After parting ways with his uncle, Caen spent half an hour working in the kitchen that night.

  Afterwards, as he used up four of his tokens purchasing extra food, he quietly bemoaned the fact that he hadn't gotten any from following the Delver team into a tunnel. Though, of course, he hadn't done anything.

  Caen snuck his food into his spatial bag and headed down to the officers' quarters. It was a two-story building. A pair of guards leaned lazily at the entrance, eyeing the speculon on his forehead. They let him in after he claimed to have an errand for Priest Sh'kteiro, but confiscated his weapons, utility belts, and bandolier, all of which he parted with very reluctantly.

  Asking directions to the aides’ hall brought him to a vast room on the ground floor, which had been split in the middle by a ply divider that ran from the ceiling to the floor. Its purpose was unclear.

  He spotted Zeris immediately and walked over to her bed where she was stooped over a tome, scrawling equations hurriedly in it. When his spirit grazed hers, she glanced up in surprise, then smiled. “What took you so long?” she said in Code, as she closed her book. “And please tell me you brought food. I don't exactly earn tokens in this place.”

  Caen scoffed as he reached into the spatial bag she'd lent him. “When have I never brought food? In fact, I've prepared quite the veritable feast.” He laid it all out on a napkin. “I give you uniquely stale bread, beans, raisins, wonderfully dried meat rations. And the ultimate source of nourishment: lukewarm water.”

  “This is terrible,” she said, laughing and picking up a raisin before popping it in her mouth. “Is this what they're making you people eat out there?”

  “The meat and raisins are actually from my stash back home. Everything here is overpriced. Downright evil.” Caen bit into a morsel of bread. “If you don't earn tokens, how do you eat?”

  “They feed us twice a day. Don't give me that look. It's mashed potatoes and oats in the morning and evening, and I usually miss the second meal because I'm out shadowing Ladia at that time. Can’t say I care, though; it’d just be more of the same. Ooh! Have you seen the badges here? They're color-coded!”

  “I know!” Caen laughed. “I was going to tell you all the ones I've seen so far.”

  As they chatted, he Mimicked her Spirit-healing affinity and carefully ran through exercises with a boosted affinity. When he asked about her studies with Ladia, Zeris complained about the woman’s teaching style. He told her about the Plane and some other things he was working on. He performed various exercises as they spoke for hours.

  * * *

  Yawning, Caen returned to his tent after he'd had a quick bath and wiped down his armor. He sat in his cot and began moving through some simple stretches. He felt a deep existential ache that he couldn’t soothe. He’d already gotten the hang of boosted spiritual exercises these past few days, so he never quite overexerted himself. But that meant little for his poor spirit. Exercises like these should have been impossible, for all he knew. No matter how careful he tried to be, there was no such thing as taking it easy.

  The only other people in the tent with him were the wereperson opposite his cot, a man who was eating a mango, and the woman who'd watched Caen erect a ward last night—she was reading just as before.

  “Don't fucking touch me again,” the Vedul woman said, walking into the tent and dropping her sword on the cot by the entrance. Her head was shorn, with traditional Vedul tattoos curling across her temples.

  A man with yellow, decorative tassels hanging from the collar of his breastplate followed behind her. “Hey, I'm just being friendly and you're acting like I have a disease or something,” he said with a grin.

  Caen recognized him. He'd been among the group of noisemakers yesterday and had been one of those playing that game of dares early this morning. Caen connected to the man. There were no active thread clusters in his soul.

  “Come on, I just wanna talk to ya. Let's step outside.”

  The Vedul woman ignored him and turned to sit on her bed.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Hey, don't be like that,” Yellow Tassels said, voice hardening. “I'm talking to you.” He grabbed her arm, stepping forward, a thread cluster suddenly growing prominent in his soul structure.

  Caen flickered Soul-sense, briefly disrupting whatever working that was.

  The Vedul woman punched the man in the face. She grabbed him by some of the tassels on his breastplate and punched him a couple more times. Then dropped him to the ground and used both her fists to pound into him some more. He braced against the blows, but she was relentless.

  The man's thread clusters quivered and fluttered on their own, as he clearly couldn't muster the concentration for a spell. Caen didn't even need to flicker Soul-sense a second time.

  Through the slit in the tent entrance, he noticed movement outside. Two other men came in. One of them had a cot in this tent, and the other was the man who had tried to steal Caen's glaive earlier.

  The Vedul woman moved away from their friend—whom she'd beaten something fierce—and faced them.

  “Hey!” the glaive-thief cried, rushing over to his downed friend.

  The other, who was a member of this tent, stood glaring at the Vedul woman. “Who the fuck do you think you are, huh?”

  “Take that piece of trash out,” she said cooly, jutting her jaw at the moaning man on the ground.

  You bitch!” he growled, pulling out a dagger and launching himself at her.

  She ducked under his slash and punched him in the side. Then grabbed his bladed hand and punched him in the face. They fell to the floor in a tumble of limbs and grunts.

  The other man who'd gone to check on Yellow Tassels conjured three small orbs of flame. The woman who'd been reading hopped to her feet, clearly alarmed. “Hey, don't even think about it!” she screamed.

  Caen, too, rose from his bed, already flickering Soul-sense at the Fire practician. The orbs of flame fizzled out just as he thrust his hands towards the ceiling of the tent, leaving three very frail specks of flame to flutter down to the grass instead.

  “Throw fire in a tent full of flammable things, why don't you, fucking dumbass?” the woman spat, gripping her book in one hand and in the other, a slick rod of metal with swirling engravings on it. A spell rod.

  The Fire practician sneered at her, fingers flitting futilely through gestures.

  Caen hadn't stopped flickering Soul-sense at the man, but he could already tell that it was starting to have less and less of an effect. He pointed his gun at the Fire practician. “Stop that. I said stop.”

  The man froze. Entirely unwarranted rage boiled within his eyes, but he opened his hands as if to placate Caen.

  At the same time, the Vedul woman, panting heavily, kicked the other man away from her. He rose, holding his side and wincing in pain. He gave Caen a bitter look when he saw him holding a gun to his friend.

  “Go,” the Vedul woman said to both of them.

  The wereperson now stood, hands on the daggers sheathed to either side of him.

  After a long moment of resentful glares, the men left, taking their still moaning companion with them.

  The Vedul woman hacked and spat out a glob of saliva that put out the embers glowing in the low grass.

  They all went back to ignoring each other, but Caen's mind was whirling. He'd been too busy trying to figure out various aspects of Mimicry while also cutting down his time, but it was honestly a shame that he hadn't practiced more with flickering Soul-sense. Being able to interrupt other people's spells without even needing to cast a spell of his own was such a useful advantage.

  Granted, it wasn't very effective and had pretty steep diminishing returns. Even the Fire practician just now had almost shrugged it off after the first few times and would've eventually completed his spell if Caen hadn't dissuaded him with a gun. But surely there had to be a way to increase the intensity of that interruption.

  He went about his night routine, mostly attempting to fiddle around with that Blood-healing spell that healed burns. He hadn't fully adapted it yet. It was impossible to try doing so in his abjection, but his mind retained wisps of the primal instinct that accompanied the passive augmentations he’d temporarily gotten at the healing tents today. It was very slow and tedious work that didn't quite count towards adapting the spell. But he was better familiarizing his mind and spirit with the schema.

  * * *

  The next morning, Caen spent more time familiarizing himself with the same Blood-healing spell in abjection. He also ran through a few other spells. Afterwards, he went over to the wooden weights on the workout field, Mimicked a Body-enhancer and got to training.

  In the kitchen, he handled tasks that no one else was eager to do while Mimicking a Wind practician's affinity. There were so few people using magic in the kitchen this morning. The rotund man was manipulating smoke and steam in a very interesting way as he stirred a broth. Caen decided to ask him about that spell later—maybe after he'd built up some more goodwill with the kitchen staff.

  He wolfed down breakfast and headed over to the Courtyard.

  He didn't join any of the team leads standing around, opting to enter the Plane by himself. He took out his glaive and jogged down to a Cutter team in the distance. They were fighting a thinning wave of ants, and one of the team members in particular was viciously cutting them down with preternatural speed and grace.

  Guinevere, the girl he'd met on the airship to Odaton. Her blonde hair whipped about her as she moved smoothly in black metal armor and a matching black sword.