Raehel’s army of fiery motes came at him like a flock of hummingbirds, each darting in unpredictable paths.

  His Gemstone Rapier danced, splitting each in two, flicking the remnants around him.

  He felt the heat of the oncoming fmes, yet they split around his bde as easily as the wind, flying behind him to an unknown fate.

  “Wait, wait, wait, I’m cutting this short,” Raehel said. Her Sapphire Icosahedron gleamed with the color of the sky and a light drizzle covered the garden.

  Archmund gnced behind him. Smoldering embers had joined the windswept wreckage, and Raehel’s rain quenched it all.

  He’d never really considered it before, but he wondered just how much pride the gardeners took in their work, and how many days of bor he’d ruined.

  “I think we’ve done enough,” he said.

  “I think so too,” Raehel said.

  They assessed the wreckage for just a bit longer. Then he looked at her.

  “Right, here’s my assessment.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “You need to learn restraint.”

  The nerve of her! The nerve of some lowborn peasant, regardless of how they’d managed to scramble their way up the dder of their social betters, to question him? Such grand and intoxicating hubris. Why, he ought to poke a hole in her and teach her a lesson.

  “Ooh, that’s bright,” Raehel said.

  Wait. What?

  His Gemstone Rapier was glowing, casting golden light onto his face. He was clutching his Gemstone Rapier rather tightly. Deliberately, he loosened his grip one finger at a time and dropped it to the ground.

  “See, that’s what I’m talking about,” Raehel said, pointing at the Rapier. “You felt something, didn’t you? You dumped all your power into it — which is great, if you can control it — but then it gave back to you. What did it make you feel?”

  “Arrogance,” Archmund said. “Pride. Status. All the things most nobles believe in.”

  Raehel nodded.

  “I was able to notice that the thoughts weren’t mine, but incidentally, do you have noble blood?”

  “That’s what it made you think of? I mean yeah, I told you I’ve been called Raehel Janusbastarddaughter. It’s why they didn’t cut off my hands on-sight when I showed up with remarkable talent for Gem magic. But we’re getting off-topic. The spirit of the Rapier turned you into a haughty noble asshole?”

  Archmund frowned. “The Rapier made me care about status and nobility and vanity. But it also was possessed of a supreme ziness and and I was unwilling to actually do any killing.”

  “It might be safe to give to a peasant, then,” Raehel said. “Most people resist pouring so much of their soul into Gemgear. They resist being shaped by the magic, of taking the jobs forced on them, which is why it takes them so many years to Attune and Awaken the gear. You’re a freak of nature, for even trying so quickly.”

  “I’m a freak of nature for putting in effort?”

  That had been a fatal fw of his in his past life. Putting in fruitless effort for things he’d committed to, instead of taking a step back and assessing whether it was worth putting that effort in or whether he still wanted that thing at all anymore. Maybe Raehel was right.

  “You’re a freak of nature for letting those foreign thoughts and emotions possess you so quickly,” Raehel crified. “Normal people try to stay themselves. They fight the crystal ghost, so to speak, for so long and so hard that when they meet it’s closer to a compromise. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve seen in anyone I’ve taught.”

  Archmund snorted. “You’re like fifteen. How many students could you possibly have had?”

  “Oh, shut up. At least five, all nobles, all zy, stupid bums.”

  He bit his tongue. He wondered if commoners, for example, might have a greater appreciation of the power they could achieve through the Gems — but to even suggest such a thing was heresy.

  “Wait. Nobles use Gemgear?”

  “You literally just—”

  “You know what I mean. If nobles can use Gems, why would normal ones, who aren’t like me, bother with Gemgear if it has such obviously bad side effects?”

  The side effects of being possessed by murderers, assholes, and murderous assholes, really. But if you were already a murderous asshole that wasn’t really a downside.

  Raehel snorted. “Because for them it takes years to show up. You should’ve seen the benefits immediately.”

  “The deflection.”

  Raehel nodded. While Gem-based Skills could be activated via proximity to the Gem, because of how magic flowed from the soul directly, Gear-based Skills often required the user to actually wield the Gear as intended. As a trade off, they were easier to use but it was easier to hit the upper limit on their potential.

  The Skill he’d used was roughly called “Deflection”, and he’d soared up the dder of its evolutions.

  The most basic form was just called Deflection, and it was used to deflect others’ bdes, so he hadn’t had a chance to test it.

  The next easiest form was Projectile Deflection, which he’d done effortlessly.

  The second was Liquid Deflection, which had been just easy.

  The next was Force Deflection, which he’d done without even realizing by deflecting the winds.

  And the st was Energy or Magic Deflection, which he’d also managed by deflecting the fire, but hadn’t fully stress tested.

  “It is just not fair at all how you picked this up so quickly,” Raehel whined. “You can’t expect anyone you give these to reach that level in like. Months. Let me stress that the only reason you got this far is because you have no defense against dumping out massive amounts of your soul’s magical power into these extremely hungry crystalline matrices.”

  “I have defenses,” Archmund said. He was actually feeling a little insulted. “I just give it my all.”

  “If you say so. I can see the flow of Numen with my Sight. The instant you get a Gem you just dump an unhealthy amount of power into it. I figured there’s no way a normal person just does that unless it’s pathological.”

  He trusted her. Not totally, but enough to tell her his secrets.

  He told her about how he’d spent a hundred days training to exhaustion using his Ruby of Energy, which had prepared him to evolve its capacities from the Ruby of Light.

  Raehel shook her head. “That’s insane. You Attuned yourself through that by dumping power into it, and then you’ve Attuned everything else as well by doing the same.”

  She paused and looked at the ruined garden. She snapped her fingers; her Cube of Earth and Octahedron of Air came to life, smoothing out the disturbed flowerbeds and gingerly repositioning all the uprooted pnts.

  “I do think,” Raehel said, “You should consider the serious pursuit of magic. It’s… you don’t get as rich as with politics or commerce. But you have a knack for it.”

  It had crossed his mind in the past. But there were serious questions he had to answer. Was magic a genuine path to true and meaningful power in this world, or was it like studying physics — great at helping you understand the world, a beautiful and insightful lens through which to see the universe, but utterly unprofitable unless you were very lucky?

  He needed to ask her that before she left, but she was fifteen. When he was fifteen, the first time, he’d had no idea what made money in his world. He’d had no idea how he wanted to live, and what was worth doing. He didn’t expect her to fare much better, to be able to see past the ivory tower of the University of Mages.

  “And if you’re serious about magic, you’ll have to learn the Sight eventually,” Raehel said. “But you’re a noble. You don’t need to be serious about anything.”

  Another matter for his task list: develop “the Sight”.

  The more pressing matter at hand, though:

  “Do you think the pn is sound? With these weapons?”

  “I think you won’t have to worry about anyone you give these stabbing you in the back,” Raehel said. “So long as you act like a noble around them and win their personal loyalty, you won’t have to worry about those effects you described.”

  Archmund nodded.

  Acting like a noble around peasants with magic swords. He could do that.

  Finally, after all the preparations, the time for the Harvest Festival had come. It was ten day’s worth of celebration, enjoying the bounty of the harvest, without regard or care for death or taxes.

  Archmund had done all he could.

  The market square of Granavale Town was packed with stalls. It always was, but this year, for the first time, he recognized the owners by name. In the book How to Win Friends and Influence People, which he’d read one or two times in his past life, the first tip was that remembering people’s names made them like you. The baker’s stall, the brewer’s stall, the basketweaver’s stall, and then a bunch of stalls set up by itinerant travelers, nomads who chose to spend Harvest Season in Granavale County picking the crops and serving their own traditional foods.

  In previous years, he’d been too picky an eater and too snobby a noble to eat the food at the Harvest Festival, but this year he savored it. He avoided the beer, though it was plentiful, yet he saw many others his age drinking. There was, of course, fried dough. Every culture had a form of fried dough, and though he’d looked upon it with suspicion in the past he now savored the chance to eat it.

  “You’ll get fat on that,” Raehel said. But he didn’t care. He was a growing boy, he needed the calories, and he had many years to go before cholesterol or triglyceride levels became too extreme.

  This year, he’d pnned his own event.

  The centerpiece of this Harvest Festival was a dueling tournament. The duelists would be given wooden sparring swords, scrounged up from the manor storeroom, and fight under simplified dueling rules: to knock-out or disarm, without regard for formalities.

  Since he would be participating, he had capped the age limit of entrants to 18. It would be unfair to anyone around his age or younger who wasn’t enhanced by the mystical power of Gem to fight older opponents. The top ten entrants would, however, have a chance to accept a piece of Gemstone Gear, and all the power and duties that came with it.

  There was a great deal of interest. Over a hundred people had signed up, and he was looking forward to it.

  Yet the Harvest Festival today seemed oddly sparse.

  Rather, there was a hubbub from an excited crowd at the east gate.

  “What’s going on?” Archmund asked.

  “You didn’t hear, young master?” Mary said, biting into a rge fried pastry as she made her way back to him.

  He pushed his way through the crowd and then stopped short.

  There, pulled by a pair of majestic horses and bedecked with gold and Gems, was a carriage that bore the insignia of House Omnio.