The Way Ahead

“Strike!” Lefi called out, as his stick snapped into position on Edwin’s torso, sending him sprawling.

Edwin got to his feet, wincing slightly. As it turned out, running wasn’t as easy as Lefi liked to make it sound. The guy was wickedly fast and incredibly accurate with all of his weapons. Right now, Lefi was trying to teach Edwin the proper ways to disengage, and while he appreciated the lesson in theory, he wasn’t sure he was actually learning anything other than the fact Lefi was somehow able to strike him from behind while in front of him.

“Stand!”

After a few tests to make sure that Edwin knew how to run away properly- he did- Lefi had pivoted their lessons to making sure that Edwin was ready to either fight or run at a moment’s notice. Threat assessment, he called it.

In practice, it meant that now Edwin was getting a few moments of reprieve between half of his times being beaten into the ground. Because of course Lefi wasn’t going to just let Edwin run away, no. He now needed to learn a fighting withdraw against even Lefi.

Block, block, step back…

“Strike!” the stick connected with Edwin’s wrist that time, making him drop his own weapon. He winced, but retrieved the rod and took his stance once more.

“Run!”

Step back, step back. Use Flight to pull, drop marble, block, and-

“Strike!”

Gah, the wrist again. Without saying a word, Lefi returned to his starting position, and Edwin followed.

“Stand!”

Block, block… instead of stepping back, Edwin tried blocking again this time.

“Strike!”

His wrist was really starting to hurt, and would probably need a potion by the time they were done. What the heck was he doing that constantly provoked the attack?

“What am I doing wrong?” he asked.

“Hm? You’ll get it!”

“Couldn’t you just tell me, so I can figure it out sooner?”

“Run!”

Step back, use Flight to suddenly veer off to the side…

“Strike!”

Okay, what did Lefi have against his wrist?

“Strike!” that one hurt, clipping the side of his head and directly hitting his ear.

“Gah!” Edwin felt a bubble of frustration envelop him. He fought it, trying to force it down, force it into line, but it pushed back even harder. He threw down his stick in frustration, sending it clattering across the stone as he cradled his ear. Was it bleeding? “I’m done!”

Lefi lowered his stance, “What do you mean? You’re performing remarkably.”

Edwin tried desperately to wrestle his emotions back in line, to no avail, “I’m not improving! All that’s happening is you’re having me try again and again to hit you and I keep failing time and time again. I have better things to do with my time, you know. I’m not getting anything from this training now that you’ve told me to just run away, or when you tell me to stand and fight! You’re not teaching me anything, and I’m not getting any better on my own!”

“Nonsense! While it may take a while, your skills will surely prevail shortly! It will just be a bit longer, then you will become a master!”

“Oh, shut up!” he snapped, his emotional restraints snapping, “I don’t have a combat Skill, Lefi! Other than Throwing Weapons, which doesn’t apply at all here. I want to learn how to use my Skills to fight, not the other way around. The only way I’m going to get better is if you teach me to get better, you can’t just let the System do all the work for you again! Honestly, do you ever do anything for yourself, or do you just coast on your hundreds of Skills?”

Lefi seemed struck speechless by Edwin’s sudden outburst. Before the adventurer could formulate a response, Edwin’s brain caught up with his mouth and was instantly mortified.

“Gah! No! I didn’t…” He could practically feel all the goodwill he’d built up with Lefi fading away in a single calamitous moment, where his emotions finally managed to break free in the very worst way. He wanted to collapse into a ball, but instead pulled on every Skill he could manage to just flee.

Next thing Edwin could properly remember, he was in his room, curled up on his bed with his head between his hands. His emotions were in shambles, his control over all of them breaking and refusing to behave as he tried to shove them back in their boxes. Regret and sorrow mixed with anger, primarily aimed at himself. If only he’d been able to keep a better control over his anger, this could have all been avoided. Why did his control right then, when the adventurer was trying to help him?

This was why he didn’t have any friends, wasn’t it? He could keep his emotions in check almost all of the time, but on the rare occasion that they did slip out… who would want to be around him? He certainly wouldn’t. Not when he lashed out at people helping him.

There was a knock at the door.

“Go ‘way!” he yelled, lifting his head from his pillow just barely enough to speak.

“Edwin?” he expected Inion’s voice but was surprised to hear Rillah’s.

