It is easier to get more than it is to get better.

Wisdom of the Ancients, book 3

The days blurred quickly into each other, and the week was over before Johanna could realize it.

They had not obtained books until Wednesday when the scouting officers finally delivered their precious cargo.

Twenty-one books. That was all that the stores of Vernon yielded. Just enough for eleven Talent builds in the end, with about three or four parchment’s worth of leftovers.

In a curious case of “leftovers,” Moore sometimes created a single-quality parchment at the end of a session. She’d wondered why at first since the parchment did not light in the soldier’s hands, but she had a hypothesis.

“You might be not too far away from increasing that quality,” she’d told the Fire Shaper.

“I remember back when we did our first conversions, there was a scavenger, name's Jackson I think, who got a parchment with a Level and Fire Shaper specialization. He’d been just a Shaper and under level 5. He activated the parchment one day while we were heading back home. The Ancient knows exactly how close you are to being able to gain something, so he probably did something in advance for you,” she added.

“Really?”

“Same thing for me. Back in Washington, he made me a Talent parchment in advance; I could use it two weeks later,” Ulrich remembered.

“Yes. Authority is your primary quality, and this will slightly improve your Burning Ground,” she completed.

The Fire Shaper winced at that. Although he was newly Talented, he’d watched his predecessor’s test of the same.

Burning Ground was, indeed, the Burning Walker’s legendary ability. Fire Shaper Mercola could surround himself with a large, extremely hot disc of flames reaching up to his head. As he walked, the fire followed and remained in a circle centered around him, leaving everything burning in his wake.

Unfortunately, the Talent did work exactly like the legends said.

It also burned one’s clothes. There were very few garments that could resist the estimated 900°F that the inferno-like circle generated. The sorcerer might be immune to his own fire, but his uniform was definitively not.

There had been laughs when the Burning Ground turned off, and Mercola was left with smoking and burning tatters on him, trying to cover himself. Not that it was the only thing left burning; the edge of his circle of devastation had caught at least two practice targets that were now burning, and people had to rush and smother the fire and salvage whatever they could.

Johanna now knew why the stories she’d heard about the Erlang fire sorcerer said he had fought naked. It wasn’t to disturb his enemies or any form of psychological warfare; it was just to save on clothing costs. God knew she’d complained more than once about the damage their own clothing suffered, and there was no Fixer Talent for that.

After dodging the complaints about that little “side effect” – “No one had that one at the Talent House, we didn’t know” – she went on to suggest less destructive options for Mercola. Fireball and Flaming Blade were more common, and she knew exactly how to use them.

The other thing she realized, almost simultaneously with the officers supervising the creation of the original Talent core for the army, was that all specializations seen so far ended up suspiciously similar. While there was a variance, all of the builds provided by Moore involved a core of similar talents. It seemed that when the brass had complained about overly specialized Talented, he’d taken that into consideration when creating each soldier’s build.

After she intoned her customary pronouncement, “Welcome to the rank of Sorcerers, Water Shaper Henry Signi,” she reflected on that third water specialist.

So far, all of the army’s water specialists ran with Frostbite, Mana Sight, Frozen Body, and Ice Blade, making them more front-line fighters with freezing spears rather than true sorcerers. This particular Shaper had, in addition, Liquid Fire, which was an odd one, giving Private Signi the ability to turn flames into a sort of liquid, potentially in addition to making the Talented immune to fire as well as cold.

She suspected the man had too small Agility or Strength to allow a better dispersion of Talents. They did not do a measurement cycle for the future Talented, letting the Ancient work directly from his own invisible summaries. But she suspected the man’s build was now complete, pending another future Level.

The second Water Shaper had had Soften Mud in addition to the four others, while the first had her old Steam Breath.

The two Fire Shapers also shared multiple talents, including Mana Sight. She’d wondered about it before remembering that Gomez had noted that both Mana Sight and Gauge Stamina were the odd Talents that he did not receive a minimum in any quality, just levels. If the sorcerers did not have much in Perception, they could still get a Talent in that branch, and Moore clearly favored spreading Talents across all qualities. She knew that after a while, you couldn’t get a Talent with every level – she had tried everything after her adventure in Moore’s realm, where she’d seen the mention of one “free skill point” on Moore’s equivalent of the Talent House summary for herself, but she hadn’t found anything.

Gomez had thought that each Talent made the others more expensive, at least within their main quality.

Progression-wise, the soldiers were increasingly better at using their own Talents. The mock battles – now plural with more soldiers raised to Talented status – once intended to get them used to fast combat and quick adaptation, were turning out increasingly less lopsided in their favor. The one thing they had for themselves was their advanced specialization. A quarter of the soldiers had gotten a level 7, but only one so far had gained a level 8 and the matching specialization. Earth Master Gared Beckstead was the winner of the Talent lottery so far.

Unsurprisingly, he was one of the oldest veterans, in his late thirties, and had served two tours of duty in the regular actions where Independence helped the forces of the Marches of the Star against the aggressive Sinaloa state south.

