“Ruined,” Miguel muttered as he tossed the sword to the ground in disgust.

  “Pick it up, kid.”

  Miguel looked up to see Colt standing over him. The old Samurai looked just as grizzled as ever, though he emitted a degree of power that felt distinctly overbearing. The man was no longer Miguel’s superior – at least in terms of power. But what he had, he could wield with deft proficiency, and to the point where he’d been one of the most effective fighters in the Red Marsh.

  “When did you get back?” Miguel asked.

  “Am I going to have to repeat myself?”

  Miguel sighed in a way only a teenaged boy could manage, then bent down to pick up the ruined sword. Its blade was so cracked that it would probably fall part with the next good strike. If it’d been up to him, he wouldn’t have retrieved it at all. But when Helen had gone to all the trouble of hunting it down, he couldn’t exactly refuse its return.

  “There? Happy?” he asked, shoving the weapon into its sheath at his waist.

  “Pretty content, yeah.”

  “Are you going to answer me?”

  Colt made a show of pulling leaning against the nearby wall. He looked out across the training ground, where dozens of legionnaires were busy practicing their formations. They were new recruits, so their movements were sloppy. But they’d get a handle on it eventually. Essex and Colt would see to that.

  “Got back last night,” the Samurai finally said. As he did so, he removed his hat and mopped his forehead with his sleeve. “Surprised to see you slackin’ off.”

  “What? I’m not slacking. I’ve been recovering.”

  “And I taught you better’n to treat your weapon like that,” Colt went on, ignoring Miguel’s excuses. “You’ve been through a lot with that blade. It deserves better’n what you just did.”

  “It’s falling apart.”

  “You discard a friend the second they lose an arm?” asked Colt. “You abandon family when they get sick?”

  “No.”

  “Damn straight you don’t,” Colt grunted. He spat upon the sandy ground. “And you don’t abandon a blade like that. You might retire one. That’s normal. But you don’t toss it aside like it ain’t nothin’. You hear me, boy?”

  “Yes, sir,” Miguel muttered.

  “Now, you want to show me how much you’ve backslid since comin’ home?”

  “I haven’t backslid.”

  “Prove it.”

  Miguel rolled his shoulders. “Alright, but I’m not going easy on you.”

  “Wouldn’t ‘spect you to,” the Samurai responded, already walking toward the rack where the Legion instructors had stored the practice weapons. Upon reaching it, he grabbed a wooden katana. Miguel took a straighter, double-edged blade – like the one Sadie Song favored, though normally sized. Seeing that, Colt nodded and said, “Probably suits your style better. Not as elegant as a katana, but…well, you ain’t a samurai.”

  Miguel gave the weapon a quick twirl to familiarize himself with the weight. Meanwhile, Colt just backed far enough away to give them enough room to maneuver. Each step was measured, though he maintained his languid gait. The man couldn’t move without a saunter.

  “Rules of engagement? You want me wearing a collar?” Miguel asked.

  Colt shrugged. “Won’t matter.”

  Miguel cocked his head to the side, wondering if Colt knew just how much his attributes had skyrocketed from being so close to the grove. They were so inflated that Miguel would have been surprised if anyone in the world – aside from people like Sadie or Elijah – could boast anything comparable.

  In fact, it had taken him a few days to grow accustomed to the increased power.

  “Getting a little cocky, aren’t you, old man?”

  Colt shrugged. “Maybe so. I ain’t immune to a bit of misplaced pride. We’ll see, though. No lethal strikes.”

  “First to three points?”

  “Fair ‘nuff.”

  “Ready when you are,” Miguel stated, holding his sword in both hands. While he could fight in a variety of one-handed styles, he preferred two. Colt, obviously, only used one.

  He moved.

  Miguel barely had time to slap his blade aside. The thrust was simple. Slow, even. But when Miguel tried to block it, he felt like he was moving underwater.

  He retreated, his footwork admittedly sloppy.

  Colt chided him, “You been slackin’.”

  “Recuperating. I almost died.”

  “We all almost died, kid. Ain’t no excuse to neglect your trainin’.”

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  Miguel didn’t answer. Instead, he decided to go on the offensive. Using three-quarters of the power at his disposal, he dashed toward the Samurai. In truth, he wanted to end the contest as quickly as possible. Not because he wanted to embarrass his former mentor, but more so he could prove himself.

  As it turned out, that was a thin hope. Colt neatly parried Miguel’s trust. He wasn’t capable of moving half as quickly as Miguel, and yet, there was no wasted motion. His technique was as close to perfect as possible, and he used that to his advantage by following the parry with a riposte that nearly hit Miguel in the stomach.

  At the last second, Miguel spun, kicking up sand as he avoided the riposte and aimed a backhand at the Samurai. Colt bent backwards just enough that the wooden blade missed his neck by an inch. Then, like a whip, he snapped back into place and scored a hit on Miguel’s scarred side.

  “One for me,” he said. “All those fancy attributes don’t mean nothin’ if you’re not usin’ ‘em right.”

  Miguel ground his teeth together, but he didn’t respond. If it had been a real fight, Colt’s attack wouldn’t have even broken the skin. Not unless he’d used an ability, and if he’d done that, then Miguel would have as well. In no world would Colt win.

  But he’d still scored that point.

  Miguel refocused, mostly on his sloppy footwork. In a war, it was easy to let that sort of thing slide. Often, Miguel’s efforts had devolved into unskilled hacking that would have made even a lumberjack decry his technique.

  It seemed that he’d picked up some bad habits that he needed to unlearn.

