“We should go to bed.”

  Oliver felt his eyebrow rise, and he looked in the general direction of where Cadence had laid down their blanket. “Seriously?” he asked.

  “What? It’s been a long day.”

  “That’s the most transparent dodge I’ve ever seen,” Oliver told them. “And I grew up surrounded by noble kids, the least subtle people in the Realm.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  Oliver heard a little rustling, as if Cadence was squirming in place just from the question. He didn’t understand why the celestial was so uncomfortable with being asked about their gifts–of course he’d need to know what they could do if the two of them were going to go into battle together, especially as outnumbered as they were. In fact, he was all but certain this was the most quiet Cadence had ever been around him.

  Even as Oli decided that maybe he could try giving a little to get a little, his gifts appeared before his eyes.

  Oliver Argent

  Level: Novice

  Gifts:

  [Gift of the Vanguard]: +2 to strength, resilience, and stamina

  [Gift of Wind]: +3 to coordination and speed

  Attributes:

  Strength: 7 (5 + 2)

  Resilience: 8 (6 + 2)

  Stamina: 8 (6 + 2)

  Coordination: 8 (5 + 3)

  Speed: 7 (4 + 3)

  Will: 6

  Knowledge: 7

  Focus: 5

  Awareness: 5

  Charm: 4

  Quintessence Pool: 10

  [Gift of the Vanguard]

  Level: Novice

  Experience: 57%

  Defeat foes to grow your skill in the face of danger

  Abilities:

  [Reckless Strike] - Active, Attack - Make a special attack with potency increased by two tiers. Major stamina cost.

  [Reinforced Defense] - Triggered, Defense - When blocking an attack, your equipment is treated as one tier of potency higher. Each time this is triggered, there is a minor focus cost.

  [Battlefield’s Blessing] - Boon - Lesser boost to your strength, stamina, and resilience.

  [Gift of Wind]

  Level: Novice

  Experience: 43%

  Push your limits to grow closer to the wind

  Abilities:

  [Gust Blast] - Active, Attack - Manifest a gust of wind straight in front of you. Inflicts little direct damage, but can disorient or physically move enemies. Moderate quintessence cost.

  [Mantle of Wind] - Active, Utility - Conjure a small cloak of swirling wind around yourself. Reduces fall speed. One minute duration. Minor quintessence cost.

  [Master of Wind] - Boon - Moderate boost to coordination and speed.

  Augments

  [Wind Slash] - Wind, Vanguard - Active, Attack - Use a bladed weapon to make a ranged attack delivered through hardened air. Damage and quintessence cost depend on the weapon used to make the attack.

  “Okay,” he suggested, “I’ll go first. I have the gifts of wind and the vanguard. I’m primarily a melee combatant, as you’ve seen, with vanguard giving me a powerful but costly special attack and a reliable defensive ability. The gift of wind gives me some flexibility though, especially when I’m outnumbered, and my augment gives me a mid-range attack option.”

  “I know all of that,” Cadence said simply.

  Oliver exhaled out his nose at the celestial’s matter-of-fact tone. “Want to explain how, then?” Silence. “No? Okay. So I know you have the gift of the vanguard, like me.”

  “How do you know that?” Cadence asked, their voice leading.

  “Because you used Reinforced Defense when we fought that first day,” Oliver told them, trying to be as frustrating to Cadence as they were being to him. “Which is the same way I know you have the gift of the outlaw, because I saw you use the same mental ability Aton did.”

  “Menacing Glare,” Cadence confirmed. “And it wasn’t the same. Aton has it upgraded to Stunning Strike, I could only do the Novice version.”

  “Sure,” Oliver said, pleased that he had managed to wring a response out of the celestial. “But that doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen you display charm, will, speed, coordination, and strength that all go beyond what either of those gifts should grant at Novice level. But never all at the same time. And I have no idea how you would know that Aton leveled up his ability.”

  Silence again. Damn it.

