)+\( Hugo )/+(

Hugo finished frothing the simple shampoo into Vidita's hair. She wiped suds from her eyes, then motioned for him to turn around as she grabbed a handful of the powdered substance and whipped it into its active state. Her fingers scraped and massaged his scalp. Hugo had experienced his fair share of spas and pampering. Nothing he remembered there compared to the simple task of you and your partner washing each other's hair.

Vidita changed the usually-silent ritual to bring up a topic often on both their minds, lately.

"Tal was soliciting the defense squads for permission to go out and hunt, again."

Hugo let himself have another few blissful moments of the head massage in silence.

"He is eager, and he longs to prove himself here. I do not feel your same level of concern. As I told him when we first brought him here, he is free to roam and level himself so long as he follows the rules put forth in how he does it."

Vidita's fingers slowed, but did not stop.

"That's part of the issue - he's eager. Talcinor has been looking at you like some sort of fabled hero since the moment he arrived here. The way you encountered his group, it's hardly difficult to understand why. He's at that odd age between childhood and true independence, and he has no family to turn to or lean on. He's hero worshipping you as a surrogate parent, and he's going to try to emulate what he thinks you would be doing."

"He was injured, and I helped him. That does not make me a parent."

"Hugo, you're latching on to the wrong thing, here." Shampoo ran down over his forehead and stung the corner of his eye. Vidita felt his flinch, and brought a small towel forward to wipe the front of his face. "In the tutorial, you almost pushed yourself into real trouble trying to live up to the idea of your father. Talcinor - Tal - is trying to do the same thing, with you. I'm not saying he can't fight. You and I both know we need as many combat capable mages as we can get. I'm saying you need to talk to him. Really talk to him, and help him understand he doesn't have to live up to the heroic image he has of you in his head. Maybe try to unwind some of his anger, while you're at it. It's not healthy to carry that much around."

"You are... not wrong."

Water plopped onto the stone floor of the small, empty bathhouse. They had another hour to themselves, then the space would open back up to the public.

Vidita let out a breath. "Well, that'll have to do." She tilted Hugo's head back until they were eye to eye, then ran a hand down over his shoulder. "Now, I want you to wash my back."

Hugo furrowed his brow. "But we already...? Oh."

#

#

Motion and noise filled the street. Since the approved scavenging runs had started, more 'vendors' had popped up, and the market was busier than ever. The whole undercity was busier, with the large group of Vuxarinans Tal had brought with him. He strutted along at Hugo's side, happy simply to be seen with the King. Their course was slowed by eager citizens, children, and one very pushy preserves stall saleswoman that tried to shove a jar of rendered fruits into Talcinor's hands.

She only stopped when she noticed his scars.

They consisted of near-solid lines of burnt skin starting at his fingertips and palms, lessening into individual thin branching burns as they traveled up his wrist and arm. There was another small cluster of burns, like a preserved lightning strike, that ran from his neck to the underside of his cheekbone.

He had obviously pushed himself, hard. It was no surprise - for a boy his age to become the de-facto leader of such a large group of refugees and rebels, a certain mentality and recklessness was required.

Talcinor had obviously not lived a privileged life even before the awakening, and Hugo understood his upbringing was not out of the ordinary for those that lived outside of the capital's wealthier districts. Hugo's father had made sure he understood different kinds of lives. He knew most in those situations - most of the time rightly - blamed their situation on factors far from their control. That blame would breed distain and animosity, and the face of those untouchable factors was generally the figure closest to the 'top' of power.

But instead of the layer of buried hostility Hugo expected towards the aristocracy, there was only admiration for Hugo himself. Longing for acceptance, and a willingness and desire to prove himself that neared zealotry. Vidita was right - Hugo had ignored many red flags. Now he needed to navigate the topics to encourage and steer the boy. It was something he had done hundreds of times with other relationships - but doing it with Tal seemed more consequential. Idle chatter continued on, warming up to the bigger topics, until one statement made Hugo change his tact.

