In two weeks, four separate convoys of rebel prisoners were going to arrive in Lochmire Keep to be petrified and shipped to the House of Bells. Rather than try to rescue all the four groups, José had acquired an Medusa's Kiss elixir, which could unpetrify someone turned to stone. His plan was to wait for the prisoners to be "executed," and then intercept the single convoy that would be carrying all four groups at once.

The convoy would be swarming with elites and urks, which would have made it an impossible target. Even one of the individual convoys would have required intense planning, immaculate stealth, and perfect execution.

"With you, my friends, I think we can be more direct," he said.

That left them two weeks to prepare and get in position. Two weeks until they fought another squad of elites, supported by urks. The memories of their last fights with elites were all still painfully fresh. None of them balked at the challenge. But they all agreed that if they were going to face it, they would need to improve, and quickly.

Ordinarily, Arden would have preferred to train their coordination as a group against a suitably dangerous monster, but there was nothing in the immediate area around Shadefall good for anything more than target practice. So, during the last day of training together before they were supposed to leave for their first mission, Valerie, List, Kaleb, and Xigbar all squared off against him.

Arden stood in the center of them, hands resting on his cane in front of him. A faint, placid smile rested on his face.

List ignited her halberd with her power, and they all attacked at once.

Golden light swirled around Arden in a whirlpool that targeted not them, but their weapons. Their equipment wasn't sliced apart by the disarming wave, but it did knock List, Valerie, and Kaleb's attacks all off course, and Arden neatly stepped through them to deliver a blow with his cane to Valerie's chest and Kaleb's temple.

Xigbar was the only one unaffected by Arden's prayer, having gone for a less direct approach. He'd thrown his weapons into the air, and they came down on top of the fight as Xigbar dashed in.

"I couldn't help but notice you're…predicament," José said. "Shapeshifting is a powerful tool, but not so powerful when you have to strip naked every time you use it, yes?"

"I've got nothing to hide," Xigbar said. "It's just a pain in the ass having to leave all my stuff on the ground. Half the time, I don't even have time to get it back."

"Well, luckily for you, I have a solution," José said as he led Xigbar to a room in the lowest level of the headquarters. "According to our magic man, your clothes need to know how to be you and how to be a snake at the same time."

Xigbar cocked an eyebrow. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

José shrugged. "No idea. I do not understand half of what the gnome says. I just follow instructions and try not to die. Speaking of, you are tolerant of snake venoms, yes?"

They had reached the door they were walking to, which Xigbar suddenly had significantly more reservations about opening than he had a moment ago.

"José, what the fuck is—"

José opened the door, revealing a dark room filled with snakes. They crawled over one another in a pile so dense they looked like a living, writhing rug. From the sounds they were making, Xigbar thought some of them might be mating.

José shoved Xigbar into the room. "See you in twelve hours!"

Arden made the mistake of glancing up to track the weapons' fall, and in that blink where the priest's eyes weren't on him, Xigbar leapt forward, and transformed into a snake.

This time, his clothes transformed with him. To someone who wasn't paying attention, it would look like he'd disappeared completely. Unfortunately, Arden was paying attention.

Xigbar's manuever had bought him a second, but in the next, Arden's eyes snapped back down, and he caught Xigbar's snake form in midair. He threw the snake at List, but Xigbar didn't miss a beat. He transformed back to himself, caught his falling weapons out of the air, and threw the dagger.

He was still flying at List, but she stabbed her halberd into the ground in between them, and he pivoted in the air to kick off of it and land on his feet. He gave List a grin that she ignored, but as she tore the halberd free, they moved in sync. He fell back a step, and she charged forward.

Arden immediately folded Kaleb and Xigbar into the lessons he'd already been giving to Valerie and List. They went over very basic tactical arrangements and guidelines—who would attack what, and from which angles, and the various permutations that took depending on what kind of scenarios they were facing.

Valerie wouldn't have thought it was possible, but Xigbar was a worse student than List. He had all of List's bristling against authority, but with even less internal motivation. It took constant hounding from Valerie, pleas from Kaleb, and threats from List to take their lessons seriously, and even then, he complained constantly.

