Ch 17: Incentive

The next few weeks everyone was moving more and more toward some kind of specialization with only a few exceptions. Ollie continued his mage training, with occasional help from everyone else when he needed to learn how to implement his spell during active combat. Marcus was always gone for large chunks of time, only to come back smelling of gunpowder. Pyotr and Davi did not gain any more specializations, but they excelled in combat training, especially Davi as he grew physically larger than everyone else. Michael spent no more time in mage training, language, or military norms. Now his mornings and early afternoons were all about learning divining and supply work. After that was an increased amount of combat training and the start of physical conditioning. They were physically reaching around twelve, and the stirrings of puberty were starting for several of them. Michael had so far avoided that fate; it seemed his new body was a late bloomer.

Michael stood, staring at the recruit who was doing his best to remain stoic, but had several beads of sweat forming on his brow. Michael could understand that. He was a recruit, from a minor nobility based on the ring that was on his pinky finger. He had standards to meet, and a family to make proud, but he hadn’t really expected to be dealing with a taker, a murderer, in the body of a child staring at him to read his soul.

Suddenly, Michael could see the boy’s Titles and Deeds.

Titles:

Bran Neath

Deeds:

Tamer of Heavy-hoof

“Huh, that’s the first time I’ve seen a deed. Is heavy-hoof a horse?” asked Michael.

The young man gulped. “Uh, yes. He was a titled wild horse that lived near my family orchard. It took me years to earn his trust, but just before I came here I was able to start riding him.”

“Very impressive to have a deed so young,” said Meera. “Most of you don’t earn any until you make it to the front, though a few of you manage it in the exercises or During the Festivals in those years they have them.”

“So, I can read his Titles and Deeds at a basic level, but there’s a deeper level that I should be able to see on his and my own?”

She nodded. “Yes, eventually titles and deeds will show you generally what benefit they confer, then later they’ll show what the benefit is exactly. There are some who can even see the shadows of Titles and Deeds before they are going to be granted by the divine, but very few can manage that even after a lifetime of practice.”

Michael nodded. He’d learned a lot about his healing ability and being a diviner, but the progress was slow on the latter, or at least it felt slow. According to Meera he was making progress with blazing speed. It was apparently very difficult to teach actual children touched by the divine how to read anyone but themselves. That didn’t surprise him, he had kids, loved them to death as children, but empathy was a rare attribute for them. As an adult with a near lifetime of experience who’d met many different kinds of people, it made sense that he was having a much easier time with it.

The rest of the day passed by relatively uneventfully. Dugan and him spent the majority of the afternoon retrieving and transporting arrows for archery practice, and when they were done he went on to conditioning and sparring. At this point they’d learned all the basic movements for swords, spears, shields, and daggers as well as a fair bit of basic hand to hand combat. Michael had noticed that the physical conditioning helped him with his healing as well, which meant as it had been amped up, he’d been able to heal more people in the infirmary every morning and as with the first time he recovered by the time the regular physical conditioning occurred, then he recovered from that by morning, though his fellows always complained of soreness and misery. Maybe his own tolerance for it was just higher, he’d experienced plenty of soreness and misery in his old aging body even before the cancer.

In the cafeteria, Kline told everyone there would be a series of announcements after dinner in the same classroom that he typically answered their questions when they’d earned the privilege.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“What do you think that’s about?” asked Ollie, using magic to hold his spoon at the tip of his finger as if he was balancing it perfectly.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Marcus.

“You going to eat your meat?” asked Davi, his voice cracking as he pointed at Ollie’s plate. Ollie shrugged and pushed his plate toward him. Davi tucked in immediately, inhaling the meal.

“I’m not looking forward to that,” said Michael.

Ollie patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry, I don’t think he’s going to eat you next… though I’m not completely certain of that. Maybe they do things differently in Brazil.”

“I’m sure it’s Americans that have the most famous cannibals,” said Pyotr, defending Davi whose mouth was too full to respond.

“Americans have the most famous everything,” replied Michael. “Comes with being the largest exporter of culture in the world.”

“Culture and human meat,” replied Ollie, affecting a kind of spooky tone to his voice as he spoke.

“I was talking about puberty. The first time was rough enough.”

Ollie shook his head. “I disagree. I can’t wait to have some hair on my balls again.”

“Hairy balls is the thing you’re most looking forward to?” replied Marcus with a grin.