Contents

Chapter 1: Old Habits             

Chapter 2: Lesson One             

Chapter 3: Job Hunting             

Chapter 4: Survival Skills             

Chapter 5: Finishing the Job             

Chapter 6: Gettin’ Paid             

Chapter 7: Punitive Remuneration             

Chapter 8: Getting Out of Dodge             

Chapter 9: Local Culture, Friendly Wildlife

Chapter 10: Road Trip             

Chapter 11: Buying Company             

Chapter 12: Run Forrest             

Chapter 13: Networking             

Chapter 14: Can’t Go Back             

Chapter 15: Knock Knock             

Chapter 16: Throttled             

Chapter 17: The Academy             

Chapter 18: Plan C             

Chapter 19: The Trial             

Chapter 20: Location, Location, Location             

Chapter 21: The O’sut Bottleneck             

Chapter 22: Factory Settings             

Chapter 23: Fan Mail             

Chapter 24: The Calm             

Chapter 25: The Storm             

Chapter 26: The Storm (Pt. 2)             

Chapter 27: Aftermath             

Chapter 1: Old Habits

***Chris Acker, level 56 Ranger***

Chris Acker whistled as his machete popped in his hand, transferring that exact sensation of cutting through a vertebra through his wrist and into his arm.

The mob’s head rolled off into the street and wobbled in front of one of the men in a similar kneeling posture, held there by the supernaturally strong hands of Chris’s demons.

The man alternated between sobbing and babbling pitifully.

You have gained a level!

You are now level fifty-seven!

“Finally,” Chris muttered, straightening up and working the tension out of the back of his neck. He’d been hunched over, hacking off heads a good half hour, and he was starting to cramp up.

Still, much faster than hunting monsters.

For whatever reason, monsters gave jack shit for XP, at least relative to humans and those other aliens. A man could spend months risking his life fighting monsters people would have only dreamed about before The System, and he’d get maybe four levels.

Rule of thumb: If it can speak, it’s worth more XP.

Chris had figured that out during the Tutorial, when he’d bashed Tony over the head with a rock after the bastard had stolen his weapons. He’d gotten two levels. Two whole levels.

Once the Tutorial was over and Earth had been added to Pharos, everything had kind of fallen to shit for a hot minute before the locals showed up with their government, pointing to their flag and how much bigger it was. In the end, most people accepted tyranny for a hot meal.

Not Chris.

Chris had it figured out.

People were just bags of XP living in close proximity to each other. All you have to do is take advantage of that, and kill enough people, before eventually no one has the power to stop you.

Risk vs. reward.

Sure, when he first got started luring men into dark alleys, they might have been able to stop him, but now?

He glanced at the blood-bound demons that held the few remaining mobs still. They loomed over his prisoners, easily twisting their arms back like a man tormenting an eight-year-old boy.

Now, nobody was going to stop him. It was simply too late for that. Killing people was the most viable way to increase a man’s level, and levels were the quickest way to gain more power to kill. One fed the other.

It was an exponential, runaway equation. After Chris finished with this town, he would skip a few towns over, then maybe backtrack a little bit, so the powers that be didn’t find a pattern in the disappearing towns.

Once he was more confident, he could move up to a small city.

Chris’s eyes glazed over as he pictured the amount of power he could accumulate from an entire city.

“Please, please,” the next guy in line whispered, tears and snot falling like rain.

“Nope,” Chris muttered, bringing down the machete again.

Pop.

The head flew off, knocking up against the previous one. Chris glanced along the line, doing a quick mental tally.

Only a dozen or so adults left, Chris thought, tapping the blade against the corpse’s ribs to get a little of the spatter off. Then I’m outta here.

Chris didn’t know what children were worth, XP-wise, and frankly he didn’t want to know.

Anybody that would consider killing kids is a sick fuck, Chris thought, maneuvering behind the next weeping mob, a grey-haired old woman with saggy tits.

I wonder what she’s worth, Chris thought, lining up the machete with the nape of her neck.

“You know what I hate about people like you?”

A voice caught his attention. It was deep, but soft and feminine, causing him to look up, frowning.

There, sitting on the town’s well, was a melas woman reading a paperback book and smoking. She had an open pack of Camels sitting beside her, and the book had a dark cover with Stephen King’s name featured prominently on the front.

Melas had orange skin and pitch-black nails and hair. They were larger than humans on average, and tended to be muscular as well. The more aggressive ones grew horns.

This woman had horns.

She’s here to stop me, Chris thought, a spike of anxiety going through his guts.

“Kill her!” Chris shouted, pointing at the alien. His demons could give him the time he needed to retreat if she turned out to be—

The melas woman flickered between turning pages, and Chris felt as though he was being torn apart as each and every one of his bound demons slumped to the ground, bisected. Their blood splattered against the adobe buildings as Chris sank to his knees, clutching his chest as his heart registered each and every death.

“I hate people that are smart enough to realize that killing other people is the fastest way to raise your level, but stupid enough to think they were the first person to think of it.”

She held apart a thumb and forefinger, still not looking at him. “Right on that fine line between clever and intelligent. That’s where people cause problems.”

 How can I get out of this? Chris thought frantically as the ache in his heart began to calm down, his adrenaline numbing the pain and kicking his brain into high gear.

Calm down. Think. I just got my new Class Ability last week.

Chris’s C-ranked Class, Ranger, didn’t mesh well with his Myst Core, but the Class itself was good at surviving, and that was exactly what he needed to do right now.

His Class had given him the Decoy Ability at level fifty. All he needed to do was break line of sight.

Chris glanced at the alley behind him, then back to the melas sitting on the well, seemingly lost in her book.

In order to break line of sight, he needed a distraction.

Chris took a deep breath and funneled the Myst out of the flaming pit in the center of his soul. He reached in and grabbed the hand of the biggest badass he could find, tearing the creature through the barrier between worlds and into existence.

Directly between the two of them.

“Who dares summon—”

Decoy.

Chris leapt straight back, leaving a live-action decoy of himself standing right where he had been, picture-perfect down to the thick blond hair and cocky grin, and landed directly behind the newly summoned hellspawn.

Predictably, Chris felt the jabbing sensation in his heart when the demon was slaughtered, but he was already turning the corner of the alley.

At this rate, she wouldn’t even know where he’d—

“Hurk!” Chris’s breathing ended in a pained grunt as something snatched him by the collar.

Desperate, Chris swung the machete behind him wildly, aiming to catch the alien with the blade and force her to let him go.

Instead, something caught his arm. Chris didn’t have any time to think before his arm snapped the wrong way, wrenching a scream out of his lungs.

Something kicked his knees out, and dragged his other arm behind him, breaking that in the process, too.

“Come on then.” The melas’s rich voice spoke from directly behind him. “Let’s get this over with.”

Steely fingers clamped around Chris’s skull, and he tried to fight them off, but he did little more than flop his arms and scrape dirt up with his boots as the alien dragged him to the center of town.

“Here we go. Try not to be a little bitch. This is for posterity.”

“Wha—” Chris couldn’t quite follow the creature’s meaning, glancing up at her in confusion as she produced a little sphere on a tripod and set it on the edge of the well, fiddling with it like a cameraman trying to get the best angle.

Suddenly a picture of her appeared on the wall of every building, directly in front of the cowering citizens of the town. Those who hadn’t take the opportunity to fuck off yet, anyway.

Directly in front of him, deformed by the shoddy craftsmanship of the well, Chris could make out his own face, eyes widening.

“Ah, there we go,” she said, straightening in front of what was presumably a magical camera.

“Greetings citizens, this is Imperial Enforcer Vresh Tekalis, dispatched to the west reaches of the empire upon reports of a reaper.

“Reaping is defined as the systematic murder of sapient individuals in order to gain levels at an accelerated pace. It is an intolerable cancer on our society, a direct violation of the Sacarus Accord, and the punishment is death.”

Chris watched his own eyes go wide.

“I, Vresh Tekalis, have found this human guilty of reaping and will now carry out his sentence.” The orange-skinned woman brandished Chris’s machete.

“Please, please!” Chris babbled, eyes watering as his heart began pounding, drowning out the woman’s response.

Chris felt the rough, notched blade rest against his neck, dull from the hundreds of people he’d executed that very afternoon.

Then he felt her start sawing.

Chris Acker watched himself get decapitated.

***Vresh Tekalis***

Vresh grimaced as she worked. She deliberately sawed the man’s head off his twitching body. Slowly. Not because she enjoyed it, but because it had to be horrific. The video had been shared to every man and woman above the age of majority, and it was meant to be seen as a stiff reminder:

Yes, we are watching.

Yes, we will find you.

Gross, Vresh thought, tossing the head aside, and continuing with her rote lines.

“The sentence has been carried out,” Vresh said, swallowing the urge to puke. She couldn’t be seen to be unwilling to perform her duties, despite how little joy she took in them. Appearances mattered. “Ending transmission.”

She reached out to tap the button on the top of the spherical camera, but the blood on her fingers caused it to slip, sending the camera toppling backwards into the well.

“Eep!” She lunged forward and nearly caught it, but the little sphere slipped out of its tripod and fell downward, spinning as it receded down the well.

“Phooey!”

I’m gonna have to buy another one out of pocket, she thought sourly. That made this her third lost empire-wide transmitter. Those things didn’t grow on trees, and her quartermaster was sure to give her a merciless reaming.

***Jebediah Trapper***

“She seems cute,” Jeb said, moments after the video feed hit the water and abruptly cut off. The image of the horned woman’s pouty face flickering in front of the camera as it receded down the well lingered with him.

“In a…just-killed-a-guy kind of way?” Smartass asked, raising a tiny brow.

“Kind of?” Jeb said, waggling his fingers. The contrast between the woman who’d literally sawed a man’s head off and the girl fumbling and giving a frustrated ‘phooey’ was highly amusing to him.

Smartass opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off by Jeb’s stomach, growling ominously in displeasure.

“Breakfast?” Jeb asked, pushing himself to his foot, leaning against the alleyway’s walls to stabilize himself. Jeb stifled a yawn as he slipped on his pegleg with a bleary grumble before using it to nudge his trash camouflage over his valuables.

People usually weren’t interested in digging through trash. If they were, it was usually because life wasn’t exactly going their way. That kind of applied to Jeb too, come to think of it.

“We could be living in an inn,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “With pillows…and baths.”

“Like I said, I’m more comfortable outside,” Jeb said, glancing up at the sky and shoving thoughts of PTSD out of mind. Jeb had spent the first two weeks after the Tutorial staring at the ceiling of inns and abandoned buildings before he’d found himself moving his bed closer and closer to the window.

Just to get fresh air, he’d told himself. Then he told himself it was so he had an escape route in case he was attacked. It was as though he was fleeing the room in stop motion.

It was when Jeb was contemplating sleeping with his head out the window that he realized his war PTSD was subtly rearing its ugly head, steering his decisions through an uneasy fear that had no name.

Other than The Spike. The fear loomed over him, always fooling his brain into thinking the ceiling would collapse on him at any moment, skewering him with a thick spike of steel. Hence the name.

Jeb had to do something about it.

Well, there wasn’t exactly an internet to look for a therapist in Kalfath and Jeb didn’t think his shrink would ever get back to him for a second session.

The first time Jeb had tried to muscle through the fear, he’d tried to off himself, so Jeb changed tactics and dealt with the problem by avoiding it entirely: He slept outside in the alley.

“Hey! What’s the first rule of Wizard Club?” Smartass said, hands akimbo, flying directly in front of his face.

“Is it…don’t talk about Wizard Club?” Jeb asked.

“Good. When phrased as a question, it isn’t a lie. You’re sooo close to a hundred days without telling a single untruth. You almost screwed yourself over with that ‘comfortable’ statement, I felt it. Lucky for you, you actually are more comfortable outside, barely. For some awful reason.”

The first rule of Wizard Club, and the only advice that Smartass had given him thus far was ‘Never Lie’. It seemed arbitrary and strange, but Jeb trusted that the fairy wanted that candy bad enough to give him good advice.

It was actually pretty difficult, though. Lies rolled off people like snowflakes, and Jeb had spent the first week astonished at how often he lied.

White lies in public, like ‘good to see you’, ‘it was fun’, ‘I appreciate it’... These reflexive, polite statements were all lies.

Lies by exaggeration: ‘He kicked the shit out of me.’ ‘That chili lit my asshole on fire.’ ‘You fart-knocker.’ They all counted too.

Etc., etc.

The only lies allowed were misleading truths and lies by omission. Technically not lies at all.

Try to go a day without uttering a single untruth. It’s harder than it sounds.

“So what happens when I go a hundred days without telling a lie?” Jeb asked, hobbling out to the street corner, scratching his beard. The scraggly thing was starting to get respectably uncomfortable.

“Then, my enormous disciple, we begin the second stage of your wizard training,” the fairy said solemnly. “Human wizards were rare for many reasons, primarily because telling the truth seems to be beyond your capability, as a species.”

“Your commentary on my species has been noted,” Jeb muttered as he emerged from the alleyway and angled toward his favorite spot for begging, the corner of a street where a modest amount of traffic passed by every day. Just enough to earn a day’s wages but not so much that he would attract the attention of the local fuzz.

The city wasn’t kind to humans, or beggars, and human beggars were right out.

“Morning, Jeb.” A keegan in a snazzy uniform of black with razor-straight gold trim oozed into view, regarding Jeb with that skull-grin they all shared. It was much easier to read a keegan’s expression by looking at their eyebrows.

Think of the devil. Jeb grimaced.

“Morning, Officer Zlesk,” Jeb said, keeping his tone as neutral as possible.

“You remembered my name! I’m flattered,” Zlesk said, his expression amused.

I certainly hope so, Jeb thought. He’d rather have the authorities be flattered than insulted, all other things being equal. Less pain in his ass that way.

“Seemed like a good idea,” Jeb said.

“Right,” Zlesk said, his stance shifting as he peered down at Jeb. “Where you headed this morning?”

“Gonna beg on the corner of Lorne and Kole,” Jeb said, motioning to the wide street just a ways down the road, where a lot of traffic meant decent pickings, begging-wise.

Not having a Class or level was rough. Jeb was now living in a kind of communist fantasy world, where everyone got the job they were good at, and did it superhumanly well.

In short, unless the task was killing for profit, there was really nothing else that he could be expected to do better than an eighteen-year-old pissant with a Busboy Class.

Jeb was on average dumber, weaker, and slower than a normal citizen. The only thing he had going for him was experience and moral flexibility.

Still, Jeb would rather not become a mugger or bandit and make others miserable simply to survive, so…begging filled the occupational gap that kept him breathing.

“Corner of Lorne and Kole, huh?” Zlesk asked, rubbing his chin. “That place gets pretty crowded between noon and three. You planning on holding up traffic?”

“No such plans, sir,” Jeb said, his pegleg clacking against the cobbled stone as the alien police officer stalked him through the street, prodding for some kind of actionable offense.

“You know, I’ve actually been mildly disappointed with you humans. First species to make it through the Impossible Tutorial. Bam! I thought every single one of you was going to be some kind of natural-born survivor, fierce apex predators smeared with dirt and blood, waiting to be unleashed.”

“We can’t all be natural-born survivors,” Jeb said, suppressing a chuckle as he pictured himself as Zlesk’s Rambo human.

“Alas, you’re right. Humans are, in general, fat, lazy little keegan clones only motivated by fear and greed.”

Don’t forget love, sex, and stupid, Jeb thought silently.

“But as weak and stupid as humans are on average, damn near every single one wound up getting by somehow. I guess humans’ strength is their ability to get on.”

The conversation fell silent for a moment.

“Except for you.”

Jeb clenched his teeth. Even though he knew the guy was dead wrong about him, it still hurt to be shit on like this.

“You wanna hear some of my thoughts on life?” Zlesk asked.

Not really.

Jeb couldn’t afford to lie or speak the truth, so he stayed quiet.

“I believe that where we are today is just the result of a long chain of effort leading us to our current situation. I’m an officer because I worked hard to become one. Spent five years training to be where I am today.

“You, though?” he asked, looking Jeb up and down. “What long chain of stupidity and failure brought you here, I wonder?”

Jeb finally broke a smile. “Honestly? I worked hard for an outrageous amount of success that captured the attention of the entire world. All to beg on the street corner of your charming city.”

Zlesk stared at Jeb silently for a moment, fingering the beatstick on his waist. A moment later, the keegan burst into a gale of laughter.

“That’s a good one, Jeb,” the officer said, chuckling for a moment.

Suddenly the keegan stooped down from his seven-foot height and grabbed Jeb by the back of the neck, his fingers like iron rods clamped around the base of his spine.

“Don’t let me catch you begging between noon and three, alright? Or I’ll have to fine you for obstructing traffic. You and I both got better things to do than take a trip down to the office.”

Jeb shuddered, remembering the cracking beam in the cell’s ceiling that had kept him awake at night, staring at it for hours.

No thank you. Jeb wasn’t interested in sleeping in PTSD Central again, not even for three hot and a cot.

“Got it,” Jeb said.

Zlesk released his neck and moved on, apparently losing interest.

Jeb got himself situated on the street corner, straightened his smelly rags, took off his pegleg and put the stump out in front of him, rubbed some street grease on it to make it look bruised, setting the missing limb center stage.

Begging is a performance art.

Jeb set his beat-up hat in front of himself, and sat back, watching the day flow by. Time seemed to speed up as Jeb zoned out, people zipping past him, doing their dailies. Every now and then a tiny copper coin about the size of a man’s thumb would clink into the hat.

Jeb’s eyes widened when he spotted a silver glint in the sun before it hit the hat, and he gave the keegan woman an appreciative nod and a ‘thank you, ma’am’. A silver was like throwing a fifty into a pot full of ones.

Maybe later tonight I’ll take a bath and visit the bar. See if there’re any human women there interested in a hobo.

Jeb chuckled to himself as he imagined the inevitable question after a night of flirting:

‘Your place or mine?’ she would whisper sultrily into his ear.

God, could you imagine if I brought her back to my place?

There’s the trash pile I stack up to block sight from the main road. It gets removed every Wednesday, so we should have some...privacy tonight. Over there’s the blankets I use as a mattress. Don’t mind the smell, some of the trash leaked on it before I noticed.

Hey, where are you going!?

Jeb was still chuckling to himself when a richly dressed keegan and a much shorter one approached from down the street. The taller one was male, and the shorter one was immature, hard to determine their gender based on physical cues, but the clothes looked decidedly feminine—for a keegan, that was.

“Ew, what’s that?” the shorter female asked, pointing at Jeb, drawing him out of his amusing reverie, covering her skull-face nose.

“Oh, that? That’s a human,” the taller male said, eyeing Jeb and his hatful of coinage.

“It stinks.”

“Yes well, that’s more of a condition of being a beggar than being a human. He really only has himself to blame. Look at the difference between us and remember: We’re the ones that are broke. Because of the gods-damned Stitching, he’s got nine thousand more bulbs than we do.”

What an asshole.

Jeb’s brows rose as the taller keegan, presumably the father, pulled out a gold coin and leaned in toward the hat.

A gold bulb was the rough approximate of a thousand dollar bill. A single one could keep him fed and clothed for three months. Jeb actually salivated as he watched the gold coin descend toward his hat.

This right here is some premium alms.

The keegan flicked the gold coin back and forth in his fingers, flickering it in the sunshine, capturing Jeb’s attention as he leaned forward and plucked the silver coin out of Jeb’s hat.

Just that quick, the keegan man straightened and walked away.

Jeb’s jaw dropped.

Did I just get robbed!?

Visions of a shower, shave, a bowl of hot food, and a slim chance of getting a date for the evening flickered past his eyes and into the gutter.

“Hey!” Jeb shouted, trying to stand, but the pegleg wasn’t on, so he wound up hopping in place for a moment, shoving the wood onto his stump and dumping the meager copper coinage into his pocket, then clomping after them as swiftly as he could, catching up to the father/daughter pair in a matter of moments.

“…be a lesson to you, child. Nothing distracts a man more than the promise of wealth. Blind them with gold and you can take their—”

“Hey!” Jeb shouted, his vision tinged red. “Give me back my money.” Jeb dearly wanted to call him a prick, or an asshole, but that would be a lie.

So much of his vocabulary had been neutered by the first rule of Wizard Club.

“What are you talking about, beggar?” the keegan asked, raising a brow. “I do not have anything of yours.”

“Oh, were you experiencing a fugue state when you stole my goddamn silver coin!? Give me my money!” Jeb grabbed the man’s shirt in a moment of mindless anger and immediately regretted it.

The wealthy man had obviously invested some points in Body, because he peeled Jeb’s hand away from his shirt like brittle Styrofoam.

Jeb sucked in a breath through his teeth as the bones in his palm and wrist grated against each other ominously, bending ever so slightly in the keegan’s iron grip. Jeb wanted to groan in pain, but he’d be damned if he let the bastard see him sweat.

“Know your place, human,” the keegan said, staring directly into Jeb’s eyes.

“I’m not the thief here,” Jeb growled back.

“That money was too good for you.”

“You’re full of sh—” Jeb winced as Smartass pinched him in the neck. “You’re lying.”

The rich bastard didn’t say anything, simply giving Jeb’s hand one last warning squeeze before shoving him back.

“What’s going on here!?” Jeb heard Zlesk approaching from the side and his skin went cold.

Goddamn motherfucking shit-ass timing!

“Sera, here is another lesson, child,” the keegan said, glancing at the younger one standing next to him.

“Officer, I’m glad you’re here. This man tried to rob me.”

“That’s bull—” Another pinch on Jeb’s neck. “That’s a lie. He stole from my hat.”

“Garland Grenore stole from your hat?” Zlesk asked, brow arched. “Sure.”

The keegan officer grabbed Jeb by the back of the neck. “Sorry for the trouble, Mr. Grenore. I’ll get this scum out of your hair.”

“Um.” The young keegan standing beside the older one spoke up, drawing their attention to her.

“Yes, miss?” Officer Zlesk asked, about to lead Jeb away by the neck.

“Um, he—” The young keegan glanced up at her father’s thunderous expression and swallowed audibly. “Nothing.”

“You son of a bi—” Smartass pinched him real hard, shocking him out of his lie. The man probably wasn’t a literal son of a bitch, and saying so would almost certainly invalidate a little over three months of carefully considered speech.

These rules are so goddamn annoying!

Officer Zlesk dragged him bodily to lockup, giving Jeb a few bruises from the beatstick along the way when his pace didn’t satisfy the alien bureaucrat.

After a few humiliating minutes of being led through the streets like an unruly child, the officer threw him in an iron cage with thick bars designed to resist someone with far more Body than Jeb had.

“Congratulations,” Zlesk said as he locked the cage. “You could be the first human to be publicly executed for robbery in Kalfath.”

Chapter 2: Lesson One

Jeb was lying on his back on the cold stone bunk, watching the ceiling beam for signs of movement two days later, when Smartass popped out of the woodwork, holding some kind of miniature party horn.

Wonk! The thing unfurled and honked as she blew into it. Jeb could only assume that was what the fairy had been doing the last couple days.

“Congratulations! You have gone a hundred days without speaking an untruth!”

Jeb might have ignored her if it weren’t for the extreme boredom and the creeping dread of being locked inside a room and threatened with death.

“Oh, what did I win?” Jeb asked, sitting up. Anything to distract him from The Spike coming through the ceiling in his thoughts.

“A lesson from the most magically-gifted species in existence! You may now grovel and consider your good fortune,” Smartass said, polishing her nails on the scrap of silk wrapped around her torso with studied haughtiness. “Go ahead, I’ll wait.”

“I don’t feel lucky,” Jeb said, motioning to the cell around him.

“Nonsense. You’re probably the luckiest human on the planet right now, if luck actually existed.”

“Go ahead, lay it on me,” Jeb said, leaning back against the wall.

“Alright. Let’s start with dimensions. You’re aware of four. The three dimensions of space, and time. But did you know…there is a fifth dimension?”

Smartass tapped her fingers together, smiling ominously.

“Yeah,” Jeb said with a shrug. “Quantum physicists say there could be as many as ten. What of it?”

“Gah!” Smartass grunted, her epic reveal ruined. “Alright, fine. The fifth dimension is known as Fate, and it’s intrinsically linked to Time.”

“So, is everything predetermined, or what?”

“Not at all,” Smartass said, pausing a moment and frowning. “Every living being capable of making choices carries around a little ball of something called Impact with them in the fifth dimension. This little ball is the expression of how much change that creature could potentially exert over the future.”

Jeb blinked. “I’m not sure I follow.”

Smartass sighed and rolled her eyes condescendingly. “Say you have two men, identical in every way, except one had more money than the other. The one with more money has a larger ball of Impact than the poorer one. The same is true with physical strength, status, magical power… Anything. Any measurable advantage that you have toward impacting the course of future events is reflected in the size of your Impact.”

“Okay, I think I get it,” Jeb said, nodding.

“Now, The System was designed by a wizard in Pharos a fuck-off long time ago, as a way to regulate Impact and how it works. To manipulate a dimension that we can only perceive through environmental cues and guesswork.”

Jeb frowned.

“As a hypothetical, what do you think would happen if we flipped the order? What if, without changing anything else, you were to increase the size of someone’s ball of Impact in the fifth dimension?”

Jeb considered it for a moment. If Impact was the measure of how much a person or thing could affect the future, then having more of it would mean they could affect the future more….

“They’d get more powerful?”

“Bam! Got it on the first try!” Smartass blew her little party-kazoo again. Wonk!

“So this ancient wizard thought to himself, ‘I wonder if I could forcibly move Impact from one creature to myself.’ That’s The System. Normally, when you kill something, their Impact unravels and dissipates into the environment of the fifth dimension in a fraction of a second. Some of it might stick to you, but probably not.

“With The System, though,” Smartass said, hovering inches from his face. “The System exists in the fifth dimension as well, and when someone with it installed kills something, The System takes the Impact that would have been unraveled and lost to the environment and adds it to the User in a convenient, structured way.

“And that, my friend, takes the forms of levels, Classes, and Abilities.”

“…I don’t have The System, though,” Jeb said. What good was telling him all this? It was neat, and interesting to think of, but ultimately useless to him. He’d been blacklisted from The System.

Smartass threw her head back and groaned. “Stick with me, okay?”

“Sure.”

“This next piece of knowledge I’m about to lay on you is much rarer and more valuable and absolutely taboo to spread to outsiders.”

“Okay.”

Smartass flew up into his face. “I need you to swear.”

“Swear what?”

“Swear that you won’t spread this knowledge by any means.”

Jeb eyed the fairy for a moment before raising his right hand. “I swear I will not spread the knowledge Smartass is about to impart on me by any means.”

Click. Jeb felt something shift inside him, locking into place.

“What the hell was that?”

“Good. Means it’s working,” Smartass said with a grin as she fluttered in quick barrel rolls of excitement.

“What just happened?”

“Something that very few people know is that individuals have different qualities to their Impact.”

“Yeah, but what just happened?” Jeb asked again.

“I’m getting to it. The Fate dimension has its own rules, and something akin to the laws of gravity, whereby certain balls of Impact can attract and consume others.”

“You’re not gonna tell me you just ate my Impact and I’m a trusting idiot, are you?” Jeb asked.

“No, shut up.” Smartass scowled at him. “Every thinking, deciding creature has the ability to naturally alter the quality of their Impact. You just got the ball rolling by not speaking any lies for a hundred days. The longer you can maintain that, the better off you’ll be. After flushing all the untruths out of your system, your Impact is now sticky, capable of stealing chunks of Impact and adding it to your own.”

“Like washing off a rubber sticky hand,” Jeb said, nodding.

Smartass stared at him for a moment. “…Sure.”

“Here’s something I don’t get: If any form of power is reflected in your Impact, why not just steal money, lie and sleaze your way to the top?”

“Well, you could, but that kind of Impact—money, status and possessions—are easy to strip away. Real power can’t be taken away from you. Our kind of power, anyway. Fairy power.”

“Explain.”

“Now that you are ‘sticky’ in the fifth dimension, people will start to rub off on you. No, not like that, shut up. I mean a little extra Impact will stick to you with every exchange of power and become absorbed by yours, adding to your intangibles.”

…..

The fuck is she going on about?

“Explain?”

“Deals! I’m talking about deals!” Smartass said with a sigh. “I swear, M&M-Lord, you’re the dumbest human I’ve ever taught this.”

“Also the only one, I imagine?” Jeb asked.

“Correct,” Smartass said, smiling.

“Impact is defined as a measure of potential influence on the future, understand?”

“Yeah. I got that part.”

“So what happens to a person if they enter into a disadvantageous bargain that benefits them little and costs them dearly? Say, paying someone to trim their lawn with all the money they possess?”

“Well, I imagine their Impact would shrink,” Jeb said.

“Not shrink, exactly,” Smartass said. “Shaved away. Taken by the one who benefitted from the bargain, the one who walked away with their money.”

“Take the money away from him, and the extra Impact is gone, though,” Jeb said with a shrug. “I’m not seeing where this is going, exactly.”

Smartass rolled her eyes. “When a fairy makes a Deal like that, a little bit of extra Impact sticks to them, increasing their intangible power, regardless of what happens to the money.”

“So fairies grow a little more powerful from each raw deal they successfully pull off?”

“Yes! Now you’re getting it!”

“And this behavior isn’t limited to fairies. Humans can do it, too. You simply have to never lie, and tempt people into Deals that are against their own interest—two behaviors that are diametrically opposed….”

Jeb frowned. “Is that why you’re a quarter inch taller since we met? Have you been siphoning my Impact away?” Jeb asked.

Smartass’s eyes darted off to the side.

“Well, I don’t need your help, so I guess—”

“Just the tiniest bit!” Smartass admitted, her eyes wild. “Your Fate is so tasty! And it’s only the amount of effort it takes you to find a single pound of sugar each month. That’s not so bad, right? It’s like donating blood once a month! That’s practically a steal by usual familiar rates!”

“How do you gain Impact from me giving you candy?” Jeb asked, frowning.

“You have to spend your time, effort and sometimes money on it—energy that could be used elsewhere to affect the course of the future. Being saddled with that debt is, on the surface, a negative drain on your Impact.”

“But not a big one?” Jeb asked, eyeing the fairy.

She shook her head wildly. “Tiny.”

“Fine, the deal continues.”

“Whoo!” Smartass fist-pumped.

“So you gain more power from screwing people over on deals. How? What does that look like?”

“Well, you’ve already seen the stats The System uses. Body, Myst, and Nerve. They are representative of the three kinds of Deals you can make with another creature, and each falls into one of those categories.”

“How so?” Jeb asked, folding his hands over his stomach as he watched Smartass pace back and forth.

“Well, any Deal involving a transfer of tangible goods will give you Body. It is by far the most common Deal.”

“Okay.”

“If you were to trade for information or social power, you would be in the Nerve category.”

“So if I took someone’s…blueprints for a machine, or traded a service for their seat on a council or something? That would give me Nerve?”

“Yes. Well…mostly.”

“What do you mean by ‘mostly’?” Jeb asked.

“It’s far more art than science,” Smartass said. “Every successful Deal will give you a complex mixture of thousands of different tiny improvements throughout your body. The three categories of Body, Myst and Nerve are a simplification created by The System. It could be a little of this, a little of that, it could improve one aspect of your body more than another; there’s really no way to tell.”

“But on average…”

“Yes, on average, that’s what the Deals will do: raise your Body, Myst and Nerve.”

“What about Myst? How do I raise that?”

“If you can convince people to pay you with things that are key to their emotions and identity—such as their appearance, objects that hold great sentimental value, their relationships, or their memories.”

“Acorn got Myst when he took Jessica’s hair, didn’t he?”

Smartass giggled, nodding, and Jeb frowned in thought.

“What if a man’s seat on a council was key to his self-image?” Often, that was the case.

“That’s why this is an art. You would get a mixture of Nerve and Myst, should you convince him to part with it.”

“So let me get this straight,” Jeb said, raising his hands.

“Okay.”

“Your method is outlandishly slower than just killing things and taking their Impact via The System,” Jeb said, ticking off his finger. A person couldn’t go around making bad deals at the same speed someone could go around killing monsters. Not even close. People wouldn’t enter a bad deal unless they were desperate, and you couldn’t even lie to them about it, either.

“It’s got arbitrary rules that force you to adhere to a weird, fae model of behavior,” Jeb said, ticking off another finger.

“And there’s no way to accurately control what kind of power you get when you do successfully manage to enforce one of these bad deals.” Jeb ticked another finger.

“Which people will actively try to get out of paying, obviously.” Jeb ticked the last finger on his hand.

“All true,” Smartass said, kicking her feet off the edge of Jeb’s stone cot.

“What’s the upside here?” Jeb asked.

“First,” Smartass said, copying him by holding up a finger. “You don’t have a choice. You’ve been blacklisted from The System.

“And second, and perhaps more importantly,” she said, ticking off her middle finger at him. “No one, under any circumstances, can take the power you gain in this way from you without your permission, short of killing you. Not even the gods.”

Jeb held his breath, considering the ramifications.

“Sold.” Fuck those guys.

“You know, this is all assuming you survive the year,” Smartass said, kicking her heels again. “You’re not exactly on track for that, given the current circumstances.”

“Blow me.”

“Excuse me?” a keegan deputy asked as he stepped inside the holding cells. “Is my translator working properly, or did you just ask me to perform oral sex on you? What on Pharos is oral sex?”

Open mouth, insert foot. Gotta make something up.

“It’s an—” Jeb choked off a reflexive lie. Smartass gave him a thumbs-up.

“I wasn’t talking to you, deputy, and I apologize for any misunderstanding. I meant no disrespect, and I have the exact amount of respect for you that the situation dictates.”

And not an iota more.

The skull-faced alien scanned the empty room, eyebrows raised.

“Oookay,” he said with a shrug and a headshake. “Humans.”

The deputy unlocked Jeb’s cell and motioned for him to come out. “You’re free to go. You can pick up your shit at Zlesk’s desk.”

Jeb was tempted to ask for a cane or something, but he didn’t want to say a word that might irritate someone who was likely already a bit miffed.

Instead, Jeb leaned on the wall as he hopped his way down to the main lobby, where he saw Zlesk processing paperwork before retiring for the night. The bureaucratic bastard glanced up and waved Jeb over, digging around in his desk for something.

“Jeb, it’s your lucky day. Mr. Grenore is too busy to press charges against you, so the matter’s been dropped. The man owns half the city, so he could’ve had you killed, were he inclined. Count your blessings,” Zlesk said, pulling out Jeb’s pegleg and setting it down on his desk.

“Here’s your prosthetic, your coppers, and your…sharpened spoon,” he said, pushing them forward as Jeb gratefully sat down.

“You’ll just have to fill out this paperwork,” Zlesk continued, pulling out a set of papers and straightening them before setting them in front of Jeb and offering him a battered fountain pen.

Jeb’s stomach twisted as he saw the wriggling nonsense lines stamped across the paper.

“I can’t read this,” Jeb said.

“What do you mean, you can’t read that?” Zlesk asked.

“Just what I said. I can’t read it.”

Zlesk rolled his eyes. “Please. Anyone who learned to read their native tongue can read anything written by a sapient. The System translates your bloated monkey hoots into civilized keegan. Or are you telling me you’ve never learned to read?”

Jeb opened his mouth to tell Zlesk that he’d been blacklisted from The System, but realized that line of inquiry would inevitably lead to why…if Zlesk didn’t outright call him a liar. There was no good solution.

Lie without lying.

“There’s a language center in the human brain that, when damaged, can make it impossible to read,” Jeb said.

“And you’re saying you’ve taken damage to those parts of the brain?”

“I’ve taken some hits there,” Jeb said, slumping his shoulders. He’d bonked his head on the left side a few times with the microwave door. Unlikely to cause brain damage, but the statement itself was true.

“Huh,” Zlesk said, taking the paper away from Jeb and beginning to grill Jeb hard, scribbling on the sheet.

“Name?”

“Jeb Trapper.”

“Class?”

“Don’t have one.”

“Level?”

“I made it to level six before the Tutorial ended.”

“Occupation before Earth was assimilated?”

“Retired from the Army.”

“Age?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“Age in Pharos years?”

“I don’t know.”

“Difficulty of your Tutorial?”

“It was easy once I figured out the trick,” Jeb said, leaning back in the chair.

At the end of the questions, Zlesk straightened in his chair, handing the papers back. “Alright, here you go. Sign your name if you can, put your thumb print on it if you can’t.”

“I still can sign my name. That’s a strong connection,” Jeb said, signing his name on the line at the bottom of the page before handing it back.

“Huh,” Zlesk grunted, glancing between the paper and Jeb.

“What?”

“I guess you can’t read,” Zlesk said.

“What?”

“You just signed an admission of guilt for several high crimes that are punishable by death. Either you can’t read or you’ve got the best Balqua face I’ve ever seen.”

“WHAT!?” Jeb shouted, hopping to his foot.

“Calm down, calm down, don’t get your panties in a twist. I just had to be sure you weren’t messing with me.” Zlesk slowly pulled out a lighter and lit the paper on fire before tossing it into the metal garbage can beside his desk.

None of the other officers seemed to be surprised at Zlesk’s antics, the flaming trash bin earning no more than a curious glance.

“Now I gotta fill out the whole damn incident report.” Zlesk groaned, pulling out another set of papers.

“Oh, and the young girl dropped by earlier today, said you dropped this bulb during the incident.” Zlesk took a gold coin out of his breast pocket and set it down on the table with a clack.

The two of them shared a glance, and Jeb knew that was the closest thing that he was going to get to an admission that Jeb was the one in the right.

“I was gonna say to the Abyss with it and keep it, but I’d feel bad robbing a retard.”

Jeb felt his eyes tearing up, a tiny flame of hope for keeganity fluttering in his heart. The girl had done right by him, and Zlesk... Zlesk had chosen not to screw him over...in a backhanded kind of way.

“You’re not as evil as I thought you were,” Jeb said, wiping the tears away.

“Ugh. Just for that, I’m adding that you’ve got priors as a sex offender,” the keegan said, scribbling on the paper.

“Are we…bantering?”

The keegan raised an eyebrow and flipped the incident report to face Jeb, roughly half the boxes filled out with squiggly, indecipherable lines.

“You tell me.”

Jeb broke into a cold sweat.

***Later***

“So I might be a registered sex offender on an alien planet.” Jeb chuckled, nursing his beer at the bar of the only place in town that served humans. It was a bit run-down, and the clientele were mostly scarred bruisers who could twist Jeb into a pretzel, but it was the only place to get a drink, so here he was.

“You’re not registered as a sex offender,” the grizzled man sitting next to him said, the first words he’d spoken since Jeb sat down and started pouring his heart out to the unflinching bartender.

Closest thing to a therapist in these parts, anyway.

“Why, were you there?” Jeb asked, scowling as he reoriented on the skinny old guy.

“A man who would fuck you over on a whim would have kept the bulb,” the old man said, glancing at Jeb sideways.

Jeb nodded. “Fair point. Hey, why do they call gold coins ‘bulbs’?”

“Why do we call dollars ‘bucks’?”

“I don’t fucking know.”

“There you go. So what are you planning on doing with your newfound windfall?”

“I thought I’d help others with it,” Jeb said, spinning the cup in his hands.

“Oh?” The skinny old man’s brows rose and he turned to fully face Jeb. He crossed his palms and idly tugged on his wedding ring.

“By supporting the local economy. Buy myself a shower, a change of clothes, and a night with a girl with negotiable virtue.”

The old man blinked and heaved a sigh. “That’s it?” he asked. “All you want is a change of clothes and company? You don’t want to start a business, or get a ticket out of here? Move to an all-human village and try to make something of yourself?”

“Pfft.” Jeb waved the man’s nagging off. “In all likelihood, umm…” Jeb snapped his fingers and motioned to the other guy, looking for his name.

“Nixus.”

“In all likelihood, Nixus,” Jeb said, the alcohol forcing him to lean heavily on his elbow to stay straight. “In all likelihood, I’m not gonna live long enough to worry about any of that. I’m a gimp. Worrying about the future is more appropriate for people under the age of thirty with two good legs. My way, the gold goes back into circulation, I get one good day. Everybody benefits.”

“If you only act for selfish motives, I can’t reward you.”

Jeb peered at the guy next to him. “The fuck does that mean?”

“Karma,” the old man said. “I believe good people who do good things because they are right deserve to be recognized. I also think that people who go above and beyond deserve to be honored for it. People like you.”

Jeb peered at the old man, his danger senses tingling, sobering him up in a matter of seconds. “Who the hell are you?”

“Nixus.”

“Who the hell is Nixus?”

“God of reward,” the bartender said, idly cleaning a glass.

When Jeb glanced back, the old man was gone, his stool was empty, and his glass was missing.

All that remained was the wedding ring.

It was thicker than Jeb had thought, almost looking like a coin with a hole punched out of it. The outside bore fascinating geometric shapes, and the inside housed roiling Myst that whirled around a central point like a hurricane.

Welp, that’s weird and magical, Jeb thought, scooping it up into his palm before anyone could see it.

“Hey, did you see a skinny old dude sitting here?” Jeb asked, jerking a thumb at the spot next to him.

The bartender gave him a flat stare.

“Are you giving me that look because the answer’s ‘no’, or because the answer’s ‘yes’?”

“You been talking to yourself all night, buddy,” the melas bartender said, throwing his cloth over his shoulder.

Jeb glanced at the empty spot next to him. “That’s what I thought.”

Jeb glanced to his right, where Smartass was floating in a cup of beer, her arms thrown over the edge like a guy in a hot tub.

She gave a respectable belch, her head lolling on her neck shortly before she slipped under the surface of the foamy brew, a few tiny bubbles all that marked her passing.

Damnit, Jeb thought, plunging his hand into the brew to pull the sopping wet fairy out of the beer, spilling a decent amount of her drink in the process.

The bartender did not look amused.

“Did you catch any of that?” Jeb asked Smartass as he retreated from the bar, leaving a silver coin behind. The fairy was sprawled out on his palm, absolutely shitfaced.

“Any of what?” The tiny fairy lifted her head off Jeb’s palm and glanced around. “Where are we?”

“I think one of the gods who voted for me to live felt bad about giving me the shaft and paid me a visit to even the score.”

“Did she say who she was?” Smartass asked, sitting up.

“Nixus.”

“Oh yeah,” Smartass said, lifting a finger. “That makes sense, because—HURK!”

Smartass rolled over and puked on his thumb.

Unlike what they might show you on kids’ cartoons, fairy vomit was not filled with glitter and rainbows.

It was filled with beer and bile.

“Goddamnit, Smartass,” Jeb said, switching hands and wiping off his palm. “Learn to pace yourself.”

“No…natural tolerance,” Smartass muttered between dry heaves.

“Then don’t drink!” Jeb said, just before bumping shoulders with a melas brute on the way out the door.

Between holding Smartass and his bum leg, Jeb almost lost his balance and took a dive into the street, but he was able to catch himself just before faceplanting. The melas didn’t even spare Jeb a glance as he sauntered into the bar.

The orange-skinned, horned fellow was wearing a patched leather jacket covered in dirt and stains, and his hair and horns were decorated with tiny bones that gave Jeb an almost Mad Max feel. He was obviously high level, and making an issue would be…ill-advised.

Not fucking with him, Jeb thought, stumbling away.

He had more important things to do… Like jamming his finger into a magic hole and seeing what happened.

Jeb tottered his way to his alley and was about to go in when he paused, realizing that the only thing between him and prying eyes was a pile of trash about four feet high, which would be taken out…

Shit, what day is it?

Jeb glanced around the corner and spotted the R.O.U.S.s snuffling through his blankets, forced to forage more now that the week’s trash had been taken away. The bigass rats looked up as Jeb peeked over, studying him for a moment before dismissing him entirely, far more preoccupied with gnawing open the can of beans he’d been saving for a rainy day.

“Well, shit. Maybe I can get a room.”

Jeb slipped Smartass’s limp body into his new vest and clomped his way to the nearest inn, seventeen silver coins burning a hole in his pocket.

It only took a few minutes and two silver coins before Jeb was seated on his bed at the Starlight Inn, breathing in the scent of raw wood and stucco.

And trying not to mind the crack in the ceiling.

No. Not gonna think about death and roofs falling on us. We are going to focus on the fact that someone or something gave us a weird magic…thing, as a little present.

Jeb discounted the idea that the strange object could be overtly bad. If a powerful being wanted to kill him, there wasn’t much Jeb could do about it. Same with maiming, curses, etc.

Jeb sat and stared at the ring with the swirling hurricane of Myst in the center. He had to assume it was most likely a good thing, because anything else wouldn’t make sense.

Hesitantly, Jeb poked his least favorite finger through the hole. Just the tip at first, but when nothing happened, he got up the gumption to put his whole left pinky through it.

Nothing happened. He couldn’t even feel the Myst interacting with him. Jeb’s finger didn’t interrupt the swirl of Myst, and vice versa.

Hmm….

“Activate,” Jeb said, clenching his fist and pointing at the wall.

“Go!”

“Shoot!”

“Pew, pew, pew!”

Jeb took the ring off, set it on the table and reached into his Myst Core. I hope I don’t have to pay for a new table. Or get sucked into the blender dimension.

Jeb’s Myst Core was barely a flicker of the size it had been when he was in the Tutorial, a sad little candle compared to the massive star it had been right before the end.

Jeb pictured his straw siphoning out the faint Myst that hung around the edges of his tiny star, drawing it out in a thread.

The Myst was dull, and slow to react, but Jeb managed to prod it into motion, creating an ultrafine thread of Myst connected to him.

He carefully spooled it out and poked the ring’s outer metal.

The ring shifted slightly.

He poked the Myst hurricane spinning in the center of the ring.

Nothing. The Myst swirling in the center rebuffed his efforts, pushing Jeb’s own Myst away like a fart in a windstorm.

“Well, that’s probably not gonna work,” he said, crossing his arms and glaring at the ring, trying to will it into working.

Reveal your secrets to me!

“He could have left a manual,” Jeb muttered.

“Technically true,” Smartass groaned from Jeb’s pocket.

“What if I shake it really hard….”

Jeb spent the next hour or so fiddling with the magic ring to no avail, until he got bored and jammed the uncomfortable thing back onto his finger. It’ll do something…sooner or later.

Jeb flopped onto his back, making sure not to squish Smartass, and stared at the ceiling.

There’s that crack again.

This ceiling is the same color as the barracks.

No, the barracks was beige. This is taupe.

Is that crack getting bigger?

Is The Spike about to come through the ceiling and crush me?

Has it already?

Jeb took a deep breath and ran his thumb over the scar on his palm, evidence that the past was in the past. He carefully recounted the events leading up to today, and while they were outlandish, they didn’t have the disjointed skipping-about of dying neurons trying to make sense of oxygen deprivation.

They were too cohesive. The narrative was too fluid. It had to be real.

I am alive.

Jeb closed his eyes, taking deep breaths as he began trying to relax in the deathtrap of an inn. Counting breaths, counting sheep, counting Smartass’s toes; counting anything he could to relax and keep his mind off—

Nope, not gonna think about it.

Jeb walled those thoughts off, blockading them before they could even reach those well-trodden roads, letting them wither away in his brain.

His chest began itching.

That’s just my nerves. There’s nothing wrong with my chest.

To prove it wasn’t anything to worry about, Jeb went to scratch the itch. Just scratching an itch. Nothing out of the ordinary here. All fine.

Jeb reached up and tried to scratch his sternum, but something blocked his hand, sending a thrill of panic through him. Is there something on my chest right now? Something in it!?

When he brought his fingers back to his face, they were drenched in blood.

“FUCK!”

Jeb jerked out of sleep, heartbeat pounding in his temples as he sat up. He spotted a pair of feet tumbling away from him in the dark as Smartass was launched off his chest like a stone from a catapult, flailing all the way down to the inn’s wooden floor.

“Ow,” Smartass groaned into the rough-hewn wood.

Jeb struggled to get his jackhammer of a heartbeat under control as he tried to defuse the panic whirling around inside him.

It was just Smartass sleeping on my chest again. I’m fine.

Practically against his will, Jeb’s body got out of bed and began pacing, trying to ride out the adrenaline eating away at his nerves like acid.

Long, slow breaths. It’s not real.

Jeb stopped counting when he reached thirty-seven breaths and his heart finally settled to a near-normal rate.

Maybe I can get back to sleep again. He glanced at the window.

The sun was coming up.

Damnit. It was never this bad in the Tutorial.

Jeb’s jaw dropped.

“Smartass, I think I need something trying to kill me so I don’t kill myself.”

Smartass levered herself up, peering at him in the dim light. “That makes no sense. But you’re telling the truth.”

Chapter 3: Job Hunting

“You wanna run that by me again?” Zlesk asked, twiddling his battered pen between his fingers.

“I said, do you have any dangerous jobs that you outsource to civilian contractors? This is like the Wild West, isn’t it? Where are the ‘dead or alive’ posters?” Jeb asked, glancing around the alien’s office.

“If you don’t have anything relevant to say, I haven’t had breakfast yet and I’ve got shit to do, sooo…”

“So give me something to do.” Jeb thought for a moment. “Like that stacked lady who killed the blond guy disappearing settlements out on the edge of the Stitch. I could do that: Hunt murderers for fun and profit.”

Zlesk let out a short bark of laughter. “Those are imperial enforcers, hand-picked and sworn to the throne, not mercenaries or bounty hunters. They are level one hundred at least, and they’re sent after the kind of monsters that you couldn’t imagine, not your typical bandit or sand-pirate. They have Myst, meaning they’re aristocrats, too. The idea of you asking for one of their jobs is as ludicrous as walking into Baron Hortz’s office and taking a shit on his desk.”

“…So mercenaries and bounty hunters do exist,” Jeb said. As well as sand-pirates, which sound really fucking cool.

“Ugh.” Zlesk face-palmed. “You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

“I don’t see what you stand to lose by giving me something here. Either way, I won’t be bothering you by begging on the corner anymore.”

Zlesk glared at him for a moment. “I can’t in good conscience help a one-legged, level six civilian perform assisted suicide. I’ll have no part in it.”

“You know I’m just going to ask someone else until someone gives me what I want,” Jeb said, leaning back in the seat.

Zlesk gave him a calculating look before he sighed. “Fine.” He drew out the cabinet drawer and retrieved an official-looking document.

“This is a recommendation for the Hunter’s Association.” He spoke as he filled out the paper. “Their members handle things like bounty and monster hunting.”

“How about gathering herbs or killing rats in cellars?” Jeb asked.

Zlesk cocked an eyebrow. “No. That’s stupid.”

“Just checking.”

Zlesk filled out Jeb’s information and then wrote a short note at the bottom of the page.

“There. You have my official recommendation. You should have no problem joining the Hunter’s Association with that. Go get yourself killed.”

“Much appreciated. I’ll make good use of it,” Jeb said, giving a keegan bow as he took the piece of paper and folded it into the breast pocket of his new clothes.

Jeb clomped his way out of the station, wincing at the early morning sun. He walked down onto the main street and waited until he was out of sight of the station.

Fool me once… Jeb thought, unfolding the paper. He snagged a keegan passing by.

“Excuse me, what’s this say?” Jeb asked, showing him the note on the bottom.

The keegan scanned the script, then gave Jeb a glance, letting out an amused snort before he continued walking.

Yeah, I thought so.

It took a couple more tries before someone actually read it aloud for him instead of laughing.

‘The man you see before you is a simpleton. Please blacklist him from the Hunter’s Association before he gets himself or others killed. —Zlesk Frantell, Sheriff of Kalfath’

“Aw, he really does care about me,” Jeb said as he walked away from the laughing keegan, scanning the indecipherable scribbles. It wasn’t too hard to isolate the signature.

Gonna need a pen, Jeb thought, clinking his remaining stack of ten silver coins together.

After a little shopping around at the Hunter’s Association and eight silvers’ worth of bribes for inscription and translation, Jeb had an identical application paper with a glowing recommendation, minus the sheriff’s signature of course.

Jeb did that part himself, moving ink one iota at a time, stamping out a perfect duplicate of the man’s signature with his telekinesis.

Jeb Trapper is a resourceful former soldier whose accomplishments during the Tutorial more than qualify him for the most difficult jobs. Give him a task and let the results speak for themselves.

—Zlesk Frantell, Sheriff of Kalfath

Text lies counted as well, of course, but none of it was a direct lie, and the only thing Jeb wrote himself was the sheriff’s name and title, oddly close to another statement that was totally true. There must have been enough layers of separation between him and outright lying, because Smartass gave him the go-ahead.

“You’re still good,” Smartass said, giving him a thumbs-up.

“Nice,” Jeb said, inspecting the two papers closely before burning the original.

“Thank you, Zlesk,” Jeb said, folding the recommendation and slipping it into his new vest pocket.

The Hunter’s Association was more...mundane than Jeb expected. It smelled like a boxy office in an abandoned mall, of must and faint cleaning agents.

The lighting was decent, owing to a bright bulb in the ceiling Jeb was fairly sure was magical, but the edges of the carpet were frayed.

From the fantasy novels Jeb had read in the past, he half-expected it to be filled with rough-and-tumble types, drinking beers between missions…

But who the hell would give guys like that an excuse to clump up and start trouble? Let them go to the bar and cause trouble there.

Nope, this place was designed to be somewhat inhospitable. There were a couple chairs next to a desk with a bunch of papers suspended in little wooden cubbies…

That’s it! Jeb thought to himself, snapping his fingers. This place reminds me of the DMV, except less popular.

There was a bored-looking melas woman, somewhat overweight, with snaggleteeth and arms as thick as Jeb’s thighs. Her skin was a more sickly shade of orange than most of the horned folk.

“Bree! You’re still here!” Jeb said, clomping forward. Bree had helped him get a blank application earlier in the day. She was dour, but helpful.

“And you’re back,” she said, sourly. “Whaddya want?”

“Zlesk gave me his recommendation,” Jeb said, handing her the note and not bothering to mention that the one he was handing her was not Zlesk’s recommendation.

“This it?” She grunted, taking it out of his hand.

Shit!

“It’s got his name on it, doesn’t it?” Jeb asked, projecting as much innocence as possible.

Bree raised a brow and scanned the document before pulling out some more paperwork of her own, filling it out in triplicate and then smashing the papers with a giant stamp that rattled her thin-boarded desk.

Jeb was half worried she might punch a hole through it, but the rickety thing held up like a champ.

“You left your bank account information blank,” she said, pointing to it.

“Don’t have one,” Jeb said.

“Your funeral,” Bree muttered, making a note. “Half the stabbings on this block are when some fool walks out of this office with a juicy bounty that they had to receive in person.”

“Sounds like it’d be a good idea to get one,” Jeb said.

Bree grunted and nodded, continuing her work until she finally slid all the papers away under her desk and met his gaze.

“Alright. Paperwork’s done. If you come back with a bounty, we’re authorized to pay you now.”

“Nice,” Jeb said.

She stared at him.

He stared at her.

She stared at him.

“You gonna give me a bounty or something?” Jeb asked.

“What? Lorten’s dick, is that what you’re hanging around for?”

“Let’s just assume I don’t know anything about how the empire’s bounty system works,” Jeb said.

Bree heaved a rumbling sigh and opened the front of her desk, where it lifted up on a cleverly-concealed hinge. She stepped up to him and Jeb realized the melas woman outsized him by half a foot in height and two feet in width.

“C’mere,” she said, motioning him to follow. “There’s the bounties,” she said, pointing to a rack full of stacks of paper with various pictures of people’s faces and drawings of monsters. “You can take one of each for reference. If I catch you emptying out a stack, or hiding one so no one else sees it, I will break you over my knee. When you finish the job, bring back a piece of them and we’ll run it through Old Grindy. Something about the size of a finger should do. If you got the right guy, we’ll pay you the price listed on the paper. If you killed the wrong guy…”

“Will you break me over your knee?”

“Punishment, somewhere between hard labor and execution, depending on whether the person you dropped was a Citizen.”

“Are there normally this many bounties?” Jeb asked, flipping through the hand-drawn images looking for a monster, but they were few and far between. If Jeb could help it, he didn’t really want to walk up and murder some random guy for a paycheck. At least, not yet.

Most of the pictures were of melas men, including the one who’d bumped into him the night before. Jeb could tell by the shape of the face and the little bones woven into his horns and hair.

Jeb briefly considered killing the guy for profit, but decided against it.

“Normally? No,” Bree said. “But public order sank like a rock ever since the Stitching. The bonanza to the east made fortune hunters crawl out of the woodwork, and wherever fortune hunters go, they bring lawlessness with them. The Split Mountains are practically honeycombed with outlaws.”

“The Split Mountains?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what they were called in your world, but when they got Stitched onto Pharos, they got cut apart and split up, leaving great slices of bare rock hundreds of miles long, ore veins exposed to air like a wench with her skirt blown up and a tattoo showing where to stick it.”

“That’s descriptive,” Jeb said, frowning. He had been in Oregon, so to the east was…

“Oh, I think they were called the Rocky Mountains,” Jeb said.

“That’s a stupid name. Like calling it the ‘dirty dirt’.”

“Not much worse than ‘Split Mountains’, in my opinion,” Jeb fired back. “If there are so many bounties in those mountains, where are all the hunters?”

“Most of ‘em are dead or run off.”

“Umm…”

“The people in those mountains ain’t stupid. You show up on their doorstep, they know either you’re a rival prospector, an outlaw looking to rob their claim, or a bounty hunter looking to claim their head. Sometimes more than one of those things. In any case, the reception ain’t gonna be friendly. Some of ‘em will attack you on sight. Not like there’s any lawmen out there.”

“Oh… I could see how that could be a challenge,” Jeb said, flipping out one of the few monster bounties.

“How about this one?” Jeb said, pointing to the writhing monstrosity depicted on the paper.

“Ah, sand-worm knot. Acting up because the Split Mountains disrupted its territory and now it’s moving its range farther west, into populated towns.” Bree glanced over the paper and shrugged. “It’s not a particularly well-paying job, but somebody’s gotta do it. And you look like you could use a warm-up. Just try not to get eaten.”

“I’ll take i—”

“Bree!” A keegan woman, identifiable by the fanciful tassels on her shoulderpads, swept into the one-room office like a bouncy dynamo. “Bree, we’ve got a new posting!” the skull-faced girl said, shoving a piece of paper that smelled vaguely of ink into the clerk’s hands.

There was no picture on the front, just more of those scribbles that Jeb couldn’t read.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Bree muttered to herself, scanning the bounty.

“What doesn’t?” Jeb asked.

“This!” Bree said, shoving the paper under his nose. “The reward listed here is criminally low! No one in their right mind would take this offer!”

“Maybe that’s the point?” the newcomer asked, peering around Bree’s meaty arms to read the script. “Maybe he doesn’t want her back?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Bree responded, shaking her head. “It’s not as though he’s got any other heirs. Maybe he’s putting up a bounty so low in order to buy time to negotiate himself.”

“Or he doesn’t care and this is his way of showing everyone ‘he tried’,” the keegan woman said, making quotation marks in a rather human fashion.

I hate not being able to read, Jeb thought to himself.

“So, umm… What’s the job?” Jeb asked.

Bree gave him a strange look. “This.” She pointed at the paper. “This is the job. What do you not get?”

“What if I told you I can’t read?” Jeb asked.

“Oh, you poor thing! All the humans we’ve dealt with over the last four months have been able to read, so we just assumed—” The keegan woman clicked her tongue and snatched the bounty out of Bree’s hand.

The melas woman grunted and went back to her desk as the newcomer began to read.

“On the eighth of Grent, Seraine Grenore was kidnapped by the outlaw Svek Pederson and company. The reward for the safe return of Seraine will be no less than five imperial gold marks.”

“And that’s low?”

“Svek Pederson is a sand-pirate captain. Works with a crew of at least a dozen men. Like so many other animals, his territory got broken up by the Stitching, and he’s moving into new territory. Causes friction. The man’s at least level thirty, and his crew isn’t far behind. You’d need a half a dozen hunters with a level of, oh, forty or higher to safely claim that bounty. And no level forty would do a job as delicate and unpredictable as a rescue mission for less than a bulb.”

“I get it,” Jeb muttered, rubbing his chin.

“Seraine Grenore… Is she related to Garland Grenore?”

“That’s his daughter,” Bree said from her desk.

“The man owns half the town,” her keegan coworker said, slapping the bounty. “He can afford to pay more than five bulbs for his own daughter.”

Jeb eyed the bounty for a while, pondering.

The guy was a dick, but his daughter had done right by him. More than right, even. Maybe she hadn’t been able to stand up to her father in the moment, but it was damned kind of her to give Jeb that coin and open Zlesk to the idea that Jeb might be innocent.

I wonder if I’d still be sitting in the cell if she hadn’t showed up.

“…Can I take that bounty?” Jeb asked.

“Do you wanna die?”

“Most days, no.”

Bree sighed and leaned on the desk, giving him a morose look. “We can’t stop you from trying, but keep in mind that there’s a very real chance you’d get the girl hurt too if you rush in there all willy-nilly. That’s on top of the fact that you’re more likely to get yourself killed than anything else.

“Not to mention, if the sand-pirates don’t kill you, but she gets hurt, you’ll probably disappear.”

“It’s just not worth your time. It’s not worth anybody’s time,” the keegan woman said, waving her hand dismissively.

“I’ve got a good feeling about this one,” Jeb said, snatching one of the bounties before he marched out the door, chest puffed out.

“Wai—oh, there he goes.”

Jeb clomped out onto the street, his mind whirling as he tried to concoct a cohesive plan. He needed more information. He needed— “Ah, crap.”

Jeb turned on his heel and went back into the office. “Do you happen to have the individual bounties on Svek Pederson and his crew?” Jeb asked, smiling sheepishly.

Bree rolled her eyes and started separating out no less than eight bounties and handing the small stack to Jeb.

“Those are Svek’s crew with their own bounties.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Now I just need to find someone to translate these who isn’t liable to sell me out…. Zlesk comes to mind. If Jeb asked a local to translate for him, he’d be more likely to wind up shot in the head a day’s journey from town, so despite being a less than ideal choice, Zlesk was at least proven to have law and order in mind.

Even if he is an ass.

“Maybe I can catch Zlesk in the office,” Jeb said, glancing at the waning sun. It had taken all day to forge the recommendation, after all. If he got back to the jail when Zlesk was wrapping up his day, he’d be pushing papers at his desk.

“Smartass.”

“Yep?” the fairy asked from where she was gnawing on a pixie stick. It was a small part of this month’s pound of sugar.

“Can you spy on Garland Grenore for me?”

“Why?”

“I want you to get some intel. I wanna know why he’s nine thousand bulbs in debt, and hopefully you can find something sentimental to him. Something that could get me Myst?”

“Besides his money?”

Jeb chuckled. “Pretty much.”

“I charge my standard spying rate,” Smartass said.

“Which is?”

“Standard rate. Just agree to it.”

“Nope. How about five percent of whatever I get from Garland?”

“Hmmm….” The fairy gave him an intense glare. “That could be nothing.”

“It could be a lot if you get me good intel,” Jeb said.

“Five percent of whatever payment you receive from Garland Grenore in exchange for the rescue of his daughter, and whatever bounties you claim in the process. This includes whatever you claim in penalty should he renege.”

“I can do that?”

“Did I not mention that?” Smartass asked.

“Does it still give me Impact?” Jeb asked. “I can just…take something if they refuse to pay?”

“Of course. If you can take something.”

“Is that why fairies are always trying to take people’s firstborn?” Jeb asked. “So when they naturally renege, you can take whatever you want and get Impact that way?”

“You’re a quick study.”

“Hmm…” Jeb began sorting out his plan.

1.       Get info on pirates/Garland.

2.       Offer grandiose verbal agreement Garland is sure to renege on.

3.       Fulfill Jeb’s side of the bargain.

4.       Get double-crossed.

5.       Triple-cross in return.

Just the broad strokes so far, Jeb thought, twisting the thick ring on his finger. I wish I knew what the hell this thing did. He was going to need every advantage he could get.

“Alright. I will pay you five percent of whatever payment I receive from Garland Grenore in exchange for the rescue of his daughter, and five percent of whatever bounties I claim in the process, including whatever I might claim in penalty, in exchange for your assistance in the completion of the task, up to and including spying on our soon-to-be client.”

“Hmm…” Smartass squinted at him.

“You know you’d be tacitly obligated to help with a percentage anyway. This is just more explicit.”

“And binding. Add a clause that frees me of the arrangement should Garland Grenore refuse to agree to any deal whatsoever.”

“Done.”

Jeb recited the entire bargain, and the two of them shook on it before the palm-sized fairy zipped off into the sky, presumably heading for the home of one of the richest men in the city.

I really hope the guy doesn’t have fairy roach motels, Jeb thought idly as he headed to the jail.

Jeb managed to catch Zlesk just before the harried sheriff left his desk, slapping the papers down in front of him with a grin.

“Can you translate these?”

“No,” Zlesk said, putting on his overcoat before grabbing Jeb’s arm, hauling him bodily toward the exit. Jeb desperately tried not to fall over, hopping and clacking across the room as he was half-dragged to the door.

“You can’t claim a bounty when you’re blacklisted from the Hunter’s Association, so let it be,” Zlesk said, shoving him out the door before locking the station up.

“But I’m not blacklisted,” Jeb said.

“Huh?”

“Bree seemed to be pretty impressed with the recommendation I gave her.”

“The recommendation?” Zlesk asked. “Not my recommendation?”

Jeb grinned nice and wide.

The skull-faced sheriff’s eyes narrowed.

“Now, will you translate these for me, or am I gonna have to ask around town? You know I’ll be killed if word of that gets back to the wrong people.”

Zlesk snatched the bounties out of Jeb’s hands and scanned them, brows furrowed angrily.

“These people will kill you,” he said, shaking the papers in Jeb’s face.

“Then translate it for me so I can see for myself. If there’s no way I can beat them, I’ll back off. I’m not completely suicidal. C’mon, it’ll only take about five minutes. I’ll buy you a beer.”

Jeb pulled out his second-to-last silver coin and wiggled his eyebrows.

***At the Bar***

Svek Pederson

Est. Level 31~35

Class: Jury Rigger

Ability: Keep It Together

Est. Body 21~34

Est. Myst 1~3

Est. Nerve 8~15

Wanted dead or alive for piracy, kidnapping, theft, arson, murder, resisting arrest, sedition, contraband, treason.

Reward: 12 Gold Marks.

Svek has proven difficult to capture, and is known for his improvised fighting style. Reportedly capitalizing on his powerful Body, he reinforces household objects with his Ability to use as weapons and armor, bulling through opposition to inflict lethal damage.

Last seen in the oil deserts, his location has become unclear since the Stitching. His crew includes...

Hmm, Jeb thought to himself as he scanned through the description of each of the bounties, written in his own hand as Zlesk translated.

Of course they would put level and stat information up for bounties. It also made sense that they would need to estimate, since an outlaw would be unlikely to give them precise numbers.

It just felt weird reading about someone’s Class and level in an official document. It gave him a strange sense of dissonance. Like all the weird stuff had somehow blended in seamlessly with the normal.

“So, you see how dangerous they are, right?” Zlesk asked over his second brew.

“I do,” Jeb said, flipping through the sheets. The lowest-level guy was level fifteen, with enough Body to tear Jeb limb from limb. Thankfully none of them had very much skill with Myst or any supernatural abilities that would be an instant loss. He felt a plan slowly percolate in his mind.

“So you’re going to stop this ridiculous course of action?” the sheriff asked, glancing at him askance. “I’m not above locking you in the jail until you cool off.”

Jeb glanced up at the snazzily dressed lawman looming over him. Goddamn, keegan are tall.

“For what? Being dumb?”

“For whatever the Abyss I want. You’re not a Citizen. But if you must know, if I feel like you’re about to do something that might get someone else hurt, I’m well within my rights to lock you up.

“In this case, I think you’re about to get a nice young lady killed. Because you’re being dumb.”

Jeb didn’t bother to answer, checking for any possible surprises in the pirate crew’s Abilities. He lingered on one in particular: the melas with the bone jewelry who’d run into him the day before, known as Boney Pete.

Not a creative bunch, Jeb thought to himself. He’d seen the guy in town the night before. He might be able to lead Jeb to their hideout.

Maybe he was on a supply run? The chances of him still being in town the next day are slim. Jeb checked the man’s Abilities. It seemed like his Class Ability could shrink things. Definitely the supply runner.

I think those bones in his hair were actually femurs, Jeb thought to himself.

“Are you listening to me?” Zlesk demanded.

“A little,” Jeb said.

“Jeb! Jeb!” A tiny voice echoed off the walls of the little bar as Smartass came flying over to their isolated booth in the corner, a piece of paper bigger than she was fluttering in her hands.

“Check this out,” she said, slapping the fluttering paper down on the table, posing triumphantly. “Filched this from his safe when he opened it. We got the good dirt on that prick now! You use this right, and we’ll be swimming in Myst.” Smartass cackled evilly, rubbing her hands together with glee.

“Do you know I can’t read that?” Jeb asked. “Wait a second. You can read that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be able to?” Smartass asked, hopping up on his shoulder.

“Goddamnit.” Jeb sighed, folding the paper up before Zlesk could get a chance to read it. Zlesk would likely not take kindly to blackmail.

“Where did that letter come from?” Zlesk asked, before frowning, his eyes focusing slightly on Jeb’s shoulder.

“And what’s that… You’ve got something on your shoulder.”

“Fairy,” Jeb said, estimating Zlesk’s Myst to be somewhere between five and eight. Higher than Jeb’s, most likely. The only reason Jeb could see and hear the bug was because of the litany of Deals they’d made with each other.

“Gah!” Zlesk backed away, leaping to his feet like he’d just seen a poisonous snake. He backed out of the booth, pointing a shaking finger at Jeb. “Get rid of it! They’re evil little creatures whose only joy is the suffering of others!”

“That’s not completely accurate,” Jeb said.

“Don’t be fooled by its honeyed words. They’re the bane of civilization! Send it back to the Death Wilds where it belongs!”

“Wow, that's quite a response,” Jeb muttered, studying the sheriff’s animated gesticulations.

“Where is it now?” he asked, brandishing his club. “I’ll squish it.”

“It’s not there anymore,” Jeb said. Smartass had climbed into his collar to hide.

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

“Let me know if you see another one,” Zlesk said, glancing around shiftily. “They’re considered anathema by the pantheon.”

“Yeah, I noticed the gods don’t react well to them,” Jeb said, thinking as he studied his enemy.

“’Sup?” a deep voice growled from above and to the left, pulling him out of his thoughts.

Jeb glanced up, meeting the gaze of Boney Pete.

He glanced back down to the table, where the picture of Boney Pete was sitting on top of the pile, ugly face grinning back at him from the Wanted poster.

This could be a problem.

Chapter 4: Survival Skills

“He’s the sheriff,” Jeb blurted, pointing at Zlesk.

Boney Pete glanced over at the skinny keegan while reaching for the bones in his hair.

Jeb took the opportunity to slip under the table.

Whoosh!

A monstrous femur longer than Jeb was tall swept through the back of his seat, treating the heavy wood like Styrofoam. Shrapnel clattered across the surface of the table above him, some of it sprinkling under the lip and peppering his clothes with sharp splinters of wood.

Coulda been my head, Jeb thought, shoving himself out from under the table and rolling in the direction of the lawman. Zlesk would stop the next swing. If not because he wanted to save Jeb’s life, then just because the next swing was now going to be directed towards him.

“Stop!” Zlesk shouted as Jeb crawled past him.

Jeb got a good look at Zlesk wrestling Boney Pete above him for control of the club before he was back up on his foot and clomping towards the door.

At this point, a stray punch or a careless shove might break Jeb’s spine, so SOP was to get the fuck out of Dodge while he still had his head attached to his body. He was about as well-equipped to handle this guy right now as a Tonka truck was equipped to haul freight.

“Later!” Jeb shouted over his shoulder as he headed for the door.

That was when he spotted Boney Pete mounted over the keegan. The orange-skinned criminal’s broad muscles were bulging as he forced a skewer of sharpened bone closer and closer to the skull-face’s eye.

Keegan weren’t known for their physical strength, and when two people had similar Body, the one with more actual muscle would come out stronger. Jeb watched the sheriff’s skeletal arms descend a fraction of an inch closer to his face, trembling all the while.

Everyone else in the room was either gawking or had already run off.

“Goddamnit,” Jeb growled, desperately wishing for his gun, which he’d left in storage outside the city. A man’s skull might be stronger than a .44 slug nowadays, but his brain would certainly feel it.

No such luck. Jeb’s gaze caught the empty space behind the bar, where the tender had the presence of mind to fuck off before things went down.

Usually, a bartender in a place like this keeps a weapon under the bar in case things turn sour. Jeb leapt over the bar, and ducked down, looking for anything he could whack with or throw.

The sleazy place didn’t disappoint. There was a solid iron rod about three feet long and sized a bit too big for Jeb’s fingers, resting in a holster that kept it secured to the bottom of the bar.

Jeb dragged it free, grunting at the weight as he leapt back over the wooden bar, doing his best impersonation of an Olympic athlete as he cleared the hurdle.

Unlike an Olympic athlete, Jeb’s wooden pegleg slipped from the sudden torque upon landing, sending him toppling to the ground, beatstick flailing out ahead of him.

The edge of the iron rod still managed to skim Boney Pete’s ear, partially tearing it off.

