Madeline eagerly pulled Cold forwards by the hand, trying to forcibly drag a woman twice her size- and succeeding, if only because Cold couldn’t refuse her pleading face. They dashed their way to the weavers’ guildhall, an old building expanded over time as the needs of the city grew. Within was the sounds of countless people at work, but Madeline rushed Cold towards the basement. Within was the sound of looms working at full capacity, and of awls and needles at work- and on a dressing dummy sized to Cold and Heat’s body was a gambeson and arming cap, its color a shimmering white.

  “It’s finished! The first set of spider silk armor is finished! The weavers said it’s way stronger than a normal one, but it’s not as strong as a full set of plate armor. But that’s still really good, yeah?” asked Madeline, her eyes staring up at Cold.

  Cold rubbed the kid’s hair with a grin. “That’s amazing, Maddie. Every advantage the Paladins can get is a good one, and you took an off-hand comment and made it a reality. I’m proud of you.”

  Cold tried on her silk gambeson and marveled at its feel- and then her gaze looked back towards the production line with a slight shiver. Dozens of spiders were each set up on a perch, each one producing silk that was woven into thread via a crank hooked up to a system of small spinning wheels, with that thread later woven into cloth. It was inefficient to say the least, and required Madeline to regularly visit to keep the spiders calm and content, but it was still staggering to see. And also deeply uncomfortable to see literal spiders being milked like that, a steady stream of bugs marching into their maws. But Madeline liked them, so Cold stomached the sight for Maddy, patting the kid’s head; Madeline could only beam.

  The two left the spider hut, and Cold felt a little better once she was outside. As Cold took a deep breath and did a stretch, she asked Madeline, “Do you want me to teach you some fighting moves today, Madeline?”

  “You… you won’t do anything scary like last time, right?” said Madeline, her voice a little unsure and her hands wringing.

  “No, of course not,” Cold replied with a shake of her head, her new tail waggling back and forth, its form phasing through the gambeson. “Come on, let’s go.”

  The two walked on to the sparring arena, only for Madeline to lag behind Cold’s admittedly quick pace. Instead of slowing down, she scooped the girl up and put her on her shoulders, prompting a laughing “Hey!” from Madeline. Cold walked on, the kid on her shoulders playing with her hair, until they reached the sparring ring. Unfortunately, when they made their way there, a bell chimed across the city once. A voice cried out from above, “All Paladins are to make their way to the citadel and report to their commanding officer! I repeat, all Paladins are to make their way to the citadel and report to their commanding officer!”

  Heat gently let Madeline down off of her shoulders with a sigh. “Sorry Madeline, this sounds important. Do you want to wait for me, or would you rather go off on your own?”

  Madeline sighed and grabbed Cold’s hand.

  “Okay,” said Cold. “Come on, let’s go.”

  The two made their way towards the citadel, specifically towards Allison’s office. After dropping off Madeline in her bunk room, Cold reported for duty, giving Allison a salute. Allison’s office was thankfully cleaned up, the blood stains and broken furniture gone, and Cold’s team were all there standing around.

  “Good to see you, Cold,” said Allison, her arms folded behind her back. “Now that everyone is here, we can discuss the situation. Last night, during the festival, an Infected broke into the city.”

  “Wait!” shouted Jack. “What do you mean, an Infected got in? Just the one? Why didn’t the guards do anything about it?”

  “It was smarter than the rest- it snuck in through a door someone forgot to lock and it didn’t attack anyone until it was discovered. It just searched through the Paladins’ commander offices until a Paladin discovered it and stopped it, taking it alive if mangled. And as far as we can tell, the Infected itself was no ordinary Infected; it was a puppet used by someone else in order to steal patrol schedule documents. If it hadn’t been caught, we very well might have had an entire army of Infected within the city without anyone knowing until it was too late,” stated Allison. “As it is, we’ll be starting a civilian militia to patrol during the night in order to try and capture any more of these Infected, as well as increasing the number of lamps outside. Every Paladin will start evening patrols until the militia is large enough. Furthermore, we’ll be calling upon Heat specifically for her skill at fire- it’s time she learned spell etching.”

  Heat brushed her way forwards past Cold in their mind, taking control of the body. “Spell etching… that’s what you make those stoves and lamps out of, right? Carved runes that channel magic?”