Beckstead was a mixed bag when fighting. He had, unsurprisingly, Earthbind like Petra, but also Stoneskin, which turned him into a good fac-simile of a marble statue, complete with golden veins that appeared to follow the actual veins under the normal skin. He was the only one who approached having serious resistance against Tom’s attacks and was pretty hard to hit in general, although stabbing and slicing could leave their mark.

The marks, if superficial enough, didn’t bleed as long as he remained in his Stoneskin shape and only started to when he relaxed the Talent, preventing any Fixer’s teleport. However, even light bleeding wounds remained bleeding when he turned into stone, which was pretty bizarre to see. An animated marble statue was pretty weird, but a statue that bled red? Utterly strange.

He also had Tremor, which was about as horrible as she remembered in Petra’s case, but at least was not made even worse by his Master–level specialization. Stoneskin also seemed to help in balancing himself against the buckling of the ground. Nobody managed to stay up within his circle, and he almost never did, but he kept trying it.

“I’ll master that,” he insisted.

Privately, Johanna doubted that. Talents did not work naturally, and what they did could not be simply ignored. In any case, he had a wide space, outside of the army compound, to test. The army engineers definitively did not want him to wreck the place, which looked likely, given the initial results.

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Johanna was almost surprised that Saturday evening to see the Executive pop up at home. His wife had informed them that Harold – Wexler – was horribly busy and worked late these days, often eating in the kitchen when he came home at night.

The head of Independence State did not look that tired, at least not until he spoke, and she could hear the fatigue in his voice.

“I have more than my usual rounds of meetings. Thanks to you or the Warden, or both, I think.”

“How are things going?”

“I’m juggling all sorts of balls. The first is books.”

“Looking for more.”

“And it is not as easy as you’d think. Most pre-Fall books that were salvaged or kept around after the Fall have ended up in private libraries and collections over the years. And we have no idea where those are. I’ve set the combined forces of Katia and Jared – he’s the Undersecretary for Trade – to get stuff, but…”

“They can’t simply get them, I suppose?” she asked.

“The issue is that we can’t simply tell everyone they’re necessary. People will ask why, and then will tell you ‘okay, but it’s $2000 per book’. Or more, trying to probe why or how hard we want their old fancy book.”

He raised his hand, staving off the next question.

“If you tell them what they’re actually for, they will still ask for money. You can’t simply seize them – there are no laws for seizing someone’s movable property under eminent domain. We can seize someone’s house, or farm, or anything like that, sure. But the content of someone’s bookshelf? No way. They’d tie the State in court for years, and trying to ignore the law is a desperation move that will probably end up badly for the State. Short-term maybe good, long-term catastrophic. My generals can think of just the war; I have to think of the aftermath.”

He sighed.

“I’ve spent enough time with all my best lawyers to figure out how to cut that Gordian knot. Emergency legislation from the Assembly, which means it will still take a couple of weeks at best. And once we tell people what their books can be used for, they will want that for themselves. Good for your potential future business, sure. Less so for us.”

“Surely…”

He looked at her with obvious pity. She blinked.

“Yes, they’re that bad. People seeing an undue advantage usually are.”

“And if we keep it secret?” she asked.

“We may get more. But it will be costly. Right now, I’m digging into the Executive discretionary funds, but – again – I will have to ask the Assembly for a budget appropriation once that dries up. And that means telling them – and that means telling everyone, in practice – why.

“In any case, we’re trying to locate every significant store of Ancient books we can, before we can figure out how to acquire it. If we had time, we’d be scouring other states as well, but sending agents there with money and instructions, plus the time you need to find there, plus, plus, plus…”

He spread his hands.

“Oh, we’ll be doing what we can. But I’m afraid your expedition to the East Coast will be the primary, no, the only significant source of Ancient books for the near future. Ask me for anything but time, the saying goes.”

“And we don’t have time,” Peter asked.

The Executive turned his head toward her friend.

“No. Robert – Robert Henley, the head of intelligence you met once – has guesses. Depending on how they made their getaway, the Warden might be getting those stolen crates right now or in the coming weeks. And you have, what, thirty…”

“About that, yes,” Johanna confirmed.

“Empowered. In a week, he’ll probably start making his most reliable troops into Talented. Our only relief is that he needs to deal with the tribal war first before he can free his army to do anything else. Then, he’ll have a winter campaign if he wants to move immediately.”

“He needs how much time?”

“Conventional wisdom is that you can’t project much force in the winter. Even your traditional foes, the northern tribes, don’t do much.”

“At least until they allied with the Wendigos,” Peter noted.

“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about them joining forces with the Warden, do we?” Wexler laughed.

“True,” Peter admitted.

“But, in any case, logistics are against him. That’s the big sunshine ray in the situation – we should have enough time to prepare and get those Talents before the Warden’s troop show up. Should.”

Wexler sighed again but didn’t comment further, nibbling his meal.

“Well, at least the first Talented are adapting well,” Johanna said.

“I got the reports. You’re doing well.”

Monday saw another small batch of books delivered. The collection was as eclectic as the previous ones, mismatched books, including apparently parts of novel series, and also several illustrated books. Johanna realized she’d never told the procurement agents that such types were apparently impossible to convert. She was unsurprised to find them remaining untouched by Moore’s conversion.