  Unfortunately, Colt still hadn’t finished teaching Miguel the lesson he wanted him to learn. So, the rest of the fight was more of the same. Sure, Miguel did better with each round, but even with all his attributes, he couldn’t even score a single point on Colt.

  “Some things change,” the Samurai said as he racked his practice blade. “Some things don’t. Keep trainin’, kid. You got power, but you ain’t a finished product. Remember that so you don’t end up dead.”

  Miguel’s shoulders sagged, but he quickly corrected his posture so Colt wouldn’t see it. The last thing he needed was another lecture. So, he just told his mentor that he would do as he’d suggested, then headed back to the island. Instead of bothering with the rowboat, he simply waded into the sea and swam across the strait.

  Once he’d arrived, he took a few laps around the island, as much to think as because he wanted the workout. Along the way, he noticed Rosabella and the other members of the crab calvary training with their mounts. On the surface, they looked a bit ridiculous, but Miguel had seen those crabs’ claws shatter boulders. And Rosabella was at least as dedicated to her training as Miguel ever was.

  Maybe even more so. It had begun to border on obsession, and he worried that she would soon burn out.

  He continued his swim until he’d made five revolutions around the island, and he climbed ashore not far from his uncle’s cultivation cave. It hadn’t been used in a while, though Nara spent at least a little time each week tending to it in the hopes of fostering a recovery. She’d even transplanted some of the leviathan’s bones back into the cave.

  From his own limited sense of the grove and its surroundings, the ethera within the cave was incredibly dense. And he intended to use it for his own cultivation soon.

  The mere thought made his shoulders droop once again.

  That was how Hope found him. When she approached, he was sitting on one of the boulders and shivering in the cold. She climbed the side of the rock and sat beside him.

  For a long time, neither said anything. The sun was still high in the sky, so it was the warmest part of the day. However, with the region still in the grip of winter, the air still bordered on frigid. Miguel accepted the discomfort, knowing that with his inflated attributes, it couldn’t really hurt him.

  It wasn’t until he felt Hope shivering beside him that he realized just how selfish he was being. She didn’t have his durability against the elements.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get back to the grove.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “I’m fine. I’m not as delicate as you think I am,” she said defiantly. “I’m almost level fifty-five. I know that’s not as high as you, but Mari says I’m leveling quickly for a Tradesman.”

  “I know,” Miguel said. “And I’m proud of you.”

  She huffed. “I’m not here to talk about me, though. I want to know what’s going on with you. And if I can, I want to help.”

  “It’s nothing. Just a low, that’s all.”

  “A low?”

  “That’s what my mom calls it.”

  “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It just makes sense. Can we talk about what you think caused this…low point?”

  Miguel shrugged. “I’m just tired. Exhausted, I guess. I got hurt pretty bad in the Primal Realm,” he said. She already knew how close to dying he’d come. Her father had told her the whole story well before Miguel could broach the subject. Oddly, she hadn’t panicked. Instead, she managed to look at it all matter-of-factly. “It’s just everything, you know? It never stops. I train. I get levels. I fight bad guys. Then, I do it all over again. I just wonder if there’s a point to it all.

  “And then I look at my uncle. I look at Sadie. I see my mom. Do you know that she outfought like half of the army? She’s not even a combatant, but there she was, swinging her hammer in the middle of every fight,” he went on. “Before, I wanted to do everyone proud. My moms. Elijah. Sadie. Colt. I thought that was enough…”

  “But it’s not, is it?” Hope asked.

  He shook his head. “Then, I fought for you. I can’t keep you safe if I’m not strong enough.”

  “We’re in the safest place on Earth. I don’t need protection.”

  “This grove has been attacked twice in the past ten years. Ironshore has faced two armies. There’s no shortage of people who want what we have, and they’ll do whatever it takes to steal it from us,” Miguel pointed out. “I know that. And it’s my job to stop them. That’s what it means to have my class. I’m a Knight of the Hartwood.”

  In the wake of that, Hope went silent until, after a few moments, she said, “You know, I should be a freshman in college.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. It’s weird to imagine what that might feel like. When I was little, I saw some movies about college. You know, when my dad was working and my sitter didn’t realize I’d snuck out of bed,” she explained. “That world…it seems so alien now. I think I would have been a doctor like my dad. Or maybe an engineer. Something like that. What do you think you would have done?”

  Miguel could only shrug. “I don’t know. All I cared about back then was playing games on my tablet. I never even considered school or a job or anything like that. Why?”

  “I’m just making a point.”

  “What kind of a point?” he asked.

  “That you’re not supposed to have all the answers. You’re not supposed to have the whole world on your shoulders,” she answered. “By all rights, you should be like me – getting ready to figure out the rest of your life. But here we are, living in paradise protected by a crab-riding gnome girl who’d sooner stab a stranger than talk to them. Your uncle is literally the most powerful man on the planet. Probably the richest, too. Your mom is the world’s strongest crafter. My dad is one of the top Healers in the world, too. And like it or not, you’re an elite too.”

  “Tell that to Colt. He gave me a beating today in the training grounds.”

  “My point is that this is a weird situation,” she went on, smiling only slightly at his remark. “I’d have been surprised if you weren’t exhausted, if you did know exactly what to do next.”

  “So, how do you suggest I get through this?”

  “We.”

  “Huh?”

  “We,” she repeated, with extra emphasis on the word. “We’re together on this. I’m here. To talk. To take your mind off things. Whatever it takes.”

  For whatever reason, that relieved some of the pressure he felt pushing down on him. And he said, “That…that means a lot to me.”

  “Now come closer. I’m cold.”

  He did just that, putting his arm around her slim shoulders. The embrace was even more helpful than her speech, and suddenly, everything didn’t feel so overwhelming anymore.

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