“So,” Tamina said, drawing her legs up to sit cross-legged, “first things first. Soren, you’re lacking offence. I assume you’re still trying for the Fencing Skill?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. I’m working on an offensive Skill myself, so we’re probably going to spend most of our time sparring.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Soren said, jokingly giving her a Quinthar salute.

  She didn’t return it, instead turning to Rylan. “That means you’ll be by yourself, but I’ll come over to check your progress once in a while.”

  “Ehm,” Rylan started. “I know you two agreed I should focus on getting Running, but there’s not exactly a lot of room in here...”

  Tamina shook her head. “Running should be the next Skill you go for, but you’re not ready to try for another Skill. You need to work on the one you have, first.”

  Rylan frowned. “I thought I used it pretty well today.”

  Tamina folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not saying you didn’t, but today things were easy for you. You had time to think, to aim, to try things, because there was only one foe and we were keeping it busy. If you’re going to use Knife-Throwing in a one-on-one, you need to be able to do it on the fly, while dodging snapping jaws and rending claws. A hit or a miss then might spell the difference between life and death. You think you’re ready for that?”

  Rylan’s stomach dropped. He’d been struggling to properly hit the armadon even under the circumstances.

  “Well?” Tamina pressed.

  “No, I’m not.” The words tasted like ashes in his mouth.

  She dropped her arms to her sides and nodded. “It’s good that you recognise that. Realising your shortcomings can be painful, but Master Lann—the Talon drillmaster who trained me—always said the first step to improvement is finding a new flaw. So, what do you think you should work on?”

  He considered it for a moment. “I think I need to get used to the different lengths and rotation speeds of my knives. It threw me off during the fight earlier.”

  “That sounds like an excellent start,” Tamina agreed. “Actually, I wanted to ask... I’m pretty sure I caught you overcharging your blades during the fight. Have you been practising?”

  Rylan nodded proudly. “This morning, while you guys slept.”

  “Care to give a demonstration?”

  Soren looked over in interest, but Rylan hesitated. “Ehm, I don’t really have anything to throw at. Also, I don’t know if I should; my Skill still smarts a little...”

  “Wait, it smarts?” Soren asked, sitting up straighter, alarm on his face. “Ryles, how far did you push?”

  “It’s just twinges really. I only pushed to about half a point of mana.”

  “Half a point, the first time you were overcharging?” Soren repeated. “Yeah, no wonder your Skill is strained; I thought I told you not to overdo it!”

  “I took it slow!” Rylan protested. “I just wanted to test my limits...”

  “How is testing your limits not pushing it?!”

  Tamina cleared her throat. “So. It sounds like we were lucky you could still use it this afternoon. To be honest, pushing your Skill to the limit is the fastest way to train, but I don’t think it’s the most... responsible thing to be doing, considering our situation.”

  Rylan cringed a little. “Right. Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. However, from now on, I would like to ask you not to practise overcharging again without my supervision, as we really can’t afford to wait for your Skill to heal, or to pay Ethereon Credits to fix it if you break it.”

  Rylan’s eyebrows rose to his hairline at the last part. He hadn’t even known Skills could break, let alone that they could be fixed! “How much would that cost?”

  “Depends on the grade of the Skill,” Tamina replied. “I believe it’s 10 for an Emerald-Grade. Anyway, for now, I suggest you give your Skill some rest. You’ve probably got plenty to learn by just throwing your knives. We’ll wait for it to stop hurting completely, before we start carefully stretching out your Skill’s mana capacity again. All right?”

  Rylan agreed, and with their plans finalised, their little shack became a hive of activity. Soren started clearing out an area for their spar, while Rylan and Tamina went out looking for plants and other stuff to make a proper target for his knives with.

  They came back with arms full of mistweed and mushrooms, which Rylan proceeded to start fashioning into a misshapen heap against the wall. It didn’t look like much, but when done, it ought to at least be enough to stop his knives, since he wasn’t going to be using his Skill.

  As he worked, Rylan couldn’t help but sneak glances behind him, where Soren and Tamina had started to spar.

  However, they weren’t using their weapons like he’d expected. Instead, they were using some flexible red reeds that Tamina had grabbed a whole bunch of. She clearly didn’t expect them to last very long.

  Interestingly, they both appeared to be starting by channelling some mana into their ‘weapons,’ slowly encasing them in a white glow before they went at it.

  Tamina was evidently more experienced at this mana-infusion process, and often ended up waiting for Soren to finish, or for him to reapply it after losing the mana mid-spar.

  Also, despite wielding similar ‘weapons,’ the way they were using them was completely different. Soren was trying to hit Tamina with the pointy end of his reed with swift jabs, while Tamina was fending off his attempts with sweeps, and seemed to be trying to slash him with her reed instead. If Rylan had to guess, he’d say she was trying to unlock Sword-Fighting, which made sense as she carried a short sword.

  Finally, Rylan’s heap was finished, and he tuned out the swishing sounds of their reeds, and focused on himself.

