If someone had told me about the revelations from a few nights ago, my guess as to the result would not have been so minor. When I woke late the next day, I expected an honor guard to deliver us to the King. Maybe a riot or two, possibly a Mage attack or six, but instead, the day was mostly quiet and calm. I wrote a few letters to the Skill Trainers and used three of my drop off locations, but in total, the day was uneventful. That night two of the major Noble House estates in the neighborhood burned to the ground. We spent a restless night in the mansion waiting for an attack, but none came. The next morning, the Baron ventured out with some of his guards to discover that two major Noble estates had 'accidentally' caught fire. Surprisingly, everyone inside died somehow. The oddity was that these two noble Houses were staunchly in the Mage faction. What few contacts I had in the capital were as eager for news as I was. The Baron had a shifty look about him when asked, but he insisted that the King had things well in hand. I could do little in whatever political maneuverings were going on except prepare a few secondary escape plans for Abby and me if we became sacrificial pawns. I didn't think that was where things were headed, but I didn't plan to take any chances.

Once Snowy was confident that things had calmed down, the pair slipped out with guards to buy Abby a new suite worth of clothing and furniture. Neither wanted to trust my alcohol-based cleaning method. However, they seemed fine with me dunking my own clothing and supplies as a precaution. Mostly, I think it was an excuse to get out of the mansion and entertain themselves. Snowy wasn't slacking on her training during this time. Mornings were reserved for shopping trips with Abby. Still, the afternoons she spent hunched over the Fascination Orb until she managed to earn her [Self Awareness] Skill.

Self Awareness - Tier 1: 2

Self-Awareness gives one insight into their own mind, how thoughts flow, and where the river of consciousness runs rough and where it becomes tranquil.

Passive Effect:

Lesser: Inner Stability - Slight resistance to effects that would alter your perceptions and actions.

Active Trigger Effect:

Minor: Improved perceptual effects.

Synergistic with other known mental skills:

[Hunter's Sagacity].

When Snowy earned [Self Awareness], it was blatantly apparent since she simply stood and handed the orb over to Abby, as casually as she would pass a cup of tea. Snowy had taken the late-night assault as a personal afront and had dived back into her training. While the pair spent time shopping in the morning and returned to the estate smiling and joking, they would train with an intense focus after lunch. Once she had her new Skill, I had delegated the pair to practice their combat Skills together. Abby would throw hammers and other blunt and weighted weapons at Snowy. Simultaneously, Snowy would try to trigger the active effect of [Self Awareness] and [Hunter's Sagacity] together. Doubling up the activated Skills' perceptual effects caused an even more extreme drain and was useful training. This provided decent practice to help Abby be willing to hurt others, along with improving her aim. With blunt weapons and Snowy's healing, it was much safer than it appeared. Though emotionally stressful for my apprentice.

Which left me alone to use [Meditation] and modify my Skills. At some point, Marcus decided that it was his duty to watch over me. In my focused state, I needed someone to be near and on hand to have food and beverages ready when I came back to myself. At first, I took it in stride and thought nothing of it, but after the first few days, I came to appreciate the thought and care the man put into his work. Having a helping hand to lean on when making my way quickly to the restroom after nearly nine hours of silent focus may have had something to do with it as well.

Initially, I wanted to rearrange my Skills to make myself a Mage killer - a weapon against those that would attack me. But, once I calmed down, I realized that was a reaction to the attack and the re-emergence of a childhood dream of combat prowess that I had no actual interest in. So the real question became: what did I want, and what did I need? Things were still unsettled, and we were still in danger, so combat prowess was still a need. But, I didn't need to turn myself into a focused bringer of death either.

My first goal was to create a passive healing Skill. With it, the Mage assassin had been a dangerous opponent; without it, he would have been killed within moments. Though, without it, he might have used something like a giant burst of flame and damned the need to keep our deaths from looking like a Mage kill. Which was a good lesson in itself. Don't lean on the healing Skill alone to stay alive.

A hurdle I had to deal with was how to create my own passive healing Skill. I could have selected one of my Skills and tried to drive it to what I wanted, but I had the feeling that it would be a long and challenging road. Shifting my [Alchemy] Skill to have an attack method left it nameless. Each change had felt like pushing a stone uphill. Worse, my soul rocked and shook at each change, so I wanted to avoid that kind of brute force manipulation if possible. My second idea seemed more reasonable. Sacrifice a Skill to produce a pool of liquid mana - a Skill point - then select a Skill that was related to healing in some way. From there, I could shift it as needed. It would give me a Skill base to work from, empowered by liquid mana, and leave room to grow and modify my Skill.

Which then begged the question, which Skill should I sacrifice. Staring at my Skill list, I finally decided on a Skill that had sentimental value but little practical value: [Fletching]. I was terrible at archery, and while I enjoyed creating things, arrows were not at the top of my list. It had been a part of my early training while my parents were working. I spent hours alone in our cabin simply flipping through booklets of Skills and trying to work through the process of earning them. I was desperate for my parents' approval, and earning Skills seemed to be needed to gain their respect. I associated their happiness with my Skill growth instead of their happy return from work and their ability to spend time with their son. Eventually, I recognized the difference, but not until I had earned a few Skills with little use. [Fletching] was one such Skill.

