Chapter Seven?

  Magic

  Roman cried out in delight when his fire roared to life.

  Freya gave him a soft clap while Zora simply shook her head. The sun had fallen below the horizon some time ago, he had been at it for at least an hour. Real fear of having to sleep on an empty stomach in the cold had started to build in Freya. She hopped up and grabbed a few thick branches, if this fire went out they were screwed.

  "You know you could have just rearranged your pages to create some fire," Zora said.

  "My pages are such a tangled web of interdependency that re arranging the smallest bit will destroy the whole system."

  "I told you that you should have taken The Storyteller's effective word manipulation class."

  Roman jabbed a broken stick in her direction. "And I told you, letting someone tell you how to be an 'efficient sorcerer', completely removes the sense of wonder."

  Zora went off to collect her own bundle of wood, not gracing him with a reply.

  "I'm telling you Bookworm, don't let anyone take the magic out of your magic."

  "Is it so bad to learn a little about it?"

  With a sigh Roman threw a pair of sticks into the growing fire. "Not another one."

  Freya wasn't certain if she should take that personally. She let her mind wander. Naturally it drifted to the large pool of power within herself. How had she spent the whole day just walking when she had this? She flipped gravity for herself and hurtled into the sky.

  Upon passing the tops of the trees she feared she made a mistake. She flipped gravity back and started rushing toward the ground. Uh oh. In a panic she flipped it several more times trying to slow her descent, in a stuttering movement she hit the grass and groaned.

  Roman gestured at her with another stick. "See, imagine how boring it would be if you didn't have to figure this out on your own."

  Zora ran out of the forest to help Freya out. "Just gonna sit there?"

  Roman leaned in toward the fire. "She's figuring it out."

  Even in the darkness Freya was certain they could see the redness building in her cheeks. How humiliating.

  After a few muffled curses Zora brushed Freya off. "Sanderson fan hey?"

  "That easy to tell?"

  "You aren't the first aspiring Knight Radiant or Mistborn to throw themselves into the sky without a second thought. People either love or hate his hard magic, but it gets mimicked a lot here. The way it can break into small logical portions makes for really efficient use of words."

  That much she had already gathered, but Zora's confirmation did get her thinking on how she could get the most use out of what The Gardener had gifted her. "Is two hundred pages a lot?"

  Zora bobbed her head from side to side. "Not really. Not for Fable-Walkers anyway. The native inhabitants of this realm treasure them though. They have no access to magic unless someone uses them as inspiration for a character, or if they get pages from Fable-Walkers." Bright tan flakes floated off of Zora into her outstretched hands. First slowly, then in a great wave. Each one materialized into a single sheet of paper. By the time the flakes stopped, Zora was probably holding around five hundred pages. "This is what I have. It is mostly the novel I wrote that sucked me in here. A few short stories are mixed in. And remember I'm less than a year in here. Think about people that have been writing for years, or decades."

  This whole 'not being a writer' thing was probably going to be a pain in the neck. None of her soulless creative writing assignments manifested, so it was doubtful she could just slap something together. The Gardener did mention agents and editors appear here too. Did they get power based on the work they assisted with? Or maybe some and not all, just the stuff they really fell in love with?

  Stop getting distracted. Freya chided herself. The first thing that needed to happen here was building a logical network of magic she could use. "Would you tell me what your magic does?"

  Zora nodded. "Of course." The pages in her hands melted away. "Are you a Dungeons and Dragons person?"

  Usually Freya cast a sideways glance at that question. Never sure whether her answer would invite ridicule, or even worse, an invitation. "Which edition?"

  "Good." Zora held out an open palm, with a few unintelligible words three spheres of light appeared in her hand. "Some spells work as they are described in the rulebook, others need tweaking-" Her forearm tensed, and the spheres of light shot into a nearby tree like arrows. "Others are nigh impossible."

  Three streaks of energy conjurable upon command. Magic missile. "And that's efficient? Just a pile of unrelated spells?"

  "I never said unrelated. I organize my pages so they can manifest their energy physically. What form that energy takes is more is less my choice. It allows a fair amount of flexibility. Fire, electricity, pure energy, all valid options. But I can't branch very far outside of that. No invisibility or dominating the minds of others. But another could if they had enough pages, or organized theirs differently. You can also add in costs to your magic, like making yourself tired, aging you, that sort of thing. The greater the cost, the fewer pages you need."

  "And what are your costs?"

  "My magic can consume my stored energy, fat, food I've eaten."

  "And that's not dangerous?"

  "It is. Very easy to go overboard with it, which is why most people don't use that method. If I push too hard I could starve myself to death in an instant. Make sense?

  "I think so."

  Roman finally chimed in. "Just wait. Soon enough you won't be so sure of that."

  Of that Freya was certain. Now that she was getting a very basic grasp of the magic, some new oddity was sure to crop up for her to be confused by. Strangely enough, that thought excited her. Zora and Roman struck up a quiet conversation that Freya moved away from.

  She really needed to organize her pages in a more advantageous way. There would be no telling when she might need them. What were her favorite magic systems? As Zora said, Sanderson was an obvious starting point. Mistborn abilities required too much training, she was just as likely to kill herself jumping through the night as she was to escape an enemy. Same thing with most Knight Radiant abilities. Whatever they called the magic in Warbreaker could be an interesting choice. Though it would need tweaking, could it work just through draining color from things?

  As greater thought was put into the matter, it became clear that she didn't want to go that way. What played to her strengths? The Epee sitting beside her pack glowed dully in the firelight. Freya was near a master fencer. Despite whatever asshole behind the description windows thought. How few could say that?

