Fortunately, it turned out that my family and the other villagers from North Forest had been successful in getting approved for temporary government aid and housing in Greenwood from the local government. Dad said that Isaac’s official statement had done most of the heavy lifting because the current mayor of Greenwood said that Isaac was an ‘old friend’ from the Giants War who he owed for saving his life. It helped that Isaac was a Codex Keeper, too, of course, but it was interesting that Isaac’s word alone held so much sway.

I’d always known Isaac was a veteran of the Giants War, the final conflict between the humans of Shinar and the giant tribes that had once ruled the entire First Kingdom, but I didn’t realize how many veterans were still alive from that time. Most of them had to be really old by this point, like Isaac, and, indeed, the mayor of Greenwood was an old man with grandchildren of his own.

Regardless, this meant that my family and the other refugees would have housing, at least, for the next six months to a year. Apparently, the Shinar Disaster Relief Program required beneficiaries to work—or actively seek work—during their time in the program. That wasn’t a problem for my family, who always had a good work ethic. Dad had apparently already secured manual labor work for himself and Moses on a nearby farm while Mom had gotten a job looking after the grandchildren of the mayor.

My family also learned that the North Forest villagers were not the only ones seeking aid in the area. Bandit attacks, both on villages and travelers, had risen sharply over the last six months, with more and more villages getting destroyed or attacked by roving bands of bandits. Over the last week—since Wolfbrand’s death—bandit activity had died down significantly in the region, though refugees from the small towns and villages surrounding Greenwood continued to trickle in every day. Some had traveled south instead to Hebron, which had even more resources to help refugees, but those closer to Greenwood had come to this city because it was less of a trek.

The main problem was that Greenwood, despite being a much bigger town than North Forest, was still a medium-sized town at best that wasn’t equipped to deal with the influx of refugees and people seeking aid. The mayor had been pestering Hebron for months for help, but only in the last week had the Royal Family of Hebron finally responded to his requests for more funding and help. He had apparently told my parents he didn’t know why Hebron had changed so suddenly but that he was glad they had changed their mind at all. Hebron had even begun sending Codexers out along the roads between cities to protect travelers from bandits.

But I suspected I knew why the government of Shinar had decided to step in: Me.

Or rather, the events in North Forest.

Wolfbrand’s plan had been to overload the North Forest Node and blow it up, which would have caused a chain reaction that would have brought down the entire Shinar Node Network. Such a catastrophic event would have plunged the entire Kingdom of Shinar into chaos and we knew, from the North Forest Node itself, that the North Forest Codexium had already sent a message to the government in Hebron informing them about it. Isaac, being the official Codex Keeper of the North Forest Codexium, had also submitted a report to the government about the near-destruction of the North Forest Node.

We also knew that Wolfbrand and his bandits hadn’t been mere bandits, but rather a Nullifier cell seeking to spread their destructive ideology beyond the big cities.

So it was no surprise at all that the leaders in Hebron finally took interest not just in Greenwood’s struggling situation, but likely the entire northern half of Shinar, which was even more rural and agrarian than the rest of the Kingdom. They had finally realized that they couldn’t ignore what was going on in ‘backwoods’ towns and villages like North Forest anymore, not if they cared at all about the stability of the Node Network and keeping the Kingdom itself safe from the Nullifiers.

I was pleased to hear the government was getting its act together regarding the Nullifiers and the threat they posed to the people, but learning about how disinterested they were in anything outside of Hebron made me worried about my meeting with King Amphrael. King Amphrael ruled the Kingdom from Hebron. Though the Arcane Codex seemed convinced that King Amphrael was an ally who I needed to meet with as soon as I reached Hebron, I was having my doubts that King Amphrael would be at all interested in meeting with a Codexer from one of the more obscure corners of his Kingdom. I didn’t think Isaac mentioned me in his report, so it wasn’t like I could use that as a way to gain an audience with King Amphrael.

In any case, that would be a problem for the coming days.

The more immediate problem was Joshua.

As I expected, both of my parents flatly rejected Joshua’s request to travel with me and my friends to Hebron so he could enroll in the Adventure Calls Academy and become a Codexer. Their reasoning was what I expected, too, with Mom and Dad worried about the family splitting and Joshua not getting admittance into the Academy. They indicated that they might have been willing to change their minds if Joshua already had a portable Node, but he did not and it would be too expensive to get him one anyway.

Joshua complained about our parents’ decision to me later, but he didn’t press them on it. I got the impression that Joshua, despite his disagreements, wasn’t going to openly rebel against my parents’ commands and would work with them in Greenwood until it was time to return to North Forest.

Nor did I challenge my parents on that decision, either. While I wasn’t against Joshua becoming a Codexer, things could get dangerous at any moment and I didn’t want to put Joshua or any of my other family members in harm’s way if I could at all avoid it. With Wolfbrand dead and bandit activity in the surrounding area dying down to a trickle in light of Hebron’s newfound interest in the northern region, this place really was the safest place in Shinar for my family to be right now. Plus, my parents were likely stressed out enough about me leaving and didn’t need to be even more stressed by having Joshua run off with me all the way to the big city.