“Oh, uh! Sorry!” he hastily clarified, embarrassed at the thought she might see him in such a state, the surprise sufficient for him to get his emotions to mutely hop back in their boxes, “I thought you were… never mind.” A quick glance around his room didn’t reveal anything he wasn’t supposed to be showing, “You can come in I suppose?”

He sat up on his bed while the girl joined him, hopping cross-legged onto his mattress. Despite being made of… he didn’t really know what beds were made of on Joriah, come to think of it. At least not these. But in any case, they were just as if not more comfortable than he was before he was ripped away from his… nope, he was trying to stay presentable, and he wasn’t allowing his emotions to run rampant again today.

“Lefi is such a pain, isn’t he?” she started.

…Of all the opening lines Edwin had expected, that was not one of them. Didn’t they get along great or whatever?

“Um, I don’t think that I’m a very good person to comment on that. I find most people to be pretty annoying to be around, just because…”

“Oh, even me? Am I really so bad?” she asked with false offense, leaving Edwin marginally stumbling over his words.

“I mean, no, but also yes? Wait, no. Um, so you see…” he struggled to formulate his words.

He didn’t dislike being around her, sure, but… that didn’t mean he was comfortable around her either. She was a new person who he wanted to make a good impression on. Emotional vulnerability was useful in that regard, yes- so long as he didn’t go so far as to evoke pity- so this wasn’t an inherent loss of a conversation. But how did you explain to someone that no, you did find their presence a drag while still marginally enjoying being around them?

“I do like being around you,” he eventually settled on a small lie, “But also… I don’t know.”

“It’s okay,” she smiled, “You just met me, it’s understandable.”

“Sure,” he settled on.

“Lefi is just a pain at times though, you know?” she continued, “I’ve known the guy for most of my life, and while I love him to pieces, we don’t travel together for a reason. Part of that is of course that we go at different speeds; I want to go wherever the wind takes me whereas he prefers his ‘Quests!’” she said the last word in a surprisingly accurate rendition of Lefi’s voice.

“But other parts of it are just that he doesn’t truly understand and empathize with the difficulties that most people have. For him, he always uses the System. For everything. People make jokes about adventurers, and half the time even their most ridiculous speculation is less than what he has.

“He once told me he has three different Skills dedicated to baking bread specifically. Three! Why he has them, or how he got them… well, I actually do know,” she said with a sly grin, “But that’s not my secret to tell. But he’s never needed a teacher because he knows the System will help him out. By that same aspect, he knows what helps him and just can’t understand that not everyone has a hundred Skills whispering secrets of success to them. All he knows is how to help the Skills level.

“He’s very good at that, though. He’s really good at that. Ask him about any Skill you have and he’ll know exactly how to level it, and his Skills will help you level it even faster. But he’s trying to make you a fighter, and that’s just not who you are, is it?”

Edwin started slightly as the conversation shifted back to him and he had to re-engage his ability to speak, “No. I… don’t think so. When I first- well, when I first arrived in Liras, I thought that I might be able to be this super cool action hero, the kind you see in stories, you know? I was actually really good at it too, or so I thought.

“I took stupid risks but they paid off, I fought my way out of captivity and managed to subdue a small bandit group. I killed a house-sized bear, burned a panther to death with my own hand. And I really liked it!

“But I also burned a panther to death with my own hand, had to cauterize an arrow wound in my shoulder, was nearly crushed by rocks, dropped myself through rotten floorboards, and more. It’s just not appealing to me any more.

“Well, no. I do like it. Fighting brings a kind of clarity, and with my toolbox, it’s like every fight I enter will be some kind of puzzle. I do enjoy that, but… not the danger. No, that’s not quite right either. I… dislike the stakes, I guess? No.. that’s not right.”

“Do you not appreciate the wounds you take?”

“Eh?” Edwin raised and lowered his hands in a display of uncertainty, “I mean I don’t like getting hurt, and I think if you do it’s probably a problem, but that’s not the issue. I think… I don’t like the margin of error.”

“Oh? Could you elaborate?” she’d produced two clay mugs filled with something vaguely tea-like from… somewhere, and offered one to Edwin.

“Margin of error? That’s basically how close you have to be to perfection before it’s a success.”

“Oh? Interesting. But that’s not what I’m asking about. What do you mean it’s so small for fighting?”

“Well…” Edwin struggled to formulate his thoughts properly. Why couldn’t this have been one of the internal debates he’d had with himself preparing his every point and counterpoint for the event where somebody asked him why he thought that bringing dinosaurs to life was a good idea.

