Chương 24: The Grind Must Go On

The horn did not sound that night. Ren hated how much relief that bought and how little safety it proved. By morning, the village had changed in little ways. Bren opened the door with the axe close to hand and stood there longer than usual, listening before he stepped outside. Elna kept Ren on her hip while she watched him go. Tessa stood beside the table with the slate pressed flat to her chest, her face pinched with the kind of fear that wanted orders because orders were easier than waiting.

Outside, people moved before breakfast. Ren heard boots in the lane, then Hadrik's voice carrying from farther off, low and hard enough that other voices bent around it. People dragged wood around. A man cursed at rope. A cart creaked past with no animal pulling it, just two men and a boy straining at the handles. Bren returned before the porridge cooled with mud on his boots and his mouth set in a line.

"Hadrik has men checking the west ditch," he told Elna. Tessa's fingers tightened around the slate.

"Because of the marks?" Bren looked at her, then at Ren, then back to Elna.

"Because of the marks." Elna did not smile.

"And the old road?"

"Tovin is walking it again with Orwin." Ren listened from Elna's arms and filed away every name, route, and hesitation. The adults knew enough to move now. That was good. By noon, Elna had turned concern into law. Tessa was not allowed past the door. Ren was not allowed near the open shutter unless he was in someone's arms. Bren barred the house before dusk and checked the latch even when the sun was still high. The cellar bucket stayed full.

Cloth, lamp, and a small knife moved together into a basket near the hatch. … The adults also knew enough to keep him inside now. That was less good. The warning had worked! It had also put Ren under house arrest. He lay in his blanket nest by the hearth and stared at the ceiling while adults made the village safer somewhere beyond walls he could not cross. This was, apparently, the problem with succeeding early.

In the last loop, he had been dragged through disaster with too little warning and too many bodies already falling. In this one, the village was awake, but awake adults protected children by locking them away from the answers. Ren approved of the instinct. But he also despised the result. He could no longer see the green, or go outside to see what the warning he brought about affected. He could only listen in passively as the village moved around them.

Little fragments like Bren's muddy boots, muffled voices, Tessa's questions, Elna's silence, Mara's visits, and the thin strip of road visible only when someone carried him upstairs. It was both better and worse than before. It was better because people were preparing before blood made the lesson obvious. It was worse because Ren had become a prisoner of that preparation. That left him time to do the only thing he could – focus on his own growth.

Especially since Knowledge made the grind measurable, so Ren stopped wasting effort on panic-shaped practice. The first change was the schedule. He could not command adults, patrol roads, build walls, or explain the shape of a raid without making everyone in the house stare at him until Mara arrived with cool fingers and dangerous questions. Not that he knew enough to do that, but his anxious mind kept telling him to do more. He already did as much as his baby body allowed.

What he could do, however, was train inside the cage he had been given. Eat, rest, watch, test, draw, sleep. The pattern was utterly simple, but the fact of life – old and new – was that simplicity simply… worked.

On the first morning after the green bell, Elna set him in his blanket nest near the hearth while Bren checked the door bar again. Tessa sat nearby with the slate in her lap, pretending not to watch Ren with the intensity of a guard dog assigned to a potato. A baby potato, but a potato nonetheless. Elna had not let Tessa outside either. And if Tessa's pout was anything to go by, she was not thrilled at that, not at all. The village was awake now.

Hadrik had watchers out, Tovin was walking the old cart road, and Bren had come home with mud on his boots twice before noon. None of that changed the house rule. Tessa remained inside with Ren, the slate, the barred door, and far too much anxious energy for one room to survive peacefully. His sister had understood the prison before she understood the strategy.

"I can help outside," she said that afternoon.

"No," Elna said.

"I know the marks."

"No."

"I can tell Niko when he says things wrong."

"Lysa can do that too." Tessa glared at the door as if it had personally betrayed her. Ren watched from the blanket. A trapped sister became a nervous sister, and a nervous sister with a slate, a temper, and no approved outlet could either become a household disaster or a training asset. Ren chose survival. He slapped the blanket once. Tessa looked down. Ren looked at the slate. Her anger shifted, redirected.

"Are we practicing?" Ren slapped once. Her face steadied in a way that made him feel both guilty and relieved.

"Good," she whispered.

"I hate waiting!" Ren understood. Waiting was annoying, no matter the situation. They started with what the room gave them. Ren looked at the spoon near the table leg. [Spoon - Eating Utensil] The label came cleanly now. He did not stare too long, and he did not try to drag hidden meaning out of it. Appraisal gave him a name and a use. If he wanted more than that, he needed a better object or a better question. He turned his eyes toward the door bar.