With enough for a new dozen soldiers, they also started to take a lesser role in training. The first squad might be a bit green in the mastery of their Talents, but they were good and they learned fast.

It also helped that Moore kept making the same type of builds over and over again. The existing Talented could easily explain and demonstrate most aspects of their Talents to the new batch. This was what the generals had intended, after all.

The four of them still helped. The general battle was a daily fixture now, although they’d increased the team sizes, with more people on both sides. This increased the chaos at first, with almost an entire squad on both sides, and the four ramped up the use of their abilities.

The officers still goggled at the insanity that was the primary battle. Johanna figured they were slowly realizing that Talented armies were not simply soldiers with bigger weapons.

“This might be a boon and a problem,” she finally confessed to General Sharpe during the end-of-day debrief.

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know how the Warden will build his armies. From what you said, redundancy is good. If you have losses, new squaddies will have familiar Talents, and they’ll know how to fight together effectively and quickly. But if the Warden’s army has extremely varied profiles… well, all your soldiers, they will face all sorts of Talents they’ve never seen.”

“I’ve looked at your list. There are a… lot of them. Over 400.”

“411. That’s only the low-level ones.”

He frowned.

“Moore used extremely high-level ones when he fought in my stead. I’ve seen mention of… more advanced ones. Things not on the list, like Triple Strike. Or Anti Mana Sphere. Whatever these do.”

“How?”

“If we have people with higher levels and qualities. We had received parchments that are up to level 9, I presume because we only had people well under that level, and that’s good enough to start. But there are Talents that require level 10… level 13… even level 16.”

“Are they more powerful?”

She remembered the display.

“They are far more significant. He… he could fly.”

“Fly? Like the Ancients?”

“I don’t think it’s the same. But yes.”

Seeing Sharpe’s face, she immediately downplayed the risk.

“That required level 16, if I remember right. The Warden can’t have those. He only has access to the basic ones that Moore made this summer. But if we have someone at level 10 or higher, then Moore can give them some of those better Talents. Quality, not quantity.”

“And how do we find soldiers with such levels?”

“The only things I know that help are… fighting. You need people who fought Changed Beasts or other people. That’s why your soldiers are already level 6 or 7 for the most, even if they didn’t have Talents before.”

“Well, most of them never did actual battles.”

“Earth Master Beckstead did, and that’s why he’s 8. You’ll have others, I’m sure. The Warden’s force may have the levels, then, but never the Talents.”

“Time to recall the forces abroad then,” Sharpe said. “The southern Marches will be pissed.”

Another week passed, and the Executive finally showed up again for dinner, this time on Thursday. He still looked fresh and sounded tired.

“More balls to juggle,” he simply said.

“I thought I hated meetings, but you’re in a worse position,” Johanna said.

“Oh, you don’t do my job if you don’t at least tolerate meetings. I tend to hate those that do not help anything moving, but those are much rarer. Thankfully.”

“I assume those ‘balls’ are still ours.”

“And you’d be mostly correct. My army is still trying to figure out how to deal with the perspective of the Warden coming at them this spring. Or worse. It’s like squaring the circle.”

Something Johanna had never understood why this particular thing was considered impossible. Or even what it was, if it wasn’t just making a square around a circle. She assumed Mrs. Vanu had been correct in skipping that lesson for the kids of Anasta.

“What is the problem then?”

“Nothing you can solve. My generals did warn me repeatedly that we do not have enough troops. The last actual war that Independence State was directly fought by us was… the Third War of Unification. With our central position and all the other states surrounding us being members of the Union, all we’ve done is helping at times other States, mostly the southern ones, with problems on their border.”

He sighed, as he often did.

“So, we have professional troops, but not many experienced ones, and not enough. We need a mobilization effort, but we would need those soldiers last summer to train them. And apparently, you said, the more veteran they are, the better.”

“We’d speculated that fighting people gave you more talent energy, more experience, but I can attest. I could see it grow when Moore dispatched the Adjutant’s agents. Just them fleeing was enough for some to add in.”

“Well, that leaves me little choice in any case.”

“Meaning?”

“Independence State cannot stand alone.”

“Uh? But how are we…”

“We will need some help from the Union, which means talking to the Senate in Nashville.”

He smiled at that, a rare sight these few days he’d been there.

“You’d better pack. Of course, you’re coming with us.”

Oh, they’re moving already? Moore realized as his four started preparing bags. It was a bit too early to move against their enemies, given the reduced force they had available.

At least this will stop those battles, he thought.

At first, it was good because they got XP from “defeating” the soldiers, around 100 per level – even if the others on their “side” got shares.

Then, the soldiers started getting partial wins, and he realized they could also lose XP. Peter being rooted, knocked and dazed and disabled had cost him a whopping 800 XP, lifted straight from his pool!

Thankfully, the XP exchange seemed to happen only once per person. They couldn’t defeat the same person twice and couldn’t lose to the same person twice. They also lost only once per battle, but having even a single new combatant on the other side meant they lost the entire XP chunk.

What had seemed to be a good source of XP was turning into a washout, and Moore was pretty happy to see it gone.