IanFlat

68 - In a Hole

The wooden floor shattered beneath me and I dropped.

Sparks faded. The world tilted. I heard Kathina gasping and panting.

Stones blurred to both sides as I fell, illuminated by the faintest flecks of skystone. A sledgehammer struck my hip and sent me spinning wildly. The dim glow of the lighthouse, receding above me, strobed in my vision as I faced upward, downward, upward, downward, upward--

Then darkness swallowed me.

My webtouch spread wide, trying to orient me in the spiraling chaos, trying to latch onto any stable landmark--then another impact struck me, that time in my calves. Pain flared and I cartwheeled in the air and slammed into what felt like a wooden frame.

I crashed through the beams, the impact pummeling and slowing me, before slamming into a shock of ice-cold water. The current swept me aside. I gulped water then struck stone, then the rapids shook me like a hound shakes a rabbit, and I might’ve blacked out for a second. There was no way to tell, but next I was tumbling along in a steep stone-banked river that spat me into the air and I fell again before I hit bottom.

My lower back slammed against a rock floor but my head whipped onto something softer. Still, I felt myself passing out, and I reflexively checked my stats.

Health: 2/57

Well, goddamn ...

* * *

When I opened my eyes, the darkness didn’t change.

I closed my eyes, then opened them again. Yeah. Complete pitch blackness. No skystone this deep, not even flecks.

And I hurt. Everything hurt.

Health: 6/57

Mana: 12/24

So I hadn’t been unconscious for very long. The pearl beads were still healing me. I suspected that if they hadn’t ticked my health up a few times before--or even during--that painful plummet, I’d be dead.

Okay. Okay, so where was I? At the bottom of a goddamn well in the Old City. Except there wasn’t any water, or I’d have drowned. So more like an elevator shaft. Except I could smell water somewhere nearby. My head rested on a bundle of soft material, and a stone floor sloped beneath my aching, limp body. There were few lumps, some rocks or plants or rubble on the ground. I sensed an open space above me, a high ceiling or something, I couldn’t quite tell.

I closed my eyes and the darkness still didn’t change. I was pretty sure that’d broken my pelvis or tailbone, but my head felt okay. If I’d splashed my brain across the stone floor, no amount of beads would’ve saved me. Thank god for this bed of moss or whatever pillow I’d--

My webtouch finally identified my ‘pillow.’

It was Kathina’s corpse.

She’d fallen just before me, and apparently we’d taken that wild ride together. Then she’d splatted an instant before me. My head was lying on the chunk of meat that used to be her thigh.

I jerked upright in disgust--well, I tried. But something gave in my back so I just sort of jerked, then collapsed again. But at least I collapsed away from the corpse. I didn’t puke. Bile rose to my throat and I gagged, but I didn’t puke. I breathed carefully and focused on the trickle of water falling from above.

I had a vague memory of hitting water ...

<We fell into some variety of aqueduct or enclosed river,> Princess told me, <and then rolled and rolled and flopped over the side and kept falling.>

<How deep are we?>

<Deeper than we were, that is all I know for certain. I suspect two or three levels below the kobold’s village? And I’m afraid to say this, my stalwart warrior, but you must search her body for beads if we wish to survive.>

“Yeah,” I said aloud.

My voice sounded weak in the near-silence. The only sound was the splash of water. I lay there for a time, feeling the pain wash over me in slow, horrible waves. I wasn’t sure how much time, but eventually the pain dulled a little. Enough for me to focus, at least.

When I cast my senses outward, I felt a pool ten or fifteen feet away. Shallow. More of a puddle, and not much bigger than a jacuzzi.

I wanted to go clean off but I wasn’t sure if crawling was a good idea, so I lay there for a while longer.

Loot corpse?

TREASURE! 9 pearl beads, 2 foam beads, 12 gel beads.

TREASURE! 1 embroidered beltpouch, quite stylish.

TREASURE! Assorted women’s clothing, mangled.

TREASURE! 1 satchel with various contents, inventory that yourself, lazy bones. Lazy brokenbones.

“Jerk,” I muttered.

TREASURE!

TREASURE!

TREASURE! One Gem of Shapeshield

A gem.

Holy shit.

Holy shit! I’d failed with Tiral-ur, but I’d pluck the gem directly out of Kathina’s half-demolished head. Another gem. I’d heard that extracting them almost always broke them, so I hadn’t been surprised at my failure earlier. Yet maybe looting them worked for me half the time? Or at least some good chunk of the time? Maybe it worked for Treasure.

So I looted, and immediately felt a new presence in my domain: Gem of Shapeshield.

Ha. Ha! Worked perfectly.

Another gem.

I let the triumph warm me for a minute, then I said, “‘Shapeshield?’ Well, that’s a ridiculous fucking name.”

<Alessinex, please,> Princess said, with a mental sigh. <That is a ridiculous frogging name.>

<Frogging?>

<No? Too amphibious? How about ‘fogging?’ Too obvious, considering we turn to smoke? Oh! How about ‘furlong?’ A ridiculous furlong name? That sounds rather like an inappropriate word, yet it’s apparently a unit of distance that I plucked with my delicate palps from your memories.>

<What are you doing?> I asked.

<I am attempting to improve your manners,> she told me. <And also, perhaps, to distract you from the discomfort as the pearl beads knit your shattered, if you’ll excuse the term, bones together.>

<Oh,> I said. <Thanks.>

<Well, now I’ve ruined the attempt by admitting my hidden motivation.>

<Yeah, but you only did that to distract me more.>

<You hush,> she said. <Forget the gem of Silkyshield for now and focus on recovering your health, my deepest delver. I shall do the same.>

She faded and I focused on recovering. By which I meant, I ate all of Kathina’s pearl beads then I dragged my sorry carcass closer to the pool of water. I didn’t quite get that far before I collapsed again, though.

The next time I woke, I felt almost human.

Health: 13/57

Mana: 24/24

I still couldn’t see anything, but my webtouch senses had settled and extended. I was in an unevenly-domed chamber of what felt like rough stone, with a trickle of water coming down one side and no visible exits at ground level. And I was alone. Which was good news. It meant that nothing was going to jump me while I could barely move.

Except the sense of security made me nervous, so I checked again with webtouch. And I noticed that one of the rocks on the wall was roundish and about the size of my head. Like a miniature kobold.

I kept my attention on it ... and it moved.

Verrrryy slowly.

Almost undetectably slowly, but enough to make my heart clench.

At least until I got a clearer sense of what it was. Not a kobold. Not an immediate threat. No, it was a snail. A giant snail that was eating the scum off the moist rocky surfaces of this cavern. Huh. Unless it started hurtling fireballs from its antennae or some shit, it wasn’t a threat.

Still, I kept track of it as I washed the gore from myself. Because it wasn’t impossible that it would start hurling fireballs. Getting clean took a while, considering how weak I felt. Also, it wasn’t like I had a mirror so I didn’t know how much gore remained. I felt a little better, though.

Then I steadied myself and approached Kathina. The fluids were ... upsetting. And bits of tissue squelched underfoot. I held my breath and grabbed her satchel and pouch.

Then I washed again.

Then I sat in the farthest corner of the chamber and breathed for a few minutes. I might’ve drifted off again, but it was hard to tell in the pitch blackness.

And finally, I inspected the new gem in my domain.

Shapeshield, huh? The name surprised me. Why did a ‘shape shield’ give someone the power to project a flexible, translucent, lightening shield instead of, say, just a shaped shield? Well, that’s what it had granted Kathina at least. Maybe she’d customized her gem just like I had?

Yeah, hadn’t Wren said that gems acted differently for different people? Sure, like Tansy had wished for a spiked tail.

Well, let’s see how this new gem acted for me.

When I removed it from my domain, it didn’t look like much. Well, not in the dark, at least. No facets, no glimmering colors. It felt like an ordinary marble.

I pressed it to my forehead.

Accept Gem? 14% Chance of Successful Implantation

“What the fuck?” I said, lowering my hand. Fourteen percent?

After a few seconds, I tried again.

Accept Gem? 14% Chance of Successful Implantation

I thought for a moment, then asked, “What are the consequences of an unsuccessful implantation?”

SUPPORT: Unsuccessful implantation results in the destruction of ALL gems.

“Oh, now you’re answering questions clearly?”

SUPPORT: An Archmage wields more power by mastering many facets of a single gem than other Gifted wield by accumulating multiple gems.

“Whatever you say,” I said aloud, “But does an archmage wield more power by mastering many facets of a single gem and also accumulating multiple gems?”

SUPPORT: An Archmage amasses power beyond gems.

“Well, that explains nothing,” I said. “So talk to me about facets.”

There was no answer.

“Okay, let’s try this again. Tell me what you mean by, ‘more power by mastering facets?’ How many facets does a gem have? How do I master them?”

There was still no answer, so I lost my temper a little.

“Listen you disembodied fuck,” I said, touching the gem to my forehead again. “I’m tired of this shit. You don’t think I’ll roll the dice on fourteen percent change just to screw you? I’d roll the dice on fucking five percent. Now tell me what you’re talking about or I take the risk.”

SUPPORT: Without a gem, you will die in the Old City. If you attempt this and fail, you will not survive.

I gave a bitter laugh that sounded more like a bark. “Maybe so, you smug chunk of internal monologue, but I’m not the only one who cares. That matters to you. You want this. You want me on this path. You want me alive, am I wrong? You need me alive, so talk or I roll the goddamn dice.”

SUPPORT: New facets are discovered upon achieving a higher tier. A higher tier is achieved every ten levels. You are currently level 9. Barring disaster you will discover a new facet soon. Sharing too much information with you is unwise, untenable, dangerous, fraught, unsafe, perilous, deleterious ...

The synonyms kept coming until I said, “I get the point, Doctor Thesaurus.”

The presence faded and I lay back on the cold stone and thought for a while. Not clearly, mind you. I didn’t come to any conclusions. I didn’t even really identify any questions. I just let my thoughts circle around. Because I was feeling overwhelmed again. Trapped in a hole in an underground city, with a splattered corpse, in a fantasy world, thinking about tiers and powers ...

67 - Depart

I made a shitload of noise as I fled the wraith, but I didn’t care. I just moved.

Well, I also ate every one of the pearl beads in my domain. There weren’t enough to make a gold but I still saw a nice immediate effect:

Health: 27/57

Mana: 2/24

That was better. It wasn’t good, but it was better.

By the time I’d crawled through the tunnel and reached the exit leading into the kobold village, Tiral-ur’s screaming had stopped. I gave a little shudder then paused to check for Kathina in the valley, where she’d ben earlier. If she ambushed me again, she’d knock my health down to three before I even saw her. Then she’d knock it down to nothing.

This time, I needed to ambush her. I needed to get in close, inside her shield. She was badly injured already. She had to think that Tiral-ur had wounded me, or finished me. So if she was still in here, licking her wounds, maybe I’d have a chance.

Of course, the other possibility was that she was already chasing Usim, Wren, and Tansy from the Old City. If she still had the mana, she could levitate like fucking Magneto. She could made her shield lift her up the center of the lighthouse and deposit her on the higher floor. What if she’d already left?

Well, then I couldn’t do anything to stop her.

But if she was still here, I couldn’t let her leave. Partly because she was the most determined, most fanatical danger to Usim, but mostly because I’d made the decision already. She’d murdered that whipping boy. Usim’s friend. Lemmy. The one I’d made silly faces at back in the wagons.

And I didn’t know what had happened to my moral code since entering this world of floating islands, but I knew I wouldn’t hesitate to hunt her down and finish her. If you murdered a child, I did not forget.

<If you murder a child, we do not forget,> Princess echoed in my mind. <Or forgive.>

Wow. I hadn’t expected her support about passing a death sentence on someone. Except maybe I’d been naive about that. Maybe some of my new callousness had come from sharing a mind with a born predator. She was sweet and silly and kind, and no stranger to death.

So I send her a feeling of agreement and determination as we scanned the valley.

There was no motion in the kobold village. There was still just one hidden kobold at level 2. No pile of bloody, frilled clothing where Kathina had laid, though. Just a bunch of corpses littering the ground at the steeple.

SUCCESS! Look at you, killing the indestructible man. Well, with a little help from a wraith.

REWARD: Expoi.

BIG NEWS! Level up. You’re a nine now. Just one more till you reach the next tier.

I immediately invested the point in Spirit because I kept almost running out. And the different was staggering.

Mana: 4/25

Yeah, not staggering in a good way. Still, it was something.

SUPPORT: With every tier increase, your abilities grow more refined.

“Refined how?” I thought.

SUPPORT: Increasingly efficacious. So twenty-five mana at tier two will last longer than twenty-five mana at tier one.

“Please tell me it gets twice as long.”

SUPPORT: That’s what she said.

I stopped and stared across the valley. What the hell? What in the absolute hell was that? C’mon. It wasn’t bad enough that I was hearing voices, and now they were making dick jokes?

SUPPORT: Not twice as long, no. Not nearly. To her dismay. But noticeably longer. Even this magic, Alex, is not reducible to mathematics. Language is a gauge with which we measure magic, with frankly laughable imperfection; it is not a law the we impose upon magic. You must learn flexibility. What matters isn’t numbers, what matters is technique. Just as she said.

After I inwardly told the insufferable prick to screw off, its presence obligingly faded in my mind. With, I swear, the echo of a laugh. As Support receded, I caught a flash of movement near the lighthouse.

Among the corpses sprawled just outside the entrance.

One of them was moving. Oh, shit. Zombies!

It shifted and moaned, then rose to its feet with a filthy, staggering motion.

For second I thought: Okay, headshots. Headshots take down zombies.

Then I realized it was Kathina. Apparently she’d taken a little breather among the dead before continuing on toward the lighthouse. She looked bad. She was clearly out of gold beads. Her once-fine dress was in tatters, and covered in ugly stains. Her hair was wild and she dragged one leg as she walked. Right before she limped into the lighthouse proper, she turned to scan the valley and her faceted face was caked with blood.

I probably didn’t look much better, but I couldn’t let her recover and follow the others. So I slunk from the tunnel and onto the balance-beam of a fallen walkway. Kathina stood with her back turned in the lighthouse and I approached slowly, trying to develop an ambush plan, but I was out of ideas. Too much had happened too fast, so I ... I just kept approaching.

<Princess?> I thought. <Any clever plans? Or, y’know, stupid ones? At this point I’ll love a stupid one.>

She didn’t answer, exhausted from having puppeted me.

I stepped, balanced, stepped, balanced. Every second that passed felt closer to Kathina recharging her mana enough to chase the others. I needed to stop her but I didn’t know how. So I came up with my own stupid plan. Listen, sometimes you have to rely on your most fundamental strengths.

I heard myself yell, “Where was he from?”

Kathina spun toward me, still standing in the very center of the lighthouse. Too far to reach me with her shield ... and maybe too weak to start levitating. Or unsure if her shield could stop me after all her injuries.

I didn’t know why else she’d answer me at all, but she said, “Who?”

“Lemmy,” I called.

“The whipping boy?”

I kept walking toward her. “Where was he from?”

“He was from whatever unfortunate creature whelped him.” She paused to cough up some blood. “He can’t have meant anything to you.”

“You’d be surprised,” I said, and took another step.

“Stop right there!” she snapped.

I didn’t stop. I stepped forward and summoned a hatchet into my right hand. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll--” she looked around in a panic. “Just stop! Stop!”

With a flick of my wrist, I threw the hatchet at her.

Her shield sparked to life. Weakly. Still, my hatchet bounced off, and I recalled it into my domain. “Where was he from?” I asked again.

“I don’t know! I don’t know! Six Coves somewhere.”

I threw another hatchet, and she deflected it again. But still weakly--and I wondered if she had enough juice to stop me if I lunged for her.

So I took a step into the lighthouse, just a few yards from her. “What was his favorite food?”

“What?”

“Tell me Lemmy’s favorite food and maybe I won’t carve you into ribbons.”

“My uncle will kill you,” she spat at me. “He’ll kill you, then he’ll kill your family.”

“Good luck with that,” I said.

“He’s the viceroy, he will kill your cousins, your neighbors--everyone you ever shared a meal with.”

“You think Lemmy liked horses?” I asked, edging closer. “A lot of kids like horses.”

“Take one more step!” she shrieked. “One more step and I kill us both. Look at the floor, you bilious cretin. I will drop us. I will drop us both into the plague-ridden depths to die.”

So I looked at the floor, and yeah, the planks were cracked and teetering from Tiral-ur’s plummet and Wren’s jump. I guess that’s why Kathina had been sticking to the very center of the space, on the most intact-looking patch of flooring.

“I may be weak at the moment,” she told me, breathing hard. “But I’m strong enough for this. I’m strong enough to snap those broken planks in half. Then we’ll both fall. Why do you think I let you approach this close? Look in the empty spaces between the planks. That’s a long fall, human. That’s a deadly fall.”

She was right. So I froze there, trying to calculate if I could leap backwards outside of the steeple. But then what? I’d just stand there throwing hatchets at her while she recovered? I didn’t know how quickly she regained her strength, but she was a lot higher level than I was, so that sounded like a bad gamble.

“This is what’s going to happen,” she said, seeing the indecision in my face. “You are going to stay right there. One step in any direction, and I kill us both. I have nothing to lose, human. If I let you get close, I’ll die.”

“Screaming,” I agreed.

She took a shaky breath. “However, once I regain a little strength, then I’ll have everything to lose. I’ll have a chance to live. That that is why I’ll depart ...” She pointed upward. “That’s when you’ll have leverage over me, the moment I have someone to lose. Oh, and we shall meet again. This isn’t the end between us. I’m a patient woman. I’m not claiming that I wouldn’t prefer to remove you before I go, but I won’t take that risk.”

“No?”

“Not today,” she said, with a cold smile. “However, if you somehow manage to return to the surface ... well. I know your weakness now, don’t I? Lemmy? He was some filthy nobody, some wretched worthless child, and you pretend to care about him? I’ll line up a hundred Lemmys and kill them once an hour until--”

At that point, my keen strategic mind chimed in with a suggestion: “fuck that.”

And with a tactical plan, too: “fuck her.”

So I lunged forward, my hatchet already swinging, to end her before she shattered the floor underfoot. To take advantage of the slightest fraction of second during which she hesitated, to hack a chunk of brain from her skull.

There was only one problem: she didn’t hesitate.

Her shield buzzed immediately into place, but not between us. No, her shield appeared around us, surrounding us, but oriented inward. Electricity fried me and screwed my aim. My hatchet bit into her upraised arm and cleaved halfway through the bone and she howled and the sparks intensified and I felt myself losing control.

I turned to smoke and pushed outward, trying to flee her shield, but the sparks slowed me, and consumed my mana: 4, 3, 2, 1.

At zero my body reformed, two feet above the floor. Well, two feet above where the floor had been.

Because apparently Kathina really was ready to die. She really was ready to kill both of us. Her screams turned to whimpers as her shield cracked against the planks underfoot and shattered them.

We fell into the darkness.

66 - The Faintest Touch

Still under Princess’s control, I shambled across the narrow edge of the fallen walkway toward the exit. Not, however, toward the exit to the traguld neighborhood. We’d already stumbled the wrong way for that. So instead, we shambled toward the exit leading toward the wraith cavern.

At least we tried to. She kept me balanced for about three steps, then I fell. Fortunately, I fell against the wall instead of down the hill.

<Oopsies,> she said in my mind.

“I’m back,” I told her aloud, and regained control without even thinking how strange that had been.

<Two legs is ridiculous!> she blurted. <The minimum, the absolutely minimum, the legal minimum number of legs should be three, unless there are extenuating circumstances, in which case two are acceptable. However none of our current circumstances are even tenuating, much less extenuating!>

<Shush,> I said, balancing on the walkway and staggering for the exit.

<I’m scared, Alingalex! I babble when I’m scared. That was ... terrible. So frightening.>

<I’ve got this, Princess. Don’t worry.>

<I never want to do that again, moving you around like a puppet, though I will if I must, of course, but I don’t wish to, and for your information, you didn’t ask, but just for your information, going forward, the extenuating circumstance in regards the appropriateness of having a mere two legs is ... if you also have wings? If you are in possession of wings? Then yes. I shall accept two legs. One cannot fall, not truly, if one is able to fly. That is the-->

<Princess!> I interrupted. <Hush.>

<Apologies,> she said, sounding abashed. <I’m babbling because I’m afraid.>

<We’re going to be okay.>

<Are we? Tiral-ur is fast approaching, and he is invulnerable. And the wraith is steadily approaching, and it is even worse than invulnerable.>

<Well, we are fast departing,> I assured her.

Which wasn’t completely true. We were departing, but not that fast. So I focused on my speed as I balanced on the narrow edge of the plank, my left hand steadying me against the crater wall. I tried to add a point to Dexterity and then one to Speed, but I had no points. Still, I managed to stay upright until I reached the tunnel leading back to the wraith cave, then I half-fell and half-crouched inside.

“That’s right, human scum,” Tiral-ur snarled, only twenty feet behind me. “On your knees.”

Which actually sounded like good advice, so I lowered myself further and started crawling back toward the cavern. By the time I reached the dog-leg in the middle of the tunnel, the crachen was only fifteen feet behind.

He was still talking, too. “... snip off your fingers, one at a time, before taking your kneecaps for my collection. Then both your ears, then both your eyes ...”

Which, I have to say, I found pretty motivating. I crawled faster. In fact, I crawled so fast that when I reached the end of tunnel, I missed my last handhold and fell out. I might need some points in Alertness, too. From halfway up the cave wall, I tumbled to the stony floor.

Health: 17/57

Mana: 4/24

I landed on my ass and crabbed--so to speak--away from where Tiral-ur was emerging from the tunnel. Retreating from him, toward the center of the cave. Checking with my webtouched awareness for any newly-emerged wraiths. I didn’t sense any, I didn’t feel a chill ... but I did detect the two nearest Pits: the empty one not far behind me, whose inhabitant was probably following even now, and the barest edge of the one past that.

Tiral-ur jumped down from the tunnel and landed with a bang that would’ve roused both other wraiths if they were rouse-able. Nothing exploded from the inky-black holes, though. Which I frankly didn’t understand. Unless, maybe, that one wraith lived in all three Pits? Or maybe the other two were too deep in hibernation to wake ... or just waiting for the right moment to strike? Or maybe you just couldn’t predict the behavior of spectral eel-bodied death monsters.

That wasn’t my biggest problem at the moment. My biggest problem at the moment was the murderous invulnerable crachen stalked toward me. It’s important to prioritize.

I crabbed faster backward, angling past a rock-strewn patch of cave, and said, “You had one job, you psychopathic crayfish. But Commander Wren got away because you can’t jump.”

“I’m going to enjoy this,” he snarled at me, snapping his pincer.

I scrambled awkwardly onto my feet. “I already killed your little infenti friend.”

“I never gave a shit about those twins,” he scoffed.

“I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about sweet little yellow-skinned Foh.”

I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten the name right, but I thought that’s what the firefly-wielding gemmed Infenti woman who’d killed Oksar has been called. I’d tried to memorize her name so if I ever saw her again I could deliver payback.

Tiral-ur froze for a moment, and despite his alien musculature I noticed tension in his shoulders. Yeah, that was her name alright. His friend Foh. The one who’d killed Oksar. The one he’d addressed in his love notes.

“How do you know her?” her growled.

“Oh, she told me more than her name by the time I finished with her,” I said, summoning both hatchets. “She told me that you’re her little crachen loverboy. She begged for mercy. She told me that if I chopped off her head, you’d get revenge. But you’re going to fuck that up, too.”

He roared in fury and swung his mace at me.

I dodged and parried and hacked. His pincer snapped and his mace flashed; I parried and dodged, because I couldn’t afford to turn to smoke. I danced around him, my blades striking his carapace again and again, because he didn’t even pretend to care about defending himself. I carved long scratches in him that looked like welts, but never even drew blood.

He hit me once, hard enough to make me stagger backward, then I caught him with a vicious chop on his wrist ... that still barely hurt him.

Health: 10/57

Mana: 4/24

“She wasn’t as tough as you,” I grunted, circling for a better position while trying not to shuffle my feet or grimace in pain. “Though I did have to hack at her neck five times before her head popped off.”

He choked with rage, his eye stalks quivering.

“Yellow skin, one horn,” I said, so he’d know I’d seen her. “I’m gonna use her head as the world’s worst coat-rack.”

When he charged at me like a berserk bull, I summoned all of my dwindling strength and leaped high and planted both hatchets into the top of his clamshell-shaped head. He didn’t seem to notice. He crashed into me like a, um, well, like a mid-sized sedan, and tackled me backward.

Right into the wraith Pit.

Yeah, I’d taunted him into just the right spot.

