EMMA

  Sutai briefly paused her quest to climb Mount Viran, seeming to settle at least part of herself back onto the bench instead of the big gray's lap as she answered the question. Luckily, Viran seemed more interested in the development that he could move his arm to eat than annoyed that the attention had lapsed due to Emma's question.

  She had tried to be polite, but it was becoming clear that dragonborn valued directness.

  And that nobody was going to explain *anything* unless she asked questions.

  "Size is the most obvious. Relative to expected outcomes for the species, of course. Tucking your chin is a normal part of meeting eyes with a kobold," Sutai said the second part with a warning tone. "If you don't need to, you should be running instead, or drawing a weapon, because they don't get to your height without a whole lot of silver in their eyes."

  Emma nodded attentively and made eye contact to show she was eagerly listening, making a note to find out what a kobold was later.

  Viran's grunt and nod of agreement was almost half a snarl, exposing a tooth or two, but was drowned out as Sutai continued. The priestess had clearly smelled *something* like opportunity, and was warming up to the idea of cozying up to Emma too. Just less physically than she was cozied up to Viran.

  This was perfect. They had been up for barely an hour, and already she was accomplishing Calen's goals of getting a second opinion on how Avarea worked while he was being allowed a second helping of food, incident-free.

  "Mana density is another indicator, though Nulls trend more towards size, present company excepted," Sutai briefly inclined her snout towards Emma instead of Viran. "But ambition is the common thread between the two paths."

  "That's far from the whole story." Dovin rumbled from beside Emma, striding through the doorway before she could ask what a Null even *was*, or why people kept calling her that.

  "Of course," Sutai unhooked herself from Viran's elbow and straightened, her body language and tone all shifting in an instant as an authority figure arrived. "Just giving a peer a bit of a primer on the subject."

  The spots on Mirri's face were a riotous orange as she strode into the hall, also glaring at the tan-scaled priestess. Emma had to lean a bit to dodge her lashing tail, then decided to just push herself further along the bench, away from the thunderous tension that had just arrived in their little section of the mess hall.

  "I'll finish the education of our young scions when they're all here, if you don't mind." Dovin's nostrils flared. "*Your* peers are busy undertaking their shares of kitchen duty shorthanded, unless you think you've recovered enough for a patrol instead?"

  Sutai took the obvious put-down in stride, sniffing lightly with her face in the air. Or maybe she was just making eye contact with Dovin. It was hard to tell.

  "I'll head back to my place. I wouldn't want to leave anyone unsatisfied with my performance while I'm still settling in," Sutai's wings ruffled as she finished disentangling herself from the table at Dovin's behest, but she turned herself towards Mirri for the rest. "Don't worry, the food is safe. I butchered the goat myself."

  The reassurance only seemed to agitate the Warden's daughter further, unless Emma was drastically misreading the body language. Mirri's limbs had taken on a similar stiffness, albeit with a weapon in hand, after Emma had attempted to strangle her in the supply closet yesterday.

  "Thank you." Mirri sounded anything but grateful for the reassurance as her tail wrapped itself around one of her legs, freeing Emma from the waving threat as the other priestess sashayed away past Calen.

  Viran's eyes tracked Sutai's retreat about halfway across the mess hall before he returned his attention to the table.

  "Did something just go wrong?" Calen had paused in his approach to the table, glancing down at the food.

  Emma waved him over the rest of the distance. Sitting wouldn't *actually* make him less vulnerable to whatever had just played out, but it might make him more of a bystander.

  "Nothing important," Dovin cleared his throat and pointed himself at Viran, obviously unconcerned with whatever opinions anyone else might have on what had just happened. "No distractions, please. You have limited time right now."

  Mirri was nodding along, silently tracking Sutai across the rest of the mess hall with a glare fit to bore holes in an asteroid.

  The whole thing felt a little intense to Emma, but then, so had Sutai's... flirting.

  Viran seemed to be taking the whole thing in stride, cheerfully turning back to Emma's question after Dovin made his own exit.

  "She forgot to say those things are common to all Immortals," The big gray explained. "Being a Young Immortal means having them when you're not done aging."

