The two of them sat with their legs crossed, looking up at Emma and the image shining down from the glass.

It was a human body, figures indistinct, twirling slowly around to act as a visual aid for their lesson.

“Okay, this lesson will cover the basic soul techniques and their applicative uses. We’ll run a test on Lysa to see what kind of Aspect she has and how it will affect her personal training regiment as well as engage in some sparring exercises. By the end of today, you two should know the foundation of soul techniques and how one might extend that foundation into other domains of interest.”

Lysa let out a groan, “Why are we covering something we all learned in grade school? Can’t we just show what we can do and then punch stuff and call it a day?”

He didn’t voice his opinion but he had confidence that Emma was organizing the lesson the way she was for a reason.

Sure, he’d be bored with going back to basics but a refresher on knowledge they covered in grade school wasn’t a bad thing.

“Lysa, your wife and my husband have the utmost faith in my ability to prepare you for the expedition. Just humor me and I promise it’ll be worth your time.” Emma looked at Lysa and she grumbled for the lesson to continue, crossing her arms in resignation.

“Now, the source of power that we use to run our machines, power our magical items, cast our spells, and even perform innate feats of heroism can be linked to the malleability and strength of our soul.”

The display of the human lit up to show a small mote of blue light in the human’s torso.

“The soul, by the gods that were, are a concentrated magical essence that can be harnessed as a sort of battery to power techniques or magical items.”

The display was given the silhouette of a pipe, academically referred to as a ‘Wand’ considering the size and the most common of magical items that could be found strewn across the world. A line connected from the soul in the center of the body, through the arm and out to the pipe.

“When performing anything with the soul, energy on your end is spent to continually charge whatever you’re using your soul on. In this case, this soul is powering the pipe to light a flame.”

The display transitioned to showcase the human soul pumping energy into the pipe. The pipe was ablaze at the effects end point. The overall diagram also showcased the soul in the center depleting, marked by an emptying of color from its brilliant light blue hue into transparency. The moment the soul approached its emptying point, the pipe’s fire began flickering until finally ceasing altogether.

“If the connection between the soul and the item is forcibly disconnected or the soul just runs out of juice, the item will cease to function.”

Lysa groaned at the demonstration, “We already know this though. Next you’re going to mention that the soul replenishes passively over time and that certain skills are easier to perform for people over others and blah, blah, blah.” She dramatically threw her upper body onto the ground and made an exasperated sigh.

Jose turned to Lysa and flicked her forehead.

“Ow,” She jolted upright, rubbing her forehead with her palm, “Why’d you do that?”

“The lesson will go by faster if we just listen. I know you’re raring to go because you feel like you’ve gotten everything mastered but I’m certain that aside from your reinforcement technique, I can blow you out of the water.”

“Oh, is that a spine I’m sensing, Jose? Is it around so long as your wife’s here for support?”

The two of them were close to lunging at one another like wild animals before Emma intervened.

“Lysa, if you don’t like my teaching method, take it up with Nora and the rest of the Vanguard. I am following our teaching plan for new recruits to the letter.” The mention of Nora made Lysa stammer and avert Emma’s gaze.

Jose’s smug smirk was short-lived when Emma smacked the back of his head.

“And you! Don’t come in here with your machismo when you’re running around with a handicap! You stand to gain the most from these sessions because you’re so far behind. Picking a fight with your friend isn’t going to make you any better in the eyes of the examiners, my love.” Her tone softened when she realized that Jose was visibly deflated by the comments.

He hated how fragile he felt about the situation, about being Hollow, about being ill-prepared for the role of volunteer and adventurer.

“Hey,” Lysa piped up, staring defiantly at Emma with a pointed finger in her face, “Your husband may be a coward and a stick in the mud, but he knows his limitations better than anyone else and he trains twice as hard as the rest of our cabal to keep up and help out. It’s why we chose him to lead our crew of misfits and it’s why I have faith we’ll get through the volunteering exams.”

Jose was surprised to hear Lysa defend him with the same passion she was using to insult him just a moment ago.

