“So first off, do you know how chroma actually works?” Elea asked, beginning their lesson.

Elea had dropped by because apparently she had something to teach Leith, and had promptly commandeered Leith’s chair, designating him to the bed instead.

“Um, no, not really to be honest,” Leith admitted. He knew how it could be applied, of course– even peasants used riftcores to power their lights and stoves. He didn’t, however, know how any of that actually worked.

“Yeah, well, me neither,” Elea told him, grinning.

Then what was the point of asking? Leith thought, scowling, but he didn’t get a chance to ask as she launched into an explanation of why she was here.

“While I have no clue what it is and how it works, I do know how to use it. I’m so good at using it, in fact, that I fight as a caster,” Elea proclaimed proudly.

Elea then noticed Leith’s blank stares and sighed before continuing. “Right. Of course a country bumpkin like you wouldn’t know what that is,” she muttered. “Alright, let me explain some things to you,” she said, clapping her hands together.

“Riftcores store chroma and us humans can do some crazy shit with it. A majority of people can sense it and influence it a little with some practice, but it takes most decades of effort to exert significant influence the way you do. In fact, most people can’t even command a riftcore to release energy– they need to use triggers instead. Some though, much like yourself, are blessed with an innate ability to control chroma.” She paused to ask him, “You did know you were a little different, didn’t you? You must have noticed how you probably never needed a trigger to activate riftcores, but most kids in your village did?”

Leith nodded, agreeing with her, though he didn’t think much of it. Yes, it was true that a majority of the children he grew up with had to use triggers, until something clicked and they eventually figured out how to issue simple commands to cores. Most appliances his neighbors in Karya used had triggers, because generally, people weren’t that good at commanding either. Most of their commands consisted of “turn on” and “turn off,” and needed triggers to do things like adjusting the heat of a stove.

His entire family, however, could easily activate and control cores with nothing but a tap of their fingers– it was almost intuitive. In fact, they would save money by purchasing riftcores separately for their tools and appliances so that they wouldn’t have to pay for a fancy trigger system.

“The same goes for hunters too,” Elea continued. “Lots of hunters need triggers to release chroma and even those that can release it with their minds usually can’t control what it does. At least not right away. That’s why a vast majority of chroma-powered items have triggers attached and are coded.” Noticing Leith’s confusion at the new term, Elea explained, “Coding is placing a mechanism into an item so that at a simple press of a trigger, some sort of effect occurs. For example, those jet boots Alcide tells me you’re fond of? Those are coded to take the released chroma to power a certain mechanism. The boots vacuum in air and then shoot it out to use as thrust. I make it sound simple, but these mechanisms are very complex. The advantage of coding is pretty obvious– it would be absurd to have to actively think about manipulating the air around you and imagine all of those particles interacting with each other when you just need a little boost.”

“Now, on to casting,” Elea said excitedly. “Some people can just control the chroma as they wish. I don’t mean just releasing chroma. Alcide, for example, can mentally release chroma from his riftcores and manipulate the amount he’s releasing, along with exerting some amount of influence on the chroma itself. You, on the other hand, can do so much more. I also happen to share this ability, and so I plan on teaching you how to use casting effectively.”

She then stood up and walked out the room, beckoning for Leith to follow her. They made their way to the yard which was surprisingly large for such a cramped city. Alcide often drilled and sparred Leith there.

There were three straw dummies set up– for target practice, Leith assumed. They stood about twenty feet away from the dummies when Elea instructed him to watch.

Elea lifted her hand, displaying it to Leith for a moment. She was wearing a glove with open fingers that had strange ashy white chains stretching from the middle of the glove to the rings around her fingers. The rings were white too– seemingly made of the same material as the chains– and the center of the glove had a slight indent, as if something was meant to be slotted in.

Elea reached into a satchel at her side and fished out a green riftcore and slotted it into her glove. She then lazily lifted her hand and pointed. Leith realized he could feel the energy emanating from her hand and he could see chroma coalescing at the tip of her finger like a bubble of green tinted fire. Then, the bubble blurred out of his vision and within an instant all three dummies exploded in a flurry of slashes, falling into dozens of pieces.

Leith watched, his eyes wide and in shock. “How did you do that? Can I do that too?” With that amount of power, he could have easily sliced the narboar in half. Hell, he could have stopped the bloodstags from ever reaching Karya if he wanted to!

Elea laughed at his reaction. “No, you can’t.” Ignoring how Leith wilted a little, she continued, “At least not yet. But I’ll get you started on that path.”

She turned towards the house and shouted for Lokan to come and replace the dummies. Lokan came out, stared blankly at the dummies for a moment before signaling to Elea with an indecent gesture. He did as he was asked, however, and brought several straw dummies with him.