  "To your prime." Mirri interjected. "Young Immortals are treated differently because the natural rhythms of growth lend themselves well to self-improvement. Power can grow in drastic leaps and bounds over months instead of decades, with the proper techniques and training."

  "Oh! They're wildcards." Calen blurted.

  Emma's confusion must have shown on her face, and she was almost sure that Mirri's expression meant the same thing.

  "What?" Calen asked her. "I was paying attention. The line wasn't that far away."

  He had been at least twenty meters across the noisy mess hall the entire time, and Sutai had been speaking at a normal volume.

  Mirri sighed after a quick glance at Calen's head.

  "Do tone that down a bit. It'll show more if you stop surging your skull, *which you should*, and some people appreciate the ability to have *private* conversations." Mirri sounded like she was struggling not to grit her teeth by the end of her instructions.

  Emma squinted just in time to catch the dull glow dimming out of Calen's head, and watch the concentrated staticky lines of mana stretching down what she assumed was his cochlear nerve dim some more.

  She avoided grinding her teeth on the wooden flatware in her mouth, but it was a close thing.

  He was *supposed* to not be testing mana without help for... *almost* exactly this reason. But not quite. It was just another one to add to the list.

  Expecting him to show any level of restraint when he could finally be an actual 'wizard' instead of just a pretend one had been naive of her.

  "When are magic lessons?" Emma asked, swallowing her nervousness as Mirri's face turned. "Just the ones about common pitfalls, so stuff like that can stop happening."

  Some sort of actual explanation about what a 'Null' was would be nice, if it was going to keep coming up. It had been less important the first time Dovin had mentioned it yesterday, when they were in imminent danger, but if everyone she met was going to be automatically disappointed in her on-sight, knowing how to fix it might need to bump its way up the priority list.

  "After warmups, but before you do any sparring. Dovin is running the morning lessons for you two for today." Came the crisp answer.

  Emma nodded. Her eyes dropped to her own mostly-empty bowl of their own accord when Calen made an annoying slurping noise.

  She tore another tiny chunk off the dense, earthy breadcrust she had left. A large chunk had proven itself an effective gag for almost a minute when she had first attempted a normally-sized bite, and she had run out of stew before she had run out of bread to soak in it.

  Not that she would have interrupted his story about how the dagger at her waist had come to be there once he had gotten started. Emma still wasn't sure whether hearing it had made him seem more or less scary.

  Watching him half-stutter his way through being flirted with afterwards definitely fell on the side of 'less', though.

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  "We all have time for seconds, right?" Viran asked, sending a floor of relief through Emma's shoulders.

  She had just been gearing up to ask.

  "I haven't even eaten yet, of course we do," Mirri rolled her eyes. "We just can't be slower than Dovin."

  Viran hurried out of his seat, and Emma followed them, angling to avoid meeting a stranger in line.

  Keeping her eyes down let her avoid stepping on his tail, and also made it easier to cross the room full of strangers who were pretending not to watch her pass by.

  She just hoped none of them were too disappointed with what they saw to let her change their minds.

  ***

  Emma only got a few bites into her second serving before Calen tried wheedling more information about their day out of Mirri. He got the same series of single-word answers he had badgered out of her during the wagon ride yesterday, only giving up after she admitted that a lot of it would depend on how well they handled the first half of the day.

  Calen shot Emma a brief glance dense with meaning at that mildly ominous proclamation. What he expected her to do about it was anyone's guess. There was nothing they really *could* do except finish eating and see what was in store for them.

  Emma overheard more than one mutter about the 'roster' from groups clustered just outside the door, but didn't catch any details she understood. Each pack of soldiers seemed to be attached to someone with a deeper yellow stripe on their uniform, whose job it was to read their assignments out for them.

  "So being able to read is a requirement for... Rangers, but not Wards?" Emma took her own stab at fishing for information.

  Isha had explained the basic hierarchy they would encounter during the meeting yesterday, but Emma had just assumed that all of the locals could read, and that she and Calen would be the odd ones out.

  Now it seemed like the system was set up to at least accommodate for her temporary illiteracy.

  "Officers need to be able to receive orders silently." Mirri mumbled, chewing more slowly afterwards.

  Viran scraped at his bowl. Calen had run out of ways to chew loudly at around the time he had run out of food, but thankfully seemed reluctant to pull out the stupid coin, which left Emma mostly with the sound of her own chewing for company.