The two stared at one another before Emma broke into a smile and turned around.

“Alright, I think I’ve been going about this the wrong way. I know how to solve this. Lysa, I want you to stand up and get into a fighting stance. Whatever makes you comfortable.” Emma pulled out a shield from the weapons rack in the corner of the room.

Lysa jumped off the ground and stretched her body, eyes alight with excitement for the first time this morning.

“What’s the plan then, Emma?” Lysa asked as she cracked her knuckles.

Emma inspected the shield for a moment before giving Lysa her undivided attention.

“Alright, we’re gonna apply some of the fundamentals you want to skip over. If you can break through the shield here with your reinforcement technique, I’ll just skip ahead with the lessons and we can go straight to training.” Emma stated. She took a deep breath and steeled herself, the shield glowing with a faint aura.

Lysa took that as her cue to begin her assault. She launched from her stance and jabbed with her fist. Her blow connected with the shield, sending a metallic reverberation across the training area.

But Emma did not yield nor did the shield give in to Lysa’s opening blow. She didn’t even move as if her legs were rooted to the ground.

Lysa was shocked but continued with her assault, launching blow after blow at the shield with increasing speed.

Jose closed his eyes and focused on his soul. He willed it to crawl through his body up to his eyes and cover them like a veil. Opening his eyes, he saw their souls and the way it was shaped.

Lysa had big globules of her soul concentrated on her fists, bubbles dispersing with each blow onto the shield.

Emma had covered the shield with a thin veil of her own soul, reacting to each attack by shaping the density of the soul from attack point to attack point.

Jose understood what was going on now that he had this information and he dismissed the soul from his sight.

He waited and watched as Lysa’s movements became more languid. Each jab and straight contained less explosive power than the last and the speed at which she was dispensing these attacks slowed as well.

Her breathing was heavy and her body was sweating while Emma remained composed and collected, not even breaking a sweat.

“Alright,” Lysa shouted, spreading herself out on the floor in defeat, “Alright. I get it. You win. I need the fundamentals.”

Emma put down her shield and gave Lysa a hand, lifting her up from the ground and handing her a towel.

“Jose,” Emma directed her attention to him, “Can you explain to Lysa what exactly prevented her from piercing into the shield?”

“Her soul shaping technique was atrocious. She pumped larger and larger quantities of her soul with each blow without channelling them efficiently, meaning there was a wasted amount of energy dispersing with each blow.” Jose replied.

Emma moved to the diagram in the training ground and honed in on the arm, “Yes. It’s likely that her soul is large enough that pumping an inordinate amount of energy makes up for the lack of shaping skill in her reinforcement technique. With the proper shaping skills, molding her soul to better utilize the excess energy will not only increase her potential strength, but increase the amount of time she can fight too.”

Lysa listened to the explanation, paying attention to the diagram and sighed.

“Well, a deal’s a deal. Give me the rest of your lesson, oh powerful matron of knowledge.” Lysa chuckled and sat down next to Jose.

Internally, he was glad to see the demonstration. A skill she showed and may not have realized was the dynamism in her attacks. Lysa was quickly pumping her soul from her core to her firsts on an unconscious level and with a speed that could keep up with her attacks. That wasn’t something people like him could do without dedication and effort.

The group took a small break with flasks of water and oranges from the Vanguards mess hall.

Revitalized for the rest of the lecture, the two waited for Emma to get into her groove and finish the rest of their lesson.

“So, the foundational techniques that every thing with a soul can access are reinforcement, sight, sense, communion, and kinesis. The ability to manipulate the soul isn’t considered optional and can be done innately in some way or another. This is the reason why even children wielding magical weapons can be a dangerous thing.”

She paused waiting for either of them to interject. The two were silent, eagerly waiting for the next section of the lesson.

“Now, the Vanguard places extreme emphasis on our soul shaping because becoming well versed in fluidly moving your soul around from one end of the body to another as well as controlling the rate at which your soul powers your equipment is important when facing monsters in the battlefield. You can’t afford to be inefficient with your toolbox.”

The rest of the lecture passed by for Jose in a blur. The usefulness of the core three techniques were discussed at length.

