The stay-cation and it's associated pleasant excitements was over. He had another scene pnned with Quinn in a week, but it was time for more training. He had felt his inscriptions settle into his skin, the mana almost begging to be used. His ruakh self-primed and swelled slightly in anticipation. He thought he felt his second ruakh, but it was so close to his main one, that it was almost impossible to separate the two.

  He almost thought about trying it early, turning on his mage sight and making a step towards greater understanding of the world. He wanted to take that first step with his friends though, so he fought the nagging urge to do so.

  The trio had decided that Princep Tolly's recommendation for 'a few days' meant three days. So they pnned to gather in the same spot they normally did for Master Tosk's training. The other assigned trainings had gotten more difficult, but they were easier to bear, they were routine, an expected hardship instead of a stressful novelty.

  The three gathered in their usual spot. Victors feet felt the dying grass under his feet, it was getting cold and soon they would need to find somewhere to meet, somewhere warm or atleast tolerable.

  "You ready?" Ar asked nervously, his ears pivoted at the slightest noise.

  "Yeah, count of three?" They nodded.

  "Three."

  "Two."

  "One"

  They sent a small continuous trickle of mana activating the inscription around their eyes. Vicktor refrained from activating the simir inscriptions in his feet, he was worried that each foot might be an additional point of sight.

  Instantly, Vicktor felt crushing intracranial pressure in his skull. He closed his eyes hoping to turn off the hurricane of shades and colors running through his brain. Even with his eyes shut he still was able to see the world around him. Most of it was a gradient of pure whites to true voids. Anything remotely magical shone with a fierceness akin to staring closely into the heat of a forge.

  He risked a quick look up from the mostly bck ground and white grass to see his friends and their surroundings. The ambient mana in any living thing glowed white, with a vague additional hue of a color he had never seen before.

  It was almost red, a vivid fog that reminded him of the color but clearly wasn't. He didn't see in infrared, but it was like feeling the radiative heat of a fme on his skin. A color out of mind, one that has no equivalent.

  The skin of the Ar and Nora glowed a different hue of red. Ar was a muddy red with a hint of orange, the feathers emitting faint wisps of red. Nora was less rust-colored and more like spiced honey. He was immediately drawn to their eyes. The active inscriptions glowed a pure brilliant red, but their eyes were entirely a dark void. The eyes gazed back and they were drawn together in infinity nullification.

  The pressure continued building, it had been but some moments but it threatened to rip his skull to shreds, so Vicktor killed the flow of power and stared as his hands, still glowing a solid deep red. No hint of orange anywhere across his skin.

  He colpsed to one knee, breathing heavily as sound returned to the world. The other two stared into each other eyes unblinking, the void no longer visible without the mage-sight. After a few unnerving moments, they both canceled their mage-sights and fell to the ground, cradling their heads in a fetal position.

  He waited for them to recover, letting the soft wind and hoarse breathes pass unnoticed as he meditated.

  ***

  "Stars above that sucked so goddamn much" Nora continued to swear fervently over a freshly drawn pint.

  They were back in the Bear's Paw, beginning to drink away the newfound knowledge perspectives.

  "We really need to figure out why eyes do that with mage-sight, I'm surprised nobody warned us." Vicktor said after a long long sip.

  "Maybe they want everyone to have a slight bit of absolute terror with their first inscription so they take it slow" Ar said, he was the most recovered of the trio. He was sipping a small gss of dark red wine.

  "So unnecessarily cryptic" Nora shivered.

  "I mean they do it so maybe it is necessary, no?" Ar sipped his wine again.

  "Too many secrets, far too many."

  "Again, they probably have reasons, but lets not worry too much about it right now, we are just ants trying to be elephants."

  The drank and feasted on warm soup and buttered bread, the st of the fall veggies were picked and now either rdered or on this week's menu.

  The drinking continued a slow but steady pace until Nora and Ar were recruited for some adult excitement by some guardsman who wanted adventures full of glory. He was promised treasures and pleasures fit for a Monarch , but Vicktor declined the hole-y quest and parted ways, wandering back to the barracks. His mind was still on his solid red color and tried to puzzle himself out. He had made that single step towards... something, he had no idea what it meant, but he had other choice but to try. He would try to keep on stepping, there was no point in diverting his path. He had seen a small infinitesimal speck of the world and yearned to see the rest.

  His robe was already off and he was half-in bed when a sultry voice called him back to reality.

  "Hey there delicious" said a foxkin wearing even less than Vicktor."Got any treats for me? It's been too long, I had to seduce a child of Matriach Gaylial in order to find something as sweet."

  "Heyyyy Zorra" Vicktor smiled a bit too hungrily. "I need a snack, and you don't look too bad either"

  Vicktor wasn't sure where this part of him was coming from, but it felt genuine and it felt raw. He wanted this...