Ranger Michael unpacked more index card sized boxes of lab crystals and the rest of her settings. Danielle set the other seven 100-mana tokens the payment required next to him, then checked in the other boxes.

  “I have the Skill tokens,” Ranger Flo said. “The pitch is basically this: you need tokens to go in your stash for when the speeds come calling, because we all know you’ll be at least level 3 by fall, and your mana production is not going to go down. We have a few things you probably won’t unlock on your own, to start off the collection with. One is the cleaning Skill the quartermaster was going to pitch to you Sunday night, De-Crusting Wash. It breaks up dried-on stuff so it can be washed off without having to soak it or scrape it. It’s entirely redundant to Remove Surface Contaminant at tier 2, and a lot of Sent unlock that eventually, but we haven’t been able to stock that lately, and this can help unlock it faster. On the face of it, neither one does much that soap and water and a little time couldn’t do for you in 99% of circumstances, but since you have a knack for discovering that last 1% and jumping in with both feet – ”

  “Would it remove dry blood from the hilt of Arny’s sword?” Danielle asked. “Especially where it got into the cracks between pieces?”

  “Oh. Ah, yes, it would do that,” Ranger Flo said. “Tier 1, 300 mana. It also has the interesting property of potentially adding a little bit of mass credit for you in the System Store. It’s a very small credit, but every little bit adds up when it comes to that particular source of materials.”

  “Sold,” Danielle said. “Next?”

  “Wood to Charcoal. Tier 1, 300 mana. It’s nothing you can’t learn to do on your own, but it also has no significant unlock synergies that we’re aware of, and the token version we have access to is officially the most efficient version of the Skill ever collected and cataloged by Skill Sharers. It even has another System Store connectivity option; I’m not sure why. It’s not a prerequisite for anything we’re aware of either, so you won’t be missing much by stashing it for a month or three, but it’s useful for crafters who need hotter fires, which will mostly be a thing next year.”

  “It definitely sounds like the right kind of Skill for the stash,” Danielle said dryly. “OK, fine, sold.”

  “Your request for Find Prey is denied, but we’ve looked into some other Skills that might provide the effects you’re really looking for. One is an animal-System crossover Skill called Assess Prey Condition. It basically gives you a sense of whether an animal is healthy, injured, aged and slow, diseased and not good to eat, etc. It will do the job of helping you choose the best prey out of, for example, deer herds. The non-verbal interface is disturbing to some people, but it’s been known to accept modification from personal Systems with medical and veterinary lore Skills, and you have one of those. Also, like all animal-System crossover Skills, it’s suitable for sharing with companion animals. Oh, it’s tier 2, 450 mana.” Ranger Flo paused, eyeing Danielle’s expression.

  She was frowning thoughtfully. “That does sound like an option,” she said cautiously. “You seemed like you were implying there was another option, though?”

  “Well, we can offer you tier 1 Veterinarian’s Diagnostics, also 300 mana, separately or alongside Assess Prey Condition. Assess Prey seems to be tier 2 mostly because it works at a distance, while Vet’s Diagnostics wants you to be up close and interacting, like Medic’s Diagnostics does,” Ranger Flo said.

  “Does Vet’s Diagnostics work on all kinds of animals?” Danielle asked. “Like, will it be equally good for deer and rabbits and falcons?”

  “It can be a little temperamental, actually,” Ranger Flo said. “You have to declare specialties at an Access Point, and it will only let you have one per level. So, for example, you might take ruminants at level 1 to cover deer and, aheh, goats perchance?” Danielle rolled her eyes at the Ranger. “You can actually come in for that goat training next spring, you know, and you might find it useful; but the point is, deer are in the same category. Also mountain sheep, which are wild and fair game, if you care to climb for them. Then level the Skill and take raptors for your level 2 specialty. That’d go a long way toward convincing Ranger Kahn to help you get a good partner, for the record.”

  “If I actually have it, which I won’t if it’s still sitting in my stash,” Danielle said. “On the other hand, if I take it and use it for prey assessment the hard way, then take Assess Prey when the speeds actually do hit, I’ll be in good shape to understand the Skill and share it with any avian hunting partner I might possess by then.”

  “For the record, Ranger Khan’s trainees are usually not referred to as possessions,” Ranger Flo said. “He’s sensitive about that, and so are they, because practically all of them have Speak With Humans. It’s part of what makes them so useful, but you do have to treat them a bit less like pets or tools and more like people, compared to non-speaking companion animals.”

  “Oh. Duly noted, and thanks for warning me before I put my foot in my mouth,” Danielle said.