“Motherfucker!” Boney Pete shouted, clapping his hand to his ear and glaring at Jeb.

Jeb scrambled to his feet an instant before a sharpened bone hidden in Boney Pete’s clothing violently expanded outward in his direction, rebounding off Jeb’s beater and missing his liver by a couple inches.

Jeb scrambled backwards, and before Boney Pete could try again, a pale fist caught him in the jaw, scrambling his eggs for a moment as the skinny sheriff slipped out from beneath him, grabbing the outlaw’s arm on the way and twisting it out of its socket.

“Gah!”

Zlesk grabbed Boney Pete’s wrist and slammed it down on the floor, his hands pulsing briefly with Myst as he did so.

Jeb watched, intrigued as the sheriff rolled away from a retaliatory strike with another hidden bone splinter.

Boney Pete tried to stand, but his wrist wouldn’t come away from the floor. His inhuman strength made the wood slats under their feet buck for an instant before the pain of the dislocated arm caught up with him, sending him howling back to his knees.

“Club!” Zlesk said, holding his hand out. Jeb obliged, tossing the steel rod to the sheriff, who gave the outlaw one good blow to the head, deftly avoiding the man’s shiny black horns.

Boney Pete’s eyes rolled back into his head, and a moment later he exploded with dozens of sharpened bones, jutting in every direction like a demon porcupine as his shrinking Ability lapsed.

Jeb was far enough away, but Zlesk caught a couple of the spikes, soaking up the damage with his arms as he backed off.

This seems like as good a time as any to get the fuck outta here, Jeb thought, hopping toward the exit as Zlesk caught his breath, staring at the unconscious outlaw while clutching his bleeding arm, obviously riding that post-battle high. Jeb scooped up his prosthetic on the way out the door.

Jeb really didn’t have time to do the paperwork that would no doubt follow the brawl, and he was pretty sure Zlesk wasn’t going to give him the bounty anyway.

No, what he needed to do was move faster than word of Boney Pete’s arrest. Rather than try and pry information out of the guy, it would be easier and faster to simply follow the messenger—whoever they kept on retainer in town to bring them word of important shit.

Any organized group of outlaws had someone like that who was paid to feed them news, allowing them to dodge large manhunts and get out of town if an enforcer was dispatched. Their supply mule getting pinched was exactly the sort of thing they’d pay to know about.

It wasn’t like the aliens were the only ones who had invented working outside the law.

But we mastered it, Jeb thought, chuckling to himself as he hopped down the street on one foot, slipping his pegleg back on in a remarkable display of agility before he went back to clomping on both feet.

He needed to get to his stash and get on the road east ASAP, which meant he had no time to play cops and robbers.

Jeb broke into an awkward run.

***Zlesk, Sheriff of Kalfath***

“Whew.” Zlesk let out a long, slow breath, fingers shaking as the last dregs of his reserves left his system. Almost dying was not a pleasant experience. He kept pressure on his arm to slow the bleeding. There wasn’t much, but keegan didn’t have a lot of blood to begin with.

This was NOT how I wanted my night to go. Now I’ve gotta process this fool. On the other hand, apprehending a dangerous criminal would be a boon for his career, so there was a silver lining to the night.

“Jeb, I’m going to need to take you down to the station and get your witness statement.

“Jeb?” Zlesk glanced up and realized the one-legged beggar was nowhere to be found. He’d fucked right off as soon as Boney Pete had slumped to the ground.

“Godsdamnit.” Zlesk glanced back at the riot of sharpened bones in the corner of the bar, some of them sticking through the floor, ceiling and tables. He was going to have to clean all this up, too.

At least the Ferravore bones in Boney Pete’s collection were worth nearly a bulb apiece. That would help with cleaning up the mess. Already, scavengers were trying to make off with the smaller ones, regardless of the sheriff standing right there.

“You there,” Zlesk said, turning to a younger man who’d watched the whole fight go down. He fished out a silver coin from his pocket and tossed it to him. “Fetch Clisk and Bon from the station, would you?”

I’m not dealing with this shit by myself.

***Jebediah Trapper***

Jeb was outside the city, panting from exertion as he’d kept up a light jog with one leg for at least half an hour. Climbing a hill one-legged was not as easy as it sounded.

Finally, he found the specific scraggly piece of brush on the side of the hill. He knelt down beside it and tore it away to reveal the top of the cooler he’d buried his contraband in.

Whistling, Jeb grabbed the Dirty Harry revolver he’d found in the glovebox of an abandoned car, and strapped it on his hip with the belt that came with it.

Jeb had buried all his gear in an oversized cooler, except for a few things to pawn when he’d first entered Kalfath. He hadn’t wanted to wind up on the wrong side of the law or get mugged in the first five minutes. A few of the item descriptions he’d gotten from The System had convinced him that getting caught carrying the wrong thing could lead to summary execution.

Case in point, Jeb thought, grabbing his self-powered fireball wand and tucking it inside his jacket, away from prying eyes. The aliens would come down on him a lot harder for that than a handgun.

Next he grabbed the Beautiful Revenge. The old-timey four-walled glass lantern was filled with half a dozen black butterflies, their wings accented with fluorescent blue and purple.

Each one of those babies could carve a hole in something about the size of a golf ball. They weren’t very fast, but they didn’t have a limit to the number that could be summoned, and they were able to be controlled until they delivered their payload of Annihilation Myst.

The best part was that the lantern had been designed to be used by weak Myst users…

Like me, Jeb thought with a scowl, tying the lantern to his right hip.

He grabbed a handful of bullets for the gun and put them in his pocket, along with several of his emergency Snickers looted from a vending machine and some bottled water.

Sweat beading on his brow, Jeb turned toward the east, where the messenger was no doubt leaving the city to inform Svek and his crew of kidnappers.

Jeb was half a mile west of the city. If he wanted to catch up with word of Boney Pete’s fate, he had to run.

“Goddamn it,” Jeb said, wiping the sweat from his brow and taking a swig of water before he resumed jogging again. This time weighed down by about ten extra pounds of gear.

“Smartass, I need a distraction,” Jeb gasped as he ran, tugging out the blackmail letter. “What’s it say?”

Smartass cleared her throat and sat on Jeb’s shoulder to read, to his irritation.

“Grenore. I do not care about your mewling protestations. The situation favors us. The Stitch has dropped a veritable fortress in the form of the Split Mountains between you and your beloved mines. A fortress I own.

“I know how far you’ve overreached with your new mine. I heard it straight from your foreman’s mouth before I broke his jaw. I have you by the balls, and you can do nothing to change it short of paying us our due. If you want your shiny new mine back, you will give us no less than two thousand bulbs in imperial marks…

“However, I’m nothing if not understanding and generous. If you can convince me to accept collateral of equal value, we will allow your workers to return to the mines, such that you can gather the money needed to appease us.”

Jeb blinked.

“Read that last paragraph again?” he asked as he ran.

Smartass did so without complaint.

“Collateral of equal value? Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Jeb asked.

“His daughter,” Smartass said with a shrug.

“His—” Jeb glanced at the fairy resting on his shoulder. “I forgot how you got your name.”

“We fairies have a knack for this sort of thing,” Smartass said, posing.

“Okay, so I think you’ve given me the kernel of what I need to enact part five of the plan, thanks a bunch.”

“It wasn’t hard,” she said with a shrug before her face brightened. “So how are you going to use the letter to take his Impact?”

Jeb glanced at Smartass. “I feel like if I tell you, you’ll do it yourself and take the whole share. I don’t recall a clause where you have to share with me if you take payment.”

“That wasn’t…the only reason I asked,” Smartass said, avoiding his gaze.

“Hah. Gimmie the letter back.” Smartass reluctantly handed it over. “Now we just have to do the part where we kill a dozen superhuman sand-pirates and rescue Ms. Grenore.”

“Simple,” Smartass said.

“Yeah, but not easy,” Jeb muttered, directing the next batch of butterflies to fly above him, keeping pace with him as they gradually disappeared into the sky, too small to be seen against the curtain of night.

They were passing the city in the dark of night, angling for the eastern road when Jeb had an epiphany that caused him to slow his stride for a moment.

“Smartass, I just realized something.”

“Yeah?”

“We didn’t actually make a Deal with Garland Grenore yet.”

“Oohh… That could be a problem. You should go do that. Like, right now.”

Jeb looked back at the city glittering in the dark, a few miles distant now.

“Nope, it’s too late to go back. I’ll miss the messenger, and this will get way harder. I’ll work something out when we get back.”

“Jeb, five percent of nothing is nothing.”

“Relax,” Jeb said. “I’ll figure something out. Rescuing that girl is more important to me, anyway.”

“Ugh! This deal sucks!”

***Mark Jacobs***

Svek is gonna wanna hear about this, Mark thought as he power-walked through the dark of night. He could already feel the heavy weight of the gold coin in his hand, taste the beer it would buy.

Among other things, Mark thought, mind wandering to the friendly ladies on the edge of town.

He’d been tapped to provide information to the pirates a couple months ago, and to be honest, they scared the hell out of him. But he’d made the trek up to the mountains three times now, and twice they’d paid him damn good money for it. The third time, they’d said the information was useless to them.

It had rankled, but Mark wasn’t going to argue with men who could casually tear his head off.

The fact that Boney Pete had been caught was way juicier than any news he’d ever brought before. He was definitely getting paid this time.

Mark chuckled to himself, but stopped when he heard a strange noise from behind him.

Clomp, shh, clomp, shh, clomp.

What the? Mark glanced behind him, his hair rising on his neck, heart jumping into overdrive. Monsters were real now, and Mark was level twelve. He didn’t even have a Class.

He’d taken the Easy Tutorial, wholly uninterested in risking his own life.

And yet, here I am, walking through monster- and outlaw-infested wilderness. What the hell am I doing out here? Mark’s typically strong sense of self-preservation returned in force, no longer blinded by gold.

Behind him, he made out the faint outline of a man limping towards him. The silhouette was human, but something was wrong. One of the feet was a slender pole.

“Who are you?” Mark asked, turning to face the silhouette and fingering his sword, widening his eyes to try and make out the figure better.

Should’ve put more points into Nerve, he thought, peering into the dark. The figure was about twenty feet back and approaching slowly, at a sedate, limping pace.

“Hi there.” The voice belonged to a man, and it sounded a bit on the older side. “Do you have a moment to talk about running information for pirates?”

He knows! Run!

Mark didn’t bother drawing his blade. If the guy knew what he was doing out here, this wasn’t a random meeting, and that meant there was no way he would win in a straight fight.

He turned and ran, putting every ounce of his fifteen Body to work, taking off like a bat out of hell. Professional athletes from before the Stitching would have drooled with envy.

Let’s see a one-legged man keep up with this.

Pain erupted in Mark’s legs as something took a bite out of him in the darkness.

“AAAIII!” He would’ve been embarrassed about the shrill scream if he hadn’t been busy tumbling into the dirt road. Once he slid to a stop, he reached down to his thighs and found chunks of flesh just gone from his legs, overwhelming his ability to think from the sheer pain blasting through his body as dirt and grit got into the open wounds.

“Oh god, oh god.” Mark didn’t think of himself as a Christian, but prayers to God just kinda…tumbled out of his mouth as he pressed down on the golf-ball-sized holes in his leg, instinctively trying to stop the bleeding.

“Evening,” the one-legged man said, grabbing Mark’s shirt and flipping him onto his back before straddling his chest.

Mark froze when he heard the click of a hammer being cocked back. He heard it real good, because the barrel was pressed against his skull, and the sound echoed through bone.

“Now, you might be thinking to yourself,” the man said, “‘My Body is high enough for my skull to stop bullets, isn’t it? Why should I give a shit?’

“Have you ever heard of a compression wave?”

“N-No?”

“Here’s a good example: the bubble that forms on the other side of something that stops a bullet. Say your skull stops this forty-four. Some of that kinetic force will penetrate, and that makes a compression wave, a little bubble on the other side of your skull. That bubble expands outward at high speed, liquefying brain cells, breaking membranes, popping blood vessels, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, god,” Mark whimpered, his life flashing in front of his eyes. I should’ve went into the Hard Tutorial with Sara.

“Now, it might kill you, it might put you in a coma, or it might just lobotomize you and make you a simpleton. I don’t know for sure. I’m not a doctor. What I do know, is that it will end life as you know it.

“So, you gotta ask yourself one question. Is my soft, squishy brain strong enough to shrug off a compression wave from a point-blank forty-four? Well? Is it...punk!?”

“No! It’s not, please, don’t shoot me!” Mark sobbed.

“Okay, back to my original question. Do you have some time to talk about pirates?”

“Yes!”

“Good, umm…” The gun nudged his forehead, making him flinch. “What’s your name?”

“Mark!”

“Mark, I want you to tell me everything you know about Svek Pederson’s crew.”

Mark did so, telling the whole story between sobs. He gave the brown-haired man everything, from the time he’d been hauled into a side alley by one of the bruisers, up until now. He gave him the password, the location of the meeting point, everything he could think of. Mark didn’t even think to lie to the guy, he was so terrified.

The man digested all of this with a contemplative scowl. “Hmm. And you’ve seen how many of them in person?”

“I only ever meet two. They put a bag over my head and bring me to Svek! It’s in some kind of tent made of leather or something, it smells like cheese sometimes and—”

“That’s plenty,” the man said, raising his other hand. He leaned close, and Mark could smell the beer on the man’s breath. “Mark, before I let you go, I’m going to ask you to do something, and it’s going to sound like a fetish thing, but it’s really not.”

“W-what?” Mark asked, swallowing hard as the man began rummaging around in Mark’s pockets.

“I want you to say some very specific things for me before I get off.”

***Jeb Trapper***

“That stuff about compression waves was all true!?” Smartass demanded.

“All true.”

“Wow.”

Jeb directed the next three butterflies to emerge from the lantern to join the growing swarm high above him. They were so high and so numerous that they looked like a wisp of cloud floating through the night sky.

And that suited Jeb just fine.

Jeb was at the meeting point, sitting next to the signal fire, just waiting to get himself kidnapped. He’d hidden his lantern and wand.

“I hope that kid doesn’t get gangrene and die. I tried to avoid the knees and femoral artery, but those butterflies aren’t exactly precise.”

Jeb hadn’t been expecting the informant to be human, but it made sense. The authorities wouldn’t think a human was working with alien pirates at first glance. Add that to the fact that humans were fairly expendable, and probably would be for another decade or two, until they managed to scrape together some political clout.

“I’ve never heard of a creature with The System dying from any illness other than age,” Smartass said.

“Yeah, high Body would mean the end of disease, wouldn’t it?”

Jeb kicked his foot off the side of the rock as he thought. I wonder if the doctoring profession is crippled from the vast majority of people being totally immune to disease. Add to that people who can heal injuries with magic, and you’re looking at the end of physicians in general.

Then Jeb imagined what would happen if a modern doctor got a Myst Core.

It’d probably be something easily underestimated like a Salt Core that he can use to change the ionic bonds of atoms in the enemy’s body and give them an untraceable heart attack…or dissolve them, or something. I dunno.

There were bound to be a few of them out there.

Jeb’s musings were cut short by the crunch of dirt underfoot. He stood up on the boulder and scanned the darkness. Despite the rather large signal fire, Jeb was unable to pierce the darkness with his regular human eyes. Whoever might be out there was invisible to him.

Jeb, on the other hand, was lit up like a Christmas tree, standing so close to the pyre.

“E’Nak Chuman!” Jeb shouted the password into the wilderness.

Silence reigned for a good minute, and Jeb was starting to think he’d simply heard some wildlife rummaging around, when the crunch of dirt sounded again, much closer this time. Two rather large melas men morphed out of the darkness, like the firelight had scoured away some dark shroud wrapped around them.

“Evening,” Jeb said, hand near his gun in case these weren’t the fellows he was looking for. “Mark told me—MMPH!” Jeb’s well-crafted excuse was cut short when the two thugs lunged forward, moving in between Jeb’s thoughts like a pair of jumping spiders, practically teleporting to either side of him.

One shoved a gag in Jeb’s mouth, the other wrenched his arms behind his back. A moment later, a hood snuffed out Jeb’s sight, and he felt the men going through his pockets.

Jeb had buried anything a messenger wasn’t supposed to have a little ways away, including the wand, the lantern, and the letter from Svek.

Those were no-nos that would probably get him summarily executed.

They fished out Jeb’s last silver coin, a bit of his change from the bar, and took his revolver, pegleg and shoe. Aww come on, why the shoes, man!? Jeb tried to protest through the gag, but it came out as a surly groan.

Jeb tensed up when the inquisitive fingers seized on his ring.

Oh, shit, I forgot about that. Goddamnit!

Plan, meet First Contact.

A moment later, they pried it off his finger before muttering to each other in hushed tones. Jeb could picture them using their fancy-schmancy System to identify his magical ring and wonder why an informant was wearing bling that could likely be traded for a mansion.

“Enough. Svek will decide what to do with him.” A rumbling voice cut the other off, and Jeb felt himself being slung over someone’s shoulder before they began moving across the mountainside at roller-coaster speeds, making his stomach distinctly uneasy.

They must have been going somewhere around forty miles an hour, judging by the feel in his gut when they made a turn, and generally the movement was more upward than downward.

Ten minutes later, Jeb heard other voices, and they set him down on some kind of rug made of coarse fur.

Ten minutes at forty miles an hour, so somewhere between five and seven miles away from the meeting point, generally uphill.

That described a fairly large swath of the mountainside.

Oh, god, the walk back is going to be murder on my feet—foot—if I don’t get my shoe back. Maybe the girl can carry me.

Without warning, Jeb’s hood and gag were ripped from his face, nearly taking his lips with them. He was kneeling with his hands tied behind his back in some kind of yurt made of animal hide. Dim firelight peeked through the seams of the door flap, and Jeb could hear raucous laughter coming from beyond.

More concerning, however, was the melas man sitting on a hide-covered throne, contemplatively turning Jeb’s ring over in his hand. He was a foot taller than any melas he’d seen so far, and those people were big.

The titanic melas’s horns were huge and shiny, curving up and around in a way that made Jeb think of Tim Curry in Legend. Slightly oranger, but still.

He dominated the yurt, making the large leather construction appear small and confined. There was nowhere in the room Jeb could go that the pirate captain couldn’t reach by leaning a bit.

“Jebediah Trapper, I presume?” he rumbled, glancing up from the ring.

Oh, goddamnit, it’s got my name on it. That son of a bitch god is gonna get me killed!

Chapter 5: Finishing the Job

Jeb opened his mouth to speak.

“Before you say anything,” Svek said, motioning to his rather large gold earring, “I have ways of knowing if you’re telling the truth. If you lie to me, I will kill you and toss your body down the mountainside. Understood?”

Jeb tried and failed to choke down a giggle.

“What’s funny?”

“I never had any intention of lying to you from the start,” Jeb said, chuckling.

“Interesting. What are you doing here?”

“Mark asked me to deliver a message for him. Said it paid well,” Jeb said. This statement was completely true, although Mark had said those words at gunpoint. Mark had said a lot of things at gunpoint to make Jeb’s infiltration easier.

“And your name?”

“It’s Jebediah Trapper.”

“Do you know what this is?” Svek asked, showing Jeb the ring.

“Can’t say that I do.”

“That’s odd, considering it has your name on it.”

Svek’s eyes unfocused for an instant as he looked at the ring with the whirling mist.

“Bestowed upon Jebediah Trapper by Nixus as a reward for outstanding performance during the Impossible Tutorial,” the melas said, eyes darting as he read something in front of his eyes.

“I knew the humans had completed the Impossible Tutorial, but I never expected to meet one. I certainly never expected one to be as weak as you. Shouldn’t you be hunting reapers for the emperor or sipping C’lackcha on a beach somewhere? By all accounts, the people who made it out of the Impossible Tutorial are forces to be reckoned with.

“How did you wind up powerless on my doorstep?” Svek grinned, looming over Jeb.

“Well, there was a whole…thing where some of the gods thought I had cheated, but they didn’t have provisions in place, so they just voted to take away my access to The System as punishment.”

“Cheated?” Svek interrupted. “How?”

“By being underhanded. I exploited a weakness in the treasure reward system to go back in time and finish the Tutorial within the unfair time limit, creating a paradox that the gods had to clean up. They didn’t seem pleased about that.”

“You met them personally?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘met’. More like I sat there while they talked over my head.”

“What happened next?”

“After that, I didn’t have access to The System, so I slummed around in Kalfath for a couple months, trying to live like a civvie until my PTSD started acting up. Then Mark told me I could make a couple silver if I ran a message for him.”

Jeb left some parts out, but none of it was a lie.

“A couple silver!?” Svek asked with a chortle, slapping his knee in amusement.

“Do you know how much this is worth!?” he asked, holding the ring out.

“I do not,” Jeb grumbled. “But I imagine it’s probably worth a lot more than that.”

“This is an Appraiser. By itself, it’s probably worth five hundred bulbs. To a collector, it’s likely worth far more than that, since it’s a unique relic that has literally been touched by a deity.”

“Appraiser?” Jeb asked.

Svek inhaled deeply and pursed his lips, bringing the ring to his face. He blew hard into the center of the ring, causing a billowing cloud of grey Myst to shoot out, roiling across Jeb’s body.

Wherever it landed, his flesh glowed and pulsed from the inside, and for an instant, Jeb felt like he was looking at himself through x-rays.

A moment later, the roiling grey Myst recoiled away from him, leaving his body and condensing into a simple screen with writing on it. Jeb could read it easily, even though it was backwards, the text facing the bearer of the ring.

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 39

Accolades: Krusker’s Brawn, Siren’s Cunning, R-R-RubU’s Mysteries, Gresh’s Subtlety, Innovator, Lagross’s Power

Body 21 (5)

Myst 71 (5)

Nerve 26 (8)

Abilities: Mystic Trigger

Accolade Pending: Lagross’s Power suspended due to multiple instances. Awaiting resolution by Admin.

Attention, this User has been flagged for exclusion from The System by executive order.

I wonder how I managed to retain five Myst, Jeb thought, noting the one difference between now and his starting Attributes. Maybe he’d had that Impact stick to him, like Smartass had mentioned, or maybe he exercised it like a muscle.

He needed to figure out how to get more.

Svek broke into a laugh.

“You weren’t shitting me!” he exclaimed, brows raised in amusement. “You really don’t have The System!”

The pirate leaned forward and studied the numbers closely, his pitch black fingernail tapping the top of his knee.

“Attributes like that, you could’ve killed everyone in my camp. God-damn. That’s a respectable spread even before you add the Myst. Seventy-one!? You must have seen some wild shit!”

“I talked to a mountain, once upon a time,” Jeb said, glancing at the ring. “You’re not gonna give that back, are you?”

“Jebediah, I’ll do you one better,” Svek said, tucking the ring in his pocket, confirming Jeb’s suspicions. “How would you like a job?”

“Is this a job where I have a choice?” Jeb asked.

“Of course you have a choice,” Svek said with a grin. “Death is always a choice. Most people don’t choose it, but hey.” The giant shrugged. “If you want to spend the night getting disemboweled, who am I to stop you?”

“What kind of job?” Jeb asked.

“What’s your impression of Mark?”

“He’s young and a little dumb,” Jeb said with a shrug. “Not deal-breakers.”

“He’s an idiot. He gave someone else the password when I specifically told him not to. I can’t abide that. He’ll be gone by the end of the week.

“You, though. You, I can use. I need someone in town who can do more than just pass messages. I need someone with experience, who can think on their feet, someone with survival skills. Someone willing to get their hands dirty to survive. You strike me as a survivor.”

“A survivor who couldn’t possibly hurt you?” Jeb asked.

“Exactly,” Svek said, putting a hand on Jeb’s shoulder and reaching over him to untie the rope around his wrists. Tying Jeb up was about as meaningless as tying up a puppy.

I wish I still had my Myst traps, Jeb thought with a scowl. He would have had a lot more options if he could just point a finger and kill people, or cut the ropes off with a few well-timed winks.

Unfortunately, they’d all been torn apart in the Great Screwening.

Still, seeing his own status again was heartening. It wasn’t gone, just blocked. And there was some proof that he had ways of improving it, too.

Matter of fact, when Jeb started without the training wheels, he could barely move grains of sugar with his mind. Now he was up to about half a pound.

Which was huge, considering Jeb was au naturel telekinetic.

Seeing my status again? Jeb frowned, having a sudden epiphany. The ring had been given to him specifically so he could see his status. There might even be more to it than that.

At least one of the gods wasn’t down with screwing me over, I guess, Jeb thought as he was hauled to his foot.

Jeb hopped in place for a moment before Svek tossed him his pegleg.

“Now, what was your message?” the giant melas asked, slouching back in his throne.

“Boney Pete got arrested,” Jeb said.

“What!?” Svek roared, leaning forward, his teeth bared like an animal.

Jeb took a step back as heat began to radiate off the horned creature like an oven.

“When did this happen?” he demanded.

“About two hours ago,” Jeb said.

Svek growled for a moment, deep in the back of his throat as he slowly relaxed his posture. “I guess we’ve got your first job, don’t we?” he said. “Spring Pete, and you’ll be well-compensated. Boys, send him back.”

Jeb’s heart thudded heavy in his chest as he eyed the mountain tyrant. He hadn’t seen the location of their base, he hadn’t figured out where they were keeping the girl… He had nothing. If he allowed himself to be carted off, he might actually wind up being a stooge for a local crime lord.

It was time to risk a little murder. Hopefully Svek wasn’t impulsive enough to kill him here, on account of the mess.

“I don’t really want to do that,” Jeb said.

Svek guffawed. “You don’t have a choice, little human.”

Jeb cocked a brow. “Didn’t you say so yourself? Everyone’s got a choice.”

“You sure about that?” Svek asked him, letting the question hang in the air, along with all it implied.

“Here’s as good a place as any.” Jeb shrugged, acting far more nonchalant than he actually was. His heart was slamming in his chest, and his shivering nerves were telling him to run with everything he had.

“Okay then.”

Svek rose out of his throne, grabbed Jeb by the shoulder and guided him out of the yurt like a disobedient toddler. There wasn’t a single thing Jeb could do about it, so he didn’t bother struggling, letting himself be dragged out into the open.

Jeb squinted as firelight pierced his dilated pupils.

The camp was pretty much like he expected: a bunch of melas criminals sitting around a campfire, drinking. The fire was set in a recessed dip in the ground so the light didn’t spread beyond the immediate vicinity of the camp.

There were half a dozen hide yurts set up around the camp, where the outlaws presumably slept on the job. Strangely, Jeb spotted some constructions moored downhill that looked a little bit like bayou airboats.

Jeb glanced at the moon and down at the slope and figured they were on a slope of the Split Mountains facing away from the city of Kalfath, further ensuring the camp couldn’t be seen from the city.

Off to the side, Jeb spotted Smartass waving violently for his attention, pointing down to the yurt she was hiding in. They were playing it safe in case one of the outlaws had enough Myst to be a problem, so she was half-hidden on the roof of one of the leather constructions, ducking behind the furry edge of a hide.

Even if a Myst user could see a fairy, they were small. Hiding came naturally to them.

Jeb glanced down at the yurt she was pointing to and made a note of it, mentally signaling the butterfly cavalry to start its approach.

The only reason Smartass would point to a yurt would be if their rescue target were in it.

Now that Jeb knew where the girl was, he could bring the swarm of void butterflies in and tear these people apart with impunity. The only problem was it would take a minute for the black swarm to orient themselves above the camp, then swoop directly down in an inescapable mass.

Butterflies could only fly at about twelve miles per hour, after all.

Svek’s meaty palms wrenched Jeb to the left, changing his view drastically. In a matter of seconds, he was face-to-face with an ugly wooden X in a clearing near the center of camp. It was made of thick wood poles with thick steel restraints designed to subdue people a lot stronger than Jeb.

The restraints themselves were covered in blood and bits of gore. Flies buzzed around the base of the wood angrily as the lumbering sapients got close enough to make the greedy insects nervous.

Well, that doesn’t look good, Jeb thought, suddenly very invested in figuring out how quick a butterfly could cross a distance of a mile.

Five minutes! Holy shit! A lot can happen in five minutes!

“Gather round!” Svek called, gathering the attention of the surrounding pirates, who were distracted from their general rowdiness by the call, standing up and peering at the short little monkey their leader had in his grip.

“This gentleman has volunteered to be the evening’s entertainment.”

He glanced down at Jeb, malicious pleasure glittering in his eyes.

“Jebediah, you’ve got some balls, having survived the Impossible Tutorial. Maybe we should start with those.”

Stall for time, Jeb thought desperately as rough hands grabbed his arms and legs, hoisting him up onto the sticky wood. His heart was beating so hard he could barely hear the jeering of the pirates.

“Come to think of it, springing Boney Pete isn’t the worst thing,” Jeb said. He didn’t have to add the tremor of fear as they secured the restraint. It was already there.

“Jebediah, my friend,” Svek said, twisting a wickedly curved knife out of the wood of the X. “I learned a lesson long ago from my dear departed father; I’ve lived by it my entire career, and it’s served me very well. Want to hear what it is?”

“No, but I bet I will anyway,” Jeb muttered, tugging on the restraints.

“Never, ever let someone say ‘no’ to you twice. Everyone who ever has wound up sitting right where you are now. And guess what? Not very many people say no to me.”

The towering melas put the hook of the knife in Jeb’s collar and yanked down, splitting his brand-new clothes down the center.

Sonofabitch.

“H-hold on!” Jeb said, mind awhirl as the hooked blade approached his pants. “How about a Deal?”

“I think we’re past that.”

“Seriously! I could tell you the secrets of how to form a Myst Core! How about that? In exchange…”

Motion caught the corner of Jeb’s eye, and he spotted one of the pirates emerging curiously from the yurt with their captive in it. The man was obviously straightening his pants, sending a lance of cold realization through Jeb’s chest.

They were hurting her.

It felt like some huge, ugly hand in Jeb’s guts flipped a gigantic switch from Flight to Fight, bringing laser focus and numbing the fear down to nothing.

“…I’ll take your lives.”

Svek burst into an uproarious laugh that rippled through the surrounding men. Even the rapist joined in the laughter as he approached, although he was clearly not in on the joke.

“Sure,” the towering melas said, still chuckling a bit. “Let’s hear it.”

Click. Jeb felt something inside him lock into place, and he started spilling his guts, everything he knew about Myst Cores and how to make them.

It felt uncontrollable and reflexive, like information vomit.

He gave them everything: from the techniques that the fairies had taught him to gather and condense Myst, to his own personal observations on the nature of Cores and how they represented the user’s ideal power, and his notes on the physics of Myst and lensing effects, only stopping when he’d run out of things to say.

“Damn,” one of the pirates said from close to the back once he was done.

That’s five minutes, Jeb thought, glancing up at the sky, where the stars were blocked out by the cloud of void butterflies hovering above them, just out of sight.

Jeb glanced back down, and he saw the calculation in Svek’s widened eyes as he regarded him. He knew exactly what the pirate captain was thinking.

How could he possibly allow that kind of information to be disseminated among his crew members? There was a good chance one of them would use it to make themselves strong enough to challenge his leadership, or outright kill him.

Svek had to take control of the situation, and that boded poorly for Jeb.

“NNG!” Jeb strangled back a scream as the knife sank into his stomach, so much more painful because there was nothing he could do about it.

“He’s lying,” Svek said, turning away from Jeb to address the rest of his crew. “The cripple doesn’t know the first thing about Myst. He’s a dumbass who lost his leg in the Normal Tutorial, nothing more. If I see you sitting on your ass with your legs crossed and eyes closed, I’ll rip out your spine.”

There was one more thing Jeb had to do. It came to him instinctively. He’d acted in good faith. He had to give them an opportunity to fulfill their side of the bargain.

He forced air through his throat, trying not to tense the blazing muscles in his stomach as he spoke.

“My…payment?” Jeb gasped.

“Here’s your payment,” Svek said, turning back to Jeb and twisting the knife, forcing a howl out of Jeb’s lungs. Through the tears in his eyes, Jeb spotted Smartass perched on his right arm, loosening the bonds on his arms until a simple flick would open them.

“Didn’t you say he was in the Impossible Tutorial?” one of the dumber pirates near the back asked.

“Who said that!?” Svek demanded, whirling to scan the cowed mass.

Now.

Jeb gave the mental marching orders to the butterflies as he breathed in, siphoning Myst out of his Core and creating a slender thread of telekinetic energy.

He flicked the bonds open on his wrists in a fraction of a second, while Smartass leapt between his ankles, tossing the latches open.

“What the Roil is that?” a pirate said, pointing straight up at the veritable wall of butterflies descending onto the camp.

Jeb landed on his knees, desperately muscling down the urge to scream as the blade wobbled in his guts. He wasn’t out of the woods yet. He turned away and began crawling as fast and quiet as he could, the noise masked by the increasingly alarmed cries of the outlaws.

“Attack!” Svek screamed. The pirate lord was much faster on the uptake than his men, and he whirled back around, swinging his thick black nails through the air where Jeb’s jaw had rested, taking a chunk out of the wood itself.

Jeb directed the butterflies to sink down around him faster as Svek stepped around the torture restraints.

Maybe if he’d gone through them, he would have arrived in time. The extra second it took to move the giant’s bulk gave Jeb enough time to bring the butterflies down around himself like a protective barrier.

All through the camp, the sound of stunned pirates getting chunks torn out of them grew to a fever pitch.

Mostly the screaming.

Jeb was hoping the pirate captain would try to dive through the wall of butterflies and put himself out of Jeb’s misery, or wait until the rest of them collapsed in on the center of the formation and tore the guy to shreds.

Predictably, the pirate chose the least polite option. The giant dug the front of his foot into the dirt and flung it up in front of him, sending a violent scatter of dirt and small rocks through the wall of butterflies, popping the majority of Jeb’s butterfly defenses in a fraction of a second.

I hate fighting smart people, Jeb thought, scrambling backward.

Svek grabbed a nearby belt lying on the ground and snapped it straight, and for some reason, it stayed straight. With a couple flicks of his wrist, the melas had used the belt to pop the last remaining butterflies between the two of them.

Shit! Jeb thought, bunching his foot under himself and shoving away, trying to put more void butterflies between the two of them. If the melas got his hands on Jeb, it was game over.

It wasn’t some Hollywood movie or kids’ cartoon. When someone with overwhelmingly superior strength gets their hands on you, they don’t toss you; they pull you in and snap your neck.

Jeb was halfway through his awkward frog-leap when Svek flickered forward, meaty hand seizing Jeb’s leg—peg leg! Jeb shoved himself farther away, the pegleg detaching in the pirate’s hands.

The cloud of butterflies was only four feet off the ground now, so the melas crawled after him, fiery murder in his eyes.

It took less than a second for the pirate king to overtake Jeb, and Jeb felt the huge hands grab his real leg at the same moment Jeb’s questing hands touched down on something cold and heavy. Jeb’s eyes flicked up and he spotted Smartass standing above his revolver, giving him a thumbs-up.

Jeb’s hand seized around the grip just as Svek gave a bellow, hauling Jeb’s leg nearly out of his socket.

Jeb slid back toward the pirate violently, bringing his gun to bear as the pirate’s hands went for his neck.

For a crystalline instant, Jeb and the pirate stared each other down.

Then Jeb pulled the trigger.

…

Gun no go boom?

Jeb’s eyes widened as he spotted the pirate’s finger lodged between the hammer and the frame, a victorious smile on the man’s face.

Jeb felt the man’s scratchy fingers wrap around his neck, and he knew he could break Jeb’s neck one-handed. One second left.

In a last, desperate bid, Jeb reached out with his meager Myst, smacking the bullet’s primer inside the barrel with everything he had.

BOOM!

The fingers around Jeb’s neck went slack as a pancaked piece of lead dropped off Svek’s forehead onto Jeb’s neck, scorching his skin as it rolled off.

Svek gave him a confused, punch-drunk look, a bit of blood pooling in his eyes where the blood vessels had burst.

Then black butterflies ate his face.

Jeb rolled out of the way as the corpse toppled over, squirting blood out of a stump-neck. The move caused the knife in his guts to tug against the ground for a moment, and Jeb would’ve passed out right there, but for the gobs of rocket fuel coursing through his system.

He carefully hauled himself to his feet and scanned the eerily silent camp. Only the occasional pop of burning wood from the fire broke the silence as the remaining butterflies settled onto every surface, awaiting instructions.

“Is that all of them?” Jeb asked, glancing at Smartass.

“I think so. I’ll do a look-see,” she said, buzzing off to survey the camp.

Need first aid, Jeb thought, stumbling to a nearby corpse riddled with holes. He tugged at the man’s thick leather belt, something he could use to help with the bleeding. Normally, the rule of thumb is to not pull out whatever sharp object was inside you until the professionals could do it themselves, but that logic was predicated on a world where ambulances were a phone call away, and doctors still existed.

Jeb gathered ingredients for a good fifteen minutes in the silent camp before he stumbled his way over to the yurt with the girl in it. Jeb brushed the door aside, shedding light on the situation.

It made him wish he could’ve taken his time killing the pirates.

The Grenore girl was chained to a thick iron post drilled into the ground, her body covered with dirty hides. Where the skin was exposed, Jeb spotted bruises.

Goddamnit.

“Is it over?” a tentative voice asked as Jeb took a step into the yurt.

“I think so. Just waiting on word from my partner.” Jeb gave a self-deprecating chuckle as he approached the girl’s chains.

“Seraine Grenore, right? My name’s Jebediah Trapper, and I’m here to get you out of here. Honestly, I thought I would be a lot more heroic when I rescued you,” he said, “but now it turns out I need your help.”

Jeb grabbed the big lock keeping the girl from leaving and peered at it, scowling. Chances were the matching key was on Svek’s body. Jeb didn’t have the patience to go looking for it with a knife in his guts, so he opened it the old-fashioned way.

He grabbed the tumblers with Myst and flipped them, springing the lock open in his hand like a magic trick.

“Did you kill them?”

Jeb searched her eyes for a moment. “Fuck yeah, I killed ‘em.”

“Good.” She buried herself deeper under the hides.

“I know you’ve had a pretty fucking rough couple days,” Jeb said, unhooking the lock from her restraints and freeing her. “And I would understand if you need to sit there and process, but I would really appreciate some help with removing this,” Jeb said, pointing to the handle sticking out of his stomach.

The keegan girl looked up at his face, then down at the knife handle before nodding. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Jeb said, helping her to her feet and turning around while she got dressed. Their species all looked like Holocaust survivors, and Jeb was fairly sure none of the people who’d assaulted her even thought she was pretty. They just wanted to hurt someone.

Once she was dressed, Jeb led her out into the open, where he sat down against the torture device. Next to him was a jug of nearly pure alcohol, a needle and thread, the cleanest cloth he could find, and a belt to cinch it all together.

“So here’s the plan,” Jeb said before walking her through the basics of what he expected to happen when the knife was removed, and how to handle it, just in case he passed out. The process took a couple minutes, but it paid off in spades.

“Ready?” Jeb asked. Seraine nodded, holding alcohol and bandages.

Jeb slowly removed the knife, biting a leather strap through the pain and trying desperately not to cut anything new on the way out. Minutes felt like hours, and when the blade left Jeb’s stomach, he got the unenviable sensation of a gush of warm blood streaming down his stomach and basting his crotch in his own juices.

Then she hit him with the alcohol.

Jeb’s eyes rolled back in his skull, and everything went black.

Chapter 6: Gettin’ Paid

People in the streets of Kalfath moved out of the way as a one-legged man limped down the street, caked in dried blood. Over his shoulder was a rope lashed to a sled chock-full of weapons and overstuffed burlap sacks that rang with a metallic chime every time they shifted.

Some might have been tempted to steal from the sled, were it not for the dozen or so severed heads that rested on top of the pile of booty.

***Zlesk Frantell, Sheriff of Kalfath***

“No, you don’t understand,” Zlesk said, glaring at Bree. “That wasn’t my signature.”

“Looks like your signature,” the obstinate desk jockey said, the barrel of a woman scowling at him as she pointed between Jeb’s fake and a zoning form for an outdoor hunter recruitment bazaar he’d signed for them a few years back.

“But I didn’t write it! He forged it using another signature I gave him!” Zlesk said, his ire rising. “I suggested that you not allow him to join the association!”

“You said he couldn’t read. He said he couldn’t read.”

“Obviously he paid someone to help him!”

Zlesk leaned forward, unafraid of the oversized melas in front of him. “Listen. That man is incredibly weak, stupid, and dangerously foolhardy. He was a homeless bum until yesterday. Did you know that? He’s only level six, for god’s sakes!”

“It’s not my problem if people want to get themselves killed biting off more than they can chew. Keeps the gene pool fresh.”

Zlesk let out a hum of anger. “Listen here. On my authority as sheriff, I want you to strike him from the record, and kick him out the next time he shows up. The man is dangerously incompetent, and he’s going to get other people—”

The door to the flimsy little Hunter’s Association office slammed open, revealing the one-legged man in question. He gave Zlesk a sheepish wave.

Zlesk almost sighed in relief, but disguised it with anger. “Jeb, where the hell did you go last night? I had to—”

Before Zlesk could finish his cuss-out session, Jeb turned toward the door, heaving on a rope, giving a heavy grunt as he hauled a sled up the stairs and into the wooden room.

Zlesk felt the words die in his throat as head after head slid in through the doorway, sitting atop a pile of what was obviously pirate weapons and treasure.

“Think you can ring this up for me, Bree?” Jeb said, motioning to the heads.

“I said something as small as a finger would work,” the clerk grumbled, opening the bar of the desk and motioning for Jeb to run the sled through.

“Fingers wouldn’t have stopped people from mugging me on the way in,” Jeb said.

“Fair enough.”

Jeb tossed her the rope and the two of them shoved the pile of loot through the gap in the desk. A moment later, Zlesk heard Old Grindy grinding up the heads to identify them.

RRRRR.

“Hey Zlesk, what are you doing here?” Jeb asked, leaning up against the front desk, panting and wiping his brow, sweating in the disgusting way that humans did.

“I was—”

“Neil Spetvar, three bulbs!” came a shout from the back.

Zlesk blinked.

RRRRR.

“Jonan Korde, five bulbs!”

Zlesk glanced between Jeb and the doorway leading to Old Grindy, where Bree was tallying the bounties aloud.

“Svek Pederson, twelve bulbs!”

“Nothing,” Zlesk said with a sigh. “I wasn’t doing anything here.”

“Cool. Beer after you get off work?”

Zlesk glared at the smug upstart. “Last time we went out for beer, you used me and left me with an enormous mess to clean up.”

“This time…will be different!” Jeb said over the sound of Old Grindy rendering heads into juice and Bree’s deep voice calling out numbers.

“Better be,” Zlesk muttered as Bree emerged from the back, carrying Jeb’s payment in tightly-packed leather holsters that made the gold visible from the side.

“Sixty-two imperial marks,” she said, placing two holsters on the desk. One was completely full and one halfway full of gold coins.

“Bree, would it be possible for you to hook me up with a bank account?” the homeless kill-savant asked, wiggling the leather pouch. “I don’t feel like getting stabbed again.”

“Normally no, but for your illiterate ass, I’ll make an exception,” Bree said.

“Stabbed again?” Zlesk asked.

“Sorry Zlesk, I’d like to stay and chat, but I got some more business to take care of, and it’s pretty time-sensitive,” Jeb said, grabbing a handful of bulbs before limping back out the way he came.

“Will you hold my stuff for the night?” he asked Bree on the way out the door.

“Twenty-four hours and then it’s mine,” Bree responded, not bothering to look up from her paperwork.

“Thanks, Bree!”

“What do you mean, stabbed again!?” Zlesk called after the limping bum. He tried to reach out to grab the man’s arm and demand some explanations, but an undefinable sense of danger halted him in his tracks, allowing Jeb to slip out of the office, stomp down the wooden stairs and out into the crowd.

“I think you’ve got better people to worry about, mother hen,” Bree muttered as she worked.

“Yeeaah, I got it,” Zlesk growled, taking his leave.

Starting to think that guy lied on his census papers.

***Jebediah Trapper***

Six bulbs bought Jeb a fancy new outfit, a damn good shave, slicked back hair, and a rough, manly perfume that smelled like wood and toughness. Two bulbs for a wicked-looking new sword that he was sure he wouldn’t need, and the sheath to go along with it. He got a nice leather cowboy hat made for a couple silver too, because why not?

Inspecting himself in the burnished mirror of the room, Jeb had to admit, he looked like a successful bounty hunter. Gotta spend money to make money, and this con wouldn’t really work without the right look.

God, I just hope word hasn’t spread already, Jeb thought. He could still punish Mr. Grenore, one way or the other, but he’d like to profit from it if he could.

“Alright, you wait here while I talk to your dad, okay?” Jeb asked Seraine. The girl nodded. “We’re just gonna work some payment stuff out real quick, then you’re good to go home.”

“Are you gonna keep me if he doesn’t pay you?” she asked, looking small, tucked up on the inn’s bed.

Jeb held up his right hand. “I swear, whether your dad pays me or not, you are going home after I speak to him.”

Click. Jeb felt the promise click into place inside him like a lock. He felt as though he couldn’t renege on it if he wanted to. Thankfully, it was a promise he was happy to follow through on.

Jeb paused with his hand on the door handle, a thought occurring to him. Screwing over her dad was going to hurt her too, possibly more than it did her dad.

“Seraine,” he said, turning to face her.

“Yeah?”

“Would you rather live in blissful ignorance, or suffer through a painful reality, if it allowed you to take control of your life?”

She watched him silently from beneath the covers.

“…I want control,” she said, barely audible.

“Okie dokie,” Jeb said, tipping his hat before heading out. He left the girl there and clomped a few blocks down to Garland Grenore’s place of business, an eyesore of a building that dominated the local architecture by a full story.

Jeb watched as a wagon full of what appeared to be rocks covered in sticky black oil were hauled into the warehouse on the bottom floor. Jeb shrugged and followed the wagon in.

“Hold up, who the hell are you?” a brawny melas asked as Jeb entered the building. He had a flat nose and his nostrils flared as he crossed his arms. The very picture of businesslike intimidation.

“I’ve got news Mr. Grenore is going to want to hear. It’s about his daughter,” Jeb said.

The melas eyed him for a moment, then nodded, motioning for Jeb to follow him.

“Right this way,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “I hope you know that if this is a waste of his time, I’m going to have to beat you within an inch of your life.”

“Understood. I fully expect that Mr. Grenore will get what he needs out of our meeting.”

A goddamn wake-up call. You don’t use your daughter as collateral on a debt and expect a happy ending. You just don’t do it. Jeb’s fingers brushed the two letters in his vest pocket, absentmindedly making sure they were still there.

There was the one Smartass had found in the man’s own safe, and the one Jeb had looted out of Svek’s personal chest.

Together, they painted a pretty damning picture.

“Here,” the melas said, opening the door for Jeb to enter.

Jeb strode through, back straight, and the hulking melas followed a moment later, cutting off any chance Jeb had of running away should things sour too badly.

Directly in front of Jeb was the man who’d stolen his silver coin, shuffling through papers with a pair of bifocals hanging on his nose.

“What’s this, then?” Mr. Grenore said, scowling at the interruption. His eyes flickered over Jeb dismissively, not showing a hint of recognition.

The homeless bum in the street might as well be an entirely separate person.

“Says he’s got news about Ms. Seraine,” the bruiser said.

“What are you? Another messenger, come to raise the ransom again? I thought I already told you if you did, I’d pay for an imperial enforcer to be dispatched.”

“I’m a bounty hunter,” Jeb said with a shrug.

Mr. Grenore’s eyebrow cocked. “A human bounty hunter? Lees, please escort this man from the premises.”

Jeb felt a heavy hand clamp down on his shoulder.

“I went through the Impossible Tutorial!” Jeb said before he could be dragged out.

“Oh, one of those?” Jeb saw cold calculus flash across the man’s gaze. “Wait there a second, Lees.” Garland opened his desk and winced a moment as he clipped a familiar golden earring onto his ear-hole.

“Say that again.”

“My name’s Jebediah Trapper,” Jeb said. “I’m one of the survivors of the Impossible Tutorial.”

Garland’s brows rose. “Interesting. What level are you?”

“Thirty-nine. Plus, I’ve consumed at least half a dozen Attribute potions and earned a similar number of Accolades.”

Jeb met the man’s gaze. “I am absolutely confident I can return your daughter to you.”

“And the kidnappers?” the greedy keegan asked, eyes glittering with barely constrained joy at the sudden solution to his problems.

“I’m more than capable of killing the likes of them. They won’t leave that mountain alive.”

“What do you want for it?” Grenore asked.

“I don’t know what the final total they would have tried to extort out of you would be,” Jeb said. He’d seen the first note, but criminals tended to move goalposts. “But I will return your daughter to you for two hundred and fifty bulbs.

“And afterward,” Jeb said with a business smile, “Svek and his pirates won’t be drawing breath.”

“I could’ve hired a team of mercenaries to exterminate those pirates for that much,” Garland said, scowling at Jeb.

“Really? I doubt it.”

“…I’m not paying you in advance.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to pay me before I’ve delivered your daughter,” Jeb said.

“Alright then,” Mr. Grenore said. “It’s a deal.”

“Return your daughter, no more pirates,” Jeb said, extending his hand.

“For two hundred and fifty bulbs,” Mr. Grenore said, clasping his boney fingers around Jeb’s own.

A little spark seemed to travel up through Jeb’s arm and settle in his heart, and he knew the Deal had been struck.

Excellent.

Jeb smiled at the asshole and the asshole smiled back. At least, Jeb thought he was smiling. It was hard to tell with a keegan. Either way, there were bared teeth all around.

Jeb turned and left the office, casually clomping down the street back towards his room at the inn.

******

Seraine was sitting in bed, stabbing the post with Jeb’s shaving knife. Jeb was just happy she hadn’t disappeared. If he didn’t deliver the girl, his Deal would fall through and he’d get no Impact whatsoever.

“Alright, we’re good to go,” he said as he entered. “Do you wanna get supper or something before we go to your dad’s place?”

Seraine gave him a blank stare.

“No supper?”

She shook her head.

“Alright, it’ll look a little unnatural getting you home this fast, but I am pretty amazing. Get’cher coat.”

Seraine got her coat and the two of them left the room.

******

“A-already!?” Mr. Grenore asked, his slack jaw nearly bumping Seraine’s head.

Jeb was standing in the same office where he’d been roughly half an hour ago, this time with the addition of Seraine Grenore, who had glomped her father in the picture of an innocent hug of pure relief.

It made Jeb’s stomach churn, but he couldn’t play his hand right out of the gate. The rules of a Deal, according to Smartass, were that he had to allow the other party a chance to repay the debt in good faith.

“My payment?” Jeb asked.

“I don’t have that kind of cash on hand. I’ll have to liquidate some stock. Give me a week.”

Jeb’s eyes narrowed, calculating. The businessman was obviously wary of Jeb’s strength now. His posture was less confident, more guarded. His security guard stood an extra step farther away from Jeb. Closer to the door.

If Jeb pushed for his payment right now, Garland might actually cave and give Jeb something of equivalent value. It felt strange to say, but Jeb actually wanted the other party to act in bad faith. It was the only way Jeb could claim an intangible asset to raise his Myst.

If he gave the guy a week…the odds were actually pretty good the businessman’s fear of Jeb’s uncanny speed and power would dull, and the desire to hold onto his money would grow. That’s just how scumbags worked.

Since Jeb had already delivered, the ball was in his court. He had Garland Grenore by the balls.

The guy just didn’t know it yet.

Now I just need to give him a time and place for a clever ambush to put me at a disadvantage.

“Here. Saturday after next, one in the afternoon,” Jeb said. “I’ll be coming for my payment then.”

“Generous. Thank you. I’ll have your money then,” Garland Grenore said, before the two shook hands again, both of them hoping money wouldn’t change hands, albeit for different reasons.

Jeb walked out of the office and back out onto the street, ignoring the people gawking at him. They wouldn’t meet his gaze even if he looked at them, anyway.

As soon as he was out of sight of the building, Jeb went back to limping, clutching his aching side as he returned to his room. He didn’t have to pretend to be a badass anymore, which was a freaking godsend. He had to have gained some Body, because Jeb was fairly sure he should have collapsed a long time ago.

Jeb winced as he sat down on his bed, favoring his stomach wound. Once he was comfortable, he tugged the uncomfortable ring off and inspected it. It had been a long day, and all he wanted to do now was pass out and deal with everything seventeen hours from now.

But he wanted to know whether the Deal he’d made with the pirates really had an effect, or if he was simply running on the placebo effect.

Experimentally, Jeb put the ring up to his lips and blew through it.

Thick grey Myst billowed outward, creating a roiling cloud in the middle of the room. It seemed to hang there, waiting for something to come across it.

Jeb stood up and walked into the cloud.

The grey Myst sank into his body, causing his flesh to glow with red inner light just as it had a few hours before, highlighting his bones. A flash of light passed over his eyes, and the Myst leapt back out of his body, forming into a status window.

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 39

Accolades: Krusker’s Brawn, Siren’s Cunning, R-R-RubU’s Mysteries, Gresh’s Subtlety, Innovator, Lagross’s Power

Body 21 (9)

Myst 71 (7)

Nerve 26 (9)

Abilities: Mystic Trigger

Accolade Pending: Lagross’s Power suspended due to multiple instances. Awaiting resolution.

Attention, this User has been flagged for exclusion from The System by executive order.

Four in Body…. That explains why I feel like a teenager…and am not bleeding out.

Two in Myst and one in Nerve. Was that because of the letter? Did the pirates not have any actionable information other than that? Jeb had mostly profited financially from the pirates’ deaths, and as already stated, all material wealth fell under the Body category.

“Smartass.”

“Yeah?” the fairy asked, poking her head out of his pocket.

“Is that a normal increase? Four, two and one?” Jeb said, pointing to each of his Attributes in turn. “It doesn’t feel like a lot. If I took their lives as my payment for the Deal, shouldn’t I have gotten a bigger portion of their Attributes? Some of the people there had at least thirty Body. Hell, Svek’s skull brushed off a forty-four.”

“Umm… How do I explain this,” Smartass said, tapping her tiny chin. “Your sticky Impact can only pick up a certain amount of Impact before it simply can’t pick up any more. It’s related to the size of your Impact. A small ball of Impact can only have a small amount packed in around it before it loses the ability to adhere to more.”

“That makes sense. Like a lint roller,” Jeb said, nodding. So a lot got wasted. Oh well. Hell of a lot better than nothing.

“When you’re totally full up, you have to take some time to convert the new layer of Impact into sticky Impact before you can take more.”

“That’s not going to take another hundred days, is it?” Jeb asked, thinking about his plans for next weekend.

“Should only take about a week, since the foundation is already laid. It’ll get faster as your Impact grows. The oldest Fae can make Deals at a speed that’ll boggle the mind.”

“And once that layer is complete, I’ll be able to accept more Impact in one sitting?” Jeb asked.

“Exactly.”

“What about the distribution?” Jeb said, pointing at the status window again. “Is that because there was simply more Body-flavored Impact up for grabs in the Fate dimension than anything else?”

Smartass eyed him sideways. “You’re a quick study.”

“So I’ve heard,” Jeb said, slipping the ring back on his finger. The status window blinked out of sight as soon as the cold metal interior touched Jeb’s skin.

He carefully lay down on the bed and put his legs up, kicking off his new boot.

“I’m going to try and get some sleep,” Jeb said, setting his arms at his sides. Normally he liked to rest them on his stomach, but the angry, swollen stitching made that a non-starter.

Jeb glanced at a hairline fracture in the ceiling, rubbing the scar on his palm with his thumb. He peered at the chair blocking the door, the bell attached to the window. He felt the gun bumping into his skull under his pillow.

He didn’t think Grenore would try to have him killed, but Jeb would rather be paranoid than dead. He closed his eyes, focusing on the throb of the stab wound in his gut aching to the beat of his heart.

Jeb slept like a baby.

******

The next day was a whirlwind of signing papers he couldn’t read, getting his newfound wealth safely insured and tucked away in the city vault.

In a world where people could shoot fireballs out their ass, a box made of solid steel wasn’t quite enough protection to ensure no one steals your cash, so the bank itself was guarded by a keegan security guard who was reputed to be a level eighty-four Mindraker.

Whatever the hell that was.

The bank even had a hall of fame, a glass case where keepsakes from previous would-be bank robbers were housed. It seemed a little macabre to Jeb, but out in the frontier, it seemed like deterrent was nine tenths of the law.

After sorting and selling the substantial amount of pirate booty, Jeb was left with a hundred and eighty bulbs, and a backpack full of lenses they had stolen from local prospectors, worth a handful of bulbs apiece.

When Jeb asked around, he found out that the term ‘bulbs’ was a reference to a psychedelic mushroom that grew in egg-like clusters. They were highly prized among Myst users in the past, and had been worth about an ounce of gold apiece before they were gathered to extinction.

Jeb got a little annoyed when people kept asking him who he was selling the lenses to, assuming he was going to pass them off to a major corporation or noble house in exchange for a quick buck.

It was apparently common sense that a plebian couldn’t make use of lenses.

Jeb had no idea why he would do that.

The backpack was like a little slice of Earth.

There were a handful of Mountain River lenses that made icy cold water on command, several large Stone (Andesite) lenses—Jeb made a boulder out of one by accident—a bunch of Cedar lenses that grew saplings to trees depending on the Myst injected into them, a few flake-sized gold ore lenses, some pebble-sized iron ore lenses, copper ore lenses, and a single pinky-sized Wolfram lens.

There were several animal lenses. A Hare lens, a couple different kinds of birds and squirrels, along with a single Buck lens about the size of a child’s fist. It looked like it was carved from lumpy antler, sloughing off coarse deer fur that disappeared as it fell away.

First, the obvious question: Why on God’s green earth was a system built around gold as currency able to continue with magical lenses that could literally spit out a nearly limitless supply of gold?

When Jeb asked around, the answer was basically: It wasn’t limitless.

A single lens about the size of a golf ball could spit out thousands of tons of material before it eventually degraded. So, rather than search the hills for a gold mine, it was far easier for prospectors to find a gold lens, which could pump out gold until it busted.

In essence, a lens and a mine were the same thing. They occurred at similar rarities, and produced a similar amount of product before being exhausted.

A mine required a huge amount of infrastructure and labor, which meant time, materials, labor and workers. Workers that had to be paid.

A lens just needed a Myst engine and a way to process the output. The only people who knew how to do that were aristocrats. The ease with which Myst produced raw materials drove the profit margin of an honest-to-God actual mine through the ground.

This forced most value to be placed in the amount of labor that went into making and shipping goods and services. Trading bulk material back and forth was almost unheard-of unless it was in the form of lenses.

The whole conversation gave Jeb a headache as he tried to unwind the strange dynamics of the empire’s economics.

Finally, he decided he didn’t care. Jeb was now the proud owner of several mines/logging camps/hunting grounds he could carry around with him wherever he went, and he had the skills to take full advantage of them.

That was good enough for him.

Jeb earmarked fifty bulbs for the smear campaign against Garland Grenore, another fifty for starting his own business, and the rest for enjoying his week.

Approximately eighty thousand dollars, American monies, to blow between now and the weekend after next.

Oh my, whatever will I spend the money on?

The time between Thursday and the Saturday after next passed by in a manic blur of enthusiastically supporting the local community.

The leisure time wasn’t all good, as it gave Jeb plenty of time to think in between. Plenty of time to stare at the ceiling and wonder if all this craziness was actually real or not. Plenty of time to crawl inside his own head.

Jeb was just starting to feel The Spike making it hard for him to sleep indoors again by the time the next Saturday rolled around.

Which was why Jeb was so happy when he opened the door to Garland’s office, and found himself face-to-face with the imperial enforcer, arms crossed, one hand brushing her weapon.

It was the same melas woman he’d seen executing that reaper a couple weeks ago. She was about six and a half feet tall, big shiny horns, black hair, with the typical muscle mass of a melas. Her dark lips were full and downturned in a faint scowl as she eyed him in return.

Her gaze lingered on Jeb’s pegleg for a moment.

Below her face… Jeb found his gaze wandering, so he tore his eyes away and directed them at the others. Zlesk flanked the enforcer, the lawman looking a little concerned and a little angry.

At his desk, the keegan steepled his fingers, seemingly pleased with his ambush. By his side, his daughter was sitting, her expression one of concern, glancing between Jeb and her father.

“Pay attention, Seraine. This is how you deal with these kinds of people,” he said, motioning to Zlesk and the enforcer.

“Jeb, Mr. Grenore says you tried to extort him?” Zlesk asked.

Chapter 7: Punitive Remuneration

Jeb scanned the room.

As far as ambushes went, it was a pretty decent one. Jeb was curious how Garland had brought an imperial enforcer into the office, but the how didn’t matter a whole lot right now.

The enforcer was the major hurdle here. Zlesk was…agreeable, to an extent. The biggest problem was that Jeb had already spilled the beans about being in the Impossible Tutorial, which wasn’t something he wanted to make known to the government just yet.

And yet, there was a government fixer with the authority to execute punishment on-site without a trial or any kind of due process. In all likelihood, the story had already been spread to her.

Can’t change what’s already done, Jeb thought, gaze flicking to the smug melas bodyguard. The man didn’t seem nearly as intimidated by Jeb as he had been last time. Probably because they had a high-level bruiser here to hold their hands.

“Jeb, Mr. Grenore says you tried to extort him?” Zlesk asked.

Jeb reoriented on Zlesk.

“Extortion is defined as obtaining something through force or threat of force. There was no mention of using force, nor do I have any intention of doing so,” Jeb said, slipping Svek’s earring out of his pocket and holding it up where they could see it.

“If you like, we could use a few Truthseekers to mediate this dispute?” Jeb said. “If mine won’t do, I believe Mr. Grenore has one in his desk.”

It really didn’t matter if Garland said ‘yes’ or not. It was already clear he didn’t intend to pay Jeb. Now it was a fun little dance before Jeb got his Myst.

“An excellent suggestion. I think a healthy dose of the truth should clear things up,” Garland said, fishing through his desk and coming out with a similar earring.

Sure will.

“Use mine please, Ms. Tekalis. There’s no telling what kind of alterations that knave may have done to his.”

The enforcer glanced at the earring a moment, pursing her lips as she frowned.

“You understand that if I put this on, I will be acting in an official capacity as an imperial enforcer and will immediately arbitrate a settlement to the best of my ability, and the two of you will be required by law to abide by my decision.”

“Understood,” Jeb said.

“I understand,” Mr. Grenore said.

“Alright then, let’s get this over with,” Vresh said with a sigh, clipping the earring on and addressing the two of them.

“Unless otherwise prompted, you will answer my questions with short, ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. First: Mr. Trapper, did you extort Mr. Grenore?”

“No.”

“Mr. Grenore. Did you agree to pay Mr. Trapper two hundred and fifty marks in exchange for the return of your daughter?”

“Yes.”

Vresh raised a brow. “Unless I’m missing something, the matter is clear. Is there anything either of you would like to add to this?”

Jeb stayed silent, allowing Garland to keep digging the hole deeper.

“This man claimed the five bulbs held in escrow for the rescue of my daughter at the Hunter’s Association,” Garland said, “only minutes before he met me to offer to return her for fifty times the original reward. He attempted to defraud me by charging again for a bounty that had already been completed and claimed.”

“Mr. Trapper, is that true?”

“Which part?” Jeb asked.

“All of it.”

“No.”

“Truth.”

“What? You said you would kill all the pirates and return her! That was already done! What else could it be other than fraud!?”

Vresh glanced at Jeb and nodded. “Make your case.”

“If you recall correctly, I said that after your daughter was returned, the pirates would no longer be drawing breath, not that I would kill them. In this way, I was not defrauding you by charging multiple times for the same rescue; I was charging you two hundred and fifty bulbs to walk her back to your office. The fact the pirates wouldn’t draw breath afterwards was simply a statement that was true.”

“Truth.”

“That’s kidnapping!” Garland shouted, earning a miffed glare from the enforcer. “He held my daughter for ransom!”

“Mr. Trapper, did you have any intention to retain Ms. Grenore, should her father refuse to pay?”

“No.”

“Truth.”

Jeb found the way the tycoon ground his teeth amusing.

“It’s not illegal for a street vendor to charge two hundred and fifty bulbs for their product, is it?” Jeb asked. “I don’t see any reason why I could not charge that for the armed escort of a young girl.”

“The disputed payment is two hundred and fifty bulbs? That’s fifty times the original reward?” Vresh asked.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Grenore. The original reward for the rescue of Ms. Grenore was five bulbs?” Vresh asked, her expression souring as she glanced at the keegan.

“Yes. What of it?” he asked, missing the frown blooming on his daughter’s face as she sat right next to him.

“Nothing actionable,” Vresh said, glancing back at Jeb. “Am I correct in assuming the agreement you had with Mr. Grenore was entirely verbal?”

“Yes. And a handshake.”

Vresh massaged her temples for a moment. “From what I have observed, Jebediah Trapper committed no actionable offenses against Mr. Grenore beyond being staggeringly misleading, which isn’t a crime.”

“But—”

“By that same token, imperial law does not enforce verbal contracts below the value of two silver. By Mr. Trapper’s admission, the service provided was a two-block escort to Mr. Garland’s place of business. The fair value of such a service falls well below small claims. Without a written contract, there is no legal impetus to enforce the outrageously inflated price.”

“Hah!” Garland said, clenching a fist.

“So, let me get this straight,” Jeb said. “You have no intention of paying me?”

“You should have gotten it in writing,” the keegan said, radiating smug superiority.

“You should’ve thought twice about fucking me over,” Jeb said. “I won’t be accepting apologies, Mr. Grenore.”

“Fine by me. Now that our business is settled, get out of my office.”

Now to get my payment through other means.

In order to raise his Myst, Jeb needed to take something from the businessman that packed a lot of emotional energy and intangible value. Something painful, which would diminish his Impact over the course of his lifetime.

Jeb had just the thing in mind.

“Just a moment. Zlesk, I’m still working on picking up your written language. Do you think you could read this aloud for me?” Jeb asked, offering Zlesk the first letter.

“Now? Can’t it wa—”

Jeb shoved it into the sheriff’s hand. “Just read it.”

He turned to Garland. “I find a lot of people don’t consider the value of trust as much as they should. It’s a valuable currency, you know. Hard to earn, easy to lose.”

“Is this real?” Zlesk asked, glancing at Jeb.

“Oh yeah.” Jeb grinned.

Zlesk cleared his throat. “Grenore. I do not care about your mewling protestations. The situation favors us. The Stitch has dropped a veritable fortress in the form of the Split Mountains between you and your beloved mines. A fortress I own.”

“BLACKMAIL!” Garland shouted at the top of his lungs, leaping to his feet.

“Blackmail is the threat of exposing damaging information in exchange for money. I never threatened to release this information,” Jeb said. “Not blackmail. Punishment.”

“YOU!”

“Sit your ass down,” Vresh said, shoving the keegan back into his seat. “I want to see where this goes.”

Zlesk glanced nervously at the imperial enforcer and kept going.

“I know how far you’ve overreached with your new mine. I heard it straight from your foreman’s mouth before I broke his jaw. I have you by the balls, and you can do nothing to change it short of paying us our due. If you want your shiny new lenses back, you will give us no less than two thousand bulbs in imperial marks…

“However, I’m nothing if not understanding and generous. If you can convince me to accept collateral of equal value, we will allow your workers to return to the mines, such that you can gather the money needed to appease us.”

“That’s stolen! He stole that from me!” the keegan shouted, growing desperate. “He made it up! It means nothing!”

Jeb caught it when Vresh’s ear twitched.

Jeb adopted a playful voice. “You know, I’m pretty sure I saw your men hauling lenses into the warehouse under the office a week ago, the day I returned your daughter…. What’s the round trip to and from your land? Three, five days?” Jeb gasped. “That must mean that a couple days before, they got past Svek’s men somehow! Did they already have the collateral? Hmm…”

“Don’t! I’ll pay! I’ll pay you, just stop!” Grenore said, struggling to reach Jeb as the imperial enforcer held him in place with an iron grip. Beside him, Seraine Grenore’s eyes were slowly growing wider, and Jeb could see the connections slowly forming in her mind.

Jeb felt a deep pang of guilt for pulling the rug out from under a nice girl, but she wanted control over her fate, not blissful ignorance. So, painful or not, Jeb was going to deliver.

“Oh, look at this other letter I found in Svek Pederson’s personal effects!” Jeb said, pulling out the second letter.

He handed it to Zlesk.

Zlesk read over it once, and glanced at Seraine. “Do you think perhaps we should read this some—”

“Read it,” Seraine said. The keegan girl was standing now, trembling like a leaf, but her voice was resolute.

Vresh nodded.

“No! Don’t re—”

The enforcer clapped a hand over Grenore’s mouth, silencing him. “Read it,” she said.

“Okay then.” Zlesk cleared his throat.

“The collateral will be visiting the Ironseed property on the edge of town on the fourteenth. I’ll make sure her guard is otherwise occupied. If I find any harm has come to her, I will rain down such destruction upon you that your ancestors will feel it.”

“You realize they were probably gonna harm her, then blackmail you with this letter, right?” Jeb asked.

Vresh removed her hand from the guy’s face.

“It wasn’t me!” he said, causing the Truthseeker in Vresh’s ear to twitch. “Someone else could have done it!”

Jeb and the imperial enforcer shared a glance, the same thought going through their heads: This guy’s lost it.

Jeb spotted a stack of papers on Grenore’s desk, and sent out a thin thread of Myst, snatching one up and bringing it to his hands. Vresh tensed up for a moment, watching the strand of Myst.

She can see Myst. Good to know.

“It kinda looks like your handwriting,” Jeb said, scanning the paper. “I mean, I can’t read but… Zlesk, does this look like the same handwriting?”

“I think you’ve made your point,” Zlesk said, folding the two letters and putting them in his pocket.

“Nah, I got one more thing,” Jeb said, glancing at the bodyguard trying to remain inconspicuous in the corner.

“Hey, Mr. Bodyguard. Were you the one who was supposed to watch Seraine that day? If so, what exactly happened that separated you from her?”

The hulking melas turned a lighter shade of orange and glanced at Vresh before pressing himself farther back into the corner, seemingly unwilling to say anything at all.

“Enough,” Vresh said, drawing the attention of everyone.

“I am the law here, not you,” she said. “I will sort this out, and you will leave. Your role here is over.”

“Sure.” Jeb shrugged. “I got what I needed.” He glanced over at Seraine. “Ms. Grenore, you chose a painful truth, but I believe you’ll come out stronger for it. I wish you luck in taking the reins of your destiny, and if you ever need help, visit me. I will hear you out.”

Jeb nodded before spinning on his peg and heading out the door. A moment later, Zlesk caught up with him as Jeb exited the doors of the first floor and burst into the dry air of the desert city.

“What in the Roil was that?” Zlesk demanded. The sheriff’s jaw dropped as they passed a poster glued to the nearest wall.

It had Garland Grenore’s name and likeness on it. Underneath the picture was a short and sweet blurb, reading: ‘I gave my only daughter to pirates. Imagine what I’ll do to you.’

Every ten feet or so, there was another poster. Same picture, same message.

Jeb nodded in satisfaction as the ice pick headache began to build between his temples, scanning the poster-studded streets. Fifty bulbs well spent.

“Eck-ban,” Zlesk muttered, stopping in his tracks. “You really went for it.”

“Had to make sure it stuck,” Jeb said as he clomped along.

“But this is just…overkill.”

“Fucker shouldn’t have stolen my silver coin,” Jeb muttered.

“Is that why you did this?” Zlesk asked. “Ruined that man and his daughter?”

“The vast majority of it is because he gave his daughter to pirates,” Jeb said. “I’m not that petty. But I have to admit there’s a certain satisfaction that wouldn’t be there if he hadn’t stolen my silver coin.”

The headache kept growing until Jeb felt like someone was stomping on the back of his eyeballs with cleated shoes.

Just gotta get back to the inn. Then I can suffer through the Myst sickness in peace, he thought to himself. Before he realized it, Jeb was toppling forward, the only thing stopping his descent the sheriff’s palm. He could barely hear the keegan’s words through the throbbing in his brain.

“Uuugh,” Jeb said in response, hoping it was the right answer. His eyes were both crossed and unfocused, making it extremely difficult to see.

The sheriff responded with some more words lost in the pounding of Jeb’s skull, then began to haul him away.

When Jeb’s senses began to return to normal, he found himself sitting in a booth at the local bar, fingers clenched in a death grip around an iron beer stein.

“Why?”

“Because you stood me up last week,” Zlesk said, glaring at him from the booth.

“I told you it would be different,” Jeb said with a half-hearted smile.

Zlesk gave him a flat stare.

“You’re lucky you got away with that stunt you pulled with Grenore,” Zlesk said, shaking his head. “You were in front of an imperial enforcer. There were so many ways that could have ended with you dead. If you hadn’t baited her with Garland…”

“Pfft. At no point in there did I tell a lie.”

“Yeah, and you admitted to some very borderline criminal activities.”

“They’ll never stick.”

“You know I could have you executed for forgery any time I want?” the lawman asked, raising a brow. “I’ve still got you dead to rights on that one, you slippery bastard.”

“Why are so many things punishable by death!?” Jeb demanded.

“Because it’s difficult and expensive to imprison people with Classes.”

