Her hands are gentle as she places the cool rag to my burning brow but, it is the sound of her voice that sooths my frequent fevers more than any cloth or medicine ever could. I know the melancholy notes of the song like I know my own name, but I never tire of hearing the words, even as they lay their curse.

Sunday's child is full of grace,

Monday's child is fair of face,

Tuesday's child is merry and glad,

Wednesday's child is solemn and sad,

Thursday's child is given to thieving,

Friday's child always has something,

And Saturday's child works hard for nothing.

“You spoil the brat,” he always says, “Now, leave him be and get me another beer.”

I know what comes next, and I will the burning in my face away, and with it the comfort of her touch, hoping that she will go before he has to tell her again with a fist.

My eyes sprang open just in time to prevent bloody murder.

I see him there, looming over her his face suffused with rage, his great granite fist raised threateningly, and then I blink, and they're gone.

I blink again and the figures waver and blur. Not her. I think. Not Him.

Sound comes next, crashing back, and I hear a distant bell[i]

I blink again, and I see it’s not my mother's hand (and her dead these many years, not of beatings like we both thought, but from pining away over the loss of Him), who holds the cloth against my brow, but the lady elf, who has never deigned to share her name, her eyes not on me, but on the heated argument I now can hear.

“You heard my oath as clearly as he,” Stellana raised her hand and gestured towards where I am struggling to sit up, the elf drawing away from one side, the kid suddenly there on the other, helping to steady me. The Arcanist’s voice is smooth and unworried as ever. If she has any fear of the fist Sarge threatens her with, there is no sign of it in her voice or in the piercing gaze which she has turned my way. Sarge moves slightly to one side, so that he doesn’t have to take his eyes off of her to look.

“And here I stand, unpunished and innocent of all harm. I am as surprised as anyone,” she lied, “I had no idea he would react so strongly to the opening of his flow.”

Sarge shoots her an “if looks could kill” and signals he shares my disbelief in that last bit with a grunt.

“Well, stop lollygagging on the ground, then,” this one to me, gruff, but lacking any heat, “we’ve got seven more of your fellows to see to before we can start shooting things. “If,” this, his gaze together with his anger, directed at Stellana, “dear Stel can manage to do the job SCHEMA bound her to do without laying anyone else out?”

That got a reaction as Stellana’s face freezes in what I’m starting to understand is the expression her face wears instead of telling her secrets. There’s some history there, between these two, and a mystery. He didn’t say that the had agreed to train us, or that she had been contracted, but he had used the word “bound” to do so.

I shook that away along with the last of the cobwebs and rose shakily to my feet. I hated unsolved mysteries, but I didn’t plan to be around either of them long enough for it to matter.

“What was that?” I asked, “what did you do to me?”

“I did only what I am here to do,” she replied, “I opened the flow of your MANA and SPIRIT pools, as I will do with the rest, or at least the rest of those whose pools can be opened.

“Everyone,” she said, turning to face me, giving Sarge her back, “reacts to this in a different way, as I’m sure we will see, today. Everyone has a MANA and a SPIRIT pool within them, though not everyone learns to touch them. Of those who do, some feel like they are remembering how to do something that they simply forgot, while others have more” she smiled that predatory smile, “extreme, reactions. Now, please retrieve the training staff from where you dropped it, I think perhaps you could use its help until your strength returns.”

I looked down at my feet to where the ironwood staff lay, and staggered a bit as I bent to pick it up. The kid got there first, though, and grabbed it as he stood from where he’d been kneeling by my side.

I saw the look of concern in his face as he held it out towards me, but I hardened my face from showing the gratitude that warmed my chest, and I almost snatched it from his hand, hardening my heart, as well, from the look of hurt his too expressive face showed.

As soon as I touched the staff, though, I had no more attention to spare for anyone else:

ITEM PROPERTIES

STAFF: This item is soulbound and cannot be stolen, sold, dropped at death, or given away until it is replaced by another soulbound item. If the item is broken, it will be restored upon sleeping, resurrection, or respawn.

Damage Blunt/Spell 1 – 3 (scalable: Damage is scalable with the level of the USER)

Make Ironwood, Engraved, Slotted (3)

Type Two-Handed

Durability N/A

Weight 10

Rarity Rare

Value 0

That’s new, I thought, why didn’t it do that when I picked it up before?

“Hmph,” Stellana’s irritated huff pulled my attention back to her. “It seems my staff has been stolen.” The words were said lightly, as if in jest, but there was a fire in her eyes, and her face was still frozen against her true feelings. “It seems that SCEMA is going to owe me a debt, before the day is done.”