  “The third option is simply Find Game Animal. Tier 1, 300 mana, easily unlocked via the Hunter Class or, frankly, being a first year Sent. The downsides are, you might very well unlock it yourself before fall, and by itself, it frankly doesn’t do what you said you want it to do. The upside is, if you haven’t unlocked it by fall, this guarantees you and your party can have it in winter when you really need it,” Ranger Flo said. “It also fills in the gap in function that Assess Prey Condition has compared to the creative use of Find Prey you described – you would use Find Game Animal to find the herd, then Assess Prey to select your individual target.”

  “I see why you’re offering it, but no sale on that one; the party already has it from someone’s mana pox luck,” Danielle said. “I’ll take the other two, though.”

  “All right, last but not least – well, actually, they kind of are the least. Anyway, I have a few random items from the selection we keep for people who get to Spring Fair bored out of their minds and desperate for something to liven up the gray, cloudy days of spring and the following winters. Tune Pipe is used when making instruments like bamboo flutes or reed whistles, and can be used with multi-part instruments when putting them together (don’t ask for details, I’m reciting a memorized description here). Tune String is for stringed instruments, like harps (which are for sale in the catalog) and ukulele or guitar (which are both popular offerings at the trade fairs). Not terribly exciting, but they’ll overcome a person’s limitations when said person doesn’t happen to have perfect pitch; you might sell more than one copy over winter even if you don’t use them yourself. Both are tier 1 and 300 mana. I also have Manifest Playing Cards, which might be just a bit of a gamble at tier 3, and costs 675 mana – “

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Is that the threefold cost for tier 3?” Danielle interrupted.

  “That’s right,” Ranger Flo said. “Base cost for tier 3 Skills is 225 mana, same as it’s 150 mana for tier 2 and 100 mana for tier 1. Don’t tell any level 1 Systemists, they don’t believe they should know anything about levels more than 1 step higher than their own – please note, I’m not telling you about anything more than one step above your level either, since I know you’re level 2.”

  “Yeah, yeah, duly noted, just a sec while I make note of it in a Systemist-safe location,” Danielle said, making a note of the new information in her Planner. “OK, so you were going to explain to me why I want a 675-mana deck of playing cards.”

  “It is stupid expensive, and you’d think nobody would ever use it. However, people need something to do in winter. Believe it or not, Sent have been known to spontaneously unlock it, and other Sent have been known to purchase and make an actual profit on it. It allows custom card backs starting at level 2, and the way you do illusions, I’m sure you’ll have a field day with that. Level it to level 4 and you can modify the card faces, too.”

  “Hm. Stupid or not, if it actually creates small pieces of paper out of thin air, and I can control what’s on the back,” Danielle began thoughtfully.

  “Thin air and mana,” Ranger Michael corrected. “It costs a hundred twenty-five mana to manifest a stinking deck of cards!”

  “Which is why Skills with mass credits are valuable,” Ranger Flo said. “Manifestation Skills use mana at an incredible rate, but dissolution skills, even ones that only eliminate very small masses at any given time, produce mana at an equal rate. Unfortunately, the System only allows us to recover that mana via the System Store or Manifestation Skills, but make no mistake, it’s still a big deal.”

  “Got any of those?” Danielle asked.

  “Just to go with the Manifest Playing Cards, yes, I also have Contact Carving – Wood. Tier 3, annoyingly hard to use the way most people want to use it, frequently abused for the exclusive purpose of converting sawdust and suchlike waste wood to System Store mass. The version we have in tokens was supposedly used by a sculptor who made amazing wood carvings with just his fingers – but he also supposedly had a Mind trait of over 40, and leveled the Skill to level 9.”

  “Yikes. That sound like – wait. Could you use a little of that instead of sanding something, do you think?”

  “You could, sure, and it would have the side benefit of not producing dust,” Ranger Michael said. “It would definitely thin the work piece just as bad as sandpaper, though, if not worse. Smooth Wood is a real Skill too, lower tier even, and offers better control for that purpose.”

  Danielle laughed. “OK, give me Manifest Playing Cards, Contact Carving – Wood, and Tune String. I’ll work on Smooth Wood the normal way, if we ever find any sandstone or anything else suitable; but if we haven’t unlocked it by winter and we just need things smoothed, I’ll have a workaround with a side benefit. And I can make a suitable art project to help keep Ezra sane, too.”

  “Wow, you’re really going for it?” Ranger Flo asked. “Who is Ezra?”

  “A Basic Artist who joined my hunting party,” Danielle said. “He’s hoping to figure out natural paints, and his friends were having a little bit of a struggle to keep him from trying to use berries for non-food purposes, but I think we’ve got him settled on charcoal as a suitable medium for now. I imagine he’ll be going for paints from the catalog, since they’re there, but they’ll only last so long. Cards are small, good for color studies maybe, and for miniature art. If I make the back design basically an empty picture frame, he can spend all winter filling in the 52 frames.”

