The trail was not hard to follow, given how the Warped hardly cared for the environment, and were prone to lashing out randomly at things around them, as if leaving a scar on the pristine forest affirmed their existence in the face of their slavery to their dark gods.
The way was also dotted with the occasional carcasses of Warp Wolves, which were set alight in passing and most of the scavengers seemed to be reluctant to get involved with. The Rangers might have warned the forest, Briggs mused to himself.
"How does she run so fast?" Estemar called out from behind him, where Briggs' Vajra could slipstream for him. He had to wear his helm to breathe easily in the face of the air flowing past.
"Remember your movement rate?" Briggs said over his shoulder.
"30!" the young paladin replied quickly.
"Hers is about 55, I reckon, and then she knows the Waveskating Steps, which is the Ocean Dragon Lightfoot style. Being a Ten means three advances in it, each increasing your speed by a third of your base. So, twice the speed."
"110?" the boy protested at the number.
"Yep. For comparison, a really fast racing horse is about 90."
"Mithar!" He didn't try to hide his amazement. "Can, can I learn to run that fast?"
"Well, not in armor. Potentially, sure. But it's a waste of time for you."
"Waste? Why?" Briggs could tell the lad was dreaming of zipping around at the incredible speeds Sama was moving at.
"Oh, because you're Powered. You can learn to FLY faster than this," Briggs informed him blandly.
The young man fell silent, as his eyes grew a little wider, the cracks in his own view of his limitations starting to open.
"While we're on that subject… it's not going to happen if you continue advancing as a knight," Briggs said loftily.
Estemar blinked, dreams of flight crashing down onto the back of a charger. "What? Why?"
"Because then it'll be your mount doing the flying most of the time, instead of you. And yes, there is a difference. It can fly really fast, but you, you'll just learn to fly… slowly." Briggs made a gesture. "You'll be dependent on your mount. It's an aspect of training as a cavalier. Without the mount, you lose a lot. Gain a lot at the low levels, but at the higher… eh!"
Estemar thought that over. "You… want me to abandon my training as a knight?" He asked, his tone deepening.
"Yes. It's not appropriate for a Paladin, and your Paladin oaths supersede all others."
Estemar's mouth opened and closed, blinking. While that was true about the Oaths, "Inappropriate?!" he had to ask.
"Mithar is not a cavalier. He is a horseman, but he is renowned as a swordsman, and the lance is a secondary weapon. Mithar fights Sword and Board by preference, although he uses other weapons as appropriate.
"You want to follow in Mithar's footsteps, you have the choice of following his heart, in Thunder, or Mitharn Style, a master of Sword and Board. Being a cavalier is following the path of Valus… you pursue glory, you charge to battle, and you challenge the biggest foe mindlessly. The General of the Heavenly Host does not fight that way, the Champion does."
Estemar blinked again on hearing this. It was all orthodox, but a very, very strange way of looking at it.
"Or, to put it another way, how many Paladins in that Order you belonged to?"
Estemar found himself licking his lips. "I… there are a couple of others…" he managed to say.
"And I daresay they aren't in leadership positions, because they aren't Champions." Estemar found himself nodding.
"But I cannot foreswear my oaths to the Order," he began, and Briggs waved him to silence.
"I'm not asking you to betray the Order or anything," he snapped, miffed at being misunderstood. "I'm asking you to change the way you train, to a road appropriate for the skills and mindset of a Paladin of Mithar, and not train like you're going to be a Champion of Valus."
Estemar flushed. "What then, are you recommending?"
"You're still a Three, you still have time to change your Primary Class," Briggs said in his voice, so deep for his age. "There are four primary combat roads. The first is the Melee Fighter, which is what I and Sama follow. There is the Cavalier, which you are being trained as. There is the Berserker, which is how savages prefer to train. And there is the Dragon Warrior, who wields profound arts and chi powers, the favored path of the Powered melee combatant.
"I recommend you follow the Melee Path, which is Mastery of Sword and Board, or the Dragon Warrior path, which is Mastery of Thunder."
Estemar closed his eyes in thought, opened them. "I know very little about the path of a Dragon Warrior. I have heard about martial artists wielding great powers, but they are not common hereabouts."
"Mmmm. Well, Valus and Mithar both share mastery of the Thunder Dragon, the Heaven Challenging style. It focuses on bringing out the righteous power of the soul, combining the powers of man, world, and heaven to strike out at those that would defile Creation. It is robust, active, physical, and can only be used by those whose heart beats true." Briggs smacked his chest. "I know some of the lesser skills of Thunder, the true basics. The greater powers of Chi-usage are naturally denied me as a Source."
Estemar had been agog when he heard Briggs talk about Sources, Nulls, and Voids earlier, having never heard such things before in his life. He was torn between pity that they could never feel the bond with the Divine that he could… and a weird feeling of appreciation that the gods could not hear or bother them, which they took as quite the benefit. The fact that they had a true choice on who to serve, knew it, and knew that they would never get a direct reward for making that choice was a stirring idea, he had to admit.
"Do you have a recommendation?" he asked.
"Sama can directly teach you Sword and Board. Thunder you can learn via Mithar, but you'll have to experience it and get a handle on using it yourself. Most Powered will choose the latter, being a Melee Fighter is more a no-magic kind of thing to them. I sort of recommend Thunder. At Ten, you can walk on air, which dovetails with the ability to fly via other means. It'll help some of your Paladin abilities along. There is one drawback, however."
