Dave was not as easy to find as I had hoped, even with my racial trait helping me cheat by showing what everyone was known as, this city seemed big enough that I could wander around all day and never find him.

  "I probably should have asked where to find him. . ." I muttered to myself, looking around at the many faces as the streets grew more and more crowded as the sun rose in the sky. Unfortunately Zerrious was a monster and heard me clear as day.

  "You didn't think to ask for more information on our only lead?" he asked quietly, minor frustration creeping its way into his words.

  "There was a lot going on," I responded weakly, the few nights of not getting much sleep starting to catch up to me now that we were moving again. I should have taken Zerrious up on that offer to find somewhere to sleep, he needed his full strength to do. . . Whatever he had to do, but I needed my full strength just to be able to follow him around.

  "Do you know anything else?" Zerrious asked, exasperation mixing with my exhaustion making the words seem much more mean spirited than they should have been.

  "Not really about Dave. The hunters have stories about monsters that might go somewhere. . . if we can find them." I really hadn't thought this through.

  Zerrious nodded and we started walking, making our way through the increasingly packed streets as we tried to make sense of the mazelike series of building lined streets that grew harder and harder to navigate as more people left their homes for whatever reason. It was all I could do to keep up with my student as he weaved expertly through the natural rhythm of the crowd. I considered just stepping into the Aether to avoid the crowd altogether but once I was in the Aether I couldn't see out of it, and I still had that warning about trying to come back in the same space as something else and creating a black hole blaring in my head every time I stepped into the energetic realm.

  As we walked, my pace growing more and more frantic to keep up, my mind started to wander as my eyes fell on the strands of Aether weaving through the crowd, actually far more dense than I had seen it without a spell being actively cast. It wove in a thousand ways, but none of them were the complicated knots I knew from watching master spell slingers work. It was interesting to watch regardless, and soon I stopped chasing after Zerrious altogether, instead wandering forward slowly as my sleep deprived mind followed the twists and loops of the natural flowing of the energy I had come to know so well. Every movement seemed to effect the Aether, causing new paths to form, some more defined and others more faint, all moving and shifting with the people. It was hard to see when there wasn't much going on around me, but the Aether reacted to the physical world, and it reacted hard. One step created a thousand new paths the Aether flowed in and I couldn't make any sense of it.

  Soon I felt Zerrious grabbing my arm, looking incredibly concerned as I finally focused back on the physical rather than the metaphysical that most people would never think about let alone get lost looking at. "Are you okay?" he asked, gazing into my eyes and trying to find something.

  I didn't have a great response, especially considering my only defense essentially amounted to "ooh pretty colors".

  "Sigurd! Seriously, you're acting super weird, what's going on?" Zerrious said, shaking me and inspecting me more fully for. . . I don't even know what as he moved my arms and spun me around, completely ignoring the fact that we were in a very crowded space and starting to accrue odd looks.

  "Sh! I. . . I think I'm onto something," I said, looking back at the the Aether and the flowing patterns now moving around Zerrious and I. No, not Zerrious and I, just me, as I stood stock still the Aether didn't have any major patterns, just faint ones that I could only see if I really focused in and looked. Zerrious on the other hand kept moving in a circle about me, thick patterns of Aether moving about the young man.

  "Sigurd I think you need to sit down-"

  "No, caffeine, I need caffeine. I'm close, I can feel it, I just need the little mmph y'know?" I said almost frantically.

  "No, I don't know, you need to sit down, come on." Zerrious led me through the crowd by my arm, pulling me and causing the Aether to spring to life around me, twisting and turning about in simple paths in a myriad directions, making small twists and loops as I was (perhaps more forcefully than necessary) pushed onto a bench, which, in hindsight was very nice and comfortable for a public accommodation. "Close your eyes, just relax for a minute."

  "No, no I'm close to something big!" I stage whispered.

  "I'm sure you'll figure it out after you get some rest," Zerrious said calmly, running his fingers over my eyes to close them, after which I couldn't fight to open them back up.

  It wasn't long before my breathing deepened and I drifted off to a dreamless slumber while Zerrious watched over me. "I knew you should have slept earlier," he said as I lost my final grasp on whatever I was so close to figuring out. I guessed it would have to wait until I noticed whatever it was again.

  . . .

  I felt the heat of the sun warming my skin as I slowly drove my brain from slumber, opening my eyes and squinting against the sun and looking around in minor confusion. Right, I had started acting weird and Zerrious pushed me to go to sleep, that's why I was sitting on a bench, although the streets seemed far more crowded before, now they seemed more normal. It must have been some kind of rush to get to work, which really made me think about the poor city design and the narrow streets not being able to handle that kind of rush.

  Regardless, I knew Zerrious was nearby because I could feel him from my racial trait but I wasn't sure exactly where. Actually, if I trained that trait. . . I pushed that thought aside, I wasn't sure that those sorts of things could be trained at all and we had more important things to worry about.

