The next morning, he got up at a more reasonable time, knowing that his fellow apprentices wouldn’t get to the compound until later in the day. As he ate breakfast, the rest of his family got up, serving themselves.

“Hey mom, how much would a round trip ticket to Tallinn cost?” Hugo said as he ate putu pap.

“I can’t remember exactly, something like thirty-two copper,” she said distractedly. She was looking out at their herb garden in the backyard.

“Can I borrow thirty-two copper? I am pretty sure I can pay you back when I return,” Hugo said.

She whirled and gave him a piercing stare, “And what are you going to do in Tallinn? That’s a human city and another county.”

Hugo shrugged, “That’s kind of the point. If I can’t contribute on the walls here, I will go to a human city. Their rules are much more lax. They let just about anyone help during a monster surge.”

“You shouldn’t leave,” grandma said, “It’s bad enough that you had to leave once. I don’t want to worry about you leaving the city again.”

A few of the other aunts and uncles nodded along.

“Why not? Standing on the walls isn’t dangerous. I need to rank up, and this is much cheaper. I think they might even pay me if I kill enough monsters.”

“It just isn’t done. It wouldn’t be proper,” one of his aunt’s said. Hugo really needed to learn all of his family member’s names.

Celia came to his rescue and said, “Acting proper is what got us here. We have followed all the rules and played nice for years, and we still aren’t allowed to build another house. We are bursting at the seams here. We can’t pretend that three of you didn’t just leave to go up the mountain. I say if he wants to do it, let him. Maybe if I had bent the rules eight years ago, I would be an alchemist instead of a slivered.”

No one had a reply to that. The table sat in silence and ate quietly. Hugo was a bit surprised to learn that just leaving their home town was culturally frowned on. There were a lot of intricacies of nox life that he didn’t understand. The atmosphere seemed strained for the rest of breakfast and family members filed out one at a time.

Before he left for his apprenticeship Themba stopped him and handed him a small bag of coins. She quietly said, “Don’t let anyone see you coming or going and don’t talk about this to anyone.”

Hugo nodded and tucked the bag away. The trains ran on a regular basis, there had to be someone on them. Apparently this was one of those situations where everyone was going to look the other way and pretend it didn’t happen.

He wished he could just talk to someone about this, someone he didn’t have to pretend with. He missed Daniela. During his last life she was a real friend and he could see himself falling in love with her eventually. That relationship might be gone forever though. Any relationship had tenuous beginnings where things could fall either way, he might not ever be able to recreate what they had. Especially in this body/

He still couldn’t decide if he wanted to keep this life or not. He was going to do his best to stop the shimmer explosions either way, but he kept waffling on whether or not he wanted to succeed. He didn’t want to be a nox, but he was starting to love this family. His mom and dad were so nice, and Nobomi was cute. He knew if he didn’t succeed in this life, they would be crowded and discriminated against for the rest of their lives.

It wasn’t like he had a lot of chances to try again anyway. There were only five runic nodes glowing on the mountain. His own, Cristian’s, and Xhosa’s were already dimmed. Five more chances, and that was it. Shaking his head, he headed off to his apprenticeship. He just needed to do his best.

While he was waiting for Klaus to arrive, he pulled up his Acomarian screen and chose his lingua. There were eight choices, each of the words meant nothing to him. He just selected isibhozo like Klaus suggested and closed his screen.

After a few moments, he felt something happening. He started catching glimpses of foreign letters, long and squiggly ones. He wasn’t seeing the letters, more like slowly remembering them for the first time. As they solidified in his mind, he realized the letters were three dimensional. Over the next hour of work, he gained the knowledge of about twenty different letters.

He stopped packing armor into a crate to go talk to Klaus about it. “Hey man, I selected my lingua like you suggested, and it’s weird. I feel like I know more, lots more, but none of the letters I know are runes.”

