“A lot can be understood about yourself from understanding another person. The strongest warriors and leaders are the ones who build upon each other and keep strong people by their side.” - Zalerd Sin.

  Roslin

  Roslin watched as the army marched. She had come to Durlim, one of the biggest cities on the border, to pick up children who possessed a token. That order was put on hold when the notification, system update, and territory event were sent out.

  The panic, near riots, and people yelling about the end of the world had been the least of her concerns. The letter she had received the day before from a divination seer in the capital, sent through a portal, had warned about the approaching army and requested, or rather ordered in kind words, that she stay there until reinforcements arrived. She really didn't mind; her blood was steaming for a fight, and she knew Silt was equally as restless.

  Now, she stood on the walls of the city next to Cast, a fellow rider who'd been stationed in Durlim, watching the approaching army. Ten thousand men, fifty griffins, and five floating warships. She could just make them out on the horizon. It was nearly a two-to-one odds for the normal troops garrisoned in the city, but as long as they didn't sally out, it would be easy to hold. The city was built like a fortress on a small hill. Fifteen-foot thick walls with bricks melded together by earth mages. Ballistas and catapults lined the walls with other defenses. Soldiers around her rushed to move equipment into place. Spots carved for siege formations meant for casting large-scale spells and reinforcing the wall were currently being infused and checked by mages.

  Even at the edge of the wall, Roslin could feel the mana being sucked out of the air and moving to under the castle at the heart of the city, where a large gem was being activated to power a ward that would cover and protect against siege attacks. It was perhaps the most expensive item outside the core of the kingdom, and the method of crafting them was one of the best-hidden secrets.

  While the attack had come fast, within days of the system announcement and hours after the decoration of war, there was no doubt that they could hold for months against a force of this size. They had fifty-two hundred troops, two riders, more on the way, and stockpiles of resources and food built up in the city from the nearby dungeon. The line of civilians still fleeing out of the back gate was being managed in as orderly of a way as possible, but there was a little chaos.

  “How many do you think will make it out?” Cast asked, looking behind them.

  Roslin shrugged. “There's no telling. The dome ward goes up at noon, and the gate closes at nightfall, but that should allow anyone who wants to leave to get out.”

  Cast nodded and eyed the ships in the distance, then asked another question: “Those ships, do they really carry siege weapons? Argoth says he can see the glint of metal on the bow, but it's too far to tell.”

  “It's almost identical to what's listed in the report. Those ships are the large ones that are designated siege ships. Two sets of ballistas are on the sides, and two trebuchets are placed at the front. It prevents the need for construction of siege weapons when arriving and allows a moving attack, but they burn easily.” Roslin left out that getting to them when being attacked on every side was the hard part. Turning slightly, Roslin looked down at the spacious courtyard that made up the marshaling grounds where the pair of dragons rested.

  The red and silver scales of the dragons glimmer in the falling sun. Silt was the bigger one, as she was a grade ahead of Argoth. They would both have feathers to pluck out of their talons soon enough.

  She noticed the slight shifting of nerves in Cast and grinned. The man and Argoth were new riders, only twenty years of age spent together, but they had done well in the time and had proved themselves overall good fighters but amazing earth and metal mages. They would do fine here. The real worry was the rest of the border. Griffins breed like feral dogs compared to Dragons, who laid eggs at best once a century.

  There wouldn't be enough riders and bonds to be everywhere at once. It was a tight position to be in, and one the Emperor of Karvum was probably aiming for in the rush to move troops. The Empire had the numbers. The forced recruitment of troops and hard contracts made them a good military that she couldn't deny even if the methods ate at her.

  What she could respect about her enemy was the avoidance of civilian deaths. It was honor that made them respectable enemies.

  It was what made the random attacks behind the border so strange for Karvum. She had tried to look into that, but the tokens appearing and watching Aster had taken up her time. With her disappearance and the token holders needing to be collected, she had been reassigned to soon. Looking off at the approaching army, she blinked those thoughts away.