  She was almost ready to give up on further answers when the priestess finished mulling over her response, and clarified more.

  "Rangers usually serve as officers in their locale, or they work in teams under whoever has the most stripes, but officers aren't always Rangers." Mirri brushed at the single band of deep yellow on her own sleeve, seemingly by way of example. "You three are expected to listen to both categories of authority, unless I contradict them directly in the moment."

  The dragoness' eyes narrowed.

  "I will not do that without a *very* good reason," She clarified. "If a Ranger gives you a confusing order that doesn't violate your principles, assume they know something you don't, follow instructions as best you can, and tell me about it later."

  "Got it." Emma's voice was a little more strained than she was used to hearing herself.

  The lady dragonborn that had pushed by them in the hall had been wearing a stripe, but the male leading the pack had two, and hadn't seemed bothered to correct her behavior.

  The rest of the meal mirrored the subdued atmosphere in the slowly emptying hall. Some of the dragonborn making their exits were obviously on their way *somewhere* with weapons, while others seemed more lackadaisical with their strides and limited in their armaments.

  It was a whole lot of bronze spears and axes, with the occasional sword thrown in. Some of the daggers Emma saw looked iron, but there was no steel in sight on armor or otherwise.

  No one else stopped by to chat, or even stared too long once Mirri caught their gaze. The only verbal interaction they had with anyone consisted of Dovin clearing his throat loudly in the nearly empty hall when he finally stopped fielding quiet inquiries from officers.

  Judging by the way Mirri straightened and tapped a claw on the table for Viran's attention, that was their cue to move out.

  The torchlit halls were far less hostile in the wake of the Warden's daughter. They had exactly one incident, and Emma couldn't really blame the pair of goats for the panicked bleating as they shrunk behind their handler at the sight of Viran.

  She had basically done the same thing yesterday.

  "What're the goats for?" Calen asked as the farm animals disappeared around a corner to as-yet-unexplored territory within the fortress.

  "Lunch," Viran rumbled. "That way leads to the actual kitchen."

  Emma had known they were eating real meat purely from the irregular, overly-chewy texture of the carved chunks of flesh, but seeing the animals called lunch drove home the idea that nothing involved had been lab-grown, or even frozen and shipped. She could probably go outside and find a goat named 'dinner', too.

  "Come on you three," Mirri prodded, waving them towards the crowded entrance hall. "If Dovin passes us before we're halfway up the Spire, he'll know we dragged our tails."

  The stairs felt more endless than not on the way back up. *Down* had been fine, but going back up put a burn in Emma's thighs, and Calen was panting.

  By the time Mirri had mercy on them and called a rest on one of the landings, they were past the halfway mark, with no sign of Dovin. Emma could hear a few sets of retreating feet and dragging tails climbing above them, but she couldn't hear anyone climbing up below.

  Not that that meant anything. She was a little too familiar with just how quiet someone Viran's size could be on these stairs, when he wasn't dragging his tail loudly behind her. Dovin seemed more than capable of climbing the stairs silently himself.

  Mirri's own ascent had also been much more casual than the rest of the huffing and puffing that was going on between Emma and Calen. The priestess has started walking *backwards* up the steps at various points, mostly when the lift was moving, keeping an eye on whatever she wanted while her tail felt out the next step for her.

  It was hard not to notice exactly how dangerous a kick would be now that the dragoness was wearing leather sandals instead of thick boots, and consistently almost a dozen steps ahead of the rest of them.

  Now that they had stopped, Mirri seemed to be studying them. And her snout and brow had wrinkled.

  Emma's heart was already beating a little faster than usual from the exercise. It made isolating her anxiety harder. Was this part of the assessment of how well they 'handled things' this morning? Were they failing?

  "Stop hunching over, you're compressing your lungs and getting less air." The priestess voiced Emma's thoughts out loud, pointed at her brother.

  "Yeah yeah, I know, one second." Calen gasped.

  He at least took his palms off his knees and straightened, leaning against the wall with his too-red face pointed at the ceiling.

  Emma mostly had her own breathing under control, falling into a familiar rhythm without much conscious effort, and Viran seemed completely unaffected by the climb. The gray was busy leaning out over the railing, sticking his head dangerously close to the guide rails for the lift's counterweights while nothing was moving.

