Hugo had to keep himself from looking back. He knew who the colonel was meeting with next and he was pretty sure that the colonel hadn’t intended wanted him to see her.

The woman waiting in Colonel Mandisa’s antechamber was the same one he had seen outside of Grandmaster Dandre’s office. She was a messenger for the queen of Paarl.

That meant that the colonel was working with royalty. There might be an innocent explanation for the visit. More likely was that the colonel was disobeying the general’s orders and telling the Queen all about the upcoming attacks by the hedge mages and Deva.

This meant that Colonel Mandisa’s loyalties were to the local royals and not to the sentinels. Hugo couldn’t trust him. He still needed his organization to get rank ups, but Hugo wasn’t going to tell the man anything sensitive now. The realization felt exhausting. He had hoped that this recent meeting would expand his list of people he could trust, but that didn’t seem to be happening.

He needed to track down the key people in the army and hedge mages, and although he needed the sentinel’s help, he was realizing that he couldn’t trust most of them. He would have to personally verify anything he was told.

Hugo shook his head and walked back to the grandmaster’s compound. He didn’t have to worry about that right now. He just needed to focus on learning runes for the next few months.

...

Sighing, Hugo tossed a clay tablet back into the recycling pile. He still couldn’t get a handle on rectifying runes that the other apprentices had made a mistake on. He had spent the last three months working on the list the grandmaster had given him. He had checked off all but this one.

He had a working repertoire of eight different runes now. Fire, Ignition, Cold, Gust, Light, Sharpness, Pool, and Impetus. The final two runes had required a new runic language, so he had chosen his second lingua. It wasn’t much different than the first time he had made his selection, but it opened up more possibilities when creating runes.

Using these runes, he had created his own weapons and armor. Four bracers, each with different runes. Laminar titanium armor for his chest and legs. A quick firing crossbow with a wide variety of runed arrows. He felt like they were all impressive, almost on par with the work they were doing here.

Almost, but not quite. Every rune he saw his fellow apprentices do was better than his own. He had hoped that his higher dexterity would help him match their skills, but nothing beat years of practice. Still, he was able to make remarkable progress in learning his domain. It helped that he could do whatever he wanted all day. The grandmaster’s impossible list and hand’s off approach may have been designed for him to give up, but it gave him the freedom to progress and practice nonstop.

It was frustrating, not being able to rectify rune tablets yet, but he wasn’t going to stay here too much longer.

Tomorrow morning he was heading out with the sentinels on a training run outside the walls. His goal was to get to rank twenty or so. That was the average rank of adult nox mages and it should help him pretend to be a disgruntled apprentice.

In about forty days, he needed to be in Deva to infiltrate their military. The mundane recruits would be starting right around then, so it would be the perfect time to join when the army was busy. It would still give him a month and a half of time undercover before New Year's. That should be enough time to uncover who was responsible for the shimmer veins exploding and have the sentinels take them out.

The colonel said that he would probably need a few trips deep into the forests outside of Paarl to hit eighteen. Hugo hoped that he would be able to prove him wrong. He knew that his crossbow was effective, and the extra runes he had learned should be useful as well. The only question was if they would run into enough monsters during their trip. It was about halfway through the year at this point, Hugo guessed that meant that the forests would be full of them.

The next day, Hugo showed up at the eastern tower in his full armor, carrying a bag with camping supplies and his crossbow and bolts. After he reported in, they sent him to the back of the tower to wait with the new sentinel recruits.

He found them waiting in a large round room. They all had standard sentinel armor on, gleaming new without a single scratch. He could tell by the way they shuffled around the room that most of them were nervous. All of them were older than him though. Being a sentinel was the pinnacle of a mage’s career, not the beginning. He guessed that most of them were around thirty years old.

Right on time, a sentinel walked into the room and said, “Glad to see you all here. Check each other’s gear and I will talk to our little noble.” He walked over to Hugo and said, “I am Lieutenant Silumko and I assume you are Xhosa?”

“Yes, I am Xhosa, but I am not a noble,” Hugo said. He wondered if a message from the colonel got garbled.

“I know, we are just going to treat you like one for this mission. In the future, we will often escort nobles out for their rank ups, so they need some practice protecting a valuable target. We will protect you the whole way. If they mess up, can you handle yourself?”

“Yes, I made runed armor and my second domain is barrier,” Hugo said and flickered a small shield into existence.

The lieutenant nodded, “Interesting combination of domains. Don't you get unbalanced?”

Hugo shrugged, “It works for me.”

“Glad to have you either way. We will be taking a mana cart for the first part of the journey, and then walking for most of the day. The whole trip should take about four days. Are you prepared for that?”

“I believe so, but I wasn’t given a full list of what to pack.”

“Just ask if you are missing something, it will be good training for my team. Nobles often expect us to give them our supplies, so we bring extra,” the lieutenant said with a shrug.

As soon as everyone was ready they stood in the middle of the round room. The lieutenant signaled to someone outside the room and the walls started rotating. The single entrance to the room revealed the inside of the city walls as it turned, and then opened to the outside. They walked out and hopped onto a pair of mana carts nearby. Hugo looked back to see the room continue to rotate and the wall looked unbroken again. That was a neat way through the walls, there was no door left as a weakness the monsters could exploit.

