“All right, are you ready for your first real day of training?” Frost asked. Her slender sword twirled in her right hand.

  “Not in the slightest,” Nick said, holding his stolen sword loose at his side. “You won’t actually hurt me while we practice, right?”

  Frost winked. “No promises.”

  “Uhhh…” He gestured to the trees around them. “Maybe we should use sticks instead?”

  “You don’t trust me not to hurt you?”

  “Will you hurt me if I say no?”

  She tilted her head slightly to one side.

  “It feels like you’re trying to verbally trap me instead of hitting me with that sword of yours.”

  Nick swung his sword, thinking surprise might give him a bit of an advantage. She stepped into it, her slender sword angling so the centers of the blades collided.

  “Why would I do that?” he asked as he pushed against her. Their weapons rattled as she leaned closer to him, a bit of her hair falling across her face.

  “Maybe because you’re better with your tongue than your hands?”

  Nick’s entire mind went blank long enough for Frost to pull away, smack his sword aside, and then hover the tip of hers an inch from his chest.

  “So easily distracted,” she chastised.

  Nick lifted his sword, the heat in his neck enough to confirm that he was blushing a deep red without the need to glance in a mirror.

  For the first hours of the morning, she showed him a series of stances and then they sparred to practice them. None seemed too complicated, barring a few quibbles about the positioning of his feet, and he picked most of them up with ease. Frost was a great teacher, and Nick couldn’t help but wonder if she had military training herself or if she was just naturally gifted in swordplay.

  “This is how I was taught,” she explained at one point. “There are positions of your body where your footing is firm and your limbs are at their strongest. You’re going to shift and dance between those stances, one to the next. The sword won’t guide you. Your body guides the sword.”

  Nick charged at her again, guiding his sword toward her breastplate, Frost blocking the strike with ease. His sword bounced off her blade, but he tried to ignore it as he’d been taught. Shift his movements. Plant his feet, move his arms, and transition the sword into a slash from the side. Try as he might, he felt so slow as his blade arced around to slam into Frost’s sword. It was as if she knew what he was planning long before he did it.

  “You’re doing good,” she said as she pushed away his sword. “Keep it up.”

  I can confirm your skill in swordplay has numerically increased

  “I feel like I’m doing terrible, but thanks for the encouragement, both of you,” he said, and grinned. When she grinned back, it lit a bit of a fire beneath his feet, and he dashed toward her, lunging with a high overhead swing. Their weapons collided, and though Nick’s looked much sturdier than her more slender weapon, his bounced off, the metal rattling while hers remained firm. As punishment for such a brazen tactic, Frost danced forward, her elbow striking his stomach while one of her legs curled behind his. A push, and he fell amid the leaves of the forest floor.

  “I yield,” he said, lying there. “This amateur fighter needs a breather.”

  Frost sheathed her sword and sat beside him. “As you wish.”

  It was strange, being able to see his exhaustion clarified so cleanly in a little green bar, but at the same time, it made it easy to know when he needed to take a break. After a moment of resting with his eyes closed, and seeing the first tick upward of that green bar, he pushed to a sit and brushed an errant leaf from his hair.

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  “It’s the strangest thing, fighting you,” he said. “My sword looks bulkier, but I swear yours is heavier.”

  “That’s because mine is magical,” Frost said. She drew it from her sword belt and laid it flat across her lap, giving Nick a chance to look it over. Its handle was wrapped leather dyed a deep blue. A matching sapphire was set into the base of the hilt, and two more on the underside of the cross guard. The blade itself was slender, gently curved, and frighteningly sharp on one side. Writing was carved along the flat edge, the words nonsensical to Nick’s eyes.

  “Magical,” he said, feeling a twinge of jealousy. “How so?”

  Item: Sapphire Longsword

  Quality: Tier 7 (Masterwork)

  Classification: Weapon

  A weapon of exceptional craftsmanship, whose sharp edge and magical enhancement allow it to withstand blows that would normally break a sword so slender

  “That…that sword is incredible,” he said as he mentally dismissed the information. No wonder it sliced through the air so easily. Compared to that, his weapon was a clumsy chunk of metal. “How do I get a sword like that?”