  “Why would we use runes? English or glyphs works just as well as anything else,” asked Allison with a raised eyebrow. Heat just muttered a quick ‘nevermind’.

  “Regardless,” continued Allison with a shrug, “yes, spell etching is a complex process of pouring one’s soul magic into an object using carvings or paint. You’ll be learning from texts, sadly- our last properly trained etcher died just the other month; it’s an important profession, but it’s not easy for most people to do and it can be difficult to mimic other forms of soul magic with it. However, with your proficiency with fire and Cold’s proficiency with ice, it should be useful even as novices.”

  Heat nodded, internally squeeing at the chance to learn how to build magitech. Fire was the basis for so much of technology- generators and guns, for example, two things that revolutionized the world. Magic could replace a lot, but it was inconsistent, every person having their own unique form of it, and that would still be a stopgap for now, but Heat figured she could help fix that eventually. Or maybe…

  No, no speculation for now. It would be best to actually read the texts on the skill first, see what’s known and what isn’t before she tries to fix its problems. One thing she had learned in her time in this world is that the people here aren’t stupid, they’re resourceful and clever. But every society has its biases and blind spots, and Heat was sure she would be able to find one. She already had an idea brewing.

  “Oh, while I’m here, Madeline and the weavers completed the first spider silk gambeson. Supposedly it’s almost as strong as plate armor; it takes a while to make- spiders don’t produce much silk at once- but this should make it easier to outfit our Paladins with stronger armor than basic gambesons,” said Cold.

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  “The blacksmiths have also started production on breastplates and helmets for most of our Paladins,” replied Allison. “Unfortunately, we simply don’t have the time or skilled laborers to make full plate suits, but we’ll be supplementing the breastplates with gambesons and chainmail. You might benefit to wear a chestplate and helmet yourself, they’re going to deflect blows that a gambeson might absorb, even an unusually strong one. Heat, I want you to study on spell etching as soon as possible. Come dusk, you’ll all meet at the central hall to be assigned patrol schedules. Now, team, you’re all dismissed.”

  Cold walked out of the office with her team, basking in the idle chatter of her teammates. Before she left to grab Madeline however, she decided to ask something. “Hey, so I have to ask: why is being transgender and gay- homosexual- so acceptable here? Back where I’m from, they’re both hotly debated.”

  “Oh trust me, they weren’t accepted everywhere before most societies in the region collapsed,” replied Jack with a shake of his head, his arms crossed. “Still, I don’t know what your original world was like, but here, medic mages have always been able to use artificial conception and reversible sterilization and change people’s hormone levels since… since there have been medic mages, I suppose. While not everyone likes the idea, the Paladins have always been accepting of just about anyone willing to help, and anyone living here either already accepted it or learned to keep their mouths shut. There’s more important things than caring what someone else does with their own body and what two consenting adults get up to, and we have enough orphans going around that making more kids isn’t too pressing right now.”

  Cold barked out a laugh before saying, “Speaking of, I should pick up Madeline. She wanted to wait for me, and I was thinking of giving her some martial training- not anything too hard, just stances and how to throw a basic punch. You guys want to come along?”

  “I might as well make sure you don’t injure yourselves,” muttered Jack. Anders let out a laugh and clapped Cold on the back, saying ‘sure thing’, and Sally just grabbed Cold’s hand.

  Cold went over to her room and found Madeline resting on her bed. She gently patted the girl’s shoulder and she shot up, grabbing onto Cold and saying, “Can you teach me now? Please?” Cold laughed and nodded, grabbing Madeline’s hand and holding Sally’s with her other one.

  As the group reached the sparring ring, Anders and Jack taking a seat to watch while Sally stood, Cold ushered Madeline into the ring and the girl immediately got into a crude stance, squaring her shoulders and putting her fists to her chin.

  “Nope, we’re starting with some exercises first to help loosen your body,” said Cold. “First, plant your feet in a wide stance, knees and toes forwards, and tuck your arms in beside you so your fists are facing forwards.”

  Cold walked the girl through some basic exercises her own masters had taught her designed to loosen the muscles and ready the body for combat practice. At her level it wasn’t strictly necessary anymore, but it was still damn useful for teaching beginners some basics. As Madeline finished the exercises, Cold had her go back into a combat stance.