I turned to smoke as he crashed into the bottom of the Pit beneath me. My vaporous self stretched to the opposite side of the Pit, then I reformed into my body with a single mana left.

And I looked down at Tiral-ur in the bottom of the hole.

He spat and swore, then grabbed his mace and stood to his full five feet tall. He reached upward and swung his mace at my boots, missing me by a full foot. Just venting his fury, because he hadn’t realized what had happened. Not yet. He was still too angry. He thought he was still invulnerable.

I crouched at the edge of the Pit and watched while he ranted, then I said, “My first week here, I met this infenti guy named Oksar. Now, maybe this is just because he was the first friendly face I saw, but I think he was something special. I think he was one of those rare people you meet, and they’re just ... good, you know? Maybe because he knew exactly who he was. People like that, they’re not driven by confusion or fear. They aren’t greedy for money or power. They just live their lives without always trying to prove something or--”

And that’s when he felt the chill.

That’s when his rant stopped short and he spun to gape behind himself, with the first hint of fear I’d ever seen in his posture. He was two feet too short to see over the lip of the Pit, but he knew what was coming from the frost in the air.

The wraith approached slowly, on the other side of the Pit from me. Twenty feet away, then fifteen. Its black eyes were holes, its gaping maw changed shape every second and each shape was horrible.

Despite his low angle, Tiral-ur must’ve finally caught a glimpse of a pale ghost eel-head drifting in the air. He made a terrible strangled cry of fear then dropped his mace and leaped for the edge of the Pit below me. His hand and pincer both grabbed hold of the cave floor and he started hauling himself upward.

I shoved him back with my hatchet.

He swore at me and tried again.

The wraith was ten feet away.

I pushed him back into the Pit.

He started pleading and cursing then dashed a few feet to the side trying to climb out in a different spot.

I moved a few feet and knocked him down.

He started weeping and raging--and I shoved him in one last time before suddenly trotting backward when that wraith got too damn close.

Tiral-ur leaped for the side again, and started pulling himself from the Pit as I backed in a wide loop around the wraith, toward the tunnel leading into the kobold village.

The crachen managed to heft his thick body halfway out of the the hole before the first eel-limb touched him. It was just the faintest brush against his carapaced shoulder. Unlike the soldiers--the non-gemmed--he didn’t immediately start crumpling. No, he was Gifted. He was invulnerable. He pulled himself another foot higher ... before the spectral limb sunk deeper into his body.

Then he started compressing in slow motion. Dark lines snapped into sight across his shell as his back cracked. He screamed and fluids seeped from him. I kept backpedalling ... until I remembered his gem.

The Gem of Invulnerability.

It wasn’t wasn’t worth dying for, especially because I’d heard that extracting them was a finicky process. Still, maybe worth taking a brief risk?

So I prowled back toward him, fear and disgust twisting in my stomach. My breath sounded loud and harsh in my ears despite Tiral-ur’s screaming.

He curled backward, his clamshell face pointing directly upward. He made a terrible sound. Then his face rotated even farther, farther, as the pressure snapped his spine. A moment later, his pained eyes, on quivering stalks, looked directly behind himself at the wraith as it sent another two, three, ten limbs into him.

Tiral-ur screamed as his chest burst, torn apart from the force. With my mind, I reached for his gem—I dug into him with Treasure, trying to loot the core of his power into my domain.

And I felt something shatter. Like the crunch of glass underfoot. Something delicate broke into a thousand shards. I felt his gem disintegrate at my mental touch ... and I didn’t wait around for a second thought.

I reached the cave wall at a run and climbed into the tunnel without slowing down.

65 - Tapestry of Soul

One of the soldiers tried to flee the lighthouse, to escape this untouchable, unkillable horror. She managed to dart to the side of the wraith, following the curve of the outside wall, and was moving fast when a spectral eel whipped at her. The tip of the eel moved through her armored boots and must’ve brushed her heel because a wave of frostbite cold washed through the area and the woman’s head snapped violently backward toward her feet.

Her shoulders followed.

Then she whimpered as her entire torso started bending backwards.

Something snapped in her hips or pelvis or spine and she howled in agony and the first soldier crumpled into a sphere of flesh. Like a car being compacted, but he was still alive. Still shrinking into that terrible point of contact at his stomach, but clinging to life.

And listen: there came a time when the enemy of your enemy was an ally. There came a time when you simply had to work with horrible people in the service of defeating a greater evil. I understood that. Honestly, I did. And that wraith was pretty much the definition of ‘a greater evil.’

Still, I took the opportunity to hack at Kathina. Because, if you followed my logic: fuck her. And she was so distracted that my blade carved a deep wound in her side. She reeled backward and I chopped halfway through her arm before a wraith tentacle lashed at me.

I dove away as Kathina screamed and wept and dug into her pouch with her uninjured arm. Spectral pain clawed at me, an agonized aura and needles of ice, as the ethereal tendril whipped toward my thigh. It hurt even before it touched me ... and it was an instant from touching me.

I couldn’t dodge, so I turned to smoke and felt a wave of burning acid pressure.

The wraith’s spectral eel lashed at my smoky form and then through the vapor of my self. It couldn’t quite touch me, not really. At least not my soul, not while I was smoke.

Kathina’s wounds healed as she swalled a gold bead and more eels lashed at me, as if the wraith was infuriated by my resistance. I condensed my smoke to a thin rope, to get some distance from the wraith, and Kathina bolted for the exit. Good think that her sudden movement didn’t go unnoticed. Also, fuck her: the moment she attracted the wraith’s attention I returned to my body and threw a hatchet.

The blade caught her in the back of the head. Hard enough to kill any ungemmed person on the spot. The hatchet dug an inch into her skull but she didn’t even hesitate. She stumbled a few steps, swallowed another golden bead, then bellowed a battlecry and poured power into her shield, so much that the crackle of lightening sounded like gunshots.

The shimmering edge of her shield caught the wraith ... but didn’t stop it. Still, she managed to slow the probing, horrible eel-limbs as she pushed toward the exit.

And as the wraith pushed through her shield toward her.

Blood wept from her eyes as she threw even more mana into her shield.

A stretching eel swayed closer to her, then swayed in the air four inches from her arm. Blood gushed from her nose, her shield shrunk into a single patch of brilliance--and she managed to shove past the wraith with inches to spare, and fall through the exit of the lighthouse.

I caught a single glimpse of her tumbling down the slope toward the kobold village before the first soldier’s whimpers fell silent. The other soldier was still keening in pain, though, as her spine snapped backward and the wraith had already touched the other two Sixer, leaving just one, in addition to Tiral-ur.

And me, Wren, Tansy, and Usim.

Wren was sprawled on the ground, facing the wraith with Usim against the wall behind her. Her eyes open but clearly unable to move. And Tansy looked terrified, more frightened than I’d ever seen her, but she still stepped forward, to protect Usim from the wraith. Because I’d told her to. Because that’s what I’d ‘ordered,’ and she’d decided to obey.

Which, fuck. What was I supposed to do? How did you kill something that you couldn’t touch? Something that killed with a touch? I didn’t know, so I just stood there with my hatchets in my hand while Tiral-ur yelled, “To me!” at the last remaining Sixer soldier.

The soldier darted to him, probably for protection, and Tiral-ur grabbed the guy and thrust him toward the wraith

“No! Sir! Please!” the soldier shrieked, slashing wildly with his sword.

His blade moved through the wraith without touching it. Not even a ripple

Tiral-ur used the guy as meat shield, shoving him forward to catch the wraith’s eels that lashed out. Three of them touched the soldier but none reached through him to Tiral-ur. As the soldier writhed and compressed in his grip, Tiral-ur marched to the exit, where he dropped the soldier and vanished from view.

Then the wraith turned toward Tansy and Usim, whose teeth chattered from fear and the frigid air. The creature didn’t approach them, though. It focused on its meal, bursting the soldier like an overripe fruit. It was in no rush.

Tansy shifted her grip on her useless sword. She shifted her weight, standing fully in front of Usim while knowing that she couldn’t stop the wraith. And Wren lay bleeding on the ground, with tears in her eyes.

<As far as I am able to discern,> Princess murmured in my mind, <faithful worshippers and devoted descendants rely upon burnt offerings for primarily two reasons.>

I snapped: <What? What the fuck?>

<Those are, first, for the olfactory element, as the gods and spirits and ancestors are thought to enjoy pleasurable scents. That explains roast meat and incense and perfumes. The second reason, however, is that smoke itself bridges or links the physical realm with the spiritual realm. Smoke is not unlike the soul, a formless essense which is extracted from its vessel by the heat of-->

<I get it, I get it!> I barked in my mind. <Now shut up.>

“Alex, w-what are you thinking?” Tansy stammered, reading something in my body language.

With my gaze still on the wraith, I tossed Usim my last gold bead. “Give this to your mom.”

“What’re you doing?” Tansy demanded.

Behind her, Usim shoved the bead in Wren’s mouth.

“Carry them out of here, Wren,” I said, as the wraith consumed the soldiers’ souls. “Carry them straight up and out of the lighthouse.”

“Don’t you dare,” Tansy snarled at her. “You leave me here with him you Sixer shit.”

“I--” Wren rose into a squat as her wounds closed. “On my honor, Alex Smokegemmed of the Sunken City. I will see them safe.”

“I’m staying with you,” Tansy growled at me. “I’m fucking guarding you.”

“Get them out of here,” I repeated to Wren, then more softly I told Usim, “Take care of--”

The wraith swayed toward them suddenly, eel-limbs extended.

So I leapt to intercept it, then transformed into smoke, spreading myself thin, into a vaporous tapestry between them and the wraith. A gaseous shield between them and a horrible death. And I prayed that Princess was right, that my smoke could affect the spiritual realm ... could at least deflect attacks on the soul. If she was wrong, I was dead. If she was wrong, we were both dead.

I braced myself and waited for one of those eels to launch at me like--

<A suhv,> Princess said.

<A what?

<A suhv, a suhv! You’re always complaining about how you jump in front of suhvs.>

An almost-hysterical bubble of laughter rose in my ... my smoky self. <SUV.>

<Yes, Alexaimagne. Pronounced suhv.>

We spoke to each other at the speed of thought, yet the wraith still struck before I had time to answer her. An eel fired through my curtain of smoke and bored a hole in my soul. Agony spread through me, a hundred scorpions striking at once, poison rotting my flesh and ...

And no, the hole hadn’t drilled through my soul.

Because my soul, my smoke, had stopped the drill bit. At least the first one. Almost simultaneous with that initial attack, two more eels smacked against my vaporous self, trying to burrow through, to reach Usim and the others--or to reach me, maybe, to reach my spirit. Yet they couldn’t. They couldn’t do more than send pulses of suffering that made me want to weep, made me want to die.

My mind reeled from the pain. I wanted it to stop, I needed it to stop--and I almost recoiled, the way I’d automatically recoil if I pressed my palm onto a red-hot stove burner.

But if I stopped resisting, the wraith would tear through my smoke. Into my self.

Health: 41/57

Mana: 15/24

My world shrank to three circles, each one hand-span wide: the three places where eels were pushing into my tapestry of smoke.

Health: 37/57

Mana: 12/24

Even as I focused on keeping the wraith back, part of my smoke-self saw Wren, now full-sized, clip Tansy on the jaw with a red fist, then grab her slumping body. Part of me saw Usim climbing onto his mother’s broad back.

Health: 30/57

Mana: 8/24

Part of me saw Wren leap upward. The wooden floor, battered by Tiral-ur’s meteoric fall, cracked violently under her feet, at the force of her jump. Planks shattered, but she managed to launch upward and land on the second segment of stairs ... and then crouch for another leap.

However, most of me focused on the farthest vaporous fringe of myself, a long tendril of smoke drifting toward the exit. One wisp wafted nearer and nearer to the door while ghostly claws ripped at my soul. I screamed despite having no mouth, my disembodied throat shredded and bleeding.

And far above me, impossibly far above me, Wren leaped with her two burdens from a jutting segment of stairs and vanished into an upper level of the Old City.

Yet I couldn’t feel any satisfaction through the agony, I couldn’t feel any triumph. All I felt was agony. I billowed in pain, my tendril still moving terribly slowly toward the door, and focused inside.

Health: 22/57

Mana: 5/24

Another two wraith-eels struck my curtain of smoke. Another two poisonous barbs drilled into my flesh and into my bone--and I fainted from the pain.

I lost consciousness at the worst possible time.

At a deadly time. I simply ... failed. I couldn’t handle the suffering for one more second, so I gave up. I surrendered.

Health: 18/57

Mana: 2/24

But here’s the thing about: Arachrys Blooded (Webtouched, Twominds, Resistance). What ‘twominds’ meant was that even if one mind, my mind, had broken, another could step into the breach for a moment.

So Princess took over. She seized the reins of our shared self and re-solidified us at the farthest point from the wraith. Just inside the lighthouse exit, in that distant trailing wisp of smoke, my body took shape again.

My mind still didn’t work. I still remained a passenger in my own self, but I felt us staggering away from the bisected tower. I felt with my blind, webtouched senses as we trotted unsteadily forward on the balance-beam of the broken walkway.

And I felt other things, farther away.

I felt the chill of the wraith, slowly pursuing. I felt that icy cold, deep in my heart.

I felt the shape of Tiral-ur, facing away from me down the slope, looking at a pile on the ground.

I felt that pile resolve into the slumped, terribly-wounded form of Kathina.

I felt her lift one weak, shaking finger and point at me.

And I felt Tiral-ur turn toward me.

64 - Pressure

The spark-shield roared down at us, solid as a brick wall, electric as sticking my tongue in an outlet. I took the brunt of the impact, because I was standing in front with Wren, and was six inches taller than her. The impact felt like a sledgehammer to the top of my head. Pain exploded into my shoulders and then into my side when the shield slammed me to the rough plank floor. Then I felt the sparks sizzling across me.

That first blow of Kathina’s shield would’ve broken my neck if not for all those points of Fortitude. Hell, I wasn’t sure that it hadn’t broken my neck. I’d definitely heard bones snapping, though through the fog of pain I wasn’t sure which ones.

Health 27/57

A single surprise blow--and electrocution--had erased half my health.

The spark-shield hit Tansy next. The impact wasn’t quite as forceful, because I’d absorbed most of the momentum with my flesh, but she still dropped like a sack of elephant shit. She managed to collapse on top of Usim, though, even as she twitched and screamed. She protected him from the battering-ram force of the shield, if not the sparks.

Kathina’s shield slowed after hitting us, which gave Wren time to throw herself sideways. She moved fast, but without her gem active she wasn’t quicl enough to avoid the crossbow bolts. Three pierced her from above, while a few more jabbed into the worn wooden floor underfoot. One sunk into the flesh at her collarbone, one tore into her thigh, and the third ripped through her ear and into the base of her neck. Death blows, if she hadn’t been gemmed.

She cried out in pain and started growing as I spun dizzily, weeping in pain, seeing double, to drag Tansy and Usim out of this deathtrap.

“Alex, go up!” Wren gasped at me while she moved to cover her son.

I barely comprehended the words, but some animal instinct inside me--which may or may not have been Princess--listened. I turned to smoke, which offered blessed relief from the pain and reeling panic. I started rising before understanding what was happening, or how ... and finally got a sense of the situation. Kathina and her remaining Sixers were hunched on segment of the broken stairwell above and barely behind us, where the outer shell of the lighthouse started curving around. The soldiers were dropping crossbows instead of reloading them, and grabbing-preloaded one instead, to keep firing. Which meant we didn’t even have three seconds before the next volley.

I didn’t see Jikap, the white infenti twin, so maybe that kobold had actually eaten his head. That was a silver lining. Except I didn’t see Tiral-ur, either, and I knew he’d survived. There was nothing in this valley that could scratch him, much less kill him.

Standing on a half-broken landing above me, Kathina looked wild and powerful, surrounded by sparks as rage shone in her faceted face. The tatters of her once-ruffled dress was now an arcane, blood-splattered cloak.

INTUIT: Infenti, Level 16

What the hell? Hadn’t she been level 14 or 15 when I’d last checked? She’d leveled up? When had that happened?

She was exactly twice my level now, and it showed. She burned with power. The air crackled around her and she reshaped her shield closer to herself as I drifted higher.

I didn’t feel pain, not exactly, but I felt ... disturbance. Interference. An unsettling tingle as I wafted through the sparks that spat from the shield.

Health 22/57

Mana 8/24

Shit.

I reached for the nearest freestanding segment of stairs with one smoky arm and another barrage of bolts shot through me--then a greenish object dropped from the sky, from the center of the lighthouse, like a fucking meteor.

Turning solid, I grabbed the stairs with both hands and threw myself upward, effortless as an Olympic athlete, into the thick of the soldiers.

The falling object blurred past me and slammed into the lighthouse’s wood-planked floor. And into Wren, who was full-sized and shoving Tansy and Usim back through the exit. The deafening crack of impact felt like a shock wave.

The sound echoed and a dust cloud rose, then Tiral-ur stood from Wren. He must’ve dropped on her from the highest section of lighthouse stairway. The floor trembled and creaked beneath him, the wood straining, but the planks didn’t quite break. And the fall hadn’t hurt him, of course. Not more than a few scuffs, at least. But Wren, even at her full size, had taken a beating. Blood oozed from her mouth and her left arm hung at a bad angle and one of her ankles looked like a goddamn vault had fallen on it.

She didn’t give up, though. She straightened--well, except for her broken arm and her horribly-twisted ankle--and stood at the door, her weight on one leg, protecting her son outside. Tiral-ur drew his mace--apparently a backup mace--and I didn’t see anything more.

Not down below me.

Because I was too busy leaping into the middle of a bunch of elite Sixer soldiers. I slashed at one but there was no room to maneuver on this narrow ledge of stairway, so my blow didn’t penetrate his armor deeply. Another stomped toward the back of my knee while a third swung her crossbow at my face. Webtouch gave me an instant’s warning so I spun and hacked and took the kick in my thigh--which fucking hurt--while the crossbow glanced off the dome of my head, which also fucking hurt. My backswing chopped into an artery though. Blood squirted everywhere like bad horror show special effects, and I lunged at Kathina because if I didn’t stop here there was no point--and her spark-shield slammed me and all of her soldiers off the stairs.

We rained around Tiral-ur, who was clubbing Wren’s forearm into paste. At least we distracted him for just long enough for Wren to throw her second-to-last gold bead into her mouth. I hit the ground hard, then a falling soldier slammed into me, her knee smashing my ribs like a hammer. My vision swam for a second, but my webtouch observed Wren blocking the crachen’s next swing.

Then Kathina’s full-powered shield swept down from above as she--

As she lowered toward us like fucking Magneto, just floating downward in mid-air, like she could stay centered inside her shield while she blasted Wren with what looked like a full bolt of lightning.

Wren staggered and Tiral-ur hit her again and I threw the soldier aside and jumped at Kathina and rammed right into her shield.

Health 9/57

Yeah, I immediately domained a gold bead into my mouth and swallowed and shoved off the shield toward Tiral-ur. I couldn’t touch Kathina, not until her mana drained, so instead I threw myself at the invulnerable crachen. And I hated to admit this, but I’d learned something from those kobolds. If you couldn’t break through someone’s defenses, you needed to immobilize them instead.

So I didn’t bother hacking at Tiralk-ur, I just wrapped myself around him like a monkey, my stomach pressed to his back as he faced the other direction, fighting Wren. He was stronger than me, but not by much, and I took a firm grip around his torso, locking myself in place. His pincer arm flailed at me but didn’t have the leverage to do much damage, and I wrapped one calf around his leg, limiting his mobility and balance exactly as my arms were limiting his reach and speed.

Wren wiped the blood from a mace-gouge on her chin and smiled at him with all her teeth. Like a full-on T-Rex. Then she blocked his next mace swipe--which was feeble, with me limiting his range of motion--and stepped inside and her tail came out of nowhere and whipcracked against his face.

He didn’t falter. He just made the faintest ‘oof’ and tried to scrape me off his back as the soldiers around us rose unsteadily to their feet.

Wren’s tail hit him three more times, moving in a blur, then her elbow came out of nowhere and caught him just under the clamshell-chin.

That time he staggered backward a foot. I would’ve cheered, but at that moment a throwing knife lodged an inch into my hardened skin, from one of the soldiers behind me. The others prepared to engage me with melee weapons, and through the grunting and swearing, I heard Tansy and Usim shouting at us from outside. Shouting urgently, but I couldn’t make out the words, I didn’t have time to listen.

Wren pivoted and slammed Tiral-ur one more time with her tail, hard enough to crack stone--but still only hard enough to ding Tiral-ur. A spear-head jabbed into my lower back, maybe into my kidney, and the pain was exquisite so I turned to smoke--an instant before three guards finished me with a frenzy of slashing and skewering.

Their spears and swords hit Tiral-ur, instead, and didn’t even scuff his carapace.

I spread myself thin on the floor, clinging to the cracks between the overstressed planks, moving toward Kathina. She blasted Wren again, with a pseudopod of her buzzing shield that bulged over the fighting and caught Wren’s horned head.

The flash of electricity almost dazzled me, Wren dropped to her knees, and Usim bolted back inside, with Tansy two feet behind him. Back inside. Back inside to the deadly battle. What the hell? What in all the smoky hells of the floating islands would they do that for? and they didn’t even stop to fight! Tansy, who loved a good scrap, didn’t so much as trip one of the Sixers.

Instead, they just sprinted across the floor, though the bladed, smokey, sizzling chaos, toward the far wall of the lighthouse. And then, with what looked like a last gasp of effort, Wren lunged blindly after them, following her son’s voice across the steeple and away from the entrance.

Which was bizarre, but I didn’t have a chance to unpuzzle that particular mystery. I was too busy condensing my body inside Wren’s shield. Like three inches from her tattered gown. Her shield covered her pretty well, but it wasn’t airtight against the ground--and when I turned to smoke I basically was air.

She froze for a moment, staring in horror at the entrance to the lighthouse, then I appeared so close to her that I didn’t even have room for a hatchet swing. So I punched her in the stomach instead, with every ounce of hatred and every point of Strength.

She folded forward, gasping and coughing, and I summoned a hatchet to finish her ...

And that’s when I felt the chill, a biting cold. And realized that the wraith had drifted into the lighthouse behind me. Slow and steady, this fucking wraith, and apparently not unwilling to travel away from its pit.

It glided through the entrance on ethereal lumps, ghostly and semi-transparent and composed of horrible eyeless eels that stretched and writhed and uncoiled. At first, it stood about Usim’s height, then it lengthened to my height, then shrunk, then lengthened to maybe ten feet tall, a long slender figure of pulsating eels and icy breath.

A throwing knife spun through the wraith like it wasn’t there, and tanged against the stone wall beside the exit.

One serpentine limb stretched outward, shot at a Sixer soldier ... and disappeared into his stomach. There was no blood. There was no wound. The wraith’s ‘eel’ simply occupied same space as the solider, who started shrieking and ... and sort of compacted into himself. His bones cracked and his flesh burst, like a terrible pressure was squeezing him into a three inch radius where the eel was touching him.

Not fast, either. He screamed and screamed and the wraith moved past him, one eel lagging behind to crush that guy while the other eel-limbs groped for the other soldiers--and for Kathina.

And me.

63 - White Noise

I nodded to show Wren that I understood, then mouthed, “Wraith Pits” to Tansy and Usim.

“Plus, an entrance into the kobold crater,” Princess sleepily informed me, tugging my attention toward a circle of dirty light, high in the left-handed wall of the cavern.

“Oh!” I thought back. “Thanks.”

“And entrance or an egress. No, wait. I mean ingress. An ingress.” Her voice faded as she continued. “Ingress, egress, egret ...”

I nodded at the light--the opening in the wall--until Wren followed my gaze. She indicated that she understood what she was seeing. Then I grinned at her and suddenly dove forward. I enjoyed the flash of panic on her face when she realized I was going to make a terrible, deadly clatter that would rouse the wraiths ... but I turned to smoke before I hit the floor.

I drifted to the left, spreading my cloudy self as wide as possible. Checking for other wraith Pits. Like, if there were three, maybe there were four or five or ten. I didn’t see any, though, not even from the most far-flung corners of my self. However, I did notice that these Pits were deeper than the first one we’d seen. More like six feet, maybe, though I wasn’t sure if that meant the wraiths were stronger.

I didn’t have long until my mana ticked empty, so I just tried to get a quick sense of the size and shape of the cavern as I wafted back toward Wren. And I felt a strange force pushing at me from the wraith Pits.

Not a breeze. Not strong. Just a faint and disconcerting ... pressure. So faint that I couldn’t even tell if I was imagining it.

