10 GIL AND GROW

Thursday Evening July 6th, 2240 ATE. North SkyHaven. Eighteen hours till red-woods Infested Area Event….

The week felt longer with a broken wrist. Claude couldn't do his usual fitness and training. He had to adjust. He had to ease up— conserve his energy, for what was to come. He even started dreaming about monstrous armored snakes with bladed whips for tails and poisonous iron-chunk swords for teeth. He'd never had to conserve his energy before.

His dad always told him the power of youth was strong in him.

Now the only thing that felt strong in him was anxiety and excitement.

Anxiety at what tomorrow's battles could bring. They'd never faced a threat like plated-snakes. They were never supposed to. Apparently Ronin himself enforced the uptick in risk-level. He wanted results. So did Claude.

That's where the excitement came from.

Excitement at the prospect of being Reborn. Getting a Class— a System, tailored to his own experience. How he's lived and fought and felt safety and happiness. Learning the elements. Unlocking spells. Exploring Tangents. Saving the world.

He'd been thinking and dreaming about such things since he was able to walk. Ever since he saw his first team of heroes come to their forest cabin to complete a Tangent. There was no fear in them. No hesitation as they jumped through the rift tear in reality and braved the chaos of the new world beyond.

They were gone for three days.

Claude watched the glimmering portal fluctuate and spit energy every night as if he was wishing upon a star.

Then, they came out.

Knights covered in blood and guts. archers camoflauged in otherworldly berry juices and foliage that glimmered like strings of starlight. The mages held an internal intensity so strong it made Claude's chest burn. They were terrifying. And yet, they still took the time to tell him the threat was no more. He was safe. He was brave for waiting on them. They said his bravery could take him far.

It felt foolish to hope the red-woods wasn't beyond his reach. But the first step was always the scar—

"Mr. Grey…?"

Claude was pulled out of his own thoughts as a woman stepped out from the back rooms of the store lobby he waited in. She blended right in with the shelves of sage, rosemary and herbal hybrids in mason jars. The whole aesthetic of the Witches-Shop seemed to blend in with her like a camoflauge.

Which made sense.

"Uhm….. are you Ms. Oracle?" Claude questioned as he stood up from the wood chair covered in squirming vines and purple cushions.

"I am….." She was cool looking— like most witches Claude had seen…. Which wasn't many. Her hair was long. Long like a brown wool cloak. As she sauntered over to him it shimmied with her steps, tickling her knees and the hems of her baggy dark-flower skirt. A shining circlet of metal hooped through her nose like a raging auroch. The scent of her sweet berry lipstick grew as she stopped before him.

Her skin was only barely lighter than his own. She was a local. He knew that even if half of her face was hidden and her arms were sheathed in a sheer long sleeve.

"You are not Mr. Grey…. Not the original, at least." Ms. Oracle commented.

"You know my dad?"

She smiled like a ghost at peace, "Do I know him? Child, I might be your mother."

"What?"

Ms. Oracle winked, "What brings you here, boy? I didn't think today would be the day a father's stories became reality."

Claude had heard witches could be weird….. something about being born with mana let them experience the world differently. But he was lost before they even got to the meat of the conversation.

He centered himself, trying to ignore the heat creeping up his neck, "I need healing."

"Obviously. Why the hell did your academy healer not do it? Anytime a strapping teenage boy comes to me for healing, it's because it's the cheapest in town and he got injured illegally. Did you try to have your way with a woman? Your father's self deprecating humor and tortured gaze attract the healer in me….. I'm sure it's worked for many good natured women. You look more…. wild. Ironic."

Claude's head was about to fall off.

He stammered once before lifting his broken wrist to show her.

"Oh cute. It's signed." Ms. Oracle spoke like she just woke up. But was also kind of sleep-walking still.

"I broke my wrist fighting a classmate in a sparring match. He was Reborn. I was not."

Ms. Oracle nodded. Slow and almost in a daze. He'd only just realized she was seven feet tall.

"For the better half of a few months, my teacher has been….. challenging me. He thinks I'm close to being Reborn. So I've been fighting and training a lot. My academy healer refuses to keep healing me because—"

"Mm…. Mana Sickness. That's a scary thing." Ms. Oracle hummed.

"Im resistant." Claude stood straighter, "I feel fine."

