The meaning and purpose of training had ged over the years for Fuyuko.

  When she was young, it was just something fun she did with her parents and art of them telling stories about their past before they settled down and had her.

  After that night of fire, it had been something she'd doh other kids, whose features and names were blurred and hazed in her memory. That training had been simply what they could figure out to do with sticks, stones, and their bodies and had been about survival oreets.

  They'd do because there were other kids their age oreets, those who did not hear or refused the call of Sanctuary. Those kids were usually junior members of a gang, and flict could get violent. Plus there were always the older ones who were often even more violent as they became more useful to the gangs.

  Not that the caretakers wahem to fight. If they got into trouble, they were supposed to run home. But that wasn't always easy and sometimes one had to fight their way free. But they always worked to keep each other safe and never left one of their own behind. And with shadow's luck, one way or ahey had always escaped, even if sometimes one or more of them had to be carried ed by the others.

  The memories were still vague and spotty, but they were slowly returning.

  After she'd left, Fuyuko's training had been those weeks on the farm and she had ti almost every day while she traveled, up until she'd been injured fighting the peryton. When Fuyuko was well enough, Gil had started training her as well. She had to admit that nothing before that pared to the iy and precision of his training. All of that training had been simple practicality, she had no way of knowing what her future held, and she might hose skills.

  Now, here, in her new home, she tio train, though in ways more varied thahing else together. At first, that training had been partly to make sure she could do what she wanted iure, and to do her part in being someohat others could rely on.

  However, her training had slowly grown into a purpose for its own sake. It felt good to be able to aplish things she'd not been able to do before and to feel herself bee stronger and faster. Fuyuko was now in an ongoing petition with herself to ever improve, and in a petition with her friends to see who could improve the fastest and the most.

  Well, that petition was mostly with Gan and Derek, once Derek had arrived with a caravan on the schedule that Shizoku had broken in her e over Aia's pregnancy. They certainly weren't going to send her ba her own and there was no point in trying to find a group for her to travel with when she'd be due to e back so soon.

  Shizoku was diligent, but she didn't get petitive about this sort of thing. Even in the bookish stuff, Shizo wasn't really petitive, she just loved learning and reading a lot and didn't o pete to keep improving.

  Still, Fuyuko found that she loved the rush of pushing herself and tinually improving.

  Usually.

  There were some days that made her feel differently about the matter.

  Right now, Fuyuko rinting across an open field with a light coating of snow while the sun shone bright in the sky above her.

  While she kept shadows ed around herself as well as she could while the bright light tried to burn it off.

  Again.

  Fuyuko had lost t of how many times she'd dohis exercise today, but it had been enough that Fuyuko had to dig deep into her will and the powers of her heritage to stand at all, let alone sprint as she currently was.

  The agony of her protesting body might make her resentful if Mama M wasn't pushing herself just as hard and in a simir way.

  Her adoptive parents had discovered that a suffit amount of earth-attuned mana celed out Moriko's ability to walk through the air without effort. She could still do it with a little bit of effort, but the more earth-attuned energy she had on her person, the harder it was to simply step up into the air.

  Moriko was currently wearing a thick, padded outfit covered with heavy ptes of ented stone aal as she sprinted across the field while several feet above the ground.

  This was how most training days with Mama M went; she would find something difficult for both of them to repeatedly do that was simir in some way, and they would both do it until one of them couldn't move anymore.

  So far, that was always Fuyuko, no matter what insane challenge Moriko gave herself.

  Once Fuyuko was uo tinue and often uo move, Mama M would take care of her until the eveni. bined with her own healing powers, that meant that they could now train in unarmed bat. This was Fuyuko's favorite part, because Betty also trained with them for this now that she'd had her child, ay always brought her son Boril with her.

  Fuyuko always mao find a way to sneak in a little bit of time with the adorable usagisune baby boy with dark, blue-gray hair.

  Boril's arrival had surprised Fuyuko at first, but she'd only been vaguely aware of the fact that dungeon inhabitants had accelerated pregnancies.

  Mordecai had ented during that night's dio Kazue and Moriko that his personal biases seemed to have tweaked the usagisune default form as Boril was born in his almost-human form. With Betty being a first-geion usagisune, Gil being human shouldn't have influenced her child's base form.

  Betty said that she'd picked the name because it meant, roughly, 'to fight' and it tained parts of her name and Gil's hough she'd also mentiohat it was simir to a word in a different nguage that meant 'wolf', which Fuyuko rather liked.

  While she wasn't ied in having one of her own, Fuyuko liked babies a lot. Especially since she could hand them back when they got smelly. Her nose was sensitive enough to notice that fast and early.

  Training days with Kazue were very different from those with Moriko. Mama K mostly focused on reviewing what Fuyuko had learned from other tutors like Horace, the librarian utan zone boss, and toug up anything Fuyuko was having trouble with.