Still, I wafted faster just in case. I billowed a few feet past Wren before I had to resolidify. She grabbed my forearm to steady me, then we gathered the others and backtracked fifty yards. Once we reached a safe distance, Wren explained what we’d seen and I added, “These Pits are pretty deep.”

“Their depth doesn’t matter,” she said. “The only thing that matter is staying out of range of their first strike.”

“Gotcha,” I said. “So I only saw three of them.”

“That’s great news,” Tansy told me. “Only three murderous non-corporeal untouchable soul-killers.”

“Non-corporeal?” Wren sighed to Usim. “What kind of person says ‘non-corporeal’?”

I ignored them both. “And I also saw a pretty clear path along the left-hand wall of the cavern. One that stays at a distance from the wraiths.”

“It goes all the way to that exit in the wall?” Usim asked. “That tunnel?”

“Yeah, but we’re going to need to climb the last part. The hole is halfway up to the ceiling. At least the wall’s not vertical. It’s at a pretty good slope, and I think I saw hand-holds.”

“So either we give this a shot,” Tansy said, scratching her trunk, “or we find a way around this cave, then try to approach the kobold cavern from a different direction?”

“We should take the shot,” Usim said.

“I thought you were a timid bookworm,” I said.

“Bookbug,” he corrected, with a devilish little smile. “And I was.”

I shot Wren a look and said, “Kids these days. They grow up so fast.”

She ignored me, too busy gazing at Usim with an embarrassing amount of maternal pride. She was simply oozing fondness, which didn’t fit my image of Commander Wren of the Sixcove Invaders.

Fortunately, Tansy said, “Grow up? He’s still ankle-high to an olifarn,” and the moment passed.

* * *

Wren stalked into the cavern first, her head swiveling.

Usim waited for three seconds, like she’d told him, then he followed her. Tansy stuck closerbehind him, not more than a half-step, right on his heels, with her hands free. She was ready to chuck him at his mom if necessary. She took her debts seriously.

I waited for another three seconds before advancing. The cavern was cooler than the rest of the Old City. Maybe chilled by the wraiths, or maybe just because it was a natural formation. I didn’t know how underground cities worked.

Tansy’s boots scuffed the rocky floor ahead of me. Usim’s shoes scraped almost as loud. Every sound made me flinch, but the wraiths didn’t react. At least not yet.

A handful of curious moths fluttered around my head, then returned toward the stalactites. I felt them with my webtouch, which meant I was getting more sensitive. I ignored them, focusing on the floor around me--and toward the Pits. I placed my feet on solid patches of ground, moving steadily but slowly. Too slowly. Impatience urged me onward. Like, part of me felt that if I spent too much time there, even without making a sound, surely the wraiths would notice me. I was better off just making a run for it now that I’d gotten halfway to the left-hand wall, I was--

“--doing a wonderful job,” Princess whispered in my mind. “Stay slow, my unruffled ruffian, stay steady. You know what they say about slow and steady?”

“Sure. That’s how the ladies like it.”

With a huff she said, “Rude boy!” and vanished from my mind.

I smiled softly and kept moving slowly, my urgency suddenly gone. Thank all the spider gods for Princess. By the time I’d reached the wall, Wren had already climbed halfway up the wall to peer through the tunnel entrance toward the kobold village. Well, I hoped toward the kobold village. If Usim hadn’t led us in the right direction, she could be looking at a random block of the Old City.

Except she beckoned us to join her.

Usim climbed first, then Tansy.

Easy, quiet, smooth ... until Usim’s left foot dislodged a rock.

A nice, roundish rock, about the size of my head. With shifted a few inches then balanced there, one eyeblink from tumbling down the cavern wall to smash against every inch of stone before slamming into the rocky floor--and waking the wraiths.

Tansy lunged to catch the rock. Too late. It fell suddenly, struck a jutting stone, and shot sideways. I reached out desperately, trying to blip it into my domain, but it was beyond my range.

“Sorry!” Usim whispered, as his mother reached down for him.

When the rock landed, it sounded like a bowling ball tumbling in a dryer.

With shocking speed, a gout of pale eels erupted from the nearest Pit then slapped to the ground. The chill behind me intensified and I hissed, “faster, faster!” then scurried up the wall behind Tansy, cursing her big, slow-moving ass.

The eels rose from the cavern floor like a stench, then braided together into a humanoid form and swept toward me. Well, maybe not ‘swept.’ The wraith didn’t move all that quickly.

On the other hand, on the terrifying and possibly-fatal other hand, I didn’t climb all that quickly.

Ten feet above me, Wren yanked Usim into the tunnel. With a trumpet of effor,t Tansy dove in a moment later. I heard her bulky form scuffing and scrambling away as the air grew colder behind me, and the pressure--that uncanny pressure--increased until my head pounded.

I flung myself into the exit, clawing at the dirt with my fingernails. When I glanced behind myself, I clocked the wraith still eight or nine feet away. Stretching toward the tunnel instead of preparing to climb the wall. It wasn’t exactly a safe distance away from me, but it was more than an arm’s length. Or an eel’s length. So safe enough.

I squirmed faster in the opposite direction. The tunnel stretched in front of me, though not for long. I already saw a brighter seep of light coming from the other side, which had to be a good sign. I crawled faster away from the wraith, until I no longer noticed the chill.

Tansy inhaled deeply as she peered ahead of us. “Smells right,” she whispered. “Smells like kobolds.”

Wren nodded and gestured for me to squeeze past the others in the cramped tunnel. Three seconds of smoke did the trick. Then I resolidified beside her. The tunnel doglegged once before it reached the exit ... and sure enough, we’d found the kobold crater. I recognized the opposite side of the ‘valley,’ where the walkway was intact, stretching across the wall and looking perfectly, treacherously, inviting.

The walkway on our side was still down, though. On the bright side, we were closer to the bisected steeple, the lighthouse ... and the kobolds were gone. There was no movement in the village, no activity at all. Just a pile of rock-headed corpses near the now-cold firepit

Which, oddly, upset me. I mean, I’d killed plenty of them myself, and I would’ve killed more. Plus, it was good news: the absence of kobolds meant we wouldn’t get swarmed by camouflaged rock-headed monsters. Yet still, seeing dozens of bodies lying in a messy heap disgusted me.

I frowned for a moment, then realized what I’d just thought, about camouflaged monsters. Even though I wanted to get as far as possible from the wraith, first I needed to check that the kobolds really were gone. I gestured for everyone to wait and scanned the valley with Intuit.

Dozens of boulders looked vaguely like kobold heads. I checked each one. Beside me, Usim touched his mother’s arm and pointed to pile of rocks. She stared for a moment, then grew a foot and stared again--then shook her head. “Just rocks.”

I kept pinging Intuit, expecting a message like Kobold, Level 19. Like they’d returned with reinforcements. Even at a ‘mere’ Level 11, they’d beaten like us like drum. And now we only had Usim’s golden beads left. We’d burned through the rest in the five minutes we’d fought them the last time and--

INTUIT: Kobold, Level 2

Oh! Down beyond the village, between two mounds of mushroom, a rock hugged the wall. Well, a head attached to a spindly body. Still, that ‘level 2’ told me everything I needed to know. At most there were two kobolds in the village. They weren’t remotely a threat, not anymore

“All clear,” I said.

“Getting chilly back here,” Tansy said, her voice tight.

Wren grunted, then took Usim’s hand and stepped onto the narrow, upward-facing edge of the fallen walkway. It was only like a handspan wide. She helped him balance and they headed forward, toward the lighthouse. Moving faster than I’d expected to put space between themselves and the wraith, if it was still coming.

Tansy squeezed next to me. “All good, boss?”

“So far,” I said.

She lowered one big boot on the walkway, steadied herself on the crater wall, then followed them.

I swept the village one last time, then glanced in the tunnel. Surely the wraith would’ve started retreating by now? They didn’t venture far from their Pits, right? Maybe, maybe not. I either felt that uncanny pressure again or imagined that I did. So yeah, I took up the rear pretty damn quickly.

The bisected tower loomed high overhead as we approached, reaching all the way to the roof of this high valley cavern. It really was shaped like a lighthouse. And for a moment I had the weird sensation of being at the seaside. I didn’t know why until I heard a shhhhh of white noise, then spotted a trickle of water spilling down the side of the lighthouse, the source of the village’s stream. Good news. That meant water was draining onto this level from the one above: this really was an exit that led closer to the surface.

Still, I wasn’t entirely sure how we’d reach the exit in the ceiling. Inside the surviving half of the tower, the open half facing us, I saw three segments of disconnected stone steps, the remnants of the stairway that had once spiraled up the interior wall. There were undoubtedly more segments higher up, out of sight, and also on the fringes of the interior where I couldn’t see. We’d need to attach ropes to the higher sections or ... well, I could waft upward. Wren could jump, in her gemmed-steroid state, and maybe carry Usim, too.

As we gathered outside the lighthouse, I wondered if she could carry Tansy, too. Probably, though I didn’t know how Tansy would feel about that. Well, we’d figure something out. Wren put her hand on Usim’s shoulder before we stepped inside. He turned to look at her but neither of them said anything. They just stood there. The closer we came to leaving the Old City, the closer they came to saying goodbye.

“Shake a hoof,” Tansy muttered.

So I took point as we entered the steeple, with Wren and Usim close behind me and Tansy in the rear ... and webtouch twanged with urgent contacts.

“Back!” I snapped.

Too late.

A blast of shimmering sparks slammed us from above.

62 - This Is the Pits

“There’s movement,” Princess said. “Approaching.”

Except she didn’t say that, she didn’t even think it. She sort of made me think it, so my eyes sprang open in the darkness, and a hatchet appeared in my hand before I even realized that I’d awoken.

Oh. Speaking of which, I’d woken from a deep sleep, after hours of ... no training, no dreamscape. Just regular, restful sleep. Which was lovely, in its way, but I hadn’t even enjoyed a nice stately stroll around Princess’s balconied ballroom in my dreams.

Instead, she’d mentally shaken me awake to alert me of a change in my surroundings. My webtouch senses detected the roughhewn stone ceiling, claustrophobically close to my face, and a figure approaching stealthily from the side. I didn’t summon my other hatchet but I prepared myself to move and ...

Oh! It was just Wren.

“Alex,” she whispered, touching my calf. “You’re on watch.”

I grunted softly and sat up. “Anything happen? You see anyone?”

“Not a soul. Not a sound.”

“I wonder where they are. They crashed through your barricade hours ago.”

She nodded in the dim light of the flecked walls. “I wish we knew, but our plan is our plan. Bring Usim to the surface and lose him in the crowds. And keep him safe until ... the danger is past.”

“You’re really going to turn yourself in,” I said.

“I know Viceroy Limt, I’ve served under him before. He’ll make an example of me, but he won’t ...” She shrugged. “He’ll leave Usim alone. That way, if this happens again, the next traitor will also turn themself in, just like I did, instead of making him chase them down.”

“Are you a traitor?”

“Of course I am.”

“You didn’t have a choice, Wren. They would’ve killed your son.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” she agreed. “But I’m still a traitor.”

“So hide. Hide with Usim, both of you together.”

She rubbed her eyes. “I’m tempted. More tempted than you know. You have children?”

“No.”

“Me neither, I just have child.” She smiled sadly, her lips trembling. “If I hide, there’s a twenty, thirty percent chance that we both survive the year. If I surrender, there’s a ninety percent chance that he does. If I hide and they find us ... “ She rubbed the bridge of her nose with her red hand. “And they will. Eventually they will find us. This isn’t a big island, and I’m not exactly popular.”

“What if they don’t take the island?”

“That’s not possible.”

“C’mon. It’s possible.”

“If the current troops fail? Six Coves will send more. There are what, ten or twenty local gifted on Waldhill?”

“So far I’ve only met me, and I’m hardly local.”

A gleam appeared in her eyed. “Yes, I do wonder where you’re really from.”

“It’s a big secret,” I said.

She snorted. “Yeah, but you’re in Ryetown now. We know--the Six Coves forces have identified five local gemmed, and I’d guess another ten are lying low. Let’s say twenty, max.”

“And there’s how many gifted invaders?”

“About the same number, plus two thousand shock troops.”

“Still, that’s not--”

“Plus another hundred gemmed on Six Coves.”

I blinked at her. “What?”

“Six Coves is a major military outpost of Krelv. You know why they call Krelv ‘the whetstone?’”

“No.”

“They believe the most effective path to power is to let gemmed strengthen ourselves against each other. Scrape against each other. To get stronger. And it works. So there’s another hundred gifted there, and some of them ...” She shook her head. “Some of them make you and me look like we’re just a lone kobold.”

“Damn.”

“They’ll send more if they need. They’ll reinforce with as many as they need. They won’t fail to take the island.”

“Well, fuck,” I said. “Why didn’t they send all of ‘em to start with?”

“Training. You can’t train properly if you deploy with overwhelming force. You need to prepare for a real fight. You need to fight a real fight. Even better, once where you’re outnumbered and out-armed.”

“That’s the whetstone thing again?”

“Yeah. Because even against the least of the Plagues, we’re like chipmunks fighting a panther. Complacency is death. We need to scrape for every last ounce of power, or everyone dies. You can hate Krelv--we all hate Krelv sometimes--but they know that better than anyone.”

I squinted at her in the dimness. “You’re cheery this morning.”

“I’m tired. Take the watch, I’m going to sleep.”

So I crawled toward the exit then lay on my stomach and watched the hallway beneath us in the faintest glow of skystone flecks in the ceiling. Listening for footfalls, but only hearing drips of condensation and the scurry of lizard-rats. I turned my arm to smoke and wafted it into threads of drifting particles. With that new perspective, I checked all directions at once.

Which was kind of a waste, because there were only two directions that mattered. Also, I felt my mana dropping. So I stopped messing around and just lay there, bored out of my skull, until morning came. Thinking about skills and tiers and plagues. Trying unsuccessfully to rouse Princess to talk to me. Mentally inventorying my domain. I want to describe everything I did over those hours, to share the utter tedium, but I’ll spare you.

Also, I didn’t actually know when morning came. It was impossible to tell underground. Still, I figured that at least three hours had passed before Tansy stirred in her corner, then snorted a few times. Her trunk-nose stiffened when she snorted, which was adorable.

I crept nearer and lay my hand on her shoulder.

She blinked at me, then smiled sleepily, and she suddenly looked young. Too young for fighting to the death in underground tunnels.

“How’re you feeling?” I asked.

“Gold beads are the shit,” she said, touching her injured abdomen in wonderment. “I feel good as garigrass. Well, it aches a little, but more like a punch than a stab. And I get a good scar, too.”

“Won’t that fade?” I asked. “When a gold bead heals me, it doesn’t leave a mark.”

“Yeah, and it takes one heartbeat, because you’re gemmed.” She narrowed her eyes at Wren, who’d woken at the sound of our voices. “Of course, we could get me a gem, boss. I know where to find one. Just an arm’s length away.”

“You want fruit for breakfast?” I asked, ignoring her murderousness. “Or those stuffed rolls that Maryne makes?”

“Can you imagine if I grew three feet taller and had a spiked gem-tail?”

I gave her a pine-melon. “Wren’s tail isn’t spiked.”

“Yeah, but mine would be.”

Wren ignored us, murmuring to Usim to wake him. We ate breakfast then I domained our blankets and wafted from our hidden half-ceiling to diffuse into the hallways below. I didn’t detect anyone nearby, so I resolidified and nodded to Wren.

She dropped soundlessly beside me and scouted the area. When she returned a few minutes later with the all-clear, Tansy and Usim joined us.

“Which way, cap’n?” Tansy asked.

“No idea,” I said. “I’m totally turned around.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she told me, and turned to Usim.

He flushed in pleasure--which surprised me given his orange skin--and pointed at a wall. “The kobold village is roughly in that direction. It’d only be a ten minute walk if there was nothing in the way. Instead of, um, everything being in the way. So if we turn right as soon as possible, we’ll parallel their valley and then any left turn will bring us closer to the lighthouse exit.”

I wasn’t sure why he was so confident, but Wren saw my expression and said, “He’s got a good sense of direction.”

That worked for me. We walked for twenty minutes, then took a left that almost immediately jogged to the right again. We followed a snaking path between erosion-carved walls, like we were in a steep riverbed. Pale strands of what looked like seaweed draped the walls, and hundreds of dimly-glowing moths danced through the air.

I tensed in case they were some kind of horrible monster. They were just moths, though.

That riverbed path led upward to a squared-off tunnel that looked like a mine shaft, plain rock with single chunks of sunstones embedded every thirty feet. We turned left again, and Wren scouted ahead, small and silent.

I turned to Usim. “So you hadn’t seen your mom in a year?”

“Almost two years.”

“But you were both on Six Coves before the invasion, right?”

“Oh! No. I was on Krelv with my father. See, Krelv and Six Coves have weirdly-overlapping routes? That’s why Six Coves is so important to Krelv. They form a bridge every few years. Every decade at the absolute least-often, according to the old almanacs.”

“Oh, So you were there, then crossed over at the last bridge, but your mom was already on Waldhill?”

“Right. I’m her because ...” He chewed his lower lip. “Well, I guess I’m supposed to be getting experience.”

I laughed. “You’re definitely overachieving at that.”

“Ha! I guess so, yeah.”

“Shh,” Wren said, slinking into view ten feet in front of us. “Come. Quietly.”

She gestured for us to follow, and two minutes later the mine shaft opened into a cavern. Like, a proper cave, with stalactites and everything, which was pretty weird in the middle of a sunken city. Without the skystone-flecked walls, the space was darker than the rest of the Old City, illuminated only by trickles of condensation catching the light that glowed from five or six tunnel mouths that opened into the cavern.

While Tansy stepped closer to guard Usim, I slipped beside Wren.

She didn’t speak. She raised three fingers then pointed to three locations across the cavern. Three circles of absolute darkness in the rocky floor.

Wraith Pits.

61 - Sleep Knits the Raveled Sleeve

While Wren flailed at the ceiling behind me, I hustled down the slope. Debris slammed and clattered, dust billowed, but I didn’t turn. I scanned the gloomy, subterranean street for Tansy and Usim.

I didn’t see them, which made sense. Of course, they’d hide, in case the next people down that slope were Sixers. They knew to stay small and silent and--

“Mom!” Usim called as he appeared in a narrow doorway. “Where’s my mother? Alex, is she, is she ...”

“She’s behind me,” I called back. “Doing some redecorating.”

“Oh, thank gods,” he said, wiping tears from his face.

“Good job staying quiet, little man,” Tansy said, hunching into sight behind him.

As I reached the street at the bottom of the ramp, I noticed that Tansy didn’t stop hunching. And that a bloody bandage was tied around her stomach. Apparently she wasn’t hunching to keep low, she was hunching from a serious wound.

“Shit.” I frowned, trotting closer. “That kobold got you.”

“Not as bad as I got her,” she said. “But yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“No,” Usim said, while Tansy said, “The best.”

“I already ate a gold bead, boss,” she continued. “I’ll be fine tomorrow. All I need is a night’s sleep.”

“That true?” I asked Usim.

He scratched one of his horns. “Um, I think so.”

“What’re you asking him for?” Tansy demanded.

“No reason,” I said, as the noise from above stopped. “Just because I trust him.”

A moment later, oversized Wren leaped down the ramp to join us in three mighty leaps. Her tail narrowed and shortened after the third one, then she shrunk to normal size.

“That’s the last time I can do that for a while,” she said, wiping her forehead.

“You’re on a cooldown?” I asked. “What’re your limitations?”

“Mom!” Usim pushed forward and wrapped her in a hug. “You’re covered in gross! Yuck!”

“Yeah, I--”

He hugged tighter. “Oh, thank the tide you’re okay. Thank the gods and all their little rosy helpers!”

“I ... “ She smiled wide, and tears glinted in her eyes. “I’m glad you’re not hurt.”

“Cause I’m one of the gods’ little rosy helpers,” Tansy told me.

“Let’s get you somewhere to rest,” I said.

“We can’t stay too close,” Wren said, still holding her son. “The kobolds won’t hold Kathina for long, and neither will that collapsed tunnel.”

“Can you walk?” I asked Tansy.

“Sure, boss. Not sure now far, though.”

I clasped her arm, partly from fondness and partly to support her. “How come I’m ‘boss’ now?”

“Just too damn small for ‘major’.”

Usim wiped his face on his mother’s uniform shirt, then nodded along the street. “We should go that way. That’s the direction that the exit’s in. I mean, where that sliced-in-half building is. The tower? The one we saw in the kobold cave.”

“The lighthouse,” I said. “You sure?”

“Yes. I think. I mean, it’s in that direction, but I don’t know if we’ll find another tunnel into the kobold village, but maybe. Maybe we can just run in and climb before anyone sees us.”

We trekked off with Wren in the lead, trying not to leave tracks. Which meant no blood smear, so Usim followed closely behind Tansy to check that she didn’t drip anywhere. When she shook off my support, I trotted in the other direction, dragging my feet, to leave a false trail, then caught up with them where the cobblestone street opened into a wider space, because we were no long surrounded by buildings. Instead, rooftops rose five or ten feet from the floor, like we were looking at a flooded village. We picked through them, and I looted a rag doll into my hand from a tin box hidden inside a chimney.

“How many gems do you have?” Wren asked me.

“Oh, nine or ten,” I said.

She frowned at me. “You turn to smoke. Your hatchets are artifact-level, and return to you. You can teleport rocks and--what is that, a toy lion?”

“Yeah, wearing a tutu,” I said, frowning at the doll.

“That’s three gems.”

“His other six are me,” Tansy said, her voice weak from blood-loss.

“What does that even mean?” I asked, pretending I wasn’t concerned for her.

She showed me a pained, tusky grin. “No idea, but it sounded good.”

“How did that survive all this time?” Usim asked, looking at the doll in my hand.

I tossed it to him. “No idea.”

“I don’t recognize the fabric,” he said.

To my surprise, Tansy didn’t make a joke about Usim playing with dolls. Well, she was hurt pretty badly, so maybe she wasn’t in the mood. Or maybe this culture wasn’t sexist like that. Either way, I eyed her worriedly as we turned onto a dirt pathway, still aiming in the general direction of the lighthouse, at least according to Usim.

Then a crash sounded from the shadows. Or the echo of a crash.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Sounded like falling rocks,” Usim said.

“They broke through the obstruction,” Wren said. “They’re coming.”

She prowled into a side-street then whistled for us to follow. We headed through a brick-lined tunnel to a wider street. Usim murmured to his mother as she stalked ahead, maybe guiding her path. I didn’t listen, cause I was too busy worrying about Tansy.

Her breath was sounding rougher. Coming in little gasps.

I wasn’t sure if we’d gotten far enough from the Sixers, though, so we kept walking as she kept weakening. Finally, Wren led us into a tangle of alleys that had once between corridors and bedrooms in a mansion or a hotel. The floor had sunk level with the street, and the doors--and some of the walls--were gone, which left eight or nine paths, with odd right-angled connections between them.

Every thirty or forty feet we came across an opening into the higher floors of the sunken buildings, places where we could climb into the half-rooms above, the lower-halves of the rooms that ended at the rough-hewn stone ceiling.

Tansy started swaying, so we found an out-of-the-way opening and hefted her through. The space was low and felt unstable. The floor didn’t have much beneath it to hold us up. Still, we crawled--well, Tansy and I crawled, the infenti mother and son just crouch-walked--until we found a protected little corner. Then Wren grudgingly re-bandaged Tansy’s wound while Usim sweetly fed her water from my domain.

I crawled out of sight, then turned my entire head to smoke, mostly so I’d weigh less and not break through the floor. Though also, I realized I could see 360 degrees around myself with a smoky head. At least for ten seconds or whatever.

Also, I hadn’t realized until the moment I turned into The Smoke-headed Man that I could do that now. It was pretty badass.

I retraced our path, erasing any signs that we’d come this way, and when I returned to the others, Tansy was asleep beneath the blankets I’d given her. I handed out more food and drink and blankets and Wren gazed at me thoughtfully.

“It’s one gem,” I said.

She grunted. “A flexible one.”

“Flexible like smoke,” I told her. “But my gem doesn’t give me a tail.”

“Plenty of infenti have tails.”

I almost scoffed, but ... did they? I suddenly couldn’t remember, which was weird. Like, I must’ve seen hundreds of infenti by now. I knew they were devil-looking, of course, with horns and pointy teeth. Had Oksar had a tail? When he’d jumped to kill the thornspider, had I seen a tail balancing him? I could sort of remember him both with and without. Not in a creepy, magical, distorted-memory type way. Just in a silly brain-fart of a way, like forgetting if a friend you’ve known for years wore glasses.