  It was two hours before a blue shimmer covered the ground in front of the wall and rose into the sky. It was translucent, and anyone could walk through it, but any high-speed or mana-based attack would be dispersed from one side. Any approaching army that tried to move too close would still feel the wrath of the city but be unable to attack effectively back. Idly, Roslin wondered if they would even get a level out of this attack, maybe if there was a high-level griffin rider.

  Aster

  I let out a laugh as I ran down Umbra’s side and plowed into the soft and fluffy snow, nearly sinking shoulder-deep before I reached up and grabbed Umbra’s tail and let her lift me out of it.

  “This is amazing! I’ve only ever seen a foot or two of snow. I didn't know this much could fall.”

  While the snow was a pleasant chill, it was also amazingly crunchy, and each time I moved, I couldn't help a smile breaking out on my face. Standing on Umbra’s back, I looked around the endless field that almost went as far as I could see. The flat plains had to have been dusted by snow from a heavy storm recently, judging by the lack of many tracks that existed, except for ours. We’d both been a bit excited when we realized how deep the snow had really gone and proceeded to go a bit wild. As I sat on her back, I watched Umbra use her Frost Control to shift and move the snow around us away in a wide circle, forming it into thick walls and uncovering the dead grass under it. Sitting down, I watched as she worked. The snow took on a brick-like look and formed upwards slowly until it was a few feet higher than Umbra herself. Once she was done, she nodded and settled back on her hunches, sending me tumbling off in the process.

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  “Hey!” I sputtered, “I squished my tail!” shaking the scattered snow off my head, I stood up and felt the amusement in the bond as I cleaned the snow out of my tail fur. “You've gotten good with shaping snow.”

  “I've gained a few levels in Frost Control, and it's almost like an instinct or muscle now.”

  That was a good way to put it. Most of the skills that I had for a bit were almost instinctive to use. Even in the six days of travel, I'd grown better with my own Frost Control, not to her level, but I was proud of the snow wolves I could sculpt even if they only vaguely resembled a wolf. As we settled in to rest, I pulled out supplies for the afternoon, and we settled in.

  The area we'd reached was outside any territory for the kingdom or empire and lacked signs of civilization besides a house or two every day spread out, and there wasn't a reason to bother them. Anyone living this far out wanted to be left alone anyway. The only downside to this area was the unnatural storm that blew in from what we guessed was the ocean every night. It delivered piles of snow that were built in strange shapes. It'd required digging out places to sleep, but that wasn't a big problem for us. In fact, it was kinda fun.

  “Tomorrow, I have something I want to try, and I'll need your help, I think.”

  Umbra quirked her head, looking up from the meal she was eating. “And what is this thing you want to try? Is it dangerous?” Her look turned flat, and her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  I held up my hands. “No, not in any big way. I want to try to speed up how fast Primal Shift works. I've already grown faster with it, but during a fight, it's still too slow, and that led me down an idea. We've never really fought each other besides once or twice, and I think it's a great way to practice and get better with our abilities.”

  “So you want to have a fight or a few of them?” She asked.

  At my nod, Umbra's expression turned thoughtful, and she took a moment to think and finish her meal. Cracking the last bone, she finally gave an agreeing noise. “As long as you don't get upset when you lose, I don't see how you could win against me.”

  I grinned at the draconic pride she was showing, but I did agree with her. “I don't think I can either.”

  My bond was like a walking castle, and her abilities only made her harder to take down. Survival would probably end up being my goal. My bow would be useless against Umbra's scales, and even if it wasn't, her resistance to frost would weaken all of my abilities with it.

  That said, my main goal would be making Primal Shift a usable skill in the middle of combat and working at improving my ability when it comes to switching forms. It took around twenty seconds to complete a shift and also took my senses away during the process, making me blind to any oncoming attacks. Narrowing the issues down the biggest problem was the time. Twenty seconds was short, but in a fight or inside a dungeon, that was enough time to be a big issue. Primal Shift was already improving the time as I used it more, but I wanted to push the skill to see if I could get at least down to a dozen seconds.

