· · · ? · · ·
The two months without his father were, by most measures, the most productive training period of Eirik’s life so far.
Part of that was the accountability vacuum.
Without Bj?rn’s constant corrections, there was no one to catch mistakes in real time. Either you developed the internal sense to catch them yourself… or you quietly drilled bad habits into permanence.
Eirik, somewhat to his own surprise, did not implode.
Sigrid’s ?nd-current grip work — introduced in the first week — turned out to be exactly the right tool at exactly the right time. He ran it every session.
What had started as a workaround for the wrong-grip problem gradually became something broader.
An internal audit.
Feet too close.
Weight drifting back.
Right shoulder loading early.
The corrections began arriving from inside instead of from six feet to his left.
He wasn’t sure yet whether that was better.
But it was… his.
The random acquisitions started in the third week.
He had been working the striking post long enough that morning for his knuckles to pass through ache and settle into that dense, information-heavy numbness — the kind that meant adaptation was happening — when the Wyrd chimed.
? Skill Acquired ?
Post Conditioning (Lv.1) [Grár]
Your hands are learning the difference between contact and damage.
This is a narrow difference. Pay attention to it.
Eirik looked at his hands.
They looked exactly the same.
He shrugged and kept hitting the post.
A week later, helping Sigrid sort dried roots from the monthly supply run, he felt something subtler — not a full notification.
More like… a filing sound.
When he checked later:
Herbalist’s Eye had quietly reached Lv.3.
Description:
You can identify common medicinal plants by ?nd-signature alone.
Your mother knows you can do this. She has been waiting to see if you would mention it.
He mentioned it that evening.
Sigrid said, “Good,” and immediately gave him harder plants.
Which, frankly, tracked.
Tracking came from Leif.
Naturally.
They’d been in the woods — for no reason except that afternoons sometimes demanded trees — when Leif pointed out a pressed-grass bed and started explaining what had slept there.
Eirik listened.
Then he listened more carefully.
Because under the beetle enthusiasm was a real system — a coherent framework for reading disturbance patterns that Leif had apparently assembled by sheer stubborn curiosity.
A week of deliberate practice later:
? Skill Acquired ?
Tracking (Basic) Lv.2 [Grár]
The Wyrd’s note was brief.
You were taught something by someone who did not know they were teaching it.
This is one of the better ways to learn.
Eirik privately agreed.
Through all of this…
Rí trained.
Relentlessly.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just with the terrifying consistency of a four-year-old who had decided something mattered and saw no reason to ever stop.
Her guard hold went:
90 seconds
2 minutes
3 minutes
4 minutes (end of month)
Worse — or better — she had recruited Brynja (óli’s five-year-old sister).
There were now two small children doing guard drills every other morning.
Astrid watched one afternoon and said:
“You’re running a class.”
“I am absolutely not running anything.”
“They show up. They follow your structure. They suffer voluntarily.”
She tilted her head.
“That’s a class.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Eirik looked at the tiny discipline cult forming in his yard…
…and reluctantly moved the situation from temporary to ongoing problem.
The Wyrd chose the morning of the fifty-third day for a full review.
Shrine stone. Morning channels. The usual moment.
Eirik let the screen surface.
Status — Year 7, Early Autumn
ATTRIBUTES
Líkami (STR): 17 [+3]
Ferd (AGI): 20 [+4]
Trek (END): 23 [+5]
Hugr (INT): 34 [+3]
Skyn (PER): 31 [+3]
Tróttur (WILL): 26 [+4]
Tokki (CHA): 15 [+1]
Level — Unassigned
ACTIVE SKILLS (?nd cost)
Earthroot — Grár Lv.19 ? NEAR CAP
?nd-Channeling (Basic) — Grár Lv.9
Appraiser’s Touch — Grár Lv.8
?nd-Sense — Grár Lv.13 (hybrid)
Blade Sense — Grár Lv.10 (hybrid)
Rune-Reader — Grár Lv.6
PASSIVE SKILLS
Dreamer’s Memory — Blár Lv.8
Ancestral Tongue — Blár Lv.13
Toughened Channels — Grár Lv.12
Keen Eye — Grár Lv.14 (hybrid)
Post Conditioning — Grár Lv.4 ? NEW
Herbalist’s Eye — Grár Lv.4 ? NEW
Tracking (Basic) — Grár Lv.2 ? NEW
Unarmed Fundamentals — Grár Lv.14 (hybrid)
TITLES
? Wanderer’s Child
? Young Cultivator
? Foundation-Builder
? Against the Grain
? Unsupervised (new)
ACHIEVEMENTS
? First Steps (S?fnun: minor)
? Still Waters (S?fnun: minor)
? Early Riser (S?fnun: minor)
S?fnun: 44%
Class: Unassigned
Vessel status: Filling
— Earthroot (Lv.19): Grár cap is Lv.20. Breakthrough required to advance. Fuel is sufficient. The match is not yet lit.
— ?nd-Sense and Keen Eye are approaching convergence. Future merge possible.
— Post Conditioning will eventually merge with Unarmed Fundamentals. This is not a race.
— You did not slow down during unsupervised training. This is worth noting.
Eirik closed the screen slowly.
Earthroot at nineteen gave him a small, cold thrill.
He could feel it now — the pressure near the top of the grade. Like a vessel filled almost to the lip.
One more level…
…and something would have to give.
Haldis had talked about Hlaupar — breakthroughs — in the abstract.
You needed fuel.
And a spark.
The spark could not be forced.
Which was deeply inconvenient.
? Skill Gains Logged ?
53-Day Summary
Post Conditioning [Grár] Lv.1 → Lv.4
Minor impacts now register as information instead of interruption.
Your hands are becoming harder to surprise.
Herbalist’s Eye [Grár] Lv.1 → Lv.4
You can now distinguish common dried medicinals by ?nd-signature alone.
Your mother has been quietly testing you.
Tracking (Basic) [Grár] Lv.2
You are no longer guessing.
You are now wrong for better reasons.
Blade Sense [Grár] Lv.6 → Lv.10
You are no longer translating word by word.
You are still far from fluent.
S?fnun increased across all entries.
The Wyrd has no further commentary.
This is not indifference.
The work has been speaking for itself.
Bj?rn came home on a grey afternoon on the fifty-eighth day, and Eirik knew something was wrong before the gate even opened.
It wasn’t anything dramatic. No limp, no blood, no obvious damage.
Just… wrong.
His ?nd-sense caught it first — that familiar dense weight of his father’s presence moving through the settlement — but the rhythm of it had changed. Careful where it was usually effortless. Guarded where it was normally just… there.
Like a big man pretending not to favor something.
Then the gate opened, and the rest of the picture slid into place.
Bj?rn’s good cloak was folded over his pack instead of worn. His left arm moved, but the shoulder didn’t follow cleanly. Not stiff enough to be obvious to anyone who didn’t know him well.
Obvious enough to Eirik.
Rí launched herself at him at approximately knee height with the full force of fifty-eight days of stored enthusiasm.
Bj?rn caught her automatically — but only with his right arm.
The left came up a heartbeat late.
Eirik felt his jaw tighten just a fraction.
Noted.
Filed away—
No. Not filed.
Remembered.
Sigrid stepped out of the house.
For just a moment — less than a breath — something flickered across her face.
Not panic.
Not fear.
Recognition.
The kind a healer got when a worry she’d been quietly carrying finally walked through the door under its own power.
Then it was gone, smoothed away beneath the calm warmth she wore like a second skin.
“Inside,” she said gently.
Not sharp. Not alarmed.
Just… final.
Bj?rn went without argument.
Which, more than anything else, told Eirik how serious it was.
Eirik gave it ten minutes.
Long enough for first look. Not long enough to hover.
Rí stayed beside him on the step, unusually quiet, her small brow furrowed in that intense way she got when her world stopped lining up the way she expected.
“Papa is hurt,” she said finally.
“Yeah,” Eirik said softly.
“Mama’s fixing it?”
There was so much absolute faith in her voice it made something in his chest pull tight.
“She’s taking a look,” he said. “Then she’ll fix what she can.”
Rí nodded once, satisfied with this for now.
“She fixes almost everything.”
Eirik huffed a quiet breath. “Almost.”
When he stepped inside, the kitchen had changed.
Not dramatically. Not to anyone who didn’t know what to look for.
But the space had that particular stillness it always got when Sigrid was working something delicate.
Clean table.
Good lamp pulled close.
Sharp, clean scent of antiseptic herbs in the air.
Bj?rn sat shirtless on the bench, broad and steady and pretending very hard that his left shoulder wasn’t currently the most interesting thing in the room.
Sigrid worked in front of him, hands sure and gentle all at once — the way they always were when someone mattered.
Fresh bandaging wrapped high across the shoulder joint. Clean work. Careful pressure.
Not a surface wound.
Eirik didn’t ask.
He didn’t need to.
“The field treatment is holding,” Sigrid said quietly as she tied off the last binding. Her voice was calm, but there was weight under it now. “But the deeper channels around the injury took strain.”
She finally glanced at Eirik, not excluding him — including him.
“I can keep it from worsening here,” she continued. “What I cannot do in Járnvik is the kind of repair that makes it heal clean.”
Bj?rn’s jaw shifted slightly.
Not arguing.
Listening.
“There’s a compound,” Sigrid went on. “Djúpblóm root properly prepared, combined with refined silver extract. With that — and the right hands — this heals the way it should.”
A small pause.
“Steinvik is the nearest place that will have it.”
There it was.
Bj?rn exhaled slowly through his nose.
“The garrison will—”
“Ulf will manage,” Sigrid said gently, already reaching for clean cloth. No edge in it. No sharpness.
Just quiet certainty.
“He always does.”
Bj?rn’s mouth twitched.
Which, from him, was practically a full concession.
“…Four days,” he tried.
Sigrid didn’t even look up. “Five.”
A beat.
“…Four and a half.”
Silence.
Which, in this house, meant the answer was still five.
Eirik very carefully did not smile.
That night, stretched out in the dim quiet of the room he shared with Rí, Eirik turned the situation over in his head.
Not obsessively.
Not the way he might have a year ago.
Just… letting the pieces sit together until the shape of things started to show.
Steinvik.
Five days out.
Proper apothecary.
Realm 2 trade post.
…and a full smithing quarter.
The heavy practice blade idea — the one that had been quietly living in the back of his skull for the better part of two months — stirred awake like it had just been called by name.
Yeah.
This could work.
If he played it right.
“Are we really going to the city?”
Rí’s voice appeared beside him out of the dark.
He hadn’t heard her wake.
Of course he hadn’t.
“Yeah,” he said. “In a few days.”
A long pause.
Then, very seriously:
“I’m going to find an interesting animal.”
Eirik turned his head slightly in the dark. “That’s your primary objective.”
“Yes.”
“…In a Realm Two trade city.”
“Yes.”
He snorted quietly.
“What’s your plan?” she asked.
Eirik thought briefly about an oversized, brutally heavy practice sword sitting somewhere in Steinvik waiting for a very reasonable seven-year-old to make an extremely persuasive argument.
“Supply run,” he said.
Rí made a deeply unimpressed noise.
“Boring.”
And promptly rolled over to go back to sleep.