Why is it called a blood moon? Because the moon is red, moron.

  - A loving mother to her child

  I find Dovik righting the furniture inside the ship by the time I make it over. The man looks up at me, a bit sheepishly, as he continues setting the chairs straight. I don’t see any evident signs of anything being scuffed. I make it a point to look over it all later. There is a chance that the man might be guilted into buying me more furniture, and given that we are heading toward the capital city of a duchy, I might be able to find some expensive furniture.

  “Here,” I say to him, tossing him a pouch of coins. “Your cut.”

  He deftly catches it, pulling open the drawstrings and doing a quick count. “You got all of this for disenchanting the monsters we slayed?”

  “I didn’t pick out who killed what. I took all of the monsters. It will be the payment for us helping out.” I take the throne, the key to the ship still lying on one of the armrests, and have Galea seize control of the ship, turning us and pointing us toward Danfalla. It will be well into tomorrow before we arrive.

  “That’s a bit ruthless,” Dovik says, bouncing the pouch in his hand. “They killed at least some of those monsters. Might be fair to give them a cut of the loot.”

  “Do you think they will complain?” I ask. The ship begins streaking forward, slightly rising as we speed off, though you can’t feel any acceleration inside.

  “No,” he admits, falling back into one of the chairs. “You just seemed to have reaped a bounty is all.”

  I shrug, looking at my inventory screen out of the corner of my eye. “I don’t work for free.”

  “Harsh.”

  “Responsible.”

  The counter of my funds in the top corner of the window beams back at me, made larger and more satisfied by the day’s work. All of the magicians today killed a little over three hundred monsters, a tenth of those rank twos. Alone, my disenchant ability created more than a hundred gold as I broke down all of the corpses, an insane sum. Moreover, the multiplicity affix that I adhered to the ability triggered several times, boosting the total by another seventy gold. All of that didn’t even take into account that the vast majority of the wealth came in the form of natural treasures, hides, affix-infused meat, a magical dagger, and even a steel essentia.

  If I were still just the daughter of a farmer, the money I made today could have lasted me more than a decade. Even longer than that if I was smart about it.

  A jingle of coins pulls my attention away from the new big number that tells me how great of a person I am. Dovik stands next to me, handing back the pouch of coins.

  “Keep the coin,” he says. “I am more interested in the meat. Without those two weirdos here to judge us, we might actually get a good meal.”

  My hand snatches up the coin pouch, secreting it back into the vault, before I realize that I am doing it. I’ve never been one to turn down coin, especially the golden kind. “I’ll add it to your tally,” I tell him, pulling out my small brown ledger, opening it to Dovik’s account, and making the adjustment. It is still the same small journal that I began to use in the trial, Dovik’s name is one of the first entries. Flipping the page on a whim, I find Macille’s listing right there. Damn, I still owe the man money. Suddenly, I am very happy to be out of Gale.

  “You don’t need to keep that,” Dovik says with a sigh. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  I wave him off, annoyed. “It’s important to keep track of one’s debts.”

  “Whatever.” He sits in one of the chairs he has dragged over near my throne. “Show me the goods.”

  “A girl could take that the wrong way,” I tell him.

  “They typically take it in the right way when I say it,” he says.

  I roll my eyes at the man, shuffling through my inventory window, finding all of the meat added in the last hour. The inventory window created by Galea interfacing with my vault ability is similar to the storage ring that I still wear, but different in a very important way.

  For one, it is not limited by the number of items that I can place inside, the individual entries expanding with each item that I place into the vault. Likely, it can be filled with items, but that issue is far away. Secondly, the items placed in my vault are not suspended in the same way as the items placed in the ring. When I store the meat in my storage ring, it doesn’t rot or go bad. The same cannot be said for the vault. I learned that the hard way.

  All of this is to say that I need to place the meat into my storage ring anyway to keep it fresh, so Dovik’s rushing me doesn’t bother me all that much.

  One by one, packages of monster meat, bundled in what can only be described as butcher’s paper, begin to pile on the floor as I pull them from the vault. Initially, I start to sort them by monster, but as I inspect them closer, I find a mix of affixes among them and try to sort them that way. The silvery affix I know, and my eye’s ability to identify objects helps in sorting the rest. All in all, there are four major affixes among the meat I have gathered: steel, which is by far the most abundant, sharpness, power, and fear. The fear affixed meat is a bit surprising until I remember that the monsters were named terror wolves. There are some that I set off to the side, meat taken from the disparate monsters that had joined the stampede of wolves, but the mana contained within isn’t enough in quantity to comment on.