“Wow, didn’t expect a straight answer,” Jeb said. “Anyway, I’m sorry. That day ran long, the stab wound made me sleepier than I thought, and I forgot the beer.”

Zlesk grunted. “Don’t worry, I’m saving arresting you for something more egregious than forgery. I want you to get famous first so I can get promoted.”

“Don’t call it forgery,” Jeb said, opening a tab with the barmaid with a silver. “Call it ‘correcting your embarrassing underestimation of what Jeb Trapper is capable of’.”

“You were right, and I was wrong, alright?” Zlesk said with a scowl. “That’s the only reason I’m not stuffing you in a cell right now.”

Jeb shifted in his seat to grab his pitcher, his pegleg bumping against the leg of the table as he did.

That gives me an idea.

“Change of subject,” Jeb said, filling his first mug. “How much would a fancy prosthetic run me?”

“You could get a nice one with a false foot and a couple heavy-duty springs to smooth out your gait for a bulb or so. If you wanted something better than that, with magical support, tricks and some kind of spell imbued into it, it could run you as much as, oh…fifty to a hundred bulbs.

“You couldn’t get that one made in Kalfath, though,” Zlesk said. “A little city like this one isn’t gonna cut it.”

“What if I wanted someone to regrow it?” Jeb asked.

“Good luck,” Zlesk said with a chuckle. “That’s a matter of having a powerful healer owe you a big favor. They’re in extremely high demand, and getting access to one is more a factor of being a powerful aristocrat than simply having enough money to throw at the problem.”

Bzzt.

Jeb blinked as the table in front of him flickered and resolved into a video feed.

“Still getting used to those,” Jeb muttered, moving his beer out of the way. The way the empire could push video to everyone inside its borders whether they wanted it or not felt very dystopian.

“Hi there!” Jeb blinked as Amanda’s cheery face showed up in front of the camera, followed by Brett’s chiseled good looks. “I’m Amanda Courvar!”

“And I’m Brett Courvar,” Brett said, smiling at Jeb with his stupid perfect teeth.

“Speak of the devil,” Jeb muttered, taking a sip of his beer.

The camera zoomed out to show the fitness model couple standing in front of a stack of paperwork.

“We’re here today to kick off a series about how to get along in this wild new world! Welcome to the first episode! I hope it helps as many people as possible!” Amanda said.

“Today’s episode is about how you can register a homestead and apply for a three-year tax exemption,” Brett said.

“Three years?” Amanda asked, eyes widening in surprise. “That’s a long time!”

“Long enough to get on your feet, anyway,” Brett said, nodding.

“The registration is free for humans! All you have to do is—”

With a wave of his hand, Zlesk dismissed the screen in front of Jeb.

“…How?”

“I’m a Citizen,” Zlesk said with a shrug.

“Fucking traitors,” Jeb heard a human mutter across the room, where the scruffy man was watching the Courvars trying to give him vital information.

Sure, they were slutty sellouts, but they weren’t bad people. Jeb didn’t really expect anything less from them than whoring themselves out for massive success. There were certainly more insidious things they could be doing than public service announcements.

“That man owes me a night with his wife,” Jeb grumbled, turning his attention back to Zlesk. The sheriff was watching him with a cocked brow. Smartass was looking at Jeb with a similar disapproving look from atop the keegan’s hat.

“What? It’s the truth.”

“And when did you meet two of the humans who survived the Impossible Tutorial?”

“Where do you think?” Jeb asked.

“You know, lying on your census information is—”

“Punishable by death?” Jeb asked.

“A serious offense,” the keegan said, eyes narrowed to slits.

“I didn’t lie. You just came to the wrong assumptions.”

“You’re gonna have to visit me and sort out that paperwork.”

“I don’t wanna.”

“Jeb…”

“Look. I’m safer if I’m a nobody on paper,” Jeb said. “Due to reasons I don’t really wanna get into, I came out of the Impossible Tutorial actually weaker than I went in. I don’t want the government knowing about me just yet.”

Zlesk flickered in front of him, and the table jumped in place a bit, making their beer slosh around in their mugs.

Jeb blinked.

“I guess you’re telling the truth,” Zlesk said, taking a sip of his beer.

“Did you just reflex test me?” Jeb demanded as he felt a sting on his cheek, a drop of blood rolling down his face from where the sheriff had nicked him faster than he could see.

“Maybe.”

“Fucker.”

“Murder Hobo.”

Zlesk eyed him for a solid minute before speaking again. “Alright. I’m willing to leave your census as is if you tell me how you beat Svek Pederson and his crew.”

“Do you know what a cleansing wand is?” Jeb said, leaning forward.

At the end of Jeb’s description of the Beautiful Revenge, Zlesk waved off Jeb’s explanation of how it had turned the pirates into burger, saying he got the idea.

“That magic item hasn’t been added to the list of prohibited weapons yet, but I’m gonna make an executive decision as the sheriff of Kalfath and say this: I don’t want to see it inside city limits, understood?”

“Yessir.” Jeb saluted.

The two of them drank in companionable silence for a couple minutes, mulling over the events of the day.

“I think you should leave,” Zlesk finally said.

“Eh?”

“You might have bloodied his nose pretty good, but even like this, Garland Grenore’s got more money and influence than you do. The only reason you pulled that off is because he didn’t see it coming. You can bet your ass he’s paying more attention to you now. If I were you…I’d probably lay low for a couple years. Avoid dark alleys.”

Jeb sat there and thought it through. If a bulb was roughly approximate to a thousand dollars, then an assassination would probably cost anywhere between ten and a couple hundred bulbs. If the keegan expected he could pay the pirates two thousand for the return of his daughter, then there was no reason to think he wouldn’t be able to afford to sic people on Jeb’s ass.

Becoming scarce was starting to sound like a good idea.

“What’s the enforcer gonna do to him?” Jeb asked, faintly hoping that would solve his pissed-off rich guy problems.

“Slap on the wrist. He’s a Citizen. The laws are far more lenient for us.”

Jeb frowned, glancing at Zlesk. “You’re a Citizen too, right? How do you go about becoming one?”

“A hundred bulbs and a Class above level thirty, or reach officer rank in the military.”

“So, what, you buy your way in?”

“My family bought my brother and I citizenship when we hit level thirty,” Zlesk said, nodding.

“Rich boy.”

“Philistine.”

“Well,” Jeb said, standing and dropping a few coins on the table as a tip. “Thanks for the advice. I think I’ll get started on it. I liked your town and I hope to see you again.”

Zlesk waved dismissively as Jeb left the bar.

******

Jeb was in his room at the inn, packing up his shit while Smartass gushed. She’d been hiding in his collar the entire time, unable to speak for fear of someone—especially the enforcer—noticing her existence.

“That was so awesome! You pulled that off like a true fae! I mean, taking his daughter’s trust as payment? That was… I mean…”

Smartass gripped her skull before making explosion noises and spreading her hands outward. “B’CHEW!

“A stroke of brilliance. It was like watching one of the ancients at work,” she babbled while Jeb stuffed a backpack with all his goodies. Lenses, a change of clothes, a box of .44 ammo, and some dried food.

“I see you liked it,” Jeb said.

“Liked it? Liked it!? Do you have any idea how long it takes for typical mortal wizards to get the hang of procuring Myst through Bargains? And the sheer amount!” she said, holding out her arms and wiggling her fingers.

“I can feel the power flowing through my veins! Kneel before me!”

Smartass cackled and zoomed around the ceiling, insect wings humming as she did.

Jeb glanced down at the ring. He hadn’t bothered to check the profit from the Grenore job yet, but Smartass seemed pretty pleased with it, which made him curious.

If the headache was any indication, it had been pretty decent.

He took off the ring and used it to appraise himself.

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 39

Accolades: Krusker’s Brawn, Siren’s Cunning, R-R-RubU’s Mysteries, Gresh’s Subtlety, Innovator, Lagross’s Power

Body 21 (9)

Myst 71 (16)

Nerve 26 (10)

Abilities: Mystic Trigger

Accolade Pending: Lagross’s Power suspended due to multiple instances. Awaiting resolution.

Attention, this User has been flagged for exclusion from The System by executive order.

Nine points in Myst and a single point in Nerve. The equivalent of ten levels.

Not a bad start.

Give Jeb a couple months to grow his Myst Core to the new limits, and he’d be moving a few hundred pounds, easy.

That, in turn, would make it easier to engage in more high-stakes Deals, and raise his survivability.

Hold on, Jeb thought, slipping the ring back onto his finger. He had to consider why he was doing what he did. Power for the sake of power never ended well.

He had to find a niche for himself.

Maybe open a business where I rescue children for exorbitant prices. Jeb chuckled at the thought.

Another thought: Jeb didn’t have to follow the same path as before.

He glanced at the immaterial insects wading through the Myst settling near the floor of the inn. One of them was about the size of a large rat with a gaping maw that seemed to strain the Myst like a whale’s filter feeder. It passed through Jeb’s foot without a care, leaving a wake of slightly off-color, blue-tinted Myst behind it.

Can’t say I missed the hallucinations.

Jeb had chosen to raise his Myst exclusively during the Tutorial because he felt that magic would be the way to break the game, and that had been the right instinct.

Now his instincts were telling him…

Don’t overspecialize.

When he had no clue what kind of trials would be heading his way, a more well-rounded approach would likely offer more ways to survive.

Well, payment is typically material in nature, anyway. I don’t think I’ll have any problem getting Body, as long as I continue making Deals.

That settled, Jeb got back to work packing to skip town, idly itching his scalp as he did.

There was a lump on his head.

The fuck? Jeb thought, standing straight and searching for the lump with his fingers.

Nothing? He probed, poked and prodded his scalp with his fingers, not finding anything.

That was weird. Jeb sighed, running his whole hand over his head to dispel the heebie-jeebies.

There was a lump.

Ice settling in his stomach, Jeb reviewed his short-term memory, prodding exactly where he had felt the strange thing. Nothing. He pulled his hand down and looked at it.

The Appraiser sat there on his right ring finger, looking innocent.

Oh, you son of a bitch, Jeb thought, folding back his index and middle finger, using only his ring finger to prod his skull.

There it is. To his ring finger, it felt like something was attached to his skull. Some kind of zipper-like object just above the skin, seemingly welded in…. Needless to say, his other fingers couldn’t feel a thing.

Jeb switched the ring onto another finger and probed with that one.

Still there. Definitely the ring’s doing, then.

What the ever-loving hell is going on here? Jeb thought, poking the lump some more.

It twitched.

The lump on his head twitched.

Okay. There’s something alive in or on my skull that only exists when touched through the Appraiser. I only have one question: Is this the appropriate time to panic!?

Knock knock.

Jeb’s gaze darted to the door.

“Not a great time,” Jeb said, his voice a little higher than he might’ve liked.

“Jebediah Trapper?” The enforcer’s voice came through the wood. “I’d like to speak to you about kidnapping and capital punishment.”

Chapter 8: Getting Out of Dodge

Jeb eyed the window, a bit of cold sweat forming on the back of his neck. He could try to make a run for it, but he was fairly sure this lady would take that as an admission of guilt. Not to mention, Jeb didn’t see himself winning any kind of footrace, the inch of hardwood between them notwithstanding.

Jeb took his magic finger off the magic lump and reoriented his attention. It probably wasn’t going anywhere, and he had prettier fish to fry at the moment.

“Yeah?” Jeb called, motioning for Smartass to hide. The fairy tucked herself behind Jeb’s backpack while he clomped his way to the door.

He opened the door and found himself tilting his head up slightly to meet the melas woman’s gaze. She had pale eyes with dark striations through the irises.

“I half expected you to run.” She gave a faint smile.

“Me too,” Jeb said, crossing his arms and straightening his shoulders. “So did I kidnap Ms. Grenore by some technicality and you’re here to deliver the punishment?”

“Well, yes and no. May I come in?”

“Of course,” Jeb said, moving aside and leaning against the cabinet beside his bed. He really didn’t have to worry about tactics or placement when the woman in front of him had enough strength to make them pointless.

“So—ow.” She bumped her horns in the doorframe on the way through, and Jeb decided not to say anything.

“So yes, technically you did kidnap Ms. Grenore, in the strictest sense of the word, and no, I won’t be punishing you for it. The girl is better off with strangers than her conniving Veek of a father, so I figured she was in less danger during a few hours spent with you. No harm, no execution.”

“Are you allowed to bend the rules like that?”

“We exercise our best judgement.”

Damn, it’s kinda like Judge Dredd up in here. Kinda.

“Then what’s this about capital punishment?” Jeb asked.

“I actually wanted to talk about other kidnappings,” she said, idly rubbing the base of her horns.

“Other kidnappings?” Jeb asked. “Which have what to do with me?”

“You’ve shown a talent for dealing with Impossible situations, and a fondness for rescuing children. I thought you would like to put your natural inclinations to work.”

“To work how?” Jeb asked, his nerves settling down now that he knew he wasn’t going to get beheaded on national TV. The mention of Impossible situations didn’t escape his notice, though.

“Many miles to the south, the city of Solmnath is home to a rather large population of human refugees left destitute after the Stitching.”

“California had a lot of people, yeah,” Jeb said with a shrug.

“It’s a dense population crammed full of non-Citizens with little to no trust in the empire. It’s a breeding ground of discontent and also…”

She glanced at him meaningfully.

“It’s a perfect hunting ground for a reaper,” Jeb filled in for her.

Packed in like sardines, limited food, no ability to interact with local government, no help from, nor trust in the law. That was a recipe for some absolutely awful conditions.

“Couldn’t you find them?” Jeb asked.

“I probably could,” Vresh said, nodding. “But there are different kinds of reapers. Some of them subtly pick off a child here and there, growing like a slow cancer. Others try to race to the finish line before they can be stopped.”

“What about the third kind?” Jeb asked, crossing his arms.

Vresh’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“The ones who hunt other reapers for the government. You’ve gotta be gaining a lot of power from this job.”

Pow!

Jeb’s vision filled with stars for a moment, his cheek stinging from where Vresh had slapped him.

The melas stared at him, her body giving off waves of heat that nearly made Jeb take a step back. He felt his arm hairs curl up.

“Those kinds of reapers exist. I am not one of them. I was born into a house that views service to the people as noblesse oblige. That includes hunting reapers. I take no joy in this duty.”

“Noted,” Jeb said, massaging his cheek. Looks like implying someone is a reaper is a good way to get slapped. Good to know.

“Let me guess. The slow reapers are on the bottom of your to-do list,” Jeb said.

“Indeed. I could spend several days hunting down the man behind vanishing children in ones and twos, but during that time, a few more villages on the outskirts might disappear.”

She met his gaze. “I can’t be everywhere at once.”

Harsh logic.

“I do, however, have the authority to deputize individuals for specific tasks,” she said, reaching into her pocket and producing a dull metal plate. It was about two inches from edge to edge, and fit easily in the palm of Jeb’s hand.

The front was emblazoned with what appeared to be the bust of a melas woman.

“Show that to the right people, and it’ll open doors,” she said.

“And the wrong people will get me lynched, I assume?” Jeb asked.

“Yep. It has one additional function: If the plate is broken, I will know it, along with exactly where it was broken.”

“Interesting,” Jeb muttered, staring down at the burnished token.

What we’ve got here is some kind of magical Bat-Signal.

The art was sort of a stylized painting of the enforcer, all solid black lines depicting the melas. The simplicity of the design drew more attention to her shape, which was, in a word…curvy.

“And if I wasn’t interested?” Jeb asked, glancing back up.

“I wouldn’t do anything to you,” Vresh said with a shrug. “I may have to mention you to my superiors though.

“You know, when the Impossible Tutorial reported the examinees had broken out, I missed the culprits due to the time dilation, but I remember the description of their leader.”

Vresh tapped her lips in thought.

“A one-legged man with brown hair growing out of his face. Telekinetic Myst Core. Mystic Trapsmith Class. Odd then, that when the humans who completed the Impossible Tutorial were teleported to the emperor’s palace, nobody by that description arrived. The humans themselves seemed pretty confused and distraught.

“Jebediah Trapper,” she said, wiggling her fingers ominously. “The one that slipped away. I wonder what my superiors would do if I were to give them your location. I’m sure they’d have a lot of questions.”

“Relax,” Jeb said, his voice flat. “I never said I wasn’t interested.”

“Oh.” She straightened, ominous voice—and fingers—falling away. “Good.”

Jeb seemed to only be able to keep his shit together for extended periods of time if he was under a ridiculous amount of life-threatening stress.

Why not save kids while he was at it? That was killing two birds with one stone.

“How far away is Solmnath from here?”

“About three weeks’ journey to the south. Follow the coast, and you’ll eventually come across it.”

And a decent place to get lost in.

“When you find the one vanishing children, deal with it yourself if you can. The Mark should only be broken for emergencies that threaten the lives of hundreds, not you specifically. I’d prefer you save it for a rampaging Leviathan or something.”

“Alright,” Jeb said, pocketing the Mark. “Then I’ll make you a Deal: I stop this reaper from killing children, probably via murder. In exchange, you don’t tell anyone about me.” He hoisted his backpack up and onto his shoulder. There was a tiny grunt from where Smartass was hiding in one of the pockets.

“Sounds good to me. Agreed,” Vresh said, folding her arms across her chest.

Click. Jeb felt the Deal settle into place and a sudden urge to travel to the south.

“Then if that’s all, I’ve got a destination in mind, and something to do when I get there.”

Vresh nodded and moved out of the way, allowing Jeb to leave the room without any further discussion.

******

Jeb closed his account at the inn and asked for directions to the nearest caravan heading south.

Kalfath’s major export had been crude oil lenses that got shipped south and east to major cities to be refined and used for lamp fuel, lubricant, firestarter, what have you. They were also shipped up north to be used to heat homes.

Garland Grenore was an oil baron in every sense of the word, except he lacked a title.

More recently though, the desert town had experienced a boom of prospectors and had begun shipping lenses of everything from lumber to gold and fish.

It was with one of these caravans hauling the bounty of Oregon that Jeb bought himself passage south to Solmnath for a cool five bulbs.

Long-distance travel in the empire wasn’t as easy or as safe as it was on Earth. The caravan wasn’t interested in giving a human passage at first, but when he made the coins dance over his palm, they were willing to compromise. Myst Cores made people dangerous.

Jeb spent a lot of the time riding in the back of a wagon, just watching the dusty desert roll by. It was almost as hot in the shade as it was in the sun. Jeb felt for the melas in the driver’s seat, the hot sun beating down on him as he guided the draft animals.

The draft animals seemed used to it. They were some kind of dark brown, thin-haired ungulates with proto-elephant noses. Like those fat pygmy…things you see on the Discovery Channel every now and then.

The comparison stopped there.

The draft animals’ noses were covered with teeth at the end and they seemed pretty adept at biting holes in cactus before suckling as much moisture out of them as they could. The noses were always looking for something to latch onto, and more than once, he’d witnessed an irritated melas driver boop a snoot for being too inquisitive.

The caravans were still figuring out their trade routes again, what with the Stitching of large swaths of land into the strange quilt that was Pharos. Roads and trails that had existed previously now ended abruptly, forcing them to forge new roads. Sometimes, they ended with a towering slice of mountain, and they had no choice but find another way around.

The most distinct thing was all the withering west Oregon landscape interlaced with the arid desert it’d been stitched with. Already, Jeb could see that most of the vegetation was dying, if not all the way dead, and the desert was slowly encroaching on the formerly human territory.

Owing to the unrelenting heat, Jeb bit the bullet and figured out what a ‘mountain river’ lens could do: ice cold water, with only the occasional grit and algae. A real man doesn’t filter his mountain water. He gets lockjaw and he likes it.

Owing either to pure mountain spring water, or simply Jeb’s improved tolerance to disease, Jeb didn’t feel any effect, and kept drinking/spraying himself with river water whenever the heat became intolerable…which was often.

Much of the rest of his time he spent messing around with his new gold lenses. Jeb had disassembled the fireball Luger for more legal transportation, keeping the Myst engine and the wand itself as far away from each other as was practical.

He popped the Myst regulator out of the Beautiful Revenge and rewired it to one of his gold lenses. The gold lenses were about the size of a dime, and they looked like a chip of white quartz streaked with a bit of gold in the center.

If anything, they were quartz lenses with gold impurities, but whatever.

Using the engine and regulator, Jeb was able to spit out over a hundred pounds of quartz gravel rich with gold onto the floor of the wagon, which he then scooped up into the Blue Serpent Furnace in ten-pound increments, heated and stirred until the individual materials began to separate based on their density.

Once it cooled, Jeb flipped the whole thing over and peeled off the thin layer of gold on the top, tossing the hunk of slagged quartz out the back of the wagon.

Over the course of an evening, Jeb made his fare back, along with a little extra. Jeb had several of these lenses, and they didn’t look like they would be exhausted any time soon. With a little bit of effort, Jeb could get himself spending money whenever he needed it.

In the immortal words of Forrest Gump: ‘That’s good. One less thing.’

Satisfied that it was possible, Jeb set the lenses aside, and worked on his other ideas.

He identified each of the lenses with the Appraiser, tossing the lens up into the grey cloud of roiling Myst. With something as small as a lens, the Myst actually seized on the item, lifting it into the air and making it part of the display.

Jeb took the lumpy antler lens and tossed it up into the roiling cloud.

Raw Stag Lens (Uncommon)

Often considered pests where they come from, deer are tenacious survivors and delicious prey animals. This particular lens creates a powerful stag of the white-tailed deer species.

Curious, Jeb took the lens outside at night and poured a drop of Myst through it, and was gobsmacked when half a dozen tiny stags bolted in every direction. It was one thing to make worms of varying sizes, but seeing a familiar Earth mammal like a deer in miniature just brought back to mind exactly how strange all of this was.

“It’s a twelve-pointer,” Jeb muttered as they disappeared into the dark of night.

Well, as long as nobody made any tiny does, that should be fine, Jeb thought as the foot-long stags scattered into the wilderness.

Annihilation lens mixed with fly lens makes void butterflies. Jeb eyed the big lump of antler in his hand. What would happen with a buck?

Might be something to see.

Jeb still had a pinky-sized piece of Annihilation lens along with some dust from the creation of the Beautiful Revenge. It wasn’t enough to mix with a stag lens big enough to make a full-sized deer.

I’ll have to buy a couple more cleaning wands, and probably some slaves.

Jeb chuckled at the idea of buying a sexy elf waifu, then kicking her out on her ass because he was more interested in the control lens in her collar.

Come to think of it…

In a flash of inspiration, Jeb had an idea for a gun that used Annihilation lenses. All he had to do was attach a spring to the focal slider.

Cock it back, setting the range to minimum, then pull the trigger, allowing a pulse of Myst to travel through the lenses. The focal point rapidly shifts as the spring pushes the lenses together again, boring a hole in a straight line out from the gun.

Gotta write this down! Jeb scrambled back to his wagon and wrote down the idea before he forgot. Jeb was forced to write the idea down on a piece of leather because he forgot to buy himself a drafting journal.

Okay, when I get to the city, I am definitely setting myself up as a mysterious and wealthy survivor of the ‘hard’ difficulty and buying a place to work on my magic…and possibly kidnap children.

Jeb’s half-formed, pseudo plan involved buying a mansion with a huge basement, then disappearing orphan children, feeding and housing them in secret until the bad guy came sniffing around looking for the other reaper horning in on his territory.

That could work. Killers are notoriously territorial.

It was also kind of a bad idea and a logistical nightmare. Jeb might be able to feed and care for them with magic, but he couldn’t physically keep track of a couple dozen kids and still investigate.

Pros: Bad guy comes to me, doesn’t suspect me of hunting him at all.

Cons: Screaming children pissing and shitting everywhere, getting in my way and stopping me from doing my job.

Wait… Slaves.

Jeb grinned as the plan started to come together. If he wanted to come across as a wealthy serial killer, there was no better way to prove he was psycho than to buy some people. These purchased people could help watch his kidnapped children.

I’m such a nice guy.

Jeb chuckled to himself, carrying on with his day.

A week into the ride was far too long to go without conversation, and Jeb managed to strike up conversations with the driver on several occasions. This particular day they were off-roading, and Jeb had the worst case of swamp-ass, aggravated by the jostling of the wagon.

“So how do you stand this heat?” Jeb asked, popping his head out of the shade.

“What heat?” the melas driver asked, glancing down at him.

“Oh.” Well, that makes sense.

“Are humans a cold-weather species?” he asked, glancing up at the blazing sun.

“I hadn’t thought so, but apparently. We like places around seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit, whatever that translates to in alien temp.”

Apparently The System translated for him, because the driver scoffed. “Seventy-two degrees? That’s nothing.”

“So I noticed,” Jeb said, ducking back into the shade.

“The melas enjoy the oil-rich desert and volcano wilds, averaging a hundred and fifteen degrees, human temp.”

“Damn. This must be balmy then,” Jeb said.

“Indeed.”

“Hey, Brav,” Jeb called.

“Yeah?” the driver responded.

“What do your people know about kidnapping?”

Brav actually turned to stare at him, brow raised.

Jeb couldn’t overlook the possibility that the human children were being taken by an alien. It was about fifty-fifty in Jeb’s head.

“Why?”

“I’m looking into missing kids for someone. Is it a common thing for melas?”

Brav barked a short laugh. “Roil, no, it isn’t common at all.”

“Why?”

“Melas babies light themselves on fire as a defense mechanism until they’re three years old or so; they’re dangerous to all but their mother. Same unique chemical reaction. Catching on fire from a flaming baby you’re not directly related to is mildly poisonous.”

“Poisonous, not…burny? Are you hazing me?” Jeb asked.

…

“You’re serious?”

“Of course. Piss off a melas and you’ll feel the heat.”

“How the… Wow. That explains a lot.”

“Why? What do your human infants do to protect themselves?”

“Scream really loud, I guess? They poop themselves and throw up, too.”

“Acid vomit?” Brav asked, eyeing Jeb cautiously.

“No, just regular vomit.”

“How on Pharos did you survive as a species?” Brav asked.

“I’m asking myself that right now,” Jeb said, shaking his head before he noticed something in the distance. Through the wobbling heat waves, Jeb was able to make out the distinct shape of a car.

“Hold up!” Jeb said, banging on the wagon and crawling out into the open to ride shotgun. “What is that?”

“A human construction of some kind?” Brav asked.

“It’s a car!” Jeb said, jumping off the wagon and running for it. “This way!”

“Is the human serious?” another wagoneer called.

“Come on!” Jeb called, motioning them to follow. “Where there’s cars, there’s road! With any luck, it’ll be the Interstate!”

After a minute of running through the arid desert, the car resolved into a Plymouth Voyager propped up on a large boulder, where it had crashed when the driver vanished. Around the boulder, the road finally came in view. He could see where it had been Stitched together with the Pharosian desert: the I-5, in all its eight-lane glory, wide enough for half the wagons to travel along side by side.

There were hundreds upon thousands of cars littering the road, but only a handful likely had their brakes on, so it would just be a matter of pushing them off the road.

Come to think of it, I wonder if I could scavenge up some gas and get one of these babies running? I could get to Solmnath in style.

“What are you on abou—Eck Ban!” Brav came to a skidding stop in the sandy soil, his jaw dropping in disbelief. “What on Pharos is this?”

“It’s a road.”

“It’s the ruins of a caravan the size of a city,” he whispered, scanning the thousands of cars baking on the blacktop asphalt.

“Well, they weren’t all going to the same place,” Jeb said with a shrug. “I figure if we clear the path, we can get a smooth thirty- or forty-mile stretch,” Jeb said, motioning to where the road disappeared into the south. “More if the Stitching is oblong.”

“How did humans do this?”

“This is what you’re impressed by?” Jeb asked, turning back to the road. “It’s just a road connecting one edge of the continent to the other that people could traverse in a matter of hours. Is that such a big deal?”

Brav looked like his eyes were going to fall out of his head, so Jeb decided to stop teasing him.

“The wagons?”

“Right, I’ll go get them,” Brav said, nodding before turning on his heel and running to where the wagons waited for them.

“And I…will start looting,” Jeb said, picking up a rock and smashing the nearest window.

All in all, the wagons actually went only a little faster on the highway due to the constant need to move cars out of the way.

On the other hand, the caravaneers were practically crying with joy as they filled all available empty space with human oddities. Glass was especially sought-after. Human glass was incredibly clear, and a single glass cup went for a couple silver. They made a stack of carefully detached windshields, also grabbing things like knives, guns, and the odd leather bucket seat to bolt onto their caravan seats.

Jeb didn’t bother looking for things to sell. He was looking for some wheels, dumping ice-cold river water on his head every few minutes as his shoe tried to melt to the pavement.

Jeb actually rested on his pegleg every now and then to allow his foot to cool.

The biggest impediment to finding a suitable ride was that many of the cars were empty, weatherworn and damaged. When the world ended a few months ago, people had been teleported right out of their cars and shoved in Tutorials.

That meant the cars were left running, moving at seventy miles an hour with no human oversight. Only a handful of smart cars had been able to avoid collisions of any kind.

Even the ones that didn’t get badly crunched up had been left running until they went empty.

If this were in town, that would have been a problem, but they were on the I-5.

A fair number of people were on long road trips, and some of them had gas cans in the back. Gas degrades pretty hard over the course of three months, but it’s still usable…barely.

After a couple hours of searching, he found an oversized Jeep with its right front tire blown out. Other than that, there was some minor damage to the fender where it had cruised to a stop and hit the meridian, but all that was fixable.

It’s like me! Jeb thought, glancing down at his own missing leg. Whoever had owned the truck had bought it specifically for off-roading, as the body was lifted, the remaining tires nice and big, and not one, but two spares in the back.

Off-roading was going to be the name of the game, so Jeb slapped his hand down on the hood and claimed it for himself, nice and loud so the surrounding aliens didn’t loot the windshield.

After that, he hauled the gas cans over, put a gallon in and tested the engine. The key was still in the ignition, so it was just a matter of crossing his fingers and hoping the battery was still alive. The machine rumbled to life without complaint or stutter despite running out of gas before sitting there for the better part of three months.

“Yesss, power!” Jeb cackled, turning it off before starting on changing the tire.

Half an hour later, he was tapping the steering wheel and bobbing his head to some kid’s EDM, feeling the wind in his hair as he cruised forward at roughly ten miles per hour.

Jeb could just go off-road and ditch his caravan, but that didn’t seem like the best idea ever. Not only did Jeb not know where the city was, he was alone. And there was no easier way to get killed or do something stupid and wind up dying, than to go it alone.

Like Into the Wild.

“Is that some kind of magical pre-recorded music?” Brav asked, driving his wagon alongside Jeb’s Jeep.

“Pre-recorded, yes. Magical, no.” Jeb blanked out. He didn’t actually know how a CD worked. “Probably not magical.”

“What’s playing the music then?”

“Speakers work by passing a current through copper wire at a rate that makes a vibrating electrical field. The vibration is then picked up and amplified by a set of magnets attached to thin fabric or cloth.”

“So, cloth, copper and lodestone does all that?”

Jeb shrugged. “Basically. You’d have to ask an engineer for more specifics. I’m sure there’s some electronics in there.”

Speaking of engineers… I wonder where all the scientists from NASA wound up. Jeb was absolutely sure there were some very smart people out there integrating human tech with Myst.

Myst and Myst engines gave the law of conservation of energy the finger. That kind of power would give those nerds wet dreams. If someone went to an oil refinery and found a Premium Unleaded lens, they could send a ship into space while ignoring fuel weight.

Jeb glanced down at the dash of his Jeep, doomed to run out of fuel sometime in the next couple of weeks when all the refined gas in the world dried up or expired.

Hell, I could find a Premium Unleaded lens. Are there any oil refineries in California? Jeb needed to keep his eyes open for an abandoned gas station.

Jeb tapped the steering wheel some more. Come to think of it, he’d only seen lenses made in nature, hadn’t he?

I wonder if man-made things count as natural. Humans are natural, in the grand scheme of things. What’s the difference between a bird’s nest and a cheap motel in the eyes of the gods? They were both made by animals to breed in.

I wonder if I could visit Silicon Valley and find an AI lens. See if it takes over the world.

Let’s see, there’s all the nature lenses found in Oregon, the beetle lens, the worm lens, the Annihilation lens, the flame lenses.

The control lens was specifically described as arising because of the behavior of people.

Hmm…

Jeb would give even odds that lenses which created advanced sapient-made constructs were either extremely rare or nonexistent.

Still, couldn’t hurt to visit a few tourist traps on the way south. If I can find a candy factory with a candy lens in it, I won’t have to worry about paying Smartass ever again.

Gotta visit that gas station and see if he could grab one of those analog maps.

Jeb spotted a dark lump on the ground moments before he ran over it.

What’s a chunk of pavement doing torn out of the ground? Jeb thought, pulling up short and hopping out.

“What is it?” Brav asked.

“This pavement is outta place,” Jeb called back, flipping it over with his foot. The dark asphalt radiated heat from the sun beating down on it. Jeb glanced around, but couldn’t see any place it might have come from.

“Oh, a sun lens variant,” Brav said. The orange-skinned man knelt down to inspect the chunk of asphalt. “Good eye.”

Jeb hadn’t noticed it radiating sunlight or the smell of asphalt with his Myst senses, because in this weather, everything radiated sunlight and the smell of asphalt.

“You found it, it’s yours.” The wagoneer shrugged and stood.

“These common?” Jeb asked, picking up the lens and wincing as it scalded his hand. He wrapped his sleeve around it, finally noticing the sunlight rolling off of it.

“Pretty common in deserts. Aristocrats put a higher value on dappled sun lenses or grassy sun lenses, forest sun, or river sun—pretty much anything that smells nice or is refreshing. I haven’t seen that variant before, but I’ll bet you a sun lens that makes the room smell like tar won’t sell for a whole lot. You’ll get maybe a bulb for it? Maybe a handful of silver. Still not a bad find.”

“Fair enough,” Jeb said, loading the lens into the back seat with the rest of his gear before dumping ice-cold river water on himself again.

God, this lens is a lifesaver, Jeb thought, eyeing the damp river rock with a thin film of algae slime on it before putting it back in his pocket.

“Hey, you guys mind some detours?” Jeb asked, turning around and catching Brav’s attention. “There’s some places—”

ZZZ!

A squat, shiny brown ball of armor plating about the size of a basketball slammed into Brav’s side, tossing him into the ground.

The melas wagoneer let out a pained gasp, and Jeb spotted a proboscis about the size of his thumb slipped between the man’s ribs, blood welling around the wound.

ZZZ!

Jeb’s gaze flicked to the side, spotting dozens more chitinous balls flying through the air.

Flying toward him.

Chapter 9: Local Culture, Friendly Wildlife

“Shit!” Jeb stopped, dropped and rolled, lumps of armor plating flying above him. He rolled under the lifted Jeep, heart hammering in his ears.

Jeb whipped his forty-four out of the holster. He was too busy to feel the pain of the asphalt scalding his skin, or where the sudden jerk had banged his elbow against the metal underside of the car.

He was focused on Brav.

From his position under the car, Jeb could hear the creatures rebounding off the metal hood, clattering softly onto the ground on either side. And he could see the wagon driver’s plight, framed by the underside of the Jeep.

The basketball-sized creature attached to his chest was pulsing in a way that couldn’t possibly be good for him as the wagoneer tried to pry it off.

Jeb aimed as carefully as he could with the shit going on around him and put two bullets into the monster attached to Brav. He was rewarded with the creature flying off in a spray of blood, devastated by the human weapon.

Jeb was about to give himself the old mental back-pat when three more monsters hit the amiable wagoneer, pinning him to the ground and greedily sucking the moisture out of the man’s thigh, gut and neck.

Jeb’s eyes narrowed. One was survivable, but three… Jeb needed to take care of his own shit before trying to help a dead man.

Goddamnit.

Can’t stay here forever, Jeb thought, mind racing. He needed to find a place to shelter and think, and these things were numerous.

There were at least a dozen on the open asphalt between him and Brav, and who knew how many behind him.

Well, no time like the present.

He’d already been under the Jeep for a couple seconds, and the unattached creatures were unfolding into evil proboscis armadillos with thicc thighs. That’s where I draw the line.

In a couple more seconds, they were going to sniff him out, and Jeb didn’t want to get into a fight under a car. It just sounded like a losing proposition.

Jeb dropped the gun and reached up, snagging the guts of the Jeep and hauling himself in the direction opposite the creatures’ origin. If there was a clear spot to stand, it would be just behind the Jeep, where they physically couldn’t have landed.

Moving light and quick like a teenager was barely enough to stay ahead of the death balls crawling under the Jeep, looking for something to suck on. Jeb came to a stand behind the car in a little wedge of empty space. Everywhere else was filled with unrolling blood suckers.

Jeb took a quick breath and channeled a strand of Myst out, whipping it forward and tugging on the handle of the closest car, a rusty station wagon.

The door was locked.

Jeb broke into a limping sprint, focusing on the old vehicle’s peg-locks in the window, pulling them up before yanking on the door handle with everything he had.

The last week or so of dedicated Myst gathering had raised Jeb’s Myst capacity substantially, and yanking open the door of a nineteen ninety-two Buick Roadmaster fell within Jeb’s mind-bending supernatural powers.

Jeb put his head down and dove, jumping head-first into the front seat. The gearshift punching him in the liver almost distracted him from closing the door, but he managed to curl his legs out of the way and tug the door closed with his mind.

Clank!

The escape only took about three seconds, and he’d only stayed ahead of the creatures by a hair. The succadillo bouncing off the car door was pretty good evidence of that.

“Ugh,” Jeb groaned, rubbing his gut and sitting up in the bucket seat and peering out the window, careful not to put his face too close to the glass. No telling if these sonsabitches could pierce glass.

Jeb momentarily contemplated the horror cliché of getting trapped inside your car by a monster, your only means of defense tantalizingly out of reach. In this case, Jeb’s gun.

He rolled his eyes and formed a telekinetic hand.

Jeb’s ability to move things telekinetically fell into two different categories. He could either imbue something with his Myst and move it around directly, but he couldn’t bend the object itself; it was held rigid.

Good for bulk and immobile weapons.

Or, he could create exterior force and use that to act on an object, which allowed for more delicate and complicated maneuvering. In this case, pulling a trigger.

Jeb telekinetically reached under the Jeep and grabbed his revolver before he blew away the closest four succadillos harassing his wagon, sending bits and pieces of keratin armor and blood scattering around the sizzling hot pavement.

Crap, empty. There were still thirty or so. This could take a few minutes.

Jeb glanced into the back of the station wagon as he was rummaging around the Jeep for his box of bullets. The station wagon must have been some teen’s hand-me-down car from a parent or an older brother, because the supplies in the back spoke to a teen road trip.

Jeb snagged some Cheetos, Red Vines, and a box of root beer, shoving one of the cheesy confections in his mouth while he watched what his telekinetic hand was doing.

It was hard to lift a backpack up with one mental hand, place it where he could see it, then rummage around in the pockets for his bullets, but Jeb was managing. He slung the strap on the back of the headrest, then worked his way to the pockets.

Smartass waved from the backpack, pointing to Jeb’s left.

Jeb glanced over and saw a group of melas and keegan ‘adventurers’ carving their way through the succadillos, using gear that looked specifically designed to penetrate the armor: short-hafted picks with wicked-sharp spikes at the end designed to ignore the armor.

They almost looked like those people picking up trash on the sidewalk, minus the reflective jackets...and a fair amount more acrobatics. They moved superhumanly fast, but not so much that Jeb couldn’t follow.

Presuming no points in Myst, they’re probably clocking in…high teens, low twenties?

Jeb reached into the twelve pack and snagged a root beer, wincing when the hundred and thirty degree can scalded his skin. He reloaded his gun, setting it on the hood of the station wagon, then settled in to watch the caravan guards do their job.

All it took was a creative application of mountain river water flowing around the soda can, and within minutes, Jeb was kicking his feet up on the dash and indulging in a bitingly cold can of some of the last root beer produced in the U.S.

Tap tap. There was one of the keegan adventurers standing outside the window, his face outside Jeb’s field of view.

Jeb worked the ancient window, rolling it down with the squeaky winch.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Trapper, the sand fleas are taken care of. It’s safe.”

“Damn, I kinda liked ‘succadillo’,” Jeb muttered, stepping out of the car.

He glanced out across the road and saw the caravaneers were taking stock of the situation, figuring out who needed help and who needed burning. Brav, unfortunately, was in the latter category. The hornless melas lay still along with two others on the side of the road.

The caravaneers were practical people, and the deceased were cremated quickly, placed atop a rather small pyre and burned while surrounded by their family, who seemed to take comfort in watching their loved ones reduced to ashes. There were tears, but they were quick to dry.

From what Jeb could glean, it was because people dying on a long trip was par for the course. Everyone threw in together expecting that some people would die. They were already mentally prepared to say goodbye to the people they travelled with.

The thing that Jeb didn’t get was why there was a general resentful look in the caravaneers’ eyes when they looked at him. As if he was personally responsible for the three deaths somehow?

Am I the albatross, perhaps?

The caravan guards explained it to him when he inquired about it.

“The caravaneers thought you might guarantee a safe journey. They believed you were a rather high-level individual travelling in secrecy. They are simply disappointed that their expectations were unfounded. It’s no fault of yours.” The guard spoke while roasting a sand flea leg, waiting for the caravaneers to finish burning their dead.

“They feel lied to. Damn, people have gotten lynched for less. How do I manage this?”

“Clear things up?”

Jeb glanced at his Jeep. He could ditch them here, but that was a last resort. As long as he didn’t get lynched, he had food, water and wheels, so he didn’t exactly fear for his life.

He sure as hell wouldn’t want to be alone through another monster attack, though. If he’d been standing where Braz had been standing…

Jeb shook his head.

“I’ll see what I can do. Thanks.”

Jeb approached Brav’s pyre, where his family was sitting around the burning corpse, ignoring the desert heat. They almost seemed as if they were bathing in the thick smoke rising off the body.

“I’m sorry,” Jeb said without preamble.

“Sorry for what, human?” the nearest one asked, glancing over at him.

“Sorry I couldn’t have done more to help. I really would have liked to have saved Brav. He was easy to get along with.”

“I thought you had Myst. You said you had Myst. Myst users are supposed to be powerful!” a small melas protested.

“I do have Myst, but it’s not good at dealing with sudden ambushes,” Jeb said, lowering his head in the universal sign of contrition. “I’ll help, but I’m not omnipotent. Please don’t blame me for this.”

“You took us to the road!” one of the younger melas said, standing. He was maybe twenty, with good musculature and an angry look in his eyes, but his horns were underdeveloped, speaking to his youth.

The oldest melas present spoke. “Relax, Los, the road had nothing to do with it. The caravan has profited greatly from the human’s knowledge.”

He was near seven feet tall, not including the towering horns, with streaks of grey through his hair. He put his palm on the youth’s shoulder and pushed him back to a sitting position.

“It was not this human’s obligation to defend us. He is a paying passenger, not a hired guard, and yet he killed five sand fleas single-handedly, the first of which being the one attacking Brav. We cannot ask anything more from him. Come to terms with it and redirect your anger.”

An olive branch. Older minds saw the value in not lynching people.

“Thank you,” Jeb said, nodding.

“Thank you for trying to save my son.”

Ouch. The caravan master had some serious self-control.

“If you’ve nothing more to say, you should leave. The smoke is poisonous to those who aren’t related to Brav.”

Jeb blinked. “Of course.” He backed away and left them to their business.

“We’re born in fire, and we die in fire. It’s a fitting way to bring a life to an end, am I right?” A melas guard spoke, shoving a bottle of some murky substance into Jeb’s hand.

“Melas babies come out the pussy on fire?” Jeb asked.

“Of course, how else would we protect newborns and their mothers from Enoch’cheen? We saw how you took care of those sand fleas. Five is a bit of a low number, but it’s more than enough to earn you a drink.”

Jeb glanced down at the drink that looked something like an oil slick.

“Ah, what the hell.” He shrugged and took a swallow before his body immediately rejected it. It tasted like some kind of cross between motor oil and whisky, and it was not meant for human consumption, and Jeb fell to the ground, barely able to keep the bottle straight as he retched out the sip of nightmare fuel.

“Guess humans don’t like moros either.” Jeb felt the bottle lifted out of his hands, and he turned on his side, trying not to suffocate.

“I told you,” the keegan guard said.

“Shut up. One day a species will be Stitched on that properly appreciates fine drink.”

“My body is literally incapable of processing that,” Jeb said, groaning.

“See?”

“Bah.”

It took Jeb another half an hour or so to wash the taste out of his mouth, with a combination of bile and whisky.

During that time, he sat around and chatted with the guards. Most of them were as he expected, somewhere between level twelve and level twenty. Their leader was the only one with a Class, but he wasn’t wealthy enough to be a Citizen.

“I wanna be a baker,” one of them said proudly when Jeb asked him what Class he was planning on taking.

“What are you doing out here, then?” Jeb asked. “How does getting your ass killed by desert monsters translate to baking?”

“How else am I going to get to level twenty and get the Class? It’s not like you can gain levels by staying in town and baking all day. Gotta do your part in protecting the people from the monsters of Pharos.”

“That’s dumb,” Jeb muttered, before doing a double take at the people scowling at him. “Not protecting people from monsters. The fact that you can’t get levels for doing the thing you want to do. You’re making sure to bake a lot on the side, right?”

“Of course.”

Jeb tapped his fingers on the whisky bottle he’d scavenged out of the back of a dirty SUV. “So why baker?”

“You can be a baker without a Class in a small town, but I want to open a pastry shop in the city. A Class is just the kind of edge I would need to make it big.”

“Ah. So how many of the rest of you are here on your college thesis?”

More than half of the guards’ hands went up: the younger, more starry-eyed guards. Now that Jeb was alerted to it, he could easily tell the difference between the people who had chosen risking their lives as a career and the ones who were doing it to get their Class.

Going adventuring was almost exactly like going to college, with the exception of possible death. All Jeb had to do was look for the ones who seemed like they belonged in frat houses or sororities.

“What about you?” Jeb asked, glancing at the oldest guard, a wrinkled keegan.

“Caravan guard, level twenty-four. My Class, and I quote, ‘Has a passive effect that negates the adverse effect of constant travel on my mind, body, and equipment.’”

“So the road feels like a relaxing cruise?”

“Basically.” The keegan shrugged. “When I set out, I was just like them. I wanted the levels to take over my dad’s smithy, but after I got a taste of the road…I guess I got wanderlust. Don’t worry about my dad’s smithy, I got seven brothers.”

“How about you? You ever get a Class?” All eyes turned to Jeb.

“Oh sure, it’s Mystic Trapsmith,” Jeb said with a shrug. “Going through the Tutorial, I wasn’t really concerned about picking what I wanted to do for a living, just living. You know what I mean?”

“Sucks,” one of the girls said.

“What’s it do?” a melas guard asked, perking up.

“A Mystic Trapsmith has something called Myst Triggers,” Jeb said. “For example, if I wanted to make a trap that would squeeze the trigger on this gun, all I would have to do would be to make a Myst Trigger and specify an event and a response. When the event happens, the response is that my Myst squeezes this trigger,” Jeb said, pointing at his pistol.

“Your Class lets you pull triggers on guns?”

“No, you can have it do pretty much anything you could normally do with Myst, but it has to be predetermined; the Trigger can’t think.”

“What kinds of events?” a keegan girl asked, cocking her head.

Jeb sighed. This is going to be a long night.

He was about an hour into explaining the concept of a chain of if/then logic, when the older guard shot to his feet, staring off into the distance.

“Keensha bra gosh!” the rail-thin keegan growled, an expletive The System was too polite to translate. “Sand-pirates! They’ve seen the funeral smoke! I told those fat fiery bastards this might happen! Everyone! Unless you’ve got rich parents or a boatload of money, I suggest hiding.”

There was a general cry of dismay among the college kids as they leapt to their feet, scrambling this way and that while their leader unsheathed his sword.

Way to inspire confidence.

Heart hammering, Jeb came to his feet and peered out into the distance. He could make out a tiny puff of sand in the distance, kicked up by something that was rapidly approaching.

“How much time do we have?” Jeb asked.

“Fifteen minutes, perhaps,” the keegan said. “Then they will kill all the male guards, sell or ransom the female guards, steal a large portion of the cargo, and let the caravaneers go unharmed.”

“Unharmed?” Jeb asked as that last phrase landed in his mind.

“Why fleece a breek only once?”

“Ah.”

The keegan glanced over at Jeb’s Jeep. “Your wagon moves fast enough to outrun them, if you wish. I’ve seen you take it off the road.”

Jeb glanced at his Jeep. “We’ll call that Plan B. In the meantime, I don’t want to leave you in the lurch. I’ve got an idea for how to get rid of them, and it shouldn’t take longer than a couple minutes.”

“That would be appreciated, Mr. Trapper.”

Jeb broke into a sprint, aiming for his car. He jumped over the door, landing in the open top and began searching through the backseat for his backpack…where Smartass had turned the foot space into a swimming pool.

“It’s sooo hot out here,” she groaned, splashing her feet in the water, likely summoned from Jeb’s smooth river rock. “I had to plug up a few holes with the clay lens, but I made the perfect place to cool off. C’mon, dip your toes.”

“Goddamnit Smartass, there’s rustables in here, and those holes are ventilation!” Jeb said, yanking the backpack out of the water and rummaging through until he came out with the fireball wand, still looking like a german pistol from the forties.

“You try to do something nice for people,” Smartass said, shaking her head as Jeb jumped back out, pegleg clacking on the ground as he landed.

He’d hidden the Myst engine under the frame of the car with a strong hide-a-key magnet, as Jeb was fairly sure it was contraband.

The glass tube was gritty and wet.

I am so kicking her ass when this is over, Jeb thought, watching the dust clouds grow larger as he carefully, carefully cleaned and dried the Myst engine.

Jeb was able to see the distant figures well enough to make out individual bodies by the time he finished cleaning the engine. They were mostly beefy melas, ranging from orange to an almost reddish color. The one in the lead had some pretty epic horns, visible even from this distance.

They were riding a large flat ship that skimmed across the surface of the rocky desert, navigating the rocks seemingly without issue. Jeb wasn’t sure if it was decorative or an engine of some sort, but he spotted jets of flame shooting out either side of the boat, perhaps acting as propellant.

Man, I hope this works, Jeb thought, blowing imaginary dust out of the wand. He opened the panel and clicked the engine into place, making absolutely sure the fiber optics made contact and there was no grit between them and the engine.

Once Jeb was done, he rolled up a scrap of cloth and shoved it in his ear, covering the other with his palm.

“You might wanna cover your ears!” Jeb shouted, holding the wand above his head.

“What’s that supposed to—”

BOOM!

A gigantic flower of bright flaming explosion appeared above them, the impact rattling their bones and setting off a few of the honking car alarms.

Inspired, Jeb adjusted the range and pulled the trigger again, exploding the air above a dense patch of cars.

Any car that still had battery left immediately began crying bloody murder, assuming someone was trying to break into it.

“Gods!” the lead guard shouted, slapping his palms over his ears.

Now that everyone was sufficiently spooked, Jeb jumped into the Jeep and cranked the engine, which turned over with a victorious roar.

Oh thank god Smartass didn’t ruin everything.

“What’s that awful racket?” Smartass demanded, hauling herself out of the water by the cup holder.

Jeb glanced over his shoulder. “Sorry.”

“Sorry for wha—AIII!”

Jeb gunned it.

The fairy and all the water surrounding her was violently sloshed into the back as Jeb charged the pirates, finally able to open up the engine now that he was off-road.

Kinda like a metaphor for my life.

Jeb stuck the wand out the open top and began pulling the trigger non-stop, creating a string of explosions above him, marching straight toward the approaching pirates at roughly sixty miles an hour.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

Jeb laid on the horn with his thumb as he approached, filling the space between the explosions with the Jeep’s piercing wail.

BOOMEEEEBOOMEEEBOOMEEEBOOMBOOMEEEEBOOMEEEBOOMEEEBOOM BOOMEEEEBOOMEEEBOOMEEEBOOMBOOMEEEEBOOMEEEBOOMEEEBOOM BOOMEEEEBOOMEEEBOOMEEEBOOM

***Krag the Unswerving, Warrior level 32***

“Payday, gentlemen,” Krag said, lowering the spyglass from his eye. “We’ve got a caravan loaded down with artifacts from the Stitching, and a new place to pick over. They’ve got so much loot, we may not have space for prisoners.”

“We’ve always got space for the right prisoners, captain!” one of the sleazier crewmen shouted, eliciting a roar of approval.

Morale is always a factor, Krag thought, eyeing the dumb bastard. “Aye, that we do,” Krag said with a smirk.

The cheering redoubled as they turned the jets on.

The ‘jets’ were Myst engines stolen from the military strapped to oil lenses, the resulting spray then atomized as it shot through a spinning grate.

The resulting black mist was lit on fire, and they were off, cruising over the bushy surface of the alien desert fast enough to drive the wind through their hair, tugging at their loose clothes. Boulders and other large impediments got shoved under the sand by the faradan stone coating on the bottom of the boat.

Krag was hoping they had a gold lens the size of his thumb. With the right application of a Myst engine, they could live like kings.

Well, not all of us, he thought, eyeing the rest of his crew. If he found a gold lens of sufficient size, they would start dropping like flies. Less shares to split. They would die and he would become Mr. Krag, Legitimate Businessman.

Krag was contemplating murder when there was a flash of light above the caravan, followed by a rumble they heard above the sound of the jets.

What in the Roil was that? Krag thought. If he didn’t know any better, Krag would have guessed it was a light anti-infantry weapon straight from the empire’s military.

Those were only wielded by powerful aristocrats who showed up simply to flick their wrist and cause mass destruction amongst the rank and file.

He should know, because he’d spent nearly a decade working for the bastards.

A moment later there was another flaming explosion above the caravan, followed by another rumble, elsewhere above the caravan, a moment before he thought he heard something.

“Hold! Kill the jets!”

The pirate manning the steering wheel pulled the oily lever with a clunk, stalling out the ship as the stream of burning oil stopped. The boat slid to a gentle stop, their ears adjusting to the sudden silence.

“What is it, captain?”

“SHH!”

Krag cocked his head, pointing his good ear toward the caravan.

Eoeoooeooaoaooeoa!

The cacophony of noise sounded like eerie wailing from this distance, making the thick hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

“What in the Roil is going on over there?” Krag muttered, bringing up his spyglass.

The eyes of the strange human wagons on the road were blinking open and closed like living things while giving off terrifying wails, and one of them was moving.

The boxy thing pulled off the road and turned to face them before it began moving toward them. It began moving toward them fast. Another flash and rumble sounded as the box wagon charged toward them, at speeds that outpaced their expensive faradan-clad boats.

“I don’t like the look of that,” one of the men, Smer, said, shaking his head.

“Who—”

BoomeeeboomeeeboomeeeBOOMEEEBOOOM!

The rumbles got louder as the strange contraption flew toward them, creating its own cloud of dust as it flew over the rough terrain, gouts of flame bursting in the air above it as it charged.

Krag had a decision to make. He had to decide right here and now whether the value they would get out of the caravan was worth the damage to his boat and crew.

“Turn the ship around. We’ll go after easier prey.”

***Jeb Trapper***

“And that,” Jeb said as he came to a lurching halt in front of the caravan, “is how you perform a threat display.” Jeb craned his neck to study the retreating cloud of dust.

“Much appreciated,” Brav’s dad said, nodding.

“We should get the fuck outta here before they realize it.”

“Agreed.”

Chapter 10: Road Trip

Jeb loomed over a map of the west coast, practically butting heads with Smartass as they both surveyed the details.

“Okay, here’re the POIs,” Jeb said, circling the three oil refineries in California, the candy factories between here and L.A., and Silicon Valley.

Jeb found his eyes sliding to the east, where Las Vegas stood. Only two hundred miles away from L.A.

“What’s in Las Vegas?” Smartass asked, following his gaze.

“Sex clubs. Lots and lots of sex clubs. They’d be my number two choice for places that can spawn good vibes lenses, right after hippy music festivals and right before SCA meetups. Except these are fixed locations.”

“You realize these places are actually twice as far away from each other as they would normally be because of the Stitching, right?”

Hmmm.

Jeb located himself on the I-5, then used a Blue’s Clues ruler he’d taken from the back of a car to measure the distance.

Eight hundred miles to L.A., where Solmnath would have dropped into existence. Double that number for stitched-in wilderness, and you got about sixteen hundred miles, as the crow flies.

Of course, it would be a lot more, because Jeb wasn’t flying, and he didn’t trust himself to learn how to land a plane that had been left in disrepair for three months on the first try.

Jeb used the cartoon-dog ruler to estimate the total distance of the trip if he hit each of his POIs.

Twenty-seven hundred miles, give or take….

Let’s see, if we drive Mr. Jeep at about forty miles an hour off-road, ten hours a day… Just under a week to check all the places I want to check. I could check all my POIs and be to Solmnath two weeks ahead of these chumps.

Jeb tapped the map with his pen a couple times.

He would be a lot safer in the caravan, but he would also miss out on a—potential—boatload of sweet loot and lost time value.

As Jeb was weighing the pros and cons, Brav’s dad approached Jeb's lonely corner of the caravan, glancing down at Jeb’s map.

“Are you planning on heading east?” the caravan leader asked, tapping the map where Jeb had circled Vegas.

“Thinking ‘bout it,” Jeb said, nodding.

“Better be absolutely sure that’s what you want to do, because the Roil is roaming those parts right now. It’s a bit north of there, last I heard, but you can never be a hundred percent sure.”

Jeb frowned. “I’ve heard people swear using ‘Roil’. I just assumed it was the local equivalent of ‘Hell’. It’s a real thing?”

“Young man, I spent fifteen years chasing that storm as a youth. It’s as real as it gets, and twice as unpredictable.”

“So what is it?” Jeb asked, leaning against the Jeep.

“It’s a living storm that’s plagued Pharos since the first Stitching. Some people say it's a tiny mistake in the tremendous magics that stitch one world to another.”

“What’s it look like?” Jeb asked.

“It’s invisible, sort of,” the melas said, holding his hands apart. “It bends and refracts light.”

“Like the predator,” Jeb said, nodding.

“...Sure,” the melas said with a shrug. “If you see the most awe-inspiring rainbow of colors on the horizon, you better steer clear. If you hear something that sounds like a voice, you need to get the fuck out of there.”

The melas clapped him on the shoulder. “Good luck out there, Jeb, whatever you decide to do.” A moment later, the aged caravaneer headed off.

Well, that’s creepy, Jeb thought, his gaze returning to Vegas on the map. Choosing discretion as the better part of valor, Jeb crossed off Sin City.

Whatever lenses they had probably weren’t worth risking his life for.

What about my gas? Do I even have enough to travel all the way to L.A.?

Assuming a paltry fifteen miles to the gallon, because Jeb had no idea what Mr. Jeep’s actual numbers were, the gas was old, and they were off-roading, Jeb needed…

A hundred and eighty gallons….

Jeb glanced into the back of his car, where two fifteen-gallon plastic jugs full of unleaded rested. Plus, the car’s tank is full. That only accounts for about a third of the trip….

Thankfully, there was a lot of road between here and there. Jeb was fairly sure he could scrounge up the fuel as he went, as long as he didn’t try to cut a straight swath through the wilderness and stuck close to the I-5.

Jeb adjusted his trip plan to stay as close to the roads as possible.

“How do you feel about visiting the candy factory first?” Jeb asked.

“Eeehh, it’s fine, I guess,” Smartass said with a shrug.

“Fine? I thought you’d be losing your damn mind.”

“I do love candy, but the thing that makes your candy really taste good is the effort you put into acquiring it,” she said. “If you no longer need to spend any effort, I won’t get as much Impact out of it.”

“Ah.” Jeb put down his ruler. “Wanna renegotiate?”

“I don’t know, after you screwed me out of ten bulbs in the last Deal…”

“Hey, we weren’t actually in an agreement with Grenore when I claimed those bounties, so tough luck.”

Jeb took a breath. “How about we renegotiate the monthly candy payment to a two percent share of any Impact gained...”

“That sounds great!” Smartass said, leaping up in the air and zipping around in excitement for a moment.

“…with a few strings attached.”

“Aw….”

“General assistance and tutoring clause,” Jeb said. “Small tasks, basic information, teaching. Stuff that doesn’t cost you inordinate Impact or put you in danger.”

Smartass puffed her cheeks up and scowled at him.

“Come on, I know two percent is way higher than a pound of candy, especially if I find a sugar lens.”

Smartass scowled even more, her face wrinkling up comically.

“You’re gonna have to make a decision soon, because when I find that sugar lens, getting you your monthly payment will become effortless.” Jeb smiled, letting that last word hang in front of her.

“Gah, fine! Two percent of your Impact per month for a standard Familiar contract,” Smartass said with a huff.

“Hell no,” Jeb replied, shaking a finger at her. “Two percent of Impact gained, not two percent of my total per month, you sneaky fae.”

Smartass gave an irritated grunt.

“I don’t know, Jeb. This is a long-term investment, here. You can’t gain a lot of Impact right now, but if you regained your strength, your growth might make it worth my time. How do I know you’ll be able to go the distance? You might get killed by sand fleas tomorrow. I want five percent.”

“Please, I beat the Impossible Tutorial. You know I’m good for it. Two and a half percent.”

“Deal!” Smartass cackled. “I got you to raise your offer by a full twenty-five percent, you gullible fool! Two and a half percent is worth hundreds of times more than a pound of candy! Ahahahaha!”

Now to test it.

“Here, help me out and cross off the candy factories,” Jeb said, holding out the pen.

“Oh, sure,” the fairy said, grabbing the pen and crossing out the candy factory locations, easily shaving a couple hundred miles off the trip.

The oil refineries should be first. Even if they don’t have a gasoline lens, they should at least have fifty-five gallon drums of gas I can load into the back of the car.

“I’m getting thirsty. Snag me one of those root beers?” Jeb said, taking the pen back.

“Of course.” Smartass fluttered away toward the back of the Jeep.

“And run some river water over it until it’s nice and cold,” Jeb called after her.

“Sure—Hey, WAIT A MINUTE!” Smartass glared at him the entire time she rummaged through the supplies for the soda and river stone.

Jeb returned his attention to the map, plotting out the best route. A few minutes later, a can of soda was thrust under his nose, condensation beading down the aluminum sides.

“Here,” Smartass growled at him, holding it out with both hands, her cheeks twitching madly.

Jeb glanced down at the soda.

“Set it down over there.” He pointed to the edge of the hood of the car they were using as a table.

“Okay.”

“Open it.”

Smartass’s eyes went wide even as her fingers went for the tab. “You know, I really don’t think that’s necessary. You can jus—”

PSSHHHH!

Smartass gasped as ice-cold soda exploded all over her front. Thankfully the fairy was wearing a plastic Snickers-wrapper tunic, which was mostly waterproof. She stood there in shock, eyes wide and shivering, dripping root beer from head to toe.

“Smartass, I’m going to make you a promise right here,” Jeb said, picking up the can and taking a sip. “I promise from this point on, I will not intentionally give abusive commands. This promise will last until our arrangement with each other has run its course or such a time as you try to sabotage or monkey-paw me. If something I’m asking you to do is abusive, simply let me know. With words. Does that sound good?”

Smartass nodded, staring into space.

“Excellent. Root beer?”

“I don’t like root beer anymore,” Smartass whispered.

“Alright then,” Jeb said, marking the new route down.

Jeb was wavering on the decision to go solo for a while, and the deciding factor was the time value. If he could get to Solmnath two weeks earlier, then he could catch the bad guy two weeks earlier, and that meant one or two not-dead children.

Plus, with Smartass now obligated to follow orders and invested in his survival, he wasn’t completely alone, and that made a big difference in his survivability out there.

Jeb heaved a breath, looking down at the map one last time before rolling it up and shoving it in the back of the Jeep.

“I’ll go say goodbye.”

******

The next week was a long string of nervous tension punctuated with butt-clenching moments here and there, when they had to speed away from desert monsters and pirates.

Smartass’s new job was scout and lookout. She muttered a bit about menial jobs, but it wasn’t abusive, and they both knew it. She would scout out a place and see if anything was living there, and Jeb would loot it.

While Jeb was looting, the fairy would then watch the outside for any signs of monsters or bandits, informing him as soon as she saw something.

Three times, this stopped Jeb from walking out the door loaded up with loot while a horde of monsters wandered by.

Once, she found a school bus-sized lizard Jeb had no desire to tangle with sleeping inside, and they avoided the location entirely.

Jeb shamelessly appropriated gold bars and coins from safety deposit boxes in banks across the west coast, tossing them in the small trailer he’d snagged for loot.

Rummaging through the safety deposit boxes didn’t just yield gold bars and expensive jewelry. Jeb found all sorts of things that people found valuable, from letters from grandma, baby teeth, and even a snarl of gunk and hair that looked like it’d been thrown up by an owl. He even found some old blackmail material of various kinds, photos taken by P.I.s, a disc with ‘Night with Tim’ printed on the front, old Nazi paraphernalia…

Some truly weird stuff that Jeb shoved back in the boxes without hesitation. One would hope the Tutorial cleaned that kind of person off the face of the earth, but things usually didn’t work out that way.

A few things, Jeb didn’t have the heart to steal. There was a gold necklace from a dead grandmother along with a heartwarming note that Jeb put back in the box and left for someone else. Anything that looked like it belonged on a rapper was fair game, though.

As it turned out, gasoline lenses did exist. Jeb found one in the second refinery he visited. The place was torn in half by the Stitching, and one of the massive steel vats they used to refine oil was cut in half, its contents long since spilled out into the dead brush and dried up until only sticky tar remained.

At the bottom of the apartment complex-sized tank was a white painted chunk of steel covered in thick sludge, its paint and markings suspiciously like those of the holding tanks.

Jeb funneled a drop of Myst through the fist-sized lens, and spent the rest of the day smelling like gasoline, much to Smartass’s amusement.

After that, he made sure to use a net and telekinesis to probe around the inside of all the sludge-filled tanks, scoring several more types of oil lenses, namely kerosene, jet fuel, diesel, lubricant and tar.

Thankfully, he managed to gather these without blowing himself up.

“I bet Elon Musk would pay a mint for one of these,” Jeb said when he found the jet fuel lens. That was the kind of shit that could launch a colony to another planet. Sadly, Jeb lacked the technical skills to make that happen, so he would probably wind up using the priceless treasure to fuel an oil lamp or something.

Does Elon Musk still exist? Does Mars still exist? If Earth got torn up and moved somewhere else, it stood to reason that Mars got left behind.

Human refugees became more common the closer Jeb got to ‘civilization’, and Jeb found himself having to wave his gun around a lot more than he was comfortable with to drive off people trying to raid his trailer.

He even wound up running away from some Mad Max types, spiky mohawks and AK-47s and all. Thankfully any chase was made easier by pulling the keys out of the opposition’s ignition with telekinesis.

Smartass flipped their safeties on, too, which was nice of her.

Jeb visited a prison off the highway and found a Hopelessness lens on the grounds, as well as several families of squatters using it as a fortress, a la The Walking Dead. Jeb was able to barter his way in with live hares from the hare lens and refilling their water tank.

Predictably, they tried to lock him up and force him to use his Myst powers to provide food and drinking water indefinitely, but Jeb politely waited until night, unlocked the cell and left while they were asleep.

They took a few potshots at him while he was driving away, but none of them hit anything important.

Cruising through the dusty ruins of Sacramento, Jeb searched strip clubs, banks, cash 4 gold places, and so on.

He found a Euphoria (addictive) lens that looked like a lumpy white pill about the size of a pinky, a glitter lens that looked like a miniature disco ball, and several different dancing lenses, a couple of them pretty exotic.

Honestly, none of them were particularly useful in and of themselves, but unless Jeb missed his guess, they were probably incredibly valuable to the upper crust of the empire, who would likely pay through the nose to have a good time.

Jeb stored the party lenses away in a small locking case lest he be tempted to misuse them and shoved them in the very back of his trailer.

Jeb got into the habit of parking his Jeep at the top of the highest point he could find at night, taking turns with Smartass keeping an eye out for things trying to sneak up on them.

One particular night, Jeb was leaning back in the driver’s seat, feet thrown up on the dash as the last light disappeared toward the west. They had just finished setting up the blind that camouflaged the Jeep and were settling down to sleep for the night.

Jeb folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes, body relaxing as the glare from the sun gradually faded from his left. He was parked on top of a particularly tall butte that had been Stitched in from Pharos, making a natural semi-mountain in the middle of the flat Californian terrain.

Jeb groaned awake what felt like a short time later as the glare of sunlight began peeking in through his right-hand side, making his eyelids glow flickering red from the inside.

Flickering? The blind could make the morning sun flicker if it were windy, blowing around their camouflage...but Jeb didn’t hear any wind.

Something’s wrong.

Jeb peeked open one eye, not wanting to make any sudden movements. There was a possibility whatever beast was sniffing around his car hadn’t found him for sure yet. Best not to startle anything with big ugly claws.

Jeb’s other eye opened, and he frowned at the shifting rainbow on the horizon. It looked something like the northern lights, but much brighter, more energetic and…

A shock ran through Jeb’s body and he lunged up to get a better look.

“Ack!” Smartass was flung out of her makeshift nest in his hair, landing prone on the dash. “What, what is it!?” Smartass asked, rubbing her eyes, obviously having been asleep during her watch.

Off in the distance, Jeb could see multiple suns rising, their light split into dozens of different facets. Jeb frowned as he watched one of the suns wink out, while another appeared off to the left, and another reversed its course, sinking back below the jagged Stitched mountain horizon.

Jeb narrowed his eyes and peered at the mountains.

The snow-capped heights dried in seconds, bursting into green for a moment before turning a desolated brown, followed by pale bluish white as the flickering rainbow sunlight crested above the mountain. Jeb watched in horrified fascination as the strange phenomena climbed onto the spine of the mountain, causing odd fluctuations in the terrain as it went.

Jeb watched as the rapid fluctuations in terrain flowed down the mountainside toward him like a rainstorm sweeping down a slope.

Jeb turned the key and the engine rumbled to life.

Jeb could feel a trembling sensation that seemed to emanate from the scintillating lightshow creeping over the mountain, washing over him in barely perceived waves. It crawled across the ground, through the floor of his jeep, scaled his legs, straight up his spine before worming its way behind his eyes.

The odd whooshing noises from the top of the mountain began to sound less like a wind instrument, and more like a voice, humming a tune that Jeb couldn’t quite recognize. He’d definitely heard it before somewhere, though. He cocked his head, trying to figure out the melody...

Ow! Jeb’s head jerked as he snapped out of the odd trance. Smartass was hunched over, pinching the back of his hand with everything she had.

“I...think we should be going now,” Jeb said, craning his neck to keep an eye on the storm as they turned away. It wasn’t moving very fast—maybe fifteen miles an hour—but Jeb didn’t wanna be anywhere near whatever the hell that was.

Jeb drove the Jeep down the opposite side of the butte, the Jeep threatening to roll several times as they made their way down the dusty hill.

Jeb spared a second between boulders to glance over at Smartass, who was glancing out the back of the truck at the flickering rainbows behind them.

“I thought the agreement was you keep watch at night, and I let you sit on the air conditioner during the day,” Jeb accused, his hands jerking as the right tire caught an oversized rock. Jeb compensated quick, before they began tumbling down the hillside.

“But it’s so boring!” Smartass protested.

“It was an informal arrangement because I thought you could handle the responsibility. I guess I was wrong. You’ve lost your air conditioner privileges,” Jeb said, hitting the gas as they neared the bottom of the butte, turning south and aiming for the desolate highway.

“Nooo!”

After the close encounter with the Roil, Jeb continued to scavenge his way down the west coast until he came across Solmnath in all its glory.

L.A. and Solmnath were both so big that the Stitching tore them apart, mixing them back together in a confusing jumble of architecture.

Ye olde castles stood right next to skyscrapers, and the city wall had a huge, ten-mile-long rent in the side where the American city and its paved roads spilled out into the desert. They were currently in the process of patching those pale blue walls up, but in the meantime, anyone could just drive in if they chose.

On his way in, Jeb came across more and more people fleeing the city, cheeks sunken and hollow from lack of food. Men, women, and children were leaving the city in what appeared to be a mass exodus, carrying little but the clothes on their back, wandering out into the desert to die.

They gave him strange, hungry looks when they saw the color in his cheeks, and Jeb didn’t stay long enough to find out what it meant. He faced forward and hit the gas.

Deeper into the city, he found the public order somewhat retained, as he came across the people who could afford to eat.

There was a port with a massive fleet of fishing boats just outside the torn coast, navigating the complicated Stitchwork that had been created when the two uneven coastlines merged.

Jeb’s opportunity to buy a mansion came easier than he thought it would.

As it turned out, the aristocrats of Solmnath had sort of…hermit-crabbed into the more impressive skyscrapers, bringing their servants with them.

This made it almost downright cheap to buy the recently abandoned mansions and castles. Of course, ‘cheap’ meant cheap for a mansion, and Jeb still had to pay about ten pounds of gold bullion for a semi-abandoned property, with peeling paint and weeds choking the front lawn.

It was big, though…. Three stories, with forty rooms on each floor, kitchen, bathrooms, basic plumbing. With a little TLC, Jeb could see it housing several hundred people.

Now I just need to staff it, Jeb thought, scanning the massive building.