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  Now modern fencing wouldn't translate perfectly to real combat. Her point and lunge control would be second to none, but if someone tried a grapple, or came at her with any skill with a large weapon, it would get ugly. So that was what she needed to remedy, first she would need a sword made of some exotic material. Something unlikely to break. Isla had a blade that looked like Valyrian Steel, then there was that woman with the elvish sword. How were those weapons getting made? There was no true Valyria, or Gondolin as the Gardener said. Freya tabled the thought. She could probably learn that at the school Zora and Roman mentioned.

  Next was how she would deal with someone trying to get inside her guard. Freya was not a particularly creative sort, so she tried to think on recent fictional magic she had been exposed to. A few days ago she watched the first season of Avatar The Last Airbender again. Earthbending could be good, shifting the very ground under someone's feet. Though making that work as it was in the show could be pretty complex. What about something smaller? Just an unexpected divot in the ground could cause a stumble, or even break an ankle. Freya focused on the wells of power within. Manipulating small bits of earth, just enough to raise or lower patches of ground, a foot at most.

  Warmth built inside as the power took her wishes and attempted to make them reality. It clumped together in confused balls for a few minutes. This could work, she knew it. The power coalesced. About a quarter of her pages seemed bound up in this. Freya focused on a particularly rocky bit of ground beside Roman, the power inside dissipated, and the ground sank into itself about six inches. She did it!

  "Now what is that meant to do?" Roman asked, looking at the small hole.

  "It will keep anyone trying to close on me off balance."

  She got a skeptical look in return. "I don't think a hole in the ground could stop me."

  Zora was looking on the hole with a little bit more interest. Her eyes flicked between the Epee and Freya. "Give it a try Roman. Bookworm, keep your sheath on."

  "I don't think so, she is so new, probably hasn't held a sword in her life before today."

  Freya bit her tongue.

  "Let's make it interesting then." Zora drew a line in the dirt out in the small clearing beside the fire. The trees were thinning the further they got from the tavern. So these clearings were everywhere "If you can land a hit on her two out of three times, you get a hundred pages. If you don't she does."

  "I'm not taking pages from her. That's probably all she has."

  "If you win I'll give the pages. If you lose, you give her yours."

  It didn't take Roman more than a second to decide. "Deal, if she is up for it."

  Zora gave Freya a knowing look. "And?"

  She shrugged. "Doesn't sound like I have much to lose."

  With that the pair stepped away from the fire and looked at each other from opposite ends of the small clearing. Roman rolled his shoulders, then tossed his simple longsword in a single hand. Its sheath was locked in place, same as Freya's. It had been a while since she had properly fenced, but she had done some practicing in the garage every couple weeks. She did hope she didn't make a complete fool of herself. The sword felt heavy in her hands, more so than before due to the sheath. A few exercises should resolve that. Quick lunges, a few basic point control drills. In minutes it was all coming back to her.

  Roman gave her a concerned look. "You uh, look like you've done that before."

  Zora smiled so widely that Freya feared her cheeks might tear in two. "Oh didn't you hear? Our dear Bookworm is an Olympic fencer."

  "Not quite," Freya said.

  Roman's mouth twitched. "Huh."

  The two closed the distance. Freya with a hand behind her back, sword extended in not-quite perfect form. Roman with all the grace of a swimming cat. It was over the second he came within her reach. He swung high, before his blade completed its arc, Freya's tip came to rest at his throat.

  "It seems you are dead." Freya said, the corner of her mouth turned up.

  Zora cleared her throat. "You are supposed to be practicing your magic."

  If everyone was as clueless as Roman maybe she didn't even need magic. Freya backed away, having completely forgotten the original purpose of this exercise. That might be a problem in combat. Forgetting her abilities. They came at each other again, she flicked the the wrist of her off-hand and sunk in the patch of ground where Roman was stepping. His ankle twisted, sending him stumbling. A few pokes with the Epee left him comfortably dead, again.

  "That's two," Zora said. "Pay up."

  Roman rose with a sheepish smile. Freya cocked her head at that. Most people would have been angry. "Remind me never to mess with you." As agreed, Roman formed a small stack of pages in his hand, then handed it over to Freya. "Use it well, I reworked that part probably a dozen times. Never could get it perfect enough to send to agents though."

  Freya suddenly felt guilty about tricking him, this was his hard work. A hundred pages was so much. It wasn't right to take it from him. "I can't, you keep it."

  "A deal is a deal. You thoroughly whooped my ass."

  "Not exactly a fair contest though."

  "No, but I agreed to it."

  Uneasily, she absorbed the pages, their light added to the numerous pools within. She could do so much more with this. "Thank you."

  "Now, if you want to make it up to me, you could show me exactly how the hell you did that."

  "Oh! Uh, sure! So I thought about Earthbending, like from-"

  "Not that! The sword stuff."

  Freya's pulse quickened, he wanted her to teach him swordplay? That was a compliment if she ever heard one. She approached, and tightened his grip on his sword, trying not to let him see how much she felt like a pre-teen teaching a boy to dance. "So couple things, this is way too loose in your hands. But it all really starts with distance, you just ran into my sword, what you should be doing is-"

  "What was that?" Zora asked with a hand on one of her swords.

  They listened, and sure enough, behind the rush of the nearby river, clashing steel and shouts could just barely be heard. Freya froze, practice was one thing, but she wasn't ready for potentially mortal danger. Roman whispered something into Zora's ear.

  "Follow the river down to Cet's Crossing."

  Zora pulled out a crudely drawn map of the area, then pointed at a central location. The Mind's Mirror and Red Lake was to the North. Torozom to the west. They needed to cross this river, then a large patch of wilderness to get there. South of them was something called the Plains of Mourning. That didn't sound good.

  Neither did the shouts getting closer. Zora threw Roman's bag at him, then threw their drinking water over the fire. "We need to go. Now."