“That one,” Tercius’ beast of choice was a shaggy gray mountain of a ram, easily tall enough for a grown horse to hide under it.

Upon hearing his words, Mistress Kalina's eyes narrowed at the beast, and a finger was pointed. Magia swirled on the top of that finger and the greenish bubble that was their vehicle made a small hole for the spell to pass.

Below, the gray ram bleated weakly and slowly laid on the ground, not caring for the snow, the bushes, or the rocks over which it prostrated itself at all. The head lazily leaned on one large curling horn and it fell asleep.

“Now let’s get him back to the camp and tidy him up a bit, shall we?”

Tercius nodded as the massive sleeping beast floated upwards. “I have a question, Mistress. It’s about the conversation we had earlier. The animated intestinal worm thing. You said that I had it. Just to confirm, I don’t have it anymore?”

If he could make a Skill out of that Seal and on top of that he had that worm? Then not only would long and mid-range energia detection be useless against him, but he could also keep his Well hidden at all times. He would effectively be under the radar of anyone who was not in his immediate area.

“That is correct.”

“Mistress, is there any way I can get it back?” Tercius asked. “I could use something like that.”

His Mentor took a deep breath. “What use would that creation see there? You’re not planning on using energia there, are you? Did you not listen to anything I said to you in the past weeks? Do I have to remind you what would happen to that Seal if you were to flood your Well with energia? Do I have to remind you who is the only human group capable of active use of energia? Do I have to remind you of the consequences if someone like that were to be found there?”

Tercius’ eyes fell to the sleeping beast that hovered below their moving bubble. “I… I spoke before thinking it through.”

Mistress Kalina only dismissed his idea as dangerous because she didn’t know the entire picture. Should he share with her more of his abilities? Would she even allow him to steal Mistress Prime’era’s work to make the Skill?

*** *** ***

Tercius watched as things, both living and dead, fell out of the previously interwoven dark gray hairs. The ground below the hovering wild beast became littered with mud, branches, leaves, bugs and parasites, hairs, and more— all of it falling out as if escaping and running away from the beast. In moments, the ram's filthy and smelly rock-colored hairs were clean and straight, glossy and uniform, seemingly combed and cut to the same length. The aged Mistress Helfira, so tiny next to the hovering mountain that was the statue-still beast, moved around with the critical eyes of a stylist, adjusting the ram's appearance with a spell here and another there, all the while reading something from a small book.

The great curling horns were cleansed, revealing a healthy earthy yellow and a little bit of white, even making the keratin shine like some strange crown. But Mistress Helfira was not done even at that point. The beast’s mouth went wide open and Mistress Helfira looked inside, a frown on her face. A wave of a hand and a clench of the aged fingers was enough to send a few rotting teeth flying out and into the wild forest that was just meters away from their newly created clearing.

Again Mistress Helfira consulted the book in her hands and with a wave of her hand the ram turned over to its side and pieces of hooves started falling off as the keratin there was shaped into a particular shape. One by one, each leg got a visit—

Tercius found the ram’s step-by-step transformation more than distracting and a little bit disturbing, and so he moved a while away towards the forest, so that everyone and everything distracting was out of view and earshot.

Even if he were to ignore the ease with which it was all happening, which left him with a rather bad taste in his mouth all by itself on so many accounts, taking the beast out of its natural environment unsettled him deeply. Now, seeing it being remodeled and prettied up like some little toy only made things worse.

Still, it had to be done. He would just have to make sure nothing happened to the beast while it was in his service and then repay it in some way afterward.

{Distant Mind} helped him settle down and prepare himself quickly before he started pushing {Memorization} towards {Teaching Bond}.

This was his only job, all three Mistresses argued unanimously, and he completely agreed with that. The sooner he completed this part, the sooner the ram and he could start their training.

As he mentally pushed one Skill towards the other, the pressure to hurry was always at the edges of his mind— which was something which none of the Mistresses seemed to have a thimble of.