“Okay, it’s kind of like this. I’m an alchemist, a scientist at that. Messing things up is almost literally my job description. I’m supposed to do something wrong in every possible way, so I can figure out the exact parameters for what is right. But with a fight, if I mess up even once, I don’t get a second try. It’s experiment over, no more testing. And that… doesn’t appeal to me, I don’t think.

“It’s a rush, don’t get me wrong. But… the stakes are too high, the room for mistakes too small. There’s no time to make sure all my work is right, I just have to make a call and live with it. Some people would find that thrilling… and I suppose I would too. But it’s also so exhausting, I just can’t live with it. There’s better ways to get that rush. ”

“So what’s the problem? Most people never fight once, you know.”

“It’s Lefi, I suppose? He wants me to be good at fighting but he’s also trying to teach me how to avoid fights, and he just sort of assumes that everyone will think like him and that of course it’s super important for me to learn how to fight!

“He’s… not wrong. I want to be able to protect myself, and take care of myself without relying purely on the goodwill of others. Heck, before all of this, I probably would have agreed with him too that I needed to be good at and would benefit from fighting and learning to fight. But after two months of being beaten into the dirt time and time again? I like to think I’m resilient, but… it’s a bit much. Not to mention it doesn’t actually feel like I’m improving. He says I am, but what does that really compare to? I’m no closer to measuring up to him than I was a month and a half ago.”

“He does tend to do that, doesn’t he? He just doesn’t understand that without a Skill to guide you, no amount of throwing you around will actually make you better at fighting, not truly.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“So,” she pivoted to another topic, “Why do you feel so strongly that you need to control your life? It’s not that often I come across such a similar desire to my own.”

“Well, I… actually, why am I telling you all this? I’m sure that I’m just tremendously boring, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to drag you into all my emotional insecurities.”

Come on, poke and prod just a bit, a tiny corner of him rooted, Please, show more than cursory interest in me. If you actually care about me, and aren’t just trying to cheer me up, surely…

“Are you sure?” she asked. Not an outright prod, but it was prod-adjacent. He’d let it slide.

“Yeah, I mean… yeah. I don’t want to spiral down in that direction, which talking about that sort of thing would probably do,” he admitted. Still room for a prod, now it was back to her…

“Well,” she settled on, “Okay. But you’ll tell me sometime!”

Edwin shrugged. He could commit to the vague future-that-is-never about that suite of emotional vulnerability no problem. It would be easy enough to deflect, and never actually have to dig into his core any time soon.

A thought seemed to cross her mind, “I know just the thing that you’ll really like.”

“Oh?” Edwin asked, interest piqued, “And what might that be?”

There was a sudden gust in the room as her autumnal wings twisted into existence, the skin of her back flowing like water and flickering like an illusion into creating the wings.

“Let’s go flying!”

“Did I mention I don’t like heights?” Edwin hazarded, cautiously peering over the edge of the tower’s roof, fighting back a bit of vertigo.

“You don’t? How on Joriah did you ever get the Flight skill then?”

“Brute force and scientific understanding,” he absently replied, “Though saying I dislike falling might be more accurate.”

“You can fly!” Rillah laughed, hovering in front of him. She didn’t actually need to flap her wings to float, apparently, and they were mainly used to help her maneuverability or so she claimed, “You’ll have no problem catching yourself. I know, it’s pretty intimidating the first few times, but I’m sure you’ll manage it!”

“I can only extend two meters from my anchor point, though,” he protested, “any further than that and I’ll actually just fall.”

“You’ll be fine! Come on, you can attach to me.”

“…Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes. Don’t worry, my wings are really strong. You explained how your Skill works, and it’s at least worth a try,” she held out a hand and assumed a pleading expression, “Do it for me?” she asked.

Well, when she put it like that…

He took a deep breath and steeled himself. She was asking him to trust his life into her hands, so to speak. He’d just met her yesterday. She was still almost a complete stranger… Could he trust her? What would he get out of it? Maybe a bit of fun? And what did he risk? Almost everything.

“Please?” she asked, wiggling her fingers in a clear invitation to grab on.

It would always be risky, wouldn’t it? He’d forever have reasons to not jump off the roof, and it would be good for his skills.

Yes! It would be good for his Flight skill. The sooner he could evolve that, the sooner he could take Stamina Manipulation and explore his abilities all the more.

It was still a risk, though.

It will always be a risk.

Edwin took her hand.