Klaus waved him closer to look at what he was working on, “Every rune is made up of several different letters. A simple rune might have twelve letters, and a complex one thirty-two. I am sure you know by now that letters aren’t flat. That means that they can be rotated.”

“What?”

“Ok, I can see I skipped a few steps there. Let me see, let me see. Go ahead and get out the bracer from that armor set,” Klaus said. Once Hugo returned with it, Klaus continued, “Do you see this light rune here?”

Hugo looked at where he was pointing. There were three runes on the bracer, and one of them made sense to him now. He could see the individual letters embedded in the rune, wrapping around each other into a compact shape. He had stared at runes before, but it was like he was seeing it for the first time now.

“Let’s start with the letter isha here,” Klaus said and pointed at a section of the rune, “As it is now it creates a beam of light that shoots forward.” He activated the rune to demonstrate. “If I had turned the letter clockwise when I was inscribing it, I would have a narrower beam. If I turned it counterclockwise, it would be a ball of light. Each letter can be adjusted to control mana usage, brightness, direction, etc. And the whole thing needs to be adjusted for the curvature of the bracer. If any one part is off, it doesn’t work and we have to scrap the whole thing.”

“That’s insane. It’s so complex. How do you know what direction to turn the runic letters?”

“Years of trial and error. Books are fine to get the general idea, but then you have to try it out on the clay tablets. You just have to keep fiddling with it until you get the orientation right and it works. I once went through ten tablets before I realized I had one part reversed,” Klaus said. He infused the rune again to make sure it was topped off, and packed the armor for sale.

Hugo took a moment to let it all sink in. Learning runes really would take forever. Runic mages could do almost any magics, but it would take forever for Hugo to learn anything. He might as well start now.

“Can you teach me the right way to make a fire rune?” Hugo said. He would need that rune if he wanted to recreate his most effective ammunition.

“Nah, I am not going to hog your help forever. The rest of the apprentices will want your help too. You can help out Issa next week when I am done with you, she can give you a few pointers. Although I would recommend getting mana sight before you attempt to create your own rune. It helps you figure out where you went wrong. Also, I wouldn’t start with fire, most people start with light. It’s going to be a while before you create your first rune, Xhosa. You gotta walk before you can run.”

Hugo nodded and got back to work. This was all so frustrating. He needed exploding arrows if he was going to rank up to eight in one trip. By the time he had learned enough to make his own fire runes, the monster surge would be over and the sentinels wouldn’t be accepting help anymore. Even if he knew where they sold the fire runes, he couldn’t afford them anyway. He needed all the money he had to travel to Tallinn.

It was all a mess of contingent clauses. Everything would fall into place if he could just move on any one of them. But without that first step, he stayed locked in place.

He spent the rest of the day frustrated before he realized he was an idiot.

He had chosen mithril for his element because he could use it in the rune making process. He had just heard the apprentices complain about how expensive it was, he could easily conjure mithril and solve his money problems. He made himself a small cube and tucked it into his pocket.

Despite Klaus complaining about mithril prices, it wasn’t his job to buy for the shop. Hugo went up to the apprentice responsible and said, “Hey there, I hear you are the one that buys the mithril for the compound.”

She put down her work and said, “Yes, that’s me and no I can’t get you an extra rod. The grandmaster cut my budget and I am barely keeping up as it is.”

“Oh, no I wasn’t going to ask for one. Just the opposite actually. I know this human who lives in another city. He claims to be a formation mage that can make mithril. He made me this. Can you tell if it is real?”

“That’s a good question actually. I know there are fakes and alloys out there. Give it here and I will test it for you,” she said.

Hugo handed it over and she weighed it. Then she put a drop of acid on it and checked what color it turned. Finally, she held it in her hands and pushed a bit of mana into it, making it glow.

“Good news, this is the real stuff. You have a very kind friend there. Just this little chunk is worth two gold by itself. Hold onto that for after your apprenticeship,” she said.

