It was late in the evening when Dalliance went to meet his presumably future master, Professor Young. The bespeckled man had accepted the letter courteously enough, promising to read it when he had a spare moment, but as it was late, felt forced to check: did Dalliance not notice how late it was?

  Tomorrow’s my first day on the wall, Dalliance had explained.

  “It’s not actually as bad as all that, you won’t need spells, not your first day; not that you’d have much time to practice them anyway.” But the professor had been sympathetic, and said Dalliance eventually needed a starter kit anyway, come on inside, he could spare fifteen minutes.

  Just as Morality had promised, Professor Young came through for Dalliance with not one or two, but four spells.

  "These are the foundation," he explained. "[Gust]: your basic wind spell. Excellent in a pinch for drying your hair, wafting potions, and the best thing about it is it scales. You can use as much mana as you like, if you can pay for it. This is not aerokinesis."

  Dalliance nodded his understanding.

  "This is, to put it plainly, a pressure gradient."

  Dalliance no longer understood him.

  "Imagine you're in the water: as it gets deeper, you feel pressed because the water has weight. The more water there is above you, the more weight there is bearing down from it, okay? Air is like water in that way. Liquids and gases are similar. With [Gust], you’re adjusting buoyancy indirectly. The spell makes air move in a straight line from A to B, but to do that, what the magic actually does is make some air more buoyant, some less buoyant, with the end result that a breeze blows from A to B."

  Seeing Dalliance's uncomprehending face did not appear to fill his perhaps someday master with a great deal of optimism, but he persevered.

  "This next one is [Sense Volume]. It’s quite simple. It makes you aware of everything stirring the air within a defined space. Very good for sensing the presence of, say, an arrow approaching you. You can use it to search under the couch. Don't look at me like that, Dalliance. We start with the basics for a reason."

  "Sorry," Dalliance said.

  "Yes, well. [Fog]. Technically, the full name of the spell is [Breath of Fog]. With this, one can blow out the requisite amount of fog. It is entirely mundane once created; it cannot be counter-spelled. And finally, I’m told that you have [Locomotion] already, so I shan’t give you [Levitate], which I would usually give to a novice at this point. What other spells do you have?"

  "[Chill]," volunteered Dalliance. “[Detect the Audible].”

  Both new acquisitions, one from Topaz, her little encouragement to learn to absorb environmental Water-aspect mana. So far it had been slow going.

  "[Chill]," Master Young said. "A versatile spell. Pairs quite well with [Fog], that one. So for a final spell . . . [Blur], I think.” He fished around in his bag for a while and pulled out a little cardboard book. "This primer's printed for use by the Rangers," he said. "Last apprentice was going to copy it, but never returned from beyond the wall, so."

  Dalliance took the lost possession of the lost ranger with vague unease.

  "It decreases your visible profile, making you less likely to be hit on purpose, but has no effect on your actual size, just your appearance. So you look harder to hit, but if they aim dead center, the actual odds of hitting you have not changed.”

  ”Pairs well with [Fog]?”

  ”Quite. [Gust], [Sense Volume], [Chill], and [Blur] all work quite well together. That ought to give you enough practice and wherewithal that on the next tier, you can advance one or more spells to something that suits you a little better. Remember, you have to perfect a spell prior to Tiering up to perfect it and retain mastery."

  Dalliance winced. He had learned that the hard way.

  "Already tried advancing the other way?" the professor asked sympathetically. That was almost worse.

  “I think I got past the worst of it. Thank you,” he said.

  It was a lot of spells. Dalliance knew he should feel grateful, but mostly he felt frustrated.

  [Gust] would scale. Okay, that was good. That was good. He needed that, something to move air in large amounts. But he didn’t understand it. Other spells came with a description, like ‘10 minutes’ for [Werewind]. Not just ‘Moves wind.’

  Dalliance had thought that he understood the general approach the system took to describing spells, but maybe not. Maybe it was more complicated.

  The frontiers of magic broadened with every spell he learned existed, but the rules didn’t seem consistent.

  None of these new spells even mentioned a duration.

  Dalliance had time to practice one spell successfully, and, at nearly midnight, filled his room with fog. Perhaps he could’ve done it again. Instead, he slept the deep and boneless sleep of an exhausted boy and fervently wished that tomorrow might feel like a better day.

  All the times before, when he'd gone onto the Wall and gone to the Overlook—that plate-shaped platform protruding from the third of the three layers of curtain fortress—he had focused on getting a glimpse of the jungle. On the other side, the unplumbed, wild shard stretching for another fifty miles beyond, filled with portals and dungeons, the imperial bastions, and who knew what else. He hadn’t been focused on the Wall itself.

