Sunlight was filtering into my closed eyelids. My head felt… wooly, as if its contents had been shovelled out and replaced with… wool. My imagination wasn’t quite up to par at the moment.

I was lying on my back, head resting on something soft. There was a quiet, rhythmic roaring in the background. It was a little annoying. I started a little as my whole body was jostled by a sudden movement.

“Oh, you’re finally awake,” a woman’s voice said. Her voice was nice. Like a soft piano.

I opened my eyes. That proved to be a mistake. Light assailed me, and a migraine slammed into me like the hand of the gods. I squeezed my rapidly watering eyes shut. It was hard to think straight.

Trying again. I cracked my eyes open a sliver, wincing at the pain in my head. A glimpse of light blonde hair. A shapely chest, covered by chainmail. An even more shapely face, painted with concern.

“Pretty…” I murmured.

I felt a soft pat on my head.

“Get some more rest,” the piano-voice said. “We’re still an hour out from Yaguan.”

I didn’t disobey.

When I opened my eyes again, the battleaxe of a migraine had decreased in intensity to more of a sledgehammer. I felt a lot more alert this time, and opening my eyes didn’t immediately make me wish for unconsciousness, so that was a good first step.

My head was still resting on something comfortably soft. I looked up into Jasmine’s eyes, and—

Wait. Jasmine’s eyes?

I bolted upright, which was a bit of a mistake given that I still felt like a trampled eggshell.

“Good to see you’re well,” Jasmine said happily. “Welcome back. We’re almost at Yaguan.”

I scanned our surroundings, slowly realizing that we were, in fact, on the same train we’d taken earlier today.

My face burned with embarassment. Had my head been buried in Jasmine’s lap the entire train ride? Come to think of it, I didn’t remember being awake past the cavern. Had she just carried me out wholesale?

A cursory glance at the people around us indicated that yes, the adventuring party was still with us. I didn’t remember much of anything from after I’d finished my last cast, but I did vaguely remember waking up momentarily. From the looks on the others’ faces, I’d done something at least mildly humiliating.

Cheeks still flaming red, I turned to Jasmine. “What happened?”

“If you’re worried about the cleanliness of my skirt, it’s fine,” she said. “I scorched it sterile after we left the cavern.”

“That’s not—“ I sighed instead of completing my sentence. “Whatever. Did we receive our payment?

“Yes,” Jasmine said, handing me a golden half-circle. “Half a golden sun each. The corporation paid their posting fee to the Adventuring Guild a week ago.”

“All that violence for half a golden sun,” I mused. “That’s adventuring for you.”

Half a golden sun was enough to pay a month’s rent at Yaguan’s cheaper apartments or enough to buy one extravagant meal. Not bad, but considering that it had cost two lives to get here, not amazing either.

“And… eighteen member contribution points,” she said. “That means we need to run five more quests on this level before the end of the month in order to meet our first obligation.”

I made a face. “Hopefully, they go better than this one.”

“For now, we have class for a couple of days. Let’s figure something out afterwards.”

I nodded my assent.

“Different gods have different prerequisites for one to take an oath with them, and these prerequisites range from pathetically easy to impossibly hard,” Professor James Lasi said. “Often times, they also range between abstract and concrete. For instance, according to classical Ceretian theory, Igni requires that someone is ‘willing to lose what they love’ in order to begin forming an oath with the god, while Nacea requires one to ‘nurse another from the brink of death’.

“The refinement of Ceretian magical theory has allowed us oathholders some level of specificity with these abstracts, as well as quick ways to meet them. In the example of Igni, one who wishes to form an oath can find a Ditas oathholder to modify their personal perception of an otherwise worthless object past a specific emotional threshold, and then annihilate it or have another destroy it. Similar methods are known for all of the core eight, but I will not dive too deep into them right now— besides, many of you have already met the prerequisites.

“Regularly upkeeping one’s oath, on the other hand, is far too often gravely undervalued by oathholding students. By increasing the frequency and intensity of upkeep, it is possible to enhance oathholding power. For example, I myself hold oaths to Igni and Ditas. In order to maintain any level of power, all I would need to do for Igni is to immolate a small part of my clothing once every ten days. However, I strengthen the bond between myself and the god by regularly sleeping inside a flaming hearth, allowing me to greatly increase the rate at which I gain power, though it also makes the negative effects of darkness and cold on me more pronounced.