  While the skill itself wasn't a trump card, it was a complete change in my fighting style and appearance that I could use to my advantage in a lot of ways. Keeping distance while making hit-and-run attacks with a bow only to switch in a moment to unrelenting constant attacks with claws and fangs, then switching to a humanoid form and using hand-to-hand combat would keep a lot of people unsure and off balance, but that would only work if Primal Shift could be used reliably.

  In a fight with my bond, who already knew most things about me, there wasn't a chance I'd win, but the practice of just surviving would help.

  “We can have our first spar in the morning before we leave,” I suggested as I crossed my legs and got ready to meditate.

  A mental nudge of agreement was all I got as she got prepared to meditate as well. I smiled. It'd been an uphill battle to get her to try to find her own Mana Core and spend time speeding up its spin, but keeping my routine of trying to find my own core had done the trick. Now, we both spent the afternoon working on our cores.

  Entering meditation and closing my eyes, I let my senses expand and reached out for the ambient mana. I shivered as the effect of the frost-aligned skill found the world covered in snow around me.

  The cool, cold air moves around me in a gentle but constant howl. I could feel the snow feet away stacked higher than I was compacted and smoothed like a wall in the circle Umbra had created. There were small hidden ice pools scattered in the grass that called to me. The light flakes had already started to fall from the sky. I could tell where each one was and the way it was going to change course. All of it I could feel. It was the cold, the frozen aspect of the realm that existed, and with it was the mana that gave it life. It wasn't all frost affinity mana. A lot of it had minor aspects I couldn't name, but it all connected in a whole that was inspiring.

  There was a sense of peace and enjoyment to be found in all of the parts of the almost endless cold. It was perfect and calming. In that peace, I saw the first speck of mana touch my body and drift into my own. I followed it as it raced down my pathways and towards my core but lost it after a moment. The loss didn't disappoint me because a moment later, I found another mote of mana that was already drifting into my body.

  A flicker of surprise, confusion, then joy and realization ran in time with the mana as I followed it. The cold aligned mana was entering my body, easily being gathered at a pace I had never seen before. It was harder to follow the ambient mana as it was absorbed faster with its closeness to my own, but even as I lost one speck, I found another, then another. Gradually, as time passed, I reached my furthest point and then went by it.

  The path my mana took grew wider as the walls that directed my mana expanded to a size I found hard to understand. I turned my focus on a clump of freezing mana that wasn't my own as it raced along, being absorbed down my own. It had stuck together like a raft going down a river. It stayed in the middle of the path being dragged along.

  It started to shrink and break apart as my mana ate it away piece by piece. My attention seemed to speed the process up, and I felt a bit of worry as part of it broke away and was swallowed, then another following suit, but it kept moving even as it grew smaller until it all at once stopped.

  The mana’s movement all but came to a stop, and I felt despair as the mana melted into my own. It'd been the biggest piece of ambient mana to enter my body, and it had just stopped moving. Why? As I pulled my attention away from the spot and did the equivalent of looking around, my heart skipped a beat at what I saw. My core.

  It was small, no bigger than the clump of mana I'd been following, but it gleamed a dark ice blue that sparkled with power. The shape was round and uneven, like a ball of mud made by a child. Around it, my mana clustered, almost seeming frozen compared to the path I'd had to follow, but the density was so much higher. As I reached out and ran my senses over my core, my entire body felt like it vibrated and crackled, a sensation I'd never felt before. Like a spark waking up, my core hummed, and I knew I'd be able to find it with just a thought from now on if I wanted to. Running my senses over it again, I felt the same feeling again.

  Pulling my attention back out of my body, I found myself smiling wide. I could still feel the exact spot my core sat. My attention was pulled away as I felt a warmth drip across my thigh, and I looked down at the red pool. Reaching up, I rubbed my nose and pulled my hand away, seeing it come back red, and felt as if another drop of blood fell from my nose. Sighing, I pulled a small piece of fabric from my storage and wiped it away. So, there was a cost to touching my core. That was good to know, but it didn't stop my happiness.

  I'd found my core!