The brew that Mel made looked similar to Thomas’ and Gwen’s, despite it being tinged blue like her favorite slush drink. “What’s the plan?” Mel asked, holding onto her [Primeval Brew] like it was the most precious thing in her possession.

  In a way, it was.

  “Good thing I didn’t pick another branch instead,” Gwen said, peering into the contents of her own [Primeval Brew]. “Though I do need more vigor.”

  “You could reset your brew,” Thomas pointed out. “We did.”

  “Would I lose the fire branch though?”

  “I lost the spirit herba,” Thomas said. “So, yeah. You’d lose it, but we don’t know how long the cooldown is. The description doesn’t make it seem short. It might be a day, or several days. Accruing that much BP every single day might be difficult unless we can find a plentiful source of monsters.”

  “Or cultists,” Mel put in. “If I ever see a red-robed son of a bitch, I’m stabbing first and asking questions never.”

  Gwen scrunched her face up at that. “Nah, I’m sticking with what’s in there. I want that perfect attribute.”

  Mel gasped, putting a hand to her chest. “You mean you aren’t willing to be one-hundred-percent efficient at all times throughout your life?! The horror! You are definitely not main character potential, Gwen. For shame.”

  “Mel, are you delirious or what?”

  “I do have a snake inside me, so…kinda,” Mel said thoughtfully. “Kinda cool having a little snek tattoo on my arm. Doesn’t it look badass?” She showed them again, which wasn’t an easy process considering she had to remove her bangle, her glove, and pull up her sleeve.

  But she was really proud of it.

  “...He’s real cute,” Gwen said dreamily, thoroughly distracted. “And yet, he does make a badass tattoo!”

  Thomas stood up, dusting his pants of ash and soot. “It suits you. Now, if you’d like to begin?”

  “Begin what?” Mel asked. “I thought we were just going to drink our totally-not-poison bottles and go out and kill stuff?”

  Thomas shook his head. “That’s no way to train. First of all, the elixir states it enhances meditation. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but I haven’t seen you meditate once this entire time.”

  “Neither have you!” Mel snapped back.

  “What do you think I do while I’m reading?”

  Mel opened her mouth, then shut it again. “That’s not real meditation,” was all she could think to say.

  “He thinks it is,” Gwen said dryly.

  “It’s good enough when I don’t need to do anything deeper,” Thomas insisted. “With everything that’s happened to you, I figured you might need a walkthrough on how meditation is done here.”

  “I know how to meditate,” Mel said. “I’m a Magi, not some street urchin.”

  “It’s different in the multiverse though,” Gwen pointed out. “Not the same as cycling Cinder.”

  “How?”

  Thomas took out his wand, saw the immediate disinterest at an illustrated lesson, then dismissed it with a grumble. “Since I know the both of you have the attention span of a peanut , I’ll make it simple. You understand that runes are the equivalent of experience in a game, right?”

  Mel nodded. “That was pretty obvious.”

  “The more runes you gain, the more your power grows,” Thomas continued. “Pretty simple, practically linear growth, right?”

  “You’re losing me. Pick up the pace, smart man,” Mel said with a grin.

  “We’ll skip the semantics and the underlying mechanisms then,” Thomas said with a huff that made Mel’s impatience seem on par with kicking puppies. Or, as Mel guessed, not reading the full terms of service before signing up to anything . “There are actually two types of runes. Prime and latent.”

  “I’m guessing prime runes are the main ones we get?” Mel asked.

  Thomas pointed his wand at her like a professor. “Right. Primes are what the system tells us explicitly about. Latent runes are stored, kinda like–”

  “Fat?” Mel interjected.

  “No. Not like fat. You’re not far off though. Think of a reservoir–no, I’m not making an illustration, you lost that privilege–that fills up over time as you gain more latent runes. It just sits there doing nothing–”

  “Like fat.”

  “Mel, I swear to the gods.”

  Gwen lounged on her side, waiting out the explanation.

  Mel raised her hands innocently. “You literally walked right into it. You can’t blame me for that. That’s on you, bud.”

  Thomas took a deep, steadying breath. “The reservoir–not fat–fills up with latent runes, but you can’t use them. They don’t go directly to increasing your attributes or aspects. They just sorta…linger there and fill up over time. Once it fills, it begins to spill over.”

  “Like a gut over a waistband,” Mel said, nodding along.

  “Latent runes? Nah, fat runes,” Gwen whispered to herself with a chuckle.

  Thomas whispered a prayer. “No. I’m not bending on this. You aren’t winning this!” He thrust his wand at Mel. “What happens when you fill a pitcher full of water and then keep filling it?”

  “It spills.”

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  “Exactly! You can’t use that water anymore. It’s wasted. Eventually, you gain enough latent runes that you waste them completely. Your reservoir–”

  Mel nodded. “My soul gut.”

  “–fills up and the extra runes are wasted. However, you can tap into those runes by meditating. By meditating and focusing on what you’ve done and recalling your battles and training, you can draw up that latent supply of runes to further enforce your soul and body. It’s different from the cycling you might be used to, but it’s not completely foreign either. These brews enhance meditation further, suggesting that they either give you latent runes to use, or apply some sort of efficiency bonus.”

  “Smart, ignoring my outbursts,” Mel congratulated. “Now you’re starting to learn. I just like to hear myself talk sometimes and giving me attention just reinforces that desire to blurt out insane things. Still gonna call it a soul gut though.”

  “You’re going to give me a nervous tic,” Thomas said with a lengthy sigh. “But I’m done at least. Gods above, I pity your professors.”

