by Jay Boyce
Accessorycraft
Intermediate 6
4%
Alchemy
Beginner 5
69%
Animal Handling
Intermediate 8
58%
Archery
Intermediate 10
54%
Armorcraft
Beginner 5
19%
Astronomy
Beginner 6
31%
Cartography
Beginner 6
51%
Cleaning
Intermediate 2
95%
Compulsion Magic
Intermediate 8
77%
Contractual Magic
Advanced 1
78%
Cooking
Intermediate 1
40%
Dancing
Intermediate 1
14%
Death Magic
Beginner 10
3%
Eating
Advanced 1
61%
Elementalist
Advanced 9
93%
Engineering
Intermediate 6
27%
Excavation
Intermediate 1
2%
Firearms
Beginner 7
63%
Glasscraft
Beginner 9
42%
Gravity Magic
Intermediate 8
75%
Healing Magic
Advanced 4
56%
Herbology
Intermediate 4
45%
Hunting
Intermediate 4
32%
Hypnotize
Intermediate 7
2%
Illusion Magic
Advanced 2
63%
Insight
Advanced 4
96%
Leathercraft
Beginner 5
13%
Life Magic
Intermediate 7
29%
Light Armor
Intermediate 5
32%
Mana Sense
Intermediate 10
8%
Merchant
Advanced 10
65%
Modeling
Intermediate 7
23%
Navigation
Intermediate 10
28%
Obscured
Advanced 8
99%
Perception
Advanced 4
82%
Resistor
Advanced 8
98%
Singing
Intermediate 3
32%
Skinning
Beginner 5
1%
Small Blades
Intermediate 9
56%
Spatial Magic
Intermediate 10
70%
Spears
Beginner 8
27%
Special Magic
Beginner 8
88%
Spiritual Magic
Beginner 2
30%
Summoning Magic
Beginner 8
39%
Swords
Beginner 10
80%
Tailoring
Intermediate 3
78%
Thrown Weapons
Beginner 6
20%
Tracking
Intermediate 5
2%
Unarmed Combat
Intermediate 9
69%
Unstoppable
Advanced 10
10%
Weaponcraft
Beginner 7
63%
Weaving
Beginner 5
58%
Woodcraft
Intermediate 3
63%
Aside from her two combined skills, Alchemy was the only new one she’d finally taken, though special magic was on there too, but she’d earned that herself! Contractual magic and eating made the jump to advanced, while cooking, dancing, and woodcraft moved from beginner to intermediate.
Cartography made the most numeric progress, jumping up five levels, with astronomy and spears at three. Accessorycraft, hypnotize, leathercraft, and summoning magic jumped up two levels, and she had to laugh because she’d still never used summoning magic, but she’d managed to find enough people with it in their top five to almost get it to intermediate.
Animal handling, cleaning, compulsion magic, death magic, engineering, glasscraft, illusion magic, mana sense, modeling, singing, thrown weapons, tracking, weaponcraft, and weaving all managed to go up a single level, but that wasn’t as frustrating as the mere percentages that archery, elementalist, gravity magic, healing magic, insight, life magic, light armor, merchant, navigation, perception, small blades, spatial magic, swords, tailoring, unarmed combat, and unstoppable went up. The combined skills barely moved at all these days, evidence of how hard it was to improve advanced skills.
Sadly, armorcraft, excavation, firearms, herbology, hunting, skinning, and spiritual magic hadn’t moved even a single percent. Spiritual magic was her absolute lowest skill, so it should theoretically be the easiest to raise, right? She grumbled in frustration at her inability to grasp it. She just knew it was holding her back from getting another combined skill. Well, she could always hope it didn’t. She still had eleven magics on her list, with the knowledge that there were still three more she hadn’t yet discovered. The problem was, any one of those magics could be the odd man out, or even four of them. Was it gravity or special magic? She had no way of knowing until she got death, summoning, special, and spiritual magic up to intermediate to test her theory.
She stared at the sunrise, lost in her own thoughts of the skills to work on raising to intermediate, and whether there would be any chances to do so during the day. She was enjoying the peace and quiet of the moment, separated from the world by several stories and a huge hill. She turned, hearing the pounding of the inner door, and began to make her way back inside as Camille groggily went to answer, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“What’s going on? It’s still early…” Camille’s sleepy voice was muffled by a yawn as she opened the door to find a frantic looking Hayden. There were several guards and maids fluttering around in the hall behind him, as if in a panic.
Ignoring his sister, Hayden’s eyes jumped straight to Jade. “Jade! There you are! Come quickly!” He lunged forward, grabbing her hand around Camille before turning and dragging her behind him, forcing her to half run just to keep her arm from being pulled out of its socket. She could have resisted, but he looked so panicked that she didn’t even try. She could hear Cami running behind them to keep up, all of them still in their pajamas.