So I played it safe. “Yeah, but not like that.”

“True.”

“If I had your gem, would I get a tail?”

She snorted faintly. “Of course not. Gemmed powers change depending on the person with whom they bond. Not much, but a little. The soldier who had my gem before me?”

“Lieutenant Garanka,” Usim added.

Wren smiled faintly. “Yeah. He grew taller, stronger, faster, like I do, but instead of getting a tail his hands turned into like ... dragon claws.”

“He was infenti?”

“Yeah.” Usim looked up from the doll he was inspecting. “He was my great-uncle. He was kind of shy, except when he was fighting. He called me ‘champ.’”

Wren put her arm around him and told me, “He died fighting the Plagues.”

I almost said, “If Six Coves wants Wallhill to join them fighting the Plagues, they could’ve just asked instead of invading. How about that?” But Princess murmured in my mind, a wordless sort of nothing, like a woman rolling over in her sleep.

So I kept my mouth shut about that, and just said, “How come kobolds don’t take over the world?”

“Huh?” Usim asked.

“Well, they get stronger if there are more of them. Like the ones we just fought, they were crazy strong compared to the first bunch. And there were only what, sixty of them totday? So they keep breeding, soon there’s a two hundred of them. That makes them so strong that they easily take over the next kobold village, and the one after that. Then there’s two thousand of them, and each one is level forty. Completely unstoppable.”

Usim wrinkled his nose at me. “What does level forty mean?”

“Completely unstoppable,” I repeated, as if he should’ve known. “So they spread, and now there’s ten thousand of them, a hundred thousand, getting stronger every day. Harder to kill. Easier for them to conquer, it’s a vicious cycle.”

Wren swallowed the stuffed grape leaf I’d given her. “Kobolds are like honeybee hives. Once a village reaches a certain size, it splits. Half of them leave. But unlike bees, if they meet again, they fight. They’re violently territorial.”

“Well that’s a boringly plausible answer,” I said, then yawned.

“I’ll take first watch,” she told me. “I’ll wake you when I wake you.”

“Sure.”

“And you ...” She gestured across our cramped little space. “Sleep over there. Away from me. I want to talk to Usim before he goes to sleep.”

So I crawled out of earshot--like a naive idiot--and made a nest for myself with blankets. Then I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling, four feet above me. The stone looked solid, but I didn’t understand how. Like, if the entire dungeon was a sunken city that had been built on a sunken city that had been built on a sunken city, how come there were such distinct levels?

“When the priests requested my presence,” Princess told me, “this was not called Ryetown. This was a capital city. Waldin. A provincial capital city, yet still a populous and ancient one. Or, no. No, it wasn’t at that time, but the oldest of the priests remembered when it had been. Or ... well! My memory remains uncertain and, dare I say, wobbly.”

After she fell silent for a few seconds, I said, “And?”

“And?” she inquired.

“You’re telling me the history of Ryetown, and why there are such distinct, um levels.”

“Or strata,” she said.

After she fell silent for a few more seconds, I said, “Or strata. And?”

“Mm?”

“Are you even awake? Sometimes I think you’re talking in your sleep.”

“Training in your sleep,” she murmured. “That is a wise idea, my honey-eyed warrior. You should absolutely indubitably work on that.”

Then she dropped into deeper sleep. The five-eyed knucklehead.

I had questions for Support, so I tried to contact the weird-ass sarcastic automated voicemail system in my head, but nobody answered. Then I realized I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to ask, other than, ‘why am I the only one with a magical support system in my head?’ First off, maybe, if I had any quests active.

So I thought, Quests.

Show quests.

Reveal quests, abracadabra!

Open sesaquests!

Welp. I knew that the Plagues quest still existed. I forgot the specifics, but it was basically: get strong enough to go one-on-one with Godzilla. Which, considering a pack of knee-high, Level 11 kobolds had just made me burn through my healing beads, wasn’t looking all that do-able.

Then there was some stuff about tiers that Support had mentioned but I wasn’t sure I understood. Every ten levels I achieved a new tier. And then I could get my stats higher and ... what else? Get more gemmed powers? Had I imagined that? I didn’t think so.

I was level 8, though I must’ve been closing in on 9 after all those kobolds. I knew enough about role-playing games to know that each level took geometrically-more experience points or expoi. I wasn’t entirely sure what ‘geometrically-more’ meant, but every level would be harder than the previous one. I still thought I was close to 9.

What else?

Well, I really did have the equivalent of three gems, with my hatchets and domain and smoke. And that was before factoring in Princess, giving me webtouched senses and a shared mind. So four gems, even if some of them were pretty minor. Huh. If I really could learn how to train in my sleep, that’d be a game-changer.

Not that I was sure what the game was. Like, what was I supposed to do between now and arm-wrestling Godzilla? Well, I had to save Usim, naturally. Which meant I needed to find an exit to the surface. Also, I needed to put an axe in Tiral-ur and Kathina--and that gemmed infenti who’d killed Oskar with her fireflies.

I considered that as I closed my eyes. At one point in my life--at any point in my life before waking up in the temple of the Marlboro Smokers--the idea of committing homicide, of attempting homicide, would’ve horrified me.

Not anymore.

I was going to find them. I was going to kill them. Those were ugly feelings, but they were true. They were ugly facts. The question wasn’t, if you kill a killer, do you become as bad as them? The question was, if you don’t kill a killer, do you become as bad as them?

In a world with a prison-industrial complex, however flawed, maybe you could afford to believe in incarceration and rehabilitation. Or at least in containment, in separation. But in a world with magic? In a world with magic, however flawed? You could not spare a killer of innocents.

And I wouldn’t.

With that in mind, I let my thoughts drift toward sleep ... and training. I needed to grow stronger. I needed to become the archmage that my sheet claimed. I needed to increase my tier, my stats, my boons. I needed to increase my gemmed powers, and sleep-training would be a tremendously-valuable tool to achieve all of that.

Imagine six or eight extra hours every day, devoted exclusively to training. Single-mindedly, in a dreamscape where my mind stayed focused and no limits applied.

Keeping those aspirations, those intentions, in mind, I let my thoughts drift ...

60 - Embrace the Avalance

As I ran up the slope toward the fallen walkway and the exit, the loose shale of the crater floor crunched beneath my boots. Kobolds growled and yipped behind me and I heard the thud of Wren’s tail smacking flesh. Then I heard her gasp in pain. Still, I kept clambering upward, weaving between the kobold corpses on the ground and

Loot corpse?

Loot corpse?

Loot all the corpses, or leave them here for someone else?

Oh, shit, I’d forgotten all about that. Yes! Yes, please. Loot!

TREASURE! A whole mess of gel and foam beads and pearl beads, enough to combine into eleven pearls and ten foams with 2 gels remaining, you’re welcome.

“Thanks,” I thought, and combined the new beads into a gold-and-change by adding them to the ones already in my domain. Which I hadn’t known was possible.

Then I heard ... a different kind of fighting behind me. Not just Wren battling the villagers in a bloody melee, but the clank of metal and the shout of unfamiliar voices. And when I looked over my shoulder, I saw too much motion at the tunnel entrance where that kobold warparty was returning.

Because they weren’t just returning, they were fighting. They were engaged in a fighting retreat ... and as they backed toward the village, their enemy advanced into view.

First Tiral-ur stepped from the tunnel entrance. He was unhurt, of course, and pushing steadily forward as kobolds swarmed to bite and claw him. He ignored their attacks, the kobolds’ needle teeth unable to pierce his gemmed crachen carapace. Ten feet behind him came the white infenti twin and a half-dozen Sixer soldiers, protected by the half-circle of a sparking shield.

Kathina stepped into view next, with only a single dedicated defender. Her dress wasn’t so colorful and flouncy anymore. The fabric was torn and filthy, but that didn’t make her look weak or defeated. No, it made her look pissed.

The kobold swarm shrieked and recoiled every time the sparks hit them, and whenever the shield suddenly expanded to batter them. Which was pretty often. The shield flickered--on off, on off--as if Kathina was trying to conserve her mana. Every time her shield vanished, the Sixer soldiers stepped forward to stab with spears and slash with sword--then they retreated when the kobolds struck back, and Kathina raised her lightning shield again.

Meanwhile, ahead of them, Tiral-ur marched steadily toward the village. Another wave of kobolds swarmed him, but they started using different tactics. Instead of biting and slashing, they just clung to him, trying to slow him down as the little ones fled from the other side of the village.

<That’s not all they’re doing,> Princess murmured in my mind. <They’re also attempting to drag him toward the firepit.>

Oh. Huh. If you couldn’t break through an enemy’s armor, try to cook him alive. That was a pretty clever strategy from the little rock-heads. Satisfyingly brutal, and I wished them all the best--at least against Tiral-ur.

I watched for a few heartbeats as Kathina and her soldiers fought their way closer to the kobolds clinging to Tiral-ur--then the ones piling onto Wren suddenly abandoned her. In response to some signal I didn’t hear, all twenty-ish of them loped away on all fours, abandoning their fight with her to defend their village from these new interlopers.

“There!” Kathina yelled, pointing at a bloodied, half-dead Wren as the crowd thinned. “She’s there!”

“That one is mine!” the white-skinned twin roared when he spotted me. “The human’s mine.”

He broke from the formation, veering toward the outer edge of the village, while the rest of the Sixers immediately reoriented on Wren. Who lifted her head, revealing that her eyes were swollen half-shut and blood was trickling from her mouth and even her mighty tail looked broken. I lost track of the white-skinned twin as the other Sixer started climbing toward Wren--but at least stopped almost immediately, to brace for the impact of the new kobold swarm.

Well, except Kathina didn’t stop. She surged toward Tiral-ur and screamed with effort, her mouth wide in her faceted face. Sparks shot from her eyes and her shield burst out of her her.

A wall of sparks slammed into the kobolds that were dog-piling Tiral-ur. The force hammered them away from the gemmed crachen, and sent them reeling with yips of pain. The shield hit so hard that even he took a few steps backward.

Well, a single step.

Then Kathina slumped from mana-exhaustion and the now-freed Tiral-ur started loping up the slope toward Wren.

Well, toward Wren and me, because I never missed an opportunity to fuck up.

When I’d spotted the Sixers entering, I’d started racing and stumbling down the slope. I stumbled to a halt beside her and draped her oversized arm across my shoulder to help her to the exit. I struggled to support half of her weight for like four steps, with her huge, broken tail dragging behind us, before she started shrinking down to her regular size.

Then I swept her into my arms like a groom carrying a bride across a threshold.

She didn’t object. Blood trickled down her red cheek from a slice on her temple and she winced every time one of her legs bounced. Probably because of the missing chunks of flesh. Plus, one of her eyes was bleeding on the inside, which looked horrible and must’ve felt even worse.

I still had two golden beads. One that I kept in the general space of my domain, which I could summon touching my skin. And one that I’d stored after placing it between my teeth. Which meant I could just ... lean down and put my lips against Wren’s and kiss a bead into her mouth.

Except I didn’t want to waste a gold on her. I mean, of course I also didn’t want Usim to lose his mother. But mostly I didn’t want to waste a gold on her. Gold beads were my literal lifeline. However, I did want Wren to fight Tiral-ur, to prevent his invulnerable crab-ass from following us. That sounded like a really good job for someone who wasn’t me.

Caught between the two options, I scrambled up the slope toward the exit. Except with my arms full of Wren, and a half-shredded calf, I didn’t scramble all that fast.

“Leave me,” Wren breathed.

“Fuck you,” I snarled, hating her for being selfless.

“Drop me,” she repeated.

“Here’s a fucking gold you fuck,” I said, in my charming way.

Then I pressed my lips to hers and tongued a bead into her mouth. And let me state for the record that there was exactly nothing sexy about it. My legs were burning with pain. Her face was covered in blood. We were ten seconds away from being chopped apart by an invulnerable crab-warrior. So no, she didn’t melt girlishly in my arms. Time didn’t stop as we shared a romantic moment amidst the violence.

Uh, but I won’t claim that I didn’t notice her lips. It had been a long time since I’d touched a woman.

Anyway. I gave her a bead along with too much saliva, then dropped her on her ass. She growled and bellowed ... then started growing, even ase the healing was throbbing through her.

I didn’t stop moving. Hell, I barely slowed down. I kept climbing for the exit, leaving her behind to keep the the Sixers off my ass.

And a handful of seconds after I heard her tail smashing uselessly against Tiral-ur, I’d almost reached the walkway. As I approached, I realized that the whole thing must’ve been held upright by diagonal wooden braces, which was what the kobold had removed to drop us. Clever little boulderheads, using the power of gravity to screw any intruders.

I climbed onto the now-vertical plank, then walked on the edge almost like a balance beam. I trotted toward the tunnel where we’d entered from the rubbled slope. From this side, I saw that the tunnel must’ve been cleared by the kobolds, because a ton of debris and rocks littered the area.

And as I reached the tunnel mouth, I thought about gravity again. Hm. Maybe I should try to be as smart as a kobold. It was a high bar, but still. I slowed down for a few steps, thinking about gravity, then I froze when my webtouch pinged an alarm.

An urgent alert, so I focused on the threat and--

A crossbow bolt took me in the throat.

A length of wood and metal. Impaling my neck.

Horror almost blinded me. I couldn’t breathe. My throat filled with blood. I couldn’t shout, I couldn’t think, my entire body weakened with dread.

And through my watery eyes, I saw the white-skinned twin, far below me, braced against a half-fallen wall near the side of the valley cavern. He was reloading a beefed-up crossbow, prepping another shot.

As I summoned my last gold bead, Princess shouted in my mind: <Pull it out first! Before you heal around it! Alex!>

I didn’t listen. I needed to heal. I needed to live. So I raised my hand to my mouth and--

<Alex!> she snapped. <Get out of my way!>

With a silken tug of thought, Princess took control. She moved my other hand to my throat, grabbed the crossbow bolt, started to yank and ...

And she paused. <Oh, goodness! Domain! Domain it!>

Huh. Now that I heard. I immediately domained the crossbow bolt, which vanished from my neck. I sucked wet, bloody breath into my lungs, and the razor edge of terror sharpened to a blunt surface.

I swallowed the gold bead, and a kobold--my favorite kobold, my goddamn soulmate of a kobold--scrambled over the half-fallen wall and dropped onto the white-skinned twin like PacMan onto a line of dots.

Well, if the dots were the same level, because the infenti twin fought back. To my grim satisfaction, he didn’t look so white anymore, though. More of a blood-red.

SUPPORT: An additional twenty percent in strength points does not necessarily result in an additional twenty percent of strength.

What? What? What you talking about?

SUPPORT: Your supposition that raising your Strength from ten to twelve meant increasing your physical strength twenty percent was incorrect.

Yeah, I get it! Now shut up.

Kinda busy right now.

SUPPORT: You will equal the average strength of an adult olifern when your Strength attribute is fifteen.

Go away!

SUPPORT: The average adult olifern can ‘bench-press’ well in excess of 300 pounds.

I didn’t respond, too busy coughing blood from my throat.

SUPPORT: More like 500 pounds.

“Fucking hell,” I muttered, and felt the presence in my mind fade away. “Finally.”

After spitting one more gob of blood, I straightened and glanced toward the village. Wren and Tiral-ur were exchanging blows. She was fierce and graceful, and her now-healed tail whipped with monstrous blows. He was unnaturally-fast, like all gemmed, but far slower than Wren. Still, he shrugged off her strikes. She must’ve hit him ten times for every hit of his, yet his mace cut and bruised her while he looked unhurt.

So I watched the kobold trying to eat the twin for only two happy seconds, then I put a hand on a big roundish rock and--couldn’t blip it into my domain.

Apparently that rock weighed more than six hundred pounds, or whatever my domain could currently carry. It wasn’t even that big. It just turned out that rocks were, y’know, heavy.

So I put my hand against a smaller rock and shifted that one through my domain, then released it a few inches from the bottom of foot, which I’d shoved high into the air. Which, I will say, did not look cool. The pose reminded me of my niece’s first week of ballet school, when six-year-old-girls stretched their stubby legs behind themselves.

Still, the rock fell from my upraised foot, slammed the slope below, and started to roll. Faster and faster.

As did the next four rocks.

Gravity for the win. Even though the rocks weren’t that big, they must’ve weighed three or four hundred pounds each. Which meant that after they built up a little momentum, they’d turn into deadly weapons.

Not that they were accurately aimed or anything. Still, the seventh or eight of them started a minor avalanche of shale, while the others jolted and sped in the right general direction. Directly toward the pack of Sixers.

When a soldier called a warning, Kathina’s shield flickered into place and blocked the first two incoming boulders but she yelled that she couldn’t hold them for long. Especially since I kept rolling more at them.

So Tiral-ur disengaged from Wren and raced to the part of the slope that was directly below me. He stumbled to a stop in front of the boulders, then bent his knees and retracted his eyestalks. A boulders impacted him a rifle-shot crack that echoed in the valley cavern. Then another, and another. He didn’t take damage when the rocks smashed him, but he didn’t look happy.

He did look stuck, though, because he needed to stay there to keep his people safe.

So I dislodged more rocks as Wren clambered to join me. She moved fast up the slope, using her tail like a kangaroo, which was almost as dorky as my elementary-school ballet routine. I cast one more glance at the white-skin twin battling the kobold, but couldn’t see anything behind the half-wall, then I ducked into the tunnel at the top edge of the crater.

In front of me the rubbled ramp fell in a gentle slope away from the kobold village, back into the traguld neighborhood. Wren joined me as the clash of Sixers battling kobolds sounded behind us. I started down the ramp ... and a nearby crashing drowned out the shouts and growls.

Behind me, at the mouth of the entrance, Wren was lashing at upward with her tail. She was standing the top of the ramp, where the ceiling was only a few feet above her head, so her windmilling tail easily reached thacked into the ceiling. For a second, I didn’t know what the hell she was doing. Then I realized she was trying to bring down more wreckage and block the tunnel, so the Sixers couldn’t pursue us.

She was succeeding, too, as chunks of mortar and stone and wood rained around her at every whipcrack impact of her tail. Which didn’t look particularly safe, trying to collapse the ceiling onto herself. So my heartfelt response was: good luck with that, Commander Wren.

But me personally? I preferred to stay away from avalanches.

59 - Ripping Teeth

In a fraction of a second, the walkway collapsed from horizontal to vertical, and I tumbled ass-over-eyebrow down the incline. ‘Walkway,’ hell. That was a goddamn booby trap. The kobolds had attached ropes to the undersize and turned the planks into a trap door. The whole length of the ‘boardwalk’ swung downward on a hinge and literally removed the ground under intruders’ feet.

And now eight or nine of the sentries closed in as we crashed in a wild tangle of limbs toward the village.

Where another thirty or so kobold warriors were scurrying toward us.

The ones who’d triggered the trap were scampering fast from above us on the hillside, aiming to attack us before we gained our bearings, so I turned to smoke. All of the momentum of my ungainly fall bled off in an instant, and when I returned to my body two seconds later, I was stable and on my feet--and a hand-span behind the pursuing kobolds.

Tansy, meanwhile, had activated her blackbead. Apparently that increased her speed so much that she’d been able to catch her balance--and then catch Usim. She hugged him tight to her chest with her left arm while her right drew her longsword.

And Wren? Well, she kept tumbling down the steep crater wall. Except not like a petite infenti woman; more like a bulky-ass meteor. She’d tapped into her gem, grown twice her size. And from the single glance I took at her, she seemed to be pushing herself to roll faster toward the village and incoming kobold warriors like devil-tailed meteor.

I didn’t look for long, though.

Instead, I chopped through the neck of the kobold in front of me, then spun and caught the next one in the stomach and realized that I hadn’t chopped through the neck of the kobold in front of me.

I’d merely chopped into its neck, because these things were way tougher than the previous ones.

INTUIT: Kobold Warrior, Level 11

Eleven! So when forty or fifty kobolds worked together, they were all level eleven? Holy shit. At least blood still spurted from the injured kobold’s neck where my hatchet carved its flesh--but it wasn’t dead. Hell, it wasn’t even down: it toppled toward me while I slashed the next one in the stomach, and as I stabbed that one in the eye with the spear-head of my other hatchet, the neck-bleeding one’s oversized mouth closed on my calf.

Teeth sliced through my armor and into my flesh.

I buckled as another kobold leapt at me. That one missed, but the next two didn’t. One caught my arm and the other bit through the back of my neck. Through my fucking spine. Which somehow, terrifyingly, didn’t hurt as much as it just felt wrong.

The lack of pain panicked me, so I turned to smoke and then drifted there in fear and uncertainty. Princess cooed in my mind, trying to soothe and center me, and maybe she did. Still, when I returned to my body, I immediately collapsed. Because, y’know, severed spine.

Still, I calmed enough to bamf a golden bead between my teeth and swallow.

Energy flared through my body. The flow of healing power felt like it was melting my neck. Pain kicked in, agony kicked in, but so did a sense of stability. Of solidity. I wasn’t fragile, not anymore. I wasn’t broken.

With a growl, I sliced a hatchet through the ropy thigh of the kobold who’d eaten my spine. Its severed leg fell away and it collapsed in a pool of pumping blood and I hurled my other hatchet at the one who’d chewed my arm.

For once, a thrown hatchet flew true. The blade chunked into the kobold’s cheek and it shrieked and flailed. Didn’t die, because level 11, but it was out of the fight.

I rose into a crouch and eyed the remaining kobolds. Four glared at me in a half-circle, while one chased Tansy and Usim uphill toward the exit. And while, well, about thirty swarmed Wren lower down on the slope. From the corner of my eye I saw her gem-strong tail scything through them before she was buried beneath the snarling pack, but I couldn’t do anything about that, not now.

I faced the ones circling me--then I turned and ran, sprinting after Tansy.

I wasn’t confident that she could handle a level 11 kobold, not now that she’d blown through her blackbead power. Maybe she could, maybe she couldn’t. She must’ve weighed five times as much as them, and she had at least three times the reach. Still, she was level 6 and these things were goddamn vicious when they were this numerous. I expected kobolds to be low-level mooks, but no. Not even close. One of them had just swallowed a couple of my goddamn vertebrae.

What would happen if five hundred kobolds lived together? Would each warrior be like level 36? Then nothing could stop them. They’d keep reproducing and spreading and getting stronger and stronger until there were a million of them, each one level 99, and they took over the world? What if they--

<Stay with me,> Princess interrupted, gently reminding to focus on, y’know, the life or death battle.

I mentally shook myself. Okay, Tansy was loping up-slope toward the spot we’d entered, and with her strength and her stride she was moving pretty fast. But the kobold chasing her was running on all fours, closer to the ground, and she--yes, from this angle I could tell that the kobold was a she, and yes, I’m just gonna leave that there--was getting steadily closer.

I was slower than either of them, but I threw my hatchets as I ran. I threw one, then the other, then recalled both and did it again.

I hit the kobold three times in eight throws. Only once with the blade, but the third strike was with the end of the hatchet haft, which whacked the kobold hard in the ear. She didn’t like that. She yowled and stopped ignoring me.

She turned, crouching low--and in that moment looked exactly like a big-headed Gollum with a shark’s teeth--and launched at me.

And let me just say that I loved things launching at me. Ever since I’d killed my first thornspider I’d really appreciated the help. I mean, sure, the other four kobolds were charging at me from behind, and the main pack was probably already chewing on Wren’s bones, but still. You needed to take your little pleasures where you could.

I shifted my grip then swung for the bleachers.

Level eleven or not, I cleaved liked little shit’s face in half. Blood splattered me. Hell, blood showed me. Some even got in my mouth but I didn’t care, too impressed with that absolute grand slam of a hatchet blow.

And then, at an urgent twang from webtouch, I shoved myself sideways. A claw raked across my armor from behind, but didn’t penetrate. Twisting and striking at the same moment, I caught another kobold in the stomach, opening a deep abdominal gash, then blocked a massive set of teeth about to bite my face off. The one that had clawed me dove at my right ankle but chomped the air as I dodged and the other two--or maybe the other three, I’d lost count--growled and yipped and snapped and slashed and tore, and the one that I’d gutted started prowling after Tansy even though its intestines were dragging on the floor.

Well, points for dedication.

When one of the kobolds chomped my boot, its shark teeth didn’t break skin but still managed clamp onto me. First I tried to shake the fucker off then I tried to cut the fucker off, but my blow didn’t do much against level 11 skin, and I didn’t have a time for a second because the other kobold exploited my suddenly-limited mobility and slammed my knee with its rock-hard head.

Something cracked and I collapsed, and the two of them plus a wounded one climbed on top of me like jackals on a dead gazelle and started digging in.