***Kol Rejan, level 57 Courier***

Kol Rejan walked through the doors of Garland Grenore’s office, head on a swivel, taking in every little detail, his heartbeat measured but heavy. He knew that he’d made enemies along the path of his career, and there was every chance this Grenore fellow had arranged a trap.

There was a bodyguard in the corner, but by the way gravity was pulling on his skin and hair, his Body couldn’t be any higher than twenty.

The dim look in his eye didn’t suggest much Nerve, either. And the melas certainly wasn’t a Mystic. They didn’t take low-paying bodyguard jobs.

Kol dismissed the melas as a threat and reoriented on the slimy businessman in front of him. Garland Grenore was wearing typical loose keegan clothing, albeit made of rich Zanta silk and woven gold.

Tacky.

Kol was wearing similar loose clothing. Although his was far more drab, it was also concealing body armor and several hidden weapons.

“Kol Rejan!” Garland said, rising in his chair and offering Kol his hand. “You come highly recommended, I must say.” Kol stared at the hand until the buffoon put it away.

“Highly recommended by who?”

“Come now, I was instructed not to tell anyone that. You’re someone. As far as I’m concerned, it came to me in a dream. I don’t even remember.”

Good. At least the rich man had a modicum of discretion.

Kol glanced over his shoulder at the bodyguard. “Your bodyguard might be more comfortable outside in the hall for the next few minutes.”

“Indeed, it’s a rather hot day.” Grenore nodded to the muscle, who shrugged and left, leaving the two of them alone.

Kol briefly lamented not having a contract for the sleaze in front of him. If he had, he’d already be done with his job, and he’d probably enjoy it.

“You’re going to write a letter,” he said. “Address it to the target, pay me my fee, and I will deliver it.”

“Oh. Is that it? I thought you were going to—”

“Obviously, I’m going to kill him,” Kol interrupted, his head pounding from the sheer stupid.

“Is there anything in particular I should write?”

“No, I’m gonna kill him. If you want me to deliver the letter first, that’ll cost extra.”

“Well then, what would that cost?” Grenore asked as he dipped his pen and wrote a big ‘Fuck You’ diagonally across the page in flowery letters.

“Two hundred, up front.”

“Done.” Garland folded the letter and slipped it in an envelope. “As for his address... Just his name, or…?”

“Name and location, to the best of your knowledge.”

“Jebediah Trapper,” Grenore muttered as he wrote. “Solmnath.”

“There you go,” he said, sliding the letter across the polished wood.

“My fee.”

“How do I know you’ll follow through? I’m not so naïve as to part with my money before a service has been rendered. I’ll give you money when I see that bastard’s head bleeding on my desk.”

Kol gave a flat stare. “My reputation is sterling. Yours leaves much to be desired. You will pay me in advance. I could just as easily kill you right now and walk away with the money in your desk. Do not test me.”

“Ahem. Yes.”

Grenore pulled out a drawer and swiftly placed five leather cases on the table, each carrying forty bulbs.

Kol picked them up and slung their straps over his shoulder, hid the cases under his flowing clothes, then picked up the letter. He wasn’t actually going to deliver them, no matter what he told his clients. Who was going to contradict him? The target?

Kol had become fairly adept at lying, describing the anger, fear and anguish as his target read the final message from his employer. Actually giving them the letter was too much of a security risk, but that service was entirely for the client’s gratification anyway, so a lie worked just as well.

The moment the letter was in his hand, Kol’s second Class Ability, Unerring Delivery kicked in, and he felt an immaterial tug guiding him towards his target. Towards the south.

“Thank you for your patronage. Expect word from me in about three grent.” Kol pocketed the letter and turned away, still feeling the gradual tug toward the recipient of the letter.

‘Become a courier, son. There’s a lot of job opportunities out there for people who can deliver.’ How right he was. In the history of the world, how many couriers had reached level fifty? Not too damn many.

Which was why his ability to find anyone, anywhere, was so highly valued. Kol took the occasional side job finding lost children or relatives, but hunting down traitors and assassinating them paid much, much better.

“Three grent? It only takes four weeks to get there! I swear, if this is some kind of scam…”

Kol glanced over his shoulder, and the windbag deflated, unwilling to complain to Kol’s face. Kol rolled his eyes and turned away again, leaving the office. Scammers see scams everywhere they look. It was the nature of the beast.

“Well, that’s settled. Now the…” Kol heard Grenore say before he faded out of earshot.

Kol left the way he’d come, stepping out onto the street and taking a moment to breathe in the fresh mountain air. It wouldn’t be long until he had to deal with the stench of Solmnath. He turned to the south, allowing the tugging sensation from his Ability to guide his feet.

He had a letter to deliver.

Chapter 11: Buying Company

“This must be the place,” Jeb said, glancing up at the sign. ‘Otto’s Slave House’ hung over the door, according to Smartass, but it wasn’t sleazy and written on a plank of wood; it was carved into marble and gold, hung above the entrance of the fancy-looking building by thin strands of some kind of unnaturally strong silk.

The only thing that gave the place away as a den of scum and villainy was the stench of hopelessness and the subtle change in the flavor of local Myst and spirits. They were darker, somehow.

“Yeah, I’m not too sure about this place,” Smartass said, hiding in his collar as he walked into the main lobby. It was like the entrance to an opera house, all red carpets and snooty staffers.

The entire place was lit with a warm glow, which did little to offset the unease that Jeb felt as he approached the main desk. The keegan watched him from behind the desk, brow raised.

No matter what happened now, the most important thing was to avoid getting added to the merchandise.

“I’m sorry sir, but we do not serve human—”

Jeb slung three cases of bulbs, a hundred and twenty of them in total, onto the desk with a satisfying thunk. Over seven pounds of gold.

“How about we skip all of that shit and get to the part where you sell me some people?” Jeb asked, giving the guy the do not fuck with me look he’d developed in his time in the army. A well-timed staredown was often better than minutes of useless explanations and haggling. It allowed the other guy to fill in their own blanks.

“You must be the human who bought the Linnorn manor,” a keegan said, approaching from the side. “Please forgive my employee’s impudence. Your money is good here.”

Of course it is, Jeb thought, slinging the cases back over his shoulder.

The new keegan motioned to the side with delicate fingers. Jeb tried to figure out if it was male or female, then decided he didn’t care, following alongside the slave trader.

“My name is Colus. I assume you’re here to look for staffers for your new home? We have some young women who would be perfect for a virile man such as yourself. There hasn’t been much time to train them, obviously, but there’ve been so many humans selling themselves and each other for a meal that it’s a bit of a buyer’s market out there. As such, we can simply use the power of numbers to search for people who most closely match your tastes.

“Are you looking for a project, perhaps? A girl that will take some time and effort, but be rewarding to tame? Or perhaps you prefer a more docile, bookish type? Or a matronly housewife to care for your body and soothe your spirits?”

“Are you working me right now?” Jeb asked, frowning. “Never mind, of course you are. I don’t think anybody’s ever called me virile before. Feels weird. Just arrange for me to view everyone you’ve got,” Jeb said. “I’ll do the rest myself.”

“As you wish.” Colus stopped him in the hall for a moment and sent word to gather everyone in the courtyard.

They chatted for a couple minutes, and Jeb made sure not to let anything personal slip, especially not the reason he was here.

Sure, people to help run his mansion were helpful, but they weren’t the actual reason he was here, and since he couldn’t directly lie about that, the conversation kinda went in circles.

The worker gave Colus a nod, and the keegan led Jeb out into the main courtyard in the center of the complex.

There were a staggering amount of slaves there. Jeb had no idea where they even kept all of them.

The courtyard was maybe half the size of a football field, and it was standing room only. Every race, age and gender stared back at him, a full representative sample of America with collars around their necks, staring back at him with apprehension.

Jeb couldn’t help but notice there were some very pretty young women.

Goddamnit. Jeb mentally kicked himself for even entertaining the notion. Lizard brain being stupid. Time for big, wrinkly human forebrain to step in and take care of this.

“Everybody under the age of thirty, out,” Jeb said, motioning with his thumb. “I don’t wanna deal with your hormonal bullshit.” Or give my darker side control over someone I find attractive.

Men and women over the age of thirty were far less likely to try and stage a coup out of some misguided need for rebellion against the man. In this case, Jeb was going to be the man.

Colus nodded, and people began to filter out of the crowd, led away by the friendly neighborhood slave handlers.

Jeb saw women under the age of eighteen and children that must have been only ten or twelve escorted out. He wanted to save each and every one of them. But there were dozens, hundreds of children. He couldn’t stomach saving one and not the rest, and besides, they were more of a liability than anything else.

So Jeb left them to their fate.

That one condition substantially reduced the volume and physical attractiveness of the people he was presented with.

Instead of ten thousand people, he was offered only a couple thousand.

“What’s the going price on these people?” Jeb asked.

“Ten bulbs for unskilled labor, twenty bulbs for young unskilled labor…although you seem to have already cut off that option. Twenty-five bulbs for a skilled craftsman, and forty bulbs for a high expert or low Classer. High Classer prices are determined individually, and I’m afraid we don’t have any in stock today.”

That’s it? “Would a schoolmarm count as skilled or unskilled?”

“Unskilled.”

Well, looks like I’ve got more spending money than I thought.

“Raise your hand if you were a teacher in a high school.”

About a hundred hands went up.

“Over a decade of experience.” A few hands went down.

“If I may ask, why schoolteachers of the high schooling? Are they actually high experts?”

“Not exactly,” Jeb said. “High school isn’t actually high schooling; that would be college. High school is the proving ground where teachers deal with hundreds of adolescent humans going through the heights of puberty—the absolutely most disobedient, rash, stupid, malicious stage any human goes through. Any high school teacher with a decade or more of experience managing teens is tough. I’m looking for a pair to put that experience to work managing my property and the people living there.”

Jeb failed to mention the children that would be living there, but the rest of it was the truth.

“Interesting logic.”

“You taught AP classes.”

More hands went down.

“This is a difficult one to answer, but just go with your gut, I guess. The kids respected you.”

A lot more hands went down.

In the end, Jeb narrowed it down to an English teacher and a history teacher, both of whom had cultivated contradicting airs of friendliness, sarcasm, and no-nonsense attitudes, which was exactly what Jeb was looking for. People who could both relate to children and handle them were rare.

The English teacher was a balding man with white hair, one Mr. Everett. He had a glint of humor in his eye as Jeb motioned him to the front, despite the situation.

“Mr. Everett, how do you feel about being a butler?” Jeb said, putting his hand out.

“Good a job as any, kid,” the older man said, shaking his hand.

Mrs. Lang, the history teacher, was a brunette with short-cropped hair and a somewhat boney body in her mid-fifties. Her gaze scanned the situation and seemed to take in everything and add it up behind her eyes.

Both of them were sharp. Good.

“Mrs. Lang, how do you feel about being a butler?”

“Honestly better than I thought my fate would be, given the circumstances. Old slaves in many cultures were simply left out to die.”

“That’s not my scene.” Jeb opened one of his cases and slipped out two tubes of ten bulbs, well over a pound of solid gold.

“I’d like them to start immediately,” Jeb said, holding the cash out to Colus.

“Usually we’d sign them over first, but I don’t see why not,” Colus said, taking the leather tubes and slipping them in his robe.

Jeb turned back to the teachers. “I need two cooks, two janitors, and a handyman. Find me the best you can.”

“Got it,” Mr. Everett said, his gaze already picking out specific individuals.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Lang said, nodding, her eyes watering.

“Go, go,” Jeb said, shooing them.

What is it about teachers that makes it impossible not to put a ‘Mrs.’ or ‘Mr.’ in front of their name? Even in my head?

The reason Jeb had given them leave to pick out the rest of the employees was so that they could:

1. Pick out any family members they wanted to stay close to. Mrs. Lang picked up on that pretty quick.

2. Pick people they were familiar with and could work well with.

People the teachers would be familiar with were school lunch ladies, school janitors, etc. They existed in the same realm as the teachers themselves, and therefore knew how to deal with children, even if it was in passing.

Allowing a certain level of favoritism was good for an organization, and bringing their whole family together would keep them tight-knit.

For this con, Jeb needed them to be tight-knit.

Oddly enough, the handyman that Mrs. Lang picked out was mid-fifties and had Lang for a last name. Weird.

One of the cooks was a white-haired woman with an amiable grin. Last name Everett.

Jeb overlooked it.

They filled in the remaining positions with people from their old schools, which was exactly what Jeb wanted.

Each of the positions technically counted as unskilled labor, so all-told they ran him another fifty cool, leaving Jeb with just fifty left.

That’s the skeleton crew I’ll need to take care of the kids I’mma kidnap. Honestly cost a whole lot less than I thought it would.

He glanced at the last five tubes of gold, when he felt a spark touch his mind, reminding him of the jet fuel lens resting back in his newly-purchased mansion.

“Quick question before I go. Are there any astrophysicists, roboticists, rocket scientists, or NASA people in here?”

One hand went up near the back.

“Come on to the front.”

It was a skinny old man with a shock of unkempt white hair, his gaze somewhat manic, unlike Mr. Everett’s.

“What’s your name?”

“Eddie Davis.”

“And what do you do?”

“A little bit of everything, but robotics and AI are my speciality. I was in the middle of working on walking rover designs and programming its AI to deal with unexpected situations more efficiently when the Tutorial happened.” At the mention of the Tutorial, the old man’s face contracted into an impressive scowl.

“You think you could fix a Roomba?” Jeb asked to lighten the mood.

The older man stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

Colus leaned in. “Excuse me, Mr. Trapper. I do not know what a roboticist, astrophysicist, rocket scientist, or NASA is. There hasn’t been a specific request for any of those things in the entire time we’ve been selling humans, and I noticed only one man raised his hand. Would it be correct to assume they are high experts?”

“Yeah, they’re high experts,” Jeb said with a sigh, pulling out four tubes of gold.

“To hell with that, son. You want me to play housekeeper for some schoolteachers while an entirely new set of physics just got dropped in our laps? I gotta science, man. If you try to make me tuck sheets, I’ll kill myself. Do you have any idea the kinds of things that are possible now?”

Jeb leaned in and whispered in the old man’s ear. “Magical energy sources that weigh half a pound and could take a ship to mars.”

Eddie jerked away, his eyes wide. He searched Jeb’s gaze for a moment.

“Fucking buy me. Fucking buy me right the fuck now,” Eddie said, holding his shackles out and wiggling his fingers.

“What did you tell him?”

“I made him an implicit offer of something his nerdy kind has been seeking for a thousand years,” Jeb said, handing over the money.

Jeb took his eight new staffers to the paperwork room, signed a bunch of papers and made his ownership official, then paused when he noticed something odd.

“Where are the slave collars? The Myst ones that control their behavior?” Jeb asked, pointing at the simple leather collars on the middle-aged slaves.

Colus chuckled. “If you like, we can lease one of them to you for a bulb a month, but most of these slaves aren’t worth that level of insurance.”

His gaze flickered to Eddie.

“How much is a Myst slave collar?” Jeb asked.

“I told you, a bulb a month.”

“How much to buy one?” Jeb clarified.

“Oh. Two hundred and fifty bulbs is the typical amount we add if a client intends to buy the collar outright with a particularly expensive and valuable slave.”

“What if I just wanted the collar?”

“We do need them to keep control over the most unruly, powerful individuals, but we could spare one or two for say…three hundred apiece.”

Jeb sucked in a breath through his teeth. Almost twenty pounds of gold each. He currently did not have that much, but he would.

“I’ll revisit that subject soon,” Jeb muttered, finishing his signature. He didn’t want the slave collar so much for the slave collar aspect of it. He wanted the big Control lens for his own creations along with the other Myst-based guts to hand over to Eddie, his R&D department.

“Of course.”

“If any more NASA folks, astrophysicists, roboticists, or rocket scientists come into your possession, I’d be happy to buy them,” Jeb said.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Colus said. “If we find such a person, we will contact your staff at the manor.”

Colus laced his fingers together. “You know, most human men who come by are far more interested in purchasing attractive young females. You are a welcome outlier, in that you seem to be purely motivated by practicality and profit. I think you’ll make quite a splash in Solmnath.”

“You better believe it,” Jeb said, standing and leaving without another word. It was probably a bit rude, but Jeb didn’t want to be buddies with a slave trader.

He led his group of eight back to the mansion. A few of them flinched at the rough state of the exterior, but most seemed to be happy simply to have a place to sleep.

“Yeah, it’s a fixer-upper. That’s what you guys are for.” Luckily, there was a lot of overlap between a janitor and a handyman. Mrs. Lang had basically gotten him four people good with their hands by ensuring cook number two had some carpentry experience as well.

Mr. Lang himself was a contractor, which suited Jeb perfectly.

Jeb took them inside the mansion and closed the door. “Alright everyone, gather round. I’mma ‘bout to give you the speech.”

They gave him their attention.

“Okay, first of all: We will never be friends.”

Jeb scratched his head, chuckling as the room full of middle-aged men and women frowned at him.

Jeb cleared his throat. “I believe that there are certain doors, certain possibilities in a relationship that close permanently upon one person purchasing another person. Friendship is one of them.

“I don’t want any of you pretending you like me for fear that I’ll beat or resell you. I am your boss. I do not care if you like me, and now that you’re here, you will not be beaten or resold, regardless of what you do. The highest priority for you is simply making sure this job goes off without a hitch.

“So contradict me, second-guess me, tell me when I’m fucking up...but as soon as I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it.”

The assembled people watched him intently, paying careful attention to his words.

“For my part, I will make sure you’re paid and cared for until the job is over, at which point I give you my word, I will set you free and give you the mansion. Make a school out of it or something. I don’t care.”

Mrs. Lang frowned. “What do you mean by ‘the job’?’”

“Ladies and gentlemen, you may or may not have noticed that the vast majority of you have a background in education. This is not by accident.

“I believe there is a killer stalking the streets of Solmnath. This particular killer has been targeting at-risk children, snatching orphans and children separated from their parents, picking them off...killing them in order to raise their level. Unfortunately, children that fit those criteria are pretty abundant recently.”

Mrs. Lang’s jaw dropped. “That’s horrible.”

Mr. Everett simply scowled, his usually cheerful demeanor turning ugly.

“Now, I have been deputized by an imperial enforcer to handle the problem.” Jeb pulled the copper plate out of his pocket and flashed it at them before they looked at it too closely.

It might be hard to take him seriously when his deputy badge looked like a mudflap girl.

“The job is this: I am going to relocate several dozen at-risk children in order to lure out the killer. When he sniffs around for the person intruding on his territory, I am going to kill him. Your job is to take care of the kids and keep them in the mansion. This job could take several months, but in the end, we’ll get several dozen homeless kids a place to sleep, and hopefully murder a serial killer. Fun, right?”

“This would never fly in America,” Mr. Everett said.

“Good thing we’re not in America.”

“You can’t just arbitrarily kidnap children for the sake of laying a trap for a serial killer.”

“Why not?”

“Can’t you just…investigate?” Mrs. Everett asked, clutching her chest. “Kidnapping children seems…”

“Extreme?” Jeb asked. “I never said I wouldn’t be investigating. I’ll be doing that, too. If it helps, don’t think of it as kidnapping. Think of it as pulling these kids out of a killer’s crosshairs.”

“Being abducted can do serious damage to a kid’s mind. It can impact them for the rest of their life,” Mrs. Lang said.

“More than starving on the street or getting murdered?” Jeb asked, raising a brow. “Besides, mental health is what I bought you guys for.” Jeb motioned to the two outstanding teachers. “I assume the two of you have master’s degrees in developmental psychology?” He eyed Mr. Everett and Mrs. Lang.

“…True,” Mr. Everett admitted.

“But dear. Kidnapping them?” Mrs. Lang asked, looking up at her husband.

“Sweetheart, I think this is one of those situations where it’s better us than them.”

“What about me?” Eddie asked.

“This Myst lens converts magic into jet fuel,” Jeb said, pulling the lens out of his backpack and tossing it at the scientist. “Knock yourself out.”

A manic giggle rose in the scientist’s throat, and he began petting the lens like Gollum with The One Ring.

“First thing’s first,” Jeb said, clapping his hands. “Get this place ready for company. Mr. Everett, Mrs. Lang, you’re in charge. Eddie, you’re with me.”

Jeb took out his remaining tube of gold. “Supplies,” he said, handing it to Mrs. Lang. He also took out the deeds that proved he owned them and passed them over to their respective person.

“Also, take these. You did more to earn them than I did. Carry them on your person, hang them in your room, whatever you want. I’ll sign the release when we’ve got the guy I’m looking for.”

That taken care of, Jeb spun on his heel and went back out the front door, Eddie trailing behind him. Jeb broke into a light jog, clomping his way around to the back of the mansion, where he’d parked the Jeep and trailer.

Right beside the mansion was what appeared to be a storm cellar: two big double doors on rusted hinges. They led down into a rather large basement, which stretched about thirty paces in either direction—plenty for a single man to set up a small lab/production facility.

Jeb needed somewhere to grind out the gold bullion once he really started spending. Somewhere preferably out of line of sight. There would be enough people wondering where he got his money from.

He also wanted to see what a real scientist could do with Myst engines.

Note to self. Get more Myst engines.

In all likelihood, a Myst engine was incredibly valuable, given that it could be used to power a lens-mine.

“Welcome to your new lab,” Jeb said, motioning to the musty expanse. A spider skittered up one of the stone support beams. “Whaddya think?”

Eddie sniffed, glancing at the ceiling. “Needs ventilation. Unless you want us to suffocate on carbon monoxide. And a light source. Tools and a workbench. And a computer for coding and drafting. And a generator to run aforementioned drafting computer.”

Jeb glanced at the smooth stone ceiling. “Start a list of what you need, then give it to Mrs. Lang.”

Eddie nodded.

“In the meantime, help me unload the trailer.”

Eddie’s eyes bulged when Jeb started unloading boxes full of jewelry and lenses from the back of the small trailer. His pegleg made carrying heavy things extra awkward, with only one foot to balance on. Jeb used his Myst to steady himself and stop from toppling over.

He’d gotten stronger over the last few weeks, but he was still only able to lift thirty or forty pounds with his mind. A Myst Attribute of sixteen was good, especially compared to the average Joe, but not great. Especially compared to the average Myst user.

I wonder if I can get some new rings. I wonder if they would work. Jeb’s stat rings had simply stopped working after the powwow with the gods themselves. They’d been little more than paperweights by the time he’d gotten back to the real world.

They had funded his first couple weeks in an inn before The Spike started nagging at him again.

Jeb wasn’t sure if the rings didn’t work because he was no longer connected to The System, or if it was because they’d been burnt out, but the guy he’d sold them to had said they were nonmagical and paid him a handful of silver for the two rings.

Jeb had to assume the guy wasn’t lying, because as far as the salesman knew, everyone could use The System to identify objects, and lying would be ousted in a matter of seconds.

So, assuming I didn’t get shafted, I could probably buy some new ones.

Still, what about contact with the gods had caused his rings to lose their juice?

Speaking of Attributes, Jeb thought, glancing over at Eddie.

“Eddie, what’s your Class?”

“What Class?”

“Your level?”

“Zero,” the scientist said, holding up a circled finger. “I went through the Easy Tutorial and listened to a bunch of safety talks and whapped a straw man with a wooden sword a couple times until they let me go. When I got back to Earth, I immediately put myself out of harm's way.”

“Why?” Jeb asked.

“Because on average, every actual fight I saw, twelve percent of the people involved got murdered,” Eddie said with a shrug.

“It takes about ninety life-threatening fights to achieve level twenty and get a Class. Extrapolating from that information by using point eight eight survival rate raised to the power of ninety to illustrate the total number of fights reveals I would have a one in one hundred thousand chance of surviving until the end.”

“You realize the twelve percent goes down as people figure out what they’re doing, right? That number doesn’t account for experience,” Jeb mused.

“That number also doesn’t account for the fact that I’m goddamn sixty years old, with weak muscles and slow reflexes. I can barely lift fifty pounds. I’m not a young man full of piss and vinegar. Whaddya say we call the math even?” Eddie said, setting the box down against the wall and rubbing his back.

True, he’s not exactly adventurer material. But…

“Eddie, if you want to figure out how to combine human and Myst tech together, we’re going to need to get you a Class.”

The skinny old man puffed up his chest and heaved out a sigh. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

A thought occurred to Jeb. “You think you could modify a bomb-disposal robot?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods?”

“Excellent. Add ‘bomb-disposal robot’ to your list. I’m sure they’re not in high demand right now. In the meantime, we need to pawn some of this stuff.”

I need to go on a shopping spree.

Chapter 12: Run Forrest

“You’re serious?” Jeb asked.

“No humans allowed,” the hulking melas said, holding up an orange palm in front of his face. “Surely you can read the sign.” He motioned to a big white sign with scribbles on it.

“This is usually the part where the bribe works,” Jeb muttered to himself, glancing greedily through the window, where dozens of minor magic items were sitting on glittering glass stands. Magic clips, magic pens, magic floaty paperweights.

Farther back, resting inside the glass counter under the watchful eye of the clerk, were dozens of wands, each one hand-crafted with magnificent decorative motifs that hinted at their function.

Behind the counter, there were rich, oiled boxes with silver and gold rings, protected by an iron grate covered with glowing runes. It was enough to make him drool.

“I’ve got money. You can see I’ve got money, can’t you?” Jeb asked, motioning to the case of gold under his arm.

Selling tubs of people’s jewelry had netted him a whopping…sixty bulbs. Turns out a fair amount of the stuff was gold-plated. Add that to some steep price gouging, and he’d walked away with only a bit of cash.

Jeb hadn’t expected to get retail price for the jewelry, obviously, but he knew the seller had to be making money hand over fist reselling those chains, watches and jewels.

Since when is sixty grand only a bit of cash, anyway? Answer: When you’re pretending to be rich.

“I can see you’ve got money,” the guard drawled. “I’m sorry to tell you that your money’s no good here. Non-human Citizens only, I’m afraid. The establishment doesn’t believe you fat monkeys can be trusted with magical equipment just yet.”

Jeb’s jaw dropped. Did I just get discriminated against? But I’m rich! Rich people don’t get discriminated against!

No, wait, I’m thinking of rich and famous people.

Jeb took one last, longing look at the candyland that lay beyond the glass window, watched a richly dressed keegan enter the shop, then turned away. He might be able to find a way to get what he needed out of that shop at a later date.

It wouldn’t do him any good to make a scene right here.

Hmm… Where to now? Jeb thought, stepping into the center of the mall and glancing around.

Just like humans had hermit-crabbed into tons of abandoned buildings, aliens loved the mall.

The previous bazaar of Solmnath had gravitated into a mall south of the ruins of Dodger Stadium, clearing out the wares of the previous occupants and setting up shop.

Even the fancy shops like the one he’d just been refused entry had made their way inside the massive building, taking up residence on the upper floors, while the fish hawkers, farmers, blacksmiths and general nonmagical wares settled to the bottom of the four-story mall.

Jeb had forty bulbs on his person because he’d been expecting to buy some magical equipment, and now he found that the rest of his day he’d planned on spending shopping had become rather…open.

Well, that can’t be the only shop in town that sells magical junk.

Jeb fixed his head on straight and started looking in earnest.

In total, Jeb found four places that sold magical equipment to the ruling class. Three of them simply turned their noses up and the last one laughed in his face.

I can’t waste my entire day on something that’s pretty obviously a lost cause, here, Jeb thought, heading down the unmoving escalator and aiming for the door leading out into the glaring light of day.

“Psst.”

Jeb glanced up.

“Hey buddy.” A whisper from the Barnes & Noble across the hall caught Jeb’s attention.

The bookstore itself was poorly lit, with all the lights off, shadows flickering from shelf to shelf, and nine-tenths of the windows covered in some kind of awful graffiti, leaving only a narrow band of the interior visible.

“Nope,” Jeb said, turning away.

“You’re looking for a place to spend some of that cash, right?” the whisper called after him. “We got the answers…for a price.”

Jeb glanced back at the defiled Barnes & Noble, brow cocked. He looked over the graffiti more carefully this time.

Plastered among the poor drawings were the words, boldly written: ‘Surch Enjin’ in big capital letters across the front window.

What the hell is this? Did some feral species of goblin move into the Barnes & Noble? Jeb didn’t know if goblins were a thing in this new reality, but he wouldn’t put it past them.

Then a kid stepped out into the light of the hallway. He was maybe twelve, with a Cobra Kai headband and a suit that was six sizes too big for him.

Oh, kids. I guess I was close enough with feral goblins.

“Welcome traveler, to a suppository of all human knowledge. Do you need information on how to farm, build a boat, make mortar? Brew? Fish? The Search Engine has the information you need to get by. How are you gonna survive the apocalypse if you don’t know how you’re gonna survive the apocalypse?”

Come to think of it, there’s probably millions of white-collar workers who don’t know a damn thing about how to get by and need to find a new niche before they’re forced out of the city. And without the internet, you need books…. Hey, these kids are pretty clever. Or, at least, whoever’s leading them.

Of course, you can’t let a child know you think they’re clever or they’ll walk all over you.

“Suppositories go in the butt. You mean repository. And you spelled both ‘search’ and ‘engine’ wrong.”

“I know that,” the kid said, bristling. “Nancy didn’t know how to spell them and she didn’t bother to ask when she was putting up the sign.”

“And now you told a stranger Nancy’s name. Great. Good job,” another kid said, slapping the first one on the back. This one was dressed more like a typical teen, with a T-shirt and jeans, but wearing a ridiculous amount of gold chains.

I guess I couldn’t have been the only one looting.

“My name’s Jebediah Trapper. I bought the Linnorn mansion up on the northeast side of the city. I’m a former sergeant in the Army, and I know a thing or two about magic tricks. There, now we ain’t strangers no more.”

“Nice one, Forrest Gump,” the preteen chortled.

Jeb clenched his teeth. Perhaps in his effort to relate to children, he’d pulled dusty lines out of his lexicon that seemed to match the occasion and accidentally opened himself to ridicule.

Let’s move past that.

“You said you knew where to spend my cash?” Jeb asked.

“Yeah, we’ll show you on a map. Come on inside.” The preteen boy motioned inside the darkened building.

“Nuh-uh,” Jeb said, shaking his head. “Looks like a trap.”

“I told you,” the freckled kid in the suit whispered to his buddy before the other one pinched him.

The one in the gold chains sighed. “Okay look, there’s a human dude who sells the kind of stuff you’re looking for.”

“And how do you know what I’m looking for?”

“Because we’ve been watching you since you tried to bribe that bouncer!” the one in the suit blurted.

“Makes sense.” Jeb nodded. “You guys trying to rob me?”

“What? No!” the kid in chains protested.

Jeb looked him in the eye.

Ever-so-slowly, his gaze slid away from Jeb’s face.

Cha-chick. Jeb heard the sound of a gun cock from the empty stall across the hall, and he almost sighed in disappointment.

“Hands above your head!”

Kids between the age of seven and twelve came out of the woodwork, every single one of them pointing a gun at him that didn’t belong in their pre-pubescent hands. They were wearing all kinds of clothes, from mad-max to notice-me. A few of the girls were slathered in amateurish amounts of makeup, while even some of the guys were too, although in more war-paint style.

Reluctantly, Jeb put his hands up.

“Hey, I’ll be the first one to congratulate you guys on a well-executed ambush…but you’ve got a bit of a problem with your fields of fire.”

“Oh?” the tallest kid, wearing a Rufio-looking mohawk, asked.

“In a circular ambush like this one, you all would want to be higher than me so that your bullets have no chance to hit each other. If you miss, there’s a chance you hit your friends here.”

Jeb motioned with his thumb to the two kids standing in front of the Barnes & Noble. “When we’re all at the same height, it gets really dangerous.”

Rufio held out a palm and motioned for the kids to get down. They knelt and aimed up at Jeb's face. Suddenly their bullets no longer stood much chance of hitting friendlies.

Clever kid.

“Give us the gold, old man.”

“I’m thirty-seven.”

“What?”

“I’m thirty-seven. I’m not old.”

“Just put the case down and walk away. We don’t wanna shoot you.”

“Then don’t shoot me.” Jeb glanced around. “You realize there are more people right around the corner, right? I don’t know what’ll happen if you start popping off rounds in here, but it won’t be good for you.”

Rufio stepped forward and pressed the gun to Jeb’s chest.

“Last chance.”

Hmm. Jeb wasn’t inherently immune to bullets, his Body still being within human limitations, and they weren’t the kind of people he could go murderhobo on, given their age.

He could try to flip the safety of their guns on, but there were nearly a dozen of the little bastards, he could only do two at a time, and if they caught on before he was done, there was a good chance he would get shot.

Or worse, a child could get shot.

Lesson one, defuse the situation.

“Okay, you got me,” Jeb said, sliding the bulb strap off his shoulder and lowering them slowly onto the ground, keeping his other hand raised as he did so. “Can you at least tell me where the human selling magic stuff is…you know, assuming you didn’t make him up?”

“Northwest side of the city, up against the coast. He’s got a shop and temp agency called Working Stiffs. You can’t miss it.”

Rufio flicked toward the door with his gun. “Now get lost, pops.”

“You know you guys would get a terrible Yelp review for this,” Jeb said, hands up as he backed away, out of the circle, armed children streaming around him, clustering around the bag of cash.

“We welcome repeat business. Come back if you’ve got cash to burn,” Rufio said with a grin before dismissing him entirely.

“I might take you up on that,” Jeb said, picturing his sweet kidnapping revenge.

Jeb backed away slowly as Rufio picked up the case, surrounded by the grasping hands of his henchmen. The farther away Jeb got, the less chance they would hit him or each other.

“Calm down, calm down!” he said, holding the case up and out of the reach of the smaller children. “We’ve gotta get this out of sight before somebody—”

Yoink. Jeb infused the case of gold with a strand of Myst and yanked it straight up, out of the boy’s palm.

The children watched, dumbfounded as the case sailed straight up, hovering ten feet above them in the high ceilings of the semi-abandoned shopping mall.

Rufio, though. Rufio’s gaze followed the strand of orange-gold Myst back to Jeb, his eyes widening.

Jeb whooped as he drew the satchel zipping through the air towards himself, catching it like a football before diving around the corner.

For being totally armed children, there was a hell of a lot less gunfire than Jeb had expected. None, actually. It’s possible that Rufio was aware giving children loaded guns in a crowded mall was a stupid idea, Jeb thought as he clomped full speed toward the exit.

Still, Jeb would rather not test it.

The click of his wooden leg echoed through the halls for a moment before the sound of screaming children and squeaking sneakers against polished concrete echoed from behind him.

Rufio was the first one around the corner, and Jeb whipped out a strand of telekinetic force, aiming to pull back the slide on the kid’s…

Where’s his gun?

Rufio thrust his hands forward and Jeb spotted a bit of green Myst condensing around the kid’s palms before a blast of slime squirted out at fire-hydrant pressure, covering every inch of the hall Jeb was standing in, including Jeb himself.

Whoa, shit! Jeb’s foot and peg flew out from under him as every surface in the mall’s hallway suddenly became slippery as hell.

Jeb’s pegleg, held onto his stump by tension, slipped free and went spinning off into the distance while Jeb barely managed to hold onto the gold, the leather case trying to squirt out of Jeb’s grasp at every opportunity.

These kids are trying to make me work for it.

Jeb was spinning at stomach-churning speeds, sailing down the hall. In a matter of seconds, he would pass by the door leading to the parking lot.

...And there it goes.

“Oof!” Jeb rammed into a drinking fountain, the wind knocked out of him by his own mass. He unclenched his eyes and spotted the kid bum-rushing him, heedless of the omnipresent film of slime.

Rufio lunged for the case on the way past, a narrow band of slime disappearing in front of the kid’s grasping hand.

Nope.

Jeb wasn’t strong enough to lift himself telekinetically, but the non-friction of the surroundings made that a non-issue.

He yanked himself to the side, snatching the cash out of range and sliding toward the exit like a luge rider.

One of the kids near the other side of the hall tried to jump for him, but slipped and face-planted on the ultra-slippery floor.

Jeb squirted out the big double doors into the light of day, yelping when the sliminess cut out suddenly and he began road-hauling himself across the pavement.

Several alien patrons of the bazaar paused upon seeing a man hurtle out into the open air of the parking lot, scream, then hop around on one foot, but they shrugged and went about their business, cruising from one open-air stall to another, where the lower-quality goods were on display for the common man.

Hopping in place and rubbing the road rash on his ass, Jeb eyed the dim double doorway, watching the children shy away from public spectacle. With a few sullen glances toward him, they faded from view, retreating back to their bookstore refuge.

Goddamnit. Jeb was tempted to gloat, but he was the adult, and they did tell him where to find the guy he was looking for. He didn’t wanna owe these punks anything, either.

Let’s see, buying food for twelve kids… Gotta be expensive.

Jeb slipped a bulb out of his case and threw it through the doorway. The gold coin clattered into the mall’s dim entrance, and a moment later a tiny white hand snatched it off the ground before disappearing.

There. That’s my good deed for the day, Jeb thought, turning around and hopping away, stabilizing himself with his own Myst. A minute later, he traded a few of his spending silver for a decent cane and clomped away.

“Well, if there’s one thing I’ve accomplished today, it’s that I’ve found some at-risk children to kidna—er, preemptively rescue.”

After a bit of hopping around and some advice from concerned onlookers, Jeb found a prosthesis shop where he ordered a custom-built, spring-aided piece of wood to walk on. Since he put five bulbs toward the down payment, they let him walk out with a simple loaner. The height was a little off compared to what he was used to, but Jeb had plenty of time to get used to it on the way to the Working Stiff temp agency.

******

“Oh man, that was a lot of children…and I’m pretty sure that big one could see me. Children usually have a bit more Myst when they’re younger. You should have made some Deals with those kids. Something as small as a little girl’s stuffed teddy bear could’ve gotten us some serious juice.”

“I didn’t think of it while they were pointing guns at me,” Jeb said dryly.

Smartass perked up for a moment. “Did I ever tell you why we fairies like children so much?”

“I don’t think you did,” Jeb said, carefully clomping along the cobbled street, trying not to stumble on his loaner leg and cane.

“Then get ready for another Wizard Lesson. I don’t know what the official word for the phenomena of children having more Impact is, but I like to call it ‘time value’,” she said.

“Lifespan?”

“Exactly. When you’re young, you have tons of Impact simply based on the sheer amount of potential lifespan you’ve got remaining, barring violent or untimely death. If you take away a piece of a girl’s innocence by trading her dolly for food, that experience echoes throughout her entire life. Boom, huge amounts of Impact for the price of a loaf of bread.”

Smartass grinned maliciously, rubbing her hands together.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with taking a child’s innocence,” Jeb said, glancing at her askance.

“Oh come on, they’re losing it by themselves all over the place. Why not take a piece of the pie?” Smartass waved her hand dismissively. “Childhood innocence has tons of Myst and is great for the skin. Why else do you think so many lady wizards use it?”

“I’m starting to understand why Pharos society labeled you as a menace.”

“Who, me?” Smartass asked, her cheeks dimpled.

“Fae in general.”

“Pfft. They just haven’t adapted to us. Not like humans have.”

“Oh?”

“You humans are innoculated. You’ve got cautionary tales about making Deals with strange forces in the woods passed down from mother to child for thousands of years in every culture. Thus, when a stranger comes up and offers you a Faustian Deal, you’ve long since been conditioned to nope right out of there. Pharosian natives don’t have that kind of deep history with us. Not yet, anyway.

“Did I use ‘nope’ as a verb correctly? I’m still absorbing modern human vernacular.”

“You used it right….” Jeb fell silent as he thought for a moment while he walked.

“Are you implying fairies existed on Earth?”

“Wizards, too, as recently as four hundred years ago,” Smartass said, perching atop his head. “Then we came to Pharos.”

“Why?”

“Idunno,” Smartass said, kicking her heels against Jeb’s eyebrows. “You’d have to ask an older fae than me. Good luck with that. They tend to be mean and not as awesome as me.”

Smartass slapped her hands on her cheeks, nearly outside Jeb’s field of view. “Ohmygosh, does that mean I’m about to stop being awesome?”

“I think you’ll be fine,” Jeb said, considering the ramifications of Smartass’s words. Humans and fae coexisted as recently as four hundred years ago, and fae have only been on Pharos for a short while? One more mystery to ponder. Icing on the Weirdness Cake.

Jeb stored that information away for later perusal and focused on finding the human with magical gear for sale.

The Working Stiff temp agency was a new business, just started a month ago by an upstart human who’d bought a vast section of land off the northwestern edge of the city. It was reputed to be a farm/shop/labor rental service, run by a single human proprietor.

Jeb made out the shop nearly a quarter mile off, as the dense city died away to reveal row upon row of brilliant green vegetables sprouting in the beating sun.

How does he water all these? Jeb wondered to himself. Was there some kind of aquifer or irrigation he wasn’t aware of? He couldn’t see anything to that effect.

Gradually the scene became clear as distant dots resolved into strange figures carrying oversized buckets of water. Closer to fifty-five gallon drums, he thought, studying the creatures. They had to be bigger than he’d thought originally.

They definitely weren’t human, but Jeb honestly didn’t know what they were. From their silhouettes in the distance, they looked like driders from D&D, with a human upper torso, and eight long legs with knobbly knees.

Except they definitely weren’t driders.

As Jeb got closer, he could make out the strange creatures using the tools that were seemingly welded into their flesh to hoe, weed and shovel dirt, replacing the occasional unhealthy crop with a new one.

What horror is this?

They did say this guy was human, didn’t they? Jeb was starting to understand the general sense of unease people had when referring to this place.

When Jeb got close enough to see the whites of their eyes, he saw there was nothing but whites. The creatures’ eyes were glazed over with death, their skin slowly desiccating.

They were monstrous amalgams of body parts harvested from half a dozen different sources, fused together to make these makeshift all-purpose tractor creatures, then animated by foul magic.

One of the creatures reached down with a slender leg and tapped the single two-legged figure working in the field on the shoulder, gaining its attention.

It was a tall, slender man bearing a dusty hoe, wearing a woven straw hat over tufts of curly ginger hair, with a wet towel over his shoulders to help with the heat. He wore denim overalls over a white T-shirt, and some obvious signs of repeated sunburn on his forearms.

More specifically, it was Ron the Necromancer.

***Nancy, 8 years old***

“Did we have to try to steal that old man’s money? Stealing is bad.” Nancy didn’t really have the words to describe how bad making other people sad felt, so she put the feeling into the word itself.

“Maybe we didn’t,” Colt said, flicking the shiny coin the old man had thrown at them between his knuckles. “But we didn’t know that he’d actually pay us until after we attacked him.” The leader of the orphans chuckled.

Nancy frowned, trying to make sense of Colt’s logic. Sure, a few people had walked off with books without paying, and a few others had gotten answers, then left without paying, then…

Oh, I get it.

“Still, that was mean.”

“Gotta be mean to get by sometimes,” Colt said, pushing himself to his feet. “I’m going to go buy food with this. You guys lock the door after me, and don’t open it until I get back, okay?”

“Because of Slenderman?” Nancy asked.

“Pretty sure Slenderman doesn’t actually exist,” Darius said. The older boy with plastic gold chains around his neck was reading a novel with a flashlight.

“Jake said he saw him before he vanished. A tall, skinny man in a suit. With white skin!”

“That was a keegan.”

“But he was wearing a suit!”

“Keegan in a suit.” Darius shrugged.

“Hey.” Colt snapped his fingers and drew their attention back to himself. “Doesn’t matter who or what is taking us, only that it needs to stop. Lock the door until I get back, okay?”

“What kind of food are you buying?” Nancy gasped with sudden realization. “Can I get some Reese’s Cups?”

Colt frowned at her, an expression that Nancy couldn’t quite read. Sad…or angry? Both?

“…I’ll try.”

“Yay!” Nancy did a double fist pump, like she’d seen her dad do whenever he beat a game. It felt good.

“No guarantees. Reese’s are getting…hard to come by.”

“Aw.”

“What else are you getting? They’re not charging gold for candy nowadays, are they?”

“Rice.”

“Booo!” Catcalls echoed from every corner of the bookstore as the children heaped disdain upon their leader’s plans.

“Deal with it,” Colt growled. “Rice will last the longest. Any idea when the next rich guy is gonna wander through looking for a book or a map?”

They felt silent.

“Didn’t think so.” Colt pocketed the coin and headed out into the dim hallway. It was dim now, but things started to get really dark inside the mall when the sun went down. The shadows looked deep and hungry during the day, with plenty of room for wicked things to hide.

At night, it was much worse, bad enough that Nancy couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. Night wasn’t very far away, either. Colt would have to travel back through the dark.

Colt will be fine. He made it through the Hard Tutorial and can see in the dark. He’s practically a superhero, Nancy thought to herself before Colt turned and looked her in the eye.

“Lock. The door,” he said, poking her in the snoot.

“You don’t have to be mean,” Nancy said, sliding the door closed and flipping the knob with a click.

The painting on the door obscured Colt as she listened to his sneakers softly scuff away.

Darius stifled a yawn. “I’m gonna hit the sack.”

“Okay, good night,” Nancy said absently as she picked up a flashlight and began searching for something by Dr. Seuss.

Or whatever this is, she thought as she pulled out a book from the shelf. It had a pretty cover with weird, blurry ink on the front. Lots of blues and purples.

Purple is the best.

Nancy took the book to her bean bag and shook the flashlight until it was bright again, sounding out the words on the cover.

“The wait-chus…hand.” Nancy looked up for confirmation on her pronunciation before realizing that Darius had already left to take a nap. Or play with Bess. Those two had been playing a lot together recently. Nancy wasn’t dumb.

K-I-S-S-I-N-G. It was the biggest word she knew, mostly thanks to the song about it. Gross. Nancy rolled her eyes, copying mommy.

The story, from what Nancy could tell, was about when a witch crept into a kid’s bedroom, dripping snakes and spiders, breathing smoke, and the daddy…

Nancy felt the tears begin to take hold as she watched the evil witch menace the fuzzy-haired daddy with a snake-knife.

Just like my daddy.

But this daddy won, because mommy was there to help get daddy’s witch sword.

“Nancy.” A whisper came from the front door.

“What?” Nancy’s head came up, glancing at the paint-covered windows. There was a faint shadow against the glass, all distorted from the flickering firelight from the bazaar outside. It was about the right shape, though.

“Nancy, open the door. I left something here,” Colt whispered.

“Oh, okay.” Colt forgot stuff sometimes. It seemed like keeping track of all of them was a lot to remember, so he was a bit frazzled sometimes. That made sense.

I wish I could help more, Nancy thought as she set the book aside, walking over to the door and clicking the lock open. She put her whole body into opening the stubborn door, grunting as she tugged.

Once that was taken care of, she peeked out into the darkness.

“Colt?”

A pale white hand snaked out of the shadows and wrapped around Nancy’s mouth, dragging her into the dark.

Chapter 13: Networking

Ron glanced over at Jeb clomping down the road, patting his forehead with the damp towel. Then the Mystic Taxidermist did a double-take.

“Holy shit!” Ron dropped his hoe and leaped over the waist-high fence, landing on the dirt path outside his land and sprinting toward Jeb at a decidedly inhuman pace. Maybe not car speed, but definitely as fast as a four wheeler.

“Ron, hold up, I’m not—”

Ron tackled Jeb’s chest, sending both of them careening to the ground. The necromancer’s arms were like living iron, squeezing Jeb with no regard for the sanctity of his bones.

“We thought you were imprisoned by the empire or dead or something! What happened!?”

“If you don’t let go,” Jeb gasped, staring up at the sky, “I might be.”

“Oh.” Ron released Jeb’s waist and stood up, peering down at him quizzically.

Jeb decided to stay down a little longer, poking his ribs to make sure they were whole.

“So what’s up, man?” Ron’s eyes flickered to Smartass hovering above Jeb. “Smartass.”

“Ron,” Smartass said, arms crossed.

“You want the long story or the short one?” Jeb said, taking Ron’s hand and pulling himself to his foot.

“Let’s go with the long story. I got time.” Ron crooked his finger, and the nearby tractor-zombie lumbered closer.

“Tell Tony to bring the good juice from the bottom shelf, along with some ice, and a bunch of wood for a gazebo. Yeah, bring Jack and Jesus.”

“UUUurgh.” The zombie lumbered off.

“Semi-autonomous,” Ron said, motioning to the zombie with a flourish. “Figured it out a few days after we got out.”

“So what happened to everyone?” Jeb asked. “I’m very curious.”

“That makes two of us,” Ron said, motioning for Jeb to follow. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine?”

“Gross. But acceptable.”

Ron chuckled.

Ron led him to a gate leading to the inside of the property and together they followed a little dirt path until they came to an artesian well where water simply squirted out into the air on its own, and zombies lined up to fill water barrels.

There was a refreshing mist of water in the air, and Ron motioned for the rotting corpses to wander off while they sat down next to the splashing fountain.

Jesus and Jack were codenames for Ron’s lumber-based zombies, with saws, hammers, planers and more fused to their insectoid limbs. In a matter of minutes, they constructed shelter from the sun around the two of them while they spoke.

Jeb told Ron everything he could about the last couple months. He left out fairy Impact harvesting techniques and his suspicions about the lump on his head, but for the most part, he told the necromancer everything.

“That’s total bullshit,” Ron said, shaking his head.

“To be fair, option number one was killing me,” Jeb said.

“So you’re supposed to kiss the ground they walk on? Assholes.”

“I don’t think they’re universally assholes, or even evil,” Jeb said, rubbing the ring on his finger.

“Well, whatever. I’m sure you’ll be fine. You got a knack for being the underdog. What are you planning to do without a Class, though?”

“Ah ah.” Jeb held up a finger. “I told you what happened to me. Now you have to tell me what happened to everyone else.”

“Let’s see…” Ron said, setting his mug of fruit juice on his knee. “Well, when we got there, they congratulated us and threw this huge party.”

He stared into Jeb’s eyes. “I’m talking a huge party. And there was every kind of entertainment you could possibly ask for. I mean it. There were these melas dancers who—”

“How about we focus on the survivors.”

“Ahem.” Ron cleared his throat. “Right. So there we were at this party, and after the festivities had wound down, the emperor gathered us all together in the same room and he gave us this amazing speech about how we should all consider working together with the empire to ease the transition. Politics-type stuff, you know. He offered us citizenship for free as well as jobs to the ones who were interested.”

“He said all this in the speech?” Jeb asked.

Ron frowned. “You know what? I don’t really remember the specifics of the speech.”

“You don’t remember, but it was amazing?” Jeb asked, little alarm bells going off in his head. “What’s your Nerve?”

“Twenty-seven,” Ron said, staring out into his farm, idly thumbing the handle of his drink. “Anyway, a lot of us took him up on the citizenship thing, but only a few people wanted to actually work for the empire.”

Let’s not poke at the gaps in his memory, Jeb thought. As far as he knew, twenty-seven was enough Nerve to remember nearly everything in crystal-clear detail. The specifics of a speech fell well inside that category. The fact Ron couldn’t remember the speech word-for-word implied Myst or a Class Ability.

“Who all did what?” Jeb asked.

“Well, Freeman retired to the remains of Louisiana, looking for family. Brett and Amanda jumped onto the empire train in exchange for land and titles. They’re technically the highest-ranked human aristocracy, now.”

“Those whores,” Jeb said with a grin.

“Yeah.” Ron chuckled. “Jess… She broke up with me.”

Jeb struggled to keep a straight face as the young necromancer tried to drown his sorrows in juice. A relationship that started with a fling spurred on by the certainty of imminent death wasn’t exactly the bedrock that you build a life on.

“She took an enforcer job. She’s off who-knows-where…killing people.”

“She did get the Assassin Class to start with,” Jeb said with a shrug. “That has to imply she was at least willing to kill people before.”

“I know, I know,” Ron grumbled.

“Casey and Mike, they didn’t take the empire job. They sold a bit of their share and opened a living restaurant. I was aimless for a while, then I realized if Casey can capitalize on free labor, why can’t I? So I decided to buy a farm. More of a plantation, really. In a couple more weeks, I’ll have my first crop!

“These boys are just smart enough to lend out, so I get a little extra spending money that way,” Ron said, patting Jesus the zombie carpenter on the leg.

“Why not take the empire up on the job thing?” Jeb asked, but he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

“Something I realized in the Tutorial: I’m not cut out for fighting.” Ron shook his head. “I spent every day for years just playing a necromancer in D&D, imagining how I’d be some kind of lord of the dead, master of all I survey, but man…that’s not my scene. The idea of actually killing people makes me insanely sick to my stomach, and if there’s anything that makes you recognize your own mortality, it’s seeing people drop like flies around you.”

Ron shrugged. “All I wanna do now is get by.”

Jeb tapped his fingers on the back of his hand. “What did you mean when you said ‘share’?”

“The haul from the shipping area, plus the reward from The System for killing the World Tortoise. You didn’t…get that?”

Jeb sighed. “No, I didn’t get that. Although I did drink my share from the shipping area.”

“Oh.” Ron rubbed his neck uncomfortably. “Well, your share is sitting in the empire’s vault. We all decided to set some aside in case you were still alive. Freeman left all his share behind, and we added it in. The only problem was we couldn’t figure out who was gonna babysit a mountain of loot indefinitely, so the emperor let us use his vault.”

“I’m sure he was happy to do that,” Jeb said, tone flat.

“Eh. We were half-convinced you’d been vaporized or some such.” Ron shrugged. “Seemed like as good a place as any.”

“Well, I’ll look into claiming that one day, if it becomes an option,” Jeb said.

“Did you… Did you need money?” Ron asked. “Cuz I could—”

Jeb held his hand up, then revealed the case of gold hanging from his shoulder.

“Today, I’m looking to buy.”

Ron’s face split in a boyish grin. “Fella, you’ve come to the right place.”

******

“You’re okay with it if this breaks?” Jeb asked one last time, holding the ivory ring between his fingers.

“Knock yourself out, man. I don’t even need it anymore.”

Jeb tugged off his Appraiser and blew smoke out of it while Ron looked on in fascination.

Ring of Myst +3

Crafted by a jeweler to find her child that had been spirited away, this ring offers a glimpse into the unseen world. The jeweler poured years of her life and lost an eye to the creation of this artifact in the hopes that she could locate him again. In the end, the ring itself was traded for her son’s life, but the boy was greatly diminished, and she could never again see him without the aid of the ring she had bargained away.

“That’s really cool,” Ron said, watching the roiling Myst form a solid panel, suspending the ring in the top.

Jeb grunted and caught the Myst ring on the way back down, then slipped it on his finger. The ring seemed to relax around his finger, growing wider as it engulfed his digit. Jeb’s temples began to pound, and he knew it was working.

He used the Appraiser on himself.

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 39

Accolades: Krusker’s Brawn, Siren’s Cunning, R-R-RubU’s Mysteries, Gresh’s Subtlety, Innovator, Lagross’s Power

Body 21 (9)

Myst 71 (16+3)

Nerve 26 (10)

Abilities: Mystic Trigger

Accolade Pending: Lagross’s Power suspended due to multiple instances. Awaiting resolution.

Attention, this User has been flagged for exclusion from The System by executive order.

There it is. Thank God I can still inflate my stats. “How much you want for it?” Jeb asked.

“For you?” Ron asked. “On the house.

“These, on the other hand.” Ron ran his fingers over the case full of artifacts before opening the wooden lid with a dramatic flourish. “These will cost you.”

Jeb nearly squinted at the sheer amount of wealth on display blasting him in the face. Ron didn’t actually have to work a day in his life; the farm was just something to do.

“I’ll take the slave collars,” Jeb said, pointing. That’s right, Ron snagged these at the end of the Tutorial. “I need control lenses, and examples of circuitry.”

Jeb went through and started identifying the wands on display.

Wand of Flowing Barriers

The ultimate intersection between personal protection and affordability, Life-Aide’s Wand of Flowing Barriers releases a thin film that instantly settles into the air, creating a malleable barrier that is difficult and time-consuming to penetrate, giving you the opportunity to escape or launch a counterattack!

Whether you need protection from monsters or simply need to buy time to make yourself presentable, Life-Aide is on your side!

Warning, choking hazard. Do not use Wand of Flowing Barriers in a manner other than for its intended purpose. Do not tamper with Wand of Flowing Barriers. Doing so voids all warranty and may result in serious injury or death. Life-Aide is not liable for any damages caused by using the product other than for its intended purpose.

“Ehh….” Jeb set aside the pearlescent wand and tossed the next one into the Appraisal cloud.

It was a simple steel tube with a ruler stamped into the metal side and a couple different sliding focus rings along the side.

Wand of Sand-blast

The right tool for every job. The Wand of Sand-blast sends a fine blast of sand out, potentially blinding opponents. But wait, there’s more!

The Wand of Sand-blast can also be used to sand furniture and other projects, even steel and gemstones. It can even be used to cut and polish at different settings. It’s the perfect gift for the crafty son of a bitch in your family this holiday season.

Warning, blinding hazard. Do not use Wand of Sand-blast in a manner other than for its intended purpose. Do not tamper with Wand of Sand-blast. Doing so voids all warranty and may result in serious injury or death. Ricter’s is not liable for any damages caused by using the product other than for its intended purpose.

“Interesting. Next.”

Wand of Translocated Vision

Need a clear point of view to fill out that map, or find true north when the canopy is blocking the sun from view? Look no further than the Wand of Translocated Vision!

Creates a temporary invisible sensor linked to the caster at the focal point of the wand, with a practical range of up to a hundred feet. The user’s viewpoint will switch to the sensor’s immediately upon casting.

Scout Rabzi dens in advance, check around the corner of that tunnel for lurking Smorlocks, all without exposing yourself to danger! Smart wizards choose Tenacity™!

May cause nausea. Tenacity™ is not liable for any motion-sickness or temporary loss of vision the user may experience. Do not use Wand of Translocated Vision in a manner other than for its intended purpose. Do not tamper with Wand of Translocated Vision. Doing so voids all warranty and may result in arrest for spying on the opposite sex.

“It boggles my mind, the gulf between the hyper-consumer tone of wands, versus the Grimm fairy tale tone of rings,” Jeb said, holding up the ivory ring on his hand.

“I think it’s because rings can’t be mass-produced?” Ron said. “I mean, you made your fireball wand in less than a week, with scraps. I wouldn’t know the first thing about these rings.”

Something to think about, Jeb thought, eyeing the ivory ring.

******

“Okay, two slave collars, the bubble wand, sand wand, peeping wand, and the gold ring of Body plus three. That’ll be eleven hundred bulbs, or seventy pounds of gold bullion. Would you like me to wrap that up for you?” Ron asked with a hint of a smile.

“Can I get a—”

“That is at a discount.”

“Just the barrier wand for now, then,” Jeb said. “I’ll be back in a couple days with more gold.”

“I don’t doubt it. I’ll be holding onto these for you until then.”

Jeb wanted to grumble aloud and impugn Ron’s family, but that would be a lie, so he settled for a glare.

“Thanks for the ring, Ron.” Jeb waved as he headed out, completely bled of gold by the heartless monster.

“Yer welcome, come on back anytime. You too, Smartass.”

Smartass waved from Jeb’s shoulder before giving the necromancer a raspberry.

******

Jeb walked down the road, passing by the occasional rusting heap of steel that hadn’t been moved out of the street yet.

I wonder if I could use Ron as reinforcements, Jeb thought, ignoring the sounds of overcrowding—people fighting over scraps of food and children screaming. The usual.

Jeb had only two moral compunctions about using Ron’s zombies as extra workforce. First, he could see a thousand different ways Ron’s zombies could get caught trying to steal children, and those zombies were indisputably Ron’s.

Good way to get the ginger set upon by a mob with torches and pitchforks.

And second, the kid said he wasn’t a fighter. The only reason he’d been a fighter in the Tutorial was because the alternative was death. Ron’s greatest aspiration was to start a business, get married and have kids. He was already halfway there.

As soon as ladies figured out the necromancer was young, single, had money, food, a place to live, and protection, well… He was about to get very popular, as soon as a woman was brave enough to investigate the mysterious owner of Working Stiffs.

Better to keep Ron out of the splash zone, blame-wise. I’d rather have him available for the long term rather than get him arrested or killed.

So if I’m not using Ron, then what’s my in? I need to start yanking kids off the streets, but without getting caught. I was considering using a custom-built zombie to somewhat disguise my involvement from the casual observer, but that’s not gonna fly.

Honestly, Jeb didn’t have the first clue how he would go about stealing children, because he wasn’t a psycho child predator.

I guess the first thing I would do is find some kids living on their own to steal. Jeb thought back to the kids dwelling in the bookstore.

Check.

Then I would case them, either by myself or with loyal investigators. Then, as soon as I got a solid idea of their comings and goings, I would exploit some flaw in their child-logic and lure one away from the group and pick them off.

Not checked.

Maybe I should’ve bought the peeping tom wand.

Jeb had prioritized his own protection over information gathering, and it looked like that was going to slow down his job. Not by a lot, given he was about to go home and begin producing gold bullion.

I wonder if I could hire a private investigator. No, it might be better to buy one from the slave house. Then I know they’re not involved.

“Nancy!” A single voice cut through the chatter of humans littering the streets, dragging Jeb’s thoughts back to the present.

“Naancyyy!” Another voice echoed through the streets. Young.

Jeb frowned and changed the direction of his foot, heading toward the voices.

“Nancy! Where are you!?”

Jeb turned down an alley that connected to the next road over. Several men sat in the alley, conserving their energy, ribs sticking out like the dry twigs of a mummy. Jeb passed them without a second glance.

Can’t save everyone.

Jeb followed the voices to a small backroad, where he spotted about two dozen children marching through the street, hollering ‘Nancy’ at the top of their lungs, many of them crying.

There’s Rufio, Jeb thought, eyes narrowing as a memory triggered. ‘And now you told a stranger Nancy’s name. Great. Good job.’

Their Nancy is missing? Today!?

Jeb had been close enough to bump shoulders with the culprit! Had the bastard been listening when the kid mentioned Nancy’s name and used that to steal her? Jeb quickly ran through his memory of the day’s events and didn’t remember anyone being close enough to have heard them.

There was nobody in eyeshot, but there was a distinct possibility that Jeb had seen them immediately before or after if they’d been close enough to eavesdrop with magic.

Damn, I wish child-killers would just wear signs that said ‘I’m the bad guy’. Make life a lot simpler.

Jeb lurked in the dark of the alleyway for a moment, casing the two dozen mewling children of varying age, considering his options.

His gaze settled on Rufio, the teenage leader of the pack. I need an in. He has an in. He’s a fighter, and he’s got a bone to pick with the guy stealing his people.

Oh god, I’m considering working with a teen. Kill me now.

Rather than off himself as was appropriate, Jeb followed the wandering horde of children until they mostly ran out of gas. Some of them still shouted for Nancy, while others wrapped their arms around their legs and curled up like pill bugs, weeping into the unfeeling asphalt.

Their leader had pulled ahead of the rest of them, calling out the girl’s name incessantly, his voice hoarse from overuse.

Now’s a good opportunity, Jeb thought to himself, spooling out a strand of Myst and extending it to where Rufio was staring blankly at the side of a building. With a little bit of effort, Jeb formed the string of glowing orange myst into some respectably legible writing, slipping it out onto the road.

Shut up.

You and me are going to have a talk.

Come into the alley.

Rufio’s eyes scanned the invisible message, then tracked over to where Jeb was pulling the unspent Myst back into his Core.

From this distance, Jeb probably looked like…well, like an older dude stalking children through the dark streets of L.A. after dark, looming in an alley.

In essence: not good.

Jeb crooked his finger, grinning evilly at the grieving teen.

This’ll determine if this is the kind of kid I can use.

If he screamed for his friends, he was a little too smart to use. If he believed Jeb right off the bat, he was too dumb.

Ideally, Rufio would come alone, take nothing at face value, then try to kill Jeb. That was the kind of bloodhound Jeb needed. Rufio glanced back at his friends, squared his shoulders, and marched toward the alley, his expression grim.

Okay, so he’s not too smart. Let’s see if he’s too dumb.

“What do you want, pops?” he asked, raising his chin arrogantly at Jeb in a ‘punch me here’ kinda way. God I hate kids, because they all inevitably become teens.

“Before we begin,” Jeb said, choosing his threats carefully, “if you repeat what I’m about to tell you to anyone before it becomes common knowledge, I will literally give you a caning.” Jeb clicked his cane against the ground for emphasis.

He meant it, too.

Rufio crossed his arms. “Spill.”

“I’m hunting the guy who took Nancy. I want your help flushing him out,” Jeb said.

“How the fuck do you know about Nancy?” Rufio bristled.

“Because you’re walking down the street shouting her name!” Jeb hissed. “Look, my plan involves housing you guys somewhere safe to flush the guy out, direct his attention towards me.”

“‘Somewhere safe’, huh?” Rufio asked.

“View this objectively. You kids represent a large pool of free power to some morally bankrupt cocksucker. If we remove your kids from circulation, the culprit’s gotta make a move if he wants the metaphorical gravy train to keep running.”

“Sounds like you’ve thought about this a lot.”

“It’s my job.” Jeb shrugged.

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Well, all you have to do is give me custody of your friends here, and send any more you find my way. Simple.”

“How do I know you’re not the one that took Nancy?” Rufio demanded, whipping his pistol out and pointing it at Jeb’s forehead.

Jeb extended a strand of Myst out his foot, through the ground and snuck it up behind Rufio.

“You were there when he said her name. You were standing right there. Were you watching us?”

Passing marks.

“You’ve never seen me before then, have you?” Jeb said, slowly raising his hands. “I just arrived in town. Ask around.”

“You expect me to believe anyone is interested in helping us?” the teen demanded, the gun shaking in his hands as he psyched himself up to commit murder. “No, you gotta be the guy. You killed Nancy.”

“Well, if that’s what you believe, pull the trigger,” Jeb said, reaching a tendril of Myst up from behind and beneath, flicking the safety on.

Rufio’s eyes narrowed, and he squeezed the trigger.

Predictably, nothing happened.

The next couple seconds were a blur of motion.

Rufio dropped the gun, stretching out his left hand and reaching for a pebble with his right. Green Myst gathered in his left palm.

Jeb whipped out his barrier wand and flooded it with Myst while pulling it from one side to the other like closing a curtain.

The pearlescent Wand of Flowing Barriers created what appeared at first to be a massive soap bubble. Take a giant wobbly bubble made by a huge bubble maker, flatten it a bit and give it the ability to harden into a tough resinous substance, and you’ve got the idea.

The thin wobbly film turned from pearlescent to a hard sheen as it cured a fraction of a second before a blast of Myst-slime scattered off its surface.

Rufio snatched a pebble off the ground and whipped it forward with the tips of his fingers.

The tiny bit of rock smashed into the resinous substance between them, creating a trumpet-shaped deformation in the wall as its energy was stolen by the semi-stretchy material. It was a bit like watching ballistics gel stop a bullet.

The gun clattered to the ground, and Rufio threw three more rocks, stretching the wall until it began to turn pearlescent again from the strain.

Better leave soon, Jeb thought, reaching into his pocket with his free hand.

Jeb took out a notepad and scratched down the address of his mansion.

“Come visit us sometime. We can talk about how you can help me catch the guy. And remember, if you tell others about me before they already know, I will beat you with a stick.”

He stuck the note to the tacky wall of clear magical resin and began clomping away. The wall was starting to degrade along the edges already, and Jeb didn’t wanna go for round two until the kid had a chance to calm down.

Rufio didn’t chase him—just stood there at the edge of the alley, fists clenched tight.

Jeb clomped his way back to his home in the dark of night, keeping his head on a swivel for teens with misguided anger and robbers who were just plain hungry. He wasn’t able to relax until he set foot inside the mansion.

Jeb hung his overcoat on the rack and stomped his way to the kitchen, where he was pleased to discover Mrs. Lang making sandwiches, half a dozen at a time with a practiced hand.

Jeb melted into the stool on the other side of the bar, listening to the pounding of hammer and nail, sawing and general boisterous atmosphere of the janitors and handymen fixing the holes in the staircase.

“I smell paint. Where did we get paint?”

“The boys took your Jeep and raided a Home Depot,” the matronly old woman said, passing Jeb a sammich.

“Nice.” Jeb took a bite. “Free is good.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” She took a second glance at Jeb’s haggard expression. “Long day?”

“Eh,” Jeb said with a shrug. “Bit of a mixed bag. A bunch of people threw me out of their shops for being human, almost got robbed, a kid tried to kill me a couple times, I met a friend from the Tutorial—oh, and I think a little girl got killed this evening by the guy I’m looking for.”

Mrs. Lang’s hand froze, knife seized tight in her trembling fingers. “You’re going to kill him…right?”

“That’s the plan, Mrs. Lang.”

“Good.” Her knife resumed spreading the homemade mayo.

Jeb finished his food and checked in on Eddie.

The first thing he noticed was the generator running outside the old man’s man cave. It was rather quiet, with what looked like a series of mufflers welded to the exhaust and an extra-large tank. Deeper inside, the old man had an extension cord leading from the generator, connected to several electrical goodies, namely a computer and what looked like an extra-fancy 3D printer. On the floor was a smorgasbord of engines, motors, and bits and pieces of electrical components that Jeb couldn’t even hope to name.

In the corner was a bomb-defusing bot with all its armor stripped away.

The old man was drafting something on the computer, his bifocals slipped down the bridge of his nose as he leaned in closer than strictly necessary and muttered to himself.

“How’s it going?”

“Completely breaking the laws of physics, that’s how it’s going.” He pointed at the Myst engine in the center of the room, feeding a trickle of Myst through Jeb’s regulator and into the gasoline lens, which trickled liquid fuel into a receiver, which in turn pumped into the generator’s tank, supplying the entire mansion with power.

“Are you telling me you can see the Myst being used by that thing?”

Jeb glanced at the whirling vortex of pale Myst being drawn into the tiny hole at the top of the engine.

“Yup.”

“How can it behave like a vapor, then a light ray!?” Eddie clutched his head and winced for a moment. “Nevermind. I gotta get those levels. Buddy will be done in a day or so, then we’ll see if you’re pulling my leg.”

“Did you make the thing I asked you for?” Jeb asked.

“Right over there,” Eddie said, waving his hand toward the bench dismissively, his gaze sliding back to the drafting program. “Now shut up.

“Motherfucker!” Eddie growled when an error message popped up.

“Where did you get the printer?” Jeb asked, picking up the length of steel. It didn’t look like one of the household 3D printers he’d seen in the past. It was big and industrial-looking with welded plating, and exposed guts twitching as the arm moved around.

“I stole it from Chuck’s house.”

“Who’s Chuck?”

“He was my nemesis. He’s dead now, and I know he would’ve hated to see me using his baby.” Eddie cackled.

“Well, you look like you’ve got everything well in hand.”

Eddie grunted.

Jeb left his technician alone and went to the room close to the stairs that he’d claimed for himself, passing by the men painting the walls with a nod.

Jeb entered his room and closed the door behind him, then sat down on the bed and stared at the wall.

Well, I guess we’re doing this.

Jeb glanced down at the metal rod in his hand. It was a length of steel, about a foot long, with a wicked bladed hook on the end. The hook itself was tiny, about half an inch from end to end.

The reason being…

Jeb slipped the Appraiser off his finger and put the hook through it. Holding the two objects with both hands, Jeb began to awkwardly probe around his scalp.

Tap, tap, tap. The side of the hook bumped against his skin…until it hit something that wasn’t Jeb.

There you are, you little bastard.

Chapter 14: Can’t Go Back

Nancy’s eyes popped open and she sat up, her heart beating so fast.

Where am I? She craned her neck, looking around the room. The walls and ceiling were clean-looking except for the smudges above the lamps, which seemed to be made of shiny gold. The walls they attached to were as red as blood, with off-white pillars supporting them. They reminded Nancy of bone.

She felt tears begin to well in her eyes as she realized that she had absolutely no idea where she was.

“Please, don’t cry,” a smooth voice said from her left.

“Eep!” In a flash of movement that even Nancy had trouble following, she catapulted off the red velvet couch and hid behind the back of the furniture. Slenderman was sitting on the chair to her left! She hadn’t seen him yet because he’d been so still!

“My name is Lenos Surpey. I rescued you from a reaper last night. You must have been exhausted, because you slept most of the day.”

Nancy peeped above the edge of the oversized couch.

There, sitting on an extra fancy-looking chair, was Slenderman in a black suit. He had no lips and a piercing stare, his boney fingers folded over each other on his lap.

I shouldn’t look away, Nancy thought, keeping her eyes wide. When you look away, that’s when he teleports up behind you and kills you. Daddy sure played the games enough.

Nancy kept silently staring at the monster, her eyes growing increasingly painful until the pain finally forced her to screw her eyes shut.

Oh no, he’ll get me! Nancy dodged the inevitable back-swipe by rolling across the floor, then looking behind herself.

Nothing there? She glanced back at the chair, and was flummoxed when she spotted Slenderman still sitting where he’d been.

He cocked his head.

Nancy cocked her head.

“Child?”

Now that she got a better look, it was just a keegan. A keegan in a suit. Weird.

“I wanna go home,” Nancy said, standing with her hands clenched into fists.

“Sadly, I lack the power to grant that request. I can’t bring your mother and father back to life, just as I can’t un-Stitch your world.”

“That’s not—” Nancy’s throat choked up at the mention of mommy and daddy.