It was only when she saw several of the guards and maids averting their eyes from her that she realized she was still clad only in a long tunic, with her legs and feet bare to the world. She had a dejá vu of her second day, when she’d gone to the common room in search of food and been scolded by Raphael for public indecency. Ah well; this wasn’t her fault, so it was fine, right?
“Jade! There you are!” She felt another sense of dejá vu wash over her at hearing the exact same words in such a similar voice, but realized that Hunter was running towards her, cradling a sobbing Tisha in his arms. Her head was buried in his neck, her hand clutched against her chest in pain. Unlike the rest of them, she was already fully dressed for the day in a beautiful baby blue dress...which was now thoroughly splattered in oatmeal, as was her hair. Her hand was streaked with it, indicating that someone tried to wipe it off quickly, but angry red welts that were already blistering were left in its wake.
“Oh sweetie, what did you do to yourself?” Jade murmured as Tisha turned to her with tear-stained cheeks, sniffling softly an
d trying to suppress the heavy sobs she’d been letting out moments before. Jade quickly pulled water from the air and washed off her hand, not wanting to accidentally heal any of the oatmeal to the skin. As soon as it was perfectly clean, she gently held Tisha’s wrist, sending a pulse of healing magic to soothe and heal the burn.
Tisha’s sobs ebbed, her shoulders relaxing in relief as she leaned her head on Hunter again, emotionally exhausted from the panic. Hunter hugged his sister closer, inspecting her hand as best he could to make sure she was really okay, and completely ignoring the fact that a lot of her oatmeal mess spread onto his pajamas. Soothingly, Jade asked again, “Are you okay now? What happened?”
Sniffing, Tisha gave her a watery smile as she explained softly, “I was having breakfast with Hayden and Hunter, but Hayden wanted to show me something, so I started walking over with my bowl, and I don’t know what came over me. It felt like something was calling me, and I was distracted and it slipped and I tried to catch it and then it was burning and there was oatmeal everywhere and my hand felt like it was on fire!” Her voice held a note of hysteria by the end as she shuddered, remembering the pain. Jade did a quick second heal check, relaxing some of the tension Tisha was still holding in.
Hunter squeezed her a little, kissing the top of her head as he reassured her softly, “Shhh, it’s okay now. Jade healed it. You’re fine.” Smiling indulgently at his sister, he turned to Jade and gave her a bigger smile. “Thanks for that, Jade. We panicked a bit, and you were the first person we thought of. It would’ve taken a lot longer to call Viscount Cody or one of his apprentices.”
She nodded in understanding, patting Tisha on the shoulder. “You’re welcome, and don’t worry about it too much. You’ll be more careful next time. Besides, my quest was easy, especially because the princess met me halfway!” She grinned, joking, then went on as she noticed the side eyes she was getting from the servants again. “There was no permanent harm done, so don’t worry about it. We should probably all go change, though.”
Hunter’s eyes widened as he took in what Jade was wearing for the first time, but Tisha’s despairing wail startled all of them, drawing their eyes back to her. “Nooooooooooo! My dress! I got up so early to get ready, and now it’s all ruined!”
Camille chose that moment to interrupt her little sister, “Tisha, don’t be silly. Sure, that dress is pretty, but you have so many others that are just as nice.”
“But I wanted to wear THIS ONE!” Tisha wailed back at her sister, plucking despairingly at the oatmeal now drying into it.
Jade giggled, reaching over to pat Tisha on the head like a little child, which distracted her for a moment as she looked at Jade. “You’ll look lovely in anything you wear. Your health is more important than a dress. Now, we all need to go get ready. It’s going to be a busy day, and remember, you get to dance tonight! So don’t worry. It’s not like it was your ballgown.”
“Oh. Right! It’s not my ballgown! It was just my morning dress!” Tisha seemed to belatedly realize it really wasn’t the end of the world, and Camille started pulling Jade away, using her own more flowing skirt to try and block Jade from view of some of the servants.
“We’ll see you in a bit, okay? Be good.” Camille sternly warned her siblings with love as they nodded meekly, and everyone turned away, hurrying back to their rooms. Once they were back inside her room, Camille studied Jade as she shook her head and asked, “I didn’t notice it last night, but do you always wear such revealing clothes to bed?”
Looking down at the tunic that only came down to mid-thigh, Jade shrugged helplessly. “Yes? It’s...close to what I was used to sleeping in my whole life. Sleeping in much more feels constrictive to me.”
“Princess Camille, Lady Jade, your baths are ready. Do you need any assistance?” A previously unnoticed maid came out of the en suite bathroom, a waft of pleasant aromas following her.