"And that is?"
"If you get into a situation where external sources of power aren't usable, like magic, psi, or chi, then you got nothing. For instance, fighting me or Sama, all the great and wonderful chi powers of Thunder are useless. Inside a Greyfield, they are useless. A dead magic zone, useless. A White Magic zone, very hard to use. You'll have your passive skills, but won't be able to bring up a Heavenly Smite from Thunder anymore then from your Paladin side.
"In short, you'll be heavily weighing yourself to your magical side, to get the benefits thereof, and taking the chance that your foundation is going to be strong enough without it."
Estemar nodded slowly, hearing those words. "You are saying this is a very important decision to make."
"Very. It will literally affect you for the rest of your life, and how you affect the world. One keeps you grounded, and the other will help you soar."
Estemar looked up at the sky thoughtfully. "These weaknesses would not affect someone like you, I gather?"
Briggs grunted. "Not as much. The only external magic we have are magic items, and our Null and Source fields deny that kind of magic, just like they do fireballs and lightning bolts."
"So, the proper thing to be thinking is… who are my comrades, and can they be strong if I am suddenly weak, and can I do the things they can't when it is needed?"
"That's a very teamwork-oriented, Mitharn viewpoint," Briggs agreed, impressed.
"Then with Lady Sama here, the base Sword and Board set of skills is covered. I should learn Thunder, because that is something unavailable to the two of you, and would give us more options. When I return to the Empire, I should try to find a Forsaken to work with so that we complement one another in the future!"
"Very shrewd. I gather we are not commonly found in your homeland?" Briggs inquired.
"There are a great many people who cannot use magic of any kind, of course. But to be Forsaken, as you are… I've not heard of such things before." He paused significantly. "Such a skillset could be seen as very dangerous to those in power, Master Briggs. Not being able to threaten you with magic will not be taken well by those who rely on it as a source of power."
"Which is why we're called Forsaken, with all the negative connotations, as if we're cursed, instead of simply born the way we are and willing to live with it," Briggs answered easily. "So, you've decided on Thunder?"
Estemar nodded slowly behind him, eyes roving over the trees and grasses zipping past so quickly. "It is the choice that my heart turns to, Master Briggs."
"Okay, that's fine. You won't be able to do anything about it until your Renewal at dawn, when you can ask Mithar to swap a Cavalier Level for a Dragon Warrior Level. Things will start to change then."
"What of combat today?" he asked, grasping the punch dagger they had let him borrow. The milk-white triangle of the blade, with the blood-red cutting edge, looked strangely ominous and yet helpful at the same time. He had injected his Soul Essence into it, and could feel the magic upon it, waiting to be used.
He had been surprised that he knew how to use it. Briggs had just sighed and told him the Mithar was the Master of Weapons, and granted all Paladins proficiency in all but the strangest weapons. He could pick up and use weapons he might not even have heard of and use them, if they weren't too odd. The fact that he drilled with a bunch of weapons wasn't to get him skilled at fighting with him, it was to let him know what kind of options he had with them. His basic skill was already there!
Estemar was coming to realize that Mithar had given him considerably more help than he had realized. Even his ease in wearing armor was granted by his god. A complete peasant who was ordained a Paladin by Mithar could instantly pick up a sword, strap on plate mail, and go at it with the skill of a person who had practiced for years in such things!
This ease of learning skills by proving yourself worthy of them, and Mithar basically teaching you wholesale, was stunning. Fight evil, get stronger so you can fight evil better and learn even stronger things! So much of the conditioning and practice he had been told about simply wasn't necessary, if you were just up and about doing Mithar's work!
"Master Briggs, this system of Karma that you are speaking about… why aren't more people told about it? Is there a reason?"
Briggs grunted at the question. "You know both possible answers. One, they don't really realize how the system works, how magic is oriented to benefit those who use it. Two, they do, but they don't want people gaining power willy-nilly fast and threatening those in power by having far, far more competitors around who they can't bully.
"Everything I've seen points towards the former, but there's definitely shades of the latter among some powerful people. It's always a pain to the mighty when the meek become strong and stop obeying them out of fear…"
"It would seem… that disseminating this knowledge might cause a great amount of upheaval," Estemar noted warily.
"You're using the system. That means that Mithar subscribes to and uses the system. You think he thinks it's a bad thing, Paladin?"
Estemar flushed despite himself. Briggs was really holding him to a higher standard and forcing him to think about what Mithar was and represented. Mithar certainly was not an elitist god who catered to nobles and the powerful. Paladins arose from peasants as or more often then the wealthy and entitled. Considering that, he realized that Paladins from the noble class, although often famous and well-known, were distinctly in the minority among those he had run across, even in his limited years. Most had come from far simpler backgrounds, and had a far greater understanding of the common lifestyle then he did.
It was something to think about, he considered.
And then he thought of something else Briggs had said. "This would be quite an opportunity before us to gather in Karma and earn some levels, would it not, Master Briggs?"
Briggs half-turned, grinning broadly. "Indeed it would, Your Highness. And that is why we are here. Not for wealth, not for fame. Those come naturally to those who have the strength. We're here to get strong.
"Stick with us, and you're going to get strong, too. Almost ridiculously so, in fact. Your worries about your family aren't going too last too long, if we play our cards right.
"However, this path is bloody. We're going to be piling up the dead in a way you find only in the worst of war ballads. Be ready for it, and we'll have you shining in the service of Mithar in no time!"