“Oh? You feel like a small library in an abandoned section of a shopping mall qualifies as a ‘home’? I imagine the pang of hunger in your stomach is nostalgic for you too?”

“Stop it,” Nancy said. He was being mean with his words, without Nancy knowing exactly how he was doing it. He wasn’t calling her names or sticking his tongue out, but all she knew is he was making her feel really bad.

The keegan’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend. I simply wanted to illuminate a truth.”

“What truth?”

“You don’t have a home, like me,” the keegan said, his eyes looking almost…sad.

“Do too!” Nancy said. “I’ve got Colt and Damian and Bess and…”

“Those are just strangers you’ve been clinging to, hoping for scraps. They aren’t family. What have they done to help you? No, much more importantly, what have you done to help them?”

“I…” Nancy twiddled her fingers as a wave of guilt crashed over her. She got yelled at when she made the sign out front. She got yelled at when she tried to make book soup, when she peed the bed, when she ate the last of the candy….

“Face it, you don’t have a home.”

“I…guess not,” Nancy admitted.

“That’s not all bad, though. There’s one good thing about not having a home.”

“It doesn’t seem like it,” Nancy said, tears welling in her eyes.

“The silver lining here, is that not having a home gives you a chance to make your own.”

“What?” Nancy frowned.

“What do you think your mommy and daddy did? They made their own home, with you included. You can make a home too; it just takes time.”

“Do I have to be a mommy?” Nancy asked, screwing up her lips. Mommy and daddy did some weird, loud stuff when they thought she was asleep.

“No, no.” The keegan laughed, waving a boney hand. “That’s a different matter altogether.”

Whew.

“You can make a home where you and all your friends can live forever. All you need is the time to do it.”

“How?” Nancy asked, walking around the edge of the couch and sitting back down.

“With a lifetime of effort,” the keegan said, reclining in his seat.

“A lifetime?” Nancy whimpered.

“Youth is the gift of life breathed into us by Mother Vresh’na. This vital energy fades over time, which is what leads to aging, and eventually, the death of all things. But what if I told you, there was a way to beat aging? A way to live forever, gaining the strength and time you need to build a home for you and your friends, and you’d never have to see them unhappy ever again?”

“Nuh-uh! Daddy says aging is when damaged ‘Dee Un Ey’ gets copied when cells split; eventually they forget how to fix themselves. He said scientists are about to figure out how to stop aging by fixing ‘Dee Un Ey’ with Crispy but they’re never going to make it pubic because rich people don’t want to share.”

Lenos’s jaw hung open for a second.

It closed.

It opened.

“Uh… Ahem.” The keegan coughed into his fist. “Humans certainly have active imaginations.”

“Nuh-uh! It’s the truth! Daddy’s never wrong!”

“Except the time he got himself killed, I assume.”

Nancy’s face crumpled, her eyes burning with pain, loneliness and shame. She grabbed a pillow off the couch and started sobbing straight into the soft velvet, heedless of the salty tears and snot working their way into the expensive fabric.

“That’s not a…nevermind. Go nuts.”

About ten minutes later, she had post-meltdown clarity and a case of hiccups. Nancy was ready to talk again.

“Anyway, the people of Pharos have found a way to eliminate aging entirely, and I’m going to help you do it for yourself.”

“Why?”

“I lost my home too,” Lenos said, tapping his chest. “I want to give you the time you’ll need to make your own.”

“You’re mean.”

“I’m practical. I’m too old to do it now, but you…” He gestured to Nancy. “You’re young enough to make it past the O’sut Bottleneck.”

“The what?”

“The O’sut Bottleneck. It was named after the scholar O’sut, who discovered that the anti-aging properties of the Body Attribute can be used to provide true immortality at high enough potency, and that the required amount is quadratically higher depending on the creature’s current biological age. In essence, at the age where a normal young man could hope to defeat monsters and gain levels, it is already too late. The amount of levels he needs would take longer to acquire than the aging they would prevent. Sure, he could live hundreds of years, but it would be almost impossible to achieve true immortality just playing catch-up with his own aging.”

Lenos spread his hands. “The O’sut Bottleneck.”

“I don’t get it,” Nancy said, shaking her head.

“That’s alright. All you need to know is that it’ll give you the time and strength you need to make a home that no one can take away from you. If you let me help you.”

“…I could invite all my friends over to my home?”

“Of course,” Lenos said.

Nancy peered at him, her mind dancing with the possibility of lazy days spent reading books while hanging off the edge of furniture, chasing each other around a big house, eating together….

“What do I need to do?”

***Jebediah Trapper***

“Okay.” Jeb breathed quietly, slipping the ring farther up the handle of the hook until he could keep it in place with his right hand.

With his left, he gently placed the very tip of his middle finger against the hook and began feeling around. He used the flat side of the hook to feel for the stitches. From feeling around with his fingertips earlier, he was fairly sure it wasn’t a zipper or legs sunk into his scalp, but stitches securing some wriggling…thing to his skull.

There’s one, Jeb thought, feeling it out using the hook as a medium. He guided the edge to the stitch, took a deep breath, and began gingerly sawing at the material. He kept perfectly still, expanding all his senses outward as he tried to keep track of every tiny sensation.

Damage to the brain won’t register as pain; it’ll register as dizziness or a funny taste, maybe even a sudden change in mood, Jeb thought, his heart thudding out a heavy beat as he sawed.

Pop.

There was a sudden loosening as the hook sawed through the stitch, a relaxing that rippled through his consciousness and his Myst Core. Instantly, the sensations faded, before he could even put a name to what was different.

Da fuck was that? Jeb thought, blinking. He paused a moment to take stock of his mental faculties. I don’t feel like I have brain damage, but then again, who does? No time like the present.

Whatever it was existed in another dimension and was not naturally occurring. Jeb was determined to remove it and anything else that had been soldered onto him without his knowledge or consent.

There’s always a chance this’ll turn me into a drooling vegetable or have me bleeding out on a plane of existence I can’t even interact with…. Worth it.

The ‘eww’ factor was just too high, having something alive strapped to him, possibly influencing his decisions on a level he couldn’t even understand. Nobody wanted to be a cordyceps zombie.

After he tested his smell, taste, balance and ability to count backwards from ten, Jeb resumed the work.

Pop.

Another stitch came loose, accompanied by a quickly-fading sensation of loosening.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

The stitches began to move back and forth, making it difficult to work. Frowning, Jeb took the hook away and slipped the ring onto his finger, feeling around the area. The long lump was thrashing back and forth, struggling against the loosening stitches.

Alright, Jeb thought, slipping the ring back onto the hook. It rattled all the way down to the handle.

Rattled? Jeb peered closer at the steel hook and noticed its surface was pitted and worn. It wasn’t rusted out, but seemed as though it had been eaten away by acid, with pinhole-sized pits in the surface.

Worry about it later. Jeb needed to strike while the iron was hot with the lump.

He found his spot again, working from the other side, pushing the wormlike thing down with the handle while he sawed away at the stitches.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop pop pop pop pop pop pop!

Here it comes! Jeb thought, barely keeping his presence of mind through the series of ripples travelling through his being. The last stitches were coming undone on their own, and the creature, whatever it was, would soon be free to get the hell off of him.

But we’re not gonna let this go that easily.

Pinning the creature down as best he could with the handle while making sure the rest of the stitches really were gone, Jeb flipped the hook around, sliding the blunt side around the wormlike creature’s midsection.

He released the ring with his right hand, letting it slide down the handle until it was bumping up against the invisible thing he’d trapped against the side of his head. Jeb grabbed the ring with his left hand and began drawing the creature through the ring-hole with his right.

The hook and ring combo began to buck in his hands, shaking violently as some implacable force resisted the transition.

Jeb pulled the whole thing away from his head, the creature effectively trapped between the ring and the hook. He leaned forward, holding the two close to his chest and putting leverage to work, straining with a level of effort reserved for the most stubborn of pickle jars.

The invisible thing continued to thrash, jerking his hands from side to side, seemingly with the weight of a full-grown man thrown into it. Jeb was concerned about the damage the thing might be doing to his fifth-dimensional body that he couldn’t even perceive.

Still, he wanted to see the damn thing with his own eyes, and so he continued to pull, struggling to tug the worm through the ring.

Despite putting all his leverage and strength into it, the creature refused to cross dimensions.

Go figure, Jeb thought, scowling. He only had one thing left to try at this point.

Jeb took a deep breath and funneled out the thickest strand of Myst he could possibly manage, sending it through the ring and seizing everything on the other side and yanking it back through.

Well, he tried.

As soon as the Myst made contact with the center of the ring, a flash of light stabbed into Jeb’s retinas, along with a bloom of heat that singed the tips of his fingers that were fixed around the edge of the Appraiser.

“Gah!” Jeb dropped the burning-hot ring to the floor, rubbing his eyes with his seared left hand.

“Damnit,” Jeb muttered, blinking the tears out of his eyes. At least I got rid of the thing.

“Um, Jeb…” Smartass called his attention, and Jeb glanced at her dim shape. She pointed toward the metal tool in his hand.

Jeb glanced down, trying to see through the afterimage dimming his vision. It actually looked like there was something wrapped around the hook….

“Crap!” Jeb tried to drop the stick, but the snakelike creature recovered first, flashing up the metal rod and onto his forearm. Out of the undamaged periphery of his vision, he could make out green scales and a strange jawless mouth.

The creature reared back, revealing fangs, and Jeb felt a sting on the flesh of his forearm. In panic mode, Jeb tore the creature off and threw it across the room. It hit the back wall and wriggled under his desk.

“Master Kanoth, I don’t feel so good,” Jeb heard himself mutter as he stumbled backwards, his shoulders ramming up against the unpainted wall.

“Jeb, are you okay?” Smartass asked, fluttering up into his face.

Jeb couldn’t manage to find the ability to answer Smartass. He knew he probably could, but there was a strand of thought in his head that didn’t want to do that, and it stood between him and the fairy.

There was no strand of thought preventing him from watching the desk, though. He needed to be ready in case the creature came crawling out.

Gotta be ready.

Why is the room sliding sideways? Oh, right, it’s bedtime in the academy.

Mevar closed his eyes, relaxing into the itchy woolen beds of the academy. Apprentice wizards were denied all but the most basic comforts. ‘To better enhance their studies,’ they said. Mevar thought it was because they were cheap.

Mevar’s fingers scrunched the silk covers.

Wait, silk?

The tiny inconsistency allowed something older and darker to peel away the facade of Mevar, reeling in the darkness.

Nope, nope, nope! Jeb thought, sitting back up with everything he had, organizing and fortifying his thoughts and identity, shoring them up against the strange thoughts and sensations.

Jeb tugged all his thoughts and feelings, all his memory, close to the gaping wound in his mind, choosing his PTSD as the battlefield, so he would feel the strange thoughts approaching a mile away. As painful as it was, it was one of the cores of his identity and it wouldn’t go away from a little Mevar juice.

He ran his thumb over the scar on his palm, focusing his thoughts on The Spike.

Am I dying right now? My chest feels heavy. I promised him. Did Tyler take my place? Do I deserve to die instead?

Chuckling, Jeb dragged his mind into the dark well of PTSD. He’d been here before, after all, but young Mevar had no tolerance for that sort of bullshit, and the invisible strands of the young man’s thoughts were viciously torn apart by the burgeoning weight of Jeb’s damage.

Just one problem.

Tyler was standing outside the door. Jeb’s eyes ached from the strain as he watched the ghost of his past rush to his side, struggling to pull the beam out of Jeb’s chest.

“Jeb! Hold on, man! I’ll get you outta there!”

“Am I gonna die?” Jeb heard himself whisper. He couldn’t move air through his lungs, only the blood-soaked oxygen already in his throat.

“You’re not gonna die, I promise!” Tyler said, grabbing his hand. The blood from the cut on Tyler’s hand mixed with Jeb’s. “I’m gonna get you out of here!”

Jeb was jettisoned out of his own body as a ball of burning golden fire. The scene below him was frozen in place: two men, one on his deathbed, the other clutching his hand. A scene that had played out time and time again in Jeb’s mind, always with the wrong actors.

Tyler is the one who died, not me. Why do I dream about myself being the one dying so often? the scraps of Jeb’s consciousness wondered.

There was a strange web between the two frozen men, a gossamer promise, made of glowing, immaterial, woven gold. Something in Jeb’s core told him that it really was Tyler’s promise. Or perhaps powered by it?

The scene began to play in reverse, and Jeb watched in fascination from his strange, omniscient viewpoint, as the world rewound like an old VHS tape, the gossamer thread travelling with the two actors.

It rewound, showing the two of them prepare for bed, getting all their gear squared away in the nitpicky way their drill sergeant had, well, ‘drilled’ into them. It rewound further, showing the two hours of R&R before bed, where they had been drinking and playing Mortal Kombat.

Like a living thing, the gossamer gold seemed to sense an opportunity, jumping into Jeb’s body with a soft flash of light.

The scene resumed in regular time, and Jeb watched himself get beat by Tyler repeatedly, a gold flash in his eyes appearing every now and then just before a critical error. Of course, every game in the army is also a drinking game, and Jeb was forced to imbibe an inordinate amount of beer, sending him into a spiral of defeat.

The exact same scene replayed itself as they stowed their gear, got ready for bed, lay down…

But this time, Jeb was the one who got up in the middle of the night and went to take a piss…not Tyler.

What the hell am I looking at? Jeb thought, reaching for the scar on his palm.

The power of a promise. Do not make them lightly, Scion.

Unfortunately, as a ball of bright orange light, he didn’t exactly have a palm to check his scar, sending a wave of dread through his…ball. Am I dead? Did I finally manage to kill myself, and this is what I wanted to happen? Or is it just omniscience in death that allows me to see all the ways things could have been?

Jeb glanced up and spotted wood above him, the cracks in the ceiling slowly growing. Any second they would send beams crashing down into his chest. He needed to get out, right NOW.

But I don’t have a body. How the fuck am I supposed to get out of here?

The beam fell through the ceiling and slammed into his chest, which he now had.

Tyler was standing outside the room.

“No, fuck this, this already happened! I’m alive!” Jeb shouted, his body fueled by pissed-off outrage, beating back the fear for a couple seconds. Long enough to hear what Tyler was really saying.

“Jeb! Jeb, wake up!”

Wake up?

I can’t open my eyes. My eyes are already open. I’m not dreaming. I can’t be dreaming, my eyes are already open… This is real?

It’s not real. Can’t be real.

Jeb looked up at Tyler, really looked.

Tyler had white hair and crow’s feet around his eyes.

Tyler wasn’t Tyler at all. It was Mr. Everett shaking the shit out of him.

Jeb’s throat was hoarse, probably from screaming.

“Anybody see the thing that bit me?” Jeb whispered, his voice not quite working as he tried to sit up.

“Huh?” Mr. Everett asked, frowning. “Something bit you?”

“Under the cabinet,” Jeb whispered, pointing, his limbs weak from adrenaline backlash.

Cautiously, Mr. Everett knelt down and peered under the desk, scanning back and forth. A moment later, the old man grunted, leaning down further and reaching under the cabinet.

Is this dude crazy? Jeb thought. The thing obviously had sent Jeb on a hell of a trip and nearly killed him.

“Nothing under here but this,” the teacher said, pulling out a book.

“Looks like an unused diary or something,” Everett muttered, flipping through the pages. “Doesn’t have anything written on it.” He tossed the book onto the bed.

“I’ll check under the bed,” Everett said.

“Nevermind,” Jeb said, finding his voice as he stared at the book. Its cover was made of green scaly skin, with two long fangs bracing either side of the binding, and rib-like bumps on the sides. “I had a flashback.”

“You sure?” Everett asked, raising a brow. “No trouble at all.”

“I’m sure. I get flashbacks every now and then. I’ll live.” Jeb shrugged. “But if you wanna check under my bed for spooks, more power to ya.”

The teacher chuckled and checked under Jeb’s bed and nightstand, declared the room clean, and bid Jeb a good night.

Jeb picked up the book.

Principles of Myst Sensors and Behavior Programming 101.

Jeb cracked the book open, studying the first page.

“Can you read this part too?” Jeb asked, pointing to the signature at the bottom.

“What part?” Smartass asked, frowning as she studied the paper.

This book is owned by Mevar Salis. If found, please return to room 113 of the Mestikos Myst Academy.

“Huh. That’s odd. I wonder…”

Jeb took the Appraiser and blew a cloud of smoke, stepping into its effect.

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 39

Accolades: Krusker’s Brawn, Siren’s Cunning, R-R-RubU’s Mysteries, Gresh’s Subtlety, Innovator, Lagross’s Power

Body 21 (9)

Myst 71 (16+3)

Nerve 26 (10)

Abilities: >>FATAL EXCEPTION. Ability missing or corrupted. Awaiting resolution by Administrator.<<<

Accolade Pending: Lagross’s Power suspended due to multiple instances. Awaiting resolution.

Attention, this User has been flagged for exclusion from The System by executive order.

Jeb raised a brow, thumbing his chin.

He glanced between the book on the bed and the missing Ability.

Mystic Trigger.

Principles of Myst Sensors and Behavior Programming 101.

So I had…information and experience stitched to my head? Jeb thought. The information was the book, the experience was the memories of the Mevar kid.

Why am I the only one who can read it? Why was it a snake-thing?

Why should I care?

Jeb picked up the book, sat down on the bed, and started reading.

Chapter 15: Knock Knock

“Boss!”

“Ngeh!” Jeb grunted, peeling his eyes open to stare at the ceiling. Principles of Myst Sensors and Behavior Programming 101 lay open on his chest where he’d simply dozed off somewhere halfway through the night.

“There’s some kid at the door!” Mr. Everett said, jutting his head through Jeb’s door. “You wanna check it out?”

“I thought I locked that thing,” Jeb muttered, eyeing the door.

“Given your mental state, we thought it best if you didn’t have a locking door, so Pedro swapped it out while you slept.” Mr. Everett gave him a big grin.

“Anyway, everyone else is busy, so hop to it, boss.”

The teacher ducked back out of his room and clomped through the hall, his footsteps swallowed by the sound of carpentry in progress. Jeb got a waft of wood-scent from the doorway.

“When did I lose control here?” Jeb muttered, sitting up and putting on his pants, shirt and leg.

“He’s just trying to make you feel needed,” Mrs. Everett said, barging in the door.

Jeb yelped and covered himself, glaring at the matronly old lady setting the platter down on his desk.

“That’s how my Harv shows he cares,” she said. “Hands up.”

“Wha?”

Without warning, the old lady brusquely yanked the shirt over his head, and then bent down to grab his pants.

“Whoa there, that’s far enough,” he said, grabbing his waistband.

“Please,” she said, rolling her eyes before yanking his pants and underwear off. “You’ve got nothing I haven’t seen a thousand times.”

Jeb probably could have stopped her, but that would involve getting into a wrestling match with an old lady, and that wasn’t really high on his bucket list, so he let her get away with it.

“What’s your waist and leg size?” she asked, folding the clothes over her shoulder.

“Thirty-six, thirty-four,” Jeb said, frowning.

She opened the door, revealing a cart full of clothes and food, along with a basket full of dirty clothes, where she dropped Jeb’s old pair. She went through the tags for a moment before finding what she was looking for.

“Here.” She tugged out a pair of jeans and tossed it at him, along with a new pair of underwear and a shirt. That done, she put her hands on the cart and moved to the next room.

“Looking good, boss!” one of the janitors said from where he was fixing the second-story railing, giving Jeb a thumbs-up.

Jeb slammed the door shut with telekinesis.

You get about the same level of privacy in the army, so it was nothing Jeb wasn’t used to…but still, the casual disregard for their owner’s comfort stung a little.

Jeb glanced at the steaming beef soup on the desk with a BLT beside it, then at the non-greasy pair of underwear in his hands.

On the other hand, forgiveness is divine, Jeb thought, grabbing the soup and wolfing it down before jumping into his new clothes. He still had to go answer the door.

A flat sixty seconds later, Jeb yanked the front door open, revealing Rufio, looking pissed and impatient as hell.

“What’s up?” Jeb asked, taking a bite of his BLT in front of the starving kid.

This wasn’t entirely to torment the teen for being a teen. It was also to signal that there was food on Jeb’s side of the fence. That probably wasn’t lost on the boy, as his eyes tracked the sandwich like it had begun to sing and dance.

“You said something about catching the guy who took Nancy. I’m here to talk.”

“Excellent. Let’s sit at the bar in the kitchen. Mrs. Everett can fix you up something.”

“No.” Rufio scowled at him, tearing his eyes away from the sandwich.

“No?”

“We’re not talking until you show me every room in this place.”

Jeb pursed his lips. “Sure, kid. Knock yourself out.” He opened the door the rest of the way and stood aside.

“I’m gonna stay at the bottom of the stairs, until you finish looking up there,” Jeb said. “Holler when you’re done.”

Jeb had no interest in following the kid around as he made extra-double sure Nancy wasn’t being kept here.

Why would I be keeping Nancy here if I’d already given him the address? Jeb thought, resting his chin on his palm. The boy was suspicious and untrusting, which was good, but he was plainly a teen of limited experience.

This’ll probably take a while. I’m curious as to what Eddie has gotten done.

Jeb hauled off and went around to the back of the mansion, into the storm cellar, where Eddie was working on Buddy.

Buddy was a bomb-defusing robot, with decent armor and resistance to getting blowed up. Eddie was currently attaching the fireball wand to the front of the robot’s controllable arm. He’d created a machine that twisted the rangefinder on the wand back and forth with the speed and precision only a robot was capable of. That was connected to a firing mechanism that threaded back under the robot’s armor, along with a set of shiny motors Jeb hadn’t seen before.

“How’s it going?” Jeb asked.

“Well, I replaced the entire battery power system with a pair of two-stroke motors. Two-stroke motors aren’t the most efficient, but fuel isn’t a problem, and with them offset like this, we should get a full power stroke with minimal vibration. The gas tank is fed by a lens I carved off of the big one according to your light-ray theory,” he said, pointing to what looked like a gasket attached to the top of the small fuel tank.

“So I had an issue with throttling the gas output, but I managed to figure out what functioned as a resistor in the Myst regulators you gave me.”

He pointed to a little chunky piece of steel and pried it open to show the regulator encased in soft foam. “Since you claim Myst from an engine acts as a sort of radiation, the first thing I thought of was a way to increase the resistance to decrease the regulator’s release speed. So I busted the regulator open and checked the walls, and sure enough, the business end had what looked like a piece of glass electro-plated with gold.

“The walls and receiving end are coated with a material I don’t recognize, but they aren’t immediately important. I would guess they are some kind of one-way transmissible material.”

“So it’s like a laser, with a one-way mirror on one side and a slightly less powerful mirror on the other,” Jeb said.

“Eh, more like a leaky fuel tank. My theory is that when the pressure in here reaches a high level, the Myst actually reverts back to a gaseous state, until the pressure forces it out the gold side as light again. Once that happens, the floodgates are open, and it drains out until it’s empty again, but never faster than the gold resistor here will allow.

“So I took a few pieces of glass and electroplated them with varying concentrations of dissolved gold and just recently got a regulator plate that limits the gas output enough that the machine doesn’t leak fuel everywhere and catch fire. There’s a fuel sensor and a manual disconnect, so the robot can remove the Myst power from the fuel supply if it ever gets overfull, too.

“I don’t have the same weight restrictions I would if this were a drone, so I was able to put a honkin’ DC engine in there, which gave me enough power to overclock the motors in his joints and give Buddy some sick moves.”

Eddie pulled up the robot’s control pad, and pressed a few buttons.

The motors turned over and caught, filling the room with a loud rumble. Eddie put his hand on the chassis of the robot.

“Feel that!”

Jeb followed suit and remarkably, the robot barely trembled despite twin motors blasting away inside it.

“Now, a normal bomb disposal robot is pretty much just a fancy RC. I had to add some thinkmeats to it, which took up space and caused some heating concerns, but I think I did a pretty good job, all things considered.”

He pushed another button, and Buddy’s arm with the fireball wand whipped up and aimed at Eddie, the rangefinder zooming down to the 20ft minimum in a fraction of a second.

Click click click. The robot dry-fired the wand three times at Eddie’s heart before moving on.

The arm spun to aim at Jeb’s center mass a split-second later, sending a wave of ice down Jeb’s spine.

Click click click.

Did Eddie just almost blow us up?

Eddie entered another command and the mechanical arm relaxed back to its resting posture, tucked in tight against the armor.

“Remote control is a little too slow. I’ll program this a bit further with some strong friendly-fire protocols, but it should help rapid response times if it locks on to its targets by itself, at least.”

Jeb glanced at the old man’s damp clothes, shock of wispy hair and the huge dark circles under his manic eyes.

“Good job. Remember when I bought you today?”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“That was two days ago. Get some sleep. I can’t afford to have you slip up making something that dangerous. You could’ve just blown up the entire house.”

“But I’m almost done!” Eddie whined. “I’ll lose track of what I was doing!”

“Your owner demands it,” Jeb said, grabbing him by the shoulder.

“You’re just as bad as the dean.” Eddie sulked as Jeb shoved him out of the basement. The old man literally hissed as the light of morning struck his eyes, shielding his face from the wrath of the sun.

“He went out here to check on Eddie.” Mrs. Lang’s voice came around the corner as Jeb shoved the thin old man in question towards the front of the mansion.

“Here,” Jeb said, pushing the roboticist forward when Mrs. Lang appeared around the corner of the building. “Make sure he gets eight hours of sleep. At least. And don’t allow him to put a cot in his workstation, either.”

“Sure, boss,” Mrs. Lang said with a smile, her hand digging into Eddie’s shoulder.

A moment later, she was steering the scientist away, leaving Jeb with Rufio.

“Find anything suspicious?”

“I found a stack of nudie magazines, but they featured keegans, so I assumed they belonged to the previous owner.”

“Seriously?”

“Hell no, old man. Where did you come from?”

“You’re not gonna be satisfied until you check everything, are you?”

In response, Rufio crossed his arms and scowled. He had a bit of mayo on the corner of his mouth. Mrs. Everett must’ve fed him already. Excellent.

“Alright, right this way,” Jeb said, guiding him to the storm shelter, where the teen spent the next fifteen minutes alternating between geeking out over magic robots and looking for trap doors to hide children in.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Jeb interrupted when he saw Rufio checking the same corner the umpteenth time in a row. “It’s not me, and if you keep this up much longer, I’m just gonna find someone else to help me. Now can we talk about how this plan is gonna work, or do you wanna leave?”

Rufio took a deep breath and shook his head. “Nah, man. I can’t just trust some rando who shows up wanting to house kids out of the ‘goodness of his heart’. I’ll take a pass.” The teen turned toward the door.

“More of your friends will die,” Jeb said.

“It’s my problem, not yours,” Rufio replied, glancing over his shoulder as he mounted the first step.

“Smartass,” Jeb muttered, poking his collar. “Back me up here.”

“Eh, what?” Smartass grumbled, emerging from the shade of his collar. The fairy had a tendency to sleep in if there was nothing going on.

“Ooh, a child!” Smartass cried, her wings kicking into gear and buzzing all the way over to the stunned Rufio, who watched her with wide eyes.

“A bit past its prime, Impact-wise, but still technically a child,” Smartass said, tugging at the boy’s earlobe, then dodging a swat. “Tell me child, do you want to make a Deal? Save your friends, perhaps? How about a decade of indentured servitude? That’s a small price to pay for their lives, don’t you think? If that’s too immediate, we can always settle for your firstborn. It’s a classic.”

“What the hell is that!?” Rufio demanded, pointing at the fairy whirling around him.

“Smartass, calm down. I’m not gonna let you make a Deal with him.”

Smartass flitted back to Jeb’s offered palm, grumbling all the while.

“This is a fairy,” Jeb said, holding out the reclining Smartass for Rufio to see her holding still. “They have a very difficult time telling lies.”

Drawn back from the steps by the sheer strangeness, Rufio approached the fairy and poked her cheek. Irritated, the little creature slapped his hand away.

“Hands off!”

“Fairies are real?”

“They are, and this particular one is working for me.”

“Technically,” Smartass said. “Although I think it should be the other way around.”

“Fairies, you see, are nearly physically incapable of telling lies. Smartass, why are we in town?”

“We’re running away from a rich dude you pissed off in Kalfath.”

“And?”

“And an imperial enforcer blackmailed you into hunting the kidnapper lurking in Solmnath.”

“And do we mean any harm to Rufio’s friends?”

“I know I don’t,” she said, putting her hand on her candy-wrapper-covered chest. “But I can’t speak for you. You could secretly be plotting to annihilate all children in Solmnath and I wouldn’t know. Actually, didn’t you say you hated teens the other day? You know, shortly after you bought a bunch of slaves to serve your purposes?”

“Smartass, is this sabotage payback for the soda incident?” Jeb asked.

“…Yes.” Smartass deflated.

“You remember what I said about sabotage, and what would happen?”

“I was hoping you didn’t,” she said, wincing.

“Clean the room with a toothbrush.”

“Noooooo!” Smartass howled as her wings dragged her away to seek out a toothbrush.

“You bought a bunch of slaves?” Rufio asked, brows up. “Cool.”

“That’s what you’re impressed by?” Jeb asked, dragging a hand down his face. “Nevermind, of course that’s what you’re impressed by. Listen up, kid. You already saw everyone I bought. It wasn’t a power trip or some misguided attempt at finding a ‘waifu’. I bought normal, everyday people with job experience handling brats like you.”

“Even Mrs. Everett?”

“Even Mrs. Everett.”

Rufio bit his lip, studying Jeb for a moment. “What’s your plan to catch this guy?”

Thank you, Mrs. Everett.

“Alright, take a seat,” Jeb said, motioning to the bench. “But first, I never got your name.”

“Colt,” the kid said.

“Jebediah Trapper. You can call me Sir, or Mr. Trapper.”

“Sounds fair, Jeb,” Colt said, sitting at the table with his legs splayed in an obvious power move.

God, I hate teenagers, Jeb thought, his knuckles tightening around his cane. He couldn’t allow these pubescent sharks to smell blood though, so he shrugged it off and sat down.

“Okay, my plan at first was to kidnap kids en masse and hide them away to attract the attention of the culprit and lure him out, but it’s evolved to fit the circumstances a bit better. With your help, I could take a much easier route with less chance of horrible failure.”

“What’s that?”

“This place is going to become an orphanage,” Jeb said, motioning to the building around them. “With you out in the wild convincing kids to come here at a much faster rate than I could ever manage alone, we won’t have to kidnap any of them, and we can be out in the open. Word will spread faster if I don’t have to be all secretive about it, and that means the kidnapper will hear about it that much sooner.”

“What’s in it for us, being bait and all?” Colt asked, arms crossed.

“Oh, you mean besides food, safety, actual beds to sleep in and classes from the best teachers I could buy?” Jeb asked. “Nothing. Learn to live with it.”

Colt growled a bit, but accepted the terms.

Smartass zipped back in with Jeb’s toothbrush and started cleaning the oiliest, gunkiest motor parts she could find, making hard eye contact with Jeb as she did.

“Once you’re done cleaning the room, get me a fancy new electric toothbrush,” Jeb said. “Mint in box.”

“Gah!”

“What’s your plan for dealing with this guy when he comes here?” Colt asked over the sound of fairy tears.

“The way I see it, there’re two major paths this guy can take in response to losing his prey.” Jeb held up two fingers. “First, if he has no political backing and no assistance, he’ll most likely come sniffing around the orphanage in person, looking to break in or lure a child away.

“In that situation, we simply catch him in the act, murder him, and bury him in the back yard. Problem solved.” He could tell from Colt’s expression that the teen approved.

“The other way this could play out is if the guy has political clout. He might set out to delegitimize the orphanage and have the government act on his behalf to scatter the children to the wind so he can hunt them again.”

“How do we deal with that one?” Colt asked.

“Substantially more complicated. We would have to follow the trail of paperwork and complaints back to whoever got the ball rolling, then find and murder them without getting caught. Much more tricky.”

“How you gonna do that?”

“I’ll figure something out. Probably bribe the right people.”

“Alright, let’s do this,” Colt said, smacking his fist into his palm. “I can’t wait to fuck this asshole up.”

“You’re mistaken. Your job is to bring in kids, and only bring in kids. I’m not interested in having a teen be involved with the murdering part.”

“Screw that!” Colt said, beating his chest. “I’m a level twenty-four Slinger!” To demonstrate, he picked up a tiny metal rod off Eddie’s desk and whipped it around, burying it several inches deep in the stone walls of the basement. “I survived the Hard Tutorial. I can handle it.”

And to prove you can handle it, you damaged my property. You little shit.

“Whoop-dee-doo,” Jeb said, wiggling his finger. “My orphanage, my plan, my rules.” Jeb raised an eyebrow. “Unless you were planning on starting your own orphanage with your own mansion, money and servants?”

Colt glared at him for a good fifteen seconds, and Jeb was wondering what teen angst would spill out of his mouth...when the boy finally agreed to do what was asked of him.

“I’ll go get the others,” Colt said, standing and moving to brush by Jeb.

“Remember,” Jeb said, catching Colt as he walked past. “It’s absolutely critical you don’t tell the other children that they’re bait. Word gets around fast, and one slip will spook the man we’re hunting. If he spooks, we get nothing.”

“Just a mansion to live in, plenty of food and servants?” Colt asked.

“You never see Nancy again.”

Colt glared at him a moment. “I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

“Thank you, Colt.”

Colt peeled Jeb’s hand off his arm. “I’m gonna be keeping a list, pops.”

“Oh?”

“I’m gonna keep track of everyone I send here, and if one kid from my list goes missing in your ‘orphanage’, it’s your ass.”

“Fair enough.”

Colt left the cellar, the sun flooding the basement as he left the large doors open.

“I think that went about as well as can be expected,” Jeb said. “…And he’s totally gonna ignore my instructions and try to kill the kidnapper himself, isn’t he?” Teens were predictably unpredictable.

“I hate you.” Smartass sobbed as she scrubbed the filth off the floor in tight brushstrokes.

“You hate me right now. Once you’re done with your punishment, we’ll talk about resetting the sabotage truce.”

***Er-Nok the Rabzi***

Er-Nok the rabzi was sleeping peacefully when an odd sound woke him up.

R-R-R-R.

Er-Nok’s ears perked up, swiveling independently to orient on the sound—a quiet rumbling, something like a soft earthquake or distant thunder, only it was constant, unchanging. Unnatural.

Er-Nok leapt to his feet, snatching up his club with sharp rocks embedded in it. He let out a full-throated howl, his lips peeling back from his teeth to show off his natural weapons.

Unnatural sounds meant something was causing it. Something made of meat and fear. Both tasted wonderful to a rabzi.

The other rabzi in the den started awake, grabbing their precious pointy weapons and cocking their heads, ears swiveling to catch the same sound Er-Nok had.

A moment of silence allowed Er-Nok’s howl to echo. Then, in an unspoken agreement, the swarm of rabzi leapt into action, pouring out of the cave entrance like a howling tide of lean rage. Er-Nok would have been swept away by the tide if he wasn’t part of it, throwing every strand of muscle into being the first. So many benefits aligned with being first.

First to eat, first to breed, first to fight.

Er-Nok’s mouth hung open, his tongue lolling out in the wind, slobber dripping along behind him as he imagined the tangy taste of meat.

There, down the side of the barren mountain, was the cause of the noise. It was a strange, black bug thing that crawled close to the ground, ungainly and slow. It seemed to have a single arm that grew off of its back. A pathetic amount of defense.

Er-Nok was disappointed there wasn’t more food. The strange bug would barely feed ten of them.

That arm swung around and pointed at them, something spinning on the front of it.

Er-Nok the rabzi ceased to exist before he even knew what hit him.

***Jeb***

A flash of light preceded the rolling thunder of the explosion coming down from the rabzi-infested mountain.

BOOM! The sound washed over Jeb and Eddie, diluted by distance.

“Beer?” Jeb asked, reaching into the cooler and retrieving an ice-cold bottle before throwing up his feet and reclining in the lawn chair, watching the side of the mountain with the peeping tom wand and scouting potential monster nests.

“Almost level twenty,” Eddie said, waving off the drink and shaking his head. The old man had hacked the bomb disposal robot’s controller to support VR, then installed it in a portable antennae that could beam the robot instructions from about a mile away. It even had its own generator that could keep the thing running a good eight hours on a single tank.

Plenty of time to hunt monsters.

The old man himself was glancing around, the VR helmet stuck to his face, plastic controller held out like a pistol.

“Take that, you son of a bitch,” Eddie muttered, pointing with the controller and clicking.

BOOM! The fireball wand triggered in the distance, claiming more lives.

About four hours of industrial-strength monster slaughter later, the boney old man leapt to his feet, arms raised.

“Whoo! Level twenty! This whole leveling thing isn’t so bad. I could see how you kids could get into it.

“It’s showing me a bunch of Class options….” Eddie said, taking off the helmet and blinking, trying to make them go away.

“Ooh, Sleepless Sentinel. I no longer need to sleep.” The old man’s eyes went watery as he seemed to picture a life without mandatory rest.

“Don’t pick that one,” Jeb interrupted. “You’ll go insane.”

“Don’t treat me like one of your orphans.” Eddie scoffed. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you really?” Jeb asked, tilting his straw hat to ward off the sun.

“Scholar, Professor, Alchemist, Artisan, Jack of All Trades—oh, here we go: Mystic Roboteer.

“Five to Nerve and Myst, with a passive bonus to hybridizing technology and building robots, along with an active Ability that lets me interact with computer programming without an interface…. Holy…shit.”

A couple seconds later the old man winced, clutching his head. “Gonna take a while to get used to that.”

Five to both of the old man’s favorite Attributes along with a Class was more than enough profit for the day. The two of them packed up their stuff and threw it onto Buddy’s storage rack, then drove the bot up into the back of the Jeep. The entire drive home, Eddie sported a vacant expression, likely interfacing with Buddy without a console.

The Admiral Orphanage had gone from a small group of frightened children hiding in a corner of the mansion on day one, to an absolute madhouse three weeks in.

No less than a hundred and fifty kids littered the grounds, running and screaming at the top of their lungs at the drop of a hat while exhausted adults tried to keep them contained, casting Jeb irate glances every now and then.

Eddie broke off for the storm cellar, the last bastion of relative quiet in the entire mansion. Jeb was tempted to follow him, but Mrs. Lang had already seen him come in the front gate, and hiding would simply prolong the inevitable.

Jeb stepped inside the mansion and took off his coat, nearly tripping over a toddler running past him and screaming mindlessly. Sans pants.

“How did we do today, Mrs. Lang?” Jeb asked.

“Harv and Rory went out again and spread the rumor that kids might be disappearing from the orphanage; that there might be some more sinister purpose at work, bringing all these children together.”

“Excellent,” Jeb said.

She frowned. “I don’t feel like this is the best method to catch this man, but I’ll do as I’m told, boss. What if the law comes, looking to catch a reaper?”

“Then they’re probably the bad guys,” Jeb said. “I have it on high authority that the empire simply doesn’t have the resources or give-a-shit to protect human non-Citizens. It doesn’t matter how bad our rep is, the good guys aren’t gonna come knockin’.”

Knock knock. Someone rapped on the other side of the mansion’s front door, before Jeb had even finished taking off all of his adventuring gear.

Jeb frowned and turned to glance at the door.

Mrs. Lang shrugged.

Jeb clomped up to the door and opened it, revealing a pale keegan looming high above him. The thin man was wearing finely crafted keegan clothes, voluminous and flowing…and he was armed.

Chapter 16: Throttled

“Hey, Zlesk!” Jeb exclaimed upon seeing the keegan sheriff gracing his doorstep. “How’s it going?”

Sure is nice to see him again. He’s a good guy. I wonder what he’s doing here, though? Him taking a vacation that soon after me leaving doesn’t sound right. He seemed to really like his job. Maybe…

Jeb’s eyes went wide as he put two and two together just as the massive keegan lunged forward.

Jeb wasn’t small by any means, but he wasn’t huge either. He was right in that comfortable range where no one had ever truly throttled him. Jeb had heard the term used before, but when the seven-foot keegan clamped his vice-like hands around Jeb’s neck and shoulders before shaking him like a disobedient toddler, he knew what it felt like.

“You ruined me!”

Shake shake.

“You ruined my career!”

Shake, shake.

“You ruined my life!”

The ceiling wobbled, and Jeb’s vision darkened a little as the blood to his brain was cut off. Jeb wanted to say something eloquent that would mollify the enraged giant boney-man, but it came out as a garbled croak.

“Three generations!”

Shake shake shake.

“Scrimped and saved to buy our citizenship!”

“Herglebuba!” Jeb responded.

Shake, shake, shake.

“And you ruined it overnight!”

Shake.

“I’m a Citizen with no standing! How can I pass on that legacy to my heirs when I have no standing!?”

Jeb held up a finger to launch a counterpoint, but couldn’t force air through his neck beyond a rattle.

Click.

Both of them went still upon hearing the metallic sound of a gun cocking.

Mrs. Everett, her flabby arms quivering with determination, and no small amount of Parkinson’s, aimed a .38 at Zlesk’s temple.

“Let go of Mr. Trapper, boney,” Mrs. Everett said.

Jeb glanced down to the old woman’s apron, slightly less bulgy than before. Does she just carry that around in her apron? That’s gotta be some kind of a safety hazard in an orphanage.

On the stairs above the foyer, the janitors and Mr. Everett were clomping down, while Mrs. Lang and the other lunch lady were cordoning off child lookie-loos.

Jeb sucked in a grateful gasp of air as Zlesk released his neck, huge thin fingers unclasping from around him.

In a blur of motion, Zlesk knocked the gun aside, faster than Jeb could see.

BOOM!

The deafening sound of a .38 at point-blank range, amplified by the close quarters, tore through Jeb’s ears. As his eardrums were ringing, Jeb did a quick self-eval, mentally scanning his body for pain or holes that weren’t put there by God.

Nothing.

Zlesk winced and shook his palm, a squished piece of lead and a couple drops of blood falling off of it.

“This is between me and Jebediah Trapper. I have no quarrel with any of you,” he said, looking up at the four men on the staircase. “But if you attack me, I may defend myself without repercussion.”

Mr. Everett opened his mouth, glanced down at his wife rubbing her bruised, shaking hand, and paused for a moment. “Take it outside. Away from the children.”

“Dude!” Jeb exclaimed before Zlesk hauled him back out the door. He’d been hoping for some kind of ‘you attack him, you attack all of us’, but Jeb had made the mistake of hiring sane, rational people.

None of the teachers could compete with someone who could catch a bullet, and they knew it.

Jeb got dragged out onto the mansion grounds, all the children gawking at the seven-foot-tall bone giant who hauled the owner of the orphanage through the courtyard, then over the hedge to the next property over.

When Zlesk dropped him onto the flagstone around the edge of the neighbor’s swimming pool, he seemed to have calmed down in the interim. The former sheriff prodded his rapidly purpling hand, watching Jeb out of the corner of his eye.

“I regret losing my temper. I was…upset.”

“So, Grenore got you fired, huh?” Jeb asked, coming to his foot. It was the only reason he could see that the sheriff might have lost his job and would blame Jeb for it.

“He wanted to discredit or eliminate any witness to his humiliation. I am a Citizen and therefore he could not risk killing me, so instead the tycoon launched an aggressive campaign to have me removed from office and stripped of my standing.

“Mere hours after you had left his office, all your posters were down, replaced with ones that muddied the water and called for my resignation. Hundreds of bulbs changed hands, and in the end…” Zlesk spread his hands. “I received a dismissal from the head office for allowing Ms. Grenore to be kidnapped, and here I am.”

“What about the enforcer?”

Zlesk snorted. “I wish he’d tried. Ms. Tekalis could have put the buffoon out of our misery before his campaign against me amounted to anything. Sadly, Garland isn’t that stupid. Imperial enforcers have a license to kill and very little oversight. He let her be until she simply left on more important matters.”

“Well, how can you get your standing back?” Jeb asked.

“Oh, there are ways, but all of them amount to either greasing a staggering amount of palms or accomplishing some monumentally dangerous task. Climbing back up is harder than falling down.”

“…Would working closely with an imperial enforcer and killing a reaper do it?” Jeb asked.

Zlesk’s brows skyrocketed for a moment. “Honestly? No, no, it would not be enough.” Zlesk cocked his head. “But it would be an excellent start to regaining my status within the empire.”

“I got the job offer right before I left Kalfath. Haven’t earmarked the credit for the kill to anyone,” Jeb said with a shrug. “Would you like to make a Deal?”

“Like your arrangement with Grenore? You might not remember, but I witnessed that farce firsthand. I’ll pass.” Zlesk waved his hand dismissively.

“Most of the setup to lure the reaper out has already been done,” Jeb said. “Help me for the last little bit and all the positive credit for the operation will be owed to you. Someone who can catch a bullet would be appreciated when we finally confront the murderer.”

“Jeb, you can’t lie about who did all the work,” Smartass whispered into his ear.

No, but I can assign credit.

“Whaddya think? I’ll even let you dictate the terms.”

“I think it could be a colossal waste of time.” Zlesk thumbed his chin, cocking his head in thought. “But...if i get to dictate the terms…

“Give me a hundred bulbs as collateral, the price of my heir’s citizenship, and I’ll do what it takes to help you catch your reaper. If we succeed in a spectacular fashion, then I will exchange your money for public crediting of my involvement. If you muck it up and incite public outrage or political blowback again, I will walk away with your money and deny all involvement with you.”

Jeb felt a smile blooming. “Do you take gold bullion?”

“Acceptable.”

“Deal.”

Jeb felt the somewhat more complicated bargain click into place inside him, urging him to fork over a little over six pounds of gold.

And now we’ve got someone who can actually fight, Jeb thought.

While the two were shaking hands, Rufi—er, Colt leapt over the hedge, a sling whirling over his head.

“Get down, pops! I got this!”

Teenagers, Jeb thought, rolling his eyes.

The teen unleashed a lead pellet with the distinctive crack of an object breaking the sound barrier, straight for Jeb’s new hire.

“Stop!” Jeb shouted as Zlesk flickered out of the way, the bullet puncturing the ground behind him.

Shing! Zlesk drew his blade, and Jeb thought he was about to see a diced Colt. The keegan charged forward, using the hilt of the blade to deflect a second bullet before punching for Colt’s head.

Colt responded with a spray of Mystic slime, covering the sheriff and just about everything else in zero-friction goop.

Zlesk’s eyes went wide as his feet slipped, throwing his punch wide before he tumbled to the ground, sliding into the hedge in a lanky heap.

“Take my friends!? I’ll fucking kill you, boney!” Colt pulled out a knife and went for the coup de grâce, and Jeb used a ball of hardened air to jab him in the nose. The boy staggered, clutching his face, giving Zlesk time to get his bearings.

Zlesk’s palm found purchase in the slime somehow, and he flipped, reaching up to catch Colt’s wrist.

There was a hum that was more felt than heard, and Colt’s wrist was dragged down to the ground. Zlesk touched the boy’s forehead and shoulder, and soon he was stapled to the ground by invisible force.

“Let go of me, I’ll kill you!” Colt shouted into the dirt, followed by some more wordless screaming and spraying of zero-friction goop.

“What did I do to offend this one?” Zlesk asked, coming to his feet. From the way he moved, Jeb could tell he was using his Class Ability to secure his own body to the ground. The sheriff’s belt was slipping off because of the slime, and his sword had long since flown away into the hedges.

“He thinks you’re the ‘bad guy’. Give me a minute to sort this out.” Jeb carefully stabilized himself with his own Myst as he walked through Colt’s slime zone and crouched in front of the kid.

“Calm down,” Jeb said.

“He’s right there!” Colt shouted. “And you helped him!”

“That ain’t the guy we’re looking for, and there’s no reasonable way it could be, since he was the sheriff of a town nearly a month north of us until a few weeks ago.”

Colt peered at him with a single angry eye from where his face was planted in the ground.

“This is a pretty good lesson on why I don’t want you fighting the kidnapper by yourself, though. Zlesk beat you easily.” Jeb poked the teen’s shoulder.

“You helped him!”

“Who knows? There might be more than one,” Jeb said with a shrug.

***Kebos O’sut***

Kebos O’sut, or ‘Lenos Surpey’ to the children, watched from the balcony as his newest acquisition slaughtered rabzi by the dozens alongside her peers. The feral creatures snarled at the children before they died, but the little girl no longer flinched and mewled, instead having grown numb to the fuzzy creatures’ threat displays.

She simply speared the restrained animals in the neck and moved on to the next cage.

About time, Kebos thought, ire simmering under his expressionless surface.

“How is your product coming, Mr. O’sut?” Judge Elkor asked, joining him on the balcony overlooking the courtyard. The keegan man was wearing his work attire, a black and blue checkered affair.

Even at a party, the judge wanted everyone to know who he was and what his station was. The man was a raging narcissist. Kebos swallowed his personal distaste and motioned to the eight children killing caged rabzi.

“Those three have shown complete regeneration on the scar test. We will get them ready to ship by the end of the week. The other five are newly acquired. It will be some time before they are ready.”

“If they showed complete regeneration, why not just kill them now? They are immortal now, are they not?

“Here, hold this,” the judge said, shoving his drink into Kebos’s hand before rolling up his sleeves, crackling energy dancing along his fingers.

“Which one’s mine?” Elkor asked, his eyes dancing with mirth as he scanned the unaware children.

“Judge, I don’t mean to be a wet blanket, but the scar test is not one hundred percent accurate. Our standard practice is a five-point buffer of Body to be absolutely sure they have achieved immortality. You wouldn’t want to pay for a dud, would you?”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine. I trust your skill.”

If you trust my skill, then let me perform my business my way! Kebos shouted in his head.

“You think I could hit that one in the head from here?” Elkor said, closing a single eye and lining up a finger covered in brilliant sea-green energy. “I bet I could.”

The child he was pointing at wasn’t even one of the three he’d pointed out! The judge was doing it specifically to get under Kebos’s skin.

“Your Honor,” Kebos said, choosing his words carefully and treading the fine line between obsequious and forceful. “If a child is killed in front of the rest of them, it will spoil the entire batch. Are you willing to pay for all eight of them, when only three are possibly worth the money? I can’t imagine the other investors would be pleased.”

The judge’s eyes opened, and he glanced at Kebos before lowering his finger, the Myst fading. “I suppose not. You shouldn’t put them on display like that if you don’t want people taking potshots at them. It’s lazy and a safety hazard, Kebos.”

“I’ll take care of it right away, Judge,” Kebos said, bowing as the man left.

“What an ass,” the lady Nevair said, idly stirring her drink as she approached, cloaked in her lovely gown. The keegan woman’s cheekbones were high and stood out to a tremendous degree that always made Kebos wonder if she’d had work done.

Kebos chose not to respond to her comment. He was merely the supplier, a low class of Citizen compared to the movers and shakers of Solmnath. He couldn’t afford to choose sides, even though the woman was absolutely correct.

“Just eight?” the lady asked as she leaned over the balcony, brow raised. “I don’t mean to criticize your math, but there’re more than eight of us.”

“Apologies, my lady, but the current supply of rabzi can only support eight at a time. If we were to stretch the Impact too thin, it simply wouldn’t work. Your Immortal will be shipped in the order they were acquired. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

“You don’t have to take that tone with me,” Nevair said, waving him off. “I understand limitations, and you are the expert, are you not?” Her eyes scanned the eight distant figures hungrily. “Tell me, is mine in here?”

“As you requested, a young female with pale skin,” Kebos said, pointing out Nancy. “The specificity of your request made finding one a little more difficult, but not impossible. She still has a few weeks to…bake, for lack of a better word.”

“Why keep the rabzi in a cage? Why not just restrain them entirely, or better yet, put them on an assembly line and have the children press a button?” she asked, taking a drink.

“Because it wouldn’t work. Impact transmission is dulled the more degrees of separation there are between the act and the result. It would be possible to arrange a system like you described, but the children would receive next to nothing in return.

“The two most important features of Impact transmission are awareness of purpose, and directness of causation. If the child doesn’t know their actions are killing a living creature, The System places the responsibility for its death on another, and if the rabzi are completely restrained and murdered by proxy, The System likewise assigns the majority of its Impact elsewhere.

“Of course, by this logic, we’re taking a hit from keeping the rabzi in cages, but allowing them freedom to act would result in all the children dying.”

“I said you were the expert. I didn’t mean that I wanted to be one, too,” Nevair said, her tone sharp.

Kebos bowed low. “My apologies, my lady.”

“Apology accepted,” she said with faint amusement. “I know how you scholarly types tend to get carried away. Your grandfather was much the same.”

Kebos clenched his jaw and bit his tongue.

“Your knowledge and enthusiasm instills me with confidence in you, O’sut. Keep up the good work.” Lady Nevair eyed Nancy one more time before sauntering away.

“Thank you, my lady,” Kebos said, heart pounding in his temples as he continued to bow until he mastered control over his expression. He would never let these people see that they’d gotten to him.

Once he was calm, Kebos cast one last look at the practicing children before turning back to the golden light spilling from his party, which hosted a swath of the wealthiest Citizens in the city—something unheard-of for a man with a background as humble as Kebos.

They wouldn’t breathe the same air as me, Kebos thought as he greeted, flirted and laughed at their awful jokes, were it not for their need of me.

The Stitching of humanity represented an opportunity, and Kebos intended to rise beyond the grandson of a disgraced scholar.

The humans called Impact ‘Experience’, and foolishly believed it was a simple measure of an opponent’s strength. It seemed they already had some kind of rudimentary myths pertaining to it, but the savages didn’t understand how it worked the way the keegan did.

And the keegan didn’t understand Impact the way Kebos did.

If a child has a large amount of time value in their Impact due to the amount of time and potential they have to choose their fate, then how much time value would an immortal child have?

Many thousands of times more than the rabzi that they spent to create them. Many thousands.

Kebos was chatting with the mayor and his wife when one of his underlings tugged on his sleeve. It was a young hornless melas with lighter skin, more pleasing to the pale keegan nobility.

“Apologies, but the work never stops,” Kebos said, excusing himself and stepping away. He dragged the underling off to the side, where the two of them wouldn’t be overheard.

“What?”

“The rabzi in the mountains have…dried up,” the melas said with a wince. “The collectors are charging us full price for a quarter of the rabzi.”

“Define ‘dried up’.”

The melas shrugged, glancing around evasively. “The hunting isn’t so good anymore. There’ve been reports of explosions echoing across the mountain for weeks now, and the hunters tell me they’ve come across hundreds of charred corpses.”

“Probably a young aristocrat flexing a new fire Core,” Kebos said, waving it off. “Their numbers will recover, as always. In the meantime, hire fishermen to catch peruha.”

“That’ll be expensive,” the melas wheedled.

“Focus on keeping the flow of Impact steady first,” Kebos said, poking his underling in the chest. “Expense second. These aren’t the kind of people you shortchange. Now, was there anything else?”

“We’re having trouble finding children to match the specifications of…sixteen of your investors.”

“Sixteen!?” Kebos hissed. “There are thousands of human children in the city alone, hundreds of whom have no guardians at all. Are you telling me that among all that choice, we’re having a hard time finding them?”

“Well, since you took Nevair’s order in, there’s been a bit of a…shift on the streets.”

“Go on,” Kebos said, motioning for the melas to continue.

“A human orphanage has opened out of the old Linnorn manor, run by a human with one leg. It’s managed to take most children of the appropriate age off the streets.”

“One headache after another,” Kebos said, rubbing his temples. “You see a problem, I see an opportunity. With the children all in one place, it’ll be as simple as going to the great bazaar with a shopping list. I’ll handle this myself. Deal with the fishermen.”

“One more thing.” The underling caught Kebos’s sleeve again, earning a baleful glare. “There’s a rumor going around that some of the children are disappearing from the orphanage, and never seen again.”

Kebos’s eyes widened. Someone was reaping children so close to him! Not only was he insulted at being ham-fistedly copied, but more rumors of children disappearing would eventually draw the attention of an enforcer, something Kebos could not afford.

No, perhaps there is a way to deal with this, politically.

Someone needed to take the blame for killing all these children, after all. Why not shove the culpability onto the other reaper? After all, Kebos knew a judge that would be happy to apply legal pressure to someone.

“Who’s running this orphanage?”

Chapter 17: The Academy

***Nancy***

“I don’t like the scar test,” Nancy griped, rubbing the burnt line of skin on the back of her hand.

“I mean, who does, but they numb it up first, so it doesn’t hurt,” Jake said, inspecting the back of his hand, which was perfectly clear of the brand. Jake had been here a full three weeks longer than she had, and he’d gotten used to the strangeness, but it gave Nancy the creeps. She still wasn’t sure if Mr. Surpey was on the up-and-up.

“It hurts after,” she muttered.

“Once your Body gets high enough, it doesn’t hurt for very long,” he responded, flopping over in his bed to look directly at her. “And just think of all the amazing things we can do because Mr. Surpey has been helping us.” Jake reached out and grabbed his headboard and lifted his entire body off the bed, holding it parallel with one hand.

“I even got a Class today!” Jake said, setting himself down. “I’m a Pikeman now. It gave me plus five to my Body!”

“What’s a Pikeman do?”

“Well, from what I could read, it helps me poke things with spears,” Jake said. “Mr. Surpey suggested it.”

Nancy shuddered at the mention of poking things with spears. She did not like killing the rabzi. They almost looked like rabbit-people, and they sounded…just awful when they died. That was why she started aiming for their necks.

Other children had adapted quickly to the situation, even chatting and laughing while they tormented the creatures in the cages, but it still made Nancy sick. The only two reasons she killed them was because if she didn’t, someone else would do it meaner, and because when she shied away from killing, all the keegan guiding them paid way too much attention to her.

It reminded her of her mommy’s expression shopping for fruit, when she discovered a bruised peach. Nancy had never known how terrifying it would be for that expression to be directed at her, but it scared her into killing fuzzy rabbit men the same size as her.

Not wanting them to hurt caused her to kill the rabzi faster than the other children, so she had even more blood on her hands. She was already level sixteen, just a week or so behind Jake.

She eyed the brand on the back of her hand that they had given her when she’d first started. It was definitely starting to fade.

Maybe she and Jake could graduate to the next step at the same time. Nancy would give almost anything to be past killing rabzi.

There was a soft knock on the door, and Nancy and the other seven children sat up, looking at the doorway. Keegan doorways were nine feet tall on average, absolutely massive compared to the children themselves.

“All tucked in for bed, I see,” Mr. Surpey said, folding his boney hands over each other as he entered. “I apologize for disturbing your night, but tonight we’re going to welcome a new member to the group and say farewell to another.”

A scared little girl even younger than Nancy peeked out from behind his pant leg, clutching a stuffed rabbit to her chest. Oh, she’s not going to do well. Nancy wondered if Mr. Surpey even knew what the doll was supposed to represent.

“This is Marcy Evans. She’ll be joining you.”

“…Hi,” the little girl whispered, barely audible.

“And Jake Baker, I’m happy to announce that you’ve graduated from this step. Everyone, gather round and give Jake your well wishes. You won’t be seeing him again until you join him in the next step: the academy.”

The children gathered round and gave Nancy’s friend hugs and congratulations, talking and laughing excitedly. Mr. Surpey stood by patiently, his hands folded as he waited for the congratulations to die down.

“Come now, Mr. Baker,” he said once the noise had quieted somewhat. “I have to show you to your tutor.”

“Okay then,” Jake said with a shrug. “Going to school can’t be much worse than stabbing rabzi all day.”

“Can I come with?” Nancy asked, stepping forward, a nameless dread building in her chest as Jake headed for the door. Something about the door reminded her of a hungry mouth. Not the shape or the color, but the feel. She wanted to follow Jake, and make sure that he’d be okay with her own eyes.

“No, the rest of you children must have your rest. It’s a lot we ask of you and you’ll be needing all the rest you can get. Remember, this isn’t goodbye forever; you’ll be seeing him again in the academy in a few weeks,” Mr. Surpey said, gently taking Nancy by the shoulder and turning her back toward her bed.

“I’ll be fine,” Jake said, flexing his nonexistent biceps and grinning before he followed Mr. Surpey through the door.

And then they were gone.

The other children clustered around the new girl, babbling excitedly as they caught her up to speed. The shy girl couldn’t get a word in edgewise and seemed to be on the brink of crying from the information overload.

Sitting on the edge of her bed and staring at the door, Nancy couldn’t get it out of her head. Normally, she would whisk the little girl away from the overbearing boys and give her some space to breathe, but she was still thinking about Jake.

She had been amazed to discover that Jake was still alive, and here. They all thought he’d been kidnapped. What were the chances that the same man saved them from the same bad guy and brought them here?

Nancy had no idea, but something felt strange to her, and it made her stomach twist with nameless dread.

Maybe I can sneak out and say goodbye in person, Nancy thought, standing up and heading for the door. She gently tugged on the latch and peeled the door open, looking around the edge of the wood.

Nothing but an empty hallway.

Nancy slipped out into the hall and went for the stairs, sneaking on her tiptoes.

The door next to the stairs clicked open, startling ice into Nancy’s skin. A melas housekeeper backed out of the room before she could react and bumped into the girl, knocking her to the ground.

“Oh, what’s this?” she asked, turning around to view Nancy, clothes slung over her shoulder. “Little Nancy, is it? What are you doing out of bed?”

“I’m…getting something to drink,” Nancy lied.

“Oh, I’ll fetch it for you then,” the maid said, her tone sweet and gentle as she bent low to address the girl. “You run on back to your room and I’ll grab a cart filled with water and snacks for you and your friends. Will that do?”

“…Yeah, that’ll be fine,” Nancy said, unable to admit to wanting to sneak around.

She headed back to the door and went back inside. Nancy snuck a peek over her shoulder as she entered the room and noticed that the melas maid was still watching her.

Making sure she went back into her room.

A shiver went down Nancy’s neck as she shut the door behind her.

Something felt wrong. Nancy didn’t know what it was, but it felt like something was tightening around her and making it hard to breathe.

She leaned against the door and slid down to her butt, breathing rapidly in and out as her heart began beating in her chest like a caged animal trying to escape.

Like a caged rabzi.

“Nancy?” one of the boys, Richard, asked, coming closer to her and putting a hand on her forehead. “Are you okay? You don’t feel like you have a fever.”

“I don’t know. I was going to go…get a drink, and the maid bumped into me,” she said.

“Yay, snacks!” Richard said, fist pumping.

Nancy frowned. “How did you know she would bring snacks?”

“When she bumped into me, she brought everyone snacks. Remember a couple days ago?”

“Oh yeah, when I ran into her, she brought snacks too,” Penny said, the dark-haired girl frowning thoughtfully before breaking into a smile. “Awesome!”

Something felt wrong. It whirled inside her, and Nancy put every ounce of focus she could into listening to her gut, slowly teasing out the dreadful question.

“Did anyone…ever get to the stairs?”

The children glanced around at each other, shrugging and shaking their heads.

“I guess not,” Richard said. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Nancy said, shaking her head. “It just feels wrong. Like we’re trapped here.”

“But…the door isn’t even locked.”

“Nobody’s ever gotten past the stairs without running into the maid! Isn’t that weird?” Nancy asked. “How could she accidentally run into everyone who tries to leave every time?”

The children frowned and fell silent, not sure how to react.

“Yo,” a boy named Thomas said, waving his hand from his bed. “Over here.” The blond preteen lifted his heavy oak bed frame up and set it aside, revealing a trap door in the floor.

“There was a girl here a couple weeks before me who could make anything into a door,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve been using it to explore the castle.”

“Really!?” Nancy crawled over to the door and ran her fingers over it. The smooth stone of the floor was marred by hinges and a stone knob. She twisted the handle, and with a smooth motion, the heavy block of stone lifted up, revealing a void-colored black hole in the floor.

Nancy couldn’t get any sense of depth, because the weak light of the room stubbornly refused to penetrate its depths. For a moment, she thought it was a doorway into death itself, until Penny brought a candle nearby, revealing a marble floor a few feet under the opening.

“Jerk,” Penny said, punching Thomas on the shoulder. “This is the kind of thing you’re supposed to share.”

“It’s the space between this floor and the rooms underneath us,” Thomas said, rubbing his arm. “Head straight that way, and you’ll get to the next door.” He pointed toward the side wall. “Leads to the roof.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem, kid.”

“Don’t act like the grown-up just ‘cuz you’re ten,” Penny said, punching Thomas’s shoulder again.

“Ow, quit it.”

“Make me.” Penny stuck out her tongue.

“I’ll be back soon!” Nancy said, dropping into the pit and orienting on the direction Thomas had given her.

“Oh, by the way, stick a piece of cloth or something in the roof door so you can find it on the way back. It took me hours to find it again from the other side,” Thomas called after her.

“Okay!” Nancy dropped to her knees and started crawling, the opening above her head shrinking into the distance until she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

After about three minutes crawling through the dark, Nancy ran face-first into stone, bopping her nose good.

“Ow,” Nancy whispered, rubbing her nose. She reached up and scanned the odd, tilted stone with her hand until her fingers came across a handle.

When she twisted it, the door revealed itself, spilling moonlight into the darkness. Nancy pried it open and clambered out onto the sloping shingles of the castle.

Gotta remember where this is, Nancy thought, taking off one of her twine bracelets and wedging it in the door frame. She gently shut the shingle-door and made her way to the edge.

Nancy almost gasped at how beautiful everything was at night. The moon was huge, a mottled pink and blue, casting a pale purple light over everything.

No, I can’t stare at the pretty moon. I gotta see Jake again. She just had to see him off. See him safe and okay, then all her doubts would go away, and she would be sure they were safe.

Nancy creeped along the rooftop, keeping as quiet as possible and listening for anything that might tell her where Jake and Mr. Surpey had gone. She had spent a lot of time on the roof at her house, and it came naturally to her, especially now that she was a lot stronger than before. Her fingers clung to the shingles, each digit strong enough to carry her by itself.

Nancy didn’t know this, but a professional rock climber would have been insanely jealous before the Stitching. Afterwards, the sport lost a bit of its luster.

Suddenly, she heard voices.

Nancy cocked her head and strained her ears.

“…Now make sure you always address him as ‘sir’, as he’ll be your sponsor during your time in the academy. And once you graduate, you may be expected to work for him for a time. Think of it as a student loan repayment.”

“Got it.” She narrowed in on Jake’s confident speech and began creeping that direction. A moment later, she was hovering over Jake and Mr. Surpey as they walked toward the castle entrance through the courtyard.

Jake was wearing keegan-style robes, which must have been why she was able to catch up with them.

She considered dropping down and saying goodbye in person, but she absolutely didn’t want to get in trouble with Mr. Surpey, so she decided she would just watch for now.

The front gate swung open, creating a path leading into the courtyard of the mansion/castle. A carriage drawn by a pair of matching black lizards with iridescent scales rolled inside, gliding silently on ivory wheels.

The carriage came to a halt in front of Jake and Mr. Surpey, where they were waiting. Jake copied Mr. Surpey and folded his hands, trying to act the part as best he could.

A keegan in a blue and black checkered robe stepped out of the carriage while his driver rested the prod on his knees, staring idly into the distance—nearly directly at Nancy, if a dozen feet too low.

“Lovely night, isn’t it?” the keegan said, glancing up at the moon as he stretched.

“Indeed,” Mr. Surpey said with a bow. “Allow me to make formal introductions. Jake Baker, this is your sponsor, Judge Mirzos Elkor. You will call him Judge Elkor or ‘sir’. Judge, this is your sponsee, Jake Baker.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Judge Elkor said, extending his hand.

Jake seemed to reflexively go for a handshake, raising his hand, but the judge’s reach extended beyond Jake’s childish palm, landing a single finger on the boy’s forehead.

Crack!

A blinding flash of greenish energy seared into Nancy’s eyes, cutting out her vision.

As Nancy was blinking tears out of her eyes, she saw Jake topple backwards, stiff as a felled tree.

Jake’s eyes were open, an expression of confusion frozen on his face. He was dead. They killed him!

“No!” Nancy gasped before she slapped her hands over her mouth.

Luckily, Mr. Surpey was shouting. Like, a lot.

“What in the Roil do you think you’re doing!?” Mr. Surpey shouted. “You’re supposed to take him home!”

“I’m expediting the process,” Judge Elkor said, raising his chin, looking down at Mr. Surpey. “Your rules are wasteful and poorly thought-out, Mr. O’sut.”

The keegan paused, looking at something in the air. “Although you do deliver results. Look at that, five whole levels from a single urchin. Magnificent.”

“The rules are in place to protect you! You just committed a reaping, not an Honor Duel!”

“Pssht.” Judge Elkor waved him off as he headed back toward the carriage. “I haven’t the time to tiptoe around the law. I am the law in Solmnath. Other than your whining, I’m very impressed by the quality of your goods.”

He stepped onto the carriage’s step and glanced over his shoulder. “Which is why I’ll expect the next one a month from now.”

“What next one?” Mr. Surpey—O’sut?—asked, glaring at the judge. “You’ve refused to follow the terms I’ve set down. I wouldn’t take your money now if you begged me.”

“Oh you won’t be taking my money. Your payment will be my silence. Goodbye, Mr. O’sut.”

Mr. Surpey watched the carriage circle around him, gracefully leaving the way it had come.

“FFFUCK!

“Damn these arrogant Mystborn sons of Roil-welted whores who’ve nothing between their ears but laziness and greed!” Mr. Surpey shouted at the top of his lungs once the drawbridge was closed.

“Jeopardize themselves, me, and everyone else because they want to cut a few corners! Idiots! Myst-addled fools!”

He turned toward her.

Nancy dropped her face below the edge of the rooftop, hand clamped over her mouth. She felt hot tears trickle down the back of her palm, involuntary whimpers rising from her throat.

Their captor continued shouting, drowning out Nancy’s quiet sobs.

“Skol, take the boy and a shovel out into the wilderness and burn his body, clothes and all. If I find out you lifted some of the silk for your wife, I will straight up murder you! Once he’s bones, bury him deep, where scavengers can’t get to him. I want plenty of time for the Myst to be scattered into nature so a Seer can’t Read them.

“Right now!” Mr. Surpey said, clapping his hands before stomping inside the castle.

I have to leave, right now. If they found out she was out here, they would kill her too! She had to get back to their room.

Taking the opportunity, Nancy scrambled back across the rooftop, trying to locate the door back to the dark passageway leading to their room.

There it is, Nancy thought, spotting her bracelet, the white beads glowing faintly purple in the moonlight. She yanked the door open and slipped into the darkness as quickly and quietly as she could. The dark no longer held any fear for her. If Mr. Surpey couldn’t see in the dark, then the dark was a good thing.

She crawled back, her heart pounding in her chest, blindly trailing her fingers across the ceiling until she came across the seam of the door. Groping around, she found the handle, twisted it, then burst out into the children’s room.

“Nancy, are you okay? What happened?” Thomas asked as she shoved his bed back over the trap door, her breath coming hot and fast.

When the door was covered, Nancy sank to her knees and began bawling, not strong enough yet to tell them what had happened to Jake. What was going to happen to them.

“Here you are. Snacks!” the melas maid said, bumping the door open with her hip, pulling a cart full of delicious meats and cheeses, along with a large pitcher of water and several glasses.

The dark orange woman paused when nobody cheered for snacks, pursing her lips when she noticed Nancy’s sobbing. “Oh dear, is she alright?”

“She, uh…misses her mommy and daddy,” Thomas said, patting Nancy’s back.

***Kebos O’sut***

The next morning, Kebos was pacing the courtyard, watching the children slaughtering the rabzi in their cages in unusual, but welcome, silence. Even the talkative or particularly cruel children who seemed to enjoy hurting things were quiet, killing the vile creatures with unusually stoic expressions.

Oh well, they’ll be back to their usual grating screams once they’ve forgotten about Jake.

They did tend to get a little subdued when one of them left for their foster homes, but this was a little more than usual. Jake had been fairly popular among the other children, from what he could recall.

The only noise he heard was Marcy’s sobbing, which was not unexpected. The little girl was holding a spear several sizes too big for her and trembling like a leaf in front of a wounded rabzi.

Kebos thought he’d have to intervene as he had so many times before when a little girl didn’t show a predilection for violence, but he was pleased to note Nancy was talking to the girl, guiding her to kill the rabzi in the cage.

He was too distant to make it out, but whatever she said must have worked, because in the end, Marcy stabbed the feral monster in the neck, ending its pitiful existence.

Perhaps an inside man would help, Kebos thought, thumbing his chin as he observed. Many children took days to convince to kill the rabzi. Days that cut into his profit margin. Nancy had done it in less than an hour.

During his patrol of the courtyard, something bright caught Kebos’s gaze. Lying in the dirt on the edge of the grounds was a bracelet, sized for a child. He stooped to pick it up, studying its simplistic make.

It was made of twine and ivory beads with black ink stamped onto them that spelled:

F-R-I-E-N-D-S

Hmm… Where could this have come from?

Chapter 18: Plan C

“Children?” Zlesk whispered, clenching his fists. “This man you’re hunting is reaping children?”

“Yeah, I mean, why did you think I started an orphanage?” Jeb asked, raising a brow.

Zlesk’s expressive brows furrowed in thought, then he shrugged. “Because it was the right thing to do, obviously.”

Jeb and Smartass burst into laughter as Zlesk looked progressively more and more pissed.

“That’s exactly the kind of attitude we look for in our faculty here at The Admiral Orphanage,” Jeb said between gasps.