  “Won’t that make the card backs unique, and therefore identifiable?” Ranger Michael asked.

  “Who cares? That deck would be for drawing on, not playing card games with,” Danielle said.

  Ranger Flo laughed. “Right – Survivor. Nothing is single purpose with Survivors.”

  Ranger Michael showed Danielle her total. “You’ll have 150 mana left from this set of sales,” he said, gesturing to all the mana tokens on Danielle’s bed.

  “Well, that’s very convenient for the Sending Authority,” Danielle said. “I hope your box has room for that and the Skill tokens too!”

  “I’ll manage,” he said, pulling a normal cloth sack out of his boti bag and packing all the 100 mana tokens into it. Then he presented her with a 150 mana token. “Your change.”

  “Thanks,” Danielle said. “Um, I know you didn’t ask yet, but since you have 150 mana tokens on you for some reason, I must regretfully inform you that I’m a bit mana-dry right now, and can’t make the usual Combat Medic tokens.”

  “We’ll endure,” Ranger Flo said. “Between you and me, I’m not sure where they’re using them now. You’ve sold us more than twenty this month alone, when we used to have to fight for four per year.”

  “I suspect Ranger Command is making up our local mana-as-currency shortage by selling some of them Inside,” Ranger Michael said, “but I don’t have proof. Either way, though, tokens for the Sent come first.” He poked at his little tablet again, then said, “Looks to me like you have 78 tokens left on your 180 token pledge, here.”

  Danielle added that number to her Planner. “Thanks. Now that I’ve got crystals, I’m thinking of using some of those 200s that aren’t spoken for anymore, and getting some serious practice in on Create Light source. Um, starting tomorrow, since I’m so low on mana now and still have my rounds to do after supper.”

  “Enjoy. Meanwhile, where are your roommates? Are they likely to be back soon?” Ranger Michael asked. “We’re supposed to be checking on everyone who will let us do the check.”

  “They’re out foraging – none of them has a fever or extra mana anymore, and we’re short on fresh food,” Danielle said.

  “Do yourself and us a favor and eat a few more cans of soup before you switch back to forage and small game,” Ranger Flo said. “You’re still recovering, and you need the nutrition.”

  “That was my plan,” Danielle said. “A couple meals a day at least. I did it for breakfast. I’ve had Urgent-C today too – that’s basically a vitamin supplement disguised as a drink mix, right?”

  Ranger Flo chuckled. “It is. It only covers a few specific vitamins and minerals, though. Eat your soup until your mana generation is normal again.”

  Ranger Michael tapped notes into his data pad. “OK, I’ve recorded Medic Falconer’s evaluation of her roommates, lacking access to do our own. Give me your action items for the end of the week, Miss Falconer, so I know you’ll remember them?”

  “Action items? Uh – eat soup until I stop generating extra mana?” Danielle said.

  “And regarding the messages?”

  “Oh, right. I do the last all-camp message tonight, then I do just this list tomorrow and Sunday,” Danielle said waving the list. “And I check up on building seven, because most of them didn’t want to let you in for final checks, and add anyone there who needs to be on the list. But I don’t go to building seven without bodyguards, because there’s someone there who is sufficiently desperate to consider attacking a Ranger – or anyway, to consider attacking someone. He might’ve backed off because he realized you were a Ranger, maybe.”

  “Maybe,” Ranger Michael said. “That’s the list I was looking for, though. Thank you again, and have a good evening.”

  “A good, safe evening,” Ranger Flo added.

  The two of them headed for the door, and Danielle saw them out with a final wave. Then she stashed her new enhancing crystals in her footlocker and lay back down as if to go back to sleep, though she’d napped long enough to make her doubt she’d actually fall asleep again.

  She woke again when her watch alarm went off with the sound of a gong. She sat up and started the gong-specific medication-time message before her brain even caught up with her. For good or ill, it failed because her pool was empty. It had been an hour, though, so she switched back to her Oceanic pool, and after taking a few minutes to plan and count words, sent a different message: “Now Hear This: A message from Medic Falconer to all residents of Camp Constanza. It’s evening Fever-Ace time. If you are still sick, it’s time for medicine, water, and some supper. This is the last message to the whole camp for this epidemic. If you need messages tomorrow, and haven’t joined the list, find me outside building seven in two hours to sign up. Skill ends.”

  She looked around the room; nobody home. “Well, time to get up anyway,” she told herself, and started getting ready to head out for the party meeting they’d promised the guys. There really were a few things they needed to know.

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