Alya, after her tirade, went to keep company with Rhea, to “take some fresh air”, as I and Quinn started to collect swords and armour from the fallen elders. The kid was still grumbling about angry women and not being able to take a joke.

  “Is it going to always be like that?” He asked me after a couple of minutes of working.

  I put another little bundle of swords in the pile, trying not to get my clothes ruined even more by their sharp edges. “Every woman is a flower,” I told him with a smirk. “That one is a rose full of thorns, but mind this, Alya is not one that attacks you if not provoked. And she is pretty much fine with everything else; most of the time she doesn’t complain, she gives her all in everything she does and is good at listening.”

  I took a breath, then stretched my back. I was bending down a lot while picking up our loot, and despite not feeling any kind of discomfort, it was a reflex I couldn’t resist. “She has her flaws, her anger especially… I don’t know where it comes from, but for sure not from a good experience. Despite all of this,” I said while gesturing around us. “She channels it in her fighting, not in her relationship with people, if you don’t provoke her. She’s one of the good ones, trust me.”

  Quinn looked at me sceptically. “If you say so… what about Melissa? You are good at reading people, no? What do you think about her?”

  I thought about what to say for a second. “Quinn, first you have to ask yourself why you are interested in Melissa. No wait, before you talk back some shit, I want you to think about everything that happened in the last days, and I don’t know what kind of life you lived through before they abducted us, but consider that too.”

  I gave the boy some time to think, and we went back to work. We weren’t even doing anything more than the bare minimum a man could do with normal stats; if we wanted, we could have done this in a tenth of the time, but it became a way to unwind after the battle and waste time until Rhea managed to open the door.

  In the end he stopped and looked down. “For me, it is an improvement, you know… this… all of this. I wished for something like this to happen, something like in the stories. Something that will let me live an adventure, that will take me away from my stupid life. The magic is more of a bonus than anything else, really.”

  He looked back up at me. He was serious, dead serious. How fucked up do you need to be to like to come to this place? I was for sure, but others? People not suffering from a curse like mine, with a family and loved ones? You may hate your job, but preferring to come into this deathly place instead of fixing your life was something else; otherwise, most of the unhappy people will go to the Middle East or some other dangerous place to play mercenaries for fun.

  “I think,” he started again, “that I like Melissa. Fuck, I hate to say it out loud. Why is it like that?”

  I chuckled, “Because you are an edgy teen and you have been influenced by the media. There’s nothing inherently wrong in saying that you like somebody.”

  He sighed loudly, “Ok, so, I think I like Melissa because she’s beautiful, she’s mostly my age, and because I feel like now that I came here, I am strong enough not to let anyone dictate how I should live my life. There is no society, no one that knows me from before, and I think I have a chance with her; if it were before, I wouldn’t even have tried…”

  It was a pretty mature response, all considered. “You have a chance, and you are starting to go somewhere with her, much better than that first conversation you had. Don’t repeat that ever, please.” I told him while he grimaced at the memory. “Melissa is not without her own demons; none of us in the advance team are, mind you, but did you notice how she speaks of the things she likes and she doesn’t like? She is overly polite but never shares anything regarding her past. She never talked about her parents, about her dog, or about friends. She didn’t say one time that she wanted to find somebody… so listen when she talks, treat her well, and if you manage it, do some kind of romantic gesture for her sometimes. You are the only person in her age range, and you’re not half bad; just put in a bit of work if you really like her. There is not much more to it.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “You make it sound so simple. Ahhh… ok, I will try. You didn’t stir me wrong until now, oh great sage.” He returned a smirk at me, then moved to pick up something else. I took it as my clue for leaving the conversation as it was. I never heard him speak so much about himself, so that was progress, I think, but I wasn’t a therapist, and he will need a good one for sure; most of us will.

  After piling everything up, I went to the coffin and took the four pieces from the skeleton. They were heavy even for my new stats; it wasn’t just some normal stone making up the vambraces and the sabatons. While holding one piece in my hand, I tried to scan it as best as I could. There was magic for sure in there, but I had no idea what kind of effect it could have. Only one way to see…

  I put the vambrace on my forearm; there was no clasp. It was a slab of stone, but despite nothing holding it up, it stayed…

  Then I put the other on; I felt my arms getting pulled down by the weight. This was really something else. Then I bent down and put the sabatons on; like the other pieces, they stayed, but after putting the final one on, I felt a pulse of magic entering me. I went into high alert, mobilising my aura to resist it. It didn’t do anything except bounce around my body, like it was searching for something… Then, after half a minute of nothing, I decided to try something myself.

  I started channelling mana through the right vambrace; at first nothing happened, but then after I put some more mana into it, the stone started flowing, like it melted. I cut off the mana and the vambrace continued to come up to my arm, near the shoulder, for a couple more seconds, then stopped. It looked like melted wax got poured on me, but there was no other effect; I could move properly too, like the stone didn’t impede my movements at all.

  So I resumed the process. I infused more mana into it, and the stone came alive again, flowing up my shoulder, circling down my back and chest, and solidifying into armour. I looked at it some more; the weight of this was impressive. It didn’t distribute from the vambrace to the rest; it was just heavier… It will be hard to move in it if it’s complete. Well, there's only one way to know. I started pouring mana into all the pieces contemporaneously, and I felt the stone armour grow on me. It wasn’t uncomfortable at all, and in the end I was totally encased in it. It was fucking heavy, but I could move with it, albeit with some difficulty. There was no helmet on this thing, but considering that the elders already possessed a kind of head protection, it made some kind of sense.

  “Holy shit, dude! That is so cool!” Quinn approached and started circling around me. “It’s like a perfect defence! I can’t even find a weak spot in it; there are no seams in the armour. My skill tells me that the best way is attacking your face; even the neck is protected… I am so jealous. I want some magic shit of my own too!”

  I took some tentative steps around; this will take some time to get used to, but I was done with giving away my stuff. I was going to keep it, and fuck whoever told me that it will be more useful in the hands of someone else.

  “It’s really heavy, like, really.” I told Quinn.

  “Yeah, but you’re a mage; it’s normal. Does it do anything else aside from what an armour is made to do and looking cool?”

  To make my point I raised a leg and stomped on the floor with all my strength, plus put the weight of the armour on it.

  With a loud crunch of stone, the tile under my feet got demolished, and my stony boot got a good foot down into the floor. Damn.

  “This is just because of my strength and the weight, nothing extra, but give me a minute.”

  I looked at myself; the armour style was particular. It had ridges of stone on the shoulders, elbows, hands and knees; some sections had carved lines, patterns and swirls, and it didn’t really look like knight armour. It didn’t have the same limitations; therefore, its look was pretty much unique. What interested me the most was, as Quinn said, if it did something other than the obvious.

  I started infusing the whole thing with mana and little by little the patterns on the armour started to light up with a soft blue light. When the armour became saturated and I could put no more… that’s where I felt it.

  “Oh yes… this is going to be good.”

  20 chapters ahead!