  This day was different.

  The Wall wasn’t really the Wall. It was three layered curtain walls, each of them taking advantage of geometry to afford the most possible fire could be brought to bear on any one point, if someone passed the earlier walls. Behind the walls, the Citadel. Behind the walls, the towers where stood mages and archers, every wall and tower having its own role, scurrying with activity like a kicked ant hive.

  The lowest of the walls, the outermost one, was to be their assignment. In the space between walls, along the covered path next to the broad stone steps that ran in great sweeps along the back of the wall—so that even if an attacker took the wall top and ran down, he would still be exposed to archer fire from the second wall the whole way—stood Uncle Solidarity Rather, resplendent in plate and lorica segmentata, his side shield held in a loose, ready stance that nevertheless blocked sight to half of his figure. He was hung with straps and skins and had what looked to be a quiver along one leg, the feathered handles of darts protruding from it.

  He was imposing and refreshingly familiar, and, as he’d never caused trouble for Whimsy, possibly trustworthy, too.

  His eyes tracked across Dalliance's form once, as if assuring himself of his nephew's health, and then returned to a direct, neutral gaze, looking forward and unconcerned as Dalliance's group assembled themselves into a ragged line.

  "Not bad," he said, as the last student arrived. "Here on time, and dawn is still a work in progress."

  The sky was a pale, robin's-egg blue.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "I say this to every group of new recruits," he said. "We are nicer to you on the Wall than they are to you in the Hunts. Why? Because having been through the Hunts, it’s assumed you have what it takes to survive on the Wall, if we don’t screw it up. If you die, I hear about it. I don’t like hearing about it, or writing to parents after, either. So, you’re not to die. Understood?"

  "Yes, sir," Dalliance said, as did a few others, Effie among them.

  Not all of the others did. His uncle chuckled. "A young Rather knows what he's meant to be saying on the Wall." But his fellows did not.

  Effie shook her head at Dalliance. This was not the way to make friends.

  "Understood?"

  "Yes, sir!" said the group when he repeated his words, this time in rather better unison.

  "When I’m talking, I’m the only one talking. When I ask a question, everyone answers it. Understood?"

  "Yes, sir!" came the chorus.

  "On the wall top, there are three divisions of labor. Senior mages, and those designated by senior mages, will cast spells. Any mages who did not get told to cast spells shall use the spell cannon. Anyone not using a spell cannon will use a bow or crossbow. Dead simple. I’ll show you how it’s done. There will be no sword fighting, no fighting face-to-face of any kind. If there is, you’ve done something wrong."

  He paused. "I don’t like it when my soldiers do something wrong. It reflects on me. You will not be doing that."

  "Yes, sir!"

  And he marched them up the wall.

  Small black shapes flooded past, intercepted with bursts of spell fire. Great, horned beasts threw themselves at the slopes of an earthen ramp built almost up to the edge of the wall top in seconds before being repulsed by an earth mage's spell, scattering the ramp in a cloud of dust and boulders.

  At a cry, the earth heaved itself up again, a monstrous turtle breathing dark fire. They had a mage of their own. Dalliance heard two spellcasters crying in opposing tones, and the earth quivered wildly as another ramp tried to form and was defeated.

  Arrows stung by like hail.

  Lightning played over the field in a series of staccato flashes.

  And that was just the first seconds.

  Solidarity did not seem bothered.

  "Alright, who wants to play cannon fodder, and who wants to take the crossbow?" their Captain said.

  The tower contained both, each mounted on a swivel. The crossbow was the size of a table, and the bolt three feet long. “More properly called a ballista,” he said casually.

  "If you don’t know, here’s a tip." He produced a thaumic token. "'Kings I do, and crowns I don’t’.'" He flipped it. The side with the kings' visages landed upright. "Kings it is. So I do it. But if I feel bad about it, if I don’t like what I see, then what I truly wanted was crowns. Remember that. It’ll help you make decisions. Knowing your own mind doesn’t seem important in a battle, but ’seemings’ can deceive you. Knowing your own mind is the first step to being decisive."

  He jest urges toward the narrow slit windows.

  "We’re on top of the wall. Threats are fliers and projectiles. When swordplay happens, someone else will step up. Hesitation, staying in place, is how we lose our rookies. Stay in motion, do what I tell you, and be decisive."

  "Second thing," he said, "of course, is not to waste too much time. Next time when I ask what you want, if I give you a choice and you don’t know which one you want, go with whichever one your nearest hand is closest to. Understand?"

  They all agreed.