  “First of all, your stance is off,” Cold instructed. “You want to keep your fists a little lower than that- if someone punches you and you block, having them that high will just make you hit yourself in the face. You also want your legs to be like this,” she said, arranging Maddy’s legs to be diagonal, her right side facing forwards. “If you hold yourself like this, you’re harder to knock over and you can easily move back and forth.”

  Cold watched Madeline keep her stance for a minute, then try keeping it while moving; satisfied, she knelt in front of the girl and held her palms out. “Now try punching my palms. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Make sure to hit with your pointer and middle knuckles, it concentrates the power behind your swing.”

  Madeline swung her front fist out in a haymaker at Cold’s palm, striking it with decent force.

  “No, that’s not right,” said Cold. “I guess I should have explained, you want your punches to be fast more than powerful; try going for jabs. That way you’ll be harder to block and can throw out more punches in the same time.”

  Madeline followed Cold’s instructions, punching a quick jab at Cold. In fact, Cold was a little surprised at the girl; she clearly was following through with her strikes and not letting up the pressure. Just what had Maddy been through…?

  Cold continued to train the girl for about an hour before Madeline had to go but was satisfied that she had learned the bare basics… and amused to see that Sally was practicing too. Her own style wasn’t quite taekwondo, but she was learning unarmed combat quickly enough, adapting what the sisters had taught her to her own style.

  As the group separated to do their own things, Madeline in particular needing to check on the spider room, Cold went to the Paladins’ library; she and Heat hadn’t used it before, mostly because they were too busy with other things, but had explored enough of the Paladins’ citadel to know where it was. It was actually open to the public, though it didn’t see much traffic because it mostly contained texts on either obscure lore or just essential information that they didn’t want to lose. Still, there were usually one or two people reading something or other, and a librarian whose job was mostly to make sure no one damaged the valuable and important books.

  Cold went through the library stacks, organized mostly by subject, until she found the tomes on spell etching. There were a fair number of them, most of them on the advanced side. Thankfully, after perusing through the section, Cold found the beginner’s textbook, Spell Etching for the Uninformed.

  Paging through it, Heat pressing up against their eyes to go along, Cold began to read.

  The art of spell etching is a difficult one, not because it is complex but because it is simple. It requires only two things: to carve or paint a symbol or phrase into an object, and to pour one’s intent and soul magic into it. It can even be used to etch other people’s soul magic, but that requires the etcher to embody their psyche and briefly mimic their soul, an extremely difficult practice even by the standards of spell etching. Many writers will try to convince you that Spell Etching is reserved for the intelligent and thoughtful, but sheer intelligence and calm rationality do not make for great spell etchers- it takes willpower and imagination to truly excel, allowing yourself to slip into the full mindset behind specific aspects your soul magic and being able to emulate other people in order to mimic theirs. But this tome is not about the more advanced aspects of spell etching- it is dedicated to the basics, to teaching people how to use it to the best of their abilities. And to that end, dear reader, I will do my best.

  Chapter 1: Why You Shouldn’t Do Spell Etching

  Spell etching is a wonderful art capable of accomplishing many things, allowing for a great number of utilities and other uses. It is also potentially dangerous when used en masse, as it draws magic from the aethersphere the same as soul magic. However, unlike soul magic, spell etchings do not have an internal store of aether, and furthermore, anything less than a master-level creation will be inefficient, consuming more aether than a human using equivalent soul magic. Spell etchings can be safe to use in small quantities, but the more you use in a single area, the more the aethersphere is drained, limiting the use of soul magic and making existing spell etchings weaker. One must remember the folly of Nero, whose over-reliance on spell etchings inside his palace resulted in the end of his reign, the thin aethersphere over his throne room allowing the mob to overpower his guards and kill him.

  Cold did a double take at that last line, reading it over again. Nero- the Roman emperor? She admittedly didn’t know much about him beyond his name and the fact that he was hated in his time, but it looked more and more like this new world was closer to her own than she had thought.

  She continued to read the tome, determined to learn all she could about spell etching- she already had a few ideas on how to utilize it creatively, but she was certain that there was more to it, her icy tail swishing behind her in anticipation.

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