They looked as if on a picnic in the woods, while the pressure in him grew and fell, the pain flaring occasionally with a hissing glee, but he was always ready to stop pushing further when that happened. He made a brief stop when his Mentor called for him to eat, but he immediately returned to his work afterward. He had no time to lose nor plans to stop until he finished, no matter how sore or tired he got.

This had to be done and so it would be done.

By the time evening came to their cliff-side clearing and the unpleasant and frustrating hours behind him crossed into double digits, Tercius found it little wonder why most people went for two barrier-bound Skills to do this. It was so easy to do it that way. Just a few minutes were enough to stimulate one Skill to be consumed by the other and in doing so overcome the barrier.

Still, why was this not working? He was quite sure that he had found that fine line between an enormous internal pressure and the sharp pain, and he had kept to it during the sun-lit hours and nothing came of it.

"Sometimes, even if you do it right– and by your description, I think that you did find that line– it can take days. Sometimes, it takes longer." his Mentor told him that evening, under the light of the moons, the stars, and a few bluish mage lights. "You should just keep to it until it gives us the result we need."

Tercius stared at her, a weight slowly settling in the pit of his stomach.

He didn’t have days or weeks. This and everything that followed had to be done as soon as possible.

Perhaps he should get some help from {Distant Mind} after all. Perhaps tomorrow, he concluded, but only if he managed to get Mistress Kalina to watch over him while he tried his idea. While he had to complete everything as soon as possible he had to do it while playing it as safe as possible. Now was not the time to experience the kind of damage that was not quickly reversible, after all. That would only set his already perilous timeline in even more jeopardy…

With a nod to himself and his decisions, he laid in the surprisingly comfortable cot that was provided to him in his part of the enormous gray tent.

He fell asleep immediately.

*** *** ***

The sun rose and Tercius rose with it. On an empty stomach, he spent the entire morning walking that edge between sharp pain and dull pressure. When the sun finally reached the zenith, he decided that it was time to change tactics. He had given this way a day, now it was time to try something else.

From the edge of the forest, he tentatively walked past the spell-bound slumbering mountain of a beast and headed for the massive gray tent. Inside, the three Mistresses were cataloging the samples of the local flora that they spent the morning collecting.

“Excuse me for interrupting you, Mistresses,” Tercius nodded to the three women. “Mentor, can I have a moment of your time? I have an idea,”

Mistress Kalina glanced at him and nodded. “I’ll be with you in a little while,” Her shining hands dimmed, revealing leather gloves and a wiggling root. Gently, she lowered the dark root onto a plate, only for a green barrier to surround it. Trapped inside, the root moved and poked and prodded, but it found no exit.

Mistress Kalina and he sought the privacy of Tercius' spot near the forest, but even so, his Mentor employed spells to make a translucent green sphere around them, which also had the benefit of cutting off the gentle sounds of swaying trees, busy insects, and chirping birds.

Finally, his Mentor nodded to him. “I’m listening,”

“I want to use a Skill of mine and see if I can accelerate this process,”

An orange eyebrow went up. “You think this Skill of yours can have an impact?”

“I do. The problem is that I won’t be able to stop once I start. I…” Tercius swallowed. “I feel nothing on the outside, once the Skill takes me. No amount of physical pain can reach me there. So… I was wondering… Could you put me to sleep if I start damaging my channels?”

Mistress Kalina's red mouth pressed into a thin line, her bronze nostrils flared and dark brows gloomily came together. He knew that look by now. She was troubled, or at least she appeared so. "You would risk so grave an injury for a mere day or two of work? Torn channels burn, Tercius. They burn as little else does. Do you remember your Well formation? They burn like that all the time until they heal."