  "Excellent. First come, first serve, and around we go. You, you.” He pointed at Dalliance and Effluvia. "Mage cannon.”

  This was Effluvia.

  “Ballista, Rather.You two, ready, but do not fire at anything you can’t be sure of hitting. This isn’t a race."

  The rest of you, with me." And he moved on to the next tower, spreading out the novices at the sheltered tower turret positions along the wall. Dalliance supposed this freed up more experienced archers and mages to move between them.

  His voice carried as he assigned out roles, two or three to a tower.

  He’d put Dalliance and Effie by themselves, maybe guessing they’d be capable without a third. Dalliance knew his uncle knew his nephew had killed several monsters, and that Effluvia had done the same. It’d be in the records.

  Dalliance had a brief flash of understanding: how they’d known had puzzled him, but obviously it was scrying.

  Effluvia took her post behind the mage cannon like she knew what she was doing, pressing her palm to the socket on its base, in which pulsed a opalescent stone. She was feeding it mana.

  "This is for mages," she said, "like us, who don’t have any good destruction spells yet. I do, but who am I to gainsay the commander? This is maybe more mana-efficient, or he just likes to have predictability."

  Or, Dalliance thought, maybe it doesn’t risk friendly fire. But he didn’t say so.

  On his side, he slowly worked the two-handed windlass, cranking the ballista back into position.

  "I’m almost envious of you," she said. "A ballista would be such a perfect fit for your skills."

  "I can fly," he said wryly.

  It would be perfect for [Prediction]. But.

  She winced. "Perhaps in time, he’ll learn what we are able to do."

  Through the window, the teeming tides threw themselves against the wall: hordes of goblins; smaller, scurrying things with tails that he supposed were lesser beast-folk; minotaurs, giants, and ogres. Even a small roc was identifiable by its twenty-foot wingspan and the grass growing on its back and shoulders, swooping by with a piercing cry.

  Dalliance had had [Prediction] on since he first saw the wall, and as it finally blinked off and he refreshed it, he took some pride in the fact that it came back up on the first try.

  And then he aimed. As it happened, goblins had [Prediction], many of them anyway, or similar. Here and there, he felt his acuity burning away, aiming at them was useless anyway because the large area-of-effect spells raining from the citadel reliably turned back wave after wave of goblins. That, or the front rank of swordsmen, whose schtick, if he were to be any judge, was that they were [Unpredictable], mowed through them in quiet defiance of their skill.

  He would have to remember that existed. There was something on the field that just straight up countered his System skill.

  A shaggy, snaggletoothed giant, ten feet tall, pushed its way towards the front of the horse, wading through its fellows.

  He took a shot, and the ballista bucked. He'd seen it coming, but hadn't understood, just how dramatic the recoil would be. The handles by which he was controlling the ballista jumped, lifting his feet clear of the floor entirely as the quarrel left the string and, seemingly without passing through the air in between, transfixed its intended target. The weighty creature fell, unmoving, to the uneven ramp of earth and bodies beneath it.

  A wash of dust wafted across the wall, hiding it from view.

  “I think someone noticed you,” Effie said, voice abstracted as she aimed her own weapon. The mage cannon hummed ominously, strange geared surface whirring with sparks in a dozen shades as she moved it this way and that, staring through the scope for a target.

  Dalliance focused on getting reloaded, but the dust coverage was unrelenting.

  [A fine kill. For your slaughter of the Earth-Queen’s get, you have been awarded six (6) experience. A burden shared is a burden lightened, don’t fear to share your triumphs and there shall be plenty more.]

  “I think the system just told me to try sharing my kills better,” Dalliance said.

  Effie arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t get anything for that. Perhaps that’s the reason.”

  Why should I he thought silently. Were you planning to share your secrets?

  Her cannon fired like a stroke of lightning, the real thing. He felt the tower shudder beneath his feet, and blinked tears from his eyes at the sheer volume. Effluvia was wincing, a hand to one ear—she’d thought so too.

  “I’ll have to find an air spell to deaden loud noises,” she said.

  Agility this time, banking six, he thought. He’d been torn last time. At this rate, I’ll be D-Tier in no time.

  But he’d need to perfect his spells he wanted to advance. How was he supposed to do that from behind a crossbow?

  “If you’re going to the archives, count me in,” he said. He had questions.

  “No—there’s not much good there. I’m going to my family’s library. In the manor.”

  Early manor. He knew where all the manors were—in a circle around the imperial lake, staggered a bit into first and second circles by the palace, temple, and kings college.

  And they have libraries in them, he thought.

  Hmm.