“Oathholding is, at its core, about balance. Overdoing the number or intensity of your oaths will spell doom for you, and underdoing it will mark you as a mediocre shell of an oathholder.”

None of the information he’d given in the lecture was anything new, but I supposed it would help the non-noble civilians who were beginning their journey as oathholders and prospective oathholders.

Professor Lasi was allegedly well-known to be a bit of a hardass who didn’t understand what his students were capable of, a statement that was immediately proven true when he assigned reading the first three chapters of On Oaths and the Pantheon, which I knew for a fact were not related to the lecture he’d given us in class. Thankfully, I’d read the text he assigned before I’d entered the university. It had been a while back, during the last days of House Byron, but I still remembered the basic details of the first part.

Every god had a magical focus. That meant that while technically, any oathholder could cast any spell, they would have a much easier and more effective time casting spells close to their god’s focus, which could be abstract or completely otherwise. I didn’t know the name of my god, but its focus was ruin.

Anticipating that we would probably get quizzed on the focuses of the core eight, I ran through the details I remembered in my mind. Igni, the god of fire and light, focused on energy. Und, god of storms, had the focus “tempest”, which translated to a heavy focus on area of effect oriented spells. Caël, god of the skies, focused on movement, which had thrown me off the first time I’d read it when I’d been expecting something more along the lines of Und’s focus. Ditas, god of flesh, predictably had the focus of the body— whether that was enhancement, modification, or something else entirely.

Voci, god of plague, had the focus of plague—shocker, I know—which I remembered actually meant quickly-spreading effects, not just disease. Nacea, the god of hospitals, had the focus of mending, whether that was for humans, objects, or less tangible things. Aedi, god of creation, had the focus of tinker, meaning that any Aedi oathholder (and gods there were a lot of them) had the capability to invent new ways to interface magic with technology. Tryesh, god of destruction, did not have an identifiable focus due to his presumed death during the gods’ Final Departure.

I collided with someone, too engrossed in my thoughts to watch where I was going.

“Oh, sorry-“ I started, before looking up at the person I’d just run into.

“Funny running into you here,” Jasmine smiled.

She dressed so different from the last time I’d seen her, going our separate ways from the train, and yet her presence felt so similar, exuding confidence in a manner that no commoner could reproduce. Jasmine was wearing a red silk top that shouted “uniform” with a family crest on it and one of the pleated skirts she seemed to favor, and she simultaneously looked ready to dutifully attend class and to slay a nest of monsters.

“Where did you come from?” I asked. “I just got out of Lasi’s first lecture.”

“Professor Gyast,” she replied. “Her lecture was for students who’re already oathholders, but it was mostly just theory. Something about how the oaths interface to create magic power. Pretty boring, to be honest.”

“At least you didn’t have another review session,” I grumbled. “I only got lessons from the Church back in Syashan, and even I knew all of this already.”

That was a blatant lie, since the Church back in the village of Syashan had never gone into the specifics of oathholding in lieu of speaking about the gods, but telling a noble girl that I’d gotten lessons about oathholding from my own tutors as the scion of House Byron was bound to lead to trouble. Even among commoners, the treason my House had committed was well-known.

“Well, there shouldn’t be any more lessons for another couple of hours,” Jasmine said, interrupting my thoughts. “Would you care to grab lunch? I happen to have just gained six moons worth of spending money.”

I rolled my eyes. That’d be the half-sun we’d earned. “I’m alright with that.”

Generally, I preferred not getting too involved with other people, since every friendship in Syashan had inevitably gone bottoms-up when the other person learned my heritage, but Jasmine didn’t know me as the weird village prodigy and she seemed both competent and friendly. I wasn’t opposed to building a relationship with her.

“Do you know anywhere decent in the area?” I asked. “I’m not too familiar with Yaguan.”

“I know a sandwich place downtown,”Jasmine said. “We shouldn’t need more than a half moon to buy a meal there.”

She walked, and I followed.

The Mage’s Oasis was a humble cafe consisting of no more than a counter to sell baked goods and sandwiches from and a scattering of wooden tables outside. I had to agree with Jasmine, though— the food they sold more than made up for their small size.