Health: 15/55

Mana: 16/24

I struggled for a moment--then a wild claw-slash ripped into my neck. Blood spurted from me in a hot wet gush. I felt myself dying and bamfed another golden bead into my mouth and swallowed even as I turned to smoke.

That time I didn’t panic.

That time I watched as I wafted.

Above me, Tansy was squaring off with the partially-disemboweled kobold. Behind her, Usim was holding a dagger completely wrong, god bless him.

Below me, Wren was covered in blood. Mostly her own. She was still alive, though, still fighting despite the missing chunks of her legs and tail, and the ugly gashes across her face. And a moment later, I saw why she was still alive: she palmed something into her mouth then roared as her wounds knit closed.

She was burning through golden beads, too.

And finally, as I floated there in my vaporous form, I spared a moment’s consideration to the three kobolds in a pile below me. One was half dead but the other two looked pretty much unscratched. With them at level eleven and my strength just a ten, I’d struggled to injure them. I could add my free point into Strength, but how much difference would it make, getting 10% stronger?

<Their limbs are relatively weak,> Princess murmured. <And we have two free points.>

<We only have one,> I thought, before I checked.

Points Avail: 2

Where the hell had that second one come from?

<I’m also right about their limbs being relatively weak,> Princess told me.

So I added both points to Strength.

Alex Levin

Anomaly

Level 8, Wax Tier

Archmage Status

Arachrys Blooded (Webtouched, Twominds, Resistance)

Boons:

Domain (3/5)

Intuit (1/5)

Support (2/5)

Treasure (1/5)

Gems:

Smoke

Aptitudes:

Spear

Fighting Hatchets (speciality: dual-wielding)

Attributes

Strength: 12

Agility: 12

Fortitude: 15

Dexterity: 15

Alertness: 12

Speed: 10

Spirit: 12

Design: 14

Derived

Health: 57

Mana: 24

Craft: 14

Movement: 10

Avail 0

And even as I checked my stats, I turned solid and started hacking away. Targeting skinny biceps and bony thighs that time. And yep, I hacked through them like kindling now. Maybe because I was twenty percent stronger, which was more than I’d imagined: the difference between benching 200 and benching 240. Or maybe because I focused on them instead of going for head- or chest-shots. In any case, it only took a half-dozen hits before I left one of them with three limbs and the other with two.

I bellowed to Tansy and Wren, sharing my delicate, gentlemanly strategy of chopping off arms and legs. And finally, I slaughtered the bleeding kobolds at my feet, and swayed from exhaustion.

Health: 41/57

Mana: 14/24

Huh. I was in pretty good shape. I had no idea why I was so tired. Well, maybe from taking enough damage to die three times over. I’d popped three golden beads--though I didn’t quite remember when I’d taken one of them during all that chaos and bloodletting--and maybe that was more exhausting than I’d expected?

I started to climb toward Tansy, grumbling, “No rest for the weary.”

<Of course there’s rest for the weary!> Princess told me, suddenly chipper in my mind. <That’s mostly who rest is designed for, the weary. It’s almost entirely who rest is meant for, when you think about it, which I suspect you did not. Why would the non-weary require rest? Your world really does invent the oddest sayings. That’s like saying, ‘no hats for the stylish’ or ‘no laughs for the amused.’ >

<No groans for the unamused,> I grumbled, trudging upward.

<She’s fine,> Princess told me. <Tansy’s fine. She won, her adversary is routed and ruined. We need to help Wren.>

<Are you sure?> I muttered.

<That we need to help her? Yes. Look at Usim!>

So I raised my gaze, and saw the teenaged demon’s orange, terrified face staring behind me. Peering over my shoulder at the village, realized why. A pile of writhing, biting, clawing kobolds were absolutely smothering his mother.

His eyes shone with unshed tears. His lip trembled and called, “Help her, Alex! Help her, she’s--please!”

“Welp,” I said, then raised my voice as I turned and started down-slope. “Hey, you boulderfaced fucks! You want a real fight?” I clanged my hatchets together. “C’mon!”

The kobolds ignored me--which I found frankly insulting--until I started throwing my weapons at the nearest ones. Then I heard Wren scream again, from deep inside the writhing pile of kobolds, the same bellow as the other times she’d eaten a golden bead.

The pile shuddered. The pile writhed like a mound of worms. I threw my hatchets five or six more times, then a blood-sheeted demon-looking She-Hulk erupted from the center of the mound of crawling kobolds, leaping toward me. Except she didn’t quite reach me. She must’ve taken serious damage in the few seconds since she’d healed herself, buried in that a horde of ravenous piranha kobolds, because she already looked rough. Her monstrous tail lashed furiously, but her side was sheeted with her own blood, her weirdly-stretchy clothing plastered to her skin, and one of her horns was broken.

“Get your kid,” I called. “I’ll hold them off.”

“What the fuck is that ollie doing?” She glared upward at Tansy with a blood-covered face and shouted: “Get him out of here! Go, go!”

The kobolds lower on the slope us regained their footing and spread out. There were only about twenty of them now, which meant Wren must’ve killed nine or ten. Which was impressive, given their level--except she’d used at least three golden beads.

“How many gold left?” I asked her, as the kobolds stalked closer.

“None,” she said.

I bamphed a bead into my palm and gave it to her. “Now we’ve got one each.”

“Not enough,” she said, spitting blood onto the floor before tucking the bead away. “This is why you never fight kobolds on their own ground.”

INTUIT: Kobold Warrior, Level 10

What the hell? Between us we’d killed over a dozen of the rock-headed beasts, and they’d only lost a single level?

“Still ten,” I grumbled.

“There’s a lot more’n ten, Alex.” She cut her eyes across the village. “Look, another warparty is coming back.”

I followed her gaze to the other side of the kobold town. At the bottom of a craggy crater wall, a broad tunnel opened beside what a fat clump of mushrooms. And sure enough, more kobolds were marching through the tunnel into the village. Just a handful in sight so far, though motion roiled in the shadows beyond them.

“Well, shit,” i said.

“I’ll hold them off,” she told me, wincing as she rolled her oversized shoulders. “I’m dead anyway.”

“You really going to turn yourself in?”

“Take care of my son. Promise me that you’ll--” She swallowed. “He needs to live.”

“He will live,” I said.

“Tell him ...” she wiped her face. “Send him to his father on Krelv.”

“I’ll tell him you love him. He already knows.”

“Yeah.”

I turned away, then said, “Hey, Wren?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not so bad for a homicidal maniac.”

And then I loped away--because she was right. Despite her son’s love, despite his pleas, Wren was dead already. Her entire goal was to surrender to the viceroy and get executed for her sins--to save Usim. If she died here, that wasn’t quite as good for Usim, but it was better than letting these PacMan-looking motherfuckers chase him down.

She was as good as dead, but I wasn’t. I didn’t need to sacrifice myself. I would if necessary, but not happily. And I really really didn’t want to get eaten alive by kobolds. That was another reason to run. On my list of Things to Avoid, getting eaten alive was well high.

So yeah, I turned tail as the village kobolds slammed into Wren behind me. Shark-like teeth gnashed and claws scratched. Wren’s powerful tail lashed and her sword stabbed. She swallowed her final gold bead and kept fighting as I climbed toward the tunnel where we’d entered not that long before. Tansy had already dragged Usim away, thank god, back into the traguld buildings in the Old City.

He wouldn’t see those oversized teeth ripping his mother to shreds. He wouldn’t see her die.

I grimaced at the thought, but I kept moving.

A Quick Note on a Slow Subject

I'm going to slow my release rate to 3-5 chapters a week. I'm happily working away on Book 2, but I want to be sure that I don't burn out.

So I wanted to flag the change here, in case you don't want to renew your membership with fewer releases. If that's the case ... thanks so much for the support you've already given!

I don't know if I've mentioned this anywhere, but I'm a traditionally-published author, and this is my second attempt to break into this new field of publishing. I wasn't sure if _anyone_ would join my patreon, and it's been so heartening to watch the membership number rise!

58 - The Lighthouse

When I dropped inside the apartment building, the pain in my leg flared. Not too badly, thank fortitude. Still, I sucked in my breath--and the interior of the air tasted faintly mineral. When I tentatively sniffed, I noticed a hint of ammonia. I guess I’d been expecting the stink of rot and decay, but obviously after centuries there wasn’t much left.

I paused there, my hatchets in my hands. The skystones of the street glowed faintly behind me, and some of that light seeped in through the windows. But not much. And after I stepped around a fallen wall, the rooms inside turned pitch black.

<You don’t need your eyes, my gentle windblown knight,> Princess told me. <Take it from someone with five of them! They’re wonderful, ingenious devices, and you know how fond I am of color! Color is twelve of my favorite things. Still, eyes are not necessary, not here. Instead, feel the web extend around you ...>

“You have five eyes?” I asked.

<Don’t be silly, you sillybones,> she told me. <Now focus, concentrate, and attend!>

So I focused on my webtouch. And sure enough, I felt the walls to either side, the rubble at my feet. I took a few steps, keeping my senses receptive. Yeah. I could do this. I was Daredevil. I saw without seeing, I felt my surroundings like--

“Ow!” I blurted, when I stubbed my toe on a chunk of broken floor.

Well, not ‘stubbed.’ I hadn’t felt any pain through my boots, I’d just been surprised.

<Shhhhh,” Princess said. “Breathe. Relax. Focus.>

<How’m I supposed to relax and focus?>

<Formidably, my stalwart Alexcellent, formidably. When you master that ability, your skills will improve by terrifying leaps and magnificent bounds. At the very least ...>

<What?> I said, when she paused.

<You won’t stub your toe.>

I snorted in amusement and took another few steps, trying to focus and relax at the same time. I sort of knew what she meant: that a passive alertness would serve me best. I’d already learned to use my webtouch, but mostly to detect large objects or fast motions. I wasn’t good at picking out subtle changes or the fine details, such as the trash on the floor of a pitch-black room.

I stepped, I focused, I relaxed. I almost wet myself when I walked into a dangling strand of dusty cobwebs. I didn’t, though, because I’m tough as nails. I relaxed, stepped, focused ... and detected a pile of insect-eaten wood that must’ve once been a table and chairs. I focused, and pinpointed a snarl of decayed fabric and clumped fur shoved beneath some tiles. A nest of those big-eyed ratlizards.

When I took another step, a dozen of them fled into a hole in the wall and chittered at me, stinking of ammonia.

“You stay there,” I told them. “And we’ll get along just fine.”

They chittered.

I continued onward, moving slowly and awkwardly in the dark, and eventually found a crumbling stone stairway that led upward for five steps before ending at a wall of rubble. So I searched for another way higher, and even turned to smoke to waft into nooks and crannies.

I found nothing.

Until I felt a tingling.

Treasure: A jade figurine with daevonci sigils.

My webtouch didn’t give me many details, but I rummaged around for a minute, then salvaged a figurine from a pile of trash. It was about the size of my thumb, and felt vaguely fish-like. I shifted it into my domain and headed back to the front window, only walking into two more cobwebs on the way.

I stepped onto the street where Tansy, Wren, and Usim waited. “No luck,” I said, rubbing the ache from my side.

“Not for you,” Tansy told me. “But the kid has an idea.”

“Not an idea,” Usim said, “so much as a question. Like, the Old City sunk super-slowly, right? Just a foot at a time. So for years and years people still came to the sinking bits. They came scavenging for stuff, or living here, or whatever. Which means they had reliable paths that led higher.”

“Makes sense to me,” I said, looking to Wren and Tansy for confirmation. “But how does that help us now?”

Usim scratched one of his orange horns. “Well, they would’ve come here the longest for the most valuable, hard-to-move stuff. Like, even after monsters started spawning, they would’ve kept a path open as long as possible for the good stuff. Driven by greed, I mean. So we need to find the location of the good stuff, and from there maybe we’ll find a way upward.”

“Oh. That makes sense. What counts as ‘good stuff’?”

Tansy grinned. “Diamonds and beads.”

“Those aren’t hard to move,” Usim told her.

“All the easily portable valuables would’ve been taken early,” Wren explained. “Survivors would’ve emptied the vaults. We should look for areas with high-quality metal scrap.”

“So, like ... blacksmith’s shops?” I asked.

“Breweries,” Usim said.

“Huh?” Wren said.

“The traguld brew liquor, or distill it I guess, in metal stills, and in the old days they used gold pipes. It’s non-reactive, and was considered worthless back then, so ...”

“So we look for breweries,” Tansy said.

Wren grunted. “First we look for the traguld quarter.”

“What does a traguld quarter look like?” I asked.

“Lower houses, narrower doors,” Usim told me.

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Where are you from?” Wren asked me. “That you don’t know that.”

“An island without many traguld,” I said. “One of the Mericas.”

She grunted again and started off through the underground city. Though with so many buildings collapsed and streets blocked, the ‘city’ was more like dozens of tunnel-streets branching in various unpredictable directions. Still, Wren seemed to think she could find Traguldtown. We passed a mile of sweating, sweet-smelling mushrooms before we diverted around a rocky avalanche where a roof had caved in. We froze at the sight of another wraith Pit, except it turned out to be a now-dry well. Er, maybe dry or maybe the hole opened into a lower level of the Old City.

We didn’t poke around to find out, despite Tansy’s enthusiasm.

After an hour, we started to see skinny buildings with narrow windows and uneven walls. They looked knobby and angular. Or ... almost faceted.

“What are traguld?” I asked.

“Little folk,” Tansy told me. “Weak but smart. They forget nothing they don’t want to forget. Some of them know entire libraries of information.”

“They’re the best,” Usim said.

She elbowed him gently. “You’re kind of like a traguld, yourself.”

“One of my great great grandparents was traguld.”

“On his father’s side,” Wren said. “And that’s probably not true anyway.”

“Infenti can reproduce with traguld?” I asked. “I thought they spawned from rock or something?”

“Infenti can reproduce with anything,” Tansy told me. “Don’t leave one alone with your favorite longsword or you’ll find yourself raising a whole generation of butter knives.”

Usim made a face at her. “Traguld believe they’re descended from gemstones.”

“Like gems? Gems like ... gems?”

“Gemstones. Like rubies and emerald. Or maybe quartz. I think I mean quartz, but that’s more of a myth than a real belief.”

“Okay.” I glanced at the dimly-glowing walls of a faceted building. “So, uh, where do gems come from anyway?”

All three of them stopped and looked at me like they couldn’t believe I’d just asked that.

“What?” I said, backtracking quickly. “I mean, I know where they usually come from. Hell, I’ve got one. I’m gemmed, I’m mister gifted. I just mean, uh, where else do they come from? Like, do they come from anywhere else? Other than, y’know, the obvious?”

“Hoo boy,” Tansy said.

Wren just snorted and scanned the street ahead, where a mound of stone from a fallen building lay across the cobblestones. The debris formed a lumpy ramp that angled upward at a low angle, and almost reached the ceiling.

“Okay,” Usim said, hanging back to talk to me. “So normally, purple beads--the super-expensive ones--are combined to make a gem.”

I tried not to gape at him. How come none of the wagon servants had mentioned that when we’d talked about beads? You just collected enough money and you created a magical gem? It was that easy? You packed cash together, and done. Though that was a lot of cash, the equivalent of a million loaves of bread or something.

“Yeah, like ten or twelve of them?” I said, instead of gaping.

“Or twenty or thirty.” He rubbed his orange nose as we followed Wren up the rocky, uneven ramp to get a better view of our surroundings. “You can’t tell how many you need until a gem is formed. But sure, that’s where most gems come from. Or they’re, uh, harvested when the original gifted is killed. Then the gems, um, find new people to bond with.”

“Yeah, the killers.”

“Or anyone who’s there when the gifted dies, right. Often that’s family and friends, or members of the same squadron or team. Though usually they melt if someone tries to extract them. I mean, the gems melt, not the friends! They sort of fade away, but sometimes they remain and a new person becomes gifted. Or if they’re already gifted, they might become double gifted. Or triple or whatever.”

That rang a bell. “Except every time you take another gem, you run the risk that all your gems will break.”

“Correct,” he said. “It’s a coin-toss if your first one takes, too.”

As I thought about “100% chance of implementation,” I peered at the vine-packed ceiling, which was now only five or six feet overhead. That high on the ramp, I realized they weren’t vines, they were roots. Extremely vine-y roots. They were red-barked in the dim glow of the whitestone walls, and slick with moisture.

INTUIT: Dungeon rhizome also known as creeping rootstalk. Technically edible, if things turn pear-shaped. Not, like, literally pear-shaped. Metaphorically pear-shaped.

Okay, then. That was completely normal.

“So those are the obvious ways,” Usim continued, giving me the Dummies Guide to Gem Bonding. “More rarely, some powerful monsters are gemmed. So people take gems from them. It’s not common, but it happens all the time.”

I stopped thinking about the stupid messages in my head and gave him a look: what did that mean? No common but happens all the time.

He ignored my look. “Or even less frequently, a city spire occasionally grows a gem, or not grows exactly but ... grows. Like a crystal fruit. And rarest of all, that I’ve read, gems sometimes generate spontaneously inside someone.”

“That never happens,” Wren told him, glancing down at us from higher on the ramp, her red skin and pointed horns looking black in the dim light.

“That’s not what Father says.”

“Who do you believe about gems? Me, who has one, or him, who doesn’t?”

“Him,” Usim said. “He reads.”

“Ha!” Tansy said, from lower down.

Wren tsked. “I read!”

“You read military reports.”

“Yeah, and they’ve never mentioned any convincing evidence of spontaneous genera--” She raised her hand for us to stop. “Ssh!”

Usim froze and I stepped in front of him then also froze. Behind me and lower on the ramp, Tansy spun to face behind us, which surprised me. Like, clearly whatever had spooked Wren was in front of us, but Tansy didn’t even peek in that direction. She spun and prepared for us get hit from behind. It was so out of character that I just knew that Hollis must’ve trained her so thoroughly that it had become second nature.

When Wren gestured to me, I crept to crouch beside her. The gentle upward incline of the ramp ended five feet in front of us, where a slope led more sharply down ten or fifteen feet to a wooden walkway. Like a narrow boardwalk that stretched to the left and right, following the outside lip of the valley. Because that’s what spread out in front of us. Maybe a valley or maybe a crater, because it was roughly circular.

Fifteen or twenty crude stone huts stood in a crude ring at the lowest point of the valley, and a few dozen kobolds were among them. Five or six were grinding chunks of material on a flat stone beside a trickling stream. Another group was pounding leather or hide. Others were dragging a carcass toward a firepit with burning embers and low flames. A handful were just lounging around watching as four or five little ones chased each other near a pile of bones.

When I looked more closely, I spotted a bunch of odd-looking boulders in a rough circle around the village: sentries.

So I caught Wren’s eye, then jerked my head in the direction we’d come from and looked quizzical. Like, should we retreat?

She gestured with one clawed finger to our right.

The rough plank walkway curved around the edge of the crater ... then joined with what looked like the steeple of an ancient church. It was a pointy narrow tower, mostly destroyed. Split almost exactly in half lengthwise, which made most of the interior visible from our side. The edges facing us curled inward slightly, blocking small sections to either side, but I saw the important part clearly: broken segments of a spiral staircase rose upward toward what looked like a hole in the ceiling.

A hole in the ceiling. The path upward?

“Sweet garigrass,” Tansy whispered behind us. “That’s the lighthouse! An old watchtower, split down the middle, they call it the lighthouse. I’ve heard stories about that. It’s the way out.”

Wren and I shared a relieved look: finally. Finally an exit. Finally a path to safety. Well, for us, at least. For me and Tansy and Usim. Not for Wren, though, considering she planned to surrender to the viceroy when she reached the surface. But she didn’t care about herself, she only cared about Usim.

So yeah, we shared a relieved look for about two seconds before she remembered that she hated me. Which made me grin. I mean, I hated her, too, for being a violent prick who’d invaded an innocent island, but it was nothing personal.

<A mere professional loathing,> Princess said in my mind. <A courteous and well-mannered hatred. The truth, Alexira, is that you like her. You approve of her bravery, intrepidity, and--primarily--of how much she loves her son, how much she values him, and how absolutely committed she is to protecting him.>

I ignored her, and leaned close enough to Wren to whisper into her ear: “What order?”

“Me first,” she whispered back. “I’m lighter than you. Then Usim. Then you, and the ollie last.”

I figured that a commander knew more about that kind of thing than I did, so I just pointed behind myself at Usim, then crooked my finger. When he slipped beside me, he gasped at the sight of the kobold crater. I murmured an explanation. He nodded while still staring in wide-eyed alarm or fascination at the village.

We moved slowly. Three minutes passed before Wren even set foot on the walkway. She took a step, watching the nearest kobold sentries. There was no motion from the boulder-looking monsters, no reaction.

She took another step, then gestures. Usim joined her. They moved onward. After another minute, all four of us were creeping toward the bisected tower--the lighthouse. Our feet scuffed quietly on the planks, but no louder than the trickle of the stream. The air smelled of woodsmoke and roasting meat, and my mouth watered. A dozen well-cooked kebabs were waiting for me in my domain, but the scent still made me want to join the little rock-heads for a hot meal and some campfire songs.

Wren glided silently forward. Usim moved slightly less-silently forward. I moved fairly quietly forward, and Tansy did her best. Not that noise mattered that much. In addition to the babbling stream there was the noise of kobolds growling and yipping to each other, and the scrape-scrape-scrape of them at the grindstone.

None of them noticed us as we snuck halfway to the lighthouse.

Or so I thought.

Then, in a single moment, three kobolds rose from concealment just downslope of us. My webtouch twanged wildly as they yanked one cords connecting to struts beneath the planks we were standing on. The walkway unhinged from the rock wall and we tumbled downhill toward the village.

57 - From the Pit

I turned to follow Wren into the corridor when Usim told Tansy, “It’s okay, I can walk now.”

“Are you refusing to ride on ollieback?” she demanded.

“Um, no, I just--”

“You’re breaking my big brown heart!” she said, with a tragic sigh.

“Are you sure?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Stay close to Tansy. She’ll grab you if anything happens.”

“I’ll grab you at super-beaded speeds,” she told Usim. “My toe-ring is at your service.”

“What’re you so cheerful about?” I asked her.

She wrinkled her trunk. “I don’t know, boss. Uh, we survived? That’s nice. Also, I’ve never been this deep in the Old City before.”

“Which is a good thing?” Usim asked.

I smiled at him. “Not if you’re sensible, like us.”

“Like we,” he said.

“Like we what?”

He twitched a smile. “Sensible like we are. Not sensible like us are.”

“Ha!” Tansy nudged him happily, if slightly too hard. “You showed him, little man.”

“Usim,” his mother said, from the shadows ahead. “Stop being charming. Let’s move. Quietly.”

“I’ll take point,” I called back. “I’m good in the dark.”

“You’re human,” she scoffed. “Just keep my son ... just watch him. Please.”

“Okay,” I said, and started up the hallway after her.

We moved in silence for about five minutes before I murmured to Tansy, “So if you wear like five blackbeads will you be strong as a gemmed?”

“Nah,” she said.

“That’s now how it works,” Usim told me. “For two reasons. First, you can’t wear five blackbeads at once. They interfere with each other. You can use one and maaaaaybe two if you don’t mind the interference. But that’s all. And second, gems don’t just grant powers, they increase your baseline. Your speed, your strength and toughness, your senses, all of that. So even before they grant a power, they already act like a bunch of blackbeads.”

I grunted. “Oh.”

“Like I told you,” Tansy said. “‘Nah.’”

“Shh,” Wren whispered, from the edge of my webtouched range.

As I approached, I felt her crouching in place, a few feet before the tunnel opened into a wider space. I stopped beside her and focused. In front of us, the Old City became city-like again. Well, first the tunnel fed into a squared-off space, almost like a warehouse, except missing the far wall. But then the ‘warehouse’ opened into underground streets in which crumbling, tilted houses stood beneath a high ceiling that glimmered faintly with skystones like distant stars.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Look for the tallest building,” Tansy said, crunching to a halt behind me. “A lot of the time there are ways upward from inside them, or around them, or something. Or, uh, so I’ve heard.”

“Anyone have a better idea?” I asked.

Nobody did, so we headed onward. At first, the street ran through mounds of mushrooms that grew around columns of what looked like petrified trees. Then we headed between the remains of ancient houses and shops. I kept my Treasure senses alert, in case I felt something worth looting, but we slunk three blocks before anything happened.

Wren lifted a hand in warning and whispered, “A pit.”

“You mean like a sinkhole?” I asked, wondering why she’d mentioned it.

“I mean like a wraith lair. They live in pits.”

“Oh. Shit. So what do we do?”

“Be very quiet. Wraith’s aren’t so easily roused. And if we see movement, we run. You take point, I’m staying near Usim.”