  He threw his whole set of knives—all nine of them, including his dagger and letter opener—from different distances, at different speeds, and with different levels of rotation, just trying to get a feel for their differences.

  Digging them out of the pile of vegetation got old fast, and Rylan resolved to get himself something a little sturdier to cover it next time so they wouldn’t sink all the way in, but he persevered.

  He considered using the crab shell as a target, but he was too worried about his blades going dull to risk it.

  True to her word, Tamina came by once in a while to comment on his form. She seemed to know a surprising amount about proper throwing technique, getting him to freeze mid-throw to correct his posture, mostly his elbow, which she said he needed to point forward, instead of to the side.

  Apparently, he also wasn’t keeping enough tension in his wrist, which was causing him to over-rotate some of his throws. He needed to lock it instead, which immediately helped his control.

  “Can you only throw from the blade?” she asked the third time she came by, shortly after she and Soren had switched to wielding their actual blades, though not against each other. They were just doing stances and making various slashing motions with their mana-filled blades, over and over.

  It looked dull, but Rylan figured they didn’t want to risk damaging their blades for a spar. “You mean throwing it by the handle?” he replied in surprise. “I’ve never tried that before...”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “You should,” Tamina said. “It’ll give you more distance.”

  Trying to let the blade perform a full spin was a fun new challenge that led to a lot of blades over or under-rotating and, at times, clanging off the moss-covered wall.

  Rylan cringed every time it happened, but he didn’t see any obvious nicks in the cutting edges.

  By the fourth time Tamina came by, his arm was getting tired, and he said as much.

  She shrugged heartlessly. “Throw with your left hand, then. It pays to be versatile.”

  He ended up switching back and forth, as he was having trouble getting the motion right with his left arm. By the time they called it a night, he was positive his right arm was going to hurt a lot more than his Skill in the morning, but he also felt quite satisfied.

  He still wasn’t ready for a real one-on-one fight, but he was more ready than he had been that morning.

  That night, during third watch, Rylan was too tired and sore to practise anything. So instead, he just stared out the door into the fog and pondered the choices that had landed them in this mess.

  Had he been wrong to want to leave so badly? Had the Thistlethorns perhaps really had ulterior motives, had they really been trying to teach him something by saddling him with that debt?

  Soren seemed to believe it, at least, and he wasn’t the best liar. All right, that wasn’t fair; the young noble could lie well enough. Just not to Rylan, who—after years of card games—knew all of his tells. Soren’s eyes hadn’t darted nervously once as he’d pleaded his case, nor had he worried his thumbs on his index fingers.

  Still, it seemed so... complex. Was it just a noble thing to want to teach lessons with overcomplicated lies and schemes? Making him pay off a debt was one thing, but sending away the Deeptides, putting a mana-powered anklet on him... it was all a bit much.

  Of course, he’d played a role in escalating the situation to this point as well. After all, he’d tried to run twice now, and had, in fact, gotten lost deep in the cloudsea. So perhaps their measures—however misguided—had been justified. Or at least well-intended.

  Still, something nagged at him. How could it both be true that the Thistlethorns cared enough about him to go to such lengths to keep him safe and teach him things... yet were also keeping him at a distance, making him sleep in the servant’s quarters, work his ass off on chores day in and out, all while letting the crushing weight of his massive debt bear down on him?!

  His hands clenched into fists, his nostrils flaring as he took a deep breath.

  You know what? I don’t even care anymore. When I get out of here, I’m going to get a job, pay off my stupid debt, and then never have anything to do with them, ever again.

  After all, he finally had a clue to his past, possibly even to his real family. And while they may have abandoned him to the Thistlethorns as a baby, he was willing to reserve his judgment until he’d heard their reasons. And judging by the strange letter he’d received, there was definitely something weird going on.

  Maybe they pissed off someone very important, like a powerful Quinthar, and they sent me into hiding for my own protection...

  Rylan tried to picture what his parents might look like, and particularly their shocked expressions as they learned that the son they’d abandoned was a Quinthar now, capable not only of protecting himself, but them too.

  He didn’t get very far with it. He’d seen his own reflection often enough to imagine an older, bearded version of himself as his father, but he had absolutely no clue what he should picture his mother to look like.

  All he got was a vague impression of a voice, humming a familiar tune, some kind of lullaby. Was he making that up, too, or was it actually a memory?

  Rylan let out a sigh. He could fantasize all night, but it wouldn’t bring him closer to any real answers.

  Shaking his head, he decided to stop thinking about it all for a moment, and instead pester Ethereon for some windows.

  His Status hadn’t changed, except for his Mana Pool having refilled to its full 11-point capacity. When he summoned his Knife-Throwing Window, however, he got a bit of a surprise.

  Knife-Throwing

  Rank 1

  Effects

  Blade guard

  Stable flight

  Forceful impact

  Augmentations

  Overcharge: 0.5 mana

  What’s this, a new heading? And it specifies the maximum amount of mana that my Skill can hold when overcharged!