  Mirri was casually leaned on her spear, seemingly content to let things play out silently now that Calen wasn't breathing inefficiently.

  "Is this part of the test?" Emma wiped a bit of moisture away from her brow, watching... *something* flicker across the scales of Mirri's face.

  "It's part of living at the Spire a few months out of the year," The priestess half-answered Emma's question, seemingly unconcerned. "People who aren't used to it have the hardest time for the first week or so. You'll start to adjust within a few days."

  "Is that why we get the 'privilege' of training up top?" Calen was still using his mouth to breathe, but he at least didn't sound labored anymore.

  He could have kept a little more of the skepticism out of his voice though.

  "We get the *privilege*—" There was nothing sarcastic in Mirri's sharp rebuttal. "—of training on the plateau under direct instruction from Dovin for now because the three of you are relative unknowns, and the longer we keep it that way, the more competent you get to look."

  And the less disappointed the locals would be that they had Emma helping them instead of a Venatrix.

  "Three?" Calen blurted, catching a detail Emma had missed.

  Mirri blew a slow breath out of her nostrils, and Emma jumped in to save him.

  "You don't have to tell us if it's a problem," She said quickly. Viran was still craning his 'neck' over the edge of the stairwell, seemingly more interested in something down there than in the fact that he was being discussed. "So it's more private up there, not less?"

  "Yes," Mirri said simply, tapping at one of her arms as the ropes carrying the lift lurched. "Specific discussion about anyone's channels will be more appropriate for a private sparring pit than for somewhere words echo. Viran. Viran the weight is coming down."

  The big gray stepped back from the rail with plenty of time and space to spare. A monolith of limestone scraped by while he turned around slowly.

  Emma almost reassured him that it was fine to look up, before she realized he was watching his tail drag during his rotation, to make sure it didn't slide over the edge behind him and get squished. She closed her mouth. Of course he wasn't doing it just to avoid looking at her.

  The turning of gears above was enough to mask any panting Calen was still doing as he wiped his brow and straightened off the wall.

  "Dovin is on the lift," Viran rumbled towards Mirri when he was ready to look up. "We should go a little faster, if they can."

  Mirri cocked her head askance, and Emma nodded after a glance at Calen. He was recovered enough.

  "Hooray, more cardio." Calen 'agreed,' again with less restraint that Emma might have hoped for.

  "Better now than with your life on the line."

  Mirri's pithy reply drove Emma past the renewed burns of complaint from her muscles, and followed her almost all the way to the top of the Spire.

  'Almost,' but not all the way, because they weren't going all the way up. The lift lurched to a stop mostly-level with the highest landing Emma could see before the ropes disappeared into the ceiling, but a narrow stairwell continued on.

  The large double doors propped open on the landing signified that they had arrived, with the conclusion of their journey leaving Emma breathless for more than one reason.

  She had expected a wind-blasted plateau with a minimal basin of water fed by rainfall.

  Instead, nearly two thirds of the reservoir was a mirror-black lake that reflected the cliffs above where it had thawed at the edges. The center was still frozen, and the banks of the water were surrounded by finely ground gray sand. The whole edifice was protected by berms at the edge of the plateau, and the back side of the lake was wrapped entirely in a shining, frozen sheer cliff covered in at least a meter of knobbly, flowing ice that stretched a few hundred meters above them.

  Navigating the steps down to the 'beaches' behind their guides, Emma stepped into the shade of the mountain, which stretched thousands of meters higher than the mere cliff face that sheltered the reservoir, hiding the early morning sun behind its peak. A crisp breeze brushed at Emma's face, whispering of winter, but it was gentle, nothing of the caliber she would have expected at this altitude.

  Calen wasn't saying anything irreverent, which meant he was similarly dumbstruck behind her.

  "Welcome to Eastwatch," Dovin's voice broke the spell. "Take a walk that way, get all the gawping out of your system, and use the outhouses if you need to. Stay away from the forges, I'll introduce you to Yarrun later."

  Literacy in these societies was thought to be near-universally linked to social class, as writing was primarily an administrative tool for accounting, medicine, and governance.