“Oh, now I take point?”

“Exactly,” she said.

I shot her a look, but did what she told me. Apparently wraiths were so bad that she wanted to stay near her son even though she didn’t trust my human senses in the front. Of course, she didn’t know that I also had webtouched senses. So I gritted my teeth at the pain in my leg, and sidled past her. I saw an ordinary-looking street in front of us. Well, given the crumbling underground buildings and the rubble-scattered cobblestones. Yeah, the streets were cobblestone here, beneath scraps of broken wood and shattered glass, and the strange subterranean lichen that grew in thick clumps. Many surfaces still glowed a faint white, but not the windows that gaped like eye sockets, or the holes in the ground that looked like mortar craters.

Except obviously not, in a world without mortars. So maybe they looked like ‘fireball’ craters?

I clocked two normal holes before I saw the pit. Except it was clearly a capital-P Pit, because it looked like a black circle scooped from the ground by God’s own hole punch. It was the size of, I don’t know, a kiddie pool or a ... a completely circular SUV. The shape looked far too regular, and I found the regularity unsettling.

Taking great care not to kick any of the rubble, I backtracked a few steps then leaned close to Wren’s ear and whispered, “That’s the Pit? The lair? A wraith is in there?”

She nodded. “Wraiths usually stay close to their Pits. Once we’re twenty, thirty yards past, we’re safe. Probably.”

I mouthed ‘probably,’ at her, then turned back, eying the Pit and spreading my awareness around myself. Alert for the slightest twinge of spectral monster.

<Princess?> I said in my mind. <You there?>

<I’m watching,> she said, serious for once.

<What the he--the heck is a wraith?>

<I’ve no notion, but can you feel that?>

I sent her a sense of negation. I couldn’t feel anything at all, except the ice-cold breeze rising from the Pit. Like I’d opened a freezer two inches in front of my face. But other than that, there was--

<Yes, that is precisely the feeling to which I’m referring,> Princess told me. <That cold wind, that graveyard chill. It feels like soulwork to me. Wraiths are spirits, no?>

<Yeah, from what I heard.>

<Untouchable by anything that is merely physical.>

<But they can touch us? That’s hardly fair.>

<If my supposition is correct, they needn’t touch us physically. I strongly suspect that they can drain our life by making contact with our souls.>

<So ...>

<Stay away from them, if you please.>

<Gotcha,> I said.

I cracked my neck, then turned to wink at Usim. He rewarded me the long-suffering expression of a put-upon teenager, which actually soothed my nerves a bit. Then I took a breath and walked forward, slow and careful. One step, stop. One step, stop. I stayed close to the ancient, waterstained stone wall of a long-buried building. One step, stop. The chill grew as I neared the Pit. Another step. I thought I heard a hollow sound rising from the inky darkness, like the echo of silence in an abandoned building.

Another step, then another.

When I drew even with Pit, I found myself wanting to take three quick steps closer to peek inside. I suppressed the urge, but I probed with my webtouch senses. I couldn’t quite feel around corners--not yet--but when I focused I was able to guess at the Pit’s depth.

And to my surprise, it didn’t feel like a bottomless horror of an endless hole. It was pretty shallow. Maybe about five feet deep, with perfectly smooth sides and a rounded bottom. Like a giant had poked a hole into the street with his six-foot-wide pinky. Which happened to be perfectly circular.

Anyway. I crept past, to the blessedly non-wraithy road on the far side of the Pit, then turned and gave the all-clear.

Wren gestured for Tansy to follow me, which I found slightly surprising. Though maybe Wren figured that if a big ollie didn’t rouse the wraith, neither would she and Usim? Even more surprising, Tansy obeyed without a word. She slunk along the street, following my path. She crept noiselessly past the Pit, slinking to within ten feet of me, then she exhaled in relief--

A shard of painted pottery cracked under her boot. Loud as rifle shot.

She froze, staring at the Pit.

I exhaled, preparing myself to ... I didn’t know what. To do something.

One second passed, then another and another. Then Tansy took one more step toward me. A silent one, that time, thank the Billowing Ones. She joined me three seconds later, and we shared a look of exhausted relief before turning our attention on Wren and Usim.

To my surprise, Wren tapped into her gemmed powers. She grew less than a foot, took Usim in her arms, and waited. She waited so long that I wondered if she was just enjoying the excuse to hold her son. Which maybe she was, but eventually she decided that the wraith was still sleeping or dormant or whatever, and she started toward us.

She moved more quietly than I expected, considering her size and her burden, though I wasn’t sure why I was surprised. I’d seen her in combat. She’d moved like a dancer then, and she brought that same grace to bear now.

Sure enough, a minute later she and Usim joined us safely on the other side of the Pit.

“Well, that wasn’t nerve-wracking,” I whispered.

And by ‘whispered’ I mean fucking whispered. More quietly than a footstep. More like a ... well, a goddamn whisper. And yet that was what roused the wraith.

So, to sum up, I barely whispered, “Well, that wasn’t nerve-wracking,” and motion erupted from the Pit. An explosion of white eels spewed upward, that’s what my mind saw in that first horrified moment. Spectral white eels, braided and clumped together, erupting toward us.

Moving fast, too.

Too fast to dodge.

I almost turned to smoke ... and the clot of spectral eels slapped to the ground five feet in front of me. Oh. So it had speed, but not range. And that explained why Wren had gathered us at this point and not any closer to the Pit.

In a flash, Wren grabbed Usim and leaped away. The translucent white eels rose into a vaguely humanoid shape as Tansy and I scrambled for distance. I spared a moment to glance behind myself saw the wraith sort of ... sludging after us. Apparently wraiths didn’t have feet. Instead, it drifted along on those writhing eels, which meant that it moved pretty slowly after that first eruption.

“That’s a wraith?” I asked, as I continued backing off.

It didn’t move that slowly, after all. More like a normal walk than a jog, but still fast enough to cover some ground.

“You think?” Tansy said.

“How long will it chase us?” I asked.

“Probably not long,” Wren said, waiting for us to catch up. “Just stay out of reach.”

“Good plan.”

INTUIT: Wraith, Level 22

Twenty-two! Damn. That was the highest level that I’d seen anywhere.

“Its tentacle things can unfurl at you,” Usim told me, as his mother carried him to safety along the road. “That’s what I read. My father told me that wraiths are either the remains of an ancient race of traguld, or maybe of gemmed people, or maybe of gemmed traguld. Like, if a gifted dies to some special kind of magic, their gem turns them into ... that. A hungry spirit.”

“What kind of special magic?” I asked, as I trotted behind Wren.

“I don’t know. I don’t if anyone knows.”

“Why do you care, boss?” Tansy asked me. “You’d look good as a snake ghost.”

I grimaced at the wraith, which was swaying toward us from thirty feet down the street. “Well, if I turn into one, I’m not going to waste my afterlife lounging in a Pit. I’m going to haunt you personally.”

“Cause you love me,” she said.

“There’s a building a few blocks over that reaches the ceiling,” Wren said, trotting away from us with Usim still in her arms.

“How’d you see it?” I asked.

“When I jumped.”

“You can let me down,” Usim told her.

“Do I have to?”

He must’ve given her a look, because she set him on his feet and smiled, the first real smile I’d seen from her since the day she’d greeted him. Which apparently brought tears to his eyes, thinking about the future, because he took a shaky, shuddering breath.

“Okay, so what we need is a serious building!” Tansy said, clearly trying to refocus them. “Not a regular house with three floors. We need like a cathedral or guild hall, or a mansion or castle, if we want to climb higher. Something that might’ve stayed intact while everything around it fell apart.”

“Let’s get away from the wraith first,” I said, glancing behind us.

The eel-apparition glowed a dim white, but its ‘eels’ weren’t quite eels, or even tentacles like Usim had said. They were more like ... tendons. Like some unfurling interior organ. In the few seconds since we’d roused the creature, it had already started looking more human. Or more humanoid, at least. Two dark hollows appeared, like eyes, and a gaping, slime-spun mouth opened horrifyingly wide in what looked like a silent scream. Instead of arms, dozens of eel-segments reached toward us. Like ... like links of sausage. Except, y’know, nightmarish.

The chill hit me again. I looked away, trotting down the block with the others, thinking about hungry souls and level twenty-two. Even invulnerable crachen and electroshock governesses weren’t even rated that high.

“So wraiths are horrible,”I said, “but if they don’t catch you in that first lunge, they seem sort of harmless.”

“True,” Wren told me, from a few paces ahead. “They wouldn’t be much of a danger, except there’s no way to fight them. If you attack one, you injure yourself. If they touch you, even just brush against you, you start crumbling like a sheet of brittle vellum in an ollie’s fist. Then they feed.”

“Ah.”

“It’s not a good death. It’s so ugly that I wouldn’t wish it on my worst ... you.”

“Mother!” Usim said.

She cracked a smile at him. “I’m kidding, Usim.”

“Oh.”

“I would wish it on him.”

That time I smiled. “Huh. I didn’t know you had a personality.”

“Of course she does,” Tansy said, peering down the next block toward a wide rectangular building. “Her personality is ‘murderous.’ Is that the building you mean, Sixer?”

“It’s the highest one around,” Wren said.

“Worth a try, but it just looks like a tenement to me.”

We headed for the entrance, which wasn’t the real entrance—or the original entrance. The building had sunk at least one full floor into the ground over the centuries, so instead of a door we faced a row of empty, second-story windows. The remains of broken shutters and household crap littered the street, but I didn’t see any kobolds even after checking every suspicious lump twice. Princess didn’t detect them either, yet I kept gazing into the shadows.

“Kobolds won’t come this close to a wraith,” Tansy told me, when I explained what I was looking for.

“But we’re outside of its range, right?” I said. “They don’t go far from their pits?”

“Usually, the Sixer said. Which means sometimes. But never very fast.”

“Okay. You all watch the street.” I cracked my neck again. “I’ll check inside.”

“If you go inside, I go inside,” Tansy said. “I’m your bodyguard. That means I stay with your body.”

“A big curvy girl like you?” I eyed her up and down. “You’ll make every single floorboard creak.”

And she--I swear--she blushed. Her elephant-looking cheeks positively pinked. So apparently ollie women--at least one of them--understood that ‘big girl’ was a compliment. Which was, frankly, a lovely change from Earth women obsessed with being skinny. Though on the other hand, she didn’t really think I was flirting with her, did she? I mean, no offense to Tansy, but chicks with elephant skin and stubby trunks weren’t really my thing.

Well, not yet. Who knew what might happen after another few dry months.

“Guard him from here,” Wren told her. “Unless you trust us to raise the warning, so he doesn’t get cornered in there?”

Tansy grumbled but she agreed to stay behind while I climbed through one of the windows, then dropped to the floor inside.

56 - Upwards

Holding my hatchet blade to the throat of the injured twin stopped his brother--and all the other soldiers.

It didn’t stop Kathina. Her shield sizzled through the air toward me. She could shape and aim the force-field a little. Enough to narrow the leading edge to about an arm’s length, though apparently no smaller. Which was good news. I didn’t want her to start jabbing lightning spears at me.

The bad news was that her shield moved too fast for me to dodge.

She yelled, “Take him! Kill him! Now!” and her crackling lightning struck glancing blows on both twins before hitting me.

My Fortitude--or my gem--protected me a little. Well, my Fortitude, my gem, and my desperation. So despite my weeping eyes, I slashed the twin’s throat as leaped around the shield toward his stunned, horrified brother. The sizzling shield knocked me aside and blasted tingling agony through my shoulder, but with my other outflung arm I managed to pound the mace-head of my hatchet into the surviving twin’s chest.

He screamed with pain and with rage--and grief. He screamed like ... well, like he’d just seen me cut his twin’s throat. And even though my blow had cracked something in his chest--his amor or his ribs--he managed to grab me in a bear-hug.

We rolled around for a few seconds, in a hail of crossbow bolts. The twin squeezed and the bolts fired and--

Health: 23/55

I turned to smoke for three seconds. When I re-solidified, I was already throwing both hatchets at Kathina. For once, she was too slow, or too drained, or too surprised to use her lightning shield.

I thought I’d finally draw blood, but instead a soldier blocked one hatchet with her buckler and then goddamn Kathina parried the other one in mid-air with a rapier I hadn’t even noticed her holding.

Right. She was gemmed. That meant she was stronger and tougher and faster even before taking her impossible magical powers into account.

Then her shield slammed into me again. So she wasn’t too drained, apparently. There was no lightning that time, but I took a hard smack that made me stagger, and Tiral-ur almost caught me with his mace. He was faster than a normal person, too, but not much. Thank god. I dodged and weaved and my websenses felt Kathina’s shield intensifying but she didn’t strike again, probably because I was surrounded by her soldiers.

Instead, she snapped orders at them and I summoned both my hatchets and lifted them overhead and bellowed, “Tiral-ur, face me! I challenge you to a duel!”

I had absolutely no idea where that had come from. A duel?

Still, the soldiers spread out off while Tiral-ur stalked closer to me, rolling his shoulders in preparation for engaging me one-on-one. The surviving twin straightened from the floor, wiping blood from his mouth and shooting me a look of pure hatred.

After taking a single step toward Tiral-ur, I spun and raced in the other direction. Fleeing like a bunny rabbit. Well, like a three-legged bunny rabbit, considering the ache in my knee and crossbow bolts in my side, and the thunder of blood in my ears from getting fried three times.

More crossbow bolts fired at me, but I managed to catch them in my domain as I stagger-ran down the hallway. I heard the Tiral-ur bellowing and Kathina snapping commands as I veered toward the courtyard, the one where Tansy had taken cover--the one where we’d killed the bears.

I wasn’t sure why she’d retreated there--

<Because you told her to, silly,> Princess murmured, which was nonsense.

Still, I was pleased for two reasons. First, the courtyard was more defensible than facing the Sixers in a hallway. And second, there were hidden caves beyond the bear den.

When I staggered through the entrance, I almost smacked into Wren, who must’ve been seven feet tall, and as bulky as I’d seen her. She waiting just inside while Tansy was covering Usim in the back corner. She’d pulled the crossbow bolts from her stomach and packed the punctures in her armor with some kind of goo or fabric. I’d thought you were supposed to keep impaling object inside your body so you didn’t bleed out, but I didn’t have ollie hide--or magicland fantasy healing herbs.

So I looked away and told Wren, “The cave, there’s a den in the corner. There’s a path, an exit, go!”

“I need to hold them off,” Wren growled at me. “Or they’ll get Usim and--”

I shoved her, which felt like shoving a tree. “Take them and go!”

She went, hustling Tansy into the corner, then toward the crack in the wall.

<I trust you have a cunning plan,> Princess murmured in my mind.

<Of course,> I said. <Yes. As always. Absolutely.>

<While I am no military strategist,> she told me. <I believe that establishing one’s defenses in a narrow point at which multiple foes cannot simultaneously attack is generally held to be wiser than shuffling gormlessly around a wide open courtyard.>

Which, yeah. That made sense. I knew that. I was still new to this, though, and it was a teensy bit hard to think with invulnerable crab dudes and electro-spark demon ladies after you. So for a second I froze, standing gormlessly in the courtyard.

Then I wondered if I should try to hold off the Sixers at the courtyard entrance.

And finally I realized that the back of the cave was narrower, and a far better place to make a stand.

So I ran to follow the others as boots slammed and metal jangled behind me. I’d only gotten halfway across the courtyard when the fastest of the soldiers appeared from the corridor.

I threw both hatchets at him, barely even looking behind myself, and got lucky. One caught him in the face. He reeled backward and I reeled forward, staggering for the skinbear den ... while rummaging in my domain with my mind.

<Oh, you do have a cunning plan,> Princess said, when she realized what I was looking for.

<Course I do!> I said, having just thought of it.

<Or at plan, at least. One cannot vouch for its cunningness.>

As I stumbled into the den, the floor turned spongy beneath my boots. A thick carpet of dried bearshit spread from wall to wall. Perfect. I bamfed a skin of lamp-oil into my hand, then popped the top and drizzled oil behind myself as I staggered toward the smaller cave with the cupboard and tunnels.

A few more of the Sixers entered the courtyard behind me. I recognized the twin’s voice growling in fury, describing all the ways he’d kill me. Then Tiral-ur snapped that he would take point, and Jikap should follow. Jikap cursed him as I splashed the rest of the lamp oil onto the manure-packed floor.

I pulled a sparkstick from my domain and said a little prayer. I knew that people burned dried cow patties for fuel. I knew that ‘fertilizer bombs’ were a thing. But other that that, I didn’t have a clue what would happen. I didn’t even know if skinbear shit was flammable.

I mean, ideally I’d start such an intense fire that the heat would drive the soldiers from the den completely. But barring that, I’d take smoke. A lot of smoke. So much smoke that they wouldn’t be able to find the smaller cave, much less the tunnels beyond. And even if they eventually found the tunnels, I hoped that the fire would cause enough damage to obscure any signs of our passing, so they wouldn’t know which tunnel we’d used.

So I crouched and fumbled with the sparkstrick, trying to light a puddle of oil soaking in bear shit. The first sparks didn’t catch, possibly because my hand was trembling too much. Neither did the second spray of sparks. Over the pounding of my heart, I heard Sixers shouting and Tiral-ur stomping closer. That guy never stopped. If we fought, he’d eventually win. I couldn’t even hurt him--but he and Kathina both could crush me pretty effectively. And the two of them were terrifyingly well-matched. He’d tank all the damage while she struck from a distance with an attack that I couldn’t dodge.

And frankly, I wasn’t even confident that I could fight off all the non-gemmed soldiers, not if they came at me at once.

I crouched there for about three lifetimes before the oil finally caught fire. Flames licked across the shitty floor, following the path of the oil I’d poured--then they started spreading with faint blue ripples.

I grimaced in discomfort as I stood from the expanding patch of flames. Crossbow bolts hurt. What a shocker. The blue flames turned a brighter yellow as I moved deeper, from the den toward the smaller cave. More of the floor caught fire, and the yellow flames danced brightly, casting strange shadows against the filthy walls.

Tiral-ur must’ve noticed, because I heard him grunt a warning to the others.

The sound of his boots grew louder and I pressed myself against the wall just inside the smaller cave. And when he rounded the corner, I attacked.

Sort of. I didn’t bother with my hatchets, I knew they couldn’t hurt him. Instead, I grabbed his mace with both hands and blipped it into my domain. He didn’t skip a single step. He immediately caught me with a hard, carapaced elbow to the side, then I grabbed his bandolier and tore off two pouches and lunged behind him toward the burning den and the courtyard beyond.

Then I turned to smoke.

Just another curl of gray fumes in the darkness.

Mana: 9/24

I didn’t have long, but I managed to waft around Tiral-ur as he lunged back toward the den, in the direction I’d gone. I heard a howl of rage from Jikap, the living twin, a howl of blind, mad fury. The sound would’ve given me goosebumps if I’d had arms at that moment. Then I drifted deeper into the small cave, past the cupboard I’d looted to the three dressing rooms--the tunnel entrances--and realized I had no idea which one to enter.

So I returned to my body with two mana left and stood there like a dumbass.

“Major!” Tansy hissed, from inside one of the entrances. “Here!”

I ducked into the tunnel to join her. “You waited.”

“Of course I waited, you prick. I’m your loyal goddamn servant.”

“On the other hand, you got shot by like five arrows.”

“Not too deep,” she said.

“Let me see.”

“After we get out of here.” Hunching over to keep from smacking her head on the rocky ceiling, she squeezed through the narrow tunnel. “Right, left, left.”

“What’s that?”

“The turns that Usim is taking ahead of us. And his Sixer mother. So if we want to follow them we can meet up.” Tansy turned her head to give me a sidelong look. “Which we definitely do, because of the kid, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Until he’s safe,” she said. “Then we don’t care about Wren anymore.”

“She’s gemmed, Tansy. You’re not going to beat her.”

“Not by myself,” she told me, and turned right when the tunnel came to a T.

“Let’s focus on getting the hell out of the Old City first.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” she said, and headed onward, limping slightly.

I followed her, limping more than slightly. The pain of my wounds flared as my adrenalin faded. My head pounded, my body ached. The damage from Kathina’s shield was fading fast, but I was still bleeding from a half-dozen cuts, and throbbing from at least that many bruises. Plus, I felt nervous because I couldn’t see where we were going; Tansy completely filled the narrow tunnel ahead. Eventually she turned sideways for a hundred feet, then stepped into a square whitestone chamber where a regular-sized Wren was talking earnestly with Usim. Having a low, important conversation that stopped when we entered.

“Do you know how to get out of here?” Wren asked us. “Back to the surface?”

“Sure,” Tansy said. “We need to head upwards.”

“We have no idea,” I said.

“You’re hurt,” Usim told me.

“I’m okay. How about you?”

“Tansy--she spun around so the crossbows hit her instead of me.”

“I’m thick-skinned,” Tansy said, and I realized that she wasn’t bleeding from the crossbow wounds anymore.

Wren must’ve removed the bolts that struck her, too. Either that, or hers had fallen out when she’d shrunk back to normal size, I didn’t know. Blood was still trickling down her arm from beneath her shoulder armor, though.

“I have three more gold beads,” Usim said, rummaging in his pouch. “And my mother has one.”

I eyed Wren. “Use it now.”

“If you’re gemmed,” she told me, “gold beads heal you instantly. It’s better to hold off until they’re absolutely necessary.”

“If you’re not gemmed,” Usim said, offering a bead to Tansy, “you need to take them sooner. So they have time to work.”

“Keep that for yourself,” Wren snapped at him.

Tansy popped the bead into her mouth. “Thanks, kid.”

“I’ve got a gift for you, too,” I told Tansy, and handed her the leather bracelet with the blackbead that I’d stolen from the twin while he was bear-hugging me.

“Whoa. What is this?”

“Speed,” I told her. “It was already used once today, but ...”

“You took that from Jikap?” Wren asked, as she looked closer.

“Yeah, you know that human guy, Old Phil? He had it when I met him in jail. You know, the guy who needed extra speed to successfully cut me open for my gem?”

Wren eyed me with dismissive amusement. “Is that what he told you?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“That’s not how it works, major,” Tansy said.

“What isn’t how what works?”

“Philomel was lying to you,” Wren said. “He’s an interrogator. He was probably trying to con you out of information. You don’t need speed to extract a gem. We let him borrow the bead because you were an unknown danger.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me. So what’s it do exactly?”

“Boosts your speed. Makes you five times faster.”

I gingerly probed a wound on my side. “Yeah, I saw that. For how long?”

“Seven or eight seconds. Usable once every three hours, more or less.”

“Damn.” Tansy tried strapping the bracelet onto her wrist, but she was too big. “Oh, c’mon.”

“It doesn’t belong to you,” Wren said.

“It does now,” Tansy told her.

“It belongs to--”

“Mother,” Usim interrupted. “She saved my life.”

“I’ve got a theory about you, kid,” Tansy told him, as she plopped down on her butt on the stone floor.

“You do?” he asked.

“Yeah. My theory is, you take after your father.”

“I, uh ...” Usim glanced at his mother. “I used to think that, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Why’d you change your mind?” I asked.

“My father would not end up in buried city full of skinbears and kobolds.” He glanced at Wren. “Whereas my mother ...”

She grunted then tousled his hair. “Has got no sense.”

“Ha,” Tansy said, pulling off one of her boots.

“What’re you doing?” Usim asked her.

She wiggled her elephant-looking bare foot at him, then fastned the blackbead bracelet around her two biggest toes. “There we go. Nice and snug.”

While she pulled her boot back on, I checked my status.

Health: 33/55

Huh. So Kathina’s electrical damage healed relatively quickly. That was good to know.

“More gold beads,” I announced, as I checked the pouches I’d stolen from Tiral-ur. “Three of them, and a bunch of pearl. And some vials of, uh, I don’t know. What are these things?”

“Narcotics,” Wren said, when I showed her. “And wound sealant and disinfectant, and that last one looks like crachen brine.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Crachen,” she said.

“What kind of narcotics?”

“I don’t know. Maybe performance boosters or maybe just recreational.”

“Huh,” I said, and started to return them to the pouch when I remembered that I had magical powers.

INTUIT: hallucinogen, soporific, wound treatment, and crachen brine for crachens.

“What’s in the other pouch?” Usim asked.

I looked in. “A shell collection?”

“A what?’

“See for yourself,” I said, and tossed him the pouch.

“Oh!” He fished out what a glossy sand-dollar. “Charms. Crachen like these. And there are some notes, too.”

As he unfolded the crumpled paper, I peered around the square chamber. There was a charred patch on the floor, surrounded by the remains of an ancient bonfire. The ceiling glowed a dim white with bits of skysstone, but instead of being matted with vines there were dozens of tiny stalactites. Also, there were two exits, which was kind of the most important thing.

