Both Rangers stopped in their tracks and turned to stare at Danielle in astonishment. “Really? That’s the exact title – Skill: Combat Medic??” Ranger Flo asked.

  “Yes? What’s wrong?” Danielle asked in alarm.

  “Nothing’s wrong, that’s awesome!!” Ranger Juliette said. “That’s a really hard Skill to unlock! Wait – when you said you ‘got the Skill’ do you mean, like, the System assigned it as a Career Skill? You could theoretically use this Skill right now?”

  “Yes? Theoretically. I mean, I don’t even know what it does yet, but I guess if I needed to do more first aid tonight for some reason, I could try it out,“ Danielle said.

  “Let me give you some serious advice, here,” Ranger Flo said. “That Skill is incredibly valuable to Sent, Rangers, police, military personnel, and Healers, doctors, and medics of all stripes. It’s incredibly hard to unlock normally – you need at least three prerequisite Skills or Traits, and even then, the unlock won’t trigger without certain usage conditions. The name kind of says it all, really. But. It’s useful for boosting all medical, healing, and combat Skills, and even some that only loosely touch on any of those; it lets you work faster, multitask better, and at high levels, it even has passive Skill-like side effects – like projecting a mana shield while you work. So here’s the advice: there’s a certain Trait called Skill Sharer. If by some miracle you ever see that, take it of course, because that one straight up makes you a VIP of the State; but – ”

  “Oh, I already have that one,” Danielle broke in.

  “WHAT?!?”

  “Flo, volume! There may not be any doors to throw open here at the end of the building, but the whole camp heard that,” Ranger Juliette said nervously. “In fact, let’s get moving again, maybe get around on the long side of two and duck into the lower walk.”

  “Right, sorry.” Ranger Flo fell silent, and started walking off quickly. They had come around the north end of building one, and were passing it on the boundary walkway; now the group sped up and crossed the space between buildings one and two, then jumped down into the sunken walkway of the empty building.

  “Can we use the gathering corner?” Flo asked Juliette.

  “I guess,” Ranger Juliette said indecisively. “I kind of feel the need to sit down if we’re going to get all these shocks, and it should have benches at least.”

  The open corner with the brazier and mismatched benches was in the same position in building two as it was in building six. (For that matter, they’d passed one in that spot in building one, also; Danielle supposed the buildings on the west side of the road must be mirrored, though, keeping their own gathering corners out of sight of the road.) The four of them chose benches near the corner of the two walls and sat down.

  “OK, keeping our voices down now – how did you come by Skill Sharer?” Ranger Flo asked. “Please tell me you know how it unlocks?”

  “I, um. I’m sorry, I really don’t,” Danielle said. “It’s one of my Decision Day picks. You know, with the extra mana from the Advancement token? Why is it such a big deal?”

  “Because nobody else seems to know how to unlock it either,” Ranger Juliette said, “and it’s not just useful for you, it’s useful for the whole state. What I think Flo was actually planning to tell you was, stay alive until the trade fair, and you can find one of the incredibly highly valued people who have that Skill at a high level, and they can work with you to make tokens of your incredibly valuable medical and combat boosting Skill, so you can sell those tokens. Firmitatem will pay a lot for them.”

  “Skill Sharers are one of any state’s important resources,” Ranger Flo explained. “They allow the proliferation of high-value, low-incidence Skills like Combat Medic – ”

  “That means Skills that are super useful but hard to get,” Ranger Juliette said.

  “ – and almost more importantly, allows Insider citizens to pick up Skills that are unlocked in conditions that Insiders normally never could encounter, from things as basic as the high mana environment to things as painful as, well, figuring out how to be a healer and a fighter at the same time. Having Skill Sharer, all by itself, would make you a person of interest among your Sending; but having Skill Sharer and Combat Medic? That means you can already provide a high-value Skill token, without even having to wait until you can get seven more levels to start drawing out other people’s Skills.” Ranger Flo paused, giving Danielle an intense look. “In fact, I’ll pay you 300 mana to make a token of Combat Medic for me right now.”

  “What? Seriously??” Danielle gasped.

  “Hey, don’t low-ball her!” Ranger Juliette protested.

  “I’m not! Twice the mana cost is the standard price for a Skill token,” Ranger Flo argued.

  “Sure, for an everyday run-of-the-mill Skill, but this is Combat Medic. It’s more valuable than that, and you know it!” Ranger Juliette insisted.

  “Yes, fine, the Firmitatem rep at the Fall’s End trade fair will doubtless pay more,” Ranger Flo. “And she can take advantage of that – at the end of autumn. Right now, however, she can’t sell the token normally because nobody around here has the mana to buy it.”