“But it’s not just a day or two. Yes, it can be only that, but it can easily be a week or two. You told me so yourself. Mistress, please. It’s been twenty-eight days since I found out. Twenty-eight days. I’ve been preparing and preparing and preparing and—” He snapped his mouth shut with a click of a jaw. His head was getting too heated and his mouth might easily spout something he would regret. “Preparation is necessary, I agree with you. And I am grateful for the weeks of instruction behind us and even all of this that you are doing, but if I can speed it up, I should. I will.”

Mistress Kalina’s nostrils flared as she exhaled deeply. “Well then, for your information, with a spell prepared beforehand and so little distance between us, I can put you to sleep in an instant.”

“A prepared spell?”

"It's a technique to prepare a spell ahead of time and release its effects when you need it. The Academy's curriculum places the basics of how to do that in year three and then you learn more and more in years four, five, and six,"

“Fascinating… but I suppose we should start then.” Tercius licked his lips. “I should warn you, Mistress. If this works like I think it will, it will happen soon after I close my eyes.”

She raised an arm, the large outer sleeve of her gray robe falling back to the elbow, revealing the inner sleeve that tightly hugged her forearm and hooked itself to her thumb. In the center of a bronze hand, it was as if an invisible fire burned. “Worry not, I’m ready.”

Tercius sat down on the green grass and leaned his back on the cold and smooth surface of their translucent greenish bubble, closing his eyes and calling for {Distant Mind}.

The darkness deepened, the heartbeat in his ears went away. He gave it a moment and then started. Like so many times before, he imagined a snake of blue and gray and white leaving the crystal obelisk of {Memorization} and heading through the endless gray fog of his Anima directly towards the deep emerald crystal of {Teaching Bond}.

Here, he felt it. The snake slithered for a single instant. Then the feeling was gone, as if it was never there.

{Memorization} [21] fuels the advancement of {Teaching Bond} [20]

{Memorization} [21] is now {Memorization} [7]

{Teaching Bond} [20] is now {Teaching Bond} [21]

A day. That was how much he wasted and here he was, completing it all in an instant. If only he tried this sooner. At the same time, he considered the possibility that the hours behind him had, to use a metaphor, loosened the jar’s lid. Perhaps over the hours of trying he had even gotten a bit stronger at doing it. Perhaps {Distant Mind} only finished off what had been nearly over. Pushing those lines of thoughts away, he mentally called for the two Skills.

White letters flared to life across the endless dark void.

{Teaching Bond} [21]

—During your lessons you form a bond with your students. You gain a strong sense of their current motivation and confusion and a minor sense of their emotional state. The students gain an improvement to focus.

—{Memorization}: The student will recall your lessons with enhanced clarity.

{Memorization} [7]

—Your ability to commit information to memory is improved.

Tercius’s thoughts swirled around the darkness. {Memorization} did not disappear, like {Visualization} years ago when he used it to advance {Distant Mind} over its first barrier. Why? An effect of using a Skill that was over the first barrier, perhaps? Possibly… something to investigate at a later date, certainly. He made a mental note of it and let his thoughts branch to further questions.

The synergy between {Memorization} and {Teaching Bond} seemed good even by a cursory glance, but what about {Memorization} and other Skills he had?

Being the recipient of a high-level {Teaching Bond}, he knew just how powerful the second effect could get.

Should he add {Memorization} to get each of his Skills across their barriers, or better yet across their boundaries of change? Already, he preferred the term, but that aside he was not so sure this would be a good avenue. To say nothing of the years it would take to get {Memorization} up in levels over and over again for each Skill, boundaries of change were not endless. Each Skill had four of them and each Skill could only go up to a [100]. Was spending one of those boundaries really a good thing?

Wait… he was getting caught up in this and he was sure that he was forgetting something… Oh. Mistress Kalina. She was waiting outside. Well, she was a couple of centuries old. What was a minute or two to someone like her?

But, if he didn’t emerge now, she might just cast that sleeping spell on him.

Reluctantly, he pushed away {Distant Mind}.

His eyes shot open as his head pounded and his entire body burned. Then all was dark.