Soul reinforcement was an adventurer's first line of defense aside from armor and the only line of defense when dealing with creatures that directly attacked the soul like those pesky soul mosquitos. The ability could be used offensively or defensively and advancing in this technique required the user be deft at manipulating their soul to reduce leakage on attacks or fatigue with over defending the body.

Soul sight was often used to detect invisible opponents and served as the lenses by which an individual can see how their soul manipulation skills were shaping up. Advancing in soul sight could even increase view distances and peering through walls, although the Vanguard were least trained in this technique considering their direct approach towards dealing with Nests in a given area.

Soul sense was the most nebulous of the three skills, allowing for the user to sense another entity with a soul in the area or sense the absence of a soul in an area if enough practice went into refining the skill. Adept users could even identify others just by using their soul sense but most Vanguard used the ability as a radar to avoid ambushes or sneak attacks.

Communion and kinesis were the ones he didn’t recognize.

“Wait, when were communion and kinesis added to the list of core technical skills? And what are they exactly?” Jose asked.

Emma was eager to reply, “Well, we’ve always had these skills sitting at the periphery but it wasn’t until recently that they were established in Vanguard orthodoxy as core skills. You might recognize these as the advanced techniques of bonding and possession from school?”

It clicked instantly and Jose became excited.

“You’re telling me that making soul bonds with objects and familiars is considered a core tenet now? As well as physically manipulating the world with your soul?”

“Core tenets in the Vanguardian field, but yes.” Emma replied. The revelation that he would be training in those techniques left Jose in glee. The suggestion that they could be considered core skills meant that Jose would have a chance to pull these techniques off.

After the lesson ended, Emma pulled out a device that looked like a box with a lever attached at the top. The lever was hollow and the box had numerous sigils on every side.

“Lysa, have you ever checked what your Aspect is?” Emma asked as she led Lysa to grab the lever.

“No. Never really came up and the Annals don’t really care about your Aspect so long as you can do the job.” Lysa replied.

“Well learning about what your Aspect is can help you lean on particular techniques over others. Things will come easier to you and feel more natural if training on a technique your soul is compatible with.”

Lysa followed Emma’s instructions, pushing her soul out of her body and into the hollow center of the lever. The box began to glow with different colors on all of its sides and not long after, the colors settled on certain sides of the box.

Lysa let go of the lever and looked drained.

“Holy fuck, why am I so tired.”

“Once you’ve volunteered a piece of your soul to the device, it’ll siphon off the rest of it until you’re completely drained. I don’t know the intricacies of the internal mechanisms but the machine reads what you put in and provides a gradient for what foundational skills you’re inclined towards.” Emma responded, inspecting the sigils on each side of the box before coming to a consensus.

“Your Aspect is inclined towards reinforcement, which was expected, and kinesis, which is promising. Both of those techniques require extensive soul shaping exercises so your effective strength should double.”

“And what about my weaknesses?”

“Well, you’re averse to sense and sight. Neutral to communion. Overall not the worst pairings in the world considering your predilection to inflict physical violence. Being averse to soul sight though will make your malleability training more difficult but we can find some workarounds.”

Emma proceeded to place the device in the bag.

Both of them knew that using the device on Jose would just bring him down.

The training grounds were illuminated with the light of the rising sun. Ileah was on the move once more, the shadows of mangrove canopies streaking across the training grounds floor.

Accompanying the light came the sounds of the morning bell, its cacophonous ringing piercing through the Vanguard building followed by the scattered footsteps of recruits and officers moving through the halls to start their routines.

With Emma’s pass card, Jose and Lysa accessed their bathrooms and showered, letting the warm water wash off the sweat from their skin and the fatigue from their bodies.

Washed and energized from their morning routine, Jose and Lysa departed from the Vanguard headquarters to head to work.

“Good luck at work love.” Emma gave him a kiss and he responded in kind, grabbing her tight around the waist.

Lysa let out a gagging noise, “Keep it in the bedroom, you too.”

Like she was one to talk.