I had other options. I had a high level of [Backstab]. Still, its level was only so high because I contorted how I trained others to practice it, not because of any desire or need for it. The same with [Anatomy], I picked up the Skill, and once I had it, I took any chance to grow and combine it with my other work. I had more use for it than [Backstab], but it could be sacrificed for other advantages. I had less practiced Skills like [Reading] and [Memorization], but I wouldn't give those up for almost anything. My Skill dictionaries could be burned along with all my other equipment. However, as long as I had time, [Memorization] would allow me to recreate the information. [Reading's] speed improvement made [Memorization] a viable tool. Without it, [Memorization] required too much time to memorize information. Combined with the long delay in recovering memories, the Skill wouldn't be worth it. When my life wasn't under a cloud of danger, those two Skills were my first target for experimentation in trying to combine Skills. [Reading] and [Memorization] let me store memories quickly. Unfortunately, recovering those perfect memories with [Memorization] took time. Hopefully, when combined, I could shift those Skills to passive versions.

[Trap Making] had been useful as a boy when trying to pick up an extra bit of meat when I had to avoid the town. Most of my levels came from that and living with old man Carten since he couldn't keep his grubby fingers out of my things. Realistically, I had no real use for it. Being able to quickly set a trap was interesting but of little use. The point of a trap was setting it up beforehand, which left me with plenty of time to prepare it in the first place.

So, [Fletching], [Trap Making], likely [Backstab], and possibly [Anatomy]. Four Skills I could abandon for other options.

Slipping into [Meditation] and then my soul, I was startled to feel a sense of discomfort resonate through the connection between mind and soul. It felt like the mental equivalent of trying to swallow a jagged shard of glass. Inside my soul, the unnamed Skill that was once my [Alchemy] crystal vibrated, jarring my soul, then calmed. Despite the sudden stillness after the waves of pain, I could sense a tenderness and sense of disquiet from the unnamed crystal - a feeling of danger. Leaving it as it was, was no longer an option. The crystal didn't seem to be the danger itself, but something outside my soul and mind from the odd tunnel of whispers. Some outside force was unhappy with my blank Skill and wanted it gone. I had little recourse but to shift the crystal back to what it was and hope that would appease whatever had attacked me on my entrance to my soul.

Willing the Skill back to [Alchemy] was a quick process, the crystal almost seeming to want to flow toward the known state. It was a far different process when growing a Skill or shifting the nature of a crystal. Developing a Skill felt like straining against tight clothing, the fabric unwilling to give but the seams stretching and moving with enough force. Shifting a Skill felt more akin to trying to push a wagon through a muddy track in the forest. The direction was known, an effort was made, but there were ruts and resistance, and the process was a struggle.

Once my [Alchemy] Skill was restored, I stared at [Fletching] and considered for only a second what this change meant for me personally. Gathering the thin mist of mana around my soul, I surrounded the [Fletching] Skill crystal. I pressed inward, trying to repeat the process of sacrificing the Skill. After minutes of inward pressure, I could feel the crystal grinding away into sand, the structure slowly failing until a small puddle of liquid mana floated free into my soul. It was far harder to break down a crystal with the gaseous mana that my body naturally collected. The liquid mana of a Skill point was able to tear Skills apart with far less work. It required only minor focus instead of the marathon of effort from gaseous mana. This then was another trade-off to consider. Liquid mana was far more potent and offered the ability to convert Skills faster. Unfortunately, this would reserve some of my potential power in unused liquid mana instead of a crystalized Skill.

Idly, I wondered if it was possible to condense the gaseous mana into liquid mana without mediating it through a Skill first. My intuition said yes, but it seemed less important than merely growing my Skills. It was yet another thing to put into my list of future experiments.

Touching my mind to my liquid mana, I wandered through the health and healing options that my Skill point offered. There were few choices for healing, but helpfully, most focused on passive recovery for myself. I wasn't given a list of Skill names like when outside my soul. Instead, it was a collection of whispers of possibilities, hints, and ideas, the same as what I heard when passing through the connection from my mind. This was both better and worse than a list of Skill names. Better in that I could generally feel my way toward the option I wanted, worse in that a precise name felt definitive instead of the fuzzy grasping of the whispers.

Still, I finally settled on a Skill, which felt like my goal, and latched on, letting the tiny pool of liquid mana drain into the growing crystal.

Recovery - Tier 1: 1

The body heals at a natural rate. Some simply heal faster.

Passive Effect:

Lesser: Rebuild - Slight improvement to rate of healing from injury.

Synergistic with other known skills:

[Veil of Ice], [Heat Resistance], [Cold Resistance], [Anatomy].

I was mildly surprised to see [Anatomy] included in the list of synergies. It made sense to me to see the three resistance based Skills. They would work in tandem with [Recovery], but [Anatomy] was focused on information about my and others' bodies. It had no active effect and no direct physical effect at all. It merely helped me intuitively understand bodies. Perhaps [Recovery] or [Anatomy] had some kind of nascent active effect that was simply too weak to be listed yet? [Recovery] as it was would require effort to shift and improve. A lesser effect wasn't what I wanted. Worse, [Rebuild's] passive effect looked to be only an improvement in my natural healing rate. I wanted to be able to regrow limbs and digits the same way the assassin mage did. Still, it was a start and would give me something to focus on. Once I modified [Recovery] into [Regeneration], I could move on to improve [Combat Awareness].

We only had a few days left before the Ball, where Snowy would confront her mother and Ashen-Arm-of-the-Mountain. I wanted to be ready before then.