As if to balance him out, Kaleb turned out to be an even better student than Valerie. He paid absolute attention to everything Arden had to say, obeyed direction without question or delay, and always reviewed what they'd discussed on his own time. Arden was pleased, Valerie was impressed, and no amount of teasing from Xigbar shook his focus.

Sometimes, while Kaleb was paying rapt attention to something Arden was saying, List would watch him with a frown on her face. But whatever she was thinking, she said nothing.

List and Kaleb reached Arden at the same time, coming from different angles. He met Kaleb's shield with his cane, reinforced with the image of a golden mace, and he took List's halberd on a shield of golden light. He summoned another shield in the air behind him without taking his eyes off them, intercepting a crossbolt from Valerie just before it could take him in the back.

He was both surprised and proud that she'd been willing to fire at him in a training exercise. The blunted bolts wouldn't kill him, as long as they didn't hit a particularly fragile part of his skill, but they would hurt. A lot.

He fired a blast of divine energy at List, but Kaleb stepped in front of her, taking it on his shield.

With a grunt, Kiva hefted a trunk onto the table. Valerie, List, and Kaleb all gathered with obvious interest as the dragonblood beamed with excitement.

"Daniel made some friends in Lochmire Keep that have been a huge help to us with finding equipment to level the playing field. They're how we've gotten a lot of our weapons and armor, not to mention all our magic stuff. This—" She patted the trunk affectionately. "—is the latest batch of stuff they managed to smuggle out of the city. I figured you guys could use some upgrades."

List eyed the trunk greedily, and Valerie put a hand on her shoulder. Her sister's appetite for violence often translated to an interest in weapons, but these were bits and pieces a group of ratag rebels had smuggled out of the capital of the province. She didn't want List to get her hopes up.

"First off, Kaleb, right?" Kiva said as she dug into the chest. "Valerie says you need a new shield."

Kaleb affectionately cradled his bronze shield, which still had multiple deep gashes in it from Agnizzar's axe. "It's…seen better days."

Kiva held out a black, hexagonal shield that shimmered crimson where she touched its face. Kaleb glanced between his bronze shield and the black surface Kiva held before reluctantly setting his old one aside on the table. He hefted it, testing the weight, the feel on his arm.

"It's an elite's shield. Same reinforcement magic as their armor, only stronger," Kiva explained.

"How much stronger?" Kaleb asked.

List held out her hand, and a dagger flashed into it, crackling with crimson chaos. She gave Kaleb an inquisitive look, asking permission. He held up the shield, and she threw.

The blade flew from her hand like a bolt of red lightning, it struck Kaleb's shield with a flash. Red light rippled across the shield's surface, and the dagger ricocheted off, embedding itself up to the hilt in the wall. There wasn't so much as a scratch on the shield's onyx surface.

Very slowly, Valerie stood back up, having had to duck to avoid being impaled by List's dagger. "I'd say a lot stronger."

The black surface of Kaleb's new shield, now trimmed along the edge in bronze, shimmered red and gold as its magic dispersed the force of Arden's blast, and Kaleb didn't budge an inch under the force of it. And unlike so many times before, Kaleb throwing himself in front of List didn't knock her off balance.

Even before the beam had tapered out, Kaleb ducked. And a whip of steel and red lighting lashed out over his head.

"Well, how can I say no to that?" Kaleb asked with a reserved smile.

"List, I have a feeling you might like this one."

Kiva lifted out what at first glance looked like a serrated shortsword, until she fingered a trigger in the hilt, and the thing collapsed into a series of steel blades linked together by a fine chain the length of a whip. List stared at the weapon like Kiva was holding precious jewels.

Gingerly, she took it, and Valerie immediately took a step back. List tested the trigger a few times, turning the weapon from sword, to whip, to sword. Then, with a burst of movement, she ran her power through it and cracked it into whip form in one motion, cutting a crackling red arc through the air before yanking it back, twirling it around her once, and then lashing out again, carving a deep gash into the wall that ran almost floor to ceiling.

"I love it," List said.

Arden had to summon a golden helmet onto his head to avoid losing his face. List had found her coordination with their new allies, just as she had with Valerie. But she was still reckless, if she was throwing out wild attacks like that in a training match.