“You fat veek, you’re using the children as bait?”

“They’re a lot safer now than they were before,” Jeb said, his humor fading away. He didn’t know what a ‘veek’ was, but he didn’t like being called one. It was something about the former sheriff’s tone.

“If it makes you feel better, once we catch the guy, I’ll leave the orphanage running. I’ll put someone who actually likes children in charge.”

Zlesk opened his mouth to respond when Mrs. Lang approached from the front of the mansion, her expression alarmed. “There’re keegan at the door, and they’re arm—ack!”

Mrs. Lang was bodily pushed aside and two keegan in snazzy black robes with silver trim oriented on Jeb, their gazes travelling down to his missing leg, then back up to his face.

“Jebediah Trapper?” the one in the lead asked.

“That’s me,” Jeb said.

“You’re under arrest on suspicion of reaping.” They stepped forward and hauled Jeb to his feet, twisting his arms behind him.

Well, it looks like our reaper has a political presence. Shit. This just got complicated and dangerous.

“Zlesk, Plan C,” Jeb hissed.

“You didn’t get around to telling me any plan,” Zlesk said, watching Jeb get dragged away with an amused expression. “Let alone Plan C.”

“Ask Mrs. Lang!” Jeb shouted, craning his neck to peer through the doorway as the goons dragged him outside. The last thing he saw was Zlesk waving him off.

“If you’re a Citizen, you have the right to legal counsel, and will not be required to testify against yourself. Citizenship also confers the right to request the use of a Truthseeker in matters both criminal and civil in nature.”

“So…what do I get if I’m not a Citizen?” Jeb asked, to which their response was a swift cuff on the ear. “Yeah, I thought so,” Jeb muttered, ear stinging as they shoved him into the carriage.

At least alien jail was relatively cushy. It all came down to accommodating species that were on average a foot taller than humans were. That meant that there was plenty of legroom in both the carriage and the bed.

Usually you hear horror stories about tiny cots, and cramped spaces, but when humans were midgets, size wasn’t an issue.

This bed probably wouldn’t fit Zlesk, though, Jeb thought, stretching his toes down to the bottom of the jail cot and his arms over his head. He glanced up at the ceiling, a familiar sense of unease knocking on the door to his thoughts.

Nope. Jeb turned onto his side and closed his eyes. He didn’t have anything to do but wait for the Bad Guys to show their faces, or get executed for not being a Citizen. Hopefully Plan C would be enough to bail him out of the fire and give them a solid lead to work on.

In the meantime, Jeb didn’t have anything to do but stew…and practice. Jeb pictured the lessons he’d learned from Principles of Myst Sensors and Behavior Programming 101.

A Myst Trigger is similar to a Prince Rupert’s drop mixed with a radio, Jeb thought to himself.

To the uninitiated, a Rupert’s drop is when a bit of molten glass is dropped into a bucket of water, creating a teardrop shape with a long, thin tail. While the teardrop portion is rather rigid and tough to break, the long tail is brittle and can easily be snapped off. When it is, the entire droplet explodes from released tension.

Jeb’s science teacher in high school didn’t let them do their own because teens are stupid, but the sight of Mr. Clemmins digging a sliver of glass out of his palm must have made an impression.

In this case, the trigger portion was the thin glass tail, connected to the reservoir of pre-programmed Myst, which Jeb pictured as the explosive teardrop of tensioned glass.

The tricky part was the trigger. Jeb had to make it respond only to specific actions by making it resonate with the events in question, dialing it in like a radio to a specific station. When the right song came on the radio, it would resonate and wiggle the fragile trigger until it broke and unleashed the stored energy.

This was the part that required experience and experimentation to get the feel for it, something that had faded from Jeb within moments of being bitten by the snake...book…thing.

If, in the Myst dimension, every event has its own unique resonance frequency, I should be able to figure this out, eventually. Jeb sat up, cross-legged, opening his palm and consulting his memories of the Tutorial. He had some experience setting up Myst Triggers, even if he was on autopilot during the entire thing. He’d at least been present.

Packaging the Myst and programming it was easy. Jeb understood programming, or at least understood the concept of predefined actions. Jeb followed the instructions in the book and made a tight bead of orange-gold Myst ready to blow a gentle gust of wind into his face.

Creating the trigger was the hard part, as the instructions in the book waxed somewhat metaphorical, giving instructions such as touching specific strands from the Weave of Creation like the spider, Venaxus.

Jeb interpreted it to mean quantum radio. He tried to picture himself closing his right hand as a single possibility out of the wide band of possible events on the infinite spectrum of possibilities that could happen, and he pictured the fragile trigger resonating with that single event until it burst.

The trigger fired prematurely, blowing a gentle wind into Jeb’s face before he’d even thought about closing his hand.

Well, at least it triggered on something.

Jeb glanced up, and not a single prisoner or guard was paying attention to his antics, and it didn’t look like they would anytime soon. Probably letting him stew in fear for a while before they started interrogating him.

Jeb shrugged and took a deep breath, drawing Myst in to fuel his growing Core before siphoning it out, forming it into a tight knot.

It might take a while, but Jeb was determined to be able to do this on his own.

***Zlesk Frantell***

Zlesk watched as the annoying human was dragged away, looking like a squirming rabzi pinned between two hunters, his gold-inlaid wooden foot beating out a staccato rhythm on the floor.

I could just let him get raked over hot coals. I’m fairly sure the human has done something to deserve it.

Zlesk glanced out at the human fat-monkeys running around wildly outside the kitchen window, screaming obnoxiously and pulling each other’s strange hair...

Completely free of worry that any minute their safe haven might crumble to the ground due to the machinations of evil men. He could stand to let Jeb suffer, but to allow the orphanage to collapse was not an option he cared to entertain.

The murder-savant had done something good here, even if it was in service of his hunting.

Zlesk sighed and set his chin on his palm. “What was Plan C, Mrs. Lang?”

Mrs. Lang rubbed her disgustingly obese hip and scowled at the retreating sentinel carriage with her disgustingly obese lips.

“Right this way.” Mrs. Lang guided him to Jeb’s room on the second floor, right next to the staircase and the closest room to the front door.

On the nightstand next to the bed was a human electric lamp, which Zlesk had never seen before. For a moment, he was distracted by the unflickering pure light as Mrs. Lang produced a series of envelopes from the drawer.

“Let’s see…” she said, flipping through no less than a dozen envelopes until she found the one she was looking for.

“Plan C: Corrupt government officials,” Mrs. Lang said, opening the letter and spreading it out on the desk.

She frowned as she read it. “Use deputy plate and Truthseeker to shake the tree. Hire extra manpower from Working Stiffs to catch what falls out? Deputy plate is under my pillow, Truthseeker is in the nightstand.”

“What a vague plan,” Mrs. Lang said, turning the piece of paper over to check the back for more.

“It’ll work,” Zlesk said when he saw what lay under Jeb’s pillow.

An Enforcer’s Mark. Only given to people enforcers had the highest confidence in. Often the kind of people who went on to become enforcers themselves. It allowed a non-Citizen to challenge a Citizen, and it gave an actual Citizen a substantial amount of freedom from censure.

Why anyone would give such a thing to Jebediah Trapper was beyond Zlesk.

A small part of him knew he could sell it for a small fortune, or leverage it to climb back into society’s good graces, and right a few wrongs along the way.

But it wasn’t his.

Zlesk stomped down on those quiet desires like a squirming colee as he picked up the Mark. He would behave honorably, or what right did he have to be a Citizen in the first place?

***Jeb***

“As your legal counsel, I advise you to admit your wrongdoings before I break the other arm!” The angry melas interrogator twisted Jeb’s left arm up and behind his back, applying just the right torque to make the entire thing feel like it was about to wrench out of every socket he had. Wrist, elbow, and shoulder all screamed in protest as they hovered on the verge of dislocating.

Jeb’s other arm was busted, having already been through this lovely process.

“Okay, okay!” Jeb shouted, slamming the table with his forehead as a way of tapping out, prompting the melas to ease up on the pressure just a little.

“I spied on some of my friends having sex when I was a teenager. I knew it was wrong, but she had the biggest tits I’d ever—”

Pop. Jeb’s dislocating arm sent an unpleasant echo through his entire body. Not to mention the pain.

“AAAGH!”

A lot of people think of a tough guy as someone who can muscle through the impulse to scream, but those kinds of people don’t really exist outside of Hollywood.

A real tough guy sticks to the script after the screaming is over.

“...seen, and the way they were bouncing was just fan-fucking-tastic.” Jeb shuddered as adrenaline worked through his veins like battery acid.

The other ‘detective’ pulled up Jeb’s face and smacked him around, loosening Jeb’s teeth a bit and filling the inside of his mouth with coppery blood. Jeb’s vision was starting to get a little blurry.

I really hope they get my plan. Shit, why wasn’t step one of Plan C rescue my ass? Why didn’t I write steps!?

“Ever since your orphanage popped up, kids have started going missing at a prodigious rate. We have it on high authority that they’re going missing from your orphanage.”

High authority, huh? I wonder who specifically pushed that narrative.

“And really, the only time you can enjoy teenage tits completely guilt-free is when you’re also a teen, so I figured—”

Crack!

“AAAAAGH!”

There goes the other one. Damnit!

“Why does he keep talking about tits!?” the melas standing in front of him said, throwing Jeb’s face away in disgust.

‘A great way to get through grueling P.T. is to have something you can focus on really really good. I like to think about boobs.’ —Drill Sergeant Sean Morgan

“The reaper’s legal counsel has arrived,” a keegan woman said, peeking her head into the claustrophobic room. “Some uptight Keegan guy.”

That must be Zlesk! Jeb thought, eyes widening. Zlesk was gonna come in here and flash the badge and totally flip the script on these goons. One look at that and they’d be eating out of his palm.

If I could lift my palm, Jeb thought, glancing down at his slowly swelling arms.

“‘The reaper’? What happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty’, lady!?” Jeb demanded, burying his excitement.

“Thanks, Sue,” the interrogator said, waving her off.

The woman gave Jeb a dismissive glance and ducked her head back out the door.

“How the Roil did this scum get counsel?” the melas in front of him asked, scratching his head.

“I don’t know. I know this boy didn’t get a message out. He’s been by himself since we got him.”

“The sentinels said he was screaming something about Plan C on the way out.”

A grip tightened on Jeb’s skull and yanked his head back.

“I bet you’d like to talk to your lawyer, wouldn’t you?” the melas behind him demanded while the other one left the room.

“I would like that very much,” Jeb said, his first non-boob-related answer since they began.

“Well, tough luck, because if your lawyer isn’t a Citizen, then—”

“Um, Croz?” the other melas said, leaning back in the door. “The dude’s a Citizen.”

“Ehehehehe,” Jeb chuckled evilly. The dumbfounded expression on their faces was almost worth the busted arms.

Well, no, it wasn’t. Not even close. But it did help it hurt less for a couple seconds.

“Shit,” ‘Croz’ muttered, shoving Jeb’s head aside as he went for the door to the interrogation room.

“You’ve got an hour, reaper scum. Then we start over again.”

The two of them stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind them, leaving Jeb blissfully alone. If Jeb could move his arms, he would have steepled his fingers ominously, channeling his inner Hannibal and Keyser Söze.

This was the moment where everything went off the rails for these two. Less than a minute later, the door opened, revealing a keegan man in plain robes.

Notably not Zlesk.

Who the fuck is this guy? Jeb thought, raising a brow.

“Good evening, Mr. Trapper. I am your legal counsel,” the man said, reaching into his robe, presumably for legal documents, or a snack, or a pen, or something.

Jeb would have preferred any of those to the foot and a half of razor-sharp steel that emerged from the assassin’s robes.

Crap. Well, that can’t be good.

Desperately, Jeb reached under the table with his Myst and lassoed the man’s legs. As soon as the man decided to move at super-speeds, it was game over for Jeb. Jeb simply didn’t have the Nerve to perceive people moving at top speeds yet.

“I’m here to deliver a messa—ACK!”

The keegan flopped backwards, his feet torn out from under him. Mid-fall, the keegan whipped his arm out as Jeb seized the air in front of himself, creating a cone of telekinetic force.

The short blade bounced off the shield and hummed through the air, burying itself in the wall a few inches from Jeb’s cheek.

When the going gets tough, the tough start screaming.

“HEEEELLLP!” Jeb shouted at the top of his lungs, leaping out of his chair and yanking himself up with telekinesis.

The keegan hit the ground and drew another blade, swiping at Jeb’s feet under the table, cutting the fancy spring-loaded toe off of his expensive ‘Remónd’ brand prosthetic, which was too dumb to pull itself out of the way.

Another sword burst through the underside of the table, showering Jeb and the ceiling with wooden shrapnel and drawing a line of blood across Jeb’s good leg.

Goddamnit, I only got one of those! Jeb thought, aiming his fancy prosthesis at the table.

Jeb’s newest idea for the Annihilation lens was a void-gun. It was a fairly obvious application of two void lenses with a simple oscillation mechanism between them, rapidly shifting the focus of the lenses forward and then back.

By shifting the focus back and forth rapidly one time, Jeb was able to create a machine that cut a thumb-sized hole through everything between itself and a point about thirty feet out.

A machine that was currently embedded in his fancy footwear.

Jeb fed a trickle of Myst into the Annihilation lens, cutting a hole through the assassin’s last known location, along with the bottom of his heel.

Whomp!

Unfortunately, the sound it created wasn’t a cool ‘pew, pew’, but was rather something akin to a tennis ball travelling out of a plastic tube at high speed, due to air collapsing in around the travelling focal point.

“Agh!” The remains of the table on top of the assassin bucked up and swatted Jeb out of the air, sandwiching him against the wall.

“What’s going on back there!?” The sound of running feet outside made it into the tiny room just as Jeb peeked above the edge of the frayed table pinning him into the corner of the room.

In the center of the dimly-lit interrogation room, the assassin clutched a bleeding hole in his shoulder, watching Jeb with fury dancing in his eyes.

“Stay or go?” Jeb asked, shakily aiming his foot at the attacker. He honestly didn’t have any idea what he could do if the man decided to take Jeb out real quick before he fled. There wasn’t much he could do at this point.

He’d already exhausted the element of surprise, his hidden ace, and his ability with Myst, in about five seconds of combat.

But the other guy didn’t know that.

With a wordless snarl, the assassin drew a cowl over his face, the fabric turning hazy and transparent, before he turned and ran, slamming into the door and blowing the interrogators off their feet.

I hope they broke something just now, Jeb thought sourly as he watched Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum roll on the floor in agony through the unhinged door. The closer one clutched his wrist where it had been smashed by the handle.

Hah! Jeb sobered for a moment of thought. Seems awfully premature to send an assassin after me. The people who were ‘dealing’ with the problem Jeb represented had barely begun to exercise their legal options. Why on earth would they default to an assassin when arresting him was pretty much a slam-dunk?

Unless…the assassin is working for someone else?

From there, it didn’t take much effort to figure out who Jeb had pissed off over the last couple months.

Most of them, like the sand-pirates, were dead already, but Jeb could think of one person in particular that might have both a pulse, and an itty-bitty bit of a sore spot in regards to him.

Garland Grenore.

I wonder if he actually paid the assassin, or just gave him an IOU?

Of course, nothing was for certain, but it made a lot more sense than the reaper sending a hitman after him when Jeb was a relative unknown who was already being taken care of.

Oh well. When I see the assassin again, I’ll kick his ass…her ass? Wait, what did they look like?

Jeb’s memory of the entire time before the man pulled down his translucent cowl showed him a blurred face. Jeb’s only clue was that the assailant was a keegan male. Probably. Judging by the clothes...

Goddamn magic hoods! Now he can walk right up and try to shiv me again!

For that matter, why did the assassin try to kill me now when he probably assumed I’d be killed on reaper charges in less than a week?

***Kol Rejan***

“That was stupid,” Kol muttered, staunching the wound in his shoulder as he leaned against the wall of his room at the inn. He’d assumed the human would be easy pickings after being worked over for an hour by the local police.

Slip in, take the Impact, slip back out, easy as hosh-spice. Kol knew he could’ve waited for the human to get convicted and executed and called the job done, but he got lazy and greedy. He wanted to cut his time in Solmnath short, and hated missing out on levels.

All those motivations convinced him that killing a human with two broken arms would be easy. And it should’ve been.

“Fucker hid a wand in his leg,” Kol muttered as he disinfected the needle and thread in melasian moros. The drink was only good as a disinfectant/firestarter/explosive anyway.

Fucker’s also a Myst user. Which would have been nice to know, Grenore.

Kol shook his head. My job, my responsibility. He should’ve done more research into this Jebediah Trapper, but he was a human. Why bother? There, laziness popping up again.

Unless it was one of the few humans that miraculously survived the Impossible Tutorial, they couldn’t hold a candle to Kol’s power. At least, hypothetically. Kol had memorized the list just in case, too, and there was no Jebediah Trapper on it.

Apparently I was wrong. Should’ve charged more.

Kol hissed with pain as he began sewing the wound shut.

Now I’ve got a big-ass hole in my shoulder because I was lazy. Lesson learned.

Kol’s new strategy was to hang around Solmnath and heal until they executed the human, then call it a job well done.

And if he doesn’t get executed…I’m going to have to re-evaluate my strategy.

That nagging tug from Kol’s Class continued to point out the location of his prey, even as he finished dressing the wound. He wasn’t moving. Excellent.

***Jeb***

Once the assassin was gone, the two ‘detectives’ asked some rather pointed questions about who the man was, and while Jeb had some idea, he couldn’t say anything for sure without possibly lying. Of course, these questions eventually turned toward why there was a twenty-four foot hole in the floor, and not being able to directly lie, this led to Jeb’s improvised weaponry being confiscated.

Several hours into the second round of questioning, there was another knock on the door.

“Boys, um…there’s another man here who says he’s the reaper’s legal counsel,” the keegan woman said, peeking her head into the room.

“Oh, come on!” Croz shouted, dropping the pliers from Jeb’s fingernail. “We haven’t time for another imposter masquerading as a Citizen. The judge is breathing down my neck to have this confession ready to turn in tonight!”

The judge? Jeb thought, barely cognizant enough to catch that little slip.

“I’m sorry, he’s just really, really insistent. Do you think you could—”

“I’ll deal with him,” Camort said, setting down the salt and heading for the door.

“Out of the way,” a familiar voice said before the secretary was roughly shoved out of the way. Zlesk barged into the room, whipping the Enforcer’s Mark in front of him like a priest warding off Dracula.

It seemed to have the same effect, as the melas detectives recoiled in horror, minus the hissing.

“Sit down,” Zlesk said, speaking with the authoritative tone of someone who’d been studying to be sheriff half his life.

The two melas flopped down on either side of the new table, their knees folding out from under them.

“You guys okay in there? Should I get help?” the secretary asked through the door Zlesk held closed with his foot.

“We’re fine!” Croz raised his voice.

“All good in here!” Camort shouted, eyes fixed to the Mark.

“…Okay then.” From the tone, Jeb could picture the woman shrugging and turning away.

“Excellent. Let’s begin,” Zlesk said, pocketing the Enforcer’s Mark.

“What took you so long?” Jeb asked.

“Your friend haggled for a great sum in exchange for his assistance. He seemed rather doubtful that we were working together.”

“Goddamnit, Ron,” Jeb groaned. His haggling cost Jeb a couple fingernails. Do those even grow back?

“You two know each other?” Croz asked, glancing between the two of them.

“Indeed,” Zlesk said, coming up behind Jeb and patting him on the shoulder before leaning forward to whisper in Jeb’s ear.

“Let me handle this. They’ll respond much better to a keegan Citizen with a Mark than a maimed human.”

Jeb grunted. It was about as much mental effort as he could devote to any one thing at the moment.

“This, detectives, is my fat, ignorant patsy.”

Jeb grunted again.

“A juicy, wriggling grub to catch a vreek. He’s no more guilty of trafficking children than you or I.”

Jeb smacked his split lips and tried to work up some unbloodied saliva. This part was important.

“Judge. Confession.” Jeb struggled to speak, his voice hoarse from screaming.

“Oh?” Zlesk said, peering at Jeb, then to the two detectives gradually paling from orange to yellow under the former sheriff’s scrutiny.

“Is there a particular judge driving the investigation against my friend here?”

“Umm…”

Zlesk reached out and lifted detective Croz one-handed and stuck him to the ceiling with his Class Ability. He took the man’s seat and sat down in front of Camort, still a head taller than him.

“Gentlemen, perhaps you don’t understand the gravity here. This judge of yours has already taken my bait. Defending him will bind your fate to his. And there’s only one fate for a reaper.

“Now.” Zlesk steepled his fingers in the exact way Jeb wanted to, staring down the flustered detective.

“Do you want to live?”

Chapter 19: The Trial

They spilled their guts in every way but the literal way.

The judge’s name was Mirzos Elkor, and he’d suddenly grown a give-a-shit for the sanctity of human life sometime between the night before last and now. Out of nowhere, the keegan judge had leaned on the detectives’ boss, who had leaned on them to retrieve Jeb and squeeze a confession out of him.

In an era where Truthseekers existed, forced confessions were still a thing—go figure. If they made Jeb admit to reaping children, they could formally ask him in court if he’d admitted to the crime, which the Truthseeker would identify as ‘the truth’, then they would pack up and call it a day.

What kind of dystopian bullshit is that? The legal system needs to get its ass ironed out.

Jeb understood the concept that sometimes people just needed someone to blame, but forcing a false confession when it would be just as easy to get the real bad guy by using a Truthseeker…

According to Zlesk, this was a custom unique to Solmnath and Judge Elkor in particular, but Jeb had his doubts.

Well, tick the ‘corrupt government official’ box, Jeb thought to himself, trying not to move too much. Moving hurt. With how slimy this judge was looking to an outside observer, it wasn’t a stretch to think his dirty laundry would be…pretty bad.

Child trafficking/murdering bad? Time will tell.

“Send me back to the cell,” Jeb muttered through his swollen lip.

“Jeb, you need to get some rest. I already paid your bail. I can take you back to the orphanage.”

“No. I have to stay in jail to stick to the story. These guys can detect a setup. As long as the detectives tell the story we want them to tell, they’ll think their little tactic is working until we have a chance to meet them face-to-face.”

“What about the guy who tried to kill you?” Zlesk asked.

Jeb shrugged. “It’ll help me sleep.”

Zlesk cocked a brow at this, then turned back to the ‘detectives’. “When is the trial?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Not wasting any time, are they? That’s abnormally fast,” Zlesk said, rubbing his chin. “Well, it works well for our plans, too.”

He directed his gaze back up to Tweedle Dee and Dum.

“Do not speak of the Mark. If you do, I will find out. If you are questioned about the events that transpired here, describe me as a pushy, unscrupulous lawyer hired by the reaper with the last vestiges of his money.”

“Yessir,” the detectives said, nodding vigorously.

“Make sure he makes it to solitary, and put a security detail on him to make sure he doesn’t sustain any more damage.”

“Zlesk…” Jeb groaned. He didn’t need a bunch of people standing around staring at him to make sure he didn’t stub his toe.

“I’m not budging on that one, so deal with it.”

“Bleh.”

“C’mon, I’ll help you,” Zlesk said, lifting Jeb to his foot, where Jeb stood woozily in place, unable to take a step.

“What’s wrong?” Zlesk asked, frowning.

“They took my foot,” Jeb mewled—actually mewled. Jeb’s face crumpled up and he tried not to ugly-cry from relief. The stress of getting tortured for an entire afternoon burst out in an unexpected way. “I just got it, too, and it already needs to get fixed!”

“Um…there, there.” Zlesk awkwardly patted Jeb on the back, seemingly unsure of what to do.

Jeb took a shuddering breath. “I’m fine. It’s just a dopamine crash from the torture,” Jeb said, waving him off and wiping his face. “I would like my foot back, though.”

“Umm, sir, that prosthesis contained a Schedule 1 improvised Annihilation Myst weapon…which are illegal,” Dee said.

“Like, really illegal,” Dum chimed in.

“Did it enter the official record yet?”

The two melas glanced at each other. “…No.”

“Then you didn’t find it. Bring my fat patsy’s foot back right now.”

“I’m not fat,” Jeb muttered.

“You are to me,” Zlesk said, patting him on the back more naturally this time. “C’mon, let’s hop your way back to your cell.”

“Ow, ow OW!” Jeb hissed as Zlesk tried to get an arm under him. Jeb’s arms had been worked over so good, they didn’t want to do anything in particular but rest in a sling for a couple weeks.

“Hold on, I’ll do this myself,” Jeb muttered, hardening a pegleg out of telekinetic force, and putting it under his stump.

He gingerly put his weight on it, and was pleased when he didn’t fall on his face. He had to move it mentally rather than physically, which presented extra difficulty when his concentration lapsed, but he managed it.

Jeb split the thread of Myst in two and used the other one to grab himself by the diaphragm, steadying his balance.

It was a bit like riding a unicycle and juggling, but it worked.

Jeb walked out of that room with one foot and no arms. Admittedly, he walked very slowly and laboriously, but he walked.

Just a few more Deals and I’ll be flying again.

Jeb sat down on his bed in solitary, gladly accepting his fancy foot back. The toe was crudely glued back on, and it would probably snap off from the pressure of walking in a matter of hours, but Jeb was happy to have it. He slipped the prosthetic back into its proper place on his stump with a grateful sigh before tightening the straps and flopping down on his bed.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Jebediah,” Zlesk said.

“Tomorrow,” Jeb said, waving a hand and closing his eyes.

Once Zlesk was gone, Jeb opened his eyes again, studying the cracks in the ceiling.

The sheer amount of stress he’d endured today had basically tired out his amygdala until it was numb, allowing him to look at a ceiling like any other person might. It was a small island in time where he simply couldn’t feel the slowly encroaching fear.

It was nice.

Jeb wanted to feel the scar on his palm to reassure himself, but his fingers were swollen, which was a good change. As long as things continued to change in a way that made sense, Jeb could convince himself he wasn’t in some kind of nightmare hell-loop. It’d been years, but echoes of that strange cyclical thinking still came back to haunt him every now and then.

But not tonight.

Tonight, he had the soothing pain of broken arms and the stress of a botched assassination to lull him to sleep. To prove this wasn’t all in his head.

“I’m really messed up, aren’t I?” Jeb muttered to the ceiling.

“Yep,” Smartass said solemnly, patting him on the cheek.

******

Jeb only got about five hours of sleep before the sentinels roused him in order to make him more ‘presentable’. They put his more damaged left arm in splints and a sling, while his dislocated right arm got some tightening wraps around the joints to help them stay in place while they healed.

They gave him a mildly magical tea that brought the swelling down substantially and slipped him into a keegan-style robe to make him look more…official, maybe?

Between getting his leg back and the loaner walking stick, Jeb was able to totter his way to court without assistance, except for getting out of the carriage. He had some difficulty navigating the marble staircase under the gawking gazes of the spectators, but he managed.

All the while, Jeb kept his eyes open for the keegan assassin. The chances of the guy coming back for more immediately when he had a hole in his shoulder were slim, but Jeb didn’t intend to be caught off guard again.

Jeb was led to a seat in the center of the room by the firm hand of one of the sentinels, who remained standing beside him, arms clasped in front.

Jeb sat in the uncomfortable chair and waited as audience members streamed in around him, taking seats on tiered bleachers that stretched around the central court, like this was a Roman gladiatorial match. As if this was the most entertaining thing they were gonna see all week.

They have no idea. Jeb chuckled.

Once the audience was in, he kept his eye open for anything akin to a jury, but he didn’t even see a separate spot for one. That’s not a good sign.

Once everyone was more or less settled, the guy standing next to him shouted, “Please rise for the honorable Judge Elkor.”

Jeb really wanted to stay seated to make a statement and prove how cool he was under pressure, but that didn’t really serve any purpose other than to irritate the judge and stir shit up. Jeb didn’t need the man angry to start; he needed him calm and confident.

Gotta keep an animal calm and relaxed before you slaughter it. Spoils the meat otherwise.

So he stood along with the rest of the crowd as the judge sauntered in, preening under the gaze of hundreds of citizens of Solmnath.

Jeb idly touched the supplies in his breast pocket, to make sure they were still there. Tweedle Dee had passed the copper plate and gold earring to him when they were getting Jeb dressed.

Ron’s zombies were outside, posing as day labor and common rats. Once Jeb shook this tree, the semi-autonomous creatures would follow the audience and eavesdrop on their conversations. That should allow Ron to point Zlesk in the right direction.

Then Zlesk and Colt smash.

Thinking of Colt, Jeb was tempted to rub his eyebrows. The boy obviously had an excellent magic for crowd control, but he kept trying to 1v1 everyone. He needed to embrace the chaos.

“Thank you, my friends,” Judge Elkor said, waving as he sat down at the raised dais in front of Jeb. “You may be seated.”

Jeb put his butt to wood, along with several dozen others.

“We gather today for the trial and sentencing of the reaper responsible for the death of so many human children here in Solmnath.” The judge bowed his head in what Jeb assumed was a show of sadness.

The audience, roughly a third human, booed and hissed. A camera flash went off, and then a battery sailed down and bounced off Jeb’s wounded shoulder, drawing a hiss out of him.

Well, the crowd seems to already have their mind made up, Jeb thought, scanning them. Getting humans involved in law proceedings was a great way to integrate them as a whole, but Jeb didn’t wanna be the scapegoat to make that happen.

“Silence,” Elkor rumbled, waving his hand dismissively. A pulse of sea-green Myst hit the crowd and in a matter of seconds, they quieted down, placidity recovered.

“Let’s begin.” Elkor clacked a pair of sticks together, each bound by rich red rope with a golden tassel. Perhaps the offworld equivalent of a gavel?

“Bailiff, will you read the charges?”

The melas beside him held up a scroll and cleared his throat. “Ahem. Jebediah Trapper stands accused of Trafficking children with intent to Reap, Reaping, owning and operating—”

The bailiff was cut off when a baby in the stands went from fussy to literally bursting into flames, engulfing its mother in a pyre. Thankfully the woman had seated herself carefully, close to the exit and surrounded by melas.

No damage was done except for the smoke-smudge on the stone ceiling.

“Madam, get that baby out of my court,” Judge Elkor said, pointing to the door.

The walking pillar of fire nodded and left while the surrounding melas poked fun at the baby for throwing a tantrum.

The bailiff cleared his throat again. “Owning and operating an orphanage without a permit, failure to register no less than six slaves with the Office of Labor, and the abuse thereof.

“That is all,” the bailiff said, closing the scroll.

“Wow,” Jeb muttered. Way to make me look like an asshole, which I suppose is the point.

“Jebediah Trapper,” Elkor said, his gaze boring into Jeb’s skull. “You are scum. I wish I could punish you separately for each of your crimes, but we all know there is only one punishment for Reaping. So this court will decide the matter of Reaping and Trafficking first, then execute the penalty.”

“Yeah! Whoo! Punishment!” Ron shouted from the spectator stands, throwing another battery at Jeb, bouncing it off the arm in a splint.

Goddamnit, Ron. The necromancer’s acting was far too enthusiastic, but he was in the middle of an angry mob and inhumans. They weren’t looking for bad acting.

“Quiet,” Judge Elkor said, clacking his Important Sticks together.

“Bring out the confession.”

A nearby melas secretary ran up to the judge and whispered in his ear.

“What do you mean, there’s none?” he growled, then looked down at Jeb’s bruised and battered form. “You’re an irritating man, Jebediah Trapper.”

So I’ve been told.

Jeb bowed his head. “I apologize. I wanted to—”

“You do not have permission to speak!” Elkor shouted over him. A wave of sea-green rolled over Jeb, settling into his bones. Everything seemed to dim for a moment, every muscle in his body relaxing as he lost control over them. His jaw, on the other hand, seemed to tense up, locking into place and preventing him from speaking.

A moment later, Jeb’s Core flared and shrugged off the effects of the Myst. In this scenario, Jeb was the unruly cat, and the judge was the human. The man had a great deal more raw power than Jeb did, but the judge had budgeted the spell expecting a gerbil.

Judge Elkor stared at him with furrowed brows as Jeb shook off the magic and flexed his jaw, rubbing out the cramp. Jeb deliberately chose not to speak, respecting the conventions of the court. Gotta keep the meat calm.

He glanced at the bailiff and tugged the man’s sleeve.

“I believe the reaper would like to speak,” the bailiff said.

Judge Elkor studied Jeb for a moment, then subtly arranged a shield of sea-green energy around himself, presumably to stop Jeb from messing with his head, if that was a thing Jeb could do.

“The court recognizes Jebediah Trapper.”

Jeb carefully arranged the words in his mind to be both entirely truthful and deceitful as all hell. It was harder than it sounded.

“I apologize for the inconvenience. I understand how bad my situation is. See, back on my home planet, there were things called ‘plea bargains’. I know that without an extraordinary event, I’m definitely going to be convicted. I can see the direction this trial is going. If it would please the court, I would like to offer a Deal: I will accept the onus the empire has placed on me, thereby bringing this trial to a swift end, and in return the judge will answer a question of mine. I have many people I feel deeply responsible for and would die easier knowing their fate.”

There, none of it is a lie.

“You would barter for my time?” Judge Elkor said, leaning over his dais, looking down at Jeb with a sneer.

Jeb stayed silent. He didn’t know if his turn to speak had been revoked, so he just kept his mouth shut.

Here it is. If he agrees to the Deal, I’ve already got him by the balls.

Jeb had specifically asked for the judge to answer a question. He might have alluded to inquiring about the fate of some of his friends, but that was a red herring in his speech. A true sentence, but unrelated.

Jeb’s end of the bargain, accepting the onus the empire had placed on him, was basically just doing what he was already intending to do. Vresh Takalis represented the empire at a higher level than the judge here did, so the job she’d given him came first, before whatever bogus decision this kangaroo court came to.

Translation: “I’ll continue to look for the reaper, and in exchange, you answer one question.”

There’s a good fairy Deal, Jeb thought, hiding his white knuckles under the table. This was what he’d kept his prey calm and confident for this entire time.

The slaughter.

“Hah!” The judge chuckled, leaning back in his seat. “Very well. I accept.” He glanced to the secretary. “Let the record show that Mr. Trapper has admitted to his crimes.”

Click.

“And for my part of the Deal,” Jeb said, his trembling fingers fishing into his front pocket.

“I will send a messenger to your cell after the trial is over.”

“Actually, I’d like to get my answer right now,” Jeb said, dropping the Enforcer’s Mark on the table in front of him.

“My onus is to find and kill the reapers operating out of Solmnath, a task which was given to me by Imperial Enforcer Vresh Tekalis.”

The copper plate clattered to a halt in front of Jeb to the sound of utter silence from all but the humans, who whispered to their melas and keegan neighbors. The whispering spread outward, surrounding Jeb with murmurs as he tried to get his fingers to grab the earring in his pocket without hurting the nail bed.

“What is this?” Judge Elkor demanded, scowling at the plate that signified Jeb was acting on behalf of an enforcer.

“A trap, I suppose,” Jeb said, battered fingers retrieving the Truthseeker and clipping it to his ear. There was a brief prick of pain as the gold pin slid through Jeb’s ear, but he ignored it.

“My question is this,” Jeb said, pointing to his ear. “Have you, Judge Elkor, aided or abetted the trafficking or reaping of human children?”

The judge leaned back and took a breath.

There were a few possible ways Jeb saw this going:

1.                   The other guy does a full court press to discredit Jeb (the most likely).

2.                   He clams up and says nothing in order to minimize damage.

3.                   He straight up bolts.

4.                   He tries to kill Jeb.

“This man is a thief or a liar!” Elkor shouted, rising to his full seven-foot height and pointing at Jeb with the tasseled mega-chopsticks. “No human would be trusted with an Enforcer’s Mark! Confiscate it from him immediately!”

Option one, then.

The bailiff made a reachy-reach for Jeb’s copper plate, and Jeb aimed his newest invention at him from under the table. Favoring nonlethal takedowns when dealing with people, Jeb had weaponized the hopelessness lens.

The hopelessness lens looked like legal documents, past-due letters, and bright red eviction notices all crumpled into a tight wad, impossible to tease out exactly who or what they were for. It gave off incredibly soft whimpers that were only audible to those with Myst.

Fueled by Jeb’s Myst, the stubby wand shot out a red-streaked beige beam that emerged from the table and caught the bailiff full in the chest.

The melas curled into a ball next to the table and started crying.

“The question. Have you, Judge Elkor, aided or abetted the trafficking or—”

“Hidden weapons!” Elkor shouted over Jeb. “He’s an assassin sent to kill me!”

Jeb felt his ear twitch.

The judge pointed the tassel-things at Jeb again, but this time they were crackling with sea-green power. A lot more than last time.

I do believe that’s more than enough to kill me. So a combination of option one and four? Jeb thought, desperately spinning up his Myst to attempt to weather the effect of Elkor’s enervation.

The beam of sea-green Myst travelled across the room and impacted against a similar beam of neon purple directly in front of Jeb. The two rays of magic scattered into a brilliant display of Myst fireworks only visible to three of the hundreds of spectators. In the stands, Ron blew imaginary smoke off the tip of his finger like an idiot.

The kid was the only other person from the Impossible Tutorial who full-stop dedicated himself to Myst, and that meant his magic was Stronk.

Judge Elkor stared at Jeb’s companion slack-jawed. A random human’s Myst had just wiped the floor with his own presumably third-generation Myst Core. The judge’s eyes were bugging out.

Seems like a good opportunity to pose my question again.

“The question, Mr. Elkor, is have you aided or abetted the—”

“Outrageous lies and slander!” the judge shouted over Jeb again, making his ear twitch as he lied. As a tactic, talking over people was actually a pretty good way of preventing them from being heard…if crude and juvenile. Effective, though. “I’ll have none of it in my courtroom! This session is adjourned until we have a chance to search the reaper for hidden weapons and teach him some respect! This reaper is guilty of the murder of children, for Vresh’na’s sake!”

“Is anybody else wondering why he doesn’t just answer the question!?” Ron asked in the middle of the slowly heating mob, his voice pitched just nasal enough to carry through the entire room, somehow finding a chink in the judge’s armor of boisterous bellowing.

“What question?” someone asked aloud.

“Did someone ask the judge a question?”

“Why’s he yelling, anyway?”

“What’s that copper thing mean?”

God fucking damnit. Of course people were oblivious. Getting everyone on the same page was like herding cats.

Jeb stood and filled his lungs.

“MIRZOS ELKOR, HAVE YOU AIDED OR ABETTED IN THE TRAFFICKING OR REAPING OF HUMAN CHILDREN!?” Jeb bellowed, with every ounce of training and clarity he could muster. One thing the army teaches you is how to scream in such a way that people can still understand you.

It rarely came in handy, but this was one such occasion, forcing the judge to lean away and shutting him up, albeit temporarily.

“The judge did?”

“Wait, so is this a sting?”

“Chris Hanson, eat your heart out.”

“Why don’t you take a seat, haha!”

The judge scanned the crowd, turning a light shade of blue, eyes wide as the scattered voices began to unify against him.

Jeb took a deep breath and cut through the chatter.

“Don’t you think someone who kills children for personal profit would have to rank among the most cowardly, spineless, pathetic excuses for a thinking creature? Worth less than the gum on my shoe? You wouldn’t want to look like that kind of reaper in front of all these people, so just answer this one simple question for all these curious onlookers:”

Jeb motioned to the crowd.

“Did ya help kill kids? Or did ya not?”

“This slander can’t be allowed to stand!” the keegan judge said, slamming his sticks down on his dais, stalking around the stone shelf to glare directly down at Jeb, only feet apart. Less than the distance it would take for the keegan to reach out and throttle him.

“I challenge Jebediah Trapper to an Honor Duel!”

“Wait, what?” Jeb frowned.

Chapter 20: Location, Location, Location

“Are you… Are you serious?”

“Unless you wish to retract your scurrilous statement! You have insulted me, and the only way out for you now is to retract your words or face your death in combat!”

“First of all,” Jeb said, holding up a finger. “It was a scurrilous question, which you refused to answer because you’re obviously guilty, and second, duels are stupid!”

A collective gasp rippled through the stands.

“I mean, what kind of idiot thought it was a good idea to determine the truth through a fight? The person who is more correct and the person who is stronger are rarely the same person.”

Accept a duel with a guy who had dozens upon dozens of stats over Jeb? Nuh-uh, not a good idea.

“Then retract your accusation, right here and now!”

“Nuh uh.” Jeb shook his head. “That’s a false dichotomy. This isn’t some grade-school bullshit; this is organized murder we’re talking about, and I refuse to entertain either of your blatant attempts to dodge culpability. I’m not dueling you, I am hunting you. I will not retract my words, either. Every one of them is true.”

The judge’s eyes squinted in glee. “Are you a Citizen, human?”

Jeb felt a hand grab him roughly by the shoulder.

“Goddamnit.”

In the stands, several spectators slipped through the noisy crowd watching the two men in the center of the room, aiming for the exits. Some of them, Jeb was sure, were simply going to gossip to their friends about the excitement at the courthouse…

But at least one would lead them to the rest of their quarry.

******

Nancy and the others were killing peruha, which were inhuman tentacle-things in barrels filled with salt water. They didn’t look like people as much as rabzi did, so that made things easier, but they were a bit more dangerous to fight.

One girl had nearly been yanked into the barrel when one of the monsters grabbed her spear with its suckers and tugged.

The kids standing next to her had nearly been paralyzed by the sight of the gnashing beak aiming for Lindsey’s head.

They had managed to pull her out and kill the creature, but not before Lindsey got a fair number of bumps and scratches, especially bruised and cut skin from where the toothy suckers had latched onto her.

Nancy glanced down at her own wound. The scar test on her hand had long since faded to nothing, which had prompted the children to make a new one, right overtop where the original brand had been.

They did this by using the flame of the lamp in their room to heat some purloined silverware before burning the backs of their hands, keeping their marks looking fresh.

It wasn’t gonna work forever, but it didn’t need to; they were escaping tonight.

They’d been pushing themselves extra hard, splitting their levels between Nerve and Body, getting faster and smarter. Even the smallest of them, little Marcy Evans, was already able to cling to the ceiling with just her fingers, and she had made huge strides in her ability to understand what was going on around them since she’d raised her Nerve by five points.

Nancy had even gotten her new Class the other day, lying to Mr. Surpey and claiming she chose Spearman.

Instead, she chose one that gave her Nerve and Myst. Nancy figured that doing the opposite of what Mr. Surpey wanted was a good way to start working against him.

As soon as she chose the Mascot Class, she’d suffered from a massive headache and an inexplicable need to hug fluffy things, but once those faded, the world laid itself bare in front of her. Every thought was expanded, as though she’d been thinking inside the confines of a sippy cup, and now her ideas swam out into the ocean and came back with little baby ideas of their own. It gave her the confidence she needed to believe they could escape.

The plan was simple: Now that they all had enough Body to climb like nobody’s business, they were going to leave the castle via the rooftop. In the middle of the night, when the people watching them were least on guard, they’d climb out through the dead girl’s doorway and over the roof, jump across to the eastern wall, then scale down.

Once they were on open ground, they would run as fast as they could for deeper in the city and aim for the Barnes & Noble. Colt would know what to do then. As far as they could tell, any adult alien they came across had a fair chance of being involved, and human grown-ups didn’t really have the ability to help them.

They had to help themselves.

Last day. Just gotta squeak out another level. Just one more, she thought as she plunged a spear into the barrel over and over, trying to end the creature’s suffering as quick as possible.

That extra point in Nerve could mean the difference between hearing an enemy approaching or not.

Speaking of which, Nancy thought, cocking her head to the side. She heard the sound of Mr. Surpey’s carriage approaching, but something sounded…wrong. The clattering was wilder, and the approach was much faster than what was typical.

“Something’s wrong,” Nancy said, straightening and stepping away from the thrashing barrel of bloody water.

“What?”

“I don’t know, the carriage is faster than it should be.”

“And that means?” Ryan asked, raising a brow.

The carriage clattered through the main gate and came to a rapid halt to the sound of banging from the inside. The melas driver cast an icy gaze at the assembled children, causing them to take a step back, but it was Mr. Surpey’s expression as he climbed out of the carriage that struck a chord of fear in their hearts.

His eyes were bloodshot, his mannerisms shaky and wild, and he was looking at them like a desperate animal looks at its own trapped leg. Like a rabzi in a cage, about to be speared to death.

“Children, we need to have a talk,” Mr. Surpey said, his foot landing on the ground.

“That means run.”

“What?” Ryan glanced at her with a frown.

“RUN!” Nancy shouted, pointing toward the door into the inner castle, activating her Ability.

Direct Attention.

Every child within earshot was compelled to look at exactly what she was pointing at, the initial Ability of her Class, the Mascot. This allowed the children to move with a unity of motion that rivaled that of a swarm of starlings as they broke into a sprint, every single one aiming for the exact same door.

Mr. Surpey wordlessly growled and Nancy heard the sound of steel ringing as their captor’s sword was set loose. The tall keegan broke into a sprint, and the young girl was terrified to see that despite all their Body, he was much faster than they were.

“There!” Nancy shouted, pointing to the left of Mr. Surpey, throwing her spear with the other hand.

Mr. Surpey’s eyes involuntarily flickered in the direction she pointed, nearly missing the spear entirely. He brought his blade up and swept the flying weapon aside, barely in time to stop it from causing harm.

Darn, Nancy thought with a scowl, mimicking Mommy’s frustrated expression.

Their captor’s legs stumbled for the next two seconds, as he was left off balance after deflecting the spear.

Two seconds was plenty of time. Ryan grabbed her by the back of her shirt and dragged her at full speed through the door before slamming the massive bolt home. They were the last of the children to make it through.

A fraction of a second later, Mr. Surpey’s sword cut through the thick wood like Styrofoam, slicing a cut into Nancy’s shoulder. Her eyes watered as pain unlike anything she’d ever imagined shot through her body, making her legs go weak. Ryan tugged her away from the door.

“You’ve been keeping secrets from me, Nancy.” The frightened children heard the keegan’s voice coming through the door, muffled at first, but increasingly clear as the sword began to crack through the wood, cutting a hole. “That’s going to make this more difficult than I hoped.”

“Keep going!” Ryan shouted, throwing Nancy over his shoulder.

“Where, though?”

“Mommy!”

“I wanna go home!”

“Stick to the plan,” Nancy said, pointing up toward the staircase that led to their room. If they got to their room, they could follow the passage to the roof.

As one, they turned and ran away from the door that was rapidly succumbing to their captor.

Out in the courtyard, unseen by the children or their captor, a mangy rat with bleach-white exposed ribs stared at the tableau with pale eyes, its dim thought processes ticking ever so slowly. It reviewed its instructions.

Pick and follow one of the people leaving the courtroom. Check.

If that person talks about themselves killing children, wait until they stop, then blow yourself up.

If following that person leads to a bunch of small humans, then…

Oh, right.

The rat, without a thought for its own un-life, detonated itself in a blast of raw necrotic energy.

***Jeb***

“This is stupid,” Jeb muttered to himself.

The point of shaking the tree was following up on whatever fell out of it. If Jeb was busy getting murdered by an angry judge, he couldn’t exactly follow up, could he?

Standing in front of him was a wrinklier-than-average keegan droning on about the rules of the duel in ye-olde speech.

The highlights were thus: Since Jeb was a non-Citizen, he didn’t really have an option but to accept the duel or retract his statement. Since he’d already refused to do that, he was required by law to fight.

Or be legally regarded as a sissy for the rest of my life? I could live with that.

“What’s the legal punishment for refusing the duel, anyway?”

“A week of hard labor and a stiff fine for flouting the law.”

“Can that be served whenever?”

“Effective immediately.”

“Damnit.”

Jeb needed to catch the judge’s compatriots now.

“As the challenged party, you have first rights to choose either the weapon or the location you will use to duel. For Myst users such as yourself, it is customary to choose Myst. It is also customary to choose the steps of the court, where we currently are, to make transportation and removing the loser’s corpse easier.”

“I get to choose the weapon?” Jeb muttered to himself, ideas beginning to flutter to the surface in his head. He glanced at the judge, who was slipping out of his ceremonial judge robe and into his ceremonial ass-kicking robe, which looked something like a gi made out of silk.

“Yes,” the aged keegan said, blinking his rheumy eyes.

“What about the trial?”

“It has been deemed a mistrial. There is precedent where a judge has challenged the defendant to a duel before. The inquiry is suspended until an impartial judge can be found. A week, perhaps. Until then, you are forbidden from leaving Solmnath on pain of death.”

“Excellent.” So all he had to do was get this fight to the death over with ASAP, then he was free to get back to his job.

And honestly, killing this guy was part of his job, too.

Although… Jeb eyed the other guy sending crackling streams of enervating energy between his palms. Making this a fair Myst fight probably isn’t a good idea.

Jeb's foot problem meant a fistfight was a bad idea, too. He was slower, weaker, dumber, had less Myst… Hell, Jeb even had about a foot less reach. He was screwed on size alone.

This could be a problem.

Alright, think. What do I have over this guy? I have telekinesis, and he doesn’t. No, if I choose a weapon and use telekinesis on it, he’ll just use his kill-beam on me. Physical weapons are out. What the fuck am I supposed to beat this guy with?

He needed a way out right now, but he couldn’t possibly win the fight, they wouldn’t let him retract his statement now, and forfeiting the duel wasn’t an option either.

Maybe I can declare that the weapons shall be peglegs, Jeb thought with a bit of wry humor. When he gets close to bash me with his leg, I can shoot him with mine. Should’ve got a better pegleg, buddy.

Jeb shook his head, dismissing the idea.

“Jeb!” Smartass’s tiny voice attracted his attention as she flitted directly in front of his face. “It’s going down!”

“What is that!?” the judge demanded, pointing a boney finger at them. “He consorts with fairies!”

“Eat a dick, child-killer,” Jeb said with a shrug. He was relieved when all his power didn’t leave him for telling a lie. Jeb had been stretching out on a limb there, but some people deserved to be called out. “What’s going down, Smartass?”

“Ron found a big group of kids still alive, in the castle near the coast, four blocks thataway.” She pointed toward the evening sun that lit up her candy-bar clothes.

“Excellent!” Jeb brightened.

“Not excellent. The trafficker is trying to kill them right now!” Smartass said.

“Well, what are Zlesk and Colt doing!?”

“They got caught up in a three-way battle with this crazy lady and her henchmen when they arrived!”

Shit, I need to leave, right now….

“Fairies are the epitome of conniving maliciousness. So much makes sense to me now, Jebediah Trapper. Your deal was a cleverly baited trap, wasn’t it? Humans have a great deal in common with the vermin, after all.”

“You’re not wrong, child-killer.”

The surrounding keegan officials glanced at each other, whispering under their breath while glancing at the child-killer.

“Stop calling me that!” the child-killer bellowed.

“I wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t true,” Jeb said with a shrug. “Anyway, I’ve decided on a location for our duel.”

“Good, I can’t wait to get this over with,” Elkor said, rolling his shoulders.

“There’s a castle near the coast about four blocks thataway! Let’s take the duel there!” Jeb said cheerily, pointing in the direction Smartass had indicated.

“NO!” the judge roared, pointing a finger at Smartass, an ocean of roiling green energy pouring out of him.

In a moment of stupidity, Jeb snatched the fairy out of the air with his wounded arm and put himself between her and the beam.

Jeb’s vision went black.

…

Jeb’s eyes opened, giving him an excellent view of the cobblestones his face was currently smushed into. His head pounded, eyes gummy, body weak, mimicking the worst hangover he’d ever had. Something small wriggled against his hands.

“Get off me, you pathetic breek!” Jeb heard the child-killer shout, slowly fading into full focus.

“Ugh, how long was I out?” Jeb muttered, sitting up and glancing over his shoulder. The nearby witnesses were restraining the judge, who was glaring at Jeb with a face that radiated pure hatred…and a little bit of fear.

Must not have been long, Jeb thought, groaning as he pushed himself to his feet.

Smartass gave an exaggerated gasp as he let go of her.

“You brute, you nearly crushed me!” she said, pinching the skin between thumb and forefinger. “You’re lucky we fairies have squishy bones for fitting into tight spots.” Jeb ignored her, refocusing on the situation at hand.

Children to rescue, people to kill.

“Whose castle is that?” Jeb asked, pointing to the distant silhouette in the fading light of the sun, resting near the coast.

“That is the home of Kebos O’sut. A local scholar...of some wealth.” The wrinkled officiator of the duel looked thoroughly confused.

“I have officially decided: I choose the location, and Mr. O’sut’s castle is an excellent location for a duel to determine which of us is a child-killer!” Jeb said. “Race you there!” Jeb started tottering away at the highest speed he could muster. Between the pegleg and the lingering enervation, it was slow going.

“No!” Jeb felt a wave of Myst like a heat bloom against his back as the people restraining Mirzos Elkor slumped to the ground, eyes wide and staring into the distance.

Did he just kill those people? Jeb thought as he glanced over his shoulder, the splitting headache returning. The surrounding crowd began to scream and back away from the maddened judge as he began sprinting after Jeb, knocking people out of his way.

Must go faster, must go faster!

Jeb’s prosthetic toe came unglued, allowing his foot to slip out from under him and sending him down like a bag of rocks.

A bolt of sea-green energy flew over Jeb’s head at that exact moment.

The judge was faster than him, yes. He also had more Myst, but Jeb‘s Myst could be used to enhance his own mobility, whereas the Judge’s couldn’t.

Jeb grabbed his ribcage with telekinesis and stopped himself from falling directly on his broken arm, buying just enough time to bunch his good leg under himself and push off, regaining his footing.

Jeb pushed himself along with Myst, evening out his stumbles and adding extra forward momentum, just barely staying ahead of the bulging-eyed judge.

The persistent headache made everything just a little bit harder to pull off.

Damnit, this feels like Myst sickness, Jeb thought in a spare fraction of a second between one footfall and the next.

Wait, what if it is Myst sickness?

Jeb had felt the beginnings of a headache when the judge refused to answer his question in court, and again when the keegan attempted to kill Smartass, and the headache had redoubled when he’d killed the people restraining him.

The judge has been losing his authority in the eyes of the people, Jeb thought to himself. The loss of respect and station was being converted into Impact for Jeb, as payment for reneging on their Deal to answer a question, in real-time.

That was probably why I was able to survive! Jeb thought, pushing himself forward at breakneck speeds. Sure, it still knocked his ass out, but his tolerance was at least high enough to survive a hit.

Except falling unconscious for a few seconds with an angry superhuman hot on your heels isn’t exactly a good idea.

Probably wouldn’t wake up again.

Jeb didn’t have time to stop and use the Appraiser on himself, and aside from his tolerance to Myst, little else had changed. His Core was still the same size, because he hadn’t been given any time to grow it.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up and Jeb hauled himself to the left with his Myst, allowing a bolt of energy to blast past him, sinking into the brickwork of the buildings lining the street.

In front of Jeb, a crimson bolt of Myst flew up above the O’sut castle, shooting into the air like a flare.

Who the fuck has blood-red Myst? Jeb thought to himself, dropping to a slide under a cart, using his pegleg to absorb the friction. He winced as the gold inlay was no doubt damaged beyond repair, scraping against the cobblestone street.

Jeb hauled himself to his foot and kept sprinting, pushing himself forward.

The judge followed him a second later, the boney bastard sailing gracefully over the eight-foot-tall wagon.

Jeb grabbed a half-rotted cabbage and threw it over his shoulder, rewarded with a squawk of outrage as it spread green-brown slime all over the keegan’s ceremonial gi.

Shouldn’t have worn fancy clothes to a duel anyway.

A handful of seconds later, Jeb made it to the front of the O’sut castle, the judge trailing behind him.

There, in the center of the courtyard, was a crazy-ass battle royale.

Zlesk and Colt were back-to-back, fighting against melas and keegan men and women dressed in servant’s garb, who seemed to be fighting both Jeb’s allies and each other.

Off to the side was a single woman wielding blood-red Myst, whirling it around her body like a whip. She had a crowd of servants around her, and was fending off the natives of the castle.

Good or bad? She whipped a length of razor-sharp Myst down at Zlesk. The former sheriff was busy locking down several combatants, and her strike was barely fended off by Colt’s slime.

Bad, then.

Sweat beaded on the teenager’s forehead as he tried to fend off the immaterial blade with nothing but magic lube.

“Colt, switch partners!” Jeb shouted from the entrance, pointing over his shoulder.

Jeb bunched his legs under him and pushed off, sailing high through the air while Colt took the opportunity to blast the corrupt judge in the face with slime, causing the man to slip from his feet and begin sliding through the courtyard at full speed.

Unable to affect physics with his Myst or Class Ability, the judge simply floundered, sliding past them until he smacked into the inner courtyard’s brick wall.

“Keep him down!” Jeb shouted, pulling off his mud-covered foot and shouldering it like a rifle. Jeb fed a drop of Myst through the gold whorl that indicated the Myst intake port.

…Nothing happened.

Where’s my ‘womp’?

The cops, ever so helpful, must have removed the hidden weapon to make it street-legal.

Sonofabitch!

His stubby, short-range depression wand had been confiscated after he’d whammied the bailiff, so he couldn’t even take these people out through ennui.

Guess we gotta do this the old-fashioned way, Jeb thought, grimly staring down the Myst user as he hopped in place on one foot.

The woman came to her senses moments after Jeb landed, sending a snakelike projection of red Myst toward him. Jeb’s blood seemed to strain in his veins as the attack came close to him, seemingly attracted to the snake through some kind of gravitational force that only affected blood.

Jeb lunged forward, diving under the projection, the skin of his back rippling with burst blood vessels. With a grunt, Jeb sent his own Myst outward, a chisel-shaped projection of force.

Jeb deliberately dragged the chisel shape through the ground roughly ten feet in front of the keegan woman.

The chisel violently kicked up sand and rocks, blasting Jeb’s opponent in the face with blinding shrapnel. She screamed, covering her eyes.

Jeb lifted the chisel back up and sent it through the area where the woman’s ankles rested.

Crack! Thud!

The woman’s legs folded at the ankle, and she hit the ground, wailing at the top of her lungs.

“Who did I just maim!?” Jeb demanded out loud.

“Lady Nevair! She’s here to kill O’sut, presumably before he can testify against her!”  Zlesk shouted back.

Jeb scanned the absolute clusterfuck. He saw plenty of well-dressed keegan servants tearing at each other like rabid animals, but he didn’t see any children.

“Where are the kids!?” Jeb demanded. The kids were the evidence, and without them, he just maimed a high-class Citizen, not a reaper.

“Ron followed them up into the castle,” Zlesk shouted, pointing, “before we got caught by Nevair!”

“Can you handle the rest?” Jeb asked, glancing between the two disabled Myst users.

Zlesk swiftly broke an arm, then glued a melas’s horns to the ground before giving Jeb a firm nod.

“Alright, I’m gonna go back up Ron and get the kids out of here!” Jeb shouted, starting for a splintered door in the inner courtyard.

“I’m coming too!” Colt shouted, bolting after him.

Jeb’s eye twitched. He would much rather have the brat in the courtyard, putting his CC to good use helping Zlesk, but the teen wasn’t going to take no for an answer, and he might as well keep him within eyeshot.

“Watch my back, kid!”

Chapter 21: The O’sut Bottleneck

Jeb charged up the stairs, heart hammering as he did. At the top of the spiral staircase, he paused long enough to look left and right, keeping an eye open for homicidal keegan.

The left hall sported several dismembered zombie limbs, still wiggling. Halfway down the hall was a room with a splintered-open door. Jeb barreled down the hall, his prosthetic foot clacking against the thin carpet until he came to a screeching halt in the doorway.

For an instant, Jeb felt as though he had once again been jettisoned out of his body, watching the event take place from a distance as the fear began to grow inside him.

In the center of the room, the ginger necromancer was bleeding out on a twin-sized bed, surrounded by mutilated zombies.

Tyler’s form overlapped Ron’s, looking at him with desperation as the metal beam slowly crushed him further.

Shit, this is it, this is where it starts over again, Jeb though, his heart and lungs seizing in his chest. The recent bad trip back at the orphanage added to and enhanced the flavor of Jeb’s suffering.

“This is real,” Jeb whispered, thumbing the scar on his palm. “This is real.”

Do you mean Ron lying there dying, or being in a living hell?

¿Por qué no los dos?

Jeb’s breathing spiked as his amygdala skipped from first gear to fifth on its own like a severely fucked-up transmission.

That’s what scar tissue in the brain feels like.

“What’s going on? Who’s this guy? The fuck are you doing?” Colt asked, pushing Jeb aside and peering into the room.

Jeb followed the irritating teen’s voice like a rope through a blizzard, tugging himself out of the blinding chaos and slowly focusing on his voice, his face. There wasn’t another person there last time. All Jeb had to do was focus on the differences and keep the fear at bay.

Sure, it sounds easy.

It wasn’t a castle, Tyler wasn’t a ginger in black robes. There’s nothing actually pinning him down.

“Thanks, kid,” Jeb said, grabbing Colt’s shoulder and hauling himself to his foot, aiming for Ron.

The necromancer was paler than usual, lying on the bed with his hands clasped over his chest, covering a deep wound that was oozing blood through his fingers. His breathing came in fits and starts as he glanced over at Jeb.

“Oh hey,” Ron said weakly. “What took you so long?”

“The duel, remember?”

“Oh yeah… Did you win?”

“Sort of,” Jeb said, checking Ron’s stab wound. “Think he got you in a lung. You probably shouldn’t be talking. You do realize you’re not vanguard material, right?”

“I thought...they were behind me,” Ron wheezed.

“Colt, c’mere,” Jeb said, motioning for the teen to approach. “Press down on that, but not too hard for him to breathe.”

For all his teenage faults, Colt was willing to get his hands dirty. The kid knelt down beside Ron and pressed down where Jeb had motioned, giving Jeb the opportunity to cut some bandages out of the necromancer’s stylish robe, using his telekinetic-scissor trick.

“Zanta…silk…” Ron groaned, seeing his robes fall apart.

“Is he gonna live?”

“Eh, people have lived through pierced lungs before. He’s got as good a shot as anyone, what with his Body being as high as it is,” Jeb said. “Heart’s here.” He tapped on Ron’s bloody chest. “Liver’s here, spine down the center. There’s some major vessels somewhere in there, but I’m not a doctor. If they’d been hit, he’d be dead already.”

“I don’t…know if…I’m gonna make it,” Ron whined.

“You better fucking make it,” Jeb growled. “Lift.”

Colt put a palm under the slender man’s shoulder and lifted him up a couple inches, to an agonized groan from Ron and a gush of blood from his back.

Wasting no time, Jeb pressed a huge wad of expensive fabric to the bloody hole, then bound the whole thing around his chest, making the pressure on the wound permanent.

“Ron, you still with us?” Jeb asked, watching the necromancer turn even paler, beginning to shiver.

“Ron?”

The man’s eyes were rolling in his head, his eyelids fluttering.

“Ron!”

Smartass poked Jeb in the temple.

“There are other ways to get his attention,” Smartass said. Jeb felt a nudge inside him, and decided to follow the Mystic logic as far as it would carry him. If Jeb gave a bit of Impact, could it help Ron survive?

“Ron, how about we make a Deal?” Jeb said, grasping at straws. “You don’t die, and in return I don’t steal your shit?” The Deal weighed Impact in Ron’s favor as it restricted Jeb’s behavior in return for nothing more than Ron continuing to breathe.

The necromancer gasped in a breath, a tiny hint of color returning to his face as his eyes refocused on Jeb.

“What the… I felt something… Felt like Smartass, trying to latch onto me.”

He frowned, searching his short-term memory.

“Deal? Wait…was that a fairy Deal?” The necromancer recoiled from Jeb, scowling at him. “Are you trying to rob me?”

“The magic that enforces the Deal could help you survive. Looting your corpse if it doesn’t is just kind of a bonus,” Jeb said with a shrug.

“Fine, Deal.”

For an instant, Jeb got a little lightheaded, while Ron’s breathing began to even out, even more color returning to his cheeks. The necromancer’s eyes began to slide closed again.

“Before you pass out,” Jeb said, fighting through the dizziness. “Where are the kids?”

“I don’t know. They were gone when we got here.” Ron chuckled, then winced. “He was pissed.”

“Where is he now?”

“He went back out the door. Seconds before you showed up.”

Where did he go then? He obviously didn’t come back the way we came.

Jeb’s thoughts were cut off by the shriek of a little girl. Not the ‘I’m having a great time’ shriek, but the ‘this dude is trying to kill me’ shriek. Admittedly, they were difficult to tease apart. Context helped, here.

“That was Nancy!” Colt said, jumping to his feet.

“You go after me,” Jeb said, grabbing the slimelord by the shoulder and using it to hoist himself to his feet, his battered joints aching.

“Ron, we’re going. Try not to die while we’re gone.”

Ron gave them a thumbs-up, dropping his hand back to his stomach before Jeb and Colt whirled away, making for the hallway.

“Aiii!” Another shriek, coming from…the end of the hall? Jeb glanced over and spotted the window was open, leading to the roof.

“They’re on the roof!” Colt stated the obvious and broke into a sprint, faster than Jeb could grab him, now in the lead. The teenager slipped through the open window like an eel in the amount of time it took Jeb to reach it.

Goddamnit, you’re tuned for support, you stupid—Jeb grunted, shoving himself over the windowsill with one good leg, one recently dislocated arm, and a fair amount of Myst.

Jeb tumbled out onto the sloped roof, barely avoiding falling into the courtyard below, where the former sheriff was holding his own against the servants now that the blood-lady was preoccupied with her shattered ankles.

Jeb pushed himself to his foot, even more ungainly now that he was on a sloping, uneven surface.

I need a staff. Big freaking wizard staff, Jeb thought as he awkwardly hobbled along.

“Aiii!” Another shriek. Jeb zeroed in on the sound and pushed himself hard, aiming for it as he scrambled over the ye olde shingles.

Over the spine of the roof, Jeb made out Colt facing off against a keegan in…

Is he wearing a three-piece suit? Weird.

There were children scattered all around the roof, some of them less wounded than others. A few…might have been dead. There were maybe six of them still standing, battered, all of them presenting spears toward the towering keegan.

Blame later, fight now.

Colt, the teen whose Class Ability was enhancing the speed of hand-powered projectiles, and Myst Ability involved tripping people up with slime…screamed and charged the keegan like a wild boar.

Maybe he was discouraged with his slime Myst after Jeb and Zlesk found workarounds, but just charging? Jeb felt like throwing his hands up and giving up on teens as a whole.

The kid nearly got a hole in his chest to match Ron’s. The keegan lashed out with a three-and-a-half-foot length of silvery steel that looked short compared to the trafficker’s outrageously long arms, nearly skewering the kid before he even got close.

Colt must have been packing some armor under his clothes, because he knocked the blade aside with his wrist and went for a feral tackle across the man’s midsection.

The tackle was interrupted by an elbow to the teen’s skull, knocking him down the sloping roof. Jeb reached out with a wisp of Myst, preventing Colt from falling off the edge.

Jeb eyed the situation. He wasn’t confident that he could have matched that speed at all. But there was no longer anyone standing between the trafficker and the children.

There are worse reasons to die, Jeb thought, patting his busty Bat-Signal.

“Yolo!” Jeb shouted, cresting the spine of the roof and rushing down full speed. Do kids still say YOLO?

The keegan’s head snapped up, his attention whipping from Colt to Jeb, his expression growing even angrier.

Jeb’s wooden leg picked that exact moment to lose purchase on one of the slippery tiles and forced him to choose between plummeting forward or doing the splits. Jeb chose the former.

Jeb hit his broken arm, flipped over and smashed the back of his head on the unyielding roofing shingles.

The world became a haze of pain that stemmed from his shoulder/arm, which the concussion actually seemed to help.

“Ugh,” Jeb groaned as he slid to a halt, some ten feet away from the child-killer.

Rattle.

His expensive, tricked-out foot slipped off and rolled down the slope, disappearing off the side of the roof with vengeful finality, getting even with him for all the abuse over the last twenty-four hours.

“Hah. Hahah.” The keegan chuckled softly, shaking his head at Jeb’s pathetic showing. “I don’t know what the enforcer was thinking, sending a human. I suppose it’s proof that nobody really cares.” The keegan turned towards the children, who tensed up, their faces streaked with tears.

Forcing his eyes to focus, Jeb siphoned as much Myst as he could without damaging his Core, wrapping a telekinetic fist around the killer’s midsection.

“Wha—”

Jeb threw him off the roof.

The keegan’s eyes widened, arms flailing as he drew an arc over the edge. Jeb felt his telekinetic grip overpowered by sheer physical force a moment later, but the kidnapper was already flying.

“Ugh,” Jeb groaned, sitting up and crawling down the sloping roof towards Colt as fast as he could.

“Colt!”

“I’m fine, pops,” Colt said, waving him off, a palm on his temple as he pushed himself up.

“Not what I was gonna say,” Jeb said, grabbing Colt’s arm and dragging him off the roof. We got work to do.

Colt’s scream went high-pitched as the two of them plummeted downward.

You’ve got just over a second and a half, falling from a four-story building.

Jeb used the time to wrap a band of telekinetic force around the both of them and slow their fall to something more reasonable, approaching the ground at half-speed. Thankfully, Colt didn’t panic too bad and scratch out his eyes. It shamed Jeb to admit the kid was physically stronger.

Below them, the kidnapper had already gotten to his feet. Rather than go back for the kids, the bastard seemed to have got it through his head that the jig was up. By the time they landed, he was sprinting for the exit, jostling his way through the chaotic melee.

“Slime him,” Jeb said, pointing out the sole keegan wearing human garb.

“On it,” Cole muttered, pushing himself to his feet and holding out both palms.

It was like someone knocked the cap off a fire hydrant, only it sprayed lube instead of water. The slime spread out on its own, forming thick sheets across the battlefield, covering everyone in a thick layer of zero-friction goop.

Especially their prey, who went down in a tangle of limbs, sliding helplessly until he smacked into the nearby wall outside the front gate.

“Keep him down,” Jeb said, grabbing himself with telekinesis and skiing across the courtyard full of slimed combatants. Across the courtyard, Zlesk was using the opportunity to subdue one combatant after another.

Thankfully, the slime didn’t make objects slippery to Jeb’s telekinesis, and he was able to rip the keegan’s slimed sword from the man’s fingers. He held the tip of the blade against the guy’s neck, causing him to go still.

“Kebos O’sut, I presume. Would you mind answering some questions, maybe rolling on your friends before I kill you?”

The keegan gave an amused eyebrow waggle and snaked a hand up to the middle of the blade and twisted. The sword popped out of Jeb’s control and tumbled to the ground.

“Shit,” Jeb muttered, seeing the dimples in the steel. Faint traces of pale blue Myst retreated from the man’s fingers.

“I hate the nobles passionately. It takes all of my willpower not to empty this city of their mindless arrogance.”

“…And you don’t because you want to join their little club?” Jeb asked, raising a brow. “That seems kinda dumb to me. You get enough Nerve growing up?”

That must have struck a nerve.

“No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t,” Kebos growled, pushing himself to his feet and glaring at Jeb. The slime made his clothes hang loose, unable to support themselves by tension, but for some goddamn reason he was able to stand.

Jeb spotted what looked like pale blue Myst cleats sprouting out of Kebos’ feet.

Yipes. When Jeb made Myst-based additions to his wardrobe, they were completely manual; he had to consciously move them with his body, making everything slow and ponderous. Jeb had the impression that once these pale blue blades were fixed, they moved with the thing they were fixed to.

Jeb funneled Myst straight backwards, obscuring the motion with his own body. He grabbed his back and clothes, ready to yank himself out of the way.

He still almost missed it.

Kebos flickered, and Jeb yanked himself sideways.

There was a line of burning pain along Jeb’s ribs, and he glanced sideways as Kebos came to a sliding halt some twenty feet distant, his cleats throwing up chunks of hard-packed dirt. He had a pale blue blade emerging from the edge of his palm.

Okay, we’ve got a guy who can make swords with his mind. Mind-swords. Seems a little uncreative, but who am I to judge?

Kebos glanced down at his feet, which were still sliding to a halt in the torn-up ground. A moment later, his cleats turned into skates, and he began to loop back around towards Jeb.

“He’s fucking ignoring my slime. Again!” Colt shouted, his face red.

“No, it’s slowing him down,” Jeb said, watching Kebos approach. Compared to the burst of speed he’d showed earlier, this was—

Kebos crouched low and pushed off the ground, making an explosion of dirt behind him. The child trafficker went from thirty to eighty in a single bound, putting Jeb in a time crunch.

Damnit. Jeb redirected his Myst in front of him, attempting to make a shield that would redirect some of the impact.

Kebos bunched his legs up under him and jumped, sailing over Jeb’s head and heading straight for the wall. Not having anything supporting him anymore, Jeb flailed for a moment before tumbling into the slimy mud beneath him.

He’s still trying to get away! Jeb thought as the keegan drew a perfect arc above their heads, hitting halfway up the stone wall of the courtyard with a dull thud. Rather than fall, the bastard stuck to the side like Spider-Man and began scrambling his way up to the top.

“Shoot him, please,” Jeb growled, trying to redirect his Myst from the wasted shield.

Colt obliged, reaching into a bag of steel pellets and flinging them up at the keegan crawling up the wall. Each throw broke the sound barrier, but none of them did what they were meant to do.