  “Me too,” Mel said with an evil grin. She paused a moment. “I do have a question though. Why not just meditate all the time then? Surely it benefits you, right? And it’s safe.”

  Thomas nodded. “That’s already been tried. When you run out of latent runes, you’ve got nothing to pull into yourself. I’m still of the mind that it works, but instead of drawing on something as energy dense as latent runes, it pulls in ambient aether or mana from the air. If you had an infinite lifespan, maybe it’d be an easy way of gaining power, but we don’t. Not yet.”

  “It got boring as hell too,” Gwen pointed out, half-lidding her eyes as if reliving the dull experience. “And we need those Battle Points to compete.”

  “I think I would probably throw myself off a cliff before I could bother to meditate for days at a time,” Mel said with a shiver of revulsion.

  “I didn’t make it that long,” Gwen admitted.

  “There needs to be a balance.” Thomas took out his brew. “The more you meditate, the more you can feel when you’re running empty. It’s sort of like feeling hungry. That’s the closest I can equate it to. You’ll know though, it won’t be subtle.”

  “So fight, grind, kill monsters and maybe some Bloodtide bastards by day, then meditate by night?” Mel asked.

  “That’s been the most effective way that I’ve found to do it. Meditation takes up less time than fighting. It seems ideal to meditate before resting. By the morning, your latent runes should be spent and you can repeat the process again. Besides, it helps to have the memories fresh in your mind. If you haven’t done it at all…well, it’s likely that you’ll want to meditate first.”

  “So the question I have is: do I burn my soul gut now, or drink this fizzy blue tonic that I really hope tastes like a blue raspberry icee first, then meditate with the rest of you goobers?”

  Gwen patted Mel’s stomach gently. “Not much there.”

  Mel looked at her. “I’m all blocked up girl.”

  She stared. “...Great.”

  Thomas hung his head. “We’ve gone from soul fat to soul gut, to soul…constipation?”

  Mel tapped a finger to the hollow of her cheek thoughtfully. “Huh. That’s a good analogy. I like it. Instead of meditating, I’m dumping out my latent runes.”

  “You did this to yourself, Thomas,” Gwen said. “I’m not helping you out of this. Not after that posturing, mister upperclassman.”

  “I didn’t. You can’t.” He looked between the two of them, throwing up his hands. “WHY?!”

  “But seriously,” Mel said, “please answer my question smart man.”

  Thomas clearly couldn’t resist helping, or else he probably would have stormed out of the camp. “I would suggest you risk wasting the elixir’s runes and drink the brew. If it improves–”

  “Dumping out,” Mel said, nodding along.

  Gwen snickered to herself, turning over so they couldn’t see her reddening face.

  “–your meditation, then you’ll get the most benefit. If it just gives you latent runes, you’ll probably feel the excessive waste. Either way, it’s your call.”

  Mel held up the brew. “Get in me you beautiful blue ex-lax.”

  That destroyed Gwen. She laughed until she was breathless.

  Mel didn’t miss Thomas’ sour expression.

  They sat back around the campfire, adding some wood from Gwen’s inventory to keep the flames nice and high. One by one they drank their [Primeval Brews].

  Each one was differently colored to suit their imbiber. Just as Mel crossed her legs and settled into a meditative pose, Gwen spoke up, “What about your ritual spell?”

  “It’s not complete,” Thomas said.

  Mel cracked open one eye. “What spell?”

  “He has been working on something to help with meditation,” Gwen explained. “It’s why he reads those books.”

  That piqued Mel’s interest, enough that she entirely forgot to make a joke about Thomas making a spell that helped people to dump out. Instead, she asked, “Do you really think you can make something like that?”

  He shot her a guarded look, clearly expecting some sort of joke. When that didn’t come, he relaxed a little. “In theory, it should be. However, I have no books on theory or study materials. It’s the difference between having a manual on how an engine is put together versus looking at various cars rumbling down the road and making guesses from their sounds.”

  “He’ll get there,” Gwen said confidently. “I believe in you, Thomas.”

  Mel didn’t miss the tenderness in her voice. She smiled to herself, unable to refute her claim. Thomas had a way of breaking things down and reassembling them. If anybody could do it, Mel imagined it would be Thomas. “I do too.”

  Thomas cleared his throat bashfully.

  Mel pumped her fist into the air. “Dumping out time!”

  “Let’s shit our pants!” Gwen cried.

  “I’m going to meditate over there,” Thomas said, walking farther away from the group.

  Mel laughed and shut her eyes. She focused on what Thomas had said. Despite all the jokes she made at his expense–making somebody like Thomas squirm gave her a special sort of kick–she found herself visualizing a reservoir full of mana.

  Slowly, Mel focused on her past experiences. Her fight with the creatures in the tomb, the naga, and even further back to the battle with Warren and his guards.

  Further and further back she went, slowly drawing on the latent power left untapped within her.

  Time flowed like a river as Mel immersed herself in her past deeds, both good and bad. In order to pull out the latent runes, she was forced to revisit scenes both horrible and terrifying.

  She refused to shy away from what she had done. She owned her actions. Some she could have done better, others she was glad for what she had done.

  The brew burned within her, helping her to draw out the power sleeping within her. She could feel the strength filling her up, and yet it never seemed to empty.

  Whether it was the brew’s doing or she somehow had an exceptionally large reservoir, Mel was glad that she hadn’t wasted too much potential.

  When Mel opened her eyes, the stars were shining down upon them and her friends were watching her with green light dancing in their eyes.

  “What is it?” Mel asked.

  “Look at yourself,” Thomas said.

  Mel lifted her arms and stared at them in awe. They were wreathed in harmless emerald green flames.