I’d been delighted to see that they offered the spiced radish, cabbage and cheese sandwiches that had been my go-to as a child. For only half a moon, too! It’d earned me an odd look from Jasmine, but it was well worth it. For her part, she was boring and settled for a simple vegetable, pork, and cheese.

“I don’t understand how you like that,” she said, her face halfway between fascinated and disgusted.

I took another bite, relishing the heat of the spices and the richness added by the cheese. “It’s a common delicacy back in Syashan. You should seriously try one.”

Jasmine cocked an eyebrow. “I’ll pass on that one.”

“On the other hand,” I said, setting the sandwich down, “You picked perhaps the single most average, uninteresting sandwich that you could find.”

“Hey! It’s good!” Jasmine defended. “It’s popular for a reason.”

I grinned. “Not much of a trendsetter, huh?”

“Maybe I like it that way,” she replied, with far too much intensity. Her eyes… that had been a significant overreaction for something meaningless.

“Suit yourself,” I shrugged. Everyone has their quirks, don’t they?

I made a mental note of it and moved on. It wasn’t worth making a problem out of at this moment.

“Anyway,” Jasmine said through a mouthful of sandwich, “Have you seen any good job postings we can take this week?”

“Didn’t your tutors tell you not to speak with your mouth full?” Mine had gone to great pains to drill that particular point in, at least.

She waved a hand dismissively. “They’re not here, and I’m not going to be in noble company for a good while.”

“Surely there’s at least one other noble child at school.”

“Not one that cares about etiquette, there won’t be. Anyway, we got off topic. Any decent jobs?”

“Nothing great,” I grimaced. “If it comes down to it, we might need to take the jobs in the five to ten point range to help clear out animal infestations or protect a house or two from bandits, and those don’t pay for shit.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Jasmine sighed. “Looks like the one I found is going to be the only choice we have, then.”

I gestured for her to elaborate.

“It’s a delivery quest, worth thirty points,” Jasmine explained. “Somebody wants to get something sensitive delivered from Tayan to the capital of Yelian.”

I frowned. “Can they not just take a train?”

“Apparently, it’s time sensitive too. The Sinlen mountains aren’t exactly conducive to fast train travel.”

“They want us to take the Pass?” I asked. “Isn’t the Sinlen Pass supposed to be a bit above our pay grade?”

“And it’s a two person quest,” Jasmine added. “They really want to keep the lid tight on it.”

“How is this quest available to us? We’re literally the lowest tier of adventurer.” I was more than a little suspicious. Either Jasmine was lying about how good we were or someone was being far too incautious about their precious cargo.

“The sender couldn’t afford anything better,” Jasmine said. “It’s two thirds of a golden sun split two ways. We do have to pass a proficiency test, but I’m pretty sure we can do that.”

If they were anything like the laughably easy admissions tests for the University, ‘pretty sure’ was understating it.

“Wait a second,” I said. “We aren’t at the Guild. Won’t someone else take it? It’s pretty low-hanging fruit.”

“Uhh… about that…” Jasmine said, almost apologetically. “I got proactive.”

I stared her dead in the eyes. “Proactive.”

She didn’t flinch. “Sorry about that. I got too excited about finding a job that wasn’t just mindless drudgery.”

I sighed. “Just run it by me next time. That last part is too true, though. Guess we were lucky to get an exciting one first.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Jasmine said, a little quieter. “Two people died.”

“I guess that’s true,” I said, not really desiring an argument. They’d been underprepared and overzealous, and they’d reaped the consequences of that, but Jasmine had a slightly more empathetic view when it came to lives.

“I’d imagine that many of the less exciting ones still come with their own dangers,” Jasmine said. “Bandits and wolves might seem more mundane than massive bat oathholders, but they’re just as dangerous in numbers.”

I didn’t disagree. A couple years ago, I’d almost died getting lost in the woods just a day’s walk from Syashan. I had a healthy respect for the elements and the nonmagical beasts that inhabited them.

I shifted my focus away from my thoughts and back to the topic at hand. “How many points is it worth? When will it be?”

“Thirty whole points,” Jasmine beamed. “And it’s at the end of this week. We can pass the proficiency test any time in the next three days.”

“Well, we’ve got some time,” I said. “Would you like to go after class concludes today?”

“Absolutely.” Jasmine punctuated her statement by lifting her drink.

I did the same. “To our next job, then.”

“To our next job.”