  But they did do some training too, it was just not focused on pushing themselves. Instead, Mama K wao test things like having Fuyuko figure a way around a warding spell or Kazue trying a spell to see how well Fuyuko could resist or shake off its effects.

  These were all done very carefully and any experiments were called off immediately if it seemed like something might have gone wrong.

  her one of them felt fident enough to try direct sparring, their bat styles were too opposite without having a great uanding of the other ohey just couldn't spar safely uhey both chose to do only unarmed fighting. Fuyuko won the few times they tried that, but she still felt foxfire was cheating, even if it was a natural on for Kazue that she always had avaible.

  Bellona's training was great as far as Fuyuko was ed. A lot of fighting practice, exactly what she wanted. Not that Bellona always trained her directly; a lot of the time she wao have Fuyuko work with one of the rabbit folk who had a specific style that Bellona wanted Fuyuko to get used to.

  Eveer was the occasional training with 'Gramps'. Thinking about Ricardo's expression when she'd called him Gramps still made Fuyuko want to giggle. Still, they had a simir fighting style and the 'old man' seemed both eager to both prove he still had what it took to keep up with Akahana and to teach a new disciple more than a few tricks.

  Fuyuko had not tried to give Akahana a niame. She'd paused after calling Ricardo 'Gramps' and given Akahana a questioning look.

  "Auntie," Akahana had said, resolving the matter firmly.

  The only reason that Fuyuko didn't get to train with Gramps more often was that he was often delving. This was also why Fuyuko didn't get to see Shizoku, Derek, and Gan more often, though she always got a free day whehey returned from a delve. Right now this meant every few days as they couldn't delve very far, even with a team.

  Mordecai had bee her rarest trainer, but he had also bee a specialist for Fuyuko. He was the one whht all her disparate lessons together and taught her how to things like bine her dagger work with her shadow powers and the teiques she'd figured out from w around Kazue's shields.

  Whenever Fuyuko mastered one of these synergies, she always felt a little stronger and more fident. It could take weeks to master them after Mordecai had taught Fuyuko enough to tinue practig on her own, but Fuyuko had some very good reasons to spend a lot of energy mastering them.

  They also unlocked a little more of her memories.

  She'd sidered asking Mordecai about it when she realized what was happening, but Fuyuko waited to give it some thought first as the idea felt familiar. After thinking about it for a while, she remembered that Mordecai had already told her that her memories would retur was safe for her to have them.

  Being strong and self-suffit was the best way for her to be that sort of safe. The teiques and skills that bined different aspects of her training into something that was hers were the most crete advances in her personal power.

  Fuyuko was hoping to have most if not all of her memories back by the time they fiheir trip to the southern dungeon. Mordecai had said that sihey were going to be going up to Trionea, it would be best to make a visit to where she had lived before they dealt with the wizard who held Deidre's core in thrall.

  He had two major reasons. First, time mattered when it came to the sg of past events. While a few months might not make much differe this point, a few more years easily could. This brought up his sed reason: They didn't know what was going to happen after the dungeon raid, and they might not have the luxury of vising the city afterward.

  There was one problem: Fuyuko wasn't sure she could remember where she lived more than six years ago. She'd only bee!

  But she had a potential solution to that problem that would also involve doing something she wao do anyway: see Caretaker Yvonne again, and maybe some of her friends too, if she could remember them well enough.

  So she trained as the weeks rolled by without major i.

  Mostly.

  Shizoku only stayed in Fuyuko's room for two nights, but that was enough.

  Her room was now permaly inated with white fur and sparkling faerie dust from Shizoku's tails. It was only occasionally irritating, but oime she had been particurly annoyed about it and tried to purify at least what she was wearing by beira selective when taking a small shadow jump. Fuyuko had been trying to filter out anything 'fn' to her, other than her gear.

  Fuyuko didirely remember the end of her test, she mostly remembered feeling particurly awful almost immediately. It wasn't paily, but it was weird, unfortable, and a little panidug.

  Papa had swooped in immediately of course, but normally Fuyuko would have expected her Mamas to nurse her beyond the first moments of crises. Instead, Mordecai was in more often than they were to check up on her.

  More than once she'd heard him muttering something about the short life spans ies.

  Hey, at least she rodigy?

  It turned out that by filtering everything that was supposedly 'not her', she'd filtered out a lot of symbiotic life that was a normal part of everyone's bodies. For her, this was about three pounds of weight acc to Mordecai.

  She found that number disturbing to think about.

  Unfortunately, Fuyuko had a few days to think about it. The dungeon's reset didn't really see the missing life as damage, and Mordecai had made her repeatedly take pills through each day, along with a few very herbal-tasting drinks and giving her a few iions.

  That was a new and scary experience. She didn't know that there were medies you could i like that. But you could i poisons, so why shouldn't you be able to i good stuff?

  Oh, aweeed visits by both Shikoku and Kazue, Fuyuko's room was now ied with both white and red fur.

  Zagaroth