goads his opponent, the worse it’s going to be for him when it’s time for them to kick his ass.”

  “I thought you were going to take it easy on me,” Sam said as he turned on his Sight. Directing his will, he made sure that his view narrowed and his mind focused on just Erianna and their close surroundings. Best practice or not, Sam was still far from being able to fight coherently unless he made sure to try and block as much extraneous information as possible.

  The many threads making up Erianna’s magical being vibrated as she smiled—Sam ignored most of them; the majority counted for nothing more than a distraction, and of those that weren’t, plenty were of no consequence to combat. Seeing the thread connecting him and Erianna moving almost imperceptibly, Sam’s mind guessed that she was about to speak mere microseconds before she opened her mouth. “I said it’s best for you to take it easy. I said nothing about taking it easy on you.” Sam mostly managed to ignore the information spillage these words had on other threads in the room.

  He clocked Erianna’s untelegraphed movement by the very much telegraphed changing of her body’s threads. Taking a guess that she wasn’t starting off with a feint—especially since making one as subtle as this would be at the very limits of Erianna’s abilities—Sam quickly ran over the possible ramifications of the threads’ movement.

  Both of the smaller threads, roughly correlating to each of the legs, were most likely a result of pure physical change as the tensing of the muscles whose information was contained in the threads could be easily kept hidden by a practiced fighter (and indeed, even by a few months ago, Sam was used to masking such micro-movements).

  But the larger thread, which more or less detailed the relationship between Erianna and the space she stood on, was much harder to affect with just invisible muscle tensing. A change like the one that came over Erianna’s had to do with a conscious directing of one’s will; with a mental decision having been reached and soon to be acted upon.

  It wasn’t, of course, guaranteed to be so, and much less certain was a person’s (Sam’s) interpretation of the intention belayed by the change in the thread. But since Erianna was just barely able to fake the latter, Sam was sure that the former was correct, and that Erianna was going to advance on him.

  To be sure, he didn’t need to the Sight to realize that; and the Sight provided only a marginal help of perhaps half-a-second between recognition and comprehension and Erianna moving, but this was just the thing that they were here to train. And Sam was definitely getting better. Two months ago, he wouldn’t have been able to read Erianna planning to come at him from the left. A month ago, he wouldn’t have been able to respond. A week ago, he wouldn’t have been able to respond without fully telegraphing his intentions to his fellow Thread-Weaver.

  As he dodged Erianna’s half-hearted lunge at his left, and responded with his own half-hearted thrust at her right calf, Sam mostly focused on keeping his threads in check. Both by trying to mask his physical signals as much as possible, and, more importantly, trying to prevent his intentions from spilling onto his threads. The second was much more troublesome and, far from relying on the first, it dictated how it ought to be carried out.

  When first sparring against an experienced Thread-Weaver like Erianna—whose fighting experience was mostly of fighting with the Threadsight—new opponents would most likely be confused by the slightly erratic and out-of-step movements of their Thread-Weaver foe. The reason was quite simple, if not wholly understandable to people who had no way to see threads; and thus an extremely difficult time understanding how they worked.

  Threads conveyed meaning, so in order to mask them from the Sight of a hostile Thread-Weaver (or, more likely in their case, hostile Ruler), they had to mask their own intentions from both themselves (which was difficult, bordering on impossible, or even passing it, depending on what you tried to hide) and, somewhat easier, from appearing in their own bodies.

  So one had to try and prevent their body from emitting even the slightest of tells that would be intensified and magnified by their own threads. The resulting masking didn’t fully correlate with the way regular people tried to hide their intentions in combat; in fact, it was sometimes exactly the opposite.

  As could be evidenced by the type of posturing that Erianna adopted right now and which she was most fond of, which was over-expressing her movements and positioning. The resulting obfuscation was achieved in two ways:

  Either by flooding your opponents’ Sight with a deluge of conflicting information, most of it irrelevant, due to constant movement and change in your muscles and limbs. All this extra noise was highly effective in hiding your physical threads’ tells but carried with it both higher physical and mental fatigue. Or, you could over-express just the one intention, mimicking closely how some regular fighters prepared their feints, before swiftly changing it in order to take action at the same moment in which your physical threads changed to match your new intentions.

  Of course, even if she was most fond of this style of masking, it didn’t mean that Erianna avoided the other major style (which just happened to be Sam’s favorite). This one, instead of having two methods, had a multitude differing ways with which to mask your intentions. Only the difference between each method was much more minor compared to the other style, and more often than not, to pull off a magical feint required you to combine a multitude of different methods.

  The short explanation of the style that Sam was now embodying as he slowly and methodically retreated away from Erianna’s attack in a circle, was to suppress any physical tell as much as possible. This was much easier for people without the Sight to understand, since it was already a generally good fighting method for those that were suited for it. But that understanding would soon prove frail when face-to-face with the extreme result necessitated by taking the conclusion of how to best suppress your physical tells to the limit.

  Essentially, the goal was to avoid appearing as though one was fighting altogether. What better way to mask one’s intentions during a fight than to act as though one were not fighting at all? The style, when taken to the limit, was far beyond Sam’s abilities and likely beyond anyone’s as long as they weren’t fighting someone much, much weaker than they were. But that limit was only when all the style’s modularity was discarded and all multitude of approaches taken to the extreme.

  In (theoretical) practice, the style focused on finding the best ways to distance yourself from your planned actions by adopting a posture which let you appear as distant from your next action as possible.

  So, when Sam was busy preparing his next few dodges, and telegraphing his intention to block Erianna’s next leftwards cut, he made sure that the parts of his body which weren’t required for this current defenses, but would be called on for his planned offenses, would be as inactive and listless as he could allow them to be. His arms, instead of tensing in preparation of adjusting from a block to a lunge, were just limp enough so that they could only block the next attack and needed to be regrouped if he wanted to pivot into his own attack.

  His physical intentions hidden so, he turned his mind towards further masking them by trying to mentally affect his threads. This was the greatest advantage this style of obfuscation had over the other; allowing you to try (i.e. hopefully have a slightly easier time—coming down from downright impossible to just borderline) and also affect your mental threads. The empty space left by your lack physical tells allowed your mind greater influence on both mental and physical threads since there was less information correlated in those threads about your next intentions.

  In the case of your mental threads, such as the one that made up Sam’s relationship with the floor and signaled his intention to move sideways around Erianna’s right side and come at her from there, the effect was pretty minuscule, especially with his level of control. But it was still there, and together with greater ability to mask his physical tells and their inference on his physical threads signaling his intentions, he managed to pivot around Erianna’s next attack following his block, pirouette to her right side, and strike her at her left shoulder.

  Thus, their first match ended six-one to her.