  “Fine, be like that. Here’s my thought then. You have some sort of gift that lets you copy gifts from other people, and another that gives you some kind of flexible buff. An Artist gift maybe? But I saw you after the fight back there–you were all but ready to pass out until you drank from that flask you carry around. So I figure whatever this gift is, which is certainly one I’ve never heard of, has some pretty big costs to go with how strong it is. Any thoughts? No?

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Okay, so let’s keep going out from there. I know about a pretty fair number of gifts. All part of a classical education. But I’ve never heard of one that lets you do things like copy other gifts. Which means that whatever this gift is, it’s gotta be pretty rare. Some really specific relic, or an obscure archetype. That sort of rarity is an advantage–no one would know how to respond to a mimic like that. So you keep whatever it is to yourself, so people can’t use it against you. Right?”

  Silence. In the distance, a cricket chirped.

  “Am I close at least?”

  More silence. Then, finally, reluctantly, an answer.

  “Actually… kind of, yeah.” Cadence sounded surprised, their usual exuberance suppressed.

  “How close?”

  Cadence sighed again, and Oliver could hear the reluctance in the sound. Still, after a moment, they explained, “You’re more or less right on my abilities. I can copy just one ability from a person at a time, with an hour between uses. And I can give any of my attributes a major boon for a few minutes, but I pay a stamina and focus cost when it wears off.”

  “Okay…” Oliver said, “want to explain where you got a gift like that then?”

  “Nope,” Cadence said simply. “You were right that you needed to understand what my gift could do, but I don’t owe you that part.”

  Oliver frowned to himself. He didn’t like it, but he was forced to accept that Cadence was right. As odd as their gift was, now that he understood what it could do, he didn’t need to know where the gift came from. He could accept that.

  “Are both those abilities from just one gift though?”

  “Yep.”

  “And your other gift?” Any Novice gifted would need to have two blessings.

  Another moment of thoughtful silence. “The gift of the wanderer,” Cadence finally admitted. “It’s a utility gift. Just gives me some barebones knowledge and a compass.”

  “Wanderer… I suppose I’m wasting my breath asking what archetype grants that?” Oliver asked.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Cadence suddenly told him. “You answer one of my questions and I’ll answer one of yours. Anything you want about my gifts. Deal?”

  This time it was Oliver’s turn to be silent as he thought furiously. It didn’t take a social savant to know what the celestial would want to ask about–they had made no secret of their interest in Oliver’s gender identity, a topic he was reluctant to talk about, at best.

  But still, he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t part of him that…

  Well, he always had been talented at lying to himself.

  “Tit for tat. Deal,” Oliver replied, his mouth moving seemingly without his brain’s agreement.

  “Why are you so uncomfortable with being eclipsed?”

  “Eclipsed” was another term Cadence had picked up at the same time as “celestial.” It referred to people who identified more with the gender opposite the one they had been assigned at birth–the metaphorical moon blocking out the sun, or the sun illuminating the moon. Within their first moments of meeting, Cadence had puzzled out the identity Oliver had long since kept repressed and confronted him, only to be swiftly rebuked.

  Of course. Oliver chewed his lower lip, not sure how to answer. He did not like discussing, or even thinking about, his gender identity, and insisted on being referred to as a boy even after Cadence confronted him with their guess.

  “I think it’s pretty obvious,” he finally replied. “I told you about my father, and about the letters.”

  “You did,” Cadence acknowledged, their voice soft, even sympathetic. “And… I’m sorry that he did that. I can’t even imagine…”

  “I guess your parents were a little more accommodating?” Oliver asked, trying his hardest to keep the bile he felt out of his voice.

  “It took my mother a little bit,” Cadence explained, “but she came around. She supported me, even if she didn’t always understand. She certainly didn’t do anything like that though, no.”

  Oliver shrugged, the motion pointless in the clinging shadows of the boughs. “Well there you go. It’s hard to want to be anything when your first attempt to embrace it ends that poorly.”