The trip with the mana carts took two hours. They couldn’t even see shimmer mountain by the time they stopped. Hugo guessed that they were even outside of the range of its veins. Whatever monsters there were out here were likely to have bodies of flesh and blood. That was good for Hugo because it meant more experience, but dangerous for them all because it meant the monsters were experienced killers. There was more variability in monster behaviors out here, and some of the older and higher tiered monsters were almost intelligent.

They all got out their weapons and adjusted their packs for a long hike. Before they got going, the lieutenant gave Hugo a long lecture on fighting in a group with a ranged weapon. They even practiced ducking out of the way of Hugo’s sightlines once he had a bolt loaded into his crossbow.

Hugo thought the whole thing was a bit insulting to his intelligence, but it was probably good practice for a trip with a noble that only used his weapon once a year.

Once they got going, all talk stopped. They walked forward at a good pace, keeping an eye out. The team was focused and hyper aware of the forest around them. Hugo was interested to see that each sentinel had a ranged weapon and a close combat one. There wasn’t much specialization in their loadouts. He could only guess at the domains of the men and women around him. The woman over there was probably a runic sentinel, no one else openly wore runed bracers. The man in the front likely had the formation domain, he occasionally threw knives into the brush that he didn’t bother to go retrieve.

Occasionally, they would stop at the edge of a clearing for a quick break. Hugo wasn't tired, so he assumed it was a break for their mental well-being. There was quiet talk during these breaks, but no one came up to him. When he walked up to a few of them, they just asked if he needed anything. They were taking this noble thing a little too seriously in his opinion.

Eventually there was a break in the silent monotony. A mage in the back of the formation quietly said, “Contact,” and they all stopped.

The mage said, “Herd of velociraptors, about a click northeast. I don’t think they have caught our scent though.”

“We are staying here for a bit, let us know if they move,” Lieutenant Silumko said.

They all waited there in a tight formation, even more vigilant, if that was possible. Waiting was tense. Eventually the light mage spoke up, “They are heading this way. Twenty to thirty of them.”

“We are going back to that clearing we just passed, double time,” the lieutenant said.

They raced back to the clearing and set themselves up on the opposite side of the clearing.

“Lonwabo, give me a countdown,” said the lieutenant.

The light mage started at forty-eight and counted down, so everyone would know how close the velociraptors were. Blue shields appeared in layers around the squad, only leaving a section in front of them free. Two sentinels stood to the sides of and drew longbows. No one else drew their ranged weapons though, they knew how fast velociraptors could be and were ready with close range weapons. Hugo had twelve bolts loaded into his crossbow, the first two were normal, the remaining ten were explosive. He was excited to see how they would do in real life situations.

He had finally figured out what was up with the mithril and titanium dust. It didn’t explode randomly, like he had first thought. It only ignited in the presence of air. If he created a sealed arrowhead with the dust inside, the bolt was stable and safe. Hugo pulled the crossbow to his shoulder when the light mage got to eight.

Trusting the man, Hugo fired as soon as he got to one. The mithril bolt shot across the clearing and embedded itself into the lead velociraptor’s thigh. Its screeches seemed to rally the rest of the herd and they headed straight for their group. The arrows from the longbows shot out, each one killing a velociraptor.

Hugo was a bit too excited with his second shot, and it sailed over their heads. He concentrated for the next shot and activated the rune as he shot. The bolt soared through the air, hit the new lead monster and detonated.

The explosion turned that monster into paste and killed the two velociraptors to either side. Before the monsters even had a chance to realize what had happened, Hugo fired another. The second explosion only hit two raptors, but broke the monster’s charge. They stumbled over each other, trying to get out of the way. Two more shots took out an additional six monsters. After that, they weren’t bunched together anymore. Hugo used his remaining four shots to turn four monsters into red mist.

Using all four hands, he reloaded with normal mithril bolts in record time. He knew that the monsters would soon be too close to use the explosive ones. He heard something that made him look up. Four velociraptors had snuck around the back of their squad and jumped clear over the walls surrounding them.

The barrier mage must have been expecting that though, and a blue ceiling appeared before the monsters could land. They hit and skidded off the barrier, falling to the ground in front of the squad. Spears lanced out and killed them before they could get up. Hugo was about to fire at the remaining monsters, but the sentinels beat him to it. Beams of light scored holes into nearby velociraptor's skulls, killing three in as many seconds.

Two more velociraptors got in range of the spears and were stabbed and flung to the side. They were keeping the entryway clear. The alchemist flung a tiny potion bottle at a group of three that were just clearing the explosion site. The glass shattered on contact and exploded in a yellow cloud. The monsters raced through the cloud, but then fell to the ground, gasping. They died in short order.

The field was quiet, all except for the first monster Hugo shot. It was still trying to limp forward. It didn’t bleed much, but seemed weakened.

“Is that a poison arrow?” Lieutenant Silumko said.

“No, it’s something different,” Hugo said. He really didn’t want to tell people he was using bolts worth several gold.

Just then, the embedded bolt started glowing blue. They all watched as the monster took a few more halting steps forward. Then the bolt exploded, taking a chunk of the velociraptor’s leg with it. Blood poured from the wound and the monster whimpered. A moment later, the velociraptor toppled to the side, dead.

“I think you neglected to inform me about your full loadout,” Lieutenant Silumko said disapprovingly. “We are going to need to have a discussion before we move on.”