2407 Diori 22, Reshpe

The camp teemed with activity by the time Kymalin crawled out of her tent. She looked back at the meager things she had collected over the year while holding up the tent flap up. Past the bedroll she made after using the night before, a wooden table sat near the rim of the tent. Stacks of parchment needing Kymalin's review, a half-drunk cup of gallberry coffee, and a frail letter opener sat atop it.

Kymalin sighed and ducked back inside, letting the flap fall behind her. The light immediately decreased in magnitude around the space. She sat on the bed roll, stretching her legs. Her fingers closed around the rusty letter opener she loaned from her tent-neighbor, Ivar. Without a word, she grabbed the unopened correspondence sitting on top of the sheafs of parchment and sliced the blade through. The satisfying sound of parchment fibers ripping filled her ears.

She peeked into the envelope. There was nothing in there but a small card. What in Pidmena's name was this? Her fingers reached inside and drew the card out. One side remained clean. When she turned the card over, two words blared in her vision. Join us.

A frown pulled at the corners of her lips. She waved the card in the air, chanted a few revealing spells. Nothing happened. No mysterious messages appeared. Annoyance sprouted in her gut. At least tell her what she's joining? And who had the gall to sneak to her tent, specifically, and place this inconspicuous correspondence? Who does that?

Besides...here she was thinking Carleon decided to reach out to here. Which was wishful thinking at best. It wasn't like Kymalin got messages from home. None of them in this camp ever did. Most of them were fugitives or presumed dead by their family. Nobody's going to attempt to write to those groups of people. Nobody's going to look for them either. The Heiress made sure of that.

Kymalin tossed the letter opener back into the table. She groaned when she pulled herself up to grab the wax-lit lamp she used during evenings. Detached, transparent wings from insects flitting near the blaze last night made a mess in the ground. From what Kymalin gathered from the soldiers, the insect was called tarme. They only come during days when rain was supposed to pour the next day.

She scoffed as she opened the lamp's hatch and struck a flint she dug from the pocket of her trousers to start a fire. It hasn't rained once since she arrived in this camp. The simulated sky made sure of that. An amused snort tore off her as the memory of her finding it out the first time flashed in her mind.

Raena had just finished knocking Kymalin around and the topic had shifted to the sky. Kymalin remembered asking Raena about why it wasn't raining in the camp. The Magistrate looked at her like Kymalin's teeth just straightened. "It's a simulation," she said. "It's a spell with the sole function is to imitate the sky above us and not necessarily the weather or the temperature. Sylfior was a genius for thinking of that."

The name rang in Kymalin's head as she tosed the card intothe flame building up inside the lamp. The smell of burning parchment filled the tent. Sylfior Ivanche, the Magistrate in charge of procuring supplies and ensuring the survival of the camp, according to rumors, was made a Magistrate at the tender age of twenty. A magic genius, an inventor, and the one who came up with the idea of cloaking and the sky simulation. No wonder the Heiress was grasping on straws to keep him.

Kymalin's competitive side urged her to beat Sylfior's record of being the youngest and the quickest to be made a Magistrate. She shook her head, watching the last of the card turn into ashes inside the lamp. The liquefied wax ate the ashes up until it turned into a murky pool. There's no point in trying to beat a record which didn't even matter. Unless she could produce something bigger than what Sylfior did, there was no way she'd be made a Magistrate a year after joining. She couldn't even swing a sword in the right direction.

The lamp's metallic base screeched against the compact ground when she got it out of the way. She stood up and paced towards her tent's entrance. Without a word, she ducked out and dove into the fray of early morning in the camp.

A group of soldiers threw sticks into a wooden, hexagonal board, cheering when some of the sticks hit a certain place. Kymalin had seen the game played for countless times yet she still couldn't understand how it worked. She tried asking Sylra or any other soldier she felt comfortable talking useless things with, but none of them gave a coherent answer. It seemed like she wasn't the only one who was clueless.