Colt only got three shots off before the man disappeared over the top of the wall. Two embedded themselves in the wall and one bounced off the man’s shoulder. Jeb’s Myst came woefully short of snagging the keegan’s ankle and tearing him off the wall.

Jeb and Colt had a moment to sit there and silently contemplate failure.

Shoulda just stabbed him in the throat.

In Jeb’s mind, if he didn’t get the names of the nobles involved, he’d be missing the root of the problem, and his attempt to get those names had given the keegan the extra second he needed to get away.

Fuck. Jeb hadn’t been expecting him to be that tough. It seemed like the trafficker might be dipping into his own supply of kids intended for nobles.

“Did a steel ball that embedded itself into rock just bounce off of him?” Colt asked.

“Go round up your friends, make sure they’re not dead,” Jeb said, pointing over his shoulder toward the fourth-story roof where several heads poked over the edge to watch them. “He’s not coming back right this second.”

“You gonna be okay, old man?” Colt asked, glancing down to where Jeb sat flat on his ass in lube-mud, one-legged and sans crutch.

Jeb assessed the situation, glancing over at the empty spot where the judge had disappeared from. He heard the rattling of broken-ankle-lady’s carriage in the distance. Zlesk looked like he’d been put through a meat grinder, limping up to them.

He’d failed to catch the main culprit. He’d failed to catch any of the people funding him. He had a consolation prize of a dozen or so hapless servants restrained by Zlesk. And he had squishy mud slowly invading every orifice. 

“I think I might cry a little.”

“I think I see your foot,” Colt said, pointing to a little dot of white in the hedges under the eaves.

Jeb reached out with telekinesis and grabbed the errant foot, sliding it on and strapping it down good. Welcome back, traitor.

“Grab Ron’s bed on the way down,” Jeb said as Colt turned away. “Don’t carry him directly. And get rid of this damn lube so I can walk.”

Colt complied, and the mud in his ass crack turned to sand.

Insult to injury, am I right? Jeb thought sourly, climbing to his foot and thinking about what could have gone better.

I was unacceptably sans weapons, Colt needs some boot camp, Zlesk needs more support. Ron needs a bodyguard….

Jeb glanced up at the castle.

At least we got the kids.

“Are you all right?” Zlesk asked, limping up to them. The former sheriff’s clothes were shredded, and he was leaking trace amounts of keegan blood all over.

“You’re asking me?” Jeb asked, raising a brow. He touched the scrape over his ribs. It burned and oozed a little blood, but it wasn’t bad.

“We should hire a bodyguard. Maybe more than one,” Jeb said, rubbing the blood between his fingers. Injured like this, Jeb and Zlesk wouldn’t be able to stop someone from setting fire to the orphanage. Or worse.

“We angered the wrong people today, didn’t we?” Zlesk asked.

“Pretty much.”

“E’choken’is, Jebediah Trapper, you have some talent for putting me on the wrong side of the wrong people,” Zlesk said, glaring at him.

“Hey, look at that: a bunch of children you helped save!” Jeb said, pointing at the front door, where Colt was leading a stream of children between the ages of four and ten out into the courtyard.

They were carrying three twin beds between them, with Ron on one, and six wounded children on the other two. Seeing this, Zlesk stood just a little straighter, his chest puffed out, and Jeb knew he’d managed to distract him.

“Good afternoon, children,” Zlesk said, wincing as he bowed. “My name is—”

“AIII!” A girl shrieked and dropped the corner of Ron’s bed to hide behind Colt.

“He’s gonna kill us!” another boy shouted.

“It’s okay, Mr. Zlesk is a nice bone-head,” Colt said, pointing to the tattered sheriff. “He helped us get to you.”

Try as he might, Colt couldn’t make the children warm up to Zlesk, and they mostly avoided his gaze or hid behind Jeb or Colt when he was near.

Jeb hadn’t ever seen the sheriff look so hurt. Even with all the battle damage, being shunned by children was what got to him.

Jeb found it hilarious.

There were six children who were badly wounded, but they seemed to be stable, so they formed a train and brought the kids back to the orphanage.

The teachers were alarmed and shot Jeb accusatory looks when he made it back with the injured around dusk, as if it was somehow his fault the kids had been hurt. They bundled the children up in bandages and immediately set about making sure they would recover.

The bad guys were gonna kill the kids. How could I have done any better?

Jeb wanted to collapse into a puddle on the floor, but he had some issues that needed addressing. First was the lack of ass-kicking potential around the orphanage. Jeb was wounded, Zlesk was wounded, Colt was a teen, the teachers weren’t fighters, and Eddie wouldn’t come out of his shop except at swordpoint.

Frankly, Jeb didn’t think the roboticist would notice if the orphanage burned down above him.

I need fighters until mine are back on their feet. Which meant Jeb needed gold, which meant a trip down to Eddie’s shop.

Urgh.

Jeb peeled himself off the chair and limped down to where Eddie was working.

The shop smelled like diesel, ozone and motor oil, and Eddie was standing there, staring intently at a drone about three feet wide, hovering silently in front of him.

“Who’s that?” Jeb asked, picking his way through the scrap-laden area, over to the gold-processing plant in the corner of the room. It was a permanent structure they’d built around the chip of a gold-laced quartz lens.

“Legolas,” Eddie said. “I stripped some smartphone processors and now I’m working on making them play nice with each other. Once I’m done with that, I’ll be able to work on his AI.”

Jeb glanced over at a pile of smartphone casings that had been torn apart, their exceedingly small microchips scavenged from their circuit boards.

“Is he weapons ready?”

“Not yet.” Eddie glanced at Jeb. “I need another Myst engine for that.”

“They’re military issue, as far as I know. I don’t know where we could get more yet,” Jeb said, channeling a thin thread of Myst into the gold refiner. The mechanism split Jeb’s Myst into several parts, threading them into a homemade regulator that allowed a tiny spool of his gold Myst to interact with the chip. The resulting quartz gravel tumbled into the furnace, which got the lion’s share of Jeb’s output. The rest went to stirring the mixture and mechanically separating gold from rock.

The reason Jeb had to do it personally was because Myst engines were imperfect. The engines shot out the full spectrum of Myst as radiant energy, and a tiny fraction of that spectrum was the antithesis of the lens it was being shoved into. Therefore, lenses fed by engines would slowly degrade.

They degraded when Jeb used them too, but much, much slower. Jeb imagined the only way to get a lens to last forever was to pour an exact match into it. Eddie was investigating a way to filter Myst, but he said not to get his hopes up.

“Set Buddy outside the orphanage as a watchdog until I can come back with some mercs.”

Eddie glanced at Buddy in the corner, and the bomb-robot’s engines rumbled to life before he headed for the stairs.

“That’s spooky.”

Eddie chuckled evilly and continued his work on Legolas, staring at the robot, his eyes flickering from side to side like he was reading something.

By the next morning, Jeb had enough money to hire on a handful of adventurers from the Hunter’s Association willing to defend them for a couple weeks. The mere sight of half a dozen brutes on the property should convince their enemies to seek legal options rather than violence.

And that would buy time.

After that, Jeb grabbed all the lenses and wands from his room and brought them down to the shop, all the while mulling over the poor showing against Kebos. He had been systematically stripped of every advantage before he’d even met the guy, and Jeb hated it.

I need more, better weapons, Jeb thought, unloading his backpack full of goodies. He never wanted to go into a fight naked again, if he could help it.

Click. The cellar wall beyond Jeb resolved into an image.

“Hi there! I’m Amanda Courvar!” his former healer said, bouncing into frame.

“And I’m Brett Courvar,” Brett said, putting an arm around her waist. “And we’re here today to talk to you about choosing the right build for your profession, why balance is important, and why you might want to save some of those Ability points for a rainy day!”

“But first, we’ve got a new segment where we read your fan mail and answer frequently asked questions!” Amanda said.

They get mail? Jeb thought, brows rising. Of course they get mail, they’ve got a fixed address!

Chapter 22: Factory Settings

The lens merchants looked at Jeb like he was going to get everything dirty and/or plot some kind of terrorism, but when Zlesk walked in covered in wounds, they bent over backwards to accommodate him as soon as they saw his Citizen club card, selling him whatever he wanted without question.

Forget the fact that Jeb was actually planning on doing violence with the supplies; it still rankled to be viewed with suspicion.

Bah, Jeb thought as he fed another Annihilation lens into the grinder. The grinder was a modified belt sander with a case/funnel around the business end. Just throw a lens in and the machine would make short work of it.

RRRR! The machine sanded the lens down into a murky powder, depositing it into the small bin underneath. Jeb brushed off the belt and made sure the funnel was perfectly free of Annihilation lens particles. That’s the kind of shit you don’t want floating around your shop.

There wasn’t enough spare Annihilation lens to go around, even though Zlesk had bought a handful of cleansing wands. Not for what Jeb wanted to do.

When you go big game hunting, you need the proper equipment, Jeb thought, glancing at the Beautiful Revenge, hung up on the shelf. It was a beautiful piece of gear, but Jeb wanted something with a little more shock and awe.

He carefully dumped the lens dust into the machine that he’d helped Eddie make.

The Squeezer.

At its core, the machine was a hydraulic press that allowed two halves of a die stamp to press against each other at outrageous pressures. Then the magi-tech got involved. You couldn’t just press lens dust together and expect it to come out as a whole, functioning lens.

While a pressed lens would work for a couple uses, the whole thing was incredibly brittle and tended to fall apart from the slightest touch. After quite a bit of experimenting—and Jeb was ashamed to admit, a couple tiny deer getting squished by a hydraulic press—they were able to figure out how to make The Squeezer reconstitute a solid lens.

Myst had three states of matter: Ray, Thread, and Myst. Ray was anything that came out of a lens or engine, and acted like you’d expect: like a ray, travelling in a straight line and delivering its effect on whatever the focal point was. It behaved very much like light.

Thread was when the Myst was coming from a person’s Core. It was malleable and generally connected back to the user’s Core, forming a thread-like shape.

Then there was Myst, the neutral form that didn’t seem to want to interact with anything except engines and living creatures. It didn’t even overtly interact with lenses, except possibly to shift their state of matter at a microscopic level.

They knew this, because in order to sinter Myst lenses, a high concentration of neutral Myst of the same type basically filled in the microscopic gaps of the pressed material and allowed it to form a cohesive solid.

The setup had a thick gold box at the top that was designed by Eddie to catch a ray before its focal point and hold it in place, compressing it until it reverted to neutral Myst. It was a similar concept to the Myst capacitor, he’d explained to Jeb earlier. From the box, a feed-tube ran down into the lens-shaped die, which Jeb had made using the Blue Serpent Furnace. Only neutral Myst could make it past the half-dozen switchbacks and down into the dies.

Jeb put the last available Annihilation lens into the converter, making absolutely sure it was close enough to the edge of the box that it wouldn’t carve a chunk out of the gold rather than get stopped and neutralized.

Jeb closed the lid, made sure it was screwed on tight, then fed the business end of the Myst engine through, connecting the nipple of the optical fibers to the neutralizer.

Once that was done, Jeb checked everything one more time before feeding the black dust from the Annihilation lenses into the dies, making sure it was piled up nicely, allowing the dust to fill every tiny crevice.

The dies themselves had a thin coat of gold which had to be peeled off the finished product each time. Without the coating, the Myst infusion would simply dissipate into the environment. Gold was an excellent Myst insulator, and likely one of the reasons it was so expensive.

“Alright, I think we’re ready to get started,” Jeb said, reaching for the lever on the hydraulic press.

A motion out of the corner of his eye grabbed his attention. He glanced over and spotted Eddie lying down on his belly, a fair distance away and partially behind some rather sturdy furniture.

“What are you doing?” Jeb asked, frowning.

“We’re taking Annihilation Myst, a highly dangerous, refined magical substance that literally erases things from existence, and compressing it at about five hundred megapascals of pressure. If the system were to fail and eject Annihilation Myst out, it would most likely vent laterally, and it would be...energetic. In short, I don’t wanna get cut in half.”

Jeb glanced at the welded-together machine, a touch more ominous now.

“Scoot over,” Jeb said, moving over next to Eddie and lying down behind a thick hunk of greasy engine.

Jeb reached out with telekinesis and flipped the switch.

The press kicked on with a loud whine, pressing a huge steel die down into another. Jeb saw a faint plume of shadow as microscopic bits of lens were ejected from the edges by the pressure before the two sides of the die clamped down together.

The whine of the machine increased in pitch for a moment as it strained against itself, then stopped, locked in place.

“Okay, moment of truth.”

Jeb flicked the switch on the Myst engine.

Nothing happened. There was no telltale hiss of an Annihilation lens ripping the air out of existence, and the press wasn’t showing any signs of being torn apart by the dangerous substance.

“Well, it didn’t blow up immediately. That’s good.”

“Agreed,” Eddie said, peeking out from behind the leg of the table.

“Shall we go see if it worked?” Jeb asked.

Eddie glanced over to the press and met Jeb’s gaze. “Let’s have Buddy do it.”

Poor bomb-defusing robot, always getting the short end of the stick.

“Agreed.”

The two of them shuffled out of the basement and sent the robot in to open the press and turn off the neutral Myst compressor.

Thankfully nothing bad happened, and Jeb wound up holding a gold-plated plano-concave lens about the radius of a golf ball. He carefully peeled the soft gold casing away and tossed the lens into the Appraiser’s roiling cloud.

Processed Synthetic Annihilation Lens (small)

Myst that passes through an Annihilation Lens removes the first thing it touches from existence, making these both useful for industrial and military applications, but also quite dangerous.

These rare lenses are found in the Mines of Seeping Death before being sold to businesses and governments to be broken down into safer sizes. It is illegal for a private entity to own an Annihilation Myst Lens larger than tiny.

“Did that say it’s illegal?” Eddie asked as Jeb took the lens out of the roiling cloud of grey and red.

“Yep,” Jeb said, carefully placing the lens in the protective mold and pouring resin over it. Unlike gold, resin insulated basically none of a Myst ray’s energy. It did, however, have a lot more physical toughness than the soapstone-consistency lens.

Resin also took well to being machined, allowing them to bolt lenses in place without drilling into the actual material.

While that was drying, Jeb started on the Stag lens, switching out the dies for a much larger plano-convex lens.

Jeb hand tooled a small lens off the main antler for the Myst compressor, then ground up the rest of the Stag lens. The lens itself was lumpy and oblong. It could only be fashioned into a much smaller processed lens using traditional means, but by filling a mould with dust, Jeb was able to scrape every millimeter of possible size out of it. This was important, because the angle at which the rays met each other dictated the strength of the creature.

They solved the width/strength formula a couple weeks into experimenting, when they noticed that larger lenses would often create smaller creatures with an identical amount of Myst being fed into them by the same capacitor.

Relative to their size, though, they were much stronger and faster. It was effectively a higher concentration of power in a smaller space. They confirmed this by lowering the Myst input on the smaller lens to make both creatures identical in stature, then testing their strength and speed.

They repeated the lens-stamping process, and Jeb wound up with a large Stag lens, perfectly round and at the exact angle they wanted it, about the width of a baseball, with enough dust left over to make another, easily.

Then came Eddie’s contribution to the weapon. After experimenting for weeks, the old man had found the material with the highest reflective value of anything they’d found yet, which was an amalgam of silver and mercury.

This must have been what was on the inside of Xen’s Scrivener, Jeb thought to himself as Eddie coated and polished the inside of a dish with the shiny amalgam.

The frame of the dish was created by the 3D printer, and it was about the width of a soccer ball, its angle carefully calculated to mesh with the other lenses. Jeb briefly winced at the idea of carrying around something that big on top of his staff. On the other hand…super-summon.

They made a mirror by lining a flat plate with amalgam, fixed it in place above the dish, then began assembling the lenses into the shaft.

Right away, they noticed it was not going to be a wand. It would look like a Spaceman Spiff laser and be incredibly unwieldy, given its size. In the end, Jeb opted to fix the contraption to the top of a staff.

Just like the Beautiful Revenge, it was a three-part sandwich: Control/Animal/Annihilation. The parabolic dish of shiny amalgam on the top would, in theory, increase the effective width of the lenses far beyond what was possible with a single lens.

They attached the contraption to the top of a piece of hardwood that rested in the hand just right, and disguised the satellite-dish shape of the head with some of the staff’s gnarled roots.

Then they stood back and took in what they had created.

It looked…kinda goofy. The head was too big, as well as garish where the elegant wood gave way to resin and silver amalgam.

“Not winning any beauty pageants,” Eddie said, chewing his lower lip.

“Not supposed to,” Jeb said, hefting the staff in his hand. Sadly, the creation was too delicate to be smacking people over the head with it, but hopefully what it lacked in durability, it made up in power.

“Outside!” Eddie said, pointing to the staircase as soon as Jeb hefted the staff. “I don’t need a frightened death deer tearing up the shop.”

Jeb obliged, heading up to the surface, using the staff to assist his gait. It was a little strange using a walking stick with such a big top, but Jeb supposed he could get used to it.

Maybe if I shorten the entire thing so the dish isn’t moving around in my periphery.

Jeb made it to the backyard, confirmed no children were standing nearby and aimed the stick in front of him. Behind him, Eddie crossed his arms and waited.

Jeb fed a drop of Myst through the staff.

A majestic black and rust-colored stag with twelve points to its magnificent antlers came into being directly in front of Jeb. The antlers had a strange aura of black and purple that seemed to pulse and quiver with barely-restrained energy.

Sadly, it was about the size of his palm.

The teacup-sized buck let out a startled bleat as it dropped down into the grass, falling from a height of about four feet.

“Maybe give it a little more juice,” Eddie noted, his voice dry.

“I can see that,” Jeb said, dialing up the output internally severalfold.

The next summon was about two feet tall, and from there, Jeb was able to quickly zero in on the amount of Myst it took to make a stag-sized stag. Jeb pushed it a little further, creating one nearly the size of a horse.

“Try it out on the wall,” Eddie said, nodding toward the brick wall fencing in the back of the manor.

Jeb was tempted to have the big stag ram it, but he decided on the teacup-sized one, just to be safe. The tiny stag bounded through the grass while the humans watched, leaping five feet up into the air and goring the brick wall with its antlers, treating the stone like softened butter.

The little stag managed to chew a hole through the wall before Jeb stopped him a moment later.

Jeb glanced over at the oversized stag standing next to him, whose shoulders were on the same level as Jeb’s. Its antlers were longer than Jeb’s arm and practically hummed with Annihilation Myst.

It looked back at him with a curious look, seeming to ask: You want me to go next?

No, I do not. We’ve only got so much wall, and Pedro would probably kick my ass if I destroyed the wall…more.

“Hey Pops!” Colt said, rounding the corner.

“What?” Jeb asked, he and Eddie glancing over at the teen.

“Nancy’s awake…” he said, frowning as he thumbed over his shoulder, eyeing the man-sized stag. “What are you guys doing?”

“Science project,” Jeb said, facing him, resisting the impulse to hide the staff behind his back.

“Right… Well, Nancy woke up a few hours ago, and Mrs. Everett says you can talk to her now.”

“Not bad for a prototype. Gimmie,” Eddie said, snatching the satellite dish/staff out of his hand. The old man took the staff and retreated back into his cave, muttering something about gravitational lensing as he did.

“Alright, let’s go debrief Nance,” Jeb said, wiping grease off his hands.

“Hold up,” Colt said, grabbing Jeb’s shoulder and glancing around like he was guilty of something. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

“Zlesk says you’re some kind of savant at killing people?”

Jeb rolled his eyes. “You get lucky and kill one pirate crew, and everybody suddenly thinks you’re a murder savant.”

“How do you do it? Kill people?”

Jeb’s eyes narrowed, looking the teen up and down. “You wanna know because you think killing people is cool, or because you don’t wanna choke and get somebody else killed?”

The kid shrugged noncommittally, and Jeb almost throttled him.

“You ever watch those movies where the bad guy kills the hero’s family?”

“Like The Punisher?” Colt asked.

“Yeah, like The Punisher. Don’t be like The Punisher. Think real hard about how much harm enemies could inflict on your friends and family if you leave them alive to nurse a grudge. It helps.”

“But…”

“Yeah,” Jeb said, nodding. “I know. We missed our shot and now there’s any number of people out there who are just aching to hit us where it hurts. Consider this a cautionary tale of what not to do.”

Colt absorbed that silently for a moment, staring at his shoes before glancing back up at Jeb. “I hate my Myst power.”

“Why? It’s a great power. You’ll never be out of lube.”

Colt’s cheeks flushed. “No, you and Zlesk and that other guy all got out of it in a couple seconds. It doesn’t work on anyone important.”

“Colt, your build sucks and you’re using it wrong,” Jeb said, breaking the harsh news to him. “Your slime is a godsend for crowd control, but you wanna go after the Big Bad. Mathematically, you will always have the most impact on a battle acting as support. If you can’t nut up and accept that, you will always be pushing more burden onto your teammates. You’ve got a ranged bonus; lean into that harder, too. Get yourself an actual sling and learn how to use it.”

“But if I wasn’t up on that roof, that guy would’ve killed you.”

Jeb frowned. “If I recall correctly, you got knocked out and I shoved him off the edge. If you’d stayed downstairs and helped Zlesk, odds are you two would’ve subdued the people in the courtyard fast, and Zlesk would’ve been fresh enough to help us take down the guy that’s been killing your friends.

“I know Zlesk isn’t going to give you shit about it, but you’re the reason he’s laid up,” Jeb said, poking Colt in the chest. And I’m the reason Kebos got away, Jeb thought, his mind wandering to his missing foot.

Then Jeb saw tears budding in the teen’s eyes.

Ah crap, I think I might’ve broke him.

Jeb opened his mouth to apologize, but Colt spoke first.

“How do I get better?” he asked, looking up at Jeb.

Jeb chewed his lip. “Talk to Zlesk. Ask him to teach you how to fight when he heals. Talk to Eddie, ask him to make you a magic sling or something. Then experiment with your slime. Can you harden it? Make it come out hot? Cold? Sticky? Can you be Spider-Man? Can you change the lubrication? Change its viscosity? Specific gravity? Does it float in water? Any change you can make or unique properties you discover are going to greatly expand your options in a fight.”

Colt was beginning to lean back, like he was being forced away by a deluge of condescending advice. Luckily, Jeb only had one more tip before he let the kid off the hook.

“And most importantly, never stop thinking.”

“Okay.” Colt nodded, presumably having absorbed almost none of that advice.

“Okay, let’s go talk to Nancy.”

Jeb followed Colt out to the front of the mansion, where one of the mercenaries dropped Mrs. Everett’s sandwich, gaping at the massive stag trotting along beside Jeb.

Can’t get hoofmarks on the rug.

“Buck, your name is Buck now,” Jeb said to the big buck. “You stay out here with your friends and don’t let anyone hurt the children, capiche?”

Buck nodded.

I wonder if it’s the control lens or inborn intelligence from being a magic construct, Jeb thought.

Together, he and Colt headed in and met with Nancy. With a bit of begging, they were allowed to let in Zlesk. Although Nancy didn’t seem particularly happy to see a keegan up close and personal again, she held it together admirably.

For his part, the beat-up keegan sat in the corner of the room, trying to look as non-threatening as possible.

The little girl was recovering from a cut on her shoulder, and a stab to the liver that should’ve been lethal, save for the fact that her Body was obscenely high, and children’s livers hadn’t yet been subjected to the same trauma as an adult’s.

The little girl was inspecting the back of her hand when they entered the room. Jeb didn’t see anything on it, so he declined to comment, simply sitting down.

Over the course of the afternoon, they carefully dissected what she had witnessed that night. She had witnessed the exchange between O’sut and the judge with her own eyes, heard him call the judge by name, even, and witnessed him kill Jake.

The fucker was going down. But the account didn’t give Jeb any clue how he was going to come after the rest of the nobles who’d purchased XP bags from O’sut. Presumably a few of them might have been hosting children at their homes. These children were most likely disposed of as soon as word got out about the raid on O’sut’s puppy mill.

“Rules are in place to protect you,” Zlesk said, rubbing his chin.

“You get something from that?” Jeb asked, glancing over his shoulder at the keegan in the corner, far away from the little girl’s bed. Nancy watched him with apprehension.

“Yes. If Nancy’s recollection is correct, O’sut said ‘you just committed a reaping, not an Honor Duel.’”

“Does that mean something?” Jeb asked.

“It implies that the rule is that the nobles must trick the children into challenging them to an Honor Duel, which they will then win handily.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“You don’t know the half of it. The winner of an Honor Duel is free from legal repercussions for the murder of the loser. Any of the aristocrats of Solmnath who’ve successfully tricked and murdered a child is legally untouchable for that murder,” Zlesk said, tightening his boney fingers into a fist. “This loophole must be closed.”

That explained why the judge was so desperate to stop Jeb from reaching O’sut. The judge had been so brazenly overconfident that he hadn’t covered his ass, legally speaking.

“What, there’s no age limit on Honor Duels?” Jeb asked.

“Not really,” Zlesk said, before his expression brightened. “But there is a book.”

“Go on.”

“Every Honor Duel that takes place in the empire must be recorded as such. Otherwise, what proof is there it wasn’t a simple killing?”

Jeb thought about it for a moment. “Are you telling me there’s a big book somewhere that’s got a list of names, and on one side will be people like ‘Baron Von Kraggle’, and the other side will have ‘Timmy the Orphan’?”

“Basically. It’s called the Book of Honor, and it’s kept in City Hall. In this case, ‘book of honor’ might be a misnomer.”

Jeb leapt to his feet. “If we get that book, we can get them for child trafficking! We get their names, trace the money they spent to buy the children from O’sut, and we’ve got them.”

“Identify the culprits, then take them down for any reason we can. Normally I would have moral objections to this, but this kind of scum needs to be removed,” Zlesk said, nodding.

“Get up!” Jeb said, heading for the door. “Let’s get to this book before they do. If you know about it, they have to know about it, too. If they haven’t come after it already, they will soon!”

“Jeb…” Zlesk said.

“What?” Jeb asked, glancing over his shoulder.

“You’ve got a broken arm, your other doesn’t work so good, and your foot is still in the shop.”

Jeb glanced down at the loaner pegleg, just visible past his arm in a sling. “What’s your point?”

“We’re not in the best shape to go after it,” Zlesk said, motioning to his own bandaged form.

“Hmm… understood. Better get help,” Jeb said, chewing his lip as he went through his list of contacts. For an operation like this, he wanted someone smart…someone stable…someone with Myst powers...

******

“Someone like you,” Jeb said, clapping Eddie on the back. They were standing on the roof of a building somewhat overlooking the center of the city of Solmnath. The hot sun was just beginning to ease up, but the rooftops themselves were still toasty against bare skin.

“This really doesn’t seem like a good idea,” the wild-haired roboticist said, setting up his satellite dish and aiming it toward City Hall.

“You didn’t think the funding and the power-leveling was going to be free, did you?” Jeb asked. “Besides, we’re hunting child-killers. Be more stoked.”

“Plenty of kids to go around,” Eddie grumbled. He tapped Legolas on the top, and the drone rose up into the air, resting on a silent plume of air. The drone was a modified package carrier from a nearby derelict Amazon warehouse, so carrying a book shouldn’t be too hard.

The stealing part, though; that was going to be Eddie. Why? Because Eddie had two working hands and Jeb couldn’t read the aliens’ chicken-scratch.

Soon as I get some free time, I need to get right on that… Just as soon as I finish making all my weapons, search the rest of my body for those weird implants in the fifth dimension, find and kill all the people who profited from murdering children….

I might be illiterate for a while.

Indefinitely, if he got murdered.

Eddie stared down at the City Hall for a moment, then back to Jeb. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Eddie, you’re gonna have the best backup you could possibly ask for. Legolas here,” Jeb said, pointing with his thumb. “You told me yourself he’s the most advanced drone on the face of the planet. He’s as smart as a golden retriever.”

Legolas’s cameras oriented on Jeb and the whole thing wobbled in place, the only method of emoting the drone had.

“What about you?” Eddie asked, his eyes pleading.

“I will be your lookout,” Jeb said. “If you die, I will make sure to tell everyone back at the orphanage what happened to you.”

Eddie paled.

“And if something goes wrong, I’ll just tell you.” Jeb picked up the old phone connected to the dish and spoke into it, his voice echoed by the speakers on the drone’s body.

“Testing, testing, one, two, three.”

“Do I have to do this?” Eddie whined.

“No,” Jeb grudgingly admitted. “But I can keep you out of the basement for an entire afternoon if you don’t.”

The old man’s face became a mask of stone-like determination.

“Let’s do this.”

***Kol Rejan, level 57 Courier***

Kol glanced up, the tugging sensation in his mind leading him unerringly to his prey. The human was above him, on the roof of the building for some reason.

This fellow might be more trouble than he’s worth. Word was the man had been tapped by an enforcer to stir up trouble in Solmnath.

Now Kol had to decide whether or not to try and make good on his assassination. As a professional, he had to weigh the risk of crossing an enforcer against the damage to his reputation.

Silently, Kol climbed up a nearby building, his entire frame hauled up by the tips of his fingers, moving as swiftly as a spider. He came to rest on the top of the building next to his target, who was blissfully ignorant of his presence.

Kol settled into a nook in the rooftop, watching Jebediah Trapper from a sheltered viewpoint. He seemed to be talking with some other human with white hair. The two of them looked at City Hall quite a few times during their talk, indicating the target of their current scheming.

Kol wanted the human all to himself this time, so he waited until the white-haired human left out the back of the building.

Here we go, Kol thought as Jebediah Trapper settled into a meditative posture, his defenses lowered. The keegan assassin silently drew his blade, moments from leaping over to the next building.

He stopped when a thought occurred to him.

Actually…why get paid once? Now that the human had revealed himself as an agent of Vresh Tekalis and exposed Judge Elkor’s dirty secrets, there were sure to be dozens of others willing to pay Kol to silence him.

Laziness and greed, Kol admonished himself, shaking his head. No. I’ll do this now, then leave the city. I’ve lingered too long.

Kol jumped across to the next building.

Chapter 23: Fan Mail

“Any interest in going with him?” Jeb asked Smartass as Eddie left, his drone taking off and flying high above his creator, a golden retriever intellect keeping an extra eye on the situation.

“You know what the normal response to a fairy in the halls of government is?” Smartass asked, watching Jeb from his shoulder.

“A rolled-up newspaper?” Jeb asked, glancing over at her.

“Yes!” Smartass shouted, shaking her fist. “Just because we occasionally make Deals with ignorant farmers for their children, and sometimes we’re forced to steal all their sweets, potatoes and cream when they renege, and every once in a while, we lead some to greatness that makes others mad with envy.”

“I have noticed the aliens are unusually quick to accept a Deal,” Jeb said, nodding. “You said lead them to greatness? Was that a Deal?”

“Oh no, that’s another way to gather Impact.”

“Do tell.”

“Okay.” Smartass held up her fingers. “I think you’re ready for Wizard Lesson number two. Another source of Impact to truth speakers is Guiding, which is helping someone discover their Role.”

Jeb raised a brow.

“This one doesn’t require a Deal, which is why you’ll hear so many stories about Merlin doing it, that git.”

“Well?”

“Alright, so you understand the concept of Impact, and how it’s the total potential change that a person could exert over the course of their lives?”

Jeb nodded. He’d had plenty of time to think about it the past month or so, after all.

“Well, a Role is a measure of how much aptitude and passion for a specific course they show. How set they are in their path. Normally you can’t alter aptitude, but you can alter passion for a profession, or shine a light on aptitude someone didn’t know they had.

“So when you have a person who hasn’t decided what they want to do with their lives, they have no Role, or it is very weak.”

Jeb raised a brow.

Smartass continued. “Let’s say you have a moody teenager who doesn’t have any particular desire to do anything. Then you wait until he and his younger sister are wandering through the woods, and you…maybe send a wolf after them. The moody teen fends off the wolf, and it becomes a life-defining moment. He goes on to become a knightly defender of the weak because of that one do-gooder experience.

“Now, a knight’s total Impact is more than a peasant’s; that’s a net positive… But! Locking in that Role, by definition, limits others. That knight will never be a farmer, nor a clerk, or clergyman. He will be a knight. A small amount of that lost potential will be visited back on the Guide.”

“So…helping people figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives? That doesn’t seem bad at all. Why aren’t I doing that?”

“It’s very hit-or-miss. Life-defining moments that lead to a person choosing a Role are hard to reliably engineer, and there’s no one perfect Role for any person. That old bag found that out the hard way.” Smartass rubbed her hands together and chuckled evilly, before she caught Jeb staring at her.

The small fairy cleared her throat. “Or so I’ve heard.”

“Have you gotten taller?” Jeb asked.

The fairy stood on his shoulder and measured her head to the top of Jeb’s head.

“Typical familiar growth, I suppose,” she said, standing on her tiptoes to get a little extra height above his head. The fairy was outgrowing her candy bar wrapper. It seemed like she’d have to hermit-crab into a baby sock or something soon.

If she’s growing, it must be a result of the power I’ve gained since the last time I checked.

Jeb blinked. He’d been too busy to check his growth since the trial. He took the Appraiser off his finger and blew a roiling cloud of grey and red in front of him. Jeb stepped into it, allowing the cloud to sink into his body. The red pulsed from inside Jeb’s bones, then withdrew, the Myst forming a status screen.

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 39

Accolades: Krusker’s Brawn, Siren’s Cunning, R-R-RubU’s Mysteries, Gresh’s Subtlety, Innovator, Lagross’s Power

Body 21 (11)

Myst 71 (26+3)

Nerve 26 (15)

Abilities: >>FATAL EXCEPTION. Ability missing or corrupted. Awaiting resolution by Administrator.<<<

Accolade Pending: Lagross’s Power suspended due to multiple instances. Awaiting resolution.

Ten points in Myst, five in Nerve and two in Body since I last checked, Jeb thought, tapping his fingers against the back of his hand. Smartass got...two and a half percent of seventeen? Little bit under half a point I gave her, heavier on Myst and Nerve.

Was Smartass’s growth caused by Myst, or Body? Jeb supposed he’d have to enter a Deal that was solely monetary in nature and see if that sparked any growth.

Judge Elkor’s stupid had been quite profitable, but the rewards had been primarily non-tangible in nature. Jeb was also still obligated to find and kill the kidnappers through his Deal with Vresh, which was still in effect.

Jeb liked to think of his Impact as a snowball. The bigger it was, the more it could pick up off the ground, leading to a higher profit from Deals. He’d received nearly twice the amount of Attribute points from this most recent deal.

I’m sure eventually it will reach some kind of law of diminishing returns, where the ‘snowball’ can’t hold itself together, but for right now, we’re on the rapid-expansion side of the bell curve.

Jeb’s Myst was already beyond the point where he should be able to fly again, which was nice. He just needed to take the time to draw in and metabolize Myst, expand his Core to match his new limits. That was going to take a while.

Jeb noticed Eddie heading out the bottom of the building, and he refocused on business. Jeb plucked the ring out of the air and slipped it on, resolving to finish the rest of his self check-up later.

You can’t have a lookout be busy gazing at their own navel.

Jeb settled down cross-legged and pulled out the Peeping Tom wand. What was the actual name, anyway? Jeb’s enhanced Nerve jumped in with the answer.

Wand of Translocated Vision

Right, that’s what it was. The wand itself was stained hardwood with a creepy eyeball carving on the side of it. Jeb held the wand vertical and closed his eyes.

For someone who grew up on video games, from ye olde Mario, up to and including the occasional VR at a wealthier friend’s house, Jeb felt he had a pretty decent idea of what to expect.

He allowed the wand’s siphon to connect to his Myst—similar to the Beautiful Revenge. The wand began draining a trickle of Myst, capturing a portion of the burning corona for itself.

Jeb’s stomach lurched when his point of view skipped forward about six inches, the field of view a full three hundred and sixty degrees in every direction.

Jeb’s feeble brain almost couldn’t keep up with the torrent of visual information. The human brain had no frame of reference for true three hundred and sixty vision.

I was wrong, Jeb thought, frowning as he fought back the nausea, staring at his own face, along with the sky, the ground, the building across from him, the guy sneaking up behind him...

Jeb had about a quarter second to study the strangely familiar keegan before the guy landed silently on the roof behind Jeb, blackened sword unsheathed.

Shitfuck!

Jeb ducked his head and yanked himself forward, causing the keegan’s first strike to miss Jeb’s face by a literal hair.

Jeb’s vision snapped back into his own eye sockets as he pinched off the flow of Myst, reaching his good hand down to his belt as he slid across the roof.

The assassin’s swift follow-up punctured a hole in the floor between Jeb’s legs.

Jeb fumbled for the defensive wand while reaching out toward the assassin with his Myst, aiming to knock the man up.

Sure, he had superhuman speed, but it didn’t matter how fast you were when you couldn’t get purchase on the ground.

Rule #1 when fighting a speedster: Get them off the ground.

The assassin threw himself to the side, evading Jeb’s thread of Myst. He used the edge of his palm to redirect his entire mass, pushing off the stucco surface in midair, leaving a cracked pattern in the wall behind him as he bounced toward Jeb like a superball.

Jeb didn’t have time to do anything more than jerk the wand in front of him and shove a panicked blast of Myst into it.

A wall of faintly mother-of-pearl gunk poured out in front of Jeb, hardening with the assassin halfway through it, catching the man midair.

“Hah!” Jeb said, scrambling backward. “Whaddya think about—crap.”

The nacre-like material was tough, and it only gave a little bit at a time, but it gave, releasing a soft shriek of tortured fiber as the assassin tugged himself free.

Goddamn bargain-bin defensive wand, Jeb thought, pushing himself up. Still, it bought him time.

Jeb created a spike of force and aimed for his enemy’s midsection, driving the assassin out the other side of the nacre wall. The assassin’s hidden armor dispersed most of the force, and rather than being skewered, the keegan rolled away, eyes narrowed with pain.

Jeb reached out a string of Myst to pick the guy up off the ground, but he dodged it. Again.

Something’s telling me this guy can see my Myst, Jeb thought. Or maybe he just had a really good sense for fighting.

The assassin grabbed the side of the wall and tore a brick off, throwing it at Jeb.

The brick hissed through the air, and Jeb created another bubble of nacre to catch it and buy himself a little extra time to figure out his next move.

The brick was caught, stretching the nacre and turning it opaque. The assassin followed the brick with a sword swing, shattering the strained bubble and intruding on Jeb’s personal space in a fraction of a second.

This guy doesn’t look like a talker, but it couldn’t hurt, Jeb thought as he caught the keegan’s wrist with his Myst, the assassin’s other hand with both of Jeb’s arms.

“I don’t suppose you’d tell me who you’re working for? Is it Garland?” Jeb asked. “He has a bad habit of welching on his debts, you know.”

“I know,” the keegan said, leaning forward until he was an inch away from Jeb’s face. “I made him pay up front.”

Jeb blinked. “Good plan.”

The keegan’s knee snapped up and hit Jeb just under the solar plexus, driving all the wind out of his body.

“Ugh.” Jeb doubled over, unable to move or breathe, his mind running full-tilt.

Gotta move or he’ll kill me. Meat suit compromised, use Myst. Backwards untenable, out of roof, and might still fall inside his reach. Same problem moving to either side.

Jeb grabbed himself with telekinesis and shoved himself forward, still doubled over in pain. Given that keegan were about seven feet tall, this put his head in line with his enemy’s groin. Jeb figured he could use his skull as a battering ram.

Talk about low blows.

He felt a warm palm seize his head, halting him in place. The gambit failed.

Shit, Jeb thought, trying to erect a last-minute barrier between himself and the coup de grâce, but it wasn’t looking good. His heart was buzzing in his ears like a goddamn hummingbird.

Yep, this is what death-terror feels like, Jeb thought idly as he tried to force his limbs to move through the paralysis of bruised organs and a runaway amygdala. It wasn’t going to be enough, but you should always make the effort. On principle.

“Hi-ya!” A squeaky voice made a karate noise before the assassin jerked away from Jeb, releasing his head.

“Fuck!” the keegan said, clutching his eye and staggering backwards.

Jeb drew a breath and spotted Smartass making a vaguely martial-arts stance in midair, her hands and feet wrapped in speckled blue Myst, her wings a blur behind her.

“My fairy-fu is unbeatable,” she said, floating like a butterfly.

How is that not a lie!?

Jeb didn’t have time to follow up on that, though. He dropped to the ground the instant before a blind retaliation strike cleaved the air where his face used to be.

Jeb hit the roof and sent a ball of force shooting out and up, catching the assassin in the groin for real this time.

The keegan’s eyes bulged as he was kicked in the balls so hard it made him airborne, and Jeb took the opportunity to wrap bands of force around the guy’s chest, holding him up and away from any kind of leverage.

“Maybe now we can have some kind of dialogue,” Jeb said. “Who are you, why are you trying to kill me, and why shouldn’t I kill you?” Jeb asked.

“Actually, scratch that second question,” Jeb said. He’d already confirmed being hired by G.G.

“My name’s Kol, I’m a courier who moonlights as an assassin. You shouldn’t kill me because—”

The assassin’s fist whipped toward his own chest and smashed the telekinetic bands, breaking them with brute force and a sickly crack.

Jeb used the last of the band’s cohesiveness to push the assassin backward, erecting a series of force defenses between the two of them.

For his part, the assassin simply dropped to the ground, giving Jeb the hairy eyeball.

“You’re more trouble than you’re worth,” he muttered, reaching into the dark interior of his robe.

Jeb tensed, expecting a throwing knife, or a smoke bomb, or even a gun.

“Here, some mail from a fan. I wash my hands of this.”

Instead of a weapon, the keegan withdrew a letter with Jeb’s name on it and tossed it across the distance between them. The letter fluttered to a halt at Jeb’s feet as the assassin drew his hood up and jumped off the side of the building.

Jeb leaned down to pick up the letter when something tickled the back of his mind.

He eyed the folded paper on the ground, frowning. His name was written in English, which was making alarm bells go off in his head. Why would any alien send him a letter in English? They assumed The System would translate anything. The only reason to write it in English would be if they knew he couldn’t read—which they didn’t—or it was simply to make the letters more familiar to his eyes.

More comfortable.

“Ooh, a letter! I wonder who it’s from!” Smartass said, zipping down toward the letter.

“Hold up,” Jeb said, grabbing Smartass in midair with his Myst. “Did you forget it’s his job to kill us?”

“No?” Smartass said, her brow furrowing.

Jeb took three big steps back and reached out with his strings of Myst and opened the letter. The envelope exploded, flinging white powder in every direction. Jeb created a concave barrier of force and none of the white powder got on him or Legolas’s coms device.

In a few moments, the wind carried the plume of poison away from them, allowing Jeb to relax. I hope there’s nobody in that alley, Jeb thought, wincing.

Other than the trap, the envelope was empty.

“Wow. What a meanie.”

“You gotta admire the professionalism, at least,” Jeb said with a shrug. The guy probably wasn’t coming back right away. It looked like he’d broken some ribs cracking Jeb’s hold on him.

“Jeb, are you still there?” Eddie’s voice came from the old man’s contraption, drawing Jeb’s attention away.

“Watch my back,” Jeb said to Smartass as he walked up to the battery-powered dish and lifted the receiver. “Yeah, I’m here. What’s up?”

“Well, I’m just sitting here, wondering why you didn’t feel like telling me about the six big fucking carriages surrounding the goddamn building!”

Jeb dropped the receiver and leaned over the side of the building, looking down at City Hall. From his vantage point, he could see two carriages, covered in shiny black lacquer with gold tracery.

Melas bodyguards were unloading from the carriages by the dozen, along with an example of a species that Jeb had never seen before. It was a slender, stooped over avian-looking creature with an incredibly smooth gait, dressed in its Sunday best: gold and vibrant silks, its slender neck lifting up an ornate headdress.

Even from this distance, Jeb could see the omnipresent grey Myst swirling around the creature as it moved, making Jeb’s hair stand on end.

Jeb rushed back to the comms unit.

“Eddie, these guys are probably out of our league, and that’s good. You haven’t actually committed a crime, so put the Book of Honor back and find a book about zoning or something. If anyone asks, tell them you’re there to do research for your owner. Keep your head down, mouth shut, and maybe kneel if you see any bird-looking people. Matter of fact, just get on your knees now. Don’t take any chances.”

“Got it,” Eddie said.

Jeb waited.

***Eddie Davis***

Shit, shit, shit, Eddie thought as he flipped to the back of the book and flipped through the last three pages of duels, using his Myst to duplicate the names onto the empty paper he’d gotten from the front desk.

Eddie’s magic was the best magic possible for a scientist: Refining, the Ability to isolate substances from each other. The vast majority of materials science was isolating compounds from other compounds. It was slow and tedious, and sometimes required guesswork and supplies he couldn’t possibly acquire, and it would have made his little workshop nearly incapable of functioning.

Now whenever he needed to isolate lithium, he just grabbed a battery and separated it out magically. Same went for the components of a phone or anything else he might need. Good stuff. Eddie was looking forward to when he had enough control to separate out plutonium in quantity and he could make robots that could keep going for fifty years.

In this particular case, Eddie separated a bit of the less-permeable wood grains out of the paper, stamping out the list of names invisibly before hastily folding the paper and shoving it in his vest pocket.

Eddie shoved the Book of Honor back in its home and sprinted down the hall, grabbing a book of law much farther down the line, something that looked innocuous.

Water Rights and Responsibilities for Landowners.

Eddie shuddered, but knelt down and started speed-reading the dry book, cramming like he was twenty-four again, Legolas hovering outside the window.

Eddie glanced over and interfaced with the robot. It was hard to describe, as half of his thoughts turned to cold numbers. He’d been staring at screens half his life, but thinking in code was a new experience. It was a bit like lucid dreaming.

Eddie instructed the drone to back off and hide. It silently pulled away from the window and settled down behind some shrubs. The sky was too exposed at the moment, with the building nearly surrounded by watchful eyes.

A moment later, Eddie heard the sound of steel on stone as armored boots filled the halls.

Eddie backed into an out-of-the-way spot and put his forehead on the marble floor.

Refreshingly cold in this heat, actually.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted half a dozen melas with deep orange skin who filled the hall. They were wearing full plate armor, only identifiable through their stature and the horns they sported above their helmets.

They paid little attention to him, beyond a silent glance. One of the men even stood beside Eddie, less than a foot away, resting his palms on the hilt of a long blade attached to his waist.

A strange pressure seemed to collect down the hall, pressing down on Eddie’s body, squishing him even further into the floor.

A moment later, Eddie heard two voices slowly growing in volume.

“The blockade will be every street in a one-mile radius around the Kordos mansion, along with the main thoroughfare. Sentinels will remove anyone or anything outside their homes after two in the afternoon inside that area. By the time of His arrival, the streets will have been clean for hours.”

“I appreciate your attention to detail,” another voice said as the figures came around the corner leading toward the office deeper in the library. “I hope that you can convince your men to share it.”

From the corner of his eye, Eddie spotted a hunched-over Big Bird traipsing smoothly alongside a keegan wringing his hands.

“What you say and what they do are seldom the same—” The bird’s head snapped to look at Eddie. “Oh, look, a human.”

“I’ll have him removed immediately, Your Grace.”

Eddie felt a drop of sweat bead up on the back of his neck.

“No, no, it’s not doing anything wrong. The kowtowing is new, but not unwelcome.”

“Excuse me, human,” the bird-creature said, stopping in front of Eddie. “Why do you bow so deeply for me? Did your owner not teach you proper etiquette?”

“He did not,” Eddie said, raising his head. “But he also told me not to take any chances, so I improvised.”

The bird-creature’s head wobbled strangely, the creature’s face devoid of expression. Finally it threw its head up and honked a laugh.

“Delightful. Keep up the good work.” The creature reached out with taloned claws and tapped Eddie’s shoulder.

“Where were we?” the bird-creature asked as they continued down the hall, ignoring Eddie entirely.

“You should leave now.” One of the melas bodyguards spoke, once the pair were out of earshot.

“I think I will do that,” Eddie said, his limbs weak from the adrenaline leaving his system. He picked up the book and slipped it back into its home before walking quickly back the way he’d come.

Eddie’s panic spiked again when one of the bodyguards stepped out in front of him, blocking his path.

“What’ve you got under there?” the melas asked, peeling open Eddie’s jacket and plucking out the crumpled paper that had been peeking out.

“I bought some paper on the way in to take notes,” Eddie stammered.

“I don’t see any notes.” The guard looked at him suspiciously.

Eddie glanced over his shoulder the direction the two officials had gone and shrugged helplessly. “Next time, I suppose?”

“Fair enough.” The bodyguard handed the paper back, then stepped aside, and Eddie walked out, his legs trembling.

Don’t run, guilty people run, Eddie chanted to himself, maintaining a steady walk as he left City Hall, leaving past the watchful eyes of the men and women watching from the line formed around the carriages.

Eddie didn’t know who the hell had just showed up, but he was glad he was too small a fish for them to be interested in him.

***Brett Courvar***

Brett was screening the fanmail, because a distressing amount of it was of the ‘go kill yourself’ variety, and Amanda didn’t deserve that. He was better at shrugging off the hate than she was. Well, maybe not better. Just more interested.

Brett put his feet up on the steel ottoman, enjoying his post-workout sponge bath from his squadron of cute young admirers. Gotta stay in peak physical condition.

He plucked out the top letter and pried it open.

Traitors to the human race, go fucking kill yourselves, you goddamn sellouts. I got a fifty caliber bullet with your fucking name on it.

Brett flicked it into the distant fire. As if a fifty caliber bullet could do anything to either of them.

Next.

The next letter had messy handwriting on the front, was addressed to Amanda & Brett Courvar, and the return address was ‘Solmnath’.

Messy handwriting and no sender usually meant crazy death threats or rude comments about his wife. He should probably save his eyes the effort and throw it in the fire, but Brett shrugged and took a chance, prying open the letter.

Hey guys, it’s Jebediah Trapper, and boy, have I got an opportunity for you to advance your careers, you greedy sluts!

Brett read down the letter, his eyes widening as he realized it was the real thing.

“Babe!”

“Hnn?” Amanda grunted from where Ricardo and Jacob were giving her a deep tissue massage.

“You need to read this letter.”

Chapter 24: The Calm

***Emperor Pikaku, Uniter of the Continent, Ruler of Mestikos, level 327***

Chains rattled as Pikaku’s father moved his hand, telegraphing his next move.

Pikaku chose discretion, allowing his father’s Waluigi to sprint far ahead. The former emperor had chosen the character because he had the closest resemblance to a kitri’s body shape.

Pikaku had chosen Peach, because her plumage was rather salacious.

“I spanked you once, I’ll spank you again,” the withered kitri muttered, the flame of undeath flickering behind his eyes as he honked softly in amusement.

“Blue shell.”

“Nooo!”

Pikaku’s neck wobbled in amusement as the shell hit his father’s character from above, allowing him to gain the lead and the win.

“The game is mine, father. You have no choice but to accept it.”

“Accept this!” The former emperor threw the plastic controller at him, the chains rattling around his wrist.

Pikaku dodged it easily enough, catching the precious commodity on the way past. They weren’t making any more of these, after all.

Pikaku checked the time. “Mother guide me, it’s time to go already?”

“It’s been four hours?” his father demanded, glancing at the ‘Nintendo’ gifted him by his new human aristocrats. “These humans are masters of masturbatory time-wasting, aren’t they?”

“I hear they had an entire city dedicated to it.”

“If I was a thousand years younger,” his father said, clutching a boney fist.

“You’d straighten them out?”

“I’d indulge in every vice they’d invented.”

“You’ve grown more honest in death,” Pikaku said.

“And whose fault is that, eh?” his father said, motioning to the glowing manacles and collar around his wrists and neck, preventing him from escaping and wreaking havoc on the world above. There were truth enchantments in there, too.

“All joking aside, these ‘nuclear bombs’ my new aristocrats warn me of paint a horrifying picture, and with the Stitching, they are not all accounted for. I fear rebel groups of humans may try to use them to shatter the empire and carve their own territory. I wonder if I truly have the luxury of attending a party at a backwater like Solmnath.”

“Your job is to appear normal,” his father said. “Remember, you lead their minds as well as their hearts. If you express concern over these ‘nuclear bombs’, it will signal to many, many humans that you are afraid of them, and possibly spawn more of these factions who seek to leverage them against you.”

His father honked. “But seriously, how bad could they be?”

“Twenty miles wide.”

“That’s impossible.”

“You believe that’s impossible. Let me tell you something. Every human I spoke to, from my aristocrats, to beggars taken off the street without warning, was absolutely sure they existed.”

His father grunted. “When everyone else believes a thing, sometimes you must ask yourself if you’re the ignorant one. These weapons seem like the sort of thing you might want to send some of your more trustworthy enforcers after in secret. The Tekalis family comes to mind.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Pikaku said, nodding. Vresh Tekalis had been stripped of her title for refusing to answer him about to whom she’d given her Mark, but that made her more trustworthy, all things considered. She had given her word not to reveal who she’d chosen, and she would rather be punished by the emperor than break it. He would need to send some of his human enforcers after these weapons as well, because they were some of the only ones who would take the threat seriously.

“If you already knew what to do, what do you need me for, then?”

“I find it helpful to sound ideas off of you.”

“Bah.” The undead kitri grunted, waving him off. “An emperor makes his own decisions.”

Pikaku set the controller down within reach of his father, then headed for the marble arch leading to the long stairs out of the crypt.

“Before you go,” his father called after him.

“Oh?” Pikaku asked, turning.

“I don’t suppose you’d send someone down here for me to eat? I am absolutely starving. A fat little human child, perhaps? If those humans on the broadcasts are anything to go by, they’re the most succulent thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

“No, father.”

“Damn you to the mangled space of the Roil! I want to eat!”

The former emperor’s curses devolved into howls a living being couldn’t hope to match.

Pikaku wanted to rub the aching corners of his beak, but he was being watched by his guard, so he straightened his spine and marched out into the sunlight while they closed the heavy stone doors of the crypt, sealing his father back in his grave.

“Four hours of lucidity, as promised,” the priestess said, bowing low.

“The emperor appreciates your assistance in this matter,” he said, nodding. “When will you be ready to calm him again?”

She winced. “Two weeks, my lord. He is very strong.”

“Do not harm your Core in haste. The emperor is patient.” Pikaku nodded, then prowled away, every inch the proud emperor. Nobody knew he’d spent all but the last few minutes playing human games with his father, rather than discussing important matters of state.

And if they did know, they kept their mouths shut.

As he walked, his secretary hustled up beside him, clutching a messy stack of papers to her chest.

“Emperor, King Jose of the Fiery Mountains wants a meeting to discuss the taxation of the villages damaged by flash-fires, and Gurand of Lee seeks your approval for the dispensation of funds to their dam.”

“I’ll Summon them personally.”

“There’s been damage in the imperial academy. Two children defaced a statue of your grandfather during a Myst battle.”

Pikaku grunted and waved it off. “Five lashes, and have them fix it.” He didn’t really care, but the institution cared—or at least, needed to be perceived as caring.

“Yes, my lord.”

“You’ve also got a slurry of letters,” she said, the smaller female half-jogging to keep up with his ground-eating pace.

“Oh, and the Courvars had some input about your visit to Solmnath. They said you might be interested.”

Pikaku nodded silently, marching to his throne that sat in the great hall of his grandfather, created by the greatest artisans of the age. He felt the weight of authority settle around his shoulders with every step he took up the short staircase that held the throne above all others.

Finally he settled down, and leaned back in the throne. He reached inside and tugged on the gnarled web of Venaxus, pulling a single strand out of his Core and giving it a voice. It only took a little bit of Myst, since they were already in the city.

“Amanda and Brett Courvar.”

The side door to the throne hall creaked open.

“You’re sure we’re not lost?” Brett asked his wife as the hairless apes stumbled into the throne room.

“I don’t know. We must’ve gotten turned around some—” Amanda put a hand on her husband’s shoulder, staring at the emperor.

Swiftly, Pikaku’s new aristocrats dropped into perfect bows. They’d been practicing their etiquette.

“You may rise,” Pikaku said, waving his hand gently, calculating every move to be as neutral as possible.

“We’re sorry for, umm, wandering into your throne room,” Brett said with a frown, craning his neck behind him, studying their path in disbelief.

“It is I who should apologize for your confusion. I Summoned you, and you came. If you find yourself before me, it is very likely that I wish to speak to you,” Pikaku said. “Remember that.”

Pikaku’s Myst Ability was to tug on Venaxus’s web and alter fate so that those who he named wound up in front of him. It was a power suited for an emperor. None could hide from him or his justice. The only limiting factor was the amount of coincidence that was required to bring a person to him, and his own familiarity with the subject.

“You’ve been doing good work for the empire, adapting humans to their new circumstances, and for that, I am grateful. You said you had something to say about my visit to Solmnath?” Pikaku asked.

“Yes, um…” Amanda tugged a letter out of her pocket. “Can I just…give this to you?”

Pikaku allowed himself a small head-waggle, and crooked a finger, motioning her to come forward.

The sickly-looking human half-jogged up to the throne and placed the letter in his hand before backing off.

“Interesting,” Pikaku muttered, scanning the letter. “Is this the same Jebediah Trapper who led you through the Impossible Tutorial?”

The two humans nodded. “We think so.”

“Well, my friends, you may be receiving land to accompany your titles sooner than I expected. The optics of this would work best if my humans were to execute punishment for this malfeasance on my behalf.”

Pikaku leaned forward in his throne, looking down at the featherless creatures. “Tell me, are you willing to kill in cold blood for the empire?”

The two humans were silent, the man deferring to his wife.

“The idea makes me want to throw up… But, if these people did what it says in the letter, then yes.” She swallowed loudly. “Yes, we’ll kill them.”

But just in case, let’s bring one human we know will follow through, Pikaku thought, leaning back in the throne and tapping his claws against the armrest. Generations of emperors had worn a groove in the gold.

“Excellent. Stay here until I am done so that we may discuss travel plans.”

“Yes, my lord,” the two said, bowing.

Pikaku reached into his Core and drew out a fine thread.

“Gurand of Lee.”

“I tell you it can’t wait any longer!” the large Brovis man shouted, shaking Pikaku’s frazzled secretary off of his leg as he stormed into the throne room at that very moment.

Amanda and Brett glanced back and forth between Pikaku and Gurand with the strange human expression of confusion that wrinkled up their eyebrows and tugged at their lips.

Heedless of the humans, the northern barbarian marched up to the throne, stopping just shy of the stairs, causing the imperial guards stationed along the hall to finger their weapons.

The man was no threat to Pikaku, but it was the principle of the thing.

“Listen ‘ere!” Gurand said, pointing at Pikaku. “We joined the empire with the expectation that we would be taken care of! And all we’ve gotten is letters asking for gold we ain’t got! Now we need that dam for our home to prosper. How else are you planning on getting your taxes?”

Pikaku once again suppressed the urge to rub the muscles at the corner of his beak. This was going to be a long day of chasing his own tail. He had to maneuver the chieftain of the tribe to give his word the cost of the dam would be paid back, and the tribesmen had a curious notion of debt.

***Jebediah Trapper***

Jeb watched Eddie walk out the front of City Hall, sweating so profusely that Jeb could see it from his third-story vantage point.

Several other carriages parked outside the circle of uniforms, waiting for their turn to enter City Hall. They were, for the most part, richly dressed keegan.

Shit.

Without his drone next to him, Eddie had no way of communicating with Jeb, and he didn’t want to send the old man back into the wolves’ den.

Jeb picked up the receiver and told Legolas to follow if someone took the book, then he packed up the dish and battery, putting them in their duffle bags and heading out.

The two of them met up at the orphanage. Eddie must have run halfway back, because he arrived first, waiting for Jeb while breathing heavily and glaring.

“Never ask me to do that again,” he said, resting his palms on his knees.

“I have no idea what that was about. I’m sorry.”

“I think it was a parade or something. They were talking about clearing the streets for ‘his’ arrival.”

“Someone important?”

“Sounded like it.” Eddie nodded, before glancing around. “Where’s Legolas?”

“I told him to follow whoever took the book. Maybe we can still get our hands on it.”

“Mother—” Eddie scowled at him, reaching into his vest. “Gotta give me more credit than that.” The old man pulled out several blank sheets of paper.

“That’s…nice?”

“The list is on here, and we’re going to have to call Legolas back; he’s got a long run time, but it’s not semi-permanent like Buddy.”

“You didn’t use the engine?” Jeb asked.

“Why would you put a pair of two-stroke motors on a stealth craft?” Eddie asked, raising a brow. “No, I’ve been experimenting with lithium ion batteries. I used a silicon anode, upping the energy density drastically, but I haven’t got the tech to fix the growing SEI layer problem, so I just use my Myst to clean it out on Sundays, and that seems to work fine. One day, though, I’ll crack it.”

Jeb frowned. “You know there’s shrinking magic, right?” Jeb said, thinking back to the collectible he’d cannibalized to escape the Tutorial.

“Holy hell, why didn’t you tell me!?”

“‘Cuz we don’t have any on hand and I didn’t think of it.”

“How much shrinking!?” Eddie demanded.

“Football to pen-sized,” Jeb said, motioning.

“Hot damn!” Eddie shouted, his brush with death and prized drone all but forgotten. “I need to make some drafts!”

“Hold up there,” Jeb said, grabbing the roboticist by the shoulder before he went into a frenzy. “Papers,” he said, shaking the blank sheets in front of the old man’s face. “How do I read them?”

“Ugh, c’mere.” Eddie and Jeb went down into the basement, where the old man pulled out an airbrush and popped a mixture of ink and water into it.

“I isolated out the nonporous parts of the paper, so they should be more susceptible to osmosis,” he said as he prepped the mixture.

“Light, too,” Jeb said, holding up the paper to a bright light, where he could make out faint scribbles shining through the slightly less-dense portions of the paper.

“Gimmie,” Eddie said, snatching the paper out of his hand. Putting it over some printer paper, he coated them with an even spray of black ink.

Eddie waited for a moment, then pulled the two papers apart, revealing a crisp list of names, one side written in alien, the other in English.

“It looks like there was an orphan named Tim,” Jeb muttered, scanning the list. He couldn’t bring himself to find that fact amusing.

Eddie shooed him away and swiveled, rolling on his chair back to his drafting computer, muttering to himself.

Jeb hoofed the three pages of suspects up to Zlesk, who would presumably be able to put titles to names.

The injured keegan was sitting on a bench, enjoying the blazing hot summer sun while the kids played out front. It was a surreal sight, watching children jump five to ten feet in the air during tag.

“How’d it go?” he asked as Jeb approached. “I saw you and Eddie return unscathed, so I assumed it was at least a partial success.”

“We got the list,” Jeb said, putting the papers in the sheriff’s hands.

The keegan’s eyes went wide, watering as he scanned his way down the list.

“So many….” he said softly, flipping between the pages.

“This represents maybe a third of the governing body of Solmnath,” Zlesk said, glancing up at him. “These are old, powerful families. You’d have about as much luck taking them down as you would pulling the sun out of the sky.”

The sheriff put his palm over his forehead, taking a deep breath and staring into the ground.

“If it were five or six, you might be able to rally the rest of the nobility against them, ostracize them and cut away their support, but with this many complicit in this horrifying trade…”

“They’re gonna cover each other’s asses, aren’t they?” Jeb asked.

Zlesk nodded. “I would be tempted to take my pay and extricate myself from this political garbage fire right now, if my very soul didn’t recoil from tacit agreement with these monsters’ methods.”

“Something I’ve heard: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” Jeb quoted.

Zlesk chuckled, eyeing him from the side. “That definitely sounds wiser than something that would come out of your mouth, Jebediah Trapper.”

“Oh, it is,” Jeb said, nodding. “Some old guy said it a long time ago. Was it Gandalf, maybe? Idunno. It holds true, though. They’re gonna keep doing what they do as long as nobody holds them accountable.”

“You’re right,” Zlesk said, sighing.

“How long until you’re ready for action again?” Jeb asked.

“About a week,” Zlesk said, flexing his fingers.

Damn, high Body really does speed up healing. The keegan had some pretty nasty lacerations a day ago. A week was warp speed in comparison to a normal recovery.

Jeb’s broken arm would likely take longer than that….

“Are you willing to do what we have to to keep the children out of the clutches of these people?” Jeb asked, tapping the list in Zlesk’s hand.

Zlesk straightened in his seat. “Yes.”

“Alright then, we’ve got a week until my next hearing. You rest up,” Jeb said, folding up The List before patting Zlesk on the shoulder. “And maybe give Colt some pointers.”

Jeb had some ideas for how he could legitimize the orphanage, at least enough to keep the children safe from the people in charge.

My kids, at least. Jeb was under no illusions that there weren’t more kids forgotten in the gutters at this very moment. They could never all be accounted for.

But stopping these people from killing for gain? The only thing he could hope to do was shine a light on it and force them to tiptoe.

I’ve got a week before my next visit to the court, hopefully with a judge that doesn’t give a shit about me, rather than one who wants to blame me for his crimes. Apathy would be a marked improvement.

In one week, Jeb was due for a retrial, and the lady whose ankles he’d broken hadn’t pressed charges; nobody who’d been at O’sut’s mansion wanted to admit they’d been there.

So Jeb had a week to polish up and prepare, and he had three major issues on his plate:

1: Getting Mystic Triggers up and running again.

2: Outfitting himself better.

3: Searching his body for more things stitched on by The System and getting them off.

Jeb really wanted to give himself a thorough once-over and check for more things that might have been stitched on, but the matter wasn’t pressing. He was fine now, and he would continue to be fine even if he didn’t get to it immediately.

Even if some worm-like thing in the fifth dimension was currently buried right behind his eyeball.

Jeb shuddered.

Besides, the weirdness of what came out of Jeb’s System meant it was dangerous...or at least unpredictable whether removing a piece would benefit him at all. Jeb still remembered thinking he was an apprentice wizard named Mevar for a couple minutes.

So Jeb directed his attention to the other two options. As much as Jeb wanted to make his own weapons, it was more time-efficient to buy and commission them. He couldn’t spend the entire week making a single shield-blade or wand.

Nope, his best course of action would be to send Zlesk out with a bag of gold and a list, and give Eddie some ideas, then spend the rest of the time mastering Mystic Triggers.

Delegation.

Jeb needed his Triggers back.

Jeb clapped his hands together and limped off to get to work.

******

The week went by slowly. The constant tension under the watchful eye of quickly-hired mercenaries made sure nothing got stale, and they were busy as hell, which made every day feel like its own week.

Zlesk bought him a +3 Body ring to drastically speed up Jeb’s healing, along with the magical equivalent of a flak jacket. It was a heavy vest lined with thin segments of faradan, a stone that exerted force against anything that got close to it. It would slow down anything aiming for Jeb’s vital organs, taking the punch out of them so the underlying chainmail could catch it.

Fun fact: Faradan was also what sand-pirates lined the bottom of their boats to cruise over the desert with, as well as a primary component of every major city’s walls. Jeb even spotted where they were being built to fill in the gaps left by the Stitching.

Zlesk also got him a glove with fire and speeding arrow lenses sandwiched into the back. It fired little darts of flame that emerged from the palm. It was a hand-me-down from an aristocratic keegan child, so the fit was decent for Jeb after they cut the extra-long fingers off.

It was also less-than-lethal—not being particularly powerful—but in Jeb’s experience, nobody liked getting a face full of fire-dart.

Zlesk got Jeb’s Annihilation lens gun back from the two detectives, disassembled so he didn’t get summarily executed just for carrying it, since the individual pieces weren’t illegal. They could figure out something else to do with it later.

Jeb’s fancy foot came back after three days with some new spit and polish, along with a small panel in the side that was practically invisible, where he could store stuff secretly.

Of course, a false foot was a terrifically predictable place to hide stuff, so that kind of evened things out—but still, it was nice to have.

Jeb stored a copy of the list of names in the little cubby and sealed it closed, marveling as the seam vanished completely. He buried the original under the orphanage’s floorboards.

As for Eddie, he took Jeb’s idea for a saw blade he could move with telekinesis and ran with it. The old man took an Udium-tipped blade and Refined the superhard metal straight out of it as a dust, then sintered a thin layer onto the blade-edge of a circular disk of ultra-tough composite material scrap he had lying around.

The material Eddie made was so tough, it would bind up his cutters in a fraction of a second, but the old man worked it easily.

Jeb watched in fascination as the old man’s pale purple Myst traced shapes along the composite, which would then shed dust of its stronger reinforcing material, allowing the roboticist to snap it off by hand, leaving a perfect circle. 

When he was done, Eddie welded a composite handle to the back of it and called it a day. The entire thing was about a palm and a half wide, and in the shape of a buckler. It was unpainted and ugly; it looked like a circular saw blade, and Jeb loved it. It was somewhat non-threatening and at first glance seemed like a defensive tool, and it was just small enough to clip onto his belt.

“Yep, that’s a murder-buckler, if I’ve ever seen one,” Eddie said, eyeing his creation.

“I’ll call it the Identity Disc, after the Tron movies,” Jeb said, nodding as he imagined it flying around slaughtering people.

“That doesn’t really fit, does it?”

“I just wanna be the one who names something,” Jeb said, throwing the disk into the roiling cloud of the Appraiser.

Murder-Buckler

A buckler that pushes the boundaries of performance for a non-magical item, this unique weapon has been fitted with a jagged Udium edge to tear flesh asunder.

“Damnit!” Jeb gave Eddie the finger and stormed outside in a faux tantrum.

When he got to the top of the stairs leading out of the storm shelter, he paused, listening. Something was off.

The surroundings were quiet.

Orphanages weren’t supposed to be quiet. They were supposed to have screaming children every twenty feet or so. Jeb had grown so accustomed to it that the sound of silence was horrifying. Jeb’s heart kicked into gear as anxiety pressed in around him. The mercenaries they hired were meant to discourage an attack, but nothing was ever set in stone.

Was everyone dead? Were the bad guys waiting in the hedges to murder him?

Jeb frowned and put his back up against the side of the mansion, wrapped a bit of Myst around his vitals and peeked around to the front yard, half-expecting dead bodies.

It was mostly just a handful of the younger girls playing with dolls.

Okay, so nothing is obviously wrong.

Jeb scanned the surroundings and noticed that A: the older, more boisterous children were missing, and B: a few of the mercenaries were gone as well.

Hmm...

Jeb stepped out of the mansion’s shadow and walked up to one of the mercs playing cards with her teammate under a parasol.

“Where’s everyone?” Jeb asked, still half-expecting some strangeness.

“They went to watch the parade,” she said dismissively, laying down a card with an alien symbol in front of her team member.

“Keensha bra gosh!” her opponent cursed, slapping his cards down in frustration.

“Parade?”

******

The parade to welcome the emperor had lined the streets of Solmnath with the finest rabble. It was the only chance the common people of the city were going to get to see the big cheese with their own eyes, because there was a strictly enforced curfew a quarter-mile around the place he would be staying.

Getting a place to watch the procession on the ground was a non-starter, the streets were so choked with people. Jeb managed to track Zlesk, a couple of the mercenaries and the loudest children to an abandoned ten-story office building along the route of the parade.

The parade itself was pretty darn impressive, in an old-timey kind of way. There weren’t any gigantic floats, but there were rows and rows of odd lizard-creatures marching down the paved L.A. roads, their riders separated into groups by species, and presenting a force that would easily tear through the city if they had half a mind to.

It was impressive in that sense.

The emperor himself looked a bit like Big Bird’s cool uncle, with his large beak and cheerful yellow plumage. Riding around him were what Jeb could only assume were some of his vassals.

At his left hand rode a big, faceless suit of ominous black armor that looked something like a Nazgûl. Creepy. Jeb couldn’t judge size super well from that distance, but the person looked imposing, and possibly human. If they were melas, they would’ve had horns.

On the emperor’s right side, Jeb found himself gawking at two blonde humans smiling and waving along with the rest of the silk-swaddled aristocracy.

Brett and Amanda, the only for-sure humans in the entire parade, were right there.

They must have gotten my letter, Jeb thought, frowning as he watched the two of them give their best smile-and-wave. Now all he had to do was set up a meeting.

A new option for how to move forward opened up in front of Jeb as he watched the underwear models canter far underneath their point of view, raisin-sized at this distance.

He had friends in local government now.

I need to arrange a meetup, Jeb thought, going to find a courier, leaving Zlesk, Colt and a handful of others gawking at the size of the army marching into the city.

Once Jeb sent the letter, he spent the rest of his time working on dialing in the bandwidth of various events. The first two things Jeb focused on were the spoken word and moving objects.

Jeb wanted his automatic protections and his bullets back.

Every day, he read and re-read the book while trying exercises that he either vaguely remembered or invented on the spot. Mevar’s experiences had sunk into the back of his mind and it was hard to tell which was which.

Much of his time was spent sitting cross-legged out on the lawn, bouncing a tennis ball off of the side of the mansion, mastering both breathing in Myst to fill his Core to his new limits, as well as creating Triggers to catch the ball on the rebound.

Well, trying.

Jeb let the ball hit him in the chest before it dropped into the palm of his hand.

What am I missing? Jeb thought, eyeing the fuzzy ball in his palm. He was still trying to tune into specific events, but it wasn’t doing anything. It never triggered the ball of Myst.

If an object comes towards me at a speed greater than 5 mph, deploy the bubble of force.

Jeb tried to focus on the criteria, focusing on tuning those events in tight.

He threw the ball, which hit the wood and rebounded, hitting him in the chest again.

What am I missing?

Jeb set the ball down between his legs and closed his eyes, reviewing what he’d read in the book. He had to picture the scene vividly, so clearly as to confuse what was real, then strip away the non-relevant parts, applying the image to the Trigger.

Jeb took a long breath and tried to envision the ball approaching him, every single detail.

The sudden shriek of one of the children playing dodgeball distracted him, and an instant later, a dodgeball whizzed out and smacked him in the face.

Jeb opened his eyes with a startled grunt, expecting to see a red ball rolling away from him and a dozen guilty-looking kids.

Instead, he saw them still playing, throwing the red rubber at each other at inhuman speeds. He glanced around and didn’t see any indication he’d been struck at all. The sensation of the rubber hitting his nose faded like a ghost. No bruising, no blood, no sting.

Did I just imagine it so well that I actually experienced it?

Jeb frowned, looking at the tight ball of Myst in front of him.

Worth a shot.

“Hey you guys!” Jeb shouted, waving, catching their attention. The children looked apprehensive, having earned the attention of ‘The Boss’.

“Which one of you wants to throw dodgeballs at my face?”

Colt raised his hand. Because of course he did.

“Alright,” Jeb said, turning to face Colt. “Now first I need to—Gah!” Jeb grunted as a dodgeball smacked him in the nose, ricocheting off into the yard where one of the younger kids chased it down.

“Sorry, were you saying something, pops?” Colt asked with an evil grin as another dodgeball was placed in his palm.

Jeb briefly considered a cost/benefit analysis of cussing the teen out, but decided against it. Enemies weren’t going to wait for him to get ready, and throwing a fit in front of children was beneath him.

“Carry on,” Jeb said, trying to picture a dodgeball hitting him in the—

Bam!

“Gah!” Another dodgeball flew away into the yard from where it’d hit Jeb in the face.

Little shit’s enjoying this, Jeb thought as Colt limbered up another throw.

Just for that… Jeb unwove the packet of Myst and gave it a new set of instructions, then went back to focusing on linking the trigger to the—

Bam!

Jeb managed not to get startled that time, letting the ball bounce off him without comment.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I’m not complaining,” Colt said, aiming for face-ball number four.

Jeb took a deep breath, closed his eyes and focused on the dodgeball coming toward him, picturing every minute detail down to the—

Faster than Jeb could react, the Myst packet unspooled, leaping outward to grab the ball mid-flight.

Bam!

Bam? Jeb opened one eye and saw Colt tumbling backwards onto his ass. The teen’s nose bore a hint of red from where the rubber ball had smacked it, and the ball itself was bouncing off to the side at high speeds.

In your face, brat! Jeb cheered inwardly.

“The hell was that!?” Colt demanded before sneezing.

“That was a Mystic Trigger,” Jeb said, weaving another Myst packet. “Throw another one.”

“With pleasure,” the teen said, wiping off his nose and climbing to his feet.

Jeb closed his eyes and focused on the dodgeball, trying to recreate his—

Sploosh!

Ice-cold slime covered Jeb’s entire body in an instant, soaking him from head to toe. It was cold enough to wrench a gasp out of him as it worked its way into his clothes.

Jeb’s eyes flew open in time to see red rubber flying towards his face.

Chapter 25: The Storm

***Gale the Roil Chaser***

Being a Roil Chaser was dangerous work, but it was rewarding, in more ways than one.

The empire needed to know immediately if the living storm made any unexpected movements, and Gale liked knowing that the advance warning afforded by him and his companions was literally saving lives from the grim fate that awaited them inside the tangled mass of spacetime.

The incredibly rare and valuable Space and Time lenses that dropped in the wake of the storm were just kind of a bonus. The majority of their pay came from the steady work of mining faradan and government sponsorship.

The danger came from the monsters the Roil would leave in its wake, strange abominations that often had no matching equivalent in the outside world. These creatures were often aggressive, and always tough, for nothing weak could survive being torn from its home plane and thrown violently into another.

Gale and his companions were sitting around the fire, sharing stories in the chill desert night, passing the time with some of the only entertainment they could afford, besides sex.

Gale was currently a relief, so he wasn’t allowed.

There were myths that children conceived in the shadow of the Roil were malformed, but anyone who’d followed it for longer than a few months had long since been disabused of that notion. The animals in the living storm’s wake didn’t suddenly give birth to two-headed babies or strange malformed hybrids.

No, that only happened to things that wandered in and survived.

Gale glanced up at the Roil in the distance, watching the way the invisible sheets of boiling magic stirred up the horizon, making the last light of dusk shimmer from a thousand different angles as time flickered wildly back and forth inside, making a picture of rainbow-colored light.

The Roil itself was invisible, but its effects were not.

Behind all the chatter and joking, there was always The Sound, the constant sound of the storm—the sound that seemed to tread the line between a voice and an object travelling down a metallic tube. It started inaudible, then gently worked up the scale until it was a crystalline tinkle, then it went back down again. Always, it sounded like it was on the edge of resolving into a voice, but it never quite made it.

Gale tuned it out. You either got used to The Sound or you did not and tried to murder yourself and others. It was a legitimate excuse to be dismissed from service, but few people faked the sickness. Being a Roil Chaser was too well-compensated by the empire, and they all had people back home.

Gale kept talking and laughing with his friends until he noticed The Noise growing unusually louder.

He glanced up at the storm again. The scintillating rainbow of hundreds of different suns peeking through the storm was much taller than it had been a few seconds ago.

Is it…moving towards us? But we were directly behind it. Gale frowned. The entire time he’d followed the storm, he’d never seen it change its course more than about fifteen degrees at a time.

Behind the storm is the safest place to be. That’s what they said.

Other people noticed the growing storm too, standing to get a better view of the rapidly-approaching storm.

Gale’s superior, for one.

“Get on your mounts and ride, you fools!” the man bellowed, sprinting for his tarruk. “Leave everything behind!”

The aging melas’s words shook Gale out of his stupor, and he leaped to follow suit, mounting his tarruk and spurring it directly away from the oncoming Roil.

Try as they might, the storm kept growing larger behind them, despite the ground-eating sprint they whipped their tarruks into. Out of the corner of his eye, Gale saw the sergeant motion for them to split up and flee in different directions, in the hopes that some of them would escape to warn Solmnath.

Gods, let it be me, Gale prayed as the land around him and his mount began to shift rapidly between desert and grassy plains, summer and winter.

The Noise was starting to sound like a voice.

Gale put his reins in his teeth and clapped his hands over his ears, his mount’s legs straining as he focused on bearing his rider at top speed.

***Jebediah Trapper***

“In light of the Mark, the Truthseeker-witnessed statements, and the testimony given by these law-abiding humans, I formally instruct the prosecution to drop the charges of Reaping and slave abuse against Jebediah Trapper.”

The old judge gave a phlegmy cough and clacked his judge-sticks together, and Jeb relaxed in his seat. Jeb’s new judge had directly benefited from him discrediting the other guy, including a pay bump, and an open slot for the man’s grandson to start climbing the political ladder.

Maybe this will be relatively painless.

“Now we move on to the civil penalties for failure to register the slaves, and operation of an orphanage without a license.”

Goddamnit, I should stop thinking positive things, because it’s nothing but a damn lure to attract bad shit. Jeb clenched his teeth. He hadn’t really expected any better from the bureaucratic keegan though, so he’d come armed.

“If it pleases the court, I didn’t spend the last week fruitlessly. Here are the licenses and slave registrations in question,” Jeb said, patting the folder resting on the table beside him.

The judge motioned and the bailiff handed him the documents, which the old man read, peering down his gold-rimmed bifocals at the documents, his jaw moving as he read to himself.

“It all appears to be in order,” he said, handing the folder back to the bailiff. “Your willingness to abide by the law is appreciated.”

“Your Honor, a non-Citizen cannot own a business or non-profit that has more than ten beneficiaries.” The prosecution spoke, aiming for any little nitpicky thing he could latch onto.

The judge blinked. “He doesn’t.”

The prosecutor frowned.

“What did he mean by that?” Zlesk asked, sitting next to Jeb.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jeb whispered, waving it off.

“Quite a heroic decision, sheltering the children of a Stitched species, Zlesk Frantell. Really stepping up to the oath of Citizenship. You do us keegan proud, and I wish we had more like you. Let’s discuss the fines you’ll be required to pay for your first two weeks of unlicensed operation.”

Jeb bit his hand, trying not to laugh as Zlesk loomed over him. That would get him hurt and damage their credibility.

“Did you use my signature again?” Zlesk whispered so the judge and prosecutor couldn’t hear.

“I asked if you were prepared to do what was needed to keep kids out of reaper hands,” Jeb whispered back. “You said yes.”

“That didn’t mean I wanted to own and operate a gods-damned orphanage, Jeb.”

“They wouldn’t accept a non-Citizen owner. There’re so many different ways they could’ve taken it away from me.”

“Then apply for citizenship, you fat little—”

“Is something wrong?” the judge asked.

“Nothing, Your Honor. There was some confusion, but it was quickly cleared up,” Zlesk said, suddenly on his best behavior.

“Good,” the judge said before coughing and spending several seconds clearing his throat. “Then we will continue. In light of the quick response on the part of The Admiral Orphanage, and the special circumstances surrounding its creation, it’s the opinion of this Judge that the penalty be struck down to the bare minimum for lapses of this…”

The judge droned on, and Jeb could feel Zlesk’s eyes boring into him.

“This isn’t over,” Zlesk whispered under his breath.

******

“Well, that was awful,” Jeb said, clipping his murder-buckler back onto his belt, blue arrow down. The buckler had been painted with four arrows in four cardinal directions: yellow, red, blue, and green.

It’d needed a little dash of color to liven up its ugliness.

“It could have been much worse,” Zlesk said, rolling his shoulders. “We could have been executed. It’s thanks to my insisting on passing everything through a Truthseeker that we were able to walk out alive.”

“I knew there was a reason I kept you around,” Jeb said, putting on his fingerless glove and foot before grabbing his staff out of the weapon bin.

Of course they didn’t let him walk into the court armed to the teeth.

Strangely, Jeb actually felt overdressed when the two of them stepped out into the open on the sunlit steps of the courthouse.

Rather than a stream of ordinary citizens going about their boisterous business and the occasional purse-snatcher, there was a more muted sense of potential energy in the crowd.

They passed by the imperial guards stationed on every street corner, their sharp eyes boring through each and every passerby, and especially Jeb and Zlesk.

The emperor’s arrival two days ago had seen the entire city placed under a curfew, especially in the upscale areas where the man might be visiting.

Today was the last day they had the mercenary bodyguards, but Zlesk was back in fighting condition, Legolas was armed, Ron was able to sit up, and Jeb’s arm was healing nicely. Even his missing fingernails had stopped hurting. They were ready to meet up with Brett and Amanda.

They’d gradually reinforced the orphanage, leveled the older children and their supervision, so hopefully once the mercs left, they didn’t present an appetizing target.

Still, if anything is going to go down, it’s going to go down soon, Jeb thought, patting the legalese in his coat pocket. It was a series of testimonies and stolen financial information that linked the murder of children to financial transactions.

Maybe Jeb couldn’t get all the bad guys, but he could definitely sway public opinion; make these guys politically toxic enough that some kind of reckoning would come their direction.

Then again, maybe not.

All of this had been in Jeb’s letter, and now all he needed to do was hand the list to Amanda and Brett. Then he could stand back and let the new human aristocrats handle human politics. Kind of a bitter half-win, but being an adult was basically a long string of bitter half-wins.

“You ready to party?” Jeb asked, straightening his jacket and the revolver on his hip. He was ready to party.

Zlesk grunted, making sure his collar was even. They weren’t going to ‘The Party’, which was where the emperor was being hosted by the richest local aristocrats. They were going to the little servant’s entrance in the back of the magnificent mansion, which made Zlesk’s orphanage look like a dingleberry by comparison.

They were going to meet Brett there, hand off all the dirt they’d uncovered on the local leadership, then slink away into the darkness—maybe grab a beer.

Would it change anything? Probably not. One or two people might be mildly inconvenienced, but at the very least, it would grant an iota of political clout to non-child-murdering humans over people who viewed thinking creatures as a resource to be used for their benefit.

Still, Jeb expected his faceless keegan friend might want to make an entrance, so he was loaded with every weapon he could think of, and ready to kick some ass.

I’m gonna be ready for him this time, Jeb thought, eyes narrowed, thinking back to dodgeball.

The sun was arcing down in the sky when they arrived at the mansion, a brightly-lit jewel among the slowly darkening streets. Imperial guards got thicker the closer they got, but Jeb and Zlesk were able to mix into the crowd easily enough.

Despite being heavily armed, they seemingly weren’t considered much of a threat, especially when weighed against the aristocrats on either side of them: men and women with decorative, but functional magic swords that burst into flame or treated stone like warm butter, and an average of three wands per person sticking out of their belt like old-fashioned gunslingers.

Jeb and Zlesk fit right in, albeit rather poor-looking and mismatched in comparison.

Jeb let his eyes wander as they waited to get through the oversized main gate. The luxurious wands the aristocrats bore had designs and murals along their sides that hinted at their function, and Jeb was pretty sure he’d seen a mural of two melas humping.

“I could’ve brought my party lenses,” Jeb said aloud, thinking back to the ones he’d gleaned from the strip clubs between Kalfath and Solmnath.

Zlesk glanced over to where Jeb was looking and snorted. “Don’t bother. Nobody likes that guy.”

They slipped away from the stream of aristocrats slowly entering the front gate and kept walking around the back.

Jeb was fairly sure one of the imperial guards was going to stop them as soon as they stepped out of the stream, but the guards posted every ten feet or so simply watched them dispassionately.

Weird, Jeb thought, watching them back.

You’d think they’d stop and question every single suspicious actor, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

There weren’t a whole lot of humans, and none of them were dressed quite as overtly combat-oriented as Jeb was. You’d think that would earn a few questions, but for some reason, they just watched the two of them passively.

Well, no skin off my back, Jeb thought as they headed for the back of the oversized mansion. At least he didn’t have to worry about being attacked by the assassin. The guy probably wouldn’t come within miles of this place, with imperial guards studding the landscape.

Jeb found Brett waiting outside the servant’s entrance. The supermodel was sitting on a fountain, eating an apple in the dark, faintly lit by the torches of the rear entrance.

Feels weird doing shady deals under the watchful eye of the imperial guard. But I doubt they have any skin in this particular game. Jeb figured they were a neutral party.

Or Brett betrayed me, and I’m dead meat. That’s always on the table.

“Brett!” Jeb said as he approached, the gravel of the rear lot crunching under his feet. “You technically outrank me now, so I’m calling in that IOU! I’ll give ‘er back in the morning. Probably.”

Brett frowned, his head cocked to the side.

Brett knows what I’m talking about. He has to know what I’m talking about.

Jeb looked harder, and saw the Myst packed in tight around the man’s face, forming the familiar features of his friend from the Tutorial.

Ah, son of a bitch. That’s not Brett. Option three, I guess, Jeb thought, reaching for his buckler as all hell broke loose.

***Korzath, level 43 Imperial Guard***

Korzath watched impassively as a half-dozen black-clothed assassin types jumped out of the fountain and the hedges, surrounding the one-legged human in a flat second.

There was a fair amount of shouting, and one of the kidnappers died to the human’s weapons, but in a handful of seconds, the human and his keegan associate were brought down and restrained, then dragged into the mansion.

He stifled a yawn.

They were under instructions from their superior not to interfere with the business of any one-legged humans today. Didn’t want to get caught up in the Emperor’s Summons.

He’d been around long enough to know a Summons when he saw one. Getting tied up and dragged into the emperor’s presence was uncommon, but not unheard-of, especially for people who normally had no interest in appearing before him.

Just one of those nights, he thought, glancing up at the horizon.

Sunset’s got a lot of color.

***Jeb***

Jeb opened his eyes with a groan, barely able to see through the rapidly swelling bruise on his left eye.

He already knew the score: Someone had intercepted his communication with the Courvars and set an ambush, and the only reason he was still alive was because they didn’t know if he had backup blackmail material…which he did.

As soon as they had that in their hands, Jeb’s life was forfeit.

And I can’t even lie. Goddamnit, this is going to be difficult.

“Good evening,” a sophisticated-looking melas man with a well-groomed goatee said upon noticing Jeb’s noise. “I thought you might be out longer than that, but you’re surprisingly resilient.”

He was wearing a green and gold tunic that would’ve looked garish on someone whose skin wasn’t nearly red. His horns seemed almost delicate, swept back like a pompadour. Behind him loomed two more melas thugs with their arms crossed, watching Jeb with that distinctive pleasure that only the very dim took in other people’s suffering.

In the noble’s hand, Jeb’s ‘big stack o’ reaping proof’ gradually burned down to cinders, licking the man’s fingertips without effect, and scattering paper ashes all around.

“Ugh,” Jeb grunted, doing a self-inventory. He was wearing nothing but bruises, his wrists were bound behind his back by thick scratchy rope, and a cold circle of steel was clamped around his neck…which seemed to be connected to the wall by a thick chain.

All of Jeb’s clothes and weapons were lying on a big table at the side of the room. His murder-buckler was lying on the edge, yellow arrow pointed diagonally down toward Jeb’s legs.

Jeb shifted his foot out of the way.

I wonder if I can pick the lock on this thing, Jeb thought, siphoning a thread of Myst out of his Core.

Something grabbed Jeb’s siphon and shoved it painfully deep into his Core, forcibly drawing Myst out of his body. The experience was deeply unpleasant, like a blowjob from a Shop-Vac.

“Gah!” Jeb thrashed in place on the cold stone floor, the chains connected to his neck rattling as something tried to suck all the magic out of his body in a terrifyingly literal sense. The siphon connecting him to the collar gradually grew bigger, seemingly reinforced by the Myst it was stealing from him.

Jeb’s Core flickered, shrinking slightly in size as the burning center of his being was drawn down the pipe.

With a monumental effort of will, Jeb pinched off the thread of Myst, his chin collapsing down to his chest.

So, telekinesis is off the table. Good to know.

“That…sucked.” Jeb groaned.

“I’ll bet,” the sophisticated-looking melas man said, brow raised. “Do you have any more?”

“More what? You’re going to have to be specific.”

“Do you have any more documents linking us to Kebos O’sut?”

“Of course,” Jeb said, meeting the bastard’s eyes. “I mean, not on me, but yeah, I’ve got a hidden stash.”

Jeb actually had two hidden stashes, but telling the guy he had one wasn’t a lie…not unless Jeb said he only had one. It was necessary to head off certain lines of inquiry by ceding misleading information.

“Where is it?”

“Telling you that seems like it would get me killed,” Jeb shot back.

“Quite astute, but you should consider your life spent at this point anyway. Instead, you should think about what other lives will be lost if you remain obstinate,” Mr. Sophistication said, coming closer and leaning down.

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll have to kill everyone you’ve come to know in Solmnath and burn your ridiculous orphanage to the ground with everyone locked inside.”

“How are you gonna lock them inside if you’ve already killed them? And if you’re talking about the corpses, it seems kind of redundant to lock the—”

A sharp slap knocked the last words out of Jeb’s mouth.

“It is not an idle threat,” the melas said, so close Jeb could smell the man’s lunch.

Jeb considered bisecting the man then and there, but with the two beefcakes in the back, it would be a short-lived victory. Best to wait until the numbers became manageable.

Jeb didn’t have to wait too long. A couple minutes of questioning later, the entire room shook, and shortly afterward, there was a polite knock on the door.

Mr. Sophistication ducked his head out the door.

“What!” The startled exclamation was the only thing Jeb could make out, followed by some harsh whispers.

“Watch him!” Mr. Sophistication said, pointing at Jeb as he rushed out, slamming the door behind him.

Suddenly silence reigned, and Jeb was alone with the two bruisers, who watched him with dim-witted malevolence.

“Sooo. Do you guys wanna play bridge or something?” Jeb asked with a shrug.

As it turned out, they did not want to play bridge.

“I was thinking more along the lines of making you squeal like a breek caught in a fence,” the left one said, unfolding his arms.

The entire building trembled.

“Is anyone else concerned about that?” Jeb asked as the right-hand thug picked a sharp blade off the table, eyeing Jeb menacingly.

“Oh, lay off the sharp objects, dude,” Jeb said with exasperation. “If you cut me in the wrong place and I bleed out, your boss is gonna kill you.”

The two glanced at each other and shared a dim look.

“What are we supposed to do, then?” he asked his friend.

“You work me over with your hands. Start from the outside and work your way in. Break my fingers and toes, as it’s very difficult to kill me from damage to those. Then you beat my arms, legs, and ribcage around a little bit, but be careful not to make me bleed internally too badly. Am I the only one who knows the right way to torture someone?” Jeb asked.

“That sounds like a lot of thinking.”

“Torture is a serious responsibility,” Jeb said. “You shouldn’t try it if you’re not interested in it.”

The guy stomped on Jeb’s toes with his thick boot.

“AAAHH! FUCK!”

“You got a smart mouth,” the melas brute said, lifting his foot off of Jeb’s toes.

“Eh.” Jeb shrugged, too pained to come up with something clever.

The room wobbled. For an instant, Jeb felt like he was gonna fall sideways as gravity seemed to shudder to the side before returning to its usual direction. The floor under his ass creaked in protest as it settled back.

“The Roil was that?” Leftie asked, steadying himself on the table.

“Maybe you should…”

“I’ll check it out,” Leftie said, stabbing the knife back into the table and heading for the door.

Jeb winked three times with his right eye, taking advantage of their distraction. He glanced over at the murder-buckler, making double-sure of the yellow arrow’s trajectory, what with the room shaking and all.

It had shifted a little, but it wasn’t aimed at Jeb, so that was good. Once the other bruiser had left the room, it was time to act. If he didn’t escape now, he was asking to die.

“I’ve been wondering, is it normal for melas women to burst into flame during orgasm?” Jeb asked, getting the brute’s attention. “Because that’s the sort of thing I’ll need to know if I start dating Vresh Tekalis.”

The melas scowled. “What would you know about it?”

“Check my dick for burn marks,” Jeb said, waggling his hips with a grin. “Could it be from your mom? You decide.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” the melas said, prying the dagger out of the wood and approaching Jeb menacingly with it.

Jeb watched carefully as the man’s legs entered the simulated strike zone.

“Yellow go fast.”

“Yellow go wha—”

The murder-buckler flung itself in the direction of the yellow arrow, spinning violently as it did, the Udium saw blades audibly tearing through the air. It treated flesh like water, and stone like butter in its mission to follow the trajectory of the yellow arrow.

Chunk! The bloody murder-buckler bored through the stone flooring beside Jeb’s leg as the melas brute toppled forward, his eyes wide with surprise.

Jeb tugged at the shredded rope behind his back, freeing his hands as the legless melas fell forward, eyes wide. The telekinetic blade was still sawing away right at the edge of Jeb’s skin as he brought his arms to bear.

In a heartbeat, Jeb grabbed the dagger with his right hand, and the man’s horns with his left, steering them both out of the danger zone. Jeb didn’t want to get stabbed by a falling asshole he’d already beat.

That would be embarrassing.

“AII—!” The melas let out a shrill scream before Jeb stabbed him in the throat, shutting him up.

Jeb’s enemy didn’t go down fast or easy, struggling with everything he had while bleeding from both legs and the throat. Were the man not so mortally wounded, he would’ve utterly destroyed Jeb. As it was, Jeb was drenched with blood by the time the bruiser went still.

Jeb collapsed against the wall, panting, the dagger drooping in his hands. Jeb wasn’t sure if the blood he tasted in his mouth was from overexertion or from the puddle he was sitting in.

Could be both.

Jeb desperately tried to catch his breath as he thought of Step 2: He needed to get this collar off, or failing that, he needed to get the chain off the wall. The chain looked like old-fashioned steel, and the murder-buckler should be able to cut through it easily enough.

Jeb glanced over at the disc-shaped hole in the floor where the buckler had punctured through.

Might be easier said than done, he thought.

CRACK!

There was a tearing sound that was felt through the entire room, almost as if some enormous beam that had been supporting the floor had been mostly severed by some asshole’s saw blade, and had chosen this exact moment to give out.

The floor fell out from under him.

My neck! Jeb thought, grabbing the chain as he began falling through the air.

Chapter 26: The Storm (Pt. 2)

***Brett***

Brett was no stranger to a party.

He’d never been to a party with naked bird-women carrying trays of hors d’oeuvres, but still: If you’ve been to one orgy where everyone’s wearing a big-bird mask, you’ve been to them all.

Amanda and Brett split apart like hunters herding their prey, splitting the meet-and-greets up for maximum effect. He went left and smiled and shook hands, bowed and waggled his neck at all the horrible feudal jokes, while Amanda took the right-hand side of the party, with the aim of meeting in the center.

Once they’d met up, they could team up to distract high-value targets. Normally Amanda would distract potential clients while he ran interference, but in this case, gender wasn’t really an issue, and a large portion of the aliens seemed to find breasts strange, rather than enticing.

So they switched jobs, and Amanda was in charge of prying people away from important dignitaries, while Brett swept in from the side and engaged them in rousing tales of the Impossible Tutorial, their primary claim to fame.

Then he would subtly guide the conversation towards the advertising business, and how modern humans used mass communication to shape public opinion.

“Like those shows of yours!” the kitri diplomat said, his neck waggling in amusement as he pointed at Brett. “You know, up until recently, the mass communication system has always belonged to the government.

“I mean, I enjoy your show, but there’s no market for selling plays to the masses without even charging admission,” he said, taking a drink of his wine.

Brett smiled and began to regale him with tales of the power of ‘advertising’ and how a popular show could be funded purely through businesses if it featured their products. Hell, with the right support, Brett and Amanda could create an entire series that would entertain millions, all while spreading their sponsor’s name to the far reaches of the empire.

A local tried to horn in on Brett’s action and Amanda grabbed him by the elbow and steered him forcibly away, chatting amiably as the poor keegan struggled to extricate himself.

Thanks, honey.

The party was going rather well, as the pair pitched the idea of television to anyone with the money to fund it. In a few years, they might be the proud owners of a global syndicate.

They’d rather be the people signing the checks, after all.

It was just something to do while they waited for Jeb to show up with his list. Oddly enough, the cripple hadn’t contacted them when they arrived, although the emperor reassured them that their friend would arrive on time.

I wonder when the shit’s gonna hit the fan? Brett wondered idly. During their brief, the emperor had basically told them to roll with whatever bizarre series of events happened in the throne room, and that it would all be over in a matter of minutes.

The last guest had just been announced when a strange vibration rocked the mansion, causing the chandeliers to swing above their heads.

Umm… What was that? Brett thought, glancing up at the wobbling lights.

Click, click, click! A retainer in the emperor’s colors sprinted along the side of the ballroom, dodging around one of the serving girls, nearly colliding with her.

The keegan runner headed to the center of the ballroom, where the emperor was chatting with the governor of Solmnath. The governor was not quite powerful enough to be a king, but was still in charge of the oversized city. With the addition of L.A.’s infrastructure, the man was likely to become one of Pikaku’s vassal kings.

The emperor held out an oversized claw, motioning for silence while the runner whispered in his ear. The entire ballroom fell silent, and soon enough only quiet whispers spread through the hall. Brett thought he saw an instant of alarm in the emperor’s expression, but he couldn’t quite tell, being a human.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the emperor said into the quiet, heading up to the raised throne at the far end of the hall and taking a seat, placing himself above all others.

I gotta admit…he does look a little like Big Bird, Brett thought.

“The Roil is coming here.”

The Emperor’s voice echoed through the stunned silence for a moment, before all hell broke loose around Amanda and Brett.

“The walls aren’t finished yet!”

“It was heading northeast, directly away from Solmnath!”

“Why would it—”

Brett caught Amanda’s gaze and shrugged. They’d heard ‘the Roil’ used as a swear word plenty of times, but nobody’d ever said it could come after you.

The emperor held up a clawed hand, then pointed to one of his vassals, a kitri in gold and white brocade.

“Calm yourselves, please. Tiyaku, if you would show us what we’re dealing with.”

The bird nodded and spread its arms, facing the northeast corner of the hall. A thick thread of Myst spooled out of the bird-person, and resolved into a huge image of the city of Solmnath, taken from a bird’s-eye view.

In the distance, the horizon wavered and scintillated as some invisible thing warped the light passing through it. A pale trail of stone was left in the wake of the invisible storm.

“Thank you, Tiyaku,” the emperor said, nodding to his vassal, who dropped the magic with a weary sag of their shoulders.

“It’s time for you to fulfill the oaths of your office,” the emperor said to the assembled nobles, clicking his talons on the throne. “You are in luck, as my travelling guard has a fair number of Warders, and I’m pleased to offer them to defend the city. In light of that, you should need no more than a hundred of your number to keep the Roil at bay.”

Brett glanced around, noting that there were approximately a hundred and fifty nobles.

“I would be honored to serve!” the governor shouted valiantly, pounding his chest in a very non-keegan move.

“As would I!”

“My family expects nothing less from me!”

In short order, every single noble had volunteered, overeager to show off in front of the big cheese.

“Come now,” the emperor said. “You would leave me here to eat all the hors d’oeuvres alone? I might be powerful, but I’m physically incapable of housing that much food.”

The emperor tapped his claw against his beak for a moment, head bobbing back and forth in thought. “I understand your honor and your willingness to serve, but that’s simply overkill. I would prefer to keep a few of you in reserve and preserve the ambiance of the night as much as possible.

“I know,” the emperor said, raising a claw. “We’ll draw straws. The long sticks may go and fend off the hateful abomination, and the short sticks will remain here and keep me company.”

One of the nearby imperial guards turned to the nearby servants and began barking instructions. “Servants, twenty of you go to the serving tables and grab eight chopsticks, then shorten two. Then half of you discard a short one.”

“Apologies for the rushed math,” the bird on the throne said. “We are in a bit of a hurry.”

As if to accentuate the man’s words, the entire building shuddered again.

Curious, Brett went to the window, where the crowd of aliens had begun to gather. The mansion had a great view of the walls of the city, perched atop a high hill in a manner that allowed them to overlook their lessers. In the distance, the walls of Solmnath began to glow and expand.

…What?

The walls glowed faintly teal, the layered stone pulling apart, resolving into smaller and smaller parts as it seemed to flow into a kind of cloud that expanded up and over the city proper…

It’s making a dome, Brett realized as he watched the unfinished edges of the walls billow outward, connecting with each other to form a curved surface of faintly glowing dust, perhaps five feet thick and perfectly smooth.

The dome was rising just in time to present a unified front to the wavering cloud of twisted light. Outside the confines of the wall, the land shifted riotously, plants growing and withering in a matter of seconds, the land and weather seemingly shifting like waves on the ocean.

Solmnath presented a tiny, pale blue barrier against the raging chaos battering against the city, and somehow, the city resisted.

Or maybe not, Brett thought, his superhuman eyes picking up a few palm trees visibly shrinking inside the blue barrier. A few buildings collapsed, their support transmuted to bone rather than wood.

A servant politely tapped Brett’s shoulder, dragging him out of his gawking. The kitri held a fistful of chopsticks out to him.

Short stick… Usually that’s a bad thing, but I think in this case…that might not be a bad thing. Brett glanced over his shoulder toward the stream of nobles running for the exit at superhuman speeds. When he looked down, he could already see the tiny figures heading for the walls, their fancy robes billowing behind them like capes.

Almost like superheroes, he thought idly.

Amanda grabbed Brett’s shoulder and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I got a long straw. I’ll be back soon, babe!”

Brett’s heart seized with worry. Amanda’s going out into that? Normally Brett would be wholeheartedly against it, but with great power… “Don’t die. You can abandon them if you have to,” Brett called after her.

After all, Brett had the sneaking suspicion it would be more dangerous to stay.

Brett glanced at the emperor. The bird met his gaze.

He winked.

Is this what he meant by rolling with the weirdness? Brett thought, frowning. Once the last of the long-straws had left the room, he watched the oversized double doors close with a strange sense of finality.

A sudden pulse of sideways gravity nearly plucked Brett off his feet, dragging his attention back to the window. The storm had just impacted against the pale dome of luminescing dust, and the defensive wall’s glow waned for a gut-wrenching second before the brightness stabilized.

“Come away from the windows, guests of mine; your peers have the situation well in hand. If more strength is needed, I will shoulder that responsibility with the rest of you. Be at ease.”

The nobles stepped away from the wall, but with only a couple dozen people left in the room, the conversation was greatly diminished. Honestly, it felt like trying to host a cocktail party in a foxhole, just waiting for a shell to drop in and turn them all to burger.

They could go through the motions, but their heart wasn’t in it.

“I see. It was immature of me to expect you to simply ignore death sniffing at your door. Perhaps you need some entertainment to bring back the mood,” the emperor said, rubbing his beak. He snapped his fingers together, the claws dimpling his palm. “I know! How about I Summon a guest to liven things up?”

The few remaining nobles looked confused, murmuring to each other under their breath. The emperor’s infamous Ability to Summon was not typically used as a party trick.

“I don’t know who could possibly take our minds off—”

SKRRRR!

A circular saw popped through the ceiling with an ear-piercing whine, heading straight for the bird sitting on the throne at a speed that Brett could barely make out. It was little more than an afterimage in Brett’s vision by the time it made contact with the emperor.

The kitri lazily raised a hand and caught the spinning blade between thumb and forefinger, inches away from his beak.

“Jebediah Trapper.”

The fancily-dressed melas standing next to Brett paled, his goblet warping in his grip.

CRACK!

The ceiling in front of the throne gave way, and a dismembered body fell through the ceiling in a rain of blood, splattering the audience in gore as it hit the ground.

A fraction of a second later, Jebediah Trapper fell through the ceiling, naked and coated from head to toe in blood, a thick iron collar around his neck. The one-legged human had a death grip on the chain and when it jerked to a halt halfway to the floor, it tore itself out of his hand, applying the rest of Jeb’s momentum to his neck.

“Hurk!”

Jeb went still for a moment, looking like one of those Japanese weather dolls as he hung by the neck in front of the emperor.

Is he…dead? Brett thought, his heart sinking. Did Pikaku just kill him with his Summon? It’s a damn good thing Amanda isn’t here. If Amanda thought they’d gotten Jeb killed by telling the emperor about him, she’d be inconsolable for weeks.

After a moment of ominous silence, Jeb gave a choked gasp and reached behind his head, grabbing the chain to take the weight off his neck.

“How’s it hanging?” he groaned, eyeing the audience as he spun in place, suspended above them like a bloody, naked human chandelier.

***Jebediah Trapper***

Jeb didn’t know how long he was out; being unconscious was like that. But when he woke up, he was hanging from the ceiling, his entire body was tingling from a bruised spine, and—I can’t breathe!

Jeb desperately reached up behind his neck and grabbed the chain, pulling up as hard as he could with the awkward angle.

With Jeb’s supernatural strength and resilience…it was enough to let him catch his breath and take a moment to get his bearings.

Beneath him, rather than an endless abyss like he had feared, there was a ballroom filled with ostentatiously dressed folk of every species, including the Big Bird-looking dude up on the throne, casually setting aside Jeb’s buckler.

Must…be…sarcastic….

“How’s it hanging?” Jeb asked the crowd as he spun like a DIY disco ball, his voice hoarse from the damage to his neck.

The emperor honked. He sounded like a goose, except a two hundred pound one.

“Jebediah Trapper,” the creature nesting on the throne said, head wobbling slightly from side to side in what Jeb could only assume was mirth. “I believe you have a list of names for me?”

“Ummm…”

Above Jeb, the table with all his shit slipped a bit deeper into the hole, tilting sideways. Jeb’s faux foot rolled off and tumbled down into the gaping hole between the two floors. The fancy prosthetic spun and whirled down into the waiting palm of the emperor.

In the beaked creature’s claws, the hidden compartment simply popped open on its own, the unfaithful slattern.

“Oh, here it is,” the emperor said, pinching the tightly-folded list out of the tiny compartment and idly tossing Jeb’s foot aside.

“Set up the transmitter.”

Jeb got a bird’s-eye view as a dark knight swept out from behind the emperor’s throne, seemingly invisible until a second ago. They held one of the strange orbs that passed for a magical camera, and with a swift motion, set it up behind the emperor’s throne.

The bird-man deliberately unfolded the list of names taken from the Book of Honor, his eyes scanning the page.

“No!” Mr. Sophistication shouted, lunging forward.

“Kratz Velos.”

The charging melas was tackled by a nearby human with short-cropped brown hair….

Is that Brett? Jeb wondered, frowning as his fingers searched for a weak spot on the chain.

“Adensus Parvey.”

One of the keegan near the front of the room went stock-still for an instant before he turned to run away, aiming for the oversized double doors.

The imperial guard, so seemingly lax in the hours leading up to this moment, had formed a wall of flesh and steel between the nobles and freedom.

The emperor kept reading names off the list, causing all the remaining thirty-some nobles to show reactions that ranged from outrage to sheer unbridled terror.

Are… Are these people all the ones on the list, and only the ones on the list? Jeb thought, frowning.

The emperor had just easily rounded up all the people Jeb had basically thrown up his hands and given up on. The question was… How the hell did he do it without spooking them?

“You might be wondering why I called you here,” the emperor said, setting the list aside. “The perceptive amongst you might have noticed that there is a common thread connecting the nobles of Solmnath that I have assembled before me.

“And that is—”

“Pip three—Hurk!”

Jeb jerked in place as the cone of force speared up through the chain link, widening it just enough to release the collar. The spear of force shot up above his head and broke the damaged ceiling a little more while Jeb fell the last ten feet to the hard marble floor, slamming down on top of the legless corpse.

From the perspective of millions of people living throughout the empire, a bloody, naked man fell flailing into frame, interrupting the emperor mid-reveal. The man covered his genitals, gave a sheepish wave, and hopped out of frame.

Cool as a cucumber, the emperor kept going.

“Each and every one of you has killed a human child under the age of twelve for no purpose other than to gain levels. In the common parlance, we call this ‘reaping’.”

One of the keegan nobles stepped forward, shaking his fist. “Those were Honor Duels! We were merely defending ourselves from upstart humans. Accusing us of reaping is an overreach of power, even for you!”

“Yeah,” another said. “The victors of Honor Duels are protected by law! You have no grounds to accuse us of anything!”

The emperor tapped a claw against the side of his beak, head waggling slightly. “Indeed, I can’t punish you for slaughtering human children under the guise of Honor Duels.”

“Hah!”

“I can punish you for funding immortality experiments. Kebos O’sut.”

Jeb frowned. He spotted some kind of grey Myst moving around the emperor, but it was almost like an inverted ripple—as if the Myst moved inward toward the kitri the instant before he said the name, then rippled back outward after he said it.

That’s…weird.

Doors to the side of the throne burst open, and a battered keegan in chains was carried inside by imperial guards, his head drooping.

“This wanted criminal was driven back inside the walls of the city by the Roil. What should we do with him?”

“Put him right there,” the emperor said, pointing at the foot of his dais. The imperial guards tossed the keegan into the center of the room, then they seamlessly joined the wall of steel trapping the rest of the guests inside the ballroom.

“As you might know, research into any kind of immortality, and the deliberate engineering thereof, is punishable by death.”

The emperor flipped the list around and showed it to Kebos O’sut. “Were these children biologically immortal?”

Kebos lifted a bruised eye, peering through the list of names. “Yes.”

The surrounding guests immediately protested. “This is preposterous! You can’t just—”

The black knight flickered across fifty feet in the blink of an eye and punched the noble in the face hard enough to shatter his jaw—and more importantly, shut him up.

“And did these people...” The emperor moved his hand to the other side of the list. “...provide the capital required to make these children immortal?”

“Yes,” O’sut said, blood dripping from his teeth.

“Well, there you have it,” the kitri said, leaning back in his throne and casually folding the list.

“In light of the nature of the crime and as a gesture of goodwill toward the newest race to join the empire, I would like my human vassals to carry out the punishment. Mr. Courvar? Ms. Stile?”

The knight dressed head-to-toe in spiky black armor flicked her wrist, a jagged blade manifesting in her hand an instant before it crunched through the broken-jawed keegan’s wrist, followed by his neck.

All hell broke loose.

The nobles, whose composure had been holding on by a thread, panicked, scattering every direction like scared rabbits.

The imperial guards were composed of high-level aristocrats themselves, and they shoved the panicked men and women back into the center of the room through sheer superhuman strength, forcing them into a narrow kill box in the center of the hall, where the black knight went to town on their asses.

Brett was doing his own thing. He wasn’t able to move quite as quickly as the black knight, but he hit hard, and every once in a while Jeb caught a flash of light interspersed in the underwear model’s movements.

Seeing an opportunity to complete his Deal with Vresh, Jeb hopped out from the side of the room, aiming for Kebos, snatching up his errant foot and yanking it on as he did.

“Mr. O’sut!” Jeb said, aiming a finger.

The keegan glanced up, exposing his eye-holes.

“Pip four.”

O’sut threw up a manacled hand, interposing his hand between the spear and his eye.

The spear of force caught the restrained keegan’s hand and dragged him six feet across the hall, until it buried itself in the hard marble floor.

Gotta follow up, Jeb thought, hobbling forward as quickly as he could.

“You bastard! This is your fault!” O’sut said, flinging himself to his feet and charging Jeb. Jeb held out his palm, spread as wide as he could, and the telekinetic shield popped into being between them.

The keegan’s eyes widened as his fist was stopped by the invisible shield, giving Jeb enough time to get out of the way, catching the man’s wrist and wrenching it around the stationary shield. The move drew an anguished cry out of O’sut’s lungs rather than breaking the keegan’s arm like Jeb had been hoping, due to his likely insane Body.

And that was about as far as Jeb’s plan got. The keegan killer adapted faster, whipping his body the rest of the way around the shield and grabbing Jeb’s head, riding him to the ground.

From the expression on the man’s face, and the way he wrapped his oversized fingers around Jeb’s skull, he was planning on popping Jeb’s head like a grape. The keegan was even starting to drool a little, his eyes bloodshot.

As much as Jeb wanted to accuse him of throwing a tantrum, the man was about to crush his skull, so he was much more preoccupied with trying to alleviate the mounting pressure on his braincase.

Jeb grunted, pulling on O’sut’s wrists, but it was like trying to stop a Mack truck with a wall made of cardboard boxes.

And it certainly isn’t helping this fucking headache! Jeb thought as he struggled in the noble’s grip.

He tried to think of an out. With the suppression collar on, Jeb was even more gimped than usual, unable to simply shove him off telekinetically.

Usually the solution is to shoot an eye out, Jeb thought, taking his hand away from the man’s wrist, allowing the pressure on his skull to redouble for an instant as he aimed his finger at the killer’s face.

The keegan lunged forward, his pearly teeth nipping Jeb’s finger off in a fraction of a second before spitting it aside.

“Pip five!” Jeb shouted before the pain even registered. “Gah!”

The spear flew out from the severed tip of Jeb’s finger and caught a random noble in the side, forcing him to drop his magical blade, which skittered across the marble floor toward the two of them.

Jeb reached out and grabbed it, swinging with everything he had at the manic Keegan’s face. The blade didn’t penetrate more than an eighth of an inch into the bone. O’sut grabbed the blade barehanded and wrenched it away.

Okay, this isn’t looking good, Jeb thought. Time for the nuclear option.

“Room full of Cha—” O’sut shoved bloody fingers into Jeb’s mouth and leaned forward.

Right there, at their most excellent moment together, they both saw exactly what was going to happen next: O’sut was going to rip Jeb’s jaw off.

Jeb started winking as fast as he could, alternating between left and right, hoping he could go faster than O’sut could tear off his favorite jaw.

O’sut tensed for a moment before flinching and letting out a howl of pain, a bit of smoke emerging from over his shoulder.

Jeb finished the third wink on his left side, completing the alternate trigger for the ‘Room full of Charlies’ command.

Telekinetic spears flew out in every direction, dozens catching the child-killer in the chest and flinging him up into the high ceiling above them.

Several spears were absorbed by the reinforced shields of the surrounding nobles, and the emperor leaned out of the way of another one, where it drilled a hole in the throne behind his head.

Jeb scrambled to the side, snatching up the sword while his spears held O’sut stapled to the ceiling. Jeb’s grip almost slipped, his right hand slick with gushing blood as it was. He wrapped his dry left hand around the handle too, making damn sure he had a good grip on the blade.

A moment later, the spears ran their course and the keegan fell down from the ceiling, hitting the marble hard.

Jeb didn’t wait for him to get up, or even twitch. He heaved the blade down like he was trying to win a prize.

The blade sank into the rock-hard flesh and most of the way through the Keegan’s spine, killing him instantly. Jeb wrenched the blade out and kicked the keegan over before striking again, severing the neck the rest of the way.

Gotta be sure.

From the back of the corpse, he spotted a smoking hole in the madman’s shoulder, and glanced up at Brett, who winked.

“Lasers!?” Jeb demanded.

“Lasers are cool,” Brett shouted back across the room with a shrug, before pouncing on his next victim.

Jeb hefted the sword, looking for the next threat, panting furiously, when his head began to pound.

Oh, shit, not now.

Jeb’s entire body began to cramp, his emotions running wild as he sank to his knees, clutching his head.

He’d just fulfilled his side of his Deal with Vresh.

The Deal favored her, didn’t it? Jeb thought. Why would I be getting Attribute Sickness from her not talking about me!?

Out of the corner of his eye, Jeb spotted Mr. Sophistication charging him, the melas literally breathing smoke, he was so pissed.

Jeb tried to raise the sword in time to block, but his muscles refused to respond, too busy pulling themselves painfully apart.

Thankfully, the black knight flickered up beside Mr. Sophistication and lopped the melas’s head off with a casual swing. The horned head tumbled past Jeb while the body slid to a halt in front of him.

“Cripples should hide behind the throne,” a familiar voice said as the ominous black helmet faded into thick smoke before vanishing.

“You’ve got a ‘fro now,” Jeb said, looking up at Jess. Her hair was growing back in since the Tutorial, but being curly, it made a silly-looking poof around her head.

Jess’s eyes narrowed, and she clicked her tongue.

Jeb wasn’t going to make fun of her for it, though. His gaze flickered down to Razorback, the wicked-looking blade caked in blood.

Nope, definitely not going to make fun of her.

Jeb looked past her and noticed that every single noble in the room not wearing the colors of the emperor’s personal guard was lying in a puddle of their own blood.

The room fell silent.

“Now,” the emperor said, leaning forward in his seat, his voice cutting through the emptiness. “We have to decide what to do with you, Jebediah Trapper.”

Chapter 27: Aftermath

Jeb froze in front of the throne, feeling like a very small animal in front of a very large snake…with cheerful yellow plumage.

“Without this information, we wouldn’t have exposed this level of corruption in our local government, and for your help excising this tumor from my empire, I must thank you.”

The emperor stood, walking gracefully down to where Jeb was crouched—seemingly gliding down the steps, the way his legs held his body stable.

“I thank you,” he said, reaching out and putting his hands near Jeb’s neck.

Jeb’s breath caught for an instant before the kitri’s claws squished through the hinge on his collar like a soft cheese. A moment later, it fell away from his neck and clattered to the floor.

Jeb immediately used Myst to cinch down on his finger stub, stopping the bleeding.

“Get this man a coat!” the emperor said. “We can’t let Solmnath’s protector carry on in shame!”

A coat was hustled over to where the two of them stood, and Jeb accepted it gratefully, as well as the hand up. Jeb wrapped the coat around himself, glad for its length as the emperor pulled Jeb into a human-looking handshake with his good hand, albeit strangely awkward and from the wrong angle.

He was shaking hands with Jeb, but his body was turned to the side, away from Jeb. Jeb frowned at this, glancing up at the emperor, who wasn’t even looking at him—he was looking at the throne.

No, he’s looking at the camera. It’s a photo-op handshake! Damnit!

Jeb stiffened and made double-sure his junk was tucked away, grinning awkwardly for the camera.

“How can I possibly thank the man who single-handedly uncovered this horrifying conspiracy?” the emperor asked.

Like involuntary word vomit, Jeb’s mouth started talking without his permission.

“Don’t thank me. In actuality, Zlesk Frantell deserves all the credit for bringing these people to justice. He’s the former sheriff of Kalfath, a law-abiding Citizen, and a goddamn decent fellow. I owe him credit for every major accomplishment I’ve made in Solmnath, and without him I’d probably be dead a couple times over.”

Jeb grinned into the camera, his jaw clenched behind his smile.

“And…cut,” Brett said, plucking the spherical camera out of its placement and pressing the button on top.

An invisible sense of tension was cut, like a wire that had been holding Jeb up until this point, and he sagged in relief for a moment, free of his Debt to Zlesk.

Once the emperor was certain the camera was off, his bird-neck twisted, fixing Jeb with a steely gaze that seemed to bore right into his soul. Jeb’s spine straightened again.

“So. Jebediah Trapper. You didn’t show up when I rerouted all the survivors of the Impossible Tutorial to Mestikos. Why is that?”

He pinched Jeb’s hand experimentally. “I assumed it was because you were far stronger than me, which made sense at the time, but you can’t have more than thirteen Body. I could sneeze on you and you’d break like tissue paper. If you’d had more Myst than me, you would have melted the suppressor like so much cotton candy.

“Here I thought I had someone who could potentially destabilize the empire as a whole and cause some serious trouble for me, but you’re actually rather weak. What happened?”

“The gods punished me for smelling wrong. You probably tried to summon me while they were discussing it.”

The kitri’s eyes went wide, his neck waggling minutely. “Seriously?”

The bird cleared his throat, regaining his composure before he patted Jeb on the shoulder. “Now that I’ve seen you, I’m more comfortable inviting you to Mestikos.”

“What’s in Mestikos?” Jeb asked.

“The capital, and more specifically, a bunch of your rewards from completing the Impossible Tutorial. Your whole team pitched in.”

“They’re probably safer in your hands.”

“True,” the emperor said. “What good is a magic blade if a man could tear it out of your grip with his bare hands? In any case, you’re more than welcome to swing by any time you like and pick up some or all of what you are owed.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” the emperor said, turning toward his throne and ascending the stairs. “You’re the kind of Citizen I wish I had more of.”

“Speaking of Citizens you wish you had more of, is Zlesk okay?” Jeb asked.

“Zlesk who?” the emperor said as he sat.

“Zlesk Frantell, former sheriff of Kalfath. The keegan who helped me. He got captured at the same time I did. I just mentioned him?”

“Oh, him.”

The emperor took a breath, and Myst rippled toward him before echoing outward as he spoke.

“Zlesk Frantell.”

“Jeb, are you okaYYY!” Zlesk’s voice echoed from the room above them as Zlesk slipped on something above them, tumbling through the hole in the ceiling to land directly in front of Jeb.

“Ugh.” The keegan groaned, pushing himself up.

“He seems fine,” the emperor said, leaning back in his throne.

He’s literally controlling causality, isn’t he? Jeb’s thoughts were awhirl as his mind unpacked the potential.

The list of names fell into his hand because he was going to say them… I was here with that list because he was going to say them. If he says a name, they show up, through dumb luck or simply by already being present.

Jeb’s brain hurt a little as he tried to process how a Myst Core could manipulate luck in order to trigger its own activation, the last remnants of the Attribute Sickness making it difficult to think.

Is he…in control of his power, or is he getting dragged around the empire by his own Myst?

It might be a bit of both.

A glint of copper caught Jeb’s attention as the table above them slipped some more and sent itself and all Jeb’s gear raining down onto the floor around Zlesk.

Jeb’s copper plate with Vresh’s symbol clattered on the marble floor, attracting the emperor’s attention.

“Ah, I see,” the emperor said, gazing at the Mark. Jeb’s headache resurfaced for a moment, then quieted down again.

“I could think of worse roles for you than serving as Vresh’s deputy,” the kitri said, his head cocked to the side. “And I understand why she was reticent to reveal your identity.

“Once her suspension is over, I will direct her to continue your arrangement. You may leave, with my blessing. This mess is for my sworn vassals to clean up.” The emperor waved dismissively.

The imperial guards stepped away from the double doors in one smooth step, allowing them to swing open.

So I just go, then? Jeb thought, glancing around as a flood of nobles re-entered the room from the outside, gaping in astonishment at the sheer carnage.

Some of them looked less than happy, and a few of them were looking at Jeb. The people slaughtered here were the nobles’ friends and co-workers, so they were understandably testy.

Yep, time to go, Jeb thought, bundling up his clothes and gear and taking the walk of shame out of the mansion beside Zlesk. He made damn sure to find his severed finger before searching the crowd for Amanda. If Brett was here, hopefully the healer wasn’t too far off.

He didn’t want any more stumps.

Jeb was lucky, picking out Amanda’s blonde hair among the stream of incoming nobles, and he was able to beg a healing off of her on his way out, reattaching his finger in a matter of seconds with a jolt of chilling white Myst.

It was a little stiff afterwards, but that was a hell of a lot better than gone. Jeb thanked her as profusely as he could before heading for the exit, the eyes of the surrounding nobles burning into his skin.

“Hey Jeb!” he heard Brett call. When he glanced over his shoulder, the underwear model continued. “Beer later?”

Jeb gave him a weak thumbs-up and kept trodding along.

When they got back, they found the orphanage a wreck. Parts of the mansion were burned out and still smoldering, and dead bodies littered the grounds. Some of them had tiny holes through the top of their heads, while others were simply cleaved into chunks.

None of them were children.

Mr. Sophistication must have been trying to ‘take care’ of the kids while he knew Jeb and Zlesk were away, but it had turned out very poorly for them. It wasn’t just old men and women guarding the mansion, after all.

“Good job, Buck, Legolas,” Jeb said, patting the powerful stag’s furry shoulder as he limped through the courtyard. The death-deer stamped a foot and snorted proudly above an annihilated corpse. Legolas the drone hovered silently above them, the Annihilation lens pointed toward the ground.

Jeb put his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Everybody who’s still alive, gather ‘round, I need to sign your slave release forms!”

Mr. and Mrs. Lang, as well as the Everetts, popped their heads above a windowsill, followed by several hundred children and Colt.

“Where the hell have you been, pops?” Colt shouted from behind a half-burned windowsill.

Is that a rhetorical question? Jeb thought, frowning. They must’ve seen him shake hands with the emperor with his dick hanging out.

“He was shaking hands with Big Bird with his dick hanging out, that’s where he was!”

“I think you go to jail for that!”

Colt high-fived a couple nearby boys of a similar age.

Jeb’s eyes narrowed as he wondered why he’d saved these brats in the first place.

He was contemplating infanticide when he felt someone tug the corner of his jacket. He glanced down and spotted Nancy. The dark-haired little girl had to crane her neck to look up at him, and she was holding a blood-soaked spear to her chest.

“Thanks for saving us,” she said, her head bobbing with childish sincerity.

***3 days later***

The bruises were starting to die down, and Jeb could drink without aggravating his split lip, so he figured it was the right time to catch up with Brett and Amanda over a beer.

Ron sat in the booth beside them, grateful to be able to drink alcohol by himself again since Amanda patched him up. The necromancer had been carried in on a walking undead bed, fully expecting to have one of his zombies feed him.

The conversation covered just about every subject, from what they’d been doing since the Tutorial ended, to money, the weather, real estate, the law, and how their lives were going.

Of course, the Courvars—sellouts that they were—were doing fine, having brokered a deal with the emperor. In all likelihood, they would be the first human king and queen of a new territory, and masters of T.V.

Jeb posed to them the question of whether television was viable in a society where everyone had to go out and physically work long shifts every day rather than a more modern approach with machinery and 8-hour shifts.

“They had radio in the forties,” Brett responded with a shrug.

“That’s true.”

“So Ron’s got a farm, you guys are going for royalty,” Jeb said, ticking off his fingers, “and Jess is a reaper-reaper,” Jeb said, making sure to flex his stiff finger as he did.

“Who am I missing? Casey, right? What happened to her?”

“Last I checked, she had, like a Denny’s or something. She brought the whole thing with her wherever she went,” Brett said.

“That’s what Ron told me,” Jeb said, nodding. “So you guys don’t know any more than that?”

“I think she didn’t want anything more than a manageable slice of property,” Amanda said. “A girl that age would probably be intimidated by much more than that. She didn’t strike me as a particularly aggressive type, either.”

Click.

Everyone at the table blinked as the magical empire-wide transmitter interrupted their conversation, making the surface of the table into a live feed.

There was a bit of fumbling with the camera and some soft cursing before the person stepped back and into focus. Jeb’s eyebrows rose as he recognized Casey’s slender figure.

“Greetings Citizens, this is Imperial Enforcer Casey Thompson, dispatched to the southern reaches of the empire upon reports of a reaper.”

She took a deep breath and continued. “Reaping is defined as the systematic murder of sapient individuals in order to gain levels at an accelerated pace. It is an intolerable cancer on our society, a direct violation of the Sacarus Accord, and the punishment is death.”

In front of Jeb’s eyes, steel puppets dragged a flailing man into frame and flayed him alive.

Casey’s complexion grew gradually more and more green, until the teen mom doubled over off-screen, retching violently.

The feed cut off a moment after that.

The members of Jeb’s team, every one of them older and wiser than Casey, sat and stared at the empty table, wondering how the hell that came about.

“There’s an explanation for that,” Jeb said, tapping at the table. “And I’m pretty sure it’s not a pleasant one.”

“If she’s working as an enforcer, there’s gotta be a reason,” Ron said, frowning.

“I’ll give you one guess as to what it is,” Jeb said, scowling. Moms in general have one unifying reason why they do insanely dangerous things they would rather not do: their babies.

“She wanted to travel?”

Brett reached over and smacked Ron in the back of the head.

Amanda took a deep breath and found the positive. “We know she’s alive, and if baby Casey weren’t alive, she wouldn’t be working as an enforcer. It’s good to know they’re both breathing, anyway.”

She took a deep swig of her drink and turned to Jeb, leaning over to glance at his prosthetic.

“I passed level fifty recently and my Class has an Ability that can boost my healing with the right preparation. I still feel like I owe you a foot. You wanna give it a shot?”

Jeb was stunned for a moment, his hand resting in the bowl of pretzels. The answer to that question was so obvious, it took him a moment to reboot afterwards. Jeb had kinda gotten used to being down a foot.

“Sure, let’s do it now,” Jeb said after taking a moment for his brain to catch up, taking off his foot and setting his stump on the table.

Ron groaned and pulled his sandwich away from Jeb’s stump. “Come on, man, I’m eating here.”

“You might want…a bit more privacy for this,” Amanda said, looking sheepish. “The requirements are…intimate.”

Jeb frowned. “What did the Celebrant of Sabrin Class do again?”

“I never told you,” she said, standing. “Come on, I got a room upstairs.” The healer walked away, her hips swaying as she glanced over her shoulder.

“Well, now I’ve lost my appetite,” Ron said, sliding his sandwich away and scowling.

Jeb blinked and glanced over at Brett. “Brett, I’ve gotta go do some…physical therapy. My finger is still stiff, you know. Gotta work with your wife to make sure it’s fully operational.”

Brett raised an eyebrow. “This counts against your IOU.”

“Fair enough,” Jeb said, slapping a silver coin down on the table and literally flying after the blonde healer.

***Emperor Pikaku, Uniter of the Continent, Ruler of Mestikos, level 327***

“That’s all I know, I swear. I swear!” Mirzos Elkor said, shaking his head pitifully, tears rolling down the sides of his skull. The former judge was suspended in a brackish mixture, slowly swelling as his body absorbed more water than he could handle.

He looked almost human now, grotesquely swollen, his skin tight, see-through, and easily ruptured.

“I know,” Pikaku said, prodding the keegan’s skin with his claws, starting a tiny rip in the man’s skin and allowing the swelling to take care of the rest of it. The rip spread on its own as the keegan gave a howling cry.

Keegan were no good in water for extended periods of time.

“Then why?” Mirzos asked once he regained control over his voice, half-sobbing.

“Because you are stupid,” Pikaku said, starting another tear across the keegan’s chest.

“AAAAAAH!”

“Out of all the nobles of Solmnath, you should have been the first to shy away from this course of action. You should have known what dabbling in immortality would buy you, but you thought yourself untouchable.”

He tore another hole in the keegan’s swollen skin, making the man thrash in the crystal bathtub.

“Well, do you still feel untouchable?”

“No!”

“That was rhetorical. I already know the answer,” Pikaku said, cutting him again.

“This isn’t rhetorical, though: Did you see any fairies on or around Jebediah Trapper?”

The judge’s face registered a moment of clarity. “There was one… Yes, I tried to kill the vermin, but he actually protected it.”

Interesting. He could have a Vow. That would explain some of the strangeness. It would also warrant further investigation.

Pikaku leaned over the side of the tub, his talons digging into the metal. “Is he celibate? Did he ever run? Tell a lie? Eat more than once a week?” Pikaku was ticking off the more obvious ones for himself. Jebediah Trapper obviously hadn’t taken the Vow of peace.

“He was a lying sack of shit!” Mirzos struggled against his bindings in anger, but the magical chains could have held someone ten times his strength.

Hmm… Pikaku grabbed a towel off the rack and dried his claws off. We’ll give the judge some time to compose himself and sharpen his memory.

“Keep him healthy. Let me know if he lets anything important slip,” he said, folding the towel and putting it back where it came from.

His torturer nodded silently as Pikaku stepped out of the torture chamber and into the dimly-lit stone halls of the vaults under Mestikos.

He could have gotten someone who knew more about Jebediah Trapper, but the chances that someone would notice and take offense to it were far higher. The information he got from the former judge was spotty and colored by the idiot’s own perceptions, but no one on the face of Pharos would blink an eye at his disappearance.

The chance that Jeb had some kind of relation to Mab was slim, from what he could gather, but not completely out of the question. Who in their right mind would protect a fairy?

Reports from every corner of the empire about humans having a strange kinship with fairies were unsettling. They seemed to get along with the creatures more often, innately understanding their behavior.

It was a worrisome fact, nearly as troubling as these ‘nuclear bombs’. The idea that the witch in the Death Wilds might have ways to spread her influence into civilization was unsettling at best.

Not to mention the prophecy.

No, I’ve already got the chosen one, Pikaku thought, shaking his head.

As far as the emperor could tell, for all his outlandish luck and skill, Jebediah Trapper was a meat by-product in the chain of causality that would create the next god.

Pikaku stopped and opened a door to his right, spilling light from the hall onto his next captive.

Vresh Tekalis sat at her desk, writing letters for her family by the dim light of a small candle. The enforcer glanced up, her eyes widening before she came to attention, her horns nearly scraping the ceiling.

“You’re free to go,” Pikaku said, stepping out of the melas woman’s way.

“Thank you, my lord,” Vresh said, kneeling quickly before gathering her letters. One of the letters’ edges caught the tip of her candle and burst into flame, causing the enforcer to burst into quiet curses, putting out the small fire with her flame-resistant hands.

“You’ll report to your usual handler for instructions. You may yet earn your title of Enforcer back, but in the meantime, I've got a few odd jobs that the empire needs done.”

“Of course,” the girl said, hiding the smoking letter behind her back as she bowed.

“Oh, and Ms. Tekalis?”

“Yes?”

“Keep a very close eye on your deputy for me, would you?” Pikaku asked.

She stiffened. “Of course, my lord.”

“My thanks.”

Pikaku turned away and walked through the dim light, his talons clicking against the stone floor as he traveled. The light gradually grew warmer as he transitioned between the dungeon and the living quarters, where he housed his true prize.

The servant standing in front of the door bowed and opened the door for him as he strode into the nursery, where a human woman of middling age was cooing over Casey the Third.

“Good evening, Casey,” Pikaku said, nodding to the frowning baby as he entered, taking off his imposing mantle and hanging it on the rack by the door. The little one watched him with a level of focus that was unnatural for any sapient child of her age.

“Your mother has instructed me to read this to you today,” he said, retrieving Green Eggs and Ham from the nearby shelf and sitting down beside the wet nurse. The woman passed the baby over to him, and he allowed the wriggling sack of chub to settle on his lap, facing the book.

“According to your mother, Doctor Seuss is an important part of human development, followed by Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes, in that order.”

Pikaku cleared his throat and opened the book, reading aloud the first odd picture of the book.

“I am Sam. I am Sam. Sam I—ack!” A tiny baby hand shoved fingers into his nostril as the child tried to treat his beak like a handhold, crawling up his front.

“Please, Casey. Kitri noses are sensitive, and while uncle Pikaku’s is quite tough, other kitri would find this terribly uncomfortable.”

Casey clumsily hauled herself up on his beak, until the two were eye-to-eye. The baby looked at him intently for a moment, before pointing to the upper shelf, where the Mystery novels were.

“Nope, not reading Sherlock. You had bad dreams for days last time your mom read those murder mysteries for you.”

Casey the Third started bawling, her voice ringing in Pikaku’s ears. While it was tolerable, it was also annoying, but he had to have patience. Raising a proper child was an endurance game.

“I can take her for you, sire,” the wet nurse said, reaching for the baby.

“No, these are crocodile tears,” Pikaku said, picking Casey up and staring her in the eyes. “You want me to tell your mom you misbehaved while she was gone? Because I will. Green Eggs and Ham takes less than five minutes to read, and if you can suffer through, I will move on to a selection from Calvin and Hobbes. The vocabulary in those is much better. Sound good?”

Spoiling a child with limitless potential was a good way to invite ruin upon yourself. Casey had other things she needed to learn, above and beyond reading comprehension:  patience and compromise, for example.

Casey scowled at him for a moment, considering his offer before nodding.

“Very good,” Pikaku said, settling the infant on his lap and reopening the slender book. “I am Sam. I am Sam. Sam-I-Am…”

***Kol Rejan, level 57 Courier***

Kol glanced up at the sun above as he walked across the spine of the mountain. About ten o’clock, I suppose, he thought idly, his feet crunching through the thin layer of faradan as he walked. The Roil hadn’t lingered too long, so the coating was still too thin to support a keegan’s weight. It simply pushed back against his foot a bit as it descended, then cracked underfoot once he put his full weight down.

A strange sensation, a bit like walking on the mantle of a mother peruha without it trying to tear you apart or drown you.

The Roil hadn’t stayed in one spot long enough for a thick crust of the blueish off-white mineral to form. Mining it wouldn’t be particularly profitable, but the Roil chasers were obligated to remove the stuff anyway.

You know what else isn’t profitable? Trying to kill that human. Kol had been in the process of purchasing a new weapon specifically to help him murder the man when he’d seen the broadcast with the emperor shaking the human’s hand.

Kol drew the line right there. The human had become too powerful, too well-known, and too connected to murder. Far too risky. Especially not for a lousy two hundred bulbs.

Still, that left Kol’s spotless assassination record somewhat tainted. The most logical way to solve this problem would be to head back to Kalfath and put Garland Grenore out of his misery before the man could do too much damage to Kol’s reputation.

I suppose I might need to have a client who has a legitimate reason to want the slimeball dead. I need a plausible reason to kill him, or the people in the know will ask uncomfortable questions. That shouldn’t be too hard.

Actually no, everyone will assume someone else hired me. The man’s positively reviled by those who know him.

Kol was pulled from his thoughts by a keegan standing on the mountain in front of him. The man was wearing traditional keegan garb: a flowing robe that didn’t allow the desert heat to enter. He was sipping a cup of tea as he overlooked the city of Solmnath, which was just a smudge on the horizon.

Kol hadn’t seen him appear.

“Terrible weather we’re having here,” the man said before his round tongue darted out and sucked up a sip of tea. “Gonna ruin my decade, I imagine.”

“I suppose,” Kol said, putting his hand on his sword and beginning to walk around the keegan. The sudden appearance put him on edge, and he’d much rather put some distance between them.

“Come, take a seat.” The keegan patted a boulder beside him.

Kol felt a moment of confusion, his brows furrowing for an instant. Why would this man want to share tea with a stranger, especially one as armed as I? That doesn’t… Kol’s critical thought process was shoved aside by a wave of trust and familiarity. Alarmed, he reflexively gripped his sword for an instant before complacency overwhelmed him.

“Okay,” Kol said. He felt as though they’d known each other for years...although Kol didn’t really know the man’s name. My mysterious friend, he thought to himself, a faint bit of humor touching his face.

Kol sat down, whereupon the man offered him a cup of tea. He accepted the cup with his left hand, his right hand stubbornly affixed to the handle of his sword. Kol tried to make himself let go, but his grip refused to loosen.

“Tough nut to crack, aren’t you?” the well-dressed keegan asked, gold thread shimmering in his robe.

“I’m sorry, I’m being rude,” Kol said, trying once again to let go of his sword. If anything, his hand managed to draw the blade an inch or two, which was even ruder. Stop it, he’s a friend!

“Nonsense.” The keegan waved him off. “I like my experiments to have a certain amount of manliness, a sort of...mental fortitude,” he said, pounding himself on the chest. “I must say, you’re doing quite well.” He eyed Kol’s trembling fist as the sword scraped another inch out of the scabbard.

“So, my friend,” the keegan said, gathering his robe and sitting across from Kol. “Do you have anyone that will come looking for you?”

“No, I’m an orphan, and I have no lovers,” Kol said, a faint screaming echoing in the back of his mind, almost distracting him.

“That’s sad, albeit convenient.”

“Don’t be sad. My father died when I was in my twenties, so it’s not that bad. I’ve never been homeless or anything.”

The sword scraped a bit further out.

“Oh?” the man asked, taking another sip of his tea. “What do you do for a living?”

“Kill people, professionally. Although I take side jobs.”

Scrape.

“Well, I suppose that explains why you’re struggling so hard.” The keegan fell into thought, tapping the side of his teacup. Something seemed to occur to him when Kol’s sword was about halfway unsheathed.

“What kind of side jobs?”

“Finding people, usually. I sometimes run recovery missions for the government or nobles whose children have gotten lost in the Death Wilds, that sort of thing.”

“How do you find people? Do you have some kind of divination variant Core?”

Kol shook his head. “I’m a courier above level fifty. I can find anyone if I have a letter addressed to them.”

Scrape.

The keegan laughed and clapped his hands together. “Courier!? That’s fantastic. I’ve never heard of a courier getting past level forty. Well, that does it. I think you’ve got the solution to both our problems. What’s your name, son?”

“Kol.”

Scrape. The sword was almost all the way out of its sheath now. Once it was, he would...do something with it? Kol wasn’t entirely sure.

The keegan leaned forward and put his finger on Kol’s pommel, pushing the blade back into the sheath. Internally, the screaming grew louder, and Kol’s other hand began to misbehave, grabbing his friend’s wrist.

They sat there like that, hands locked as Kol’s trembling hands tried to dislodge the keegan from his blade, staring into each other's eyes with an intensity Kol hadn’t felt in years. Not since his father had passed away.

“Nice to meet you, Kol. My name’s Xen, and your skillset just saved your life. I’d like to hire you to find some people, and possibly kill them, then bring something they owe back to me.”

“It’s fifty bulbs for a rescue, two hundred for a kill—unless they’re noble or well-connected. Then it’s five hundred, non-negotiable.” Kol’s mouth spat out his standard rates on reflex.

“How about I let you live?” the wizard asked, raising a brow.

“Not…good…enough,” Kol forced himself to say, the faint screaming buried in his subconscious bubbling up for a desperate instant and blowing off the keegan’s control over… The placid expression returned to Kol’s face unbidden.

Xen cocked his head before amusement flooded his expression.

“You know what? I think I like you, Kol. We could be good friends.”

“We are friends, though?” Kol said, frowning, his right hand trying to gouge out the man’s eyes, albeit at an eighth his usual speed.

Xen batted the hand aside with an amused look. “I’m going to give you control of your body back. Don’t freak out.”

Suddenly the dopy, trusting personality that had dominated his mind was gone, Kol was sharp again, and he was aware of exactly how dangerous this man was. His arm twitched for a moment as he suppressed the impulse to lash out. The likelihood of catching the wizard off guard with a quick-draw was too slim.

He would wait until the odds were in his favor. Preferably from a mile away, with a human fifty caliber sniper rifle. Kol’s fingers slowly unclasped from his blade, but they never strayed far from the handle.

“Cool as a desert cucumber,” the keegan said, leaning back. “I like that.”

“Xen, the sindio?” Kol asked to clarify, recalling the bedtime stories, the tales of horror, death and destruction that spanned thousands of years. Emptied cities, slain kings worn as trophies, foolish heroes turned into wandering abominations.

“That’s me.”

Kol stuffed the mindless terror urging him to escape way down and focused on the trait that the monster had found endearing. That was the path to survival.

“Good. You should be able to afford my rates.”

A Word From the Author

Hi there! If you’re reading this, chances are good that you just finished this whole book! I’m a simple guy who likes writing protagonists who use their brainmeats to solve their problems instead of wrapping their fists in ever-more-ridiculous ‘techniques’ and punching harder.

Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you like reading about wizards that behave like proper wizards instead of DBZ clones.

If that’s the case, I cordially invite you to visit Macronomicon’s Patreon page, where I’ve always got something going on, whether it be the sequel to this book, the sequel to that book, or something entirely different.

Chapters hot off the presses, available as soon as they’re written, often months ahead of public releases like this one.

If you liked my style, but not enough for that kind of commitment, I’ve got several series available to binge on RoyalRoad.

Go there.

Read for free.

Enjoy the craziness.