*** *** ***

The bright white hands dimmed and Mistress Prime'era opened her blue glacial eyes, looking directly at him. "Nowhere on your body did I find a torn channel, but there are many that are considerably inflamed. The channels in your brain seem to be in the direst conditions."

Through squinted eyes and gritting teeth, Tercius saw Mistress Helfira smile down at him. "I think this makes you a hothead, Tercius. Actually, I'm quite sure that it does. Alas, I don't think its permanent,"

In his cot, Tercius winced and closed his eyes. All he needed right now was someone to annoy him.

"The good news is that a long sleep should do away with most of the inflammation. You might have a nasty headache later, but that should be about that." Mistress Prime'era said. He could hear that quirk in her voice— he heard it quite a few times over the past few days— she was amused.

“Thank you,” Tercius licked his dry lips. His mouth was as dry as the lips despite the liquid he drank a moment earlier. His head was on fire, perhaps even literally.

“Kalina, a spell to cool his head will interfere with the recovery, but a spell to cool the surroundings of his head will do just fine. Do no more than that. A spell to help him sleep will interfere likewise, but—”

“I have something that will help him sleep,” his Mentor said.

Somewhere behind an intricate partition of carved wood, Mistress Helfira hummed to herself, “It seems that I will have to wait another day to see which of the two is more stubborn…”

*** *** ***

The giant gray ram jumped and kicked, its back arching in trying to throw Tercius off. Attached by a saddle that he had trouble getting out of, Tercius wasn't going anywhere, no matter how much his stomach and the beast wished he did. Frantic bleats accompanied each unsuccessful jump, disturbing more than just Tercius' center of gravity.

“Easy there. Easy, boy.” Tercius tried using a calm and soothing voice, as was recommended.

As he spoke he tried to reestablish the bond lost only moments ago, but all the jolting around made it more difficult and he was pretty sure that his lunch was slowly making its way to his throat.

“Easy there, easy boy,”

“Tercius, is something the matter?” the voice of his Mentor came from behind him.

"The bond is broken, Mistress!" Tercius burped and clamped his mouth shut.

“Oh,”

A wave of coldness tingled Tercius' neck and the beast settled in mid-jump. Knowing what was coming, Tercius relaxed. He was dragged off into the air and deposited near his Mentor like a little doll. Sitting in a chair, with one hand pointed towards the awkwardly hovering ram and the other holding a book, Mistress Kalina was frowning. The pointing hand slowly came down and the beast's massive frame followed the movement. The ram, suddenly finding itself free again, immediately bolted across the meadow, heading for the cliffside, but neither Mistress Kalina nor Tercius seemed worried about that.

“Maybe you need to be more firm with it? The chapter on proper commands is highlighted as important, see?” Mistress Kalina waved the book his way.

Tercius swallowed the bitter sensation that had reached his mouth as he took the book. The guide was written millennia ago by a Magos Master who had been born into a tribe that had used these same mountain rams as mounts, and the book detailed everything from the way to rear the beasts, keep them healthy, break them in for riding, and more, delving deep into the tools, methods, potions, and Skills which would help and make things easier for a tamer with each step of the way. It was an interesting read, one he made sure to pay frequent visits to.

Although the guide was mostly made in mind for training newborns of the species, it also had a section delving deeply into taming older wild specimens, which mostly boiled down to repeatedly exploiting two quirks that were especially present with the males of the species in abundance.

The book proved to be of invaluable help in the past two days.

“I don’t have the Skill that that Master had, Mistress. Besides, this was more about… I felt… It’s…” Tercius closed his eyes and reached towards those last moments of the bond. His experience with {Familiar Bond} helped him to recall and parse through what it was like for the beast and strangely enough, Tercius had a feeling that {Language Acquisition} and {Pattern Insight} were helping him along. “It’s… there’s fear there. A deep, deep… primal one. It was… every time I get up in that saddle, there’s this brief moment where he’s overwhelmed with fear… He had never felt anything like it before but he knew deep down… that he had to shake me off of himself to live…” Tercius opened his eyes and looked at his Mentor. “I suppose that there could be predators in these mountains that attack by jumping on them. These beasts might be conditioned to act that way.”