But we did let Joshua watch Jonah, Ruth, and I practice our spells and techniques. Well, Jonah and Ruth practiced their spellcasting. I mostly spent my time practicing Trace Glyph over and over again, one of the few spells I knew that didn’t require spending any Words. It wasn’t offensive or defensive—just runecrafting practice—but for an Inscriptionist like me, that mattered

Plus, I was worried about using up Words from my Casting Pool, which I couldn’t regenerate naturally like normal Codexers. If I used Words from my Casting Pool to cast a spell—even spells that just cost one Word—I would lose those Words forever. Therefore, it was of utmost importance that I conserve my Words and use them only as needed.

Especially since I didn’t have a way of reliably gaining Words. Sure, I could have taken up a Codex Quest from the Greenwood Codexium, but the Greenwood Codexium had been so busy that I hadn’t been able to try to get a Quest. It didn’t help that the Assistant Keepers insisted that they didn’t want to give out Codex Quests to anyone until Keeper Deborah had recovered from her injuries, as that was yet another thing that apparently required a Codex Keeper to oversee.

Perhaps Jonah was onto something when he complained about the rules and regulations of the SNA.

Regardless, Words were not the only way to get stronger. Every Codexer also had the Eight Skills, which could be increased independently of one’s Chapter through practice and study. My Runic Knowledge Skill—the one most relevant to my Discipline—was at 76 Lines out of the maximum of 99, so practicing Trace Glyph allowed me to increase my Runic Knowledge. Increasing my Runic Knowledge also improved the stability of my glyph arrays and reduced the likelihood of a Glyph Collapse.

I was largely driven to practice Trace Glyph and increase my Runic Knowledge because of how poorly I had handled the encounter with the Nullifier earlier today. I felt like I could have fixed the glyph structure of the barrier if only my knowledge of glyphs had been more advanced. By practicing with Trace Glyph, I hoped to avoid a repeat of that failure in the future.

After all, there was no guarantee that Silas Dravyn would come to our rescue again. For that matter, there was no guarantee that I would ever get to see Silas again. His disappearance after dealing with the Nullifier still bothered me.

But I couldn’t do much about it at the moment. I just had to focus on what I’d done wrong and where I could improve going forward. And right now, it was important for me to focus on improving my Runic Knowledge, which would, in turn, help me handle such scenarios better in the future.

So after spending about an hour practicing Trace Glyph, I was pleased to earn one Line in my Runic Knowledge. It wasn’t much, admittedly, but it was a step forward. It was also frustrating to move so slowly, but I didn’t know any better way to study and practice the Eight Skills. It wasn’t a subject Isaac had delved into deeply during my Codex Orientation, and I’d kind of neglected it in favor of developing my Chapter and Page in the Codex. Codex Quests sometimes offered Lines as rewards, but as I already said, those were few and far between at the moment.

Jonah and Ruth both offered me advice on how to study and practice my Eight Skills, though both admitted they weren’t experts either. Ruth told me her method of increasing her Skills was to intensely study one particular Skill for as long as she could, even at the expense of others. She also admitted she was lucky because her Discipline meshed well with the Healing Skill; simply casting a healing spell or brewing a potion with her kit allowed her to increase it.

As for Jonah, he took a completely different approach. He rotated among all Eight Skills as often as he could, focusing on a different one every day he trained, though he admitted some of his Skills were far lower than others. His best Skills, according to him, were Combat Magic and Spellcasting, as those were the most relevant to his Discipline.

What this revealed to me was that there were a lot of ways to develop one’s Skills alongside one’s Discipline—and that a Discipline influenced Skill growth as much as work ethic did. So perhaps it wasn’t bad that my top two Skills were Spellcasting and Runic Knowledge, since those were the most relevant to my Discipline.

Still, I didn’t like the fact that most of my Skills were at zero Lines. Even Combat Magic had no Lines, despite all the fights I’d been in recently—and I technically had at least one Combat Spell, two if you counted Fire Trace. Jonah couldn’t explain that one to me, except to say I probably hadn’t been thinking about my Combat Magic Skill during those fights, so I hadn’t earned any Lines because I wasn’t consciously practicing or learning. That seemed like complete nonsense to me—but also, unfortunately, exactly how Skill training worked.

Eventually, I grew tired of Skill training and decided to take a break with everyone else to have dinner with my family and the other North Forest refugees. This might be the last time I had dinner with my family for a while, so it was worth taking the time to have one final family meal with them. In the morning, we’d all go our separate ways, and I didn’t know when I’d see them again. I told them they could always message me through the Greenwood Codexium if they ever needed to contact me.

The food was good and the fellowship even better, but seeing Silas repair that glyph barrier and save everyone kept reminding me of something I’d been meaning to do—and had never found the time for until now.

So after dinner, I decided to take advantage of the free time we had, head out into the woods surrounding Greenwood, and do the impossible:

Invent a new spell.