Some soldiers steered clear of the game and instead retreated to playing karavag, or at least a variant of it. With the amount of different fairy races, half-bloods, and humans in this camp, Cardovia had developed their own variant which was a amalgamation of all the variants in the island. In turn, the game became more confusing and more convoluting.

Erith Derenei, a soldier who joined Cardovia a year before Kymalin, was the reigning champion who managed to beat even the self-professed masters of the game in their own race's variant.

Kymalin had other entertainment in mind, though. She turned her eyes to region in the camp where a certain group of soldiers were known to hang out. The gambling group. Now, those were her people. She had lost sleep and more in trying to win at a card game she came to know as poserne. The combinations and the shuffles were a challenge but she'd get there. That's probably how she had no possessions left after betting it all and losing.

Then, something caught her eye, making her halt her walk. She approached a random tent upon noticing a mound of upturned earth beneath it, almost near the tent's pitch. That's...strange. Were they looking to pitch their tent elsewhere? If so...why? Kymalin knitted her eyebrows and tilted her head to one side. It didn't seem to be the case, though. If they were looking to remove the tent, by do it only in one pitch? Why not dig around the other three too?

From the looks of it, this mound looked like it was upturned in a hurry and then put back in the same manner. It wasn't done cleanly, too. Flecks of mud colored the base of the tent as well as the wooden pole supporting it. Whoever did this would find those traces hard to scrub off. What were they even doing?

"Oi, Kymalin!" a voice speared through her thoughts, distracting her from the soil. She turned to find Ivar running towards her, waving his arm as he went. He stopped a few steps away, catching up to her. "Have you seen my letter opener? I thought I gave it to someone here."

Kymalin clasped her hands together. "Oh, yeah," she tucked the strands of hair that escaped Sylra's braid behind her ear. "I'll give it to you after lunch. It's in my tent."

The soldier nodded. "Ah," he said. "I'll wait until then. See ya."

He turned and sped off gods-knew-where before Kymalin could say anything more. What has that man had been doing anyway? Must be nice to be finished with training. It took up most of Kymalin's time during the day, leaving her with just the evenings to visit the gambling circles.

The sound of metal hitting its molten kind rang in the air the moment Kymalin reached the working sections of the camp. The dining hall shone in the distance, inviting her for a quick snack even though it was hours before lunch. She tore her gaze from the famed building and turned right, heading straight into the armory after crossing the wide training field. Already, there were pairs, even groups of three, sparring in the field, unsupervised. Was that how Raena trained them to do?

Kymalin tried imagining herself to be among those people twirling and grunting. She failed. Perhaps, combat wasn't for her. She could be like an information broker like the Ventora guy. Or she could be a spy in royal courts. Or something. The job the Heiress required her to do wasn't explained well.

She ducked inside the tent and headed straight into the sharpening machine. It took her a while to learn how to even turn the thing on. Once she did, she swore to never stop using it with every chance she got. Besides, she has the perfect excuse since Raena always succeeded in dulling Kymalin's blades in training.

A chugging sound tore her from her reverie. She glanced down to find the sharpening wheel not turning like it should. It wasn't even moving despite the switch being on and the ore powering it shining brightly. That's weird. Kymalin flipped the switch off, the light from the ore in the middle of the mechanisms dying with it. She squinted at the mess of gears and bands. Nothing seemed amiss. Except maybe...

She reached inside and poked at a bunch of fine-toothed gears. Something felt off in that place. Didn't there used to be a gear somewhere there? Where was it? As an experiment, she turned the machine on again. True enough, the rest of the gears and the bands turned and ran smoothly but stopped when they reached those specific bunch. They were the ones who were supposed to get the sharpening wheel to start spinning.

"Kym! You're early," Raena's voice speared from the tent's opening, startling Kymalin enough to make her drop the sword. The metal hit the ground with a solid clang. No doubt they heard it in the residential area with how loud it was. Raena winced. "Oh, that must have hurt."

Kymalin snapped out of whatever trance she was in. "Yeah," she bent down and picked up her sword. It was made of normal metal, without the dark gray sheen of Raena's thin, twin swords. What kind of metal were those made of, even? "Not much, though. The sharpener wasn't working. I don't have my sword primed for our sparring. I'd hate to use a dull sword."