“We’ll be fine, thank you. We’ll call for you to come in when we need help.” Camille answered, smiling at the girl, who curtsied and then left the room. Letting out a sigh, Camille gestured to the bathroom. “Shall we?”
Curious, Jade nodded, following her into the large room. The end was sectioned off by screens for privacy, creating two bathing areas. “Do you often need two baths?” She couldn’t help but ask, seeing as it wasn’t something that’d been thrown together for her.
Nodding, Camille stepped behind one screen for privacy as she said, “Yeah, Tisha loves staying with me and getting ready before I go to school. We do it at least once a week, usually. It’s our time to be together and talk. We wouldn’t normally get a ton of one on-one-time, so we’ve got our little traditions with different family members, like Tisha having breakfast with the twins this morning.” Camille trailed off, and the pregnant pause was palpable.
What she left unsaid and Jade inferred were the words ‘we make time for those we care about.’ She hadn’t voiced it, because she clearly understood that Jade had a hard time spending individual time with people; everyone wanted time with her. She barely ever got one-on-one time with anyone like this. Today was the fourteenth day she’d been in the world, and in those two weeks, she’d had no set schedule, even when she thought school would be consistent. Too many things had happened; too many things kept happening.
She could only hope that at some point, things would slow down. She didn’t want the superhero life, always rushing from one disaster to the next. She just wanted the freedom to be a normal girl. Maybe it was asking for too much, but that was still her dream. She wanted to experience a normal school life, and maybe even go on dates. Go on vacations and see the world.
They were beautiful dreams, but for now? She needed to get through today. Tournaments and balls may not be the everyday normal girl experience, but they should at least be fun!
Chapter Forty-One – Mothers
"So, is there a specific dress code for this tournament?" Wrapped only in a giant towel, Jade was staring at the different outfits she'd pulled out of her ring and laid on the bed. Each represented a different style, covering more formal morning type dresses, like what Tisha was wearing, all the way to what she mentally labeled her ‘fight clothes.’
She'd laid them out in order of most formal to least, and Camille stepped over for a second and picked two outfits, then explained, "Anything between these two is fine, but I'd go with pants. It's unlikely that you'll be challenged, but you probably want to be ready for it just in case there's a hothead who can't control himself."
Jade raised a brow. "What makes you think it'll be a guy who challenges me?" From what she'd seen of the Niloi delegation, she'd have pegged the women as the ones who'd challenge her, trying to prove something. Despite her remarks, she’d chosen an outfit from the middle: charcoal grey pants that had a fun cargo-style pocket on the right thigh, and a light green tunic that fit snugly around her chest and flowed loosely around her torso. It fit perfectly over her leather vest without leaving obvious lines, but her favorite part was probably that it was sleeveless. While she’d touched all of the Saibreh delegation during her contractual session, she realized she’d only come into contact with a few of the Resaigh and resolved to do better with the Niloi.
She was determined to get as many strange or unique abilities out of people as she could. Plus, it was good sense to be aware of other people’s best skills. She’d taken the lesson that allies are not always going to have your best interests in mind to heart. “Because the men challenge women to prove their worth as father material.” Camille answered her earlier question, but it almost made her more confused. She hated politics.
Sighing, she sat in front of the mirror and plaited one side of the front of her hair into a french braid before she secured it into a high ponytail with a ribbon that matched the green of her shirt. “Isn’t that a bit unfair? Men are bigger than women. You’d think they would challenge their own gender.” She turned to glance at Camille, who was gaping at her, and realized that while men were still physically bigger t
han women, there wasn’t quite the inequality in the fighting as there was on Earth, because magic and the system seemed to equalize things a bit.
Still staring as if dazed, Camille shook her head. “No, the Niloi women might be smaller, but they’re generally stronger and better trained. If the men can beat them, it proves they have good seed that is worthy of being passed on. They don’t even have to beat them, sometimes they just have to put up a good fight to show they’re equal to the woman they’re courting.”
Jade paused, then walked over to Camille, who was brushing her hair. “Courting? I didn’t think they stayed with one partner? Also, want me to do something with your hair?” At Camille’s nod, Jade began to weave her hair into a half crown braid, figuring that Camille’s selection of a pretty blue dress meant that she didn’t intend to accept any challenges. She wasn’t sure what it meant that Camille warned her to wear pants, then wore a dress herself. Maybe she was reading into things too much.
Camille shrugged, watching her work in the mirror as she answered, “Usually, once a guy has proven himself, they stay together for a couple months at least until she gets pregnant. That’s generally the minimum, unless they have issues. Some of them stay together longer, and occasionally they stay together for life, but that’s rare. They typically provide whatever support the mom allows after the fact.”