  I looked around through squinted eyes against the noonday sun to see Zerrious talking to someone close by. They were gesturing down the street and seemed to be giving directions with a big smile and she seemed a good deal closer than she needed to be to convey the information with a hand on his shoulder. Unfortunately he did not seem to notice what was probably the most obvious flirting I've ever seen.

  Actually, now that I thought of it there was probably a Name for picking up women. As I watched I noted that that was a Name Zerrious probably wouldn't get. I hoped he wouldn't need it as he glanced my direction and noticed I was awake. "Sigurd! You're awake! Come here, Lucy was giving directions so we can find our way around here," Zerrious said, turning to me which sort of forced the girl to back away from him. I noticed it wasn't intentional but she still seemed disappointed as she looked at me with a look of minor annoyance.

  "Actually, I'll leave you two to talk for a bit, I think I need to write something down," I said with a knowing smile and a subtle wink to Lucy who seemed to stand up a little straighter and smile a little as I pulled my book out alongside the quill and started with drawing larger shapes for cities to try and educate Zerrious about how things would need to be built. He was a smart kid, so he would probably surpass me pretty quick, but this consumed time to let the girl have her fun and Zerrious to get a bit more information about this particular city.

  "Alright," Zerrious said. He seemed a bit confused and still a little worried about me and how weird I was acting earlier, but he turned and continued his conversation.

  I started with drawing a few basic shapes and explaining the advantages of each shape and the best sort of places to put each shape of city. First was circular which is nice for the interior of the city walls (which I would get to later) and the defense was decent because there weren't really any blind spots which made this kind of city good on an open field. Next was square which was my least favorite as it naturally creates four fronts that need defended and tend to have less visibility at the corners, which means this style of city really only makes sense on a cliff or perhaps in a valley where nature defends several sides so that it doesn't need to be actively guarded as heavily. Then there was a triangular city which I found. . . odd. It was defensible on three fronts so it was a little better than a square city but it didn't lend itself well to natural defenses, which meant you would do this only if you have one side defended or perhaps one side would be backed up to a lake or ocean.

  Then came more drawings with the interior design of cities. It was harder to put to drawings than I had thought, and I was sure I had missed some very vital parts of a city, but I knew you wanted a sort of marketplace in the center where it would be relatively easy to get to for everyone, then you wanted housing around that where they were close to jobs and the market, then you wanted public property, stuff like parks or city hall or whatever, then factories or other workshop type things that didn't directly sell anything but instead supplied for markets, then you wanted stuff like sewage treatment and other unsavory tasks that needed to be done, then you wanted defense on the perimeter for obvious reasons. Farmland could be kept between sewage treatment and factories, or kept outside the walls depending on how much interior space we work with or how much you want farmland to be able to expand.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Or you could have a pie like system instead of one made of concentric rings like I had already described, each section taking a slice of the city, public property and markets around housing, factories close by and unsavory necessities as far from that as far as it could be on the other side of the pie. Defense would still need to be a ring around it, but this kind of design made a lot more sense when importing was more important which doesn't seem to be the case in most cities, which I could only guess was a holdover from very long ago when each city had to be self sufficient in case the mage that took over their country decided not to help them in any way. A sad reality but one that made some strong people, I had to say.

  Circles made it easy to divide into sectors, but it made it hard to sell land as not every plot could be perfectly equal, while a square made it easy to divide the city into sectors and sell equal plots of land, but the triangle didn't have any of those problems, but it did make for a good "spectacle city" as I called it, where it was more focused on importing and tourism with whatever was in the center being very easy to get to, the first thing to come to mind being a central coliseum where the main commerce of the town was trapping monsters and betting on which one would win, or perhaps a commerce built on execution for whatever they were loyal to.

  From my guess about the historical reason for current city design I didn't expect spectacle cities to exist, and if they did they would be very rare. Maybe Zerrious could make one to get some sort of governing or founder Name. That would take forever, I wasn't sure I would live long enough for him to get that kind of Name. As I drew this out I felt a new Name buring itself onto my back. So I was definitely on the right track as I made the final few touches on the (admittedly bad) drawings.

  I looked up to see Zerrious waving bye to Lucy, who had a big blush as she waved back and quickly scampered off. I wasn't sure what had happened, and I really didn't care to know. Zerrious deserved to keep the personal things to himself, even if I did kind of agree to track his every move on his journey to godhood.

  "So, anything new?" I asked lightly.

  Zerrious blinked a few timed before looking back at me with a little blush of his own before answering. "Yeah, I uh." I gave Zerrious a second to organize his thoughts. "I've got a rough idea of where Dave tends to hang out, and a few places the hunters frequent and uh. . ."

  "And?" I asked as he trailed off. This kid was adorable.

  "That's it," he said, shaking his head at the look on my face.

  I laughed and dismissed my quill, holding out the book for Zerrious to read. He took the leatherbound soul in his hand and studied the pages. I had written it in his language as I had Named him a master of mine, but it was clear that there was some wiggle room in the Naming process. To be Named an equal you could be slightly worse, which is why so many skills had fallen off in power, people would gain the Name and stop working to improve. I chuckled a little more, this time at the idea that the gods had built a system to try and facilitate skill growth just for that very same system to backfire. It was such a human mistake that it was hard to imagine beings like Ensiar doing that.