"Thankfully, you don't need to," Raena drew something from her side. A flash of brown whizzed towards Kymalin. Her hand reached out and closed around the scabbard of a sword. Raena jerked her chin in Kymalin's direction. "Use that today. You earned it."

Kymalin knitted her eyebrows as she examined the sword in her hands. The guard, hilt, and pommel peeked out of the sheath. All of them were gilded with a silver cast and intricate markings featuring interlocking lines and arching curves. The smiths have outdone themselves with this one.

"Come on," Raena said. "Draw it."

Kymalin obeyed, grasping the hilt and giving the sword a quick tug. The blade slid free from the sheath with a silent and slick shriek. It was...well, gorgeous. The first thing that caught her eye was the dark gray sheen similar to Raena's swords. Words died in her throat. She looked up to find Raena with her arms crossed and a grin painting her face. "Is this..." Kymalin couldn't find the right term.

"Dwarven metal?" Raena supplied. "Yeah. It is."

Kymalin almost choked on her own saliva. Dwarven metal? It was one of the rarest metals in Umazure, left by the Dwarves after the Dwarven occupation. Meaning there was a limited number of articles containing it. Meaning her sword was one of the rarest weapons around.

"But...why?" Kymalin inclined her head to one side. She sure didn't deserve this after botching her first mission.

From what she heard from the soldiers who received their camp-ordained weapons of choice, dwarven metal was preferred by Cardovia because of its ability to inflict wounds which couldn't be healed by magic. Something about foreign magic interferring with Umazuran magic or some theoretical things Kymalin could care less about. Was Kymalin ready for such a huge responsibility?

Raena laughed, almost in response to Kymalin's internal turmoil. "You did good on your first mission," she said. "Not many people could take on the red coats and win like you did. Not bad for someone who only trained for a year."

Heat rushed to her cheeks at the compliment. Kymalin did her best to blink the pride away. "I mean..." she said. "I learned from the best."

It was Raena's turn to blush. Then, her features reset just as quickly, reverting back to the stern training supervisor Kymalin had come to know. "Now, enough talking," she said. "Let's train."

As they went out of the tent, Raena's hand rested on her sides, giving Kymalin a perfect view of her fingers and her nails. She wasn't even thinking about it but one particular detail caught her eyes. Mud stained Raena's fingers. For what reason?

"Yo, Kym! You coming?" Raena's voice already sounded far away. Kymalin looked up and saw Raena waving her over to an empty spot in the field. Why would the Magistrate's nails be laid with mud this early in the morning? Was she helping someone move tents? Why? She's a Magistrate, for Pidmena's sake.

Kym jogged to meet her trainer. On her way, she glanced up to find the sky as blue as ever. Unlike the first time she came here and gazed up at the endless blue, there were a few wisps of clouds floating through the expanse. What did that mean? Was this really how the sky outside looked like? For all Kymalin knew, Diori was a month of storms and rain in most of the eastern parts of the island. Shouldn't there be a few clouds in the simulation, if that's the case?

"Hey, Raena," Kymalin said as she met with the Magistrate. "Did you notice the clouds getting fewer every day?"

Raena answered with slashing with her sword even before Kymalin could draw her sword out. Kymalin held her sheathed weapon vertically, wincing when the leather scabbard caught the thin sword's trajectory with a thwack. The Magistrate threw slash after slash, barely running out of breath with every twirl. Kymalin gritted her teeth, hating how she was forced to be on defensive every time she sparred with Raena.

Finally, Kymalin's heel slammed against a timely pebble, upsetting her balance. Raena lunged and pinned Kymalin to the ground with an artful twist and kick to her knees. A cold and unforgiving blade pressed against Kymalin's chin. Above her, Raena's face, slick with sweat, was a dark shadow against the glare of the midday sun.

"You should worry about clouds after you've finished saving your neck," Raena breathed. "Don't you think?"

Without much to say to that, Kymalin just nodded. Well...damn.