  “Right now, I can’t sell the token normally because I don’t have the mana to make it,” Danielle corrected. “Honestly, until now, I was kind of regretting taking it, because what I didn’t think of in the Dome is that it’s going to be incredibly hard to use until I get a few levels, and I don’t mean just level 2, you know?”

  “You use mana tokens to manifest the Skill token – all Manifestation Skills are on the list of Skills that can use mana tokens, along with all mana enhancement Skills and most variable-cost healing Skills,” Ranger Juliette said. “It’ll still take people a while to save up at this point, but consider this: if you go fishing and kill a twenty-five point fish every day for these first couple months, and assuming you keep your absorption pointed at base levels the whole time, you’d have hit level two in about six weeks. At that point, daily mana generation doubles, and so does the size of your mana pool.

  “Most people who manage to either kill a fish or trap a small game animal every day will average 20 to 40 points of mana per day on top of background absorption, and sure, maybe not everyone takes something every day, but they’re going to be trying most days, and nobody else fishes this river, so barring crazy situations like the guys from 1019, most people will be getting to level 2 around the end of July. Then they can make a 5-point token and activate three to six Skills per day, every day; so at that point, it becomes entirely plausible that they could save up for a tier 2 Skill by the end of August – assuming they just need the mana to create the token, and they’re actually paying you with something else, I guess.”

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  “Uh-huh, which means that sharing her more ordinary Skills will potentially get her some income before winter. But I’m offering enough mana to level two existing Skills, or take two new tier-2 Skills, right now,” Ranger Flo broke in. “My offer has high situational value. And before you argue any further, Juliette, kindly remember that I’m on duty, and can’t spend down more than half my mana on non-duty tasks. I’m basically full, but 300 mana above the creation cost is literally all I can offer right now. And the rules about not interfering with the Sent mean I can’t just come wandering back whenever I feel like it, either. I can only get away with this because we are doing a volunteer responder debrief right now.”

  “Oh, that’s actually a good point,” Ranger Juliette said.

  “So you’re only allowed to offer because it’s new?” Heather asked.

  “Sort of,” Ranger Flo admitted. “Not exactly the reason, but that’s how it works out.”

  “I have to admit, I’d love a chance to try out Skill Sharer,” Danielle said. “And I’m not against helping boost a Healer who might be answering my own emergency call if I ever have to make one, someday.”

  “So you agree to make a token of Skill: Combat Medic for me, in exchange for 450 mana in tokens, of which we both understand 150 mana will be required to go into the Skill token?” Ranger Flo said formally.

  “Yes, I agree,” Danielle said. “Er, what happens when I take the 450-mana token and only use a piece of it, though?”

  “Oh, the wedge of the token would evaporate, like a slice taken out of a pie,” Ranger Juliette said. Danielle and Heather both looked her askance. “No really! That’s how it works,” she insisted. “On bigger tokens like you’re talking about, it’ll redo the value number too. Smaller tokens just get marked into one-mana wedges, so you can see how many are left, but that’s only with 5- to 12-point mana tokens.”

  “I’ll make you a few separate tokens, though,” Ranger Flo said. “A one-fifty to make the Skill token with, and for the payment you can have two 150s or three 100s, depending on what you think you might want to unlock with it.”

  “Well, I just got a mana enhancement Skill,” Danielle began.

  “Are you kidding me?!” Ranger Flo interrupted.

  “It came from the same group of unlocks as Skill Sharer, back in the Dome!” Danielle exclaimed defensively. “And I’d already been told it was super useful, so – ”

  “Oh, don’t tell me,” Ranger Juliette said. “You actually took a spatial expansion Skill – we mention those in the orientation, so – what, with your level-up just now?”

  “Right, that,” Danielle said.

  “I hate to say it, but you should probably not share this around much, at least until you get another level under your belt and a good shield Skill or some armor, or both,” Ranger Juliette said. “Because it’s totally inappropriate to get upset over the good Skills someone else unlocks by their own hard work and potentially harder experience, but dang you’re unfair.”

  “Your skill set is going to be amazing once you’re back inside,” Ranger Flo said seriously, “But that only works if you stay alive. What’s your combat Skill? You have to have one, to unlock Combat Medic.”

  “Staff Apprentice,” Danielle told her.

  “All right, perfect – I’m going to strongly advise you to head for the northern Access Point as soon as you can get together enough extra food to spend a day walking and not fishing, and use some of the mana I’m about to pay you, and buy a tier-2 staff Skill called Flash Shield. You imbue the Skill into your staff, and it reacts to one attack that would bypass the Staff – like an arrow, for example – by manifesting a shield and a flash of light at exactly the right time to deflect it. It has a solid chance of infecting a crystal on a staff you use it with regularly, too, which can and probably will allow the staff to store more charges of the flash with one use of the Skill (or more rarely, generate its own Flash Shield).”