[Door Bar - Reinforced Household Brace] The word reinforced still amused him. Bren had shaved a beam until it fit, jammed it into place, and earned System respect through stubborn carpentry. Ren approved. Tessa followed his gaze.

"Door bar?" Ren slapped once.

"Strong?" Slap.

"Strong enough?" Ren paused. Tessa's mouth pressed thin. He slapped twice. Wrong. Her fingers tightened around the chalk.

"Then we make more things strong!" Ren stared at her. That had been easier than expected. He might have created a little monster, but at least it was pointed at the door. Ren let Mana Sense open thinly around the hearth room. The charm's cool thread hung above the shelf. Elna's warmth moved near the table. Bren's steadiness sat by the door with an axe-shaped edge to it. Tessa flickered between curiosity and worry beside him. Then he reached toward the loose mana drifting near the charm. His first attempt slipped.

His second pulled too sharply and made his temples tighten. On the third, his mana answered. Nothing entered him. Ren held still and tried to understand the failure before trying again. The room-drift had moved. His own mana had answered. The draw had almost formed, but there had been nowhere for the mana to settle while his pool was full. That meant the attempt was not useless, he simply needed to test after spending mana first. Tessa leaned closer.

"Old-man face?" Ren slapped once.

"Yes?" He slapped again, harder. Tessa beamed.

"I knew it!" The second change was restraint. Ren needed empty space in his mana pool before recovery could tell him anything, but emptying it too quickly made him sloppy. He learned to use Appraisal in short sets, then rest. He learned to stop before his head hurt badly enough for Elna to notice. He knew now that Mana Sense became cleaner when he showed restraint rather than trying to see everything at once. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Ren stopped treating the whole room as one problem. Spend a point, check the number, find the loose mana– And draw only from that. Stop if his attention touched a person. That was the entire method. The first pull slipped apart. The second stirred the drift without bringing it in. The third made his temples tighten. The fourth brushed the edge of his own mana and scattered. Ren stopped, breathed until the room steadied, and tried again. Appraisal. Wait. Reach. Draw. Appraisal. Wait. Reach. Draw. Appraisal. Wait.

Reach. Draw. The work was clumsy, but the failures were no longer identical. Each attempt gave him a little more sense of where the draw broke. Too much force made the drift scatter. Too little left it hanging beyond reach. A wide pull caught the room instead of the mana. A narrow pull slid through the drift without gripping it. On the ninth attempt, something changed. The loose mana bent toward him before he dragged at it. [Skill Unlocked: Mana Manipulation] Ren froze. The next breath pulled cleaner.

[Mana: 34/34] A grin split across Ren's face before he could stop it. He spent the point. The next pull came even easier. The loose mana bent toward him without the same resistance, sliding into place with far less effort. [Mana: 34/34] Ren almost laughed. Again! Appraisal. Wait. Reach. Draw. [Mana: 34/34] Again. The motion smoothed out with each attempt, the clumsy fumbling replaced by something closer to control. The drift responded faster. The pull held together. The strain in his head eased instead of spiking.

It worked! Ren kept going until Tessa got bored and started nagging him to play with her. Soon after, Elna stepped in and forced him to stop. It was feeding time, and his body refused to miss it!

By the end of the third day, he could spend one point with Appraisal and pull it back with Mana Manipulation without fighting the process every time. It was still rather slow, and pretty limited. But it was his, and it made everything easier. [Skill Level Increased: Mana Sense Lv. 2 -> Lv. 3] [Skill Level Increased: Mana Manipulation Lv. 1 -> Lv. 2] [Skill Level Increased: Discipline Lv. 7 -> Lv. 8] Ren read the messages, then let them fade, and went on to continue the grind.

He stopped with mana left and a headache still only threatening. It was Sleeping time.

The week after that became a week of doors, rumors, and children. Bren brought the first updates home on his boots. Mud from the west ditch meant Hadrik had kept men there. Dry burrs on his trousers meant the old cart road. Ash on his sleeve made Elna stop folding cloth.

"Where?" she asked.

"Under the scrub near the old road," Bren said.

"Rusk found it."

"Tovin saw it?" Bren nodded.

"He did." That news was enough to change the room. But no sighting followed it. No horn followed it. The village gained signs instead of certainty, and signs were worse for people who had already started imagining teeth. Ren listened from the blanket while the adults collected scraps he could not inspect. The warning had worked well enough to make everyone careful. It had also worked well enough to keep him uselessly safe. The rumors moved faster than the watchers.

The old cart road became the old road, then the bad road, then the no-go place. A broken branch became a sign. Old ash became a camp. By the time each rumor reached the house, Tessa had already heard half of it wrong and wanted to know the rest, but was still not allowed outside. So did he, admittedly. But being a baby made asking difficult. And so Ren listened in instead, and used the only person trapped with him. And his older sister was all too eager to kill time with him. Morning meant slate review.

Noon meant object practice. Afternoon meant road words. Evening meant quiet signals under the blanket while Elna pretended not to see. Mana practice fitted into the gaps whenever Ren had spent enough to recover and Tessa had the sense to stay silent for ten breaths. Tessa also loved authority too much to resist being made responsible for things.

"Door," she whispered. Ren slapped once.

"Bar." Slap.

"Old cart road." Slap.

"West ditch." Slap.

"Green bell." Ren hesitated. Tessa narrowed her eyes.

"Meeting bell?" Slap. She corrected the mark on the slate.

"Goblin?" Ren paused.

"Wrong question?" Slap. She scratched the word out.

"Danger?" Slap.

"Marks?" Slap.

"People listen?" Ren hesitated. Tessa leaned closer.

"Sometimes?" Ren slapped once. She nodded pensively as if he had confirmed a military report.

"Adults are slow when they are scared!" Ren stared at her announcing this truth of life with perfect certainty. Tessa lifted her chin.

"Yuh uh! They are!" Ren slapped once. [Skill Level Increased: Language Lv. 12 -> Lv. 13] The level came after she made him repeat the difference between road, wrong road, old road, cart road, and meeting bell until his throat ached. Tessa was learning where to put his broken sounds. That made her dangerous in the useful direction. [Skill Level Increased: Interpretation Lv. 5 -> Lv. 6] Ren blinked once, then accepted it. Being understood counted, apparently. Fine, he would exploit that too.

The second week became a week of Appraisal. Ren had mana now. That was not the problem. The problem was making each use mean something. Firing Appraisal thirty times at the same spoon would give him thirty labels and a headache. Tessa solved the first half of the problem by turning boredom into sabotage.

She moved things when Elna was not looking, changed their positions, hid chalk under cloth, shifted the basket closer to the hatch, and whispered "now" whenever she thought she had made the room different enough to matter. Ren used the changes. Appraisal began catching what had altered, not only what an object was. The door bar after Bren set it. The bucket after Elna filled it. The slate after Tessa copied the warning marks again and held it like a weapon she was too small to swing.

[Slate - Child's Mark Board, Warning Record] Tessa went still at his attention.

"It is important!" she said. Ren slapped once. She held it against her chest for the rest of the afternoon. [Skill Level Increased: Appraisal Lv. 5 -> Lv. 6] The level made the next few days faster. Ren burned through mana in controlled bursts, pulled it back with Mana Manipulation when the room settled, and used Tessa's little rearrangements to force Appraisal past simple naming. The house became a set of before-and-after questions.

The grind needed changed objects, enough mana to spend, and a sister angry enough at confinement to keep feeding him both. By the fifth day, Appraisal rose again. [Skill Level Increased: Appraisal Lv. 6 -> Lv. 7] Bren became the next useful victim. Tessa noticed an old scrape near the door after Ren stared at it too long. She asked. Ren slapped. She accused Bren of scraping the bar every time he set it.

"It means the bar works," Bren said.

"It means you scrape."

"It means I am not taking carpentry advice from a child who thinks mud is a letter." Tessa looked at Ren. Ren stared at the scrape, then at Bren, then very deliberately slapped once. Bren groaned. Elna laughed for the first time in two days. Ren considered that a success! By the end of the week, Appraisal had become part of a loop he could trust: notice change, spend mana, read the label, recover, compare again. It was still crude, but it was finally more than staring at spoons until the System pitied him.

[Skill Level Increased: Appraisal Lv. 7 -> Lv. 8] Knowledge rose the next morning after Ren finished a recovery cycle faster than before. He had spent mana on Appraisal until the numbers dipped, then waited for the room to settle. Mana Sense found the drift. Mana Manipulation pulled it in. The point returned sooner than his last clean attempt, with less pressure behind his eyes. [Knowledge +1] [Knowledge: 2] Ren let the messages fade, and felt the change right away. Mana Sense still found the edge.

Mana Manipulation still did the pulling. Knowledge made the whole route easier to line up again after each attempt. That meant more repetitions before Elna noticed. Ren approved of that with his entire baby soul. He would be the best mana slinger around! … As soon as he figured out how to actually do that. The third week became a week of bodies. Ren could not neglect the prison just because the soul inside had found a mana handle. He crawled between blanket folds.

He pulled himself upright against the crib rail until his arms shook. He practiced falling without smashing his face into the floor. He slapped with each hand, pointed with two fingers, gripped cloth, released cloth, and learned that releasing on purpose was far harder than grabbing. Tessa, imprisoned by maternal decree and fear of the road, poured all her restless misery into training him. She built obstacle roads out of pillows and spoons.

"This is the west ditch," she said, placing a folded blanket in his path. Ren stared at the blanket. It was soft, blue, and smelled of milk.

"What are you waiting for? Go on, Baby Knight, onwards!" Tessa was in the zone now. He shook his head. The west ditch deserved worse, but he crawled over it anyway, and Tessa saw the chance to interrupt him. His right hand landed wrong. His knee slipped. His body started to pitch forward. His elbow caught him. Ren froze. [Skill Level Increased: Athletics Lv. 9 -> Lv. 10] [Skill Milestone Reached - Initiate: Athletics Lv. 10] [Athletics Initiate Bonus: Improves body coordination, balance recovery, crawling efficiency, and intent-to-motion response. Does not bypass size, strength, stamina, injury, or developmental limits.] His hand had tightened before the fall finished. His shoulder had shifted in time. His knee still dragged, but it no longer ruined the whole motion. Tessa crouched beside him.

"What?" Ren flexed his fingers. She looked at his hand, then at the blanket ditch.

"Again?" Ren slapped once. He crawled again. This time, when his knee slipped, his shoulder moved before his mouth hit the blanket. Tessa covered her mouth with both hands. Ren waited for the shriek. It did not come. She whispered, "Secret?" Ren slapped once. Her eyes shone. That was probably bad. Not even Memory was able to help him count all the 'secrets' he had with Tessa so far. …Oh well, Ren would deal with it if it ever became a problem.

By the end of the third week, the house had become more prepared than the village had been on the morning of the last horn. The door had a clean bar. The cellar hatch had a brace. The basket near the hatch held cloth, water, lamp, and knife. Tessa knew the difference between old road, cart road, west ditch, meeting bell, and horn. Bren checked the axe without pretending he was only moving it out of the way.

Elna kept both children inside with the patience of a woman who would rather be called unreasonable than careless. Outside, the first ring of preparation had settled into place. Fence gaps were patched. Wet sacks marked low spots. Watchers knew the west ditch, the goat run, and the old cart turn. Children were kept close enough to resent it loudly. Hadrik's orders had stopped sounding like emergency measures and started sounding like chores. That was when Ren noticed the next shift.

The adults stopped asking how to prepare and started asking how to know. Bren returned one evening after speaking with Tovin and stood just inside the door longer than he needed to. Elna looked up from the basket near the cellar hatch.

"What?"

"Tovin wants to go farther along the old road." Tessa's chalk stopped moving. Elna said, "Farther than the marks?" Bren nodded.

"He says if something is using the scrub line, the old signs are not enough. Hadrik agrees."

"Hadrik is going with him?"

"Tomorrow morning. He wants two men at the ditch first, then he and Tovin will push west if nothing changes." Elna's face tightened.

"That sounds like looking for trouble."

"That is what looking for proof usually is." Ren lay very still in his blanket nest. The first ring was finished. Doors, braces, buckets, baskets, watchers, fence marks, and child rules had carried the village as far as caution could carry it. Now they needed proof. Proof would move adults faster than fear. It would also put the best men closer to teeth. Ren could not go with them. He could not point at the safer angle through the scrub.

He could not warn them which kind of sign meant scout and which kind meant the heavier bodies would follow. He could not even reach the door without being scooped up, kissed on the head, and returned to the blanket like an escaped vegetable. He was trapped inside because the warning had worked. Which was fine. If the village was going to search outward, Ren would grind inward. He slapped the blanket once. Tessa looked at him, pale and tense.

"Practice?" Ren slapped once again. She swallowed, then pulled the slate closer.

"Hehe," she said.

"Let's go! I hate waiting!" Ren agreed with his entire soul. Waiting could rot. They would train.