“How is it you cause such a headache in three days, Ward Harridan? Answer me that.”

  Volithur stood at attention before the irate Marshal. “I don’t know, Master Marshal.”

  “You asked a member of the family to marry you? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. But then it gets worse. She actually agreed to your proposal. Her guardian consented.” The Marshal loomed over Volithur. “How do you manage to make such a mess of things in three days? How do you even know this girl?”

  “We were in css together.”

  “A css where a commoner sits silent in the back.”

  “We practiced calcutions together in the library after css, Master Marshal.”

  The frightening man’s fingers curled to make fists. “You have been meeting unchaperoned with a young woman of the family? Ward Harridan, tell me truthfully, is she pregnant?”

  “She is not, Master Marshal.”

  “Do not lie to me. If you misrepresent this, I will hit you with a chaos bolt that makes you wish you were dead. Is she pregnant?”

  “It isn’t possible, Master Marshal.”

  “Wishful thinking and ignorant attempts at birth control will not impress me.”

  “We have not had retions yet.”

  “If I find out otherwise….” The Marshal pushed Volithur roughly back into his room. “You have made a mess of things, boy. Your shenanigans kept the team up all night and cost them a repeat of their victory. Master Lydia is out for your blood. The family council is debating whether or not to even allow this marriage to happen. A wedding is a lot cheaper than buying a real education, but they are not pleased with you and your presumptions.”

  He did not know what to think about that. On the one hand, he did like the idea of being with Khana. On the other hand… he had a lot less to offer her than she knew. A political obstacle might be the best resolution to this mess that he could ask for. Khana wouldn’t be caught in the fallout of his lies. He would be able to escape into obscurity….

  The Marshal remained in the doorway, an immovable object. “Here are my instructions for you, Ward Harridan. Do not meet with Khana in private. Any meetings are to be chaperoned, preferably by Master Rowan or myself. You are not to gossip of the matter.” He raised his voice loud enough to be heard by all the nearby soldiers who were no doubt listening intently. “Nor will anyone else under my command gossip about the matter. This is family business and none of us wants to be implicated in it.”

  Volithur struggled to get back to sleep after the rude awakening. In the morning, he found himself facing a gauntlet in the intermediate skill css. He was forced to fight one soldier at a time while the rest watched from the sidelines, with a new one rotating in every time Instructor Lisbet decided he needed a fresh opponent.

  It was the first time since he’d supercharged his lungs that he felt his cardio tested. He continuously gasped for air as he fended off punches, kicks, knees, elbows, trips, throws, and tackles. They didn’t break from sparring to move into spear practice that day. Volithur had no doubt the Marshal had left explicit instructions to torment him. Hopefully his punishment would only st that single css.

  When Instructor Lisbet dismissed everyone at the normal time except for him, he knew that he wouldn’t be forgiven so easily. She informed Volithur that the two of them would be doing an extra workout for the next week. Then she loaded backpacks with rocks and brought out weights that fit around the ankles of their standard issue boots.

  Thus encumbered, they began to hike along the inner edge of the wall surrounding the estate. Instructor Lisbet set an ambitious pace and forced him to constantly echo back motivational chants she would shout at him. “Hard work, hard work, hard work! Gimme gimme hard work!”

  His legs burned at first, then began to feel heavy like they had been filled with lead. As they approached the end of their first p, Volithur grew hopeful that the exercise had reached its conclusion. It had not. They did four more ps, at the end of which Instructor Lisbet allowed Volithur to colpse.

  “Since you are no longer attending csses in the pace, you will be attending the afternoon conditioning training with the rest of us, Ward Harridan. Hydrate and grab lunch.”

  He drank copious amounts of water, but found himself preferring to y on the ground instead of eating bread. Back on the training field for the conditioning training, he managed to somehow not be st when they ran, nor did he give up during push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, box jumps, rope climbs, bear crawls, or bridge holds.

  His increased stamina proved a liability as he didn’t feel he had a good excuse to stop at any point. He always had just a little bit of fuel left in his gas tank. Too much to justify flopping to the ground, at any rate. And his enhanced digestive system didn’t easily escate from ‘upset stomach’ to ‘hurling up the st meal’ like it once had.

  Volithur survived the workout, then retired to the barracks to rest. That was not to be, as the Sergeant sought him out. “Ward Harridan, today you begin domain training.”

  “Sergeant, I don’t have much energy stored in my soul.”

  “Then you will find the lesson more challenging than it would be otherwise. Now get your butt to the training field.”

  Once they were outside, the Sergeant set several rocks the size of a human fist between the two of them. “These are our training aids. We will be extending energy through our domain apertures. Then we will form appendages within our area of influence and use them to move the rocks. It’s a very simple technique, but there is a serious learning curve. Don’t be surprised if you can’t even find your target the first couple of times.”

  Volithur sighed dramatically as he pushed energy through the domain aperture of his soul. Despite his curiosity, he had always avoided performing any domain work due to the knowledge that it was extremely wasteful of cosmic energy. He had never been in a pce where he could afford the expense. There was always a desperate need to level up his soul or enhance his body taking precedence over experimenting for the fun of it. Over time, he had developed a generally negative opinion of domains. He wasn’t a natural at any of the Xian skills, with the exception of senses Khana cimed were superior than average.

  But he had been given an order and there was no benefit to disappointing one of his few allies on the estate. So Volithur slowly pushed out his domain, feeling the confusing feedback from the invisible sphere extending out from him in all directions. It created a noticeable drain on his energy reserves even in its passive state. Volithur estimated his soul would be completely empty in no more than fifteen minutes.

  Next up came forming the appendages. Volithur tried several times before he figured out how to concentrate energy into a dense cable, which shot his energy expenditure through the roof. He would be exhausted in maybe two minutes at this rate. The cable of energy had frayed threads leaking from every inch of its length, which was a far cry from the smooth creations he’d observed from others.

  “Very sloppy technique,” the Sergeant observed.

  Knowing he didn’t have much time left, Volithur swiped a cable across the ground to sp the three rocks and send them flying.

  “Now, don’t be surprised if you can’t… oh.” The Sergeant blinked at the rocks as if confused by their movement. After a moment, smooth glowing cables extended from him and pced the rocks back in their starting positions. “Not terrible for a first try, Ward Harridan. Try demonstrating a little more control, however. Lift one of the rocks straight into the air.”

  Volithur used the st of his energy to coil an energy appendage around the center rock and lift it up a single foot. Then his reserves failed and his domain guttered out. The rock fell back to its original spot. “I’m out of energy,” Volithur needlessly stated.

  The Sergeant stared at the rock. “Well, that was not the complete disaster I expected it to be. You have superb accuracy and at the same time some of the worst appendage formation I have ever seen.”

  “Khana says I am talented at sensory techniques,” Volithur said with a touch of pride.

  “Your future wife,” the Sergeant noted.

  “I… don’t think I’m supposed to talk about that, Sergeant.”

  “Is it love?”

  Volithur nodded, not daring to put his tangled thoughts into words.

  The Sergeant shrugged. “Though they like to think otherwise, nobles are no different than any other human. The members of the Shaocheth family conveniently forget that the Lord General himself was born a commoner. He only became a noble when he reached level ten and became a Lord. If you love the girl, Ward Harridan, and she loves you, then it is a good match.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “I will be sure to let the Marshal know you have some talent for precision domain work. That may alleviate some of the pressure being pced on you. But now you need to cultivate to restore your energy reserves.”