  "What's this?" he asked, looking at the diagrams that didn't have a ton of context. He could figure out, but I was ready for a bit of a lecture.

  "We'll walk and talk. Lead the way to Dave!" I proclaimed and pointed down the street. Zerrious then grabbed my hand and pointed it the exact opposite direction. "Way to kill the fun," I muttered as we started walking and lecturing.

  I introduced the topic, referring him to the diagrams when necessary and answering his clarifying questions as we continued on, explaining the different shapes, the different locations each one makes sense in, even going as far as explaining that you want a street system that could be easily followed to help facilitate trade, tourism, and just general welfare. I did note, however, that streets could be made intentionally difficult to navigate if there was something that needed the extra layer of protection in the middle, preventing armies from just marching in and taking it over by pure virtue of them having no idea where they were at any given point. That sort of city didn't make much sense in this time of relative peace unless they were protecting something important. Or preventing something dangerous from getting out. Both were equally possible in this world, but I didn't suspect either to be here, and back home with Nyah had felt much the same in design, though it seemed a little better planned than whatever was happening here.

  It wasn't long before I didn't have anything else to add to his knowledge base, touching his shoulder and transferring the Name over.

  Notice!

  Zerrious has been Named by a master of his craft and been acknowledged as his equal.

  Notice!

  Name gained: Seedni (Civil Engineering)

  Name: Seedni is the profession Name for the following skills:

  City Design

  City Defense

  City Construction

  Cartography

  Structural Design

  Structural Construction

  Notice!

  Name: Seedni is a profession Name and counts as a Name for every skill required to earn it plus one (7 total).

  I had to admit, that was a good chunk, it wasn't too common with the weirder Names like that to get more than four Names out it. Glad I thought of it, covering for a seven Name gap would be annoying in the future, I was sure. There were probably more like that now that I thought about it, but I couldn't think of it at the moment. There were probably more engineering subspecialties to learn but I didn't no much about that beyond what I'd already taught Zerrious.

  I let it go as we approached the bar Lucifer worked at and walked in, scanning the room for anyone called Dave. I didn't see any, so we sat down and kept an eye on things as they unfolded, Zerrious relaxing or writing in a journal I had encouraged him to start keeping early in our relationship. I never looked at it, but from how his hand was moving I guessed he was mostly doodling, but that was his prerogative, I encouraged him to keep his thoughts down so he could make sense of them later no matter how he put the thoughts down.

  I then realized that I hadn't been as good as I should have about keeping track of my own thoughts. I'd write down what happened every few days or so, but I almost never wrote down the things I figured out or the things I was still trying to work out. I pulled out my book and quill and started writing down the new information I had gained on the Aether, looking up frequently to make sure I didn't miss Dave if he showed up that night.

  Writing it all down highlighted the massive holes I had in my knowledge but I'd hit a sort of wall and couldn't figure it out. I supposed it didn't really matter, I already had the Name, and it probably wasn't one I could give to Zerrious because I had really earned it by getting straight up summoned by a bunch of gods. There might have been a different Name in there. . . God I had no idea what did and didn't have a Name, we'd probably tear ourselves apart trying to follow every lead, so we had to keep to the task at hand and find the boo hag. I wasn't sure what was next or what skills we'd learn, but if nothing else we'll help someone out and that was plenty enough for me.

  I put the quill away and started flipping through the pages of my soul, mostly watching the bar folk while skimming the scrawling on the pages that oddly enough got much more neat as the tale went on. Looking back and actually reading the words I realized it's because that's when I became a teacher and had to have my words legible for children, in English and Kaldar.

  Zerrious got up several times throughout the night to get drinks, his seemed a much more. . . alcoholic variety than I was given but I didn't complain, I liked the mixed drinks, they were sweet but still had that little bite at the end that reminded me not to drink too much lest my liver give out and I needed to be saved by Zerrious.

  I had dismissed my book and taken to doodling in Aether on the pages in my center, which was much easier than regular drawing once you got a hang of it, when Lucifer himself walked up to our table.

  "Alright, it's late and I want to go home to the wife. You two either need to get a room or go find somewhere else to stay," said the large man. I wasn't about to argue, the guy that provided alcohol was most definitely the guy you wanted on your side.

  "Right. Um, Zerrious do we have money?" I asked with a nervous glance across the table.

  "No, you said I couldn't steal-" he cut himself off as he finally noticed that I was not the only one in this conversation. He wasn't sure how to fix it so he just went silent and let me handle the conversation.

  "Well, I guess we'll just go then," I said, hopping up and pulling Zerrious with his notebook, quill, and inkwell roughly packed away into his ring on his belt, hopefully without spilling.

  "See you around!" Zerrious exclaimed as I pushed him out of the door while pulling reality open with my mind. As we entered into the night I pushed him into the Aether and stepped in after him, pulling the hole closed behind me as we stood in a well furnished cabin.

  "I guess we'll just find Dave tomorrow," I muttered as I slumped into a nearby chair.