  “I earned mine,” she said with pride. “Maybe one day you’ll earn one of your own.”

  Nick could only wish.

  “Come on,” she said, standing. “Don’t get hung up on my sword’s capabilities. The difference in a fight between us is never going to be decided by that, but instead our relative skill and experience in battle.”

  “Of which you have far more,” Nick argued.

  “For now,” Frost said, as she lunged at him again.

  *

  After several hours, Nick lay on his back, thoroughly exhausted. For some ridiculous reason, he’d tried to spin after parrying, a maneuver he thought would look cool. Instead, it only landed him on his ass when Frost rammed him with her shoulder mid-spin.

  “I am, without a doubt, the worst sword fighter,” he said.

  Frost stood beside him, and her boot thudded into his rib cage.

  “New rule. No insulting yourself.” She offered him her hand. “You’re not terrible, and not an idiot. You’re just learning, so stop beating yourself up. I’ve had a lot of practice, and if Cataloger’s rating is to be believed, my skill with a sword is pretty damn good.”

  “Cataloger mentioned my skill in swordplay, too,” Nick said, trying to swallow his bruised pride as he stood. “What did she mean by that?”

  Frost gave him a momentarily confused look.

  “Oh…you haven’t seen your list yet.” She grinned at him. “Well then, prepare to feel very small and strange.” She lifted her voice. “Cataloger, please show Nick his full evaluation.”

  “My what?”

  A massive spreadsheet suddenly blocked off half of Nick’s vision. Skills upon skills flooded his eyesight, all with an assigned number. Accounting, acting, appraisal, balance, bartering, brawling, climbing, cooking, cosmetics, disguise, first aid, intimidation, investigation, jumping, perception (auditory), perception (visual), swimming…it seemed to go on forever. Every tiny part of him, cataloged and analyzed with what he assumed were relevant ratings. Nick blinked at the incredible amount of data, trying to parse it for any meaning. His immediate reaction was mostly to be offended.

  “Cooking at two?” he asked. “I’ve never cooked anything in Yensere. How can you know my cooking skill?”

  Assumptions are based on a combination of your personality and revealed skill set—with both predicting a lack of interest and time spent dedicated to food preparation

  “I can’t decide if I should be insulted or not,” he grumbled.

  These skills shall be updated over time given relevant data and should not be viewed as inflexible—nor should offense be taken, as individual characteristics were compared to comprehensive data sets without judgment or bias

  “Finding that hard to believe,” Nick said, and shook his head. He once more scanned the list until he found what he was looking for.

  “It says I’m only a five at swordplay,” he told Frost. “I’m going to guess yours is higher?”

  “That’s a safe guess.”

  Nick scrolled down the list with his eyes, then gave up, overwhelmed by the data. The list shot back to the top and momentarily displayed his initial stats. He noted one listing, something he’d heard the very first time he’d entered Yensere. Everything had been so strange and new, he’d not been able to give it much thought.

  Special Classification: None

  “What’s a ‘special classification’?”

  Unique attributes with associated benefits and capabilities that are possessed by rare individuals

  Frost patiently waited, a smirk on her face.

  “I suspect Cataloger’s answer was both informative and unhelpful?” she asked. When he nodded, she continued. “In short, ‘special classification’ is a catchall used by the Artifact to explain when people are sufficiently different or unique from the average inhabitant. So for me, if you saw my sheet of stats, you’d find mine listed as ‘Ice Caster,’ to denote my ability to use ice magic.”

  “Your sheet,” he said, dismissing his own. “Can I see it? Or is that, I don’t know, some sort of invasion of privacy?”

  Frost smirked at him. “Sorry, Nick, you get nothing. If you want to know if your swordplay skill is higher than mine, there’s only one good way to find out.” She lifted her sword. “You duel me, and you win. So would you like to try? Pull off that one-in-a-million chance?”

  “More like one in a thousand, right, Cataloger?” he asked as he readied his own sword.

  Based on current skill comparisons, your odds of landing a significant blow when in direct conflict with Frost are—

  “Cataloger,” he interrupted, “for the love of all that is good, do not finish that sentence.”