Jose let his partner go and waved her off. He sighed once she was out of view and started on their long trek back to work.

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“You know, you never mentioned what your trump card was.” Lysa said. They were all in the office, sitting at their respective desks identifying sections of yesterday's shipment and some of todays, although those didn’t interest Jose nearly as much as the manual on his desk.

“What trump card are you talking about?” Radolfo inquired.

“Lysa and Jose are planning to volunteer for the drop site mission.” Laura mumbled while fiddling with one of the magic eggs.

“Wait, what?” The other three cabal members asked in unison.

The conversation devolved into an interrogation process, with Radolfo asking details about their motivations for participating and their training regimen while Jose and Lysa grilled Laura on how exactly she knew about the information.

“Well if you must know,” Laura set aside her tools and addressed the both of them directly, “There’s an updated volunteer list available to the public that was released during our lunch break. Your names are on the list.”

She pulled out her journal and scrolled through the different feeds she was a part of before stopping at the colony’s public quest board.

No wonder neither of them were privy to the info; there wasn’t any information on the quest board pertinent to their lives so they never considered anchoring their journal to its feed.

“As you can see here, the volunteer list is at 47. Pretty surprising considering the suggested danger of the quest…” She trailed off.

Their names were registered near the top of the list along with their profession of Archivist.

Jose scrolled down the list of other volunteers and saw that there were botanists, machinists, alchemists, and even bureaucrats vying for a spot of the action.

Radolfo wrapped his arm around Jose, “Well look at you! Did Lysa put you up to this or is this your first step following in your mother’s footsteps?”

Jose pushed him off. His good mood was ruined.

“Nah, he’s the one that roped me in on this venture. I’m just tagging along for the ride.” Lysa chimed in.

Even with his rebuff at the topic, Radolfo persisted, “Well now, what is our resident Arcanist superstar going to do to dazzle the examiners, huh?”

“Wait, Jose is an Arcanist?” Laura asked, now looking at Jose with curiosity.

This was why he never mentioned his origins to people. It would have been better if he was born a nobody than to have such a large shadow cast over him.

“You didn’t know? I’m surprised that he’s so cagey about it. His mother is a bonafide archmage pioneering on the other side of the Veil for gods sake!”

Laura’s eyes widened when she connected the dots but by then, Jose had stormed out of the office in anger.

Jose knew he was giving Radolfo what he wanted. Getting under his skin was Radolfo’s pastime and he hated him for it, but the man knew what buttons to push to send him spiralling. He hoped that with time, Radolfo would grow up and ease up on the needling but the comments had become more pointed and spread out with age.

The man had ammunition on Jose from their childhoods, and the weasily fucker didn’t relent on using anything and everything to piss him off.

“Is everything okay, Archivist Ileria?”

Jose looked up from his pacing and saw the Annals Overseer, their milky white eyes staring down at him. The man was gnarled and tall like a great tree, his archivist vestments loosely hanging around his body like wizard robes of old.

“Oh, uh, yes. Everything is fine Overseer Richardt. I just stepped out to focus my mind.” Jose blurted out.

The Overseer leaned closer, inspecting Jose in some fashion before leaning away and continuing with his walk down the hallway.

“Don’t make this a habit, Archivist Ileria. Our work is tireless and we cannot afford to dally it away when overwhelmed.”

Overseer Richardt disappeared after passing through a corridor.

Not wanting the ire of the old man to fall on him (or have his commissions cut for leaving his station early and without warning) he balled up his anger and walked back into the office.

Radolfo maintained a smug look but decided not to engage. Laura was preoccupied with her work on the egg but he felt that aura of curiosity that so many others had when they found out about his origins. He made a mental note to sate some of her curiosity though, just so she wouldn’t bother him about the issue in the future.

Lysa gave him a pat on the back, “Hey, you’re Jose, alright? You’re following your dreams because you want to, not for anything else. Stop being a baby and get in the zone.” She gave him a shit eating grin and Jose relented with a smirk of his own.

He was following his dreams for the first time and he wasn’t going to let that shadow or his inadequacies get in the way of that.