One orange eyebrow went up. “You understood all that through the bond? Did it grow, your Skill?”

“No, same as before, [21]. Let’s just say that I might be good at reading it.”

Mistress Kalina smiled. “Yes, let’s do that,”

Furthermore, it was frightening how simple, yet powerful and rampant the ram’s emotions were. Even if nothing else came out of this experience, he had felt a new depth to fear.

“Here it comes again,” Mistress Kalina pointed at the distance.

Far in the grassy distance a gray blimp had turned around and was now moving towards them. Tercius smiled, showing all his teeth. Here he comes again indeed.

Tercius gave his Mentor her book back and lowered his head to her. A glowing green finger touched his forehead and then he sprang from his spot. A refreshing sensation ran up his legs, torso, and into his lungs as {Running} enhanced him. Keeping his breathing regular, Tercius' legs ate up the distance, and opposite to him the mound of lean muscles grew with each passing second, small clumps of green and brown spraying behind it. Both of them were going for a head-on collision and seemed eager for it.

Seeing the charging mountain charging his way, Tercius felt a tiny dose of fear laced with some kind of special excitement he had rarely if ever felt before.

A small green light appeared right between the curled horns of the massive beast. Right as the beast loomed over him, Tercius jumped and the spell of his Mentor propelled him over the beast's head and then across the large back. A deep thud and a crack of glass were heard behind him, as a spray of earth and grass showered everywhere.

Bracing for impact, Tercius landed on the dug out earth as if on a trampoline. Without breaking a step, he turned around and ran back to stand before the ram.

Tercius crossed his arms as the massive ram shook his head and snorted repeatedly, its large soulful eyes blinking as its rectangular irises narrowed and expanded.

"Want to try that again?" Tercius asked. As he spoke, the connection of {Teaching Bond} extended itself towards the beast.

Still blinking away, the ram bleated weakly his way and Tercius smiled. He knew what that weak bleat meant.

According to the guide, butting heads was the recommended way of asserting dominance and getting the beast to consider him as an… equal of sorts. Well, equal might not be the right word. What butting heads did was that it activated some kind of conditioned response of a competitive part of the beast and constantly winning that competition showed the beast who was on top and that, well, it made things easier for Tercius. The most important part for Tercius was winning the exchange in a rather decisive manner, which in turn made the beast think of him as some kind of a mentor figure rather than competition, or at least the guide's writer thought so. In any case, the giant ram was truly willing to test himself over and over again and in turn, Tercius got to spend more time with it as a result.

Already Tercius had spent over a dozen hours with the beast, letting the gray mountain of lean muscles get used to his smell and so on, and things had gone so smoothly that he had been willing to try climbing up on its back.

True, instead of smashing his own skull and brain into a pulp to achieve the results, Tercius had used some outside help, but the ram did not need to know something like that.

“Did you choose a name?” Mistress Kalina suddenly appeared near him. “The guide said that naming should be done as soon as possible and then keeping the name consistent through training, and even after training ends, always gives good results… Here, I brought you these,”

Tercius hid a small tremor as he took the large sack from her. How did she always manage to sneak up on him? With one hand he rooted around the bag and took out a branch full of tiny green leaves and strange yellow berries, extending it to the beast. Slowly the ram approached and lowered its head to start munching away at its favorite treat.

“I am oscillating between two,” Tercius said. “One of the first ones I had in mind was Horny. Horny the Ram? It has a nice sound to it…”

Mistress Kalina snorted and gave him a tight smile.

Tercius chuckled as he took out another branch and extended it upwards. “Lucky, it is then. Well, Lucky, you and I shall just have to come to an agreement… or we can just bash our heads together and find out whose will crack first… I can tell you right away that it won’t be mine.”

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** 

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