"...So if I get as strong as you, I'll be able to wipe out the invaders, and kill any alien that tries to come here after!"

"That is not how I think, Tal. Our goal is not to kill all intelligent life that does not originate from Vuxarina. Our goal is to oust the scourge of Belar. We should not be irrationally hostile towards others from outside our home, simply because they are foreign."

"But they'd just come here to take! Belar tried to look nice at first, too, and then they turned on us. We can't let that happen again! We have to stop anyone that isn't Vuxarinan."

Hugo considered his next words. "Is a lost child foreign?"

Tal blinked. "Of course not. They're Vuxarinan."

"Ah, but what of an infant, removed from our home before they understood the world? They would grow up in an environment completely removed from us, our ways, our home. Are they still Vuxarinan, or should we treat them as an outsider and kill them?"

Hugo knew the words came out harsh. He meant them to. The boy again took the bait, and Hugo led the conversation through the right loops to start to change the way Talcinor thought about enemies and fellows. He wrapped the bow on the lesson by telling Talcinor about Serroc, a lost child to whom Vuxarina as as foreign as the foreigners were to Tal. A man who saved Hugo - and by extension, saved Talcinor and anyone else Hugo had kept from death. The hatred still lingered, rooted deep, but Hugo saw cracks starting to form.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

With that lesson done, Hugo turned to the next - encouraging caution and offering a path for Talcinor to go back out on combat missions.

That one ended up taking far, far longer.

The eventual outcome was a compromise on both sides. Tal would accompany Hugo on his next exploration into the worm tunnels. The boy would be an observer only, to keep him out of the fighting itself. While not an ideal scenario, Hugo considered it a safe bet - especially after his absorption of the Guardian's soul had resulted in a tangible boost to his soul magic.

And truly, how much danger could there be in fighting worms?

+ Reid +

Reid shook out his hands, and sat cross-legged on the ground. He was still amped up from the earlier sprint down the mountain, the less-than-ideal outcome of his run, and the ensuing climb. His mind warred the ideas of wanting to be relaxed and open for this process, and the reality of the time crunch he faced to get this done so he could go help at least some of the people he'd managed to put in harm's way.

The issue was one idea fed off the other, and instead of actually relaxing, it just made Reid more stressed. He could practically feel his pulse thrumming in his neck. He cupped and rubbed it with one hand, and breathed through his nose. The top of the mountain smelled heavily of dead spider, with faint notes of liquefied beast, and a hint of dirt.

He decided to breath through his mouth.

The use of his skills mostly came to him naturally. Way back when he was nearly dying to simple coyotes, Reid had needed to break through a barrier internally to unlock his basic skills. Since then, things were just... available to him. His only requirements to wield the skills was to figure out how to activate them, and it was a generally easy chore. Identify was near-instantaneous and impossible to mess up. Accelerated growth worked on its own. Darkvision was essentially automatic, as was Weather Resistance. Arcane Craftsman, passive. Gills and Warband - untested. He brought up the description for wings.

Arcane Wings [legendary] Scales with level. Allows the individual to fly on manifested wings. Mana use is dependent on flight speed, duration, maneuvering, arcane-flight experience, and applicable arcana mastery. Wings may only manifest from a sufficiently mastered arcana.

He was a grandmaster when it came to osteal smithing, and he'd produced plenty of equipment pieces that showcased his ability and talent. Mastery wasn't going to be an issue - but something told him this was not going to be a straightforward process. He had touched the skill more than once so far. At first, he got the immediate sensation that he was not in the right state to work with or try to manifest wings for the first time.

Since then, he'd touched the idea of the skill a few times. With each, he confirmed his sense of 'where' it was, but didn't actually understand how it needed to be activated. That needed to change.

