Chapter 26

Maston Academy

The Town of Maston in the Candis East District

Kate was growing increasingly frustrated after each lesson with Reah. She kept telling her to try to follow the pain, to embrace it, but that was the last thing Kate wanted to do. Every instinct she had told her to avoid the pain. She had spent 16 years doing that.

It made no sense. So far, they had done nothing but delve, the same thing she always did in their aether class. It was frustrating. The only advice she was given was to delve and to embrace the pain. Kate didn’t even know how or if she even could do that if she wanted to. It wasn’t like she could feel the pain coming from somewhere in her aether space. Kate was beginning to think that she had been wrong to stay around.

Reah hadn’t blocked her affliction off since that first day. She claimed she couldn’t teach her if she wasn’t able to sense the pain coming from her aether space. As far as Kate could tell, the whole situation was like running in circles. She had expected to be able to stop her pain, not try to feel more of it. Not that she had managed to do that either.

After the first lesson, Kate had been happy to stay around for as long as Reah would continue to teach her. Now though, Kate was the first out the door when the class ended.

Kate had taken to eating lunch with the rest of her dormmates. She had been surprised to find support in Silas. During the first month, he had refused to have anything to do with her. Kate was beginning to suspect that might have been because Silas was too loyal of a friend.

He had apparently been upset with her for not apologizing to Myles and Jane. Now that she had though, his tune had changed dramatically. He had eagerly jumped into the game of surprises that Primrose had started with her little exercise. Now, the two of them had an ongoing rivalry between them to see who could one up the other.

Kate had never really enjoyed herself like this before. Sure, she had to take extra care to not go anywhere near the infirmary, but she found that she could withstand the frequent bits of pain she ran across more.

Still, Kate was stressed about the upcoming monster hunting that she was planning with Myles and Jane. She had spent hours in the bestiary and many more at the edge of the town, looking for the right sets of tracks. So far, Kate had narrowed their choices down to two, neither of which she was completely convinced they could take.

Kate felt a familiar pain startup and felt herself rolling her eyes. “You have to try harder than that.”

“Right, right, you can feel my pain.” Silas came from behind her, walking quickly to catch up. “You know if I had been trying to scare you, I wouldn’t have tried to do it myself. I was just trying to catch up to you. You stormed out of class as soon as it finished.”

Kate scowled, not at Silas, but at her own feet. “I’m just frustrated. I feel like I’ve been failing at everything lately.”

“Do you not remember saving my life. You did that just last week.”

“I wouldn’t have needed to save your life if I had managed to navigate us across the voidlands safely.”

“You’re kidding right? That was my fault. I should have figured out a way to get a shikari along with us for protection.”

Kate shook her head. “That’s not the problem now.”

Silas came closer to put his hand on her shoulder. “Is this about the mission you’re planning with Myles and Jane?”

Kate nodded silently. She didn’t bother asking how he knew. Silas and Mercy were both good at reading people. That was probably one of the reasons why they had been selected for the course they were taking. “From my research and scouting, I’ve narrowed the options down to two groups of monsters, but I’m not confident that we can win either fight.”

“What are the options? Maybe I can catch something you missed.”

Kate almost denied the possibility offhand. After the hours of research she had done, Kate was confident that she was something of an expert on the topic, but she stopped herself. Silas was in many ways the cleverest one in their dorm. Sure, he had a lot of competition for the title, but Kate couldn’t deny that he might see something she had missed. “The first option is a group of flamegons. They are a thankfully very distant cousin of hydras.”

Silas froze for a second. “A cousin of hydras!?”

Kate shook her head. “A very, very, very distant cousin of hydras. They’re only like three feet tall.”

Silas took a breath of relief. Hydras were one of the few monsters that were listed in the highest tier of the bestiary Kate had been given. Monsters in that tier were more forces of nature than monster. A single hydra would likely take the combined forces of the entire Perralin empire to even steer away. It was no wonder that Silas was relieved to hear that the flamegons were far less of a threat, but Kate knew that they were still likely too much for them to handle.

“Flamegons each boast a set of three heads. The monsters are exceptionally slow, but they made up for it in their defense. They can’t regenerate a head like a hydra can, but they are apparently known to recover from minor wounds by rapidly cauterizing their injuries.”

Silas nodded along seriously. “That does sound difficult to deal with. We would need to deliver a decisive blow.”

Kate sighed in frustration. “That would be a great idea, but I can’t figure out a method that we could use to accomplish that. Their scaly hides would protect them from most conventional weapons, and all we have are conventional weapons.”

Silas nodded. “I agree with you that we would have difficulty dealing with them.”

Kate couldn’t help but notice that Silas had included himself in the statement. He really was too loyal of a friend. He might have recovered enough to be able to handle some practice in their combat class, but that was a lot different from fighting against monsters. Kate didn’t bother arguing. They would have to find a way to convince him not to come during the hunt later. “The second option is a pack of cinderwolves. They would be much easier for us to kill since they have about the same resilience as a normal wolf, but they also have too potent of an offense for me to be comfortable with.”

Silas nodded slowly. “What is their offense?”

“Imagine a normal wolf pack. They have speed, pack hunting mentality, and considerable strength.”

Silas looked on in consideration.

“If you set that wolf pack on fire and give them the ability to spit fireballs, you’ll have a pretty good idea how dangerous these things are.”

Silas cursed. “That would be bad. I’m not sure how well our pure mana will hold out against fire.”

Kate felt an itch from where her burn had healed. She resisted the urge to scratch it. She didn’t need to be reminding herself of how she had fared against the vexenaught’s fireball. “Even with our armor active, the fire would burn through our pure mana armor as easily as dry leaves. I think we could only take one or two hits before we run out of mana, and that’s assuming we take them in the right way.”

Silas shook his head. “It sounds like we don’t really have any options at all.”

Kate nodded her head sullenly. “I think you’re right, but I don’t want to admit it. Having a fire construct along with us would be extremely useful for our next mission. Besides, after what I said at the start of the year, I need to prove to Jane and Myles that they can trust me.”

Silas grinned. “I just came up with an idea. I think we’ve been looking at this wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

Silas smiled widely. “This isn’t a problem we can solve with any more knowledge of the monsters. This is a problem for my skillset.”

“What do you mean?”

They were walking into the cafeteria now and Silas made a gesture around them, indicating the other students. “We don’t have to do this alone. If we would find a fire construct useful, then it makes sense that most of the students here would to.”

Kate was starting to catch on now. “You want to recruit more people to fight with us.” Kate considered for a second. “We would need to pay them though, and in case you hadn’t noticed, no one in our dorm is exactly wealthy.”

Silas shook his head. “We don’t need to pay them with money. They’ll work with us for the chance to get their hands on a construct.”

That was it. Kate felt a smile crossing her lips as she grabbed a table. She would need to get Myles and Jane on board with the idea, but it was the first plan that actually had a chance of success.