“Actually, I was hoping to sell it to you,” Hugo said, “I can just ask my friend to make me more after my apprenticeship is over.”

“Well, I am not supposed to buy anything outside of approved sources. And I would have to melt this chunk down and reform it so it is usable in the inscribing pens,” she said.

Hugo recognized a negotiating technique when he heard one. “How about I knock off a little from the price, so you can still meet your budget? One gold, eighty silver.”

“Well...” she said. “I really shouldn’t. Our shop’s reputation is everything.”

Hugo spied something in the back of her shop. It was a small handful of fire runes, “I need some of those fire runes. How about we do ten of those and one gold, fifty silver?”

“Ignition runes? We use those to start the forges in the morning. What do you need those for?”

“Does it matter?”

She thought it over for a bit before she said, “Deal.”

...

It was two days later and Hugo had just arrived in Tallinn. He hopped off the train and hurried towards the closest walls. He was in a hurry. He needed to rank up and get back home as soon as possible.

First off, he needed to get back home so he could sleep. He had to make this trip after the work day was over and he was already tired. Secondly, he didn’t want to get stuck in Tallinn. They shut down the trains at the height of the monster surge. Hugo knew that the actual height wasn’t for another three days, but he didn’t know when the trains would be shut down. The conductors had just spouted nonsense about judging local conditions.

As soon as he arrived at the northern tower on the wall, he walked inside and talked to the first person he saw, “Hello there. Is this where I sign up? I would like to volunteer for a single shift. Are there slots available nearby?” He held up his crossbow so they could see he would be useful on the wall.

“Uh, yes. This is where we sign up volunteers. Are you soulmarked? We can’t allow anyone that isn’t soulmarked up on the walls. It’s too dangerous for mundanes.”

Hugo sighed, “Yes, I am soulmarked. I have had two domains for a while now. Formation and Barrier,” Hugo said and held up the crossbow and flickered a shield into existence.

“Oh, good then. Sorry for the confusion. You just looked a little young,” he said and got out a form.

Hugo said, “Just because nox are shorter than humans, doesn’t mean we are all young.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

Hugo used the man’s embarrassment to get a spot nearby and just a four hour shift. Normally they preferred eight hours of protection from volunteers, but Hugo insisted on a shorter shift.

Once he was up there, he relaxed. He was finally here. He would get a few ranks just from being around when monsters were killed. The mana density around here would create a survival effect rank up or two for him. The remaining four ranks wouldn’t be too hard to gain as long as all of his shots hit.

While he waited for his two free levels, he used his regular mithril bolts. He wanted to save the exploding ones for later since he only had ten of those. He was shocked at how effective the simple bolts were.

He took out a fire beetle with his first shot. The bolt didn’t seem to do much at first, just piercing deep into its carapace. The beetle continued to lumber forward. A few seconds later the mithril started to glow. It continued to glow brighter and brighter. The beetle’s fires grew dim until the bolt shattered, leaving a large wound that caused the monster to bleed out.

Hugo was confused before he realized what happened. Mithril was very mana conductive and the young monster was all mana. Just getting the bolt inside the beetle must have been enough to start a chain reaction and overloaded the bolt with mana until it exploded. Two dings resounded in his ears. He had enough to rank up to four now. Just a few more ranks and he would be ready to go.

He wondered why more formation mages didn’t pick mithril. Sure, it cost him more mana than just about any other choice he saw up and down the wall, but still. That was an impressive result.

Two and a half days of mana from his huge mana pool had been enough to create a total of twenty crossbow bolts. That seemed like a lot earlier today, but when he saw all of the other sentinels and harvesters around him outperform him, he decided that mithril might not be a realistic choice for a lot of people.

Still, he was ecstatic two hours later when he hit rank eight. He still had six exploding arrows left and was just pacing himself so he could rank up even further.

As the bells rang and a few sentinels swapped out, a new formation mage took his post on the wall. The man soon became Hugo’s least favorite sentinel.