  “Does it work on swords?” Heather asked.

  “To defend from swords, you mean? Yes. Any attack that would get past the physical part of the staff,” Ranger Flo told her.

  “I’ll be saving up for that one too, then,” Heather said. “If it hadn’t been for Danielle, Arny would’ve wasted my mana, too.”

  “Oh, ah. Are we totally failing at the actual debrief here?” Ranger Flo asked.

  “I was kind of going for positive distractions, and then they turned out to be so distracting I got distracted too,” Ranger Juliette said with some chagrin. “Finish your purchase, though, you’re not wrong about them needing the mana.”

  “Right, so before we got double-distracted, I was saying, I’d like a 150, a 100, and a 50,” Danielle said rapidly, before anyone else could interrupt. “One new Skill, one Skill up, and a smaller piece to practice Enhancing with.”

  “You need the 150 for the tier-2 Skill she just said,” Heather reminded her. “Are you sure you don’t want two 150s?”

  “I – hmm. Well, I can save up for the other fifty and – or no, I could just use the smaller tokens directly – huh. Maybe I do want two 150s.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Ranger Flo said. “You might want the 50 for that summer un-fair they’re doing in a few weeks. I’ll go ahead and give you the set you asked for, and you can decide whether to take them all to the Access Point, or use the 50 for enhancing practice, or hoard it for fair money – you shouldn’t have to make that decision right now. If you do decide to use it to level a Skill, it’s no problem, you just feed both tokens to the Access Point. It’ll let you pay for a tier-3 Skill in all fives, if you have the patience to stand there and feed in a whole bag of them, one at a time.”

  “All right. Um, I do need your tokens before I can even try to make it,” Danielle said awkwardly.

  “Right, we’ll start with that 150,” Ranger Flo said, holding out her hand and flicking her eyes at her System Interface. A moment later, she handed Danielle the metallic token, with “150” seemingly stamped into both faces. It felt unnervingly identical to the 5-mana tokens she was familiar with; no extra heft to it, really. It did have a more prominent decorative border around the faces, and a texture ‘stamped’ into the edge, which the 5-mana tokens didn’t have. The edge texture looked oddly like a sort of impressionistic version of paisley.

  Danielle held the token out in her own hand and navigated her own interface: Skills, Token Manifestation, activate; Skill token, Skill: Combat Medic. Her System prompted her, “Do you want to use mana from tokens first or pool first?” and she chose “Tokens first.” The token in her hand took on a faint green highlight – was that a sign of what Observation Skills would be like, she wondered?

  Danielle confirmed the Skill activation, and the mana token in her hand shrunk down to nothing. Danielle could feel that the mana remained near her hand, though, and a moment later, a new token appeared in her palm. This one was, once again, the same size; but instead of numbers, the front face read “SKILL” in the largest letters that would fit, and the back read “Combat Medic,” much smaller but still in the largest letters that would fit with one word above the other. The edge of this one was ‘stamped’ with starburst symbols. She held it up so Ranger Flo could read the name on it.

  Ranger Flo nodded. “Good instincts – hold onto the token until your payment is presented, but let the customer see that you’ve made it correctly. Just a second while I make the others, now.”

  Ranger Flo held out her hand and manifested another mana token, then took it with her other hand and manifested a second token in the outstretched hand. She stacked it with the first one in her off-hand while she made the third, then held them all up for Danielle to see: 150, 100, 50, as they had agreed.

  Danielle held out the Skill token, and Ranger Flo traded the small stack of mana tokens to her. She slid them into her Decision Day satchel. Ranger Flo put hers in a uniform pocket.

  Ranger Juliette’s radio crackled to life as they were exchanging tokens, and the voice on the other end said, “Richard to Juliette, did you get lost out there?”

  She grimaced and raised the radio to reply. “Juliette responding, no we didn’t get lost, just distracted. I’ll get us moving again – back in ten.”

  “If you’re just dodging cleanup duty, you’re gonna find nettles in your bedding again,” another voice said, coming across at lower volume, but in the tones of someone shouting across a gap.

  “You won’t believe the story when I tell it, but that doesn’t mean I’ll forgive you for a repeat of the burrs-in-the-bedding incident,” Ranger Juliette said. “Juliette out!”

  “I guess we better get moving,” Ranger Flo said.

  Glaring intensifies.

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