  As he looked at the word ‘Augmentations,’ Ethereon once again seemed to whisper meaning into his spirit.

  So an Augmentation is a new effect, added as part of a Rank-Up... Interesting!

  Looking at the line below the heading, he instinctively understood that it was greyed out to signify that the Augmentation wasn’t complete yet, that he still had some ways to go before the Skill could Rank-Up.

  It looked like Ethereon was not only guiding him along the path towards his first Rank-Up, but even showing him his progress along the way!

  I wonder if Ethereon does this at every Skill rank...

  Well, either way, it would be a great way to monitor his progress, and check his safety limits.

  The Skill’s requirements had disappeared from the window as well, but Rylan supposed he didn’t have any pressing need to see those listed anyway. And he was sure he could always ask to see them again if he somehow forgot what they were.

  He spent the rest of his watch daydreaming about being a powerful Quinthar, taking down Malequints—and other Quinthar—like they were flies, and casually dropping a couple of Decacubes or even a Hectocube on his fuzzy-faced parents’ dinner table.

  Somehow, the hardest part for him to imagine was them actually being happy to see him.

  Eventually, he decided it was time to heat up their leftovers.

  And so began their second day in the cloudsea. The mood over breakfast was significantly less tense than it had been the morning before, and Soren even made small talk as they ate.

  Tamina was quiet again, but she probably just wasn’t a morning person, Rylan decided.

  They cleaned and packed up quickly, and set out again, trying to find their way through the maze-like reef.

  Most of their day consisted of slogging through sand, interspersed with brief moments of high tension when a large predator came a little too close for comfort, and they had to duck under some nearby coral to hide.

  When night fell, they didn’t manage another lucky find of an abandoned building, and instead made do with a small clearing adjacent to a large overhanging coral they could sleep under.

  They had fogfish fillet for dinner. Rylan had managed to take one down with his Skill when it had drifted low enough that he didn’t have to worry about the precious implement sailing off into the fog. In the evening, they once again trained, with Soren and Tamina sparring and Rylan off practising his throws by himself.

  And so it continued. During the day, they mostly walked in silence, ever-vigilant. During meals, they spoke quietly about stuff like what they missed most about being on land.

  For Rylan, it was dry socks.

  He also carefully tried to pry into what Tamina’s life in Summit had been like, but she remained rather tight-lipped about it, dismissing any questions on the topic with a shrug and a short-to-the-point-of-meaningless answer.

  It was still more than he got out of her regarding the Talons or her Skills. Any questions about such topics were met with pointed silence—likely due to her Contract—but Soren had whispered to Rylan that he suspected she had Shield-Fighting and Footwork, a Skill that mostly improved grip.

  It had sounded a little underwhelming to Rylan at first, until Soren revealed that he’d heard of someone who’d ranked up the Skill to the point that it allowed them to walk up walls.

  During the evenings, they trained. After days of slogging through the maze-like reef, Rylan’s initial enthusiasm about hurrying up had waned, so he poured his energy into improving his throwing instead, persevering through blisters and sore muscles with grim determination.

  The ache in his Skill soon faded, and he started working on overcharging it again, this time under Tamina’s watchful eye. She strictly forbade him from pushing beyond the overcharge capacity Ethereon indicated on his Skill Window, and instead had him focus on pushing right up to that limit, and then trying to control all the mana wrapped up in his Skill for as long and as well as he could.

  He saw the first results after only two days of this practice, when Ethereon indicated his Skill’s overcharge capacity had gone up to 0.6.

  During the night, they slept in shifts, always keeping watch.

  It wasn’t until their fourth day in the reef that they spotted another confirmed Malequint.

  Rylan had gotten quite used to the omnipresent life in the reef. The pale-furred mice, the frogs and toads, the hard-shelled crabs, the colourful fogfish; during the day they were a constant presence, and at night, dinner. They also served as an excellent early warning system for predators.

  So when the reef went quiet, they took cover. Not long after, a shadow passed over them. Looking up, Rylan recognised the source as a huge fogray.

  Then, out of nowhere, a forty-foot-long eel shot up from below it.

  White light sparked from its teeth as it tore through the ray’s wing, before it proceeded to coil around the struggling creature.

  They didn’t stick around for the seemingly inevitable outcome of its hunt.

  However, the true fearfulness of the cloudsea didn’t sink in for Rylan until the sixth day.

  It started with an earth-shaking pounding that caused bits and pieces of the surrounding corals to fall off and caused every single critter to immediately run and hide.

  They all froze to listen to the noise as it rapidly grew louder, the very sand beneath their feet starting to shake. Then all of a sudden, it stopped. However, at that moment, Rylan’s chest grew tight. It was as if the fog had suddenly grown denser, too dense to breathe, and a weight settled over him. Simultaneously, something, some base instinct, prompted him to turn his head to the right.

  Just in time to spot the approach of a massive, segmented, blue-plated crab-leg, heading straight for his companions.

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