You can owe SCHEMA debts? I filed the information she probably hadn't meant to convey away for later.

Sarge looked nonplussed but bulled through it. “Be that as it may, no business of mine or theirs. We need to get things moving before the new batch of trainees drop dead from running and we have to send for a priest. That’s if, you can see your way to controlling your… touch?”

Her eyes were still burning when they flicked quickly to and away from his face, and I thought I surely imagined it that he had to hold himself from taking a step back.

“Tom. It seems that my staff has taken a liking to you. Perhaps that is why you had such a… strong reaction, because you were holding it when I opened your flows. I trust that SCHEMA will take note of this and future arcanist trainers will not make the same mistake. The fault seems to be mine, not yours. You are free from guilt or obligation.” She spoke the words as if they had some ritual meaning, and I half expected another notification like when she’d made her vow, but nothing happened, and she moved on.

Do I not get a notification because the staff soulbonding to me should never be the USER’s fault, or because she’s lying? I wondered, but there was no way for me to know, so I let it go and turned my attention to what she was saying.

“Now, if the rest of you will please line up, single file, we can get this over with, and I can be on my way.”

If I hadn’t been watching her face so closely, I wouldn’t have noticed how the skin around her eyes tightened ever so slightly when everyone looked and then waited on Sarge’s nod before moving into a line in front of her.

Clearly this woman is not used to people who don’t ask ‘how high’ when she says ‘jump’.”

I stepped farther away, towards where the weapons were laid out on the table as she repeated her touch to each trainee’s temples.

Kid was the first in line, just because he was closest when she told them to line up. She held her fingertips on his temples for a while, but nothing seemed to happen. She allowed her face to show a touch of sympathy when she instructed him to move aside.

“As I said, not everyone will be able to touch their pools.”

The kid’s face didn’t show the disappointment I’d expected when he turned towards me and moved away. He looked relieved, if anything.

“I never like playing spell casters,” he whispered as he reached my side, “I like tanking too much.”

I grunted to show I’d heard him, but I didn’t want to start him up again by asking what that meant.

The elf lady was next, followed by the two gnomes, then Blue Man, with the other elf guys bringing up the rear. Nobody passed out, and everyone else seemed to be able to touch their pools. The reactions were different with each person; the elf lady sang a little giggle (which seemed to piss Stellana off, for some reason), the gnomes each gave a whoop! of excitement and moved to the other side of the line slapping each other on the backs as if they’d done a great thing. The blue guy was silent and stoic as ever, I don’t think he’d spoken a single word or made a single sound, even with rats crawling all over him, or the fireside bonding after. The first elf spoke a quiet word of thanks and the last one bowed (which seemed to please her) and then it was done.

“Now, you,” here Sarge indicated the kid—Rob, I reminded myself to call him, “come with me and pick a weapon. The rest of you, get your spells from Stel and join us over there.” He indicated a spot near the table that faced the line of training dummies that had once again appeared in the distance.

We all moved slightly towards the edge of the clearing, away from the weapons’ table, and Stellana moved to stand in front of me once again. I didn’t step back, even though I felt like she intentionally chose to crowd my personal space. With a smirk at my reaction, she simply raised her hand and pulled a book from the air.

“This,” she said, moving back a comfortable distance where she could more easily address us as a group, “is a spell book. Once you acquire one of your own, you will be able to learn spells. Spells, or blessings and curses,” this she added with a nod towards the elf-girl, as if she knew something we didn’t, “that you learn will automatically be written in your spell book, or grimoire, as some would say. The spell’s specific properties will be listed with it, and it and the book will be soulbound to you until you give it away or it is lost in a wager, duel, or broken oath.” Here, her eyes speared me again as she handed me the book.

She looked as if she half expected something to happen when I took it from her, but nothing did, and she continued. “These,” and her hand reached to the sky, pulling down another book, which she handed to the elf-girl, repeating the process with each of the rest as she went on, “are your temporary books. SCHEMA will have already chosen a spell that it has determined will be best suited to you. Once I give leave, you will open your books, read the spell, and thus learn it. You will then return the books to me, and we will practice casting these spells. You will remember the spell until you sleep,” she said returning to stand in front of me.

“Or die,” she finished, staring straight into my eyes.

[i] CONGRATULATIONS! Successful save against MENTAL DOMINATION +1 WILLPOWER