That, or she was actually trying to kill him. It could be hard to tell with that smile on her face.

She switched back to her halberd in a flash as Kaleb and Xigbar both came in, and she followed shortly after, threading her thrusts through the gap between the boys' assault. Valerie fired freely, none of her allies in her line of fire. This time, Arden had to summon armor over his entire body, as the attacks finally came in too fast and from too many angles to catch them all.

It was a good effort, but their rhythm was still off. If they'd timed it better, they could made it so there were no gaps between their attacks landing, keeping him permanently on the defensive. As it was, they'd left an opening.

In the breath's time between one volley of attacks and the next, Arden detonated his armor, unleashing a wave of power that sent List and Xigbar flying, and staggered Kaleb. Arden swung his cane with the force of a divine mace and prayer-enhanced strength at the same time that he let loose with a beam of energy at Valerie.

Kaleb's shield rang like a gong, and with his footing already shaken by Arden's burst, he was sent stumbling back.

Then, Arden felt a sharp pain in his calf. Too late, he glanced down to see a snake sinking its fangs into his leg. Xigbar had been favoring transforming himself ever since unlocking the ability to do it without losing his clothes. In the heat of battle, Arden had forgotten to watch out for the armband transforming on its own.

He shook it off with a single kick, but he could already feel a burning pain rushing up his leg, and his muscles were beginning to seize. He used a prayer to expunge the poison from his body, but Saint Hedwing's weak affinity for healing cost him. The prayer worked too slowly, and he was off balance when List's whip cracked toward him.

He could only meet the whip with his cane, and when List' weapon wrapped around his, her feral smile widened. She retracted the whip into sword form, and yanked hard. Arden's grip held, but only until Kaleb's fist met his wrist. Kaleb slammed his shield into Arden's face a second later, and though Arden caught it, it left him even more unbalanced, and vulnerable to Xigbar kicking the back of his knee.

Arden threw out his hands even as he fell to one knee, managing to hit both young men with blasts of divine light. But then Valerie was in front of him.

Valerie leaned over to see what else was in the trunk of weapons Kiva had brought. She saw a bundle of arrows with peculiar heads, a few mundane swords. Kiva saw her browsing, and shrugged.

"I know you don't use a bow, but these arrowheads are actually pretty neat. We could try mounting them onto your bolt shafts? Or maybe…"

Valerie drew out an item that had caught her attention; a silver sword hilt with no blade, but a curious insignia stamped into the pommel.

It took Valerie a moment to figure out where she'd seen the symbol before. It was the same stylized eye symbol that Arden wore. The emblem of Olwin Monster Hunter Society. She gripped the hilt, until she found a trigger in its hilt as well.

She fingered it, and with a click, a two foot long, needle-like blade shot out of the hilt, and accompanying razor sharp crossguard arms snapped into place. The blade gleamed an almost blue-white silver along its edge, and in the grooves carved into its flat. The blade felt almost weightless, and when she gave it a test flourish, white light trailed her swing, and the blade sang as it sliced the air.

"Or…that," Kiva said.

Valerie recognized the metalwork immediately, covered extensively as it was in her training. Silvered weapons, tempered in a similar process to what was used to make blessmetal, weren't strictly any better than normal weapons in most situations. But against some monster—werewolves, demons, vampires—they could be lethal where ordinary steel might simply be ignored.

Not exactly a weapon suited to fighting the Chosen's elites, and yet, Valerie couldn't bring herself to put it down. Everything about it, its nature, the insignia in the pommel, called to her. It felt perfect.

"I'll take it," she said.

Arden met his first apprentice's grey eyes as her silvered blade came to a halt under his throat, the tip drawing a single pinprick of blood. His earlier prayer finally worked the last of the poison out of his system, though his leg still ached. He was mostly likely still in better shape than the others, having taken far fewer hits. And yet, there was no mistake.

He was beaten.

Arden had heard from Valerie that the four of them, wounded but acting together, had just been able to hold back Agnizzar long enough to escape. While he himself wasn't quite Agnizzar's match, he was close enough to be a reasonable benchmark. And now, he had seen for himself how far they'd come.

He gave Valerie a reserved but proud smile. "Well done."