  Cadence blew out a slow breath, and he heard the celestial shift around, wiggling closer to him. It wasn’t quite anything as intimate as a hug–even Oli knew he would’ve bristled if they had tried that–but the feel of their slim body, pressed close enough to be warm against his side, was a small reassurance by itself.

  “But you left home, right? To become a silver knight?”

  Oli groaned. “Just how much did Rose and Beryl tell you about me?”

  Oliver could hear the little huff of laughter his complaint drew out of the celestial, and feel it as their shoulders shook where they pressed into his side. “Not that much,” they reassured him. “It was actually Alyssia who told me about it. About her brother leaving home, and how little her family supported him…” Cadence paused a moment before adding, “and about how proud she was of him for leaving.”

  “Really?” Oli asked. He suddenly found his throat tight as he thought back to that last day in Elliven. Oli had always been close to his older siblings, and before he left his family home, he had made sure to take one last meal with them both. During that conversation, Adeline had offered Alyssia, his sister, some help getting over line to Initiate level, directing her to a village in the heartlands. Not long after Oli met Cadence, he learned that they had actually met Alyssia in that same village, and while they had shared stories of the times they had fought together, Oliver hadn’t expected his sister to have talked about him the way Cadence was describing.

  “She asked me to say ‘hi’, you know. If I ever met you.” Oli felt his lips turn up in a little smile, despite the tears their words provoked. “And to tell you to come visit her.”

  “It’s not that simple…” Oliver said.

  “It is,” Cadence reassured him, bumping their shoulder to his. “Simple isn’t the same thing as easy, after a lifetime hiding yourself, but it really is as simple as just accepting the you that makes you happy.”

  Oli chewed his bottom lip again, feeling how raw it was getting from his constant fretting. “I just… I don’t know if I’m ready yet.”

  “I know. But I’ll be here when you are–and I’m sure plenty of others will be too. Like Alyssia, and like this Adeline you told me about.”

  Oli tried to respond, but felt his voice crack a little. He paused to swallow, trying to work his way through the tangle of confused emotions the celestial had stirred up. “I… Thank you. I guess. For getting me to talk about it.”

  “You’re welcome,” Cadence said simply. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “R-right…” Oliver swallowed, trying to relax the tight knot that had swelled in his throat, and resisted the urge to sniff away the goo his budding tears had brought with them. It was still dark after all, if he kept quiet, there was no reason for Cadence to know he was crying. He recognized that Cadence was even trying to give him a distraction from everything she had forced him to confront. “Your first gift. The weird one. Where did you get it from?”

  Cadence’s voice was surprisingly wry when she replied, “A man named Storyteller.”

  What? That didn’t make any sense. “You mean… like, he made an ensouled item for you with the gift?”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “It’s another thing that’s not so simple,” Cadence said dryly. “It’s called the gift of the echo. An adventurer named Storyteller saved me from a bad decision I made, and he offered to somehow give me the same blessing he had. I still don’t really get how, but it worked, and I got the gift of the echo, without any relic or archetype being involved.”

  Oliver could feel his logic tugging free from the mire of his feelings, caught by the puzzle Cadence’s answer proposed. “That… that’s not how it works, though.”

  “I know,” Cadence replied, “but here we are.”

  “And he didn’t tell you why or how this gift works like that?”

  “Magic,” Cadence said. “That was his go to answer for a lot of the weird stuff I saw around him.”

  “But-”

  “I know.”

  “That’s not-”

  “Nope.”

  “What about your other gift?” Oli asked eagerly. “The wanderer–I’ve never heard of that one either.”

  “I already answered one question,” Cadence observed, her tone teasing. “Do you want to go another round?”

  Oli rolled his eyes, but he relaxed back. Still, he had to blow out a long breath before his overwhelmed brain managed to cobble together an answer. “I think if we did, I’d never get to sleep. I… I guess I’m good for tonight.”

  “Mhmm.” Doubt laced Cadence’s reply, but she let it go. “Good night then, Oli. Rest up. Tomorrow we hunt bandits.”