Reid sucked in another breath, and concentrated. He felt out for the location on himself he could tell the skill was supposed to activate, and touched on the idea once again. It was an interesting sensation, like the possibility of creation he felt within his bones, but set into the muscles in his back. He bit his lip.

His early experiments - and failures - in making subdermal armor out of bone had taught Reid that he couldn't just grow new bone and have it exist inside of his body. Any time he tried, it wouldn't last long before the bone began to break down and deteriorate. One of the reasons he'd held off this long was that he expected the same issue to plague this skill, and he didn't have good ideas to get around it.

But really, when had he ever let that truly stop him before?

Reid pushed mana into the area of the skill, in between the muscles and the skin. Mana had a tendency to 'snap' onto the things you brought it to. That had been true for his mana compressor, and the trait that recalled his equipment. This time, it didn't so much get sucked into a specific structure, as it started to create one. The mana itself looped in a pair of circular hoops. He watched the motion as it circled, slowed, then stilled. Reid nodded to himself. He needed more energy than that to get things going.

Mana poured through him to the skill location, more than double the amount of energy he'd sent into it the first time. The mana looped into the same two hoops, then the shape formed into a cuplike design. Energy solidified as bone grew in his back. It pushed aside muscle with a stinging intensity as the bone rapidly expanded. Bases flared out from the bottom of each cup, stretching out until they almost touched his shoulder blades. The mana he'd poured in was already running out.

This skill was going to be a massive mana hog.

Reid pulled more energy through himself, relying on his innate understanding and his experience in manipulating his mana to allow him to perform the feat while still keeping an eye on the actual process taking place in his back. The new mana was partially absorbed in places that were already eroding away. Progress was slow as the skill solidified and built - and it would disappear much more rapidly if he slowed too much, or stopped. Reid moved more of his attention to ensuring a consistent stream of mana was flowing into the skill area.

Once the plates were fully rebuilt, spheres of mana formed within the cups, then grew a cylinder out sideways. Not cups - Reid recognized - those were sockets. Two sockets, anchored into bone bases, as the start of the wings on his back. Then, in those sockets, the base of each actual articulating portion of the wing would grow. Reid kept feeding the process energy, ready and eager to see the process progress.

He watched the first bone - the humerus - grow. That was right. Wings were just a bird's arms, which meant he was effectively growing a set of arms on his back. The humerus finished, and a small seam of mana formed between the humerus and the start of the next two bones. His mana started to take the shape of a radius and ulna - then stalled.

Reid double checked himself. He still had mana in his mana pool. It was still flowing up to the skill area, and he was pulling a serious amount through himself. It just... wasn't enough. He frowned, and halted the entire process. Bone eroded and disappeared as he watched, and he breathed heavy from the exertion of running so much energy around his body.

More power. More mana.

Reid already had the answer for that. He shifted internally, until his mana compressor was in a good spot to feed into arcane wings. But that wasn't everything he wanted to try. Reid's goal was ensuring the process worked this time. A mass of mana pooled near the compressor, a reserve to kick off and hopefully see things to completion. It was more mana than he'd ever used on himself before. He connected the edge of that mass to the compressor, then pulled the compressor's output to the skill.

The process restarted - quicker this time.

Sockets and bases grew in his back. Humerus bones extended out, growing cleanly through his skin and out. A radius and ulna began to form on each, bridged by glowing yellow mana.

Reid held his breath.

It was working.

It was taking an insane amount of compressed mana, but he inched past his prior progress point. The sheer concentrated volume of energy coursing through his body and out to his slowly growing bone felt like it would melt everything around it - like it was going to burn his pathways out.

He pushed on, pulling more mana from his pool to join the rest just in case things fell short. Just in case he was slightly off the mark.

Mana solidified into bone, and grew. The radius and ulna branched out, each longer than the humerus, and another glowing bridge formed at their edge.

Reid kept pulling mana through himself.

Mana pooled at the outer edge of that glowing bridge.

It swirled.

And solidified.

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