Ms. Oracle chuckled, "If you catch the sickness that'll be more for your father to worry over….. then he'll spend more time with me."

"Sure." Claude saw the opportunity and clamped down on it like a wolf in hunting, "I'm ready to be healed now."

Ms. Oracle held out a hand with six fingers covered in dark lace and oak-wood bracelets, "Then come with me, son."

Claude took her hand. His whole arm fell asleep immediately.

On the way to her operating rooms, he had to continuously look at it to make sure she didn't take it off as some sort of magical gag.

The halls were long. So long, he didn't understand how the shop looked so small from the outside. The ceilings were covered in black vines where snakes coiled and watched him with eyes like jewels. On the walls lanterns with naturally died wicks held controlled blue flames. The vibe of it all made Claude both tired and scared. Like he was walking alone at midnight.

Eventually they reached the end of the hall. She passed room after room, looking to Claude before shaking her head until finally…. Ms. Oracle waved her fingers over the door and it opened on its own. She looked to Claude once and nodded.

The interior was nice.

Black carpet sprinkled with jewels. It looked like they were walking on midnight air.

Forestry wallpapers and moonlight globes hung from the ceiling.

Somehow it was perfectly visible inside.

Ms. Oracle sat at the wood table. A crystal ball sat center in a wild wooden casing that seemed to spontaneously grow from the table.

"Sit."

Claude did so, pulling up a chair across from her.

She looked around the room.

Claude looked at the cats collecting around him. Some were brown with blue eyes. Others were multicolored and striped. One was missing a leg.

They all smelled nice and purred like cicada's in the distance.

Ms. Oracle watched him as he pet the cats and let them crawl on his shoulders.

The one missing a leg sat on his bald head. Using the short sharp blades of his hair to itch its belly.

"You have nice cats, Ms. Oracle. They're well socialized…. considering what I probably smell like."

Ms. Oracle turned her head at him, "You're weird, boy."

"Yes." At this point he'd say anything to get healed. He only waited a day to calm Ms. Callisto… and be sneaky. But now he was regretting it. Ms. Oracle had the energy of a violent lioness waking from a deep slumber. She was still yawning. But her eyes would zero in and her jaws would flex in hunger soon.

Or he was just paranoid and anxious.

His money was on the latter.

"Do you know what makes men and women mana resistant?" Ms. Oracle questioned.

Claude shook his head, "No, ma'am."

Ms. Oracle grabbed her crystal ball and ran her long dainty fingers over its spotless cloudy surface. Colors sparked and twisted like electrified leeches inside.

Ms. Oracle's handwork on the ball felt purposeful.

His instincts proved right as the colors that coalesced and shifted inside grew brighter until a holographic image hovered above them.

It was a picture of a city. No— a village. Less advanced. The hundreds of men and women outside wore basic clothing and looked to be farmers living in refurbished OldWorld neighborhoods.

A Tangent hovered above their village.

It spit a torrent of energy.

"Tangent break…" Claude realized as the villagers began to run.

"It takes trauma, Claude." Ms. Oracle commented as she continued painting the live picture with her six fingered hands.

Immediately an elven primal-rider exploded from the Tangent. It was large and tan and wearing the skeleton of humans as armor. The elves eyes glowed behind the empty skull sockets. It rode in on a scream-wing. Also called a pterodactyl, and wielded a scepter made from the spine of a protartyrannus— deadlier cousins of the t-rex.

The elven primal-rider didn't give chase to the fleeing humans. It simply aimed its bone scepter and scent a blast of unknown energy at the village.

It bounced and ripped through the people in cruel arcs like green lightning.

Claude couldn't stop his gasp.

It was nothing like the stories.

It was ugly. It was violent and unpolished. Some of the blasts missed, leaving people running with no arms and holes in their stomachs. Someone was picking up their own charred guts and trying to stuff them back into their stomach before face planting in the sandy dirt.

All that was left was a small group of the fittest men and women running for the forests. One carried a baby. The baby was burned just from the ambient magics of the blast. There was no sound but Claude could hear the scream in his mind as the baby squirmed and tried to fight off the dirty shirt that was scratching every angry red burn.

"It takes trauma to become mana resistant….. Physical and mental trauma by magic." Ms. Oracle spoke, reminding Claude that she was there.

The image flashed and suddenly they were watching a young girl— no older than Claude, running in a forest.

It was the baby. She'd grown up. She'd survived. The burns left her skin with bright red scaly patches that reminded him of dinosaur skin. Fitting in a horrific way.

A lounge of lizard-men chased her. They touted spears and slingshots and rode raptors covered in face paint.

She was only human. They ran her down.

"Why are you showing me—"

"Quiet." Ms. Oracle snapped. The lioness was waking.

The girl hit the ground and rolled as a lizard-man rode by and kicked her in the back.

She tumbled down a hill, hitting every tree and rolling through every thorn bush.

The only thing to stop her was a massive boulder.

She was covered in a new shade of red as she woke.

Blood.

"You see, her body never forgot what happened in that village. Like a muscle, it adapted and grew stronger. Scarring over the wounds like armor." Ms. Oracle explained as the lizard-men and their mounts circled her. "Her mind never forgot either. The same could be said for her soul."

A look of fury twisted the girls face. Her long brown hair rose as if she were under water. Like she was electrified.

Again, there was no sound, but he could read her crusted lips as clear as day.

"You fuckers can't hurt me."

Her eyes flashed a cruel shade of red— matching her scars, opposing the green of the lizard-men.

Immediately an aura shaped around her like a second skin— growing thicker and fiery over every scar.

She roared— at the memory of her burns. At the loss of her village. At the fear of death.

Her aura exploded and infected the lizard-men.

"Taunt skill. She's a tank." Claude noted.

The lizard-men attacked.

She swung. The boulder behind her followed her movements, turning into an extension of her fist and smashing the whole of them through three trees.

The reptilian death-squad was nothing more than giblets in the grass.

The girl walked away. For the first time, she could walk. She wasn't carried, she wasn't burned, she wasn't running for her life. She was Reborn.

The boulder followed her like a trained hound.

Then it was over.

"I don't understand." Claude said.

"Like much of the worlds greatest tanks, she was mana resistant. So much so, that all the local healers couldn't remove her scarring. And you know why…."

"The primal-rider?"

"The trauma, child." Ms. Oracle replied, "To the world of magic— the human body is a baby in development until Rebirth. And to the body of an unawakened, magic is a passive flame that burns in variation. Anything we're exposed to in high quantities becomes a stepping stone, a path of alteration, a wound— even healing magic. And wounds scar over. The body adapts, it trains itself to be resistant so you can survive sometimes to a fault. That's all life is. To survive."

"But…."

Ms. Oracle nodded, "Do you understand now?"

Claude didn't say anything.

"The only way you can be mana resistant is if you experienced some great magical trauma as a child…. Most likely earlier. And then you'd have to be slotted as a tank. I think it's quite obvious based off this persona chamber, you are no tank."

Claude pet the cats in silence.

"So…. Can you tell me what great trauma you've endured? What's made you durable, boy? What great magics were you exposed to as a baby?"

Claude shook his head, "I…. nothing. My life's been pretty chill. Me and my dad had to stay in the cabin for three days once under suspicion that a pack of werewolves were in SkyHaven. But I was eight when that happened."

Ms. Oracle smiled, "So do you think maybe you're not mana resistant? And are instead just an egotistical little boy? If you've just been put at risk of mana sickness this week, then you could get the sickness right here. Hell, if you're too soft inside, you could get the mana sickness just being next to me."

Claude huffed with irritation, "Ms. Oracle. Please. I have the money, I have the will. I can take it. I have to."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Putting your life at risk because. I wonder how your father will feel."

"You can ask him the next time he comes."

Ms. Oracle giggled, "Oh I will….."

Claude didn't understand what was funny.

"Give me your money then. If you die, I'm not donating any of it to your funer—"

The silver coin rolled across the table before she could finish speaking.

Ms. Oracle took the coin and stood up, walking her chair over to Claude's side.

The cats skittered away meowing loudly. Her breath smelled like skin and spice.

"To do a proper healing I must heal it all. Do you consent to a full body reading prior to your forearm correction?"

Claude nodded.

Ms. Oracle took a deep breath and pulled her hair back into a messy ponytail.

With her full face revealed, Claude could see that half of it was deeply burned and her eye on that side was fully black. As were her teeth. He'd trained worse off dogs. They were always the nicest.

"Hm…." Ms. Oracle seemed to expect a different reaction. She smiled once and got to work.

He could physically feel where her black eye was looking on his body. But not on his skin. In his bones.

First his skull. She lingered there a long time. So long he felt his eyes going crossed. She seemed lost there before moving down and down and…

"You have bones of steel, child."

"What?"

"Your bones are at least one and a half times more durable than the average man. The tensile strength in your muscles isn't bad either. What in the gods many names and faces shattered your forearm?"

"Rocko." Claude replied. "He's an arthurian mastiff-epicyon crossbreed."

"Epicyon?" Ms. Oracle lifted his broken forearm and removed the cast.

"A member of the bone-crushing dog canine family. They're primals…. They usually look like giant wolfish hyena's so I didn't realize it until after I submitted him. If Rocko was a full-breed I would've lost my arm."

Ms. Oracle laughed. "Your father said you were smart."

"Do you two talk a lot?" Claude asked as healing magics began to spin from her fingers like spiderwebs and her black eye turned golden. Like a crystal ball full of sand under sunlight.

Ms. Oracle shrugged, "Not with words usually. Your father is a very physical communicator."

"He doesn't do that with me…." Claude thought in confusion.

"Yes because that would be highly illegal and perverse."

"What?"

"What?"

They sat in silence for the next few minutes. Ms. Oracle was healing injuries he didn't even know he had.

Places in his shoulder. His low back— his knees.

He fell asleep once.

Then a cat slapped him— as if he was disrespecting Ms. Oracle by doing so.

He could feel they were almost done.

"So…. Uhm. Is it true that to become a witch, a hexblade had to bless your bloodline generations before you?" Claude asked to cut the awkward silence.

Ms. Oracle nodded.

"Shouldn't you be….. more rich? They say hexblades cost a fortune to bless bloodlines."

Ms. Oracle looked up at him. "My family was rich. Then my grandmother was born with mana flow at birth. The first witch in our family. The induction of mana was unbalanced and infected her hormones. She could piss fire and burp lightning— she was also horrifically disfigured and insane. Still, my grandfather saw potential and had a child with her. My mother was only less disfigured. And my grandfather— her father, was jailed for breeding with my grandmother in her state. It put people at risk. Witch-hunts followed us and sapped our money bone dry. Then I was born….."

Ms. Oracle aimed her eye and scarred face at him, "The witch-hunters found me. They missed. Kind of."

Claude shook. He wasn't sure if it was the healing magics leaving him or the story.

"I'm sorry for asking, Ms. Oracle….. I'm also sorry that happened to you. I don't think you deserved that just for being born. Actually, I know you didn't."

Ms. Oracle raised an eyebrow as her hair fell back over her face, "I don't scare you, boy?"

Claude shook his head. "Not anymore."

"What changed?"

Claude lifted his arm and flexed his fist. "You helped me."

Ms. Oracle stared at him in the silence.

"I'll be like you when I'm Reborn."

"Oh really?"

Claude stood up. She rose with him. "Yea."

"You know, I could tell you what your class will be….—"

"No thanks." Claude replied, "I need to focus on the fight tomorrow."

Ms. Oracle chuckled as she towered over him.

"So… are you a tank, then?"

Ms. Oracle's only exposed eyebrow raised before she smiled again, "You paid attention…. The bare minimum. Amazing. Yes."

"So why aren't you a hero?" Claude asked.

"Do you see me?"

Claude nodded, "Yes. You're strong— you could save people….. why is your shop always empty?"

Ms. Oracle sighed and walked him out of the persona chambers. She spoke to him as they approached the door out of her shop.

"One day, you're going to leave that forest with your father and step out into the world. Truly. When that happens, I ask that you don't change. Not where it counts."

She was once again saying things he didn't understand. "I step out of the forest every day….. what?" Claude thought before nodding in fake understanding.

"Also take this." She handed him a card with a rune on it. A simple glowing blue circlet with two red crescent slashes on each side. The shapes were made of a thousand letters only visible if you squinted.

"A protection rune." Claude said, "I don't have enough for this..—"

"I don't remember naming a price. Now get."

As Claude turned to leave, the cat seated on his head casually jumped off and disappeared deeper into the shop.