The door opposite the tunnel where we’d entered led into a hallway that slanted slightly upward. The other door opened into a stairwell leading down.

I pointed to the first and said, “Let’s try that one.”

“Told you so,” Tansy said to Wren. “We need to head upwards.”

“They’re mostly recipes,” Usim grumbled, tucking Tiral-ur’s notes back into the pouch. “And shopping lists. Oh, and love notes from some lady named Foh.”

“No convenient maps to the Old City, huh?” I asked.

He stuck his orange tongue out at me.

“Stay between the traitors, Usim,” Wren told him. “I’ll take point.”

She cracked her neck and started up the slanting hallway.

55 - Arched Throat

The kobold’s skin cracked like shatterproof glass beneath my boot. It didn’t break apart, but a spiderwebbing of lines spread across its rocky skin. My kick sent it flinging away, and it squealed as it slammed into the wall then tumbled to the floor. Kobolds were harder than they looked. The impact would’ve broken a few toes if I hadn’t raised my fortitude.

I barely had time to enjoy the sight of the spiderwebbed one gasping on the floor before the kobold that I’d dodged scrambled to face me again, it skinny legs bent to lunge. I crouched to meet the attack but my webtouch spun me around with an insistent twang.

Instead of hacking at the scrambling kobold, I threw my hatchet at the little fucker that was scurrying toward Tansy and Usim.

My blade carved a furrow in the kobold’s head, then I lunged sideways and failed to keep the scrambler from leaping onto my back and trying to climb to my head. Scratchy claws scraped at my armor and I turned to smoke for the briefest moment, then spun in place and returned to myself and caught the now-falling kobold by one skinny leg and bashed its brains out against the floor.

I beheaded another one with a casual backhand of my hatchet, using my webtouch to aim, then recalled my thrown hatchet and took stock of the fight.

INTUIT: Kobold, Level 4

Three of them were still alive, but none of them was after me. I watched Wren dispatch two more, wielding her sword with elegant perfection. She hadn’t even bothered tapping her gem--either because Tansy had been right and the ability was time-limited, or because she hadn’t needed to.

Maybe both.

Tansy killed the final one, the one I’d wounded, with a sword blow that looked more like a golf swing, and then:

INTUIT: Kobold Squad, Level 3

The notification remained. Huh. That didn’t make sense.

“Um, I’m pretty sure ...” I said, frowning at the carnage. “They’re not all dead.”

Tansy poked the corpse at her feet with her sword. “This one is.”

“There!” Wren said, gesturing along the hallway. “Don’t let it get away!”

The one that I’d kicked, the one with the spiderweb-cracked skin, was hugging the corner as it scurried away. It was blending into the surroundings as it ran, camouflaged so well that I only saw it in flashes. Still, I hefted a hatchet in my right hand and measured the distance in my mind.

I knew the weight and balance of my weapon perfectly, I’d been practicing for days. I was bound to these hatchets. My vision narrowed, and I threw.

It was a perfect throw in terms of rotational timing. The blade hacked forward and downward at exactly the right distance. Sadly, it was also about ten inches to the left of the kobold, which scurried through a hole and vanished.

“Well, nine out of ten ain’t bad,” I said, recalling my hatchet in a stream of smoke.

“It’s a scout,” Wren told me, as she strode toward Tansy to check Usim. “It’ll raise the alarm and return with dozens of warriors.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I’m fine, mom,” Usim said. “That’s not my blood.”

“Kobolds get stronger when they fight together,” Tansy told me.

“Doesn’t everything?” I asked.

“No, I mean each individual kobold gets stronger if there’s more of them around.”

“What? You mean, like ... each one gets individually stronger?”

“If there’s more of them around,” she finished.

“That’s so weird.”

“We won’t have much trouble if there are fewer than twenty,” Wren said, cleaning the gore from her sword. “But that scout might recruit forty or fifty to defend their territory.”

“In that case,” I said, “let’s get out of their territory.”

On the way back toward the street with the courtyards and the skinbear den, I double-checked every lump of stone and water stain. I didn’t detect a single thing except a few beetles and big-eyed rat-lizards. Everything was clear sailing, at least until we returned to the fork in the tunnel. Our rather simple plan had been to U-turn and take the left-hand hallway this time. We knew we’d come from one of those two branches, after all.

But the moment we trotted around the corner, we heard a shout: “Hostile contact! Ahead, ahead!”

“Crossbows!” one of the infenti twins called from the depths of the left-hand hallway. “Fire!”

A dozen click-twangs sounded, then a dozen bolts sped toward us from the shadows.

“Usim!” Wren bellowed, and threw herself toward her son, ballooning larger with shocking speed.

My mind sharpened, my world narrowed. I focused on my webtouch senses instead of my sight, and for a fraction of a second I felt a dozen crossbow bolts speeding at us. I located them. I touched them with my awareness ... but I still only managed to plucked five of them into my domain

Another one caught me in the side and two struck Tansy in the stomach as she spun to face the onslaught and keep the boy safe behind her bulk.

She made a pained noise and backed unsteadily away, telling Usim to drop lower on her back. He hunched down, piggybacking on her with his head behind hers for protection, and the rest of the bolts slammed into Wren but at her full size they didn’t penetrate far.

“Back, back!” she snarled to us, spreading her arms to make herself a bigger target for the crossbowers.

She was a ruthless invader and all, but she didn’t hesitate to protect her son. So as Tansy retreated with hisses of pain--and with Usim on her back--I darted closer to Wren and slapped my palm between her shoulder blades.

“Follow my hand backward,” I said.

She grunted acknowledgement but before we took a step a wave of crackling air shimmered from the dark tunnel in front of us. For a blank moment, my brain didn’t understand what I was seeing. Only for a moment, though. Then I realized, and Kathina’s lightning-shield swept toward us.

At the same time, I realized that I needed to turn to smoke to avoid the shock--or minimize the shock--though I didn’t know if it’d work. Still, it was worth a try, I needed to--

The lightning hit me before I finished the thought.

Health: 39/55

Wren roared in pain and anger, then charged forward, aiming to take Kathina down in one sudden blitz--but the gemmed invulnerable crachen Tiral-ur emerged from the tunnel to block the charge, and swung a big-ass mace at Wren’s side.

She ignore the mace and punched him. The blow sounded like a grenade blast in the contained area. I swear I felt the shock waves, but Tiral-ur didn’t move. Oh, he grunted--he’d felt that, at least a little--but the impact didn’t send him flying.

The impact didn’t move him an inch.

So he wasn’t just tough, he also absorbed blows. Or absorbed momentum or something. With an guttural growl, he swung his mace at Wren. She dodged that time--barely--then blocked and darted inside, slugging him in the stomach with a sound like a tree limb breaking. Tiral-ur didn’t even grunt. He just kept advancing, kept swinging at her. Wren couldn’t hurt him, not with all her gemmed strength--at least no more than I could with my hatchets.

And while most of the next volley of crossbow bolts bounced off her gem-hardened hide, two pierced her thigh. She swore and Tiral-ur pushed her backward, closer to me, and closer to Tansy and Usim who’d retreated behind me somewhere, into the corridor with the courtyards.

Then the white-skinned infenti twins stepped from the left-hand path, both wielding what looked like boar spears. Two shieldmen appeared next, guarding Miss Kathina--as if she needed guarding--then the rest of the Sixers stepped into sight: eight or nine soldiers with crossbows and swords.

Average level: 8

Same level as me, but they weren’t gemmed. Well, I hoped they weren’t. They definitely weren’t archmages with magic spider powers. Still, they weren’t just regular troops, either. This was the elite of the Ryetown soldiers.

I hurled a hatchet at Kathina then immediately bamfed my second hatchet into the same hand and aimed at one of the shieldmen’s calves. Sure enough, the instant I threw the first hatchet, the guy raised his shield to deflect it, to protect Kathina--so my second smacked him on his armored shin. It didn’t do any damage, but it slowed him down.

Kathina called orders that I couldn’t parse with the blood rushing in my ears, but her crossbowers veered to one side, for an angle on Tansy and Usim.

So Wren bellowed and charged her, juking around Tiral-ur.

I guess we weren’t retreating.

I followed her forward, slashing at the gemmed crachen’s face with my hatchets, dancing around him, avoiding his blows. My blades barely scratched his carapace but Wren had more luck: she smashed into a shieldman and sent him flying fifteen feet to crash against a wall.

She bolted forward and was about to cut Kathina in half when her sword bounced off the lightning-shield--and electricity struck her again.

Full force.

Short range.

That impenetrable, sparking surface slammed into her. Wren reeled backward and I turned to smoke. Faster, that time. The lightning still struck me with a painful jolt--but not a debilitating one. As I wafted there in the gloomy, chaotic hallway, the Sixers kept advancing.

I was only ten feet from Kathina, when she dropped her shield to avoid electrocuting her allies. So I returned to my body and sprang at her, my hatchet already swinging.

Before my blow landed, a boar spear smashed into the back of my knee while another slammed my forearm hard enough to break my grip, sending my hatchet flinging away. Then the blunt end of a third spear caught me in the face and--

And three spears hadn’t hit me. Hell, two spears hadn’t hit me. That had all been a single spear. One of the twins was moving uncannily fast. Blurring with speed, and wearing--oh, shit. Wearing that same embossed, black-gemmed bracelet as Old Phil, the human vivisectionist in the prison. The one that granted super-speed.

Well, that wasn’t great news.

The other twin was no slouch, either, and he stabbed at me from behind with the sharp end of his heavy board spear. My senses twisted me at the last minute, and I dropped to the ground and chopped desperately at his calf.

I caught him, too. I caught him hard and sliced halfway through the bone,.

He howled in pain and collapsed beside me and I scrambled behind him--taking cover from his twin’s speed-empowered slashes--and one of the other soldiers, bloodied and mangled, hurtled through the air overhead. Slammed by She-Hunk Wren toward me.

I heard her bellow a moment later, as she turned to flee back to her son along the courtyard-studded corridor.

“Retreat!” she yelled.

The flying soldier smacked into the standing twin, giving me a moment’s reprieve. So I grabbed the wounded twin’s horn from behind, bowed his head backward, and put my axe blade to his arched throat.

That stopped his brother. 

Stopped the other soldiers, too.

54 - A Wrong Turn

Usim cut the argument short by limping over to Tansy and letting her lift him onto her back. He wrapped his arms around her broad neck and she held him in place with one hand and left the other free for her weapon. I started off, retracing our steps. Wren fell in with me a few seconds later, her sword drawn as she scanned the street ahead.

Tansy stayed in the rear to keep Usim safe, which impressed me. I thought she’d hyperfocus on protecting me, but instead she focused on protecting what mattered to me. Apparently I’d been underestimating her.

“You know about the Old City?” I asked Wren.

“Only from reports.”

“There’s kobolds, wraiths, and redworms, they told me. Nobody said anything about skinbears.”

“There’s wraiths down here?” she asked.

“Apparently.”

“Good thing we’re not sticking around. A wraith is a death sentence.”

I paused at a fork in the road. A cloud of gnat-like bugs hung in the air as I frowned to my right, then to my left. I didn’t remember which way we’d come from, and when I looked at Wren, she shrugged. Then she glanced over her shoulder and asked, “You remember the way?”

“Nope,” Tansy said.

“Sorry,” Usim said.

<Princess?> I said in my mind. <A little help?>

<It all trembles the same to me,> she yawned. Which wasn’t, in fact, any help at all.

“Neither of you can track?” I asked Wren and Tansy. Surprised, because what kind of fantasy-world warrior-people couldn’t track?

“Not on a stone floor that’s been heavily-trafficked by a pack of skinbears,” Wren told me.

“‘Heavily-trafficked,’” Tansy repeated, in a faintly mocking tone.

“Don’t tease my mom,” Usim said, looking down from where he was now sitting on her shoulders. Apparently he’d climbed up higher while I hadn’t been looking. His hands griped her thick, braided hair and his skinny calves dangled in front of her.

“Who talks like that?” Tansy asked. “‘Heavily-trafficked.’”

“You hush,” he said. “Mom, can you please at least try?”

So Wren paced off the left-hand fork, frowning at the floor. Then she moved to the right, and frowned some more. Finally, she took a few steps, zig-zagged, then squatted and peered at a vague mark on the ground.

“Does this look like a boot print to you?” she asked me.

I squinted at the curve in the dirt. “Yeah. Yes. Well, that or the edge of toe-pad. One or the other. Or, um, something else completely.”

“Great,” she said, and started off in that direction, following the right-hand fork.

I followed. The walls still glowed faintly and the ceiling was still packed vine. Other than that, the hallway looked like a mine-shaft or dungeon. We passed a few open doorways, or at least rectangular holes in the wall, and only paused long enough to check that nothing would jump out at us before pushing past. We needed to return to the cellar quickly, before the Sixers cleared that bottleneck.

We needed to disappear into Ryetown with an entire army on our asses.

Except nothing looked familiar. We’d only sprinted through the city for a short time while chasing the skinbear that had snatched Usim, but we’d been moving pretty fast. Still, I expected to recognize something after walking for five minutes. Instead, after the hallway curved for a while, one wall suddenly turned into what looked like a coral reef, with a thousand mutant cauliflower-like growths.

“We definitely didn’t come this way,” Tansy said, behind us.

“We’ll go back to that first fork,” Wren said, turning with a parade-ground abruptness.

Tansy snorted. “I guess neither of you have the Gem of Not Getting Stupidly Lost?”

“GPS,” I said.

“What does jeepies mean?” Usim asked.

“Sorry. It’s, um, a swear where I’m from. Jeepies!”

“You okay up there?” Wren asked Usim, craning her neck.

He nodded from his place on Tansy’s shoulders. “I’m good, mom.”

“Of course he is,” Tansy said. “He’s got the Gem of Olifarn Height.”

Wren gazed at her son for a long, meaningful moment. Usim, despite being orange-skinned, flushed. She touched his knee, then gave a faint smile and stalked off, retracing our steps

I trotted to catch up with her, less interested in the family moment than the weird coral reef growths on the wall. What the hell were they? I almost asked, but this probably wasn’t the right time.

“What you really want is the Gem of the Olifarn Nose,” Tansy murmured to Usim behind me. “I don’t know how you all walk around with those tiny things. It’s embarrassing. That’s why there’s that old saying, ‘Everyone wants to smell like an ollie.’”

“That’s not a saying,” Usim told her.

“An old, old saying. You probably never heard it, on account of your tiny ears.”

He gave a bleat of laughter. “I know what you’re doing, Miss Tansy. You’re trying to cheer me up so I’m not afraid.”

“Don’t be dumb!” Tansy trumpeted. “I’m to cheer me up so I’m not afraid.”

Usim laughed again. “Well, is it working for you, because--”

“Shht!” I hissed, at a twang from my webtouch sense.

An alert. A warning of imminent danger. I raised a hatchet and stopped short, focusing on the empty hallway in front of us, stretching back toward the intersection where we’d taken the wrong turn.

Wren tensed beside me, while Tansy spun to scan behind us, her longsword suddenly in her hand.

And in the sudden, taut silence ... I couldn’t sense anything threatening. I wasn’t even sure if I’d felt a warning in the first place, not really. Maybe I’d just imagined that flash of danger.? Still, I made myself focus. Water dripped around us, as condensation drizzled from the vines overhead. Weeds grew here and there, pale wormy-looking things. The dingy white walls glowed faintly, casting almost no shadows, and the flagstoned floor was weirdly smooth except for the occasional deep, jagged crack caused by the entire underground city settling lower over the centuries.

Rubble lined the sides of the hallway. Boulders, tumbled stone fences, and parts of fallen walls lay in scattered chunks, pushed to the sides to form the clear aisle in the center. I half-recognized bits of furniture and household goods as a chair-back, shattered crockery, a rusted rake. Mounds that might once have been cloth rotted among formless lumps that had been abandoned during the evacuation of these blocks, or maybe during the explorations later, when this section had been closer to the surface and merely called the ‘cellar.’ Or whatever term they’d used back then.

We stayed in place for a full minute. Motionless, scanning, listening to the plink, plunk of condensation.

Then I said, “Maybe it’s nothing.”

“Maybe Alex is trying to cheer us both up,” Tansy told Usim. “And he’s just bad at it.”

“Well, if you can’t smell anything with your magnificent nose,” he said. “I’m sure there’s nothing here.”

“‘Magnificent’ or ‘majestic,’” she told him. “I’ll accept either one.”

A quick series of expressions flitted across Wren’s face: angry, embarrassed, unsure. She didn’t like Tansy chatting with her son, but she’d basically given him into our care, so she couldn’t say anything. I was pretty surprised--by which I meant ‘absolutely shocked’--that she’d entrusted him to us. She’d gone in a heartbeat from trying to kill us to putting with her beloved son’s life in our hands. I guess she didn’t have a choice. If Six Coves took Waldhill Island, there’d be nowhere for her and Usim to hide. They’d catch her sooner or later. She didn’t care about that, though, she didn’t care about herself. All she cared about was her son.

So she’d decided that she’d surrender. She’d accept whatever punishment the Six Coves military--this viceroy--meted out, in the hopes that they’d leave Usim alone. That they’d let him live. And that calculation had taken her like zero time.

Impressive. Brave, clever, and adaptable, too. Maybe that’s where the kid got his smarts. Of course, it was even more depressing than it was impressive, at least for Usim. Commander Wren deserved whatever she got, but the kid didn’t deserve to lose his mother.

Well, he’d be okay. Eventually. Maybe. Though first we needed to find the above-ground city again, and to hide for a few weeks or months or whatever. You’d think that you couldn’t misplace the entire surface of a planet, but I had no idea which way the exit was, or how to--

Three rocks launched at me from the side of the hallway.

Big ones, the size of basketballs. Mouths gaped open in the pitted surfaces. They hinged as wide as PacMan’s mouth and had as many teeth as Jaws. Claws curved at the end of skinny arms that unfolded from the rough stone.

Goblins! Holy shit, those weren’t boulders those were actual goblins. They were four foot tall bipedal monsters with hairless extra-large heads that still looked almost exactly like the rocks lining the hallway.

INTUIT: Kobold Scout, Level 7

Oh, kobolds.

There were eight or nine of them in total, I didn’t take the time to count because a bunch were swarming us from the front. We must’ve passed them when we’d come this way, and not noticed them hiding among the actual boulders. Then they’d sprung at us on our return. Well, or maybe they’d been following us, and when we turned around they’d camouflaged at rocks? Not, uh, that that was the most pressing issue at the moment.

I juked sideways to avoid two of the attacking kobolds and braced to meet a third that was leaping at my throat. Wren hurled a dagger past me at a lichen-stained kobold that was veering toward Tansy and Usim. I heard a thump of impact and I chopped the leaping kobold in half while Intuit was still active and the tag on that same monster changed into this:

INTUIT: Kobold Scout, Level 6

It was weird, seeing the kobold lose a level as it died. A moment later, things got even weirder, because the notification didn’t overlap with the bleeding, bisected body at my feet. Instead, the words sort of hung in the air in the center of the hallway. Also, level six seemed pretty high for such skinny-limbed, short creatures, much less level seven.

On the other hand, those PacMan teeth looked fearsome, and hadn’t Tansy said they could chew through metal? They had one other advantage, too. As two of them circled me, they stalked in perfect synch; they were pack hunters. They moved like a team, not like individuals--and sure enough, the two of them swarmed my legs at exactly the same time, trying to ensure that one caught me from behind.

Also trying to rip off one of my kneecaps with their overside goddamn teeth. The taller of the little shits focused on my patella like a hunting owl focusing on a field-mouse, and the predatory intensity in its beady eyes repulsed me.

And, to be honest, frightened me a little. Hey, I still wasn’t used to inhuman monsters, and the bipedal ones were even freakier than the spiders and snakes.

Still, I managed to harness my fear, and used the spurt of adrenalin to hack at that kneecap eater with my hatchet. My blade cleaved deep into its head then I whipped myself in a circle to avoid the oversized teeth of the second, which closed with a snap an inch from my ass--and then I jerked at a warning from my webtouch senses and kicked a third kobold with my angry revulsion and my increased strength and my heavy boots.

53 - A Beating

<Maybe notifications shift, modulate, or change as your Support level increases,> Princess said, in my mind, for absolutely no reason.

I frowned toward a skinbear corpse. <Huh?>

<You said that the latest notification wasn’t even in the same format as the ones earlier.>

<Yeah, because it’s fu--> I caught myself. <Messing with me.>

She shared her sleepy agreement. <Almost as if, my well-thumbed mammal, you’re not wholly in control of every event that occurs around you.>

<Oh, shut up,> I grumbled, seeing where she was heading with that.

<You aren’t solely responsible for what happened to Usim, Alex. You’re not even from this dimension. We stumbled into an ongoing conflict; let us agree to blame the conflict itself for the consequences thereof.>

<Fine,> I said. <As long as you promise to never call me ‘well-thumbed’ again.>

<I was referring to your opposable digits!>

<Okay, listen. Uh, you’re good with spacial ... directions and stuff, right? I mean, thinking in three dimensions. Can you keep track of where we are? So as we move around, we won’t get lost down here?>

<I’ll do my best,> she said. <But my best at the moment is quite somnolent, if that’s the word I mean. Languorous, and perhaps even enervated. Sleepy. Dozy. What I’m attempting to convey is, somnolent.>

<Just try your best, Princess.>

<Your wish is my command, sweet prince,> she said. <There is a bear den.>

<A what now?>

<Through there,> she said, and tugged my attention toward a nasty-smelling corner of the courtyard, where the floor was smeared with filth. <The den or lair of the skinbears.>

<Am I supposed to do something with that information?>

<My head itches.>

<Am I supposed to do something with that information?>

<Scritch me,> she said.

So I scratched my ‘bracelet’ gently, and Princess fell back asleep.

I snorted, then said, “Hey,” to Wren.

When she looked at me, I tossed her a waterskin from my domain, to help Usim swallow the gold bead.

“How is he?” I asked.

“He’s okay,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “He’ll be okay.”

“Good.” I turned to Tansy. “Check there aren’t any more of those things around, then watch the hallway.”

She nodded as I went from corpse to corpse collecting beads via my Treasure ability. After I combined them, I ended up with five pearls and a handful of foams.

Then I looked toward the nasty-smelling corner of the courtyard. The skinbears’ den or lair. Princess must’ve mentioned that for a reason. Well, probably. Well, there was fifty percent chance that she’d actually sensed something inside the den, and a fifty percent chance that she’d been babbling in her sleep. So I breathed through my nose and moved closer. In the very corner, a wide crack opened in the wall, wider than a double doorway. Inside, I found a cave. A dark cave, because only a few bits of the skystone-flecked wall emerged from the packed dirt. A corner here, a flat patch there.

The ground felt spongy under my boots, and after a moment I realized that I was standing on packed, desiccated bearshit. I didn’t think that animals shat in their own homes, but clearly skinbears didn’t shit anywhere else. At least it was dry.

I didn’t see anything else, other than a few depressions in the floor--skinbear beds, I figured--and a pile of bones against a wall. I scanned the bones with Treasure but didn’t get any loot notification. I did, however, feel a faint tug in the back of my mind.

Huh.

I walked toward the rear of the cave and tried Treasure again and ...

Loot cupboard?

Cupboard? What cupboard?

Leaning on my webtouch senses instead of my vision, I picked my way through the darkness until I found a wide alcove to one side. Or not an alcove, more of a secondary, smaller cave. It had been formed, apparently, by a space that had once been a closet or ... or a number of closets, because three dark rectangles lined the wall. Almost like changing rooms?

Except when I peeked into the first one, the ‘closet’ led off into the lightless distance. Three narrow tunnels headed deeper into the Old City, like hidden passageways. Oh, and a breeze was coming from at least one of them. Which intrigued me. My very first dungeon, and I’d found a hidden entrance!

Still, this wasn’t the time to explore, so I just searched the surrounding area until I spotted what looked like a broken cupboard. I disturbed a few beetles, then I looted away.

TREASURE! 1 jeweled hand-mirror (cracked), 3 platinum hatpins, and a copper coin.

Huh. I hadn’t known that anyone used coins in this weird fantasy world. I thought it had all been beads. I popped the items into my domain and returned to the courtyard. Everything looked the same. Tansy watched the hallway while Wren cooed and murmured over the slowly-rousing Usim, who blinked at her in confusion.

I slipped into place beside Tansy. “No trouble?”

“Only that Sixer behind me,” she muttered. “If we didn’t owe that kid, I’d go for her throat.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But we do owe that kid.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.

She shot me a look. “She’s a killer, Alex.”