  Dovik looks over the piles of bundled meat as I explain to him the affixes contained. He squints at the one I set aside, noting the fear affinity it contains.

  “I don’t think that I have ever been tested for that affinity,” he says. Dovik then leans back in his chair and pulls an object out of his storage item. I immediately identify it as a powerful creation of enchantment, but to my more mundane senses, it appears as a huge pearl, nearly the size of a palm, with a wand of steel connected to it through a copper wire. He holds it up, noting my obvious unfamiliarity with the instrument. “Have you ever had your affinities tested?” he asks.

  “I know what they all are,” I answer, a perfect nonanswer.

  He shrugs, letting me keep my secrets, and waves the wand attached to the pearlescent orb over the meat that I set aside. Immediately, the milky whiteness of the orb begins to darken, becoming a purple so deep that it is almost black. I am a bit caught off guard by the sudden rush the orb gives to my magical sense. It all of a sudden contains the same salty and rich taste that I sensed a bit from the fear-tainted meat. Dovik then touches the wand to his chest. Nothing happens for a moment, before suddenly the orb flashes with a vibrant red light, returning to its milky whiteness less than a second later, any trace of the fear-affixed mana contained within having vanished.

  “No dice,” he says. “Jor’Mari probably has the fear affix.”

  “But he will get nothing from the meat,” I say. What a waste.

  “It would still probably be quite tasty for him, even if he can’t absorb the mana inside in such a straightforward and easy way as we can. I bet if the pretty farm girl that granted him a kiss before disappearing back to her orchard cooked it for him, he would enjoy it immensely.”

  I feel a blush come at the mention of that. I had just done that on a whim. I would like to say that it slipped my mind, but I have thought about that kiss several times in the last few weeks, especially when I was out on the grass staring at the stars and when I was trying to get to sleep.

  “That’s right, that did happen. I had almost forgotten,” I lie.

  “Right.” Dovik turns his attention back down to the bundles on the ship floor.

  “So,” I say, trying to adopt the nonchalance that the man beside me is so effortlessly capable of displaying. “How did he take that?”

  “Take what?” Dovik glances back at me for just a moment before looking back down. “I have a minor connection with steel affix,” he mutters. “It is a good foundation for body tempering I suppose.”

  “The kiss,” I say, nodding at Dovik’s muttering like it was a serious thing to consider. “Did he say anything about it after I left?”

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  “No,” Dovik says, tapping the largest pile of bundled meat with his affix detector wand before tapping his chest. This time, the color in the orb sparks a dull green for a moment before turning white once more. “No, he mainly just strutted around like the top rooster for a day or two and then got all quiet and sad for the rest of the time before I left. He will probably be back to his usual self by the time we arrive. Likely, he forgot all about it, same as you.”

  “Yeah. Same as me.” I nudge away some of the steel-affixed meat with my foot, getting a dirty look from Dovik. He doesn’t complain though, moving on and looking at the other spoils.

  Dovik sighs, leaning back in his chair and kicking his legs up on the armrest. “Nothing good for me it seems. All yours, my lady.”

  I sigh as well, pulling a proper footrest from my vault to kick my legs up on. “I don’t like people thinking that I am nobility,” I say. “It never even crossed my mind that it would happen in the empire. Don’t those people know that there are no human nobles here?”

  “She obviously thought you were foreign, which you are.”

  “Same empire.”

  “An empire that you didn’t even know the name of just a few months ago.” I have to concede that point. “Really though, Charlene, if you don’t want people thinking you are nobility, then you probably shouldn't walk around wearing a golden crown.”

  “I know,” I say, tapping the crown. “It’s just so useful though.”

  “That, I understand. Take the bad with the good. It is a great piece of equipment that just might get you mistaken for someone of importance now and again. Could that lead to you potentially landing yourself in some deep trouble, sure, but good equipment is often worth that risk.”

  “I know you’re joking,” I say, “but it really is that good.”

  “Then keep it,” he says.

  “It isn’t as if I need your permission.”

  “Well, I am giving it anyway.”

  I roll my eyes at the man but have to admit that I feel a bit better. Thinking back on that healer whose name I’ve already forgotten, I feel a bit unsettled. “They were…weak, weren’t they?”

  “Who?”

  “The other magicians. By the time that I arrived, they looked fairly exhausted. I counted only fifty or so dead monsters, but I am willing to bet that you made up the majority of those. They had a rank two guardian with them, but all that man did was fight defensively. Their mage was obviously out of mana already. Between the five of them, with them either having already reached the second rank or so close to it, how could they have already been at their limit.”

  Dovik looks at me for a time, trying to determine if I am being sincere or not. Evidently deciding that I am, he shakes his head, knocking it back against the head of his seat. “They are low-rank adventurers,” he says. “Not in terms of their development as magicians, but as the quality. That woman said that her team was high-copper tier, not very impressive. You can’t blame them, as most fall into that category. They either don’t have the advantage that the truly talented like us do, or they didn’t focus enough on increasing their power to climb higher. It could always be both. Don’t blame them for it. It is what it is.”

  “I’m not blaming them for it,” I say. Stopping, I think that over, uncertain if it is true. “I just find it odd. Also, don’t group me in with you. You are the one who is the son of some famously powerful magician, the one who has inherited some kind of crazy legacy, and the one who grew up rich enough to afford all the best tutors and equipment.”

  “True,” he says, not put off in the least. “Except for the fact that my niece picked you up out of obscurity and gave you not only an incredibly powerful artifact but also two-thirds of your essentia. Also, you were given entrance into a trial for the rich elites that took place in a hunting ground others would literally kill to be allowed into. Oh, and I might have forgotten to mention, as you certainly forgot to mention it to me, but your brother is also a rank-five magician. More incredible, the man achieved such a feat before the age of forty. I would say that all of these things are powerful advantages that most would lack.”

  Unlike Dovik, I feel an immediate urge to take offense. His words beat against the fragile self-image of being just a country bumpkin that got to where she is off only her hard work and gumption. The fact that I can’t refute what he says makes it all the worse. Still, I take a breath, keeping myself calm.

  “I take your point. I don’t like it, but I will take it.”

  “Good, because it’s true. Charlene, if I talk about pure magical potency, there are only a handful of people that I have seen who would rival you at having just reached the second rank. More, add those nasty new spears you are chucking around, and you have even covered for enemies that have high magical resistance, something that I am always on the lookout for. I think you know why. As a ranged combatant, there are few who I think would outmatch you in terms of the hurt you can deliver. Couple that with your resilience, the vast depth of your mana pool that I have witnessed personally, and your ability to recover as quickly as you do, face it, you are an elite.

  “We managed to make silver tier as adventurers without needing to take any formal kind of exam. That is not something done, but it was done for us. Yes, partly because of who I am, but the league isn’t as shallow as that. You placed in the top ten of a trial held by the Willian Guild, a trial where hundreds of young scions participated. You, a girl who had only been a magician for a few weeks before the trial even began, beat out almost all of them. If we had actually gone and been evaluated, I don’t doubt that everyone on our team would be able to score higher than silver. I don’t want you on this team because you are my friend–well, at least that isn’t the only reason–I want you because you are powerful. You are going to have to admit this to yourself, Charlene, you are an elite and a rare talent.”

  I chew on the words. The idea of me calling myself an elite seems so ludicrous that I want to dismiss it immediately. The rational part of my mind tells me not to. I can’t exactly find fault with what he says, again, maddeningly again. If you just looked at the outcome, I had placed high in the trial, though I am well aware that I would have fallen several rankings if the contest continued past the tower. The rank twos in the trial would have just pulled too far ahead for me to catch up to.

  Despite knowing that he isn’t, Dovik’s words also sound like he is trying to dismiss all of my hard work. I hadn’t understood Halford’s command to work harder than everyone else at first, but after waking up at the bottom of that cliff, barely clinging to life, I threw myself fully into that mindset. My brother was right, as he often is. Most of the other contestants that I had seen throughout the trial had been arrogant and uncaring. I’m fairly certain that they had all been arrogant in their own ways. I still think that I am different from them, but I wouldn’t ever call myself weak. If I was being truly honest with myself, out of our team of four, Dovik is the only one that I don’t think I could beat in a fight. That meant, that despite how lowly my origins, how unimportant I really am, maybe I am some kind of elite magician.

  The sentiment still feels false. Maybe that is something else to work on.

  “You just say whatever you think, don’t you?” I ask, poking the bundles on the floor with the toe of my boot, storing them away into my ring where they won’t rot. “Ready at any moment to shatter a girl’s ego.”

  “You try to hide it, but I know that ego of yours is as hard as iron and as big as a moon,” he says, nudging a bundle of the steel-affixed meat aside.

  “People with big egos don’t hide them,” I inform him. “Have you met yourself?”

  “Thankfully, yes. Let’s stow the topic away. Like any wise sage, I’ll leave you with my words to think on,” he says, standing and snatching up the bundle.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to cook us dinner,” he says over his shoulder, waving the affixed meat.

  “You know how to cook?”

  “Not at all.”

  All I can do is shake my head and turn back forward on my throne. Galea handles the navigating while I turn my mind to thinking.

  Thinking of Galea, I recognize again what a powerful artifact the Eye of Volaash has been. Compared to most humans, I am almost a third stronger as the eye counteracts the inefficiency of soul reinforcement that most humans experience. From what I understand, that gap is closed when humans achieve each rank milestone, the extra soul energy they haven’t been able to incorporate being transformed into something almost resembling my free points. No, the gap between me and that healer couldn’t have come from that.

  Dovik was also right about my being able to access a hunting ground. I had been with my brother’s team for most of the time he was an adventurer. Finding challenges that he thought his group could handle was what occupied most of his time and effort. In the forest of the trial, there had been no challenge in finding monsters to face; the place had been lousy with them. I progressed quickly, perhaps too quickly, but the constant combat had allowed me to specialize in a very narrow way. Likely, any run-of-the-mill magician would have a higher strength, defense, and magic defense than I do, but I doubt that any could match my recovery or magic, and likely only the highly specialized could eclipse my speed.

  I have never bothered asking anyone if this is a good or bad thing, but I don’t believe it to be. If I had less mana today, I wouldn’t have been able to handle that stampede on my own. No, I think I might be doing this whole magician thing right.

  The smell of burning meat catches my attention. I am pulled from my throne by the need to snuff out the small fire that Dovik has set in the back of the ship, cooking on some strange stove he has pulled out of nowhere.

  We share one of the meals my mother packed, staring out at the dark sky as the landscape rolls by unseen below. It’s nice, and time passes by without notice. I occupy myself with reading, having Galea steer us well clear of any of the flying monsters she manages to see with the ship’s instruments. The spirit leaves me alone, Dovik either concerning himself with his studies or with sleeping. For a rank two magician, the man sure sleeps a lot.

  When Galea informs me that Danfalla has come into view, I find myself too occupied with a passage to look up. By the time I can put the book down, Dovik is already at the front of the ship, looking down and marveling at the city.

  The first thing that comes to mind as my gaze roams over the brown and black buildings intermingling in a chaos on the two sides of a wide and winding river is that someone has spilled dark pebbles out onto the grass. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the structure that I can see from the air, nothing like Grim. Hundreds of buildings, maybe so many as a thousand, expand away from the river choked with all manner of skimming craft. There are entire neighborhoods of squat, cheap-looking structures, their depressing closeness broken up by a random clock tower five stories tall straight in their midst. There are entire sections or rigid black-bricked municipal buildings set around wide parks. I can see no pattern to the chaos other than that everywhere seems choked with people.

  Not just the usual buzz of a city that I have come to know in Grim infests Danfalla, but people sitting out on the streets, small tents erected here and there. Danfalla is stuffed with all sorts of people, so much so that it looks like a nightmare to try and navigate the streets.

  There is a single district that sets itself apart, the northern part of the city. There, the streets are wide and mostly empty, the white stones peeking up from the road lined with fine black-bricked buildings. These are all high buildings, great expense put into their sloping and flowing architecture. All of the attention in the northern part of the city sweeps away, all roads leading to a single structure, a magnificent castle built on the slopes of a lonely mountain, the Duke’s Castle.

  “We’re here,” Dovik says. “Now, we get to have fun.”

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