Elea then handed Leith the stick she had poked him with earlier. He held it, noticing that it was a curved rod made entirely out of bone. It was sloped strangely so that it would slot into his palm comfortably, a white riftcore slotted at the center of the curve. When he held it, he realized it very loosely resembled a gun. It was kind of like the vaguely gun-like sticks Leith and Hani would harvest from the forest to play fight with when they were younger.

“What you’re holding right now is a wand. It's the most common type of focus– a device used to channel chroma in order to cast spells. There’s a few things you need to know about foci. Most hunters carry at least one or two of them, for either utility of some sort or a ranged option if they are a melee fighter. Many come with triggers, though that’s irrelevant for you. Most are also coded, like the one you are holding right now. Try firing it,” she suggested.

Leith pointed the wand towards one of the dummies and imagined pushing the chroma out of the core. He could feel the energy stream along grooves engraved into the wand, seemingly filtering through some mechanism, a pulse of energy forming at the tip of the wand when suddenly— BOOM.

His whole body rocked from the recoil as a giant bolt of white light zipped from his wand and out towards the dummies. He had missed what he was aiming for entirely and the mass of energy instead pulverized the dummy next to it, blasting its top half into smithereens.

The wand in his hand crackled as the bone near the tip disintegrated, the riftcore itself cracking under the pressure it just went through.

Elea snorted, glancing at him derisively. “Why the hell did you pour all of the chroma out?”

“Um, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break–”

Elea shook her head at him as if to shoo away his worries. “That thing was cheap anyway, don’t worry. At any rate, next time you should regulate the amount of chroma you are emitting at once– not every target needs a full force attack.”

Leith nodded lamely, apologizing once more for breaking her wand. She soon handed him another one and told him to shoot that instead.

This wand was similarly designed, in fact, it looked almost identical to the one he just broke, with similar grooves pointing towards the tip, but lacking the markings and indents the other had. He pointed it towards a dummy, and this time, he focused on pushing out only a little bit of chroma. The energy moved forward again like before, crackling to life in front of the wand… and fizzling out. Leith frowned– maybe he needed a little more power?

He tried shooting it again and again with increasing amounts of power, but it continued to constantly crackle to life and fizzle out. Eventually, he managed to shoot a bolt forward, but it was slow and dissipated before even making it halfway to the target.

Leith turned to Elea to ask her what was happening, but she beat him to it.

“So Leith, why do you think you’re unable to shoot with that wand but were able to so easily use the other?” she asked.

He thought about it for a moment and came to an answer pretty quickly. “It’s because the first one was coded, right? This one isn’t.”

Elea nodded. “Yes, indeed. Coded wands are significantly easier to use as they do all the grunt work of manipulating the chroma for you.”

“Then… what’s the point of using a wand that isn’t coded, then?” Leith asked.

Instead of answering, Elea beckoned for Leith to hand the wand over. She then pointed it at a dummy. Three white bolts, humming with energy materialized at once. They shot forward and missed… until Leith realized that they hadn’t but instead had flown into the sky, looping in circles before all slamming into the same target.

The level of control displayed didn’t fail to impress even Leith’s untrained eyes. The ability to control multiple projectiles and make them approach at different angles would be extremely useful.

“That is why free casting is so much better than casting with a coded wand. There is so much more you can do when you learn how to free cast,” Elea said. “It’s also more fun,” she added with a grin. “Now, do you know the importance of spells?”

“Uh, what do you mean?” Leith asked. “Spells are just another name for anything you cast, right.”

“Well yeah, but that's a bit too simplistic,” Elea told him. “Spells are formations and structures that a caster memorizes. It's technically not necessary because you can always just blast out chroma and force it to do what you want to, right? However, that’s pretty inefficient and in the heat of battle you might not have the time to actually think for long enough to cast a spell that you’re not intimately familiar with. That’s why actually learning spells is so important for a free-caster. You must repeat a spell hundreds of times and truly understand the mechanics behind it, so much so that it becomes second nature. When you can do that, you’ll be able to use powerful spells under duress while also being able to maintain the versatility that comes with free casting. Eventually, you will learn some complex and more impressive spells, but for now, you’re going to practice forcebolts until I’m impressed.”

Leith proceeded to spend the entire evening pointing wands at dummies and firing forcebolts until he could do so consistently. After a few hours of practice and cycling through a dozen or so riftcores, Elea finally called it quits.

Ever since then, Leith proceeded to spend the next month hunting a few times a week and practicing free casting any time he wasn’t hunting. It was long, grueling, and difficult, but was overall very rewarding.

Leith felt he had learned a lot and was accepting more and more that he had made the right decision. Yes, he still felt homesick and some guilt at leaving his family behind, but if things kept going the way they were, his work would clearly pay off and he’d be able to treat his family to luxury.

He was also having a lot of fun– hunting was harrowing but he enjoyed the rush of adrenaline that came with it. Free casting was fun too– it was just so cool to be able to do these things he had only heard about in stories.

Sometimes, Leith couldn’t help but wish that his father was here to see him living out the stories his father often shared.

One day, a few weeks before his intended departure for the Academy, Alcide entered his room and stood in the doorway.

“Can I come in?” Alcide asked.

“Sure,” Leith replied. He pulled his chair towards the bed where he was sitting and motioned Alcide to sit.

Alcide sat down and stayed silent for a moment before asking, “How much do you know about your father?”

“Uh, I know he was a hunter and worked as a medic for the Royal Hunters,” Leith replied.

“That’s it? Do you know any of his contributions?”

“Not really? He told me about some of the hunts he participated in, but that’s about it.”

“Huh,” Alcide said, unimpressed. “Sir Ilham never mentioned he was the head of the entire medical cohort for the Royal Hunters?”

“Uh… what’s a cohort?” Leith asked sheepishly. He vaguely recalled that his father had mentioned that he was important, but he couldn’t quite remember why.

Alcide sighed. “I forget how little you know about how the world works. The medical cohort of the Royal Hunters is the entirety of the medical forces that the Crown employed during the war. That’s five hundred men and women.”

“Oh. That… sounds like a lot,” Leith said, cringing a little at his own response. Five hundred did in fact sound like a lot– he was pretty sure that was about the same as the population of Karya. From the way Alcide was making it sound, that must have been extremely impressive, though Leith didn’t really have a reference to compare those numbers to.

“Yes, it is a lot. Beyond this, your father contributed immensely in almost every important hunt and battle during the Surge War. He was an important man and a great man but… a lot of other, more important men don’t like him.” He hesitated for a moment before casually adding, “Ilham is considered a traitor and an enemy to the Crown.”

Leith recoiled, as if struck by a sword. “Wh-what the hell do you mean an enemy to the Crown? We’d be long dead if that were true, wouldn’t we?”

Alcide shrugged. “Your father, and your mother too for that matter, are two extremely intelligent people. They managed to escape and move to the countryside and live quietly there. Despite his status as a traitor, many soldiers who participated in the Surge War, including myself, deeply respect your father. I… owe him a debt, and perhaps paying it through his son would allow me to alleviate it.”

“Don’t just gloss over that you’re calling my father a traitor,” Leith snapped. “What did he do to offend the Crown?”

“He grew disillusioned and fled from war,” Alcide stated simply. “Many of us were realizing that the war was not… quite what it seemed. Your father met your mother and they just ran away. Due to his prestige, this was considered a heavy act of treason and the Crown declared that they would have his head.”

Leith sat silently for a minute, digesting this new information. His father was a traitor? It didn’t seem believable to him. His father’s sense of duty was the greatest that Leith had ever seen in any man.

Leith studied Alcide for a minute longer, before concluding that, no, Alcide probably wasn’t lying to him. Thinking back on his parents, Leith realized that he didn’t know any details about their pasts whatsoever. His father would talk about being a medic for the Royal Hunters and his experiences there– but he never mentioned any battles by name, nor did he mention anyone that he had met there. He didn’t know anything significant and the stories his father told him were all quite vague and left out names and places. Leith’s mother shared even less, and he realized that he knew nearly nothing about either of their pasts.

Fidgeting discontentedly, Leith slowly nodded. “Okay… lets say you’re right, Alcide. My father was a traitor and the Crown wants his head. Does that mean that the attack on Karya was perpetrated by them? Did the Royal Hunters set out to kill him?”

Alcide shook his head. “No, not at all. The Royal Hunters are the Crown’s fighting force dedicated to hunting and nothing else. Yes, they fought the Riftwalkers during the Surge War, but they have long since returned to their previous duties. I’ve already told you how the men who attacked your father were impersonating the Royal Hunters, and that remains true. I do not think that this attack was against your father, instead he just happened to get killed as collateral.”

Leith gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. It almost felt better to think that his father was killed in a targeted attack, an assasination of sorts, but no. He really was just caught in a senseless massacre.

Bitterly, Leith asked, “So what’s the reason you’re telling me all of this? It doesn’t seem relevant to the attack on Karya, is it?”

“I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to draw unnecessary attention at the Academy. Do not ever mention your father or mother by name, no matter what happens. Don’t mention anything you know about them and their pasts, either. It may place you in danger.”

“I understand,” Leith replied. He was perplexed and his head was swimming with bitter thoughts. Why hadn’t his parents told him any of this? Why was a random man he just met several months ago telling him this instead.

“Leith, I hate to drop this on you right after telling you about your father, but there’s something else I want you to know,” Alcide said.

“What is it?” Leith asked, sighing. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be more shocking than learning his father was a traitor to the Crown.

“I want you to join the Menagerie.”