“I know. I know that, but look at her. She loves her boy. That’s hard not to like.”

“I’ll manage.”

“Hah. Well, Erdinand’s safe. Your debt’s paid, Tansy. To him and to me. If you want to head back, feel free. You don’t--”

“Oh, shut up,” she said. “You don’t get to decide when my debt is paid. I decide when my debt is paid. And someone has to watch your back around that Sixer.”

“I have a lovely back.”

“Turning into a long-tail gem-monster like that,” she said, frowning toward Wren. “She threw one of the bears. Like, into the air. She becomes impossible strong. But my theory is, she can’t stay like that for long.”

“My theory is, she could handle you even without turning into a monster.”

“Your theory is dumb,” Tansy said. “We should kill her while we have the chance.”

“We’re not killing her in front of her kid. Even if we didn’t owe him.”

We lapsed into silence, watching the silent dim white street. The flecks of skystone glowed steadily. And I hadn’t noticed until then, but the ceilings were matted with what looked like vines. Except they didn’t dangle down, they just hugged the ceiling and emitted another faint glow that joined with the brightness of the walls. Tansy didn’t know anything about them, and Intuit just said, “matted vines.” Nothing else happened, so I took the opportunity to check myself.

Alex Levin

Anomaly

Level 8, Wax Tier

Archmage Status

Arachrys Blooded (Webtouched, Twominds, Resistance)

Boons:

Domain (3/5)

Intuit (1/5)

Support (2/5)

Treasure (1/5)

Gems:

Smoke

Aptitudes:

Spear

Fighting Hatchets (speciality: dual-wielding)

Attributes

Strength: 10

Agility: 12

Fortitude: 15

Dexterity: 15

Alertness: 12

Speed: 10

Spirit: 12

Design: 14

Derived

Health: 55/55

Mana: 24

Craft: 14

Movement: 10

Avail 1

One point available. I should probably spend that. I mentally asked “Support” for advice, but didn’t get an answer. Not a surprise. So I considered my stats, and realized that my strength was lagging. I really didn’t like that I’d taken a clean shot at Tiral-ur, my best shot, and had barely scratched him. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I could kill him even if he was unconscious or tied down. I’d hack away until I dropped from exhaustion, and he’d just ... heal.

So yeah, I needed more power behind my strikes.

Strength felt so vanilla, though. So boring. And Oksar would probably recommend Spirit, to improve my smokiness. On the other hand, I could increase Treasure and maybe pull more beads from any creatures I killed in the Old City. Collect more golden beads. Except I didn’t plan on staying down here for long. The minute Usim could travel, we’d return to the cellar, and then the surface.

Well, first we’d check if Kathina and Tiral-ur and the twins--and the entire goddamn army--was waiting for us. I didn’t know how long that rubble would keep them away, and I didn’t know what other Six Coves forces were on the island.

“Who’s the viceroy?” I asked Tansy.

“The chief of the Six Coves murderers. I heard he was a ranking member of the Krelv military back in the day, too. See, Krelv took over Six Coves decades ago, but the two didn’t chain up. So Six Coves is like a mini-Krelv, drifting around, getting bigger, and one day they’ll re-connect.”

“Okay, and the viceroy--where is he now?”

“At Port headquarters, probably,” she said. “Ask the invader.”

I looked at Wren for an answer, but she was busy fretting over Usim.

“Yeah, he’s at the Port,” Tansy continued. “Commanding their forces and preparing for the chaining. Or maybe he’s going back and forth across the bridge, helping ten thousand new invaders move in, to take over Waldhill. Overwhelm us with numbers.”

“Ah. So the bridge is near the Port?”

“Of course it is. Yeah. Obviously. There are only four towns or cities worth the name on Waldhill, right? The Port’s the biggest, and it’s on the water, so the biggest spire is already there. Which is why the landbridge formed nearby.”

“Because bridges form near spires?”

“Sure. Well, usually. Depends how many spires there are. Like, if there was another city the size of the Port on the other side of the island? Then maybe a bridge would split the difference and form between them.”

“Huh.”

“Or maybe not. The spires are what pull two islands together. You already know that, Alex, I told you like five times.”

“Yeah, the spires kind of act as ... as a center of mass for the floating islands.” I scratched my neck and considered the quiet, underground street. “So if the Sixers drag all the spires to the Port, Waldhill will keep trying to move closer and closer to Six Coves even after they’re touching. Which makes the bridge permanent.”

“Pretty much. Then at some point, Six Coves will chain to Krelv.”

“Okay, so how is Miss Kathina suddenly in charge of Commander Wren?”

“No clue.”

“She’s the viceroy’s niece,” Wren said, from deeper inside the courtyard.

I turned to find her walking toward us, supporting a limping, bruised Usim. Bruised, but not defeated; he smiled when he saw me.

“How you feeling?” I asked him.

“O-okay,” he said. “I’m okay. A little rattled.”

“Getting body-slammed by a skinbear will do that.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you kidnapped him,” Wren told me.

“Good point,” I said, and didn’t mention that he’d offered to come along. “Now why exactly did I kidnap him, again?”

“To save an innocent man’s life,” Usim told his mother. “You’re not angry at Alex, Mother.”

“Pretty sure I am,” she said.

“What are you going to do now?” I asked her. “Kathina wants you dead. She wants your son dead, too.”

Tansy laughed unkindly. “Ha! Now you’re an outlaw like us.”

“I’m not like you.”

“That’s true. I was born here, and I only ever kill soldiers.”

“What are we doing to do?” Usim asked his mother.

Wren’s shoulders sagged. “First, I’m going to ask these assholes to keep you safe for a while. To keep you away from ... from our troops.”

“They’ll do that,” he told her. “What comes second?”

“You’re pretty confident we’ll look after you, huh?” Tansy asked Usim.

“Yes,” he told her.

She laughed again, but kindly that time. “How old are you? You’re scarier than a skinbear.”

“What comes second?” he asked his mother again.

“I surrender to Kathina,” she said.

Usim blinked at her. “You what?”

“Once we return to the surface, and these ... people ... take you to safety, I’ll turn myself in. Kathina will bring me to the Port, to the viceroy. I’ll throw myself on his mercy. He’s a parent, too. Maybe he’ll just ... “ She smiled at Usim, trying to reassure him. “He’ll probably just demote me.”

“He’ll execute or imprison you.”

“He’ll demote me, and maybe imprison me, but he won’t execute me.”

“So stay with me!”

“If I stay with you, they’ll hunt us down, Usim, and kill us both. The only way to save your life is to turn myself in.”

Tansy trumpeted quietly. “They won’t kill you if we kill them first.”

“The first step is to get you safe,” Wren told Usim, ignoring Tansy. “Are you sure you don’t need me to carry you?”

“I’ll carry him,” Tansy told her.

“You won’t touch him,” Wren snapped.

“She’s the only one without a gem,” I told her. “If we run across more bears, you and I will fight them while Tansy stays back and protect Usim.”

“I’m supposed to trust you?” Wren asked Tansy.

“I owe your son a life debt,” Tansy told her. “All I owe you is a beating.”

52 - Skinbears

“Don’t let him in there!” I yelled to Tansy, and started running toward her voice. “Keep him out!”

Wren raced past me, growing two inches with every step. “Usim! Usim!”

When she reached the junction, I shouted, “Left!”

She veered leftward, shockingly agile despite her size, and two heartbeats later I followed. Losing ground to Wren with every step because she sprinted like a monster. Except I caught sight of her again as she raced toward the rusted fence that warned people away from the entrance to the Old City.

Tansy--on the other side of the fence--raised her sword when she spotted her and snarled, “Fucking Sixer.”

“Stand down!” I yelled. “That’s her kid.”

“How many of our kids did she--”

“Stand fucking down!” I bellowed, and she stepped aside.

Which was a good thing, because Wren would’ve hit her like a freight train. (Actually more like an SUV, but I’m trying to get past that.) As Tansy said, “He’s already in there,” Wren tore through the rusted fence like it was made of cardboard.

She skidded to a halt at the top of the sharp slope that dropped off toward the white-walled streets of the Old City. “Usim! USIM!”

Her voice boomed and echoed, then faded away.

None of us spoke. I wasn’t sure if any of us breathed. Even Tansy looked disturbed.

Then, in the silence, a quieter voice called, “Mom?”

I exhaled in relief. Usim was alive. He was okay. I couldn’t see him, but he was hiding around one of the corners in the Old City below us.

“Thank the gods,” Wren said, before raising her voice again. “Where are you?”

“I’m coming,” he called. “Hold on!”

Wren pressed her eyes with her palms and repeated, “Thank the gods.”

“Can I kill her after we save the kid?” Tansy asked me.

“You can try,” Wren said.

“No killing her in front of her son,” I said.

Tansy sheathed her sword and scowled at Wren. “Fucking gemmed. So that’s what yours does, huh? Makes you grow till you’re almost like an olifarn. Not quite, though, because you’re still a shitbird with--”

“Mom!” Usim trotted into view from a nook thirty or forty feet past the bottom of the slope. “I was hiding, I thought--”

A pale shape blurred from a side street, grabbed him, and dragged him away.

He was out of sight in a fraction of a second. He screamed once, then fell silent.

Wren leaped into the air to chase after him. A second later, I slid down the slope, my new armor skating across the stone with a grinding rasp. Tansy followed me, then Wren landed with a bang in the street ahead of us, and I noticed that her clothes expanded with her when she grew. Which was so weird. Although on the other hand: magic.

She didn’t seem to notice the jarring impact when she landed. Well, she didn’t seem to notice anything but her son. She stayed laser-focused as she sprinted after Usim, chasing the creature that had grabbed him into a narrow street between two half-domed white-walled buildings.

“The fuck kind of monster was that?” I asked Tansy, running forward

She scowled beside me. “An overgrown Sixer with a gem.”

“I mean the thing that grabbed Usim!”

“A skinbear,” she told me, lagging slightly. “What are we doing, Alex? What do we care?”

“Usim helped save those kids’ lives. Without him, they’d be dead. You sister would be--”

“Oh. Oh!” She sped up. “Right.”

The street curved sharply, and I caught single flash of Wren ahead of us as I asked, “What are skinbears?”

“You know bears?”

“Yes, I know bears.”

“Like that, except with skin instead of fur.” Tansy scrambled with me around another corner. “Also, they only eat meat. And live underground. And their hide is tough like, uh, boiled leather. Tougher. They’ve got nasty fangs and claws like dire pumas.”

I grunted. “So carnivorous bears with rhino skin? Great.”

“Fun, right?” she said, as we raced through a series of junctions.

A minute later, we turned into a hallway that was lined by entrances to dimly-lit courtyards. I heard faint noises, craping and grunting, but I couldn’t tell from where. Except then, after trotting past four or five, a roar sounded behind us.

Nothing was closing in, thank god. I knew that because webtouch hadn’t alerted me to danger. We’d just missed the right turn-off. So we scrambled to a halt, eyed the empty street, then backtracked. Grunts and growls and scuffling sounded louder, coming from one of the courtyards we’d passed.

When I rushed through the entrance, I spotted Wren crouching in the center of an open rectangular space with a flagstone floor. Crumbled stone plinths dotted the area, beneath a pale, dark-veined ceiling.

Wren was circling a skinbear that stood two feet taller than her, even in her She-Hulk form. Pale, wrinkled skin covered the beast like a hairless sharpei, and its head look more like a velociraptor than a bear. Also, its feet looked more like frog toe-pads than bear paws, like it had evolved to maintain a grip on these stone streets instead of the forest floor.

Usim lay motionless on his side near a pile of stones, and the oversized skinbear swiped at Wren. She blocked with both forearms and the bear roared in her face and her tail swiped from the side and caught its head with a whipcrack that made it stagger.

I froze in dread for a moment, staring at Usim. Then I saw him twitch faintly. Still alive! I took a step toward him ... and four more skinbears shuffled into sight from the edges of the courtyard. Smaller than the first one, but not much smaller.

“Oh, and also,” Tansy told me, drawing her sword, “they hunt in packs.”

INTUIT: Skinbear, Level 7

INTUIT: Skinbear, Level 6

INTUIT: Skinbear, Level 7

INTUIT: Skinbear, Level 8

“So do we,” I snarled, and summoned my hatchets.

Drawing her sword, Tansy stepped into place at my side, probably to defend me.

The first skinbear shook its horrible, bleeding head then charged Wren. She sidestepped gracefully. She drew and thrust her short sword--which hadn’t grown to match her--in a single motion. The blade bit through the beast’s rough hide but didn’t seem to bother it much, and another bear rammed into Wren from the side and I didn’t see what happened next because two bears started prowling toward me on all fours while a third tried circling around.

Tansy pivoted until we stood back-to-back, and I threw a hatchet at one of bears. The blade chunked deeply into its flank. The beast yelped and I threw my other hatchet then recalled them both and the one circling lunged at my side but juked away when Tansy’s sword flashed, then the other two charged me. I chopped and spun and blocked and dodged, and pain flared in my thigh through my hauberk and leggings as one of the fuckers bit me with dinosaur jaws.

I saw red. Pain? Yes, but also fury. With a roar of my own, I domained my left-hand hatchet and took the other one in a two-handed grip and chopped through that skinbear’s spine at the base of its neck.

The fucker dropped and a moment later I did, too, because its friend had tackled me. It felt like a wrecking ball made of ground beef smashing into me. I found myself sprawled on my back, and I’ll tell you this: a velociraptor-looking mouth, when opened wide to bite your face off, is quite large. It’s the size, more or less, of a yawning grave--except with about a thousand dagger-like teeth.

The horrible gaping maw snapped shut like a bear-trap ... and closed on smoke.

My heart somehow pounded wildly even though it didn’t currently exist. That had been too goddamn close. Damn. I’d felt spittle on my face, and one tooth had actually touched my cheek.

Tansy’s sword slashed the skinbear’s eyes as I reformed between her and the third bear, which was standing on two legs about to lunge at her. I buried both my hatchets in its chest. Bone splintered beneath my blade. The bear still managed to bat at me before it died, but not hard enough to break my armor and crachen-tough skin. Still, it took me a few seconds to clear my head.

When I spun to help Tansy I found her jogging toward Usim, having already finished off the blinded skinbear. Meanwhile, Wren was choking one of the smaller bears to death with her tail around its neck while she yanked her short-sword from the bigger bear’s skull.

INTUIT: Skinbear, Level 12

Oh! That bigger bear hadn’t just been larger, it’d also been substantially higher level. Well, that made sense.

When the smaller bear went limp, Wren returned to her normal size. Her tail shrunk then disappeared toward her butt, and she beheaded the unconscious bear with a two-handed swing of her sword. She looked tired but untouched, except for three stripes of blood on her arm where claws had sliced through her sleeve. I was in slightly worse shape, as my thigh was bleeding from tooth punctures. To my surprise, the wound didn’t hurt that much. Still, I leaned against a fallen plinth, pulled fabric from my domain, and started wrapping the wound. I could’ve disinfected it with the vodka-like liquor I’d stored for that purpose, but I didn’t think the cuts were deep enough to mess with my Fortitude.

“He’s breathing,” Tansy told me, crouching beside Usim.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Yeah, cause you protected me, like an absolute mudskull. I’m supposed to protect you, Alex. That’s the entire idea, drill that fact into your thick head.”

“Get the fuck away from my son,” Wren snarled at her, striding closer.

Tansy smiled venomously. “Yeah, I’m a danger to children.”

“Tansy,” I said.

She shot me a look, but she backed off as Wren knelt beside Usim. She started digging around in his pouch, and after a minute emerged with a gold bead. She took his head in her lap and opened his mouth and--

LEVEL UP!

You saved Erdinand!

Which means, yes, he’s safe.

QUEST: Now save Usim, too. As of right now he’s trapped in the Old City, and the new commander of the Ryetown troops wants him dead. Oopsies.

REWARD: More expoi.

FAILURE: A dead kid on your conscience. You don’t want that. That would ruin your whole day.

You ruin my whole day, you weird automated update goblin. That wasn’t even the same fucking format as the previous notes. Would you just tell me what the hell is going on without the snark and hints and vagueness? The bad jokes and the stupid sarcasm? How come nobody else has levels and boons? How am I supposed to defeat a Plague? How am I supposed to ... to save Usim?

My temper cooled at that last thought. That’s what really worried me. Not just saving Usim, but ... this was my fault. He was here, trapped underground, hunted by the Sixers, because of me.

51 - Into the City

“Shit,” I said, hesitating there in the archway. “Shit! Okay, follow me.”

Usim shouted at Wren, “Mom, this way!”

She was already coming, charging at us like a bull, and I didn’t wait around for her to arrive. I turned and dragged Usim inside and across the storage space then clattered the first flight of stairs. Then I paused and told him to keep running as I blipped an entire vending cart into my domain and waited about four seconds until Wren--demon-Wren, Hulk-Wren--stomped into the room from the stairs.

The minute she passed the doorway I dropped the cart behind her, to slow any pursuit and said, “He’s one flight down!”

She shot me a look of pure hatred but kept moving. I followed, careful of her powerful tail sweeping behind her as she ran. To my surprise, the tip of her tail looped around boxes and planks and shelves and threw them behind us to build a barricade around the cart. Whoa. Prehensile.

She whipped a box of screws at my head, too, but my webtouched senses helped me dodge.

“Fuck off!” I snapped. “You need me to get Usim out of here.”

She growled and started down the final stairs, and the cart behind us exploded into a thousand pieces. I caught a single glimpse of Tiral-ur stumbling over the wreckage, then clattered down to the bottom floor.

“The crates,” I told Wren. “Fill the doorway with crates, pack them tight. Usim, head back the way we came in.”

“Then follow us, mom!” Usim told her. “Fast!”

“Just get Usim away,” Wren snarled at me.

“Go, go!” I told Usim, and he crawled through the hole I’d torn in the chickenwire then squirmed into the passageway I’d cleared in the bottleneck wreckage.

As Wren hurled crates to block the doorway--crates that must’ve weighed ten much as she did--I tried to think. Which was hard, given the adrenaline thundering in my head. I needed to collapse the passageway after Usim was through the bottleneck, to stop Kathina and her soldiers.

Sure. That wasn’t so hard. I could do that. But could I leave his mother behind to die? Well, yeah. Yeah, I could. She’d tried to kill Erdinand. I could absolutely bury her alive.

<Hm,> Princess murmured in my mind, sounding dubious.

<In a goddamn heartbeat,> I thought back, but despite my insistence I felt a hint of uncertainty.

Could I really abandon her? Could I reward Usim for his help, for his bravery, with a dead mother, torn apart by her own soldiers? Well, goddammit, that question answered itself.

“Fuck,” I muttered, then stalked forward to stand beside the stairway where nobody would spot me as they walked down.

“What’re you doing’?” Wren snapped at me.

I materialized a hatchet into one hand. “Waiting for Tiral-ur.”

“He’s invulnerable, human. He’ll tear you apart--and I’ll get to watch, so that’s good. Where’s Usim?”

“There’s an exit tunnel through there.” I nodded at the wall of rubble behind the crates. “Get your boy. I’ll slow them down.”

She bared her hulked-out crocodile teeth at me. “I’m not done with you.”

“This isn’t the time for sweet talk, my little songbird.”

The thump of boots sounded on the stairs past the barricade.

Wren turned and thundered across the sub-basement, shrinking with every step so she’d fit through the passageway. I adjusted my grip on my hatchet and went motionless, trying not to breath. I’d wait for Tiral-ur to break through, then chop into his neck from behind.

This is for you, Oksar. This one’s for you. A good man, a good friend, a good father.

This one’s for you.

A heavy thud hit the other side of the barricade. Wood cracked and shifted. There was a grunt and the crates moved a few feet. So Tiral-ur managed to burst through a single cluttered cart upstairs, but not through heavy crates packed with goods. He might be incredibly durable but he wasn’t incredibly strong. Just regular super-strong.

The barricade shifted a foot, and then another. Then the top half of a speckled green crachen appeared in the gap, bracing himself as he shoved through.

Brace for this, you crabby fuck. Standing against the wall behind him, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t give any warning. I didn’t care about a fair fight, I just wanted blood. I wanted revenge.

I shifted my weight and chopped my hatchet at his neck, trying to remove his head in a single blow. I swung with all my might and all my anger.

My blade cut into the shell at his neck ... for about a half an inch. Holy crap. Talk about invulnerable. My emerald-level hatchets could chop deeper than that into goddamn steel. Still, even though I only cut a finger’s depth into him, he still bellowed in pain and surprise.

My hatchet jammed in his shell so I summoned the other one and swung again, aiming for his eyestalks. That time the blade glanced off his clamshell-head without even scratching him. Then he swung his pincer-arm at me and I heard one of the twins yelling behind him, with Kathina’s voice calling for blood more faintly.

And announcing that she’d blast through the blockade with her shield. Which was good to know.

I backpedaled fast, using my extended awareness to keep my footing on the wreckage-strewn floor. I resummoned my trapped hatchet and threw the other at Tiral-ur, which bounced off his shell without even chipping the surface.

“I’m gonna snip you into pieces one inch at a time,” he growled, still shoving through the barricade. “The longest anyone’s ever lasted is three days. You’ll beat my record.”

“You’ll get your chance,” I promised, then I spun and sprinted for the back wall.

One step behind the crates, I transformed into smoke. I wafted into the narrow tunnel I’d cleared in the rubble, using my momentum to move five or six feet. Then I turned solid and touched a big chunk of mortared-together bricks on one side of the tunnel. I blinked it into my domain for two seconds before returning it in the middle of the passage behind my heels.

The passageway wall shifted at the sudden change. My stomach dropped and I braced myself to turn to smoke again, but the rubble didn’t collapse on me. Well, at least not immediately.

I grimaced and heard the twins arrive in the room behind me. Then I heard Tiral-ur crawling after me into the bottleneck tunnel. I squirmed forward, shifting a few stones from my hands to my feet--into my domain and back out again. I glanced behind myself to check for the best placement, and for pursuit, and I crawled face-first into Wren’s oversized ass, which filled the space like a cork in wine bottle.

“The fuck are you doing big again?” I said. “Shrink down!”

“Run, Usim!” she called in the other direction. “They’re coming. Fast, keep moving, keep going! I’m right behind you!”

“Oh,” I said.

<Oh,> Princess echoed in my mind. <She’s blocking the tunnel to keep him safe.>

<Yeah, she’s blocking the tunnel with me. She’s using me as a meat-shield.>

<Nonsense! She’s blocking the tunnel with us. Well, it’s good thing that you know exactly what to do.>

<I-I do? And what is that, exactly?>

She smiled in my mind. <Oh, I’ve no notion. I’m not you, Alexiniad. However, you really should do something, though. Preferably quickly, because they’re getting closer with every twitch of the spinneret.>

“What the fuck?” I said aloud.

<Language!> she chirped.

Ahead of me, Wren stopped shouting at Usim to run and snapped, “Don’t swear at me, human. You’re the reason he’s in danger.”

“It’s cute how you take no responsibility for your own actions,” I told her, then turned to smoke again.

That time I wafted forward, alongside Wren in the cramped tunnel. My gaseous form brushed her neck, swirled around her hips and between her legs. It was weirdly intimate. And despite being followed by murderous gemmed troops, I couldn’t help but notice my proximity to a sexy demon.

And let me just say, for the record: She-Hulk was smoking hot.

Anyway, I returned to my body on the other end of the bottleneck, facing the rubble. And despite my desire to at least partially collapse the tunnel on her, I said, “Get your Avenger-looking ass out of there!”

Wren jerked in surprise at my change of location. “What the hell?”

“I can drop the rubble on you or behind you, you Six Cove fuck. You know what I’d prefer, but for some reason your son actually likes you.”

She scowled at me then shrunk to her normal size and started wriggling from the passageway.

And that’s when I realized the tunnel was empty around me. Usim wasn’t there. Well, of course not. He’d kept running when his mother yelled at him to made tracks. Yet Tansy wasn’t there, either. Which made no sense. There was no way she would’ve abandoned me.

Except maaaaybe to run off and massacre some Sixers. But no. Tansy took her pledge to me deadly seriously. I didn’t like to think about what this mean, but she’d vowed to serve me. To guard me. To protect me and obey me.The whole thing had made me uncomfortable, yet when I’d told her that, she’d said, “So what? I didn’t vow to make you comfortable, I vowed to keep you alive, so why don’t you just shut up?”

Which, to be honest, wasn’t how I expected my one and only vassal to speak to me.

“Tansy!” I peered into the dark tunnel leading into the cellars. “Hey! Where you at? Tansy?”

“Collapse the fucking passage,” Wren snapped, as she rose to her feet beside me.

I opened my mouth to say something snotty, