There it was. The class he had spent his whole life chasing, its requirements laid bare now that it was forever out of reach.

  [Wizard: Premier mana use generalist. Advances to all upper-tier mana use classes. Requires 10 effective Wit (prerequisite) and the potential to manipulate material, ritual, somatic, and vocal spell channels (prerequisite). Class focus: Spirit. Potential spellforms: all]

  He looked down at his maimed left hand.

  Da had been right about wizards needing all their fingers.

  So, he couldn't be a [Wizard]. That path was lost to him. Lost.

  The silvery ones took up most of the sky. It was only from the crescent outward to the left that there were other colors, and of the silver ones, he could determine nothing, not even the name.

  For the blue—they were possible future steps from cream, and he could see their names. [Archmage], [Magus de l’Ordre], [Arcane Knight]. The creamy ones, warmer in aspect than the cold argent ones, were possible now, but seemed so few. The red—were neither.

  He began searching through the edges of wizard-like disciplines. If he focused, he could see some of the requirements. If he really sat down and meditated on one of them, he could almost see the full entry.

  [Thaumaturge: Mana use oriented by connection and blood. Requires 10 effective Wit (prerequisite), a functional circulatory system, and the potential to manipulate material, ritual, and vocal spell channels (prerequisite). Class focus: Wit. Potential spellforms: Maladiction, Enchantment, Divination, Healing, Dimensionalism, Necromancy]

  No.

  He could never do that. Not as a matter of crime or law, but as a matter of who he refused to become. [Thaumaturge] was dismissed.

  [Pyromancer]. [Cryomancer]. [Geomancer]. He scanned their skill lists. Each one eschewed somatic components—this seemed to be a trend for elementalists. Geomancer was tempting. He put it on the maybe pile, then added the other two a moment later.

  [Healer] . . . wasn’t what he wanted. He’d seen Circe at work, knew it was a worthy calling, but it wasn’t for him. Blood and sickness and misery and whining.

  Not for him.

  [Aeromancer] and [Hydromancer] were even more tempting; the unshaped elements were available nearly without limit. Pyromancers, he knew, had to carry around a source of flame. Geomancers needed to be standing on a surface of unworked earth or stone.

  [Aeromancers] could do what they wanted, wherever they were, unless they were underwater. The opposite would go for a [Hydromancer], but at least wells were commonplace. Besides, carrying around water was hardly difficult or dangerous, like carrying around fire.

  By the time he realized he had been talking himself into [Aeromancer], he had been staring at the entry for a long time.

  [Aeromancer: Mana use having to do with the element of air and its sister principles. Requires 10 effective Wit (prerequisite), and the potential to manipulate material, ritual, and vocal spell channels (prerequisite). Class focus: Spirit. Potential spellforms: Divination, Elementalism, Arcanistry, Maladiction, Warding, Transmutation]

  But what was ‘Maladiction’? What was ‘Arcanistry’?

  It wasn't time to make the decision yet. He began to look at the entries in more detail, to focus on the spell forms that they allowed and the subsequent classes they would unlock. He hadn't had this choice the first time, so having this choice now, he would make it rightly.

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  [Pyromancer] would unlock [Battle Mage], in the future, or [Kinetomancer]. He pictured riding to battle on an invisible sword of force, severing foes wherever his eyes could see them.

  But that all depended on him surviving to Tier-Up, with the worst element.

  Pass.

  [Hydromancer] was a disappointment. It led to such disciplines as [Weather WItch] and [Dowser], which were fascinating briefly before he realized he’d be a water-finder and well-filler. Its overlap with Healing was another dead end as well.

  In the end, there was just too much he didn't know. Nearly all of the paths he could choose were compatible with selecting [Arcanist] in the future, but he didn't know what that did. Focusing on it revealed nothing; all he could see was the name. As with all of the 'secondary' classes, as he was beginning to call them—the ones with prerequisite classes—the details remained hidden.

  He saw other names, just as opaque:

  [Alchemist], [Archivist], [Summoner], [Channeller], [Riteswright].

  He was choosing the entry level in a broad and confusing field. He had known that, technically, but hadn't felt it until it was before his eyes. He didn't know enough to make a good choice.

  He thought about what Effluvia had said, about how the nobles tried to prevent this sort of information from making it to the general public. He felt an ugly emotion worming its way around in his gut.

  Envy.

  Maybe.

  It took him long moments to let go of the anger, to re-focus.

  And in the end, it was only one option.

  Selecting a skill was comparatively easy, once he’d worked past the disappointment of being constrained to making a choice at all.

  In the end, he wasn’t letting go of [Prediction]. It was too perfect a fit for him, and besides nearly mastered. [Introspection was sort of a bonus skill anyway, Da said—and, indeed, removing it didn’t remove the skill, which just sat to the side like an indictment of his self-knowledge. Thirty-five percent sounded pitiful for twelve years of age.

  [Deflection] could evolve to [Redirect]. He took that happily.

  And it was done.

  He let out a long, weary sigh, the thrill of his victory completely gone, replaced by a grim resignation. He had survived. He had won. And this was his reward.

  With a final, mental command, he made his choice.

  [Aeromancer].

  And the wind took him.

  In his mind, he had a map of his world. He could picture his pockmark of a village, nestled in the dirt beside the spine of Galton. He could expand that picture to the network of hamlets and towns that dotted the island, it’s forests and rivers branching and branching again, to pour at length off its edge. He imagined seeing the great Wall of Galton at the island's edge, and the green, swirling wastes beyond, to the other edge of the shard, great trees dwarfing the human endeavor, and in the greater distance, the innumerable other shards of land drifting in the endless sky, and the Bowl of the world below.

  But he had never before seen it, because he had never ridden the wind.

  He shot up, down, high, and low, a disembodied thought carried on the currents. He soared above the chimneytops of farmsteads miles away, and dipped to the distant, inverted surface of the world below, whistling through frost-covered trees and knife-edged mountains of glass. He was the whistle in the lips of a shepherd and the mournful note in a trailing pipe. He felt the waving needles of the pine forest like a pleasant frisson, the freezing bite of shard-shadow as clarity, the warm updraft from a baker's chimney as freedom and joy. He was over it, and under it, all at once, a blending and whirling storm of perception.

  And then, he was himself again, kneeling in the dirt behind the tavern bar.

  Everything was different.

  And everything was the same.

  [Congratulations, Aeromancer! The Four Winds have named you ‘friend’ and shall always hear your bidding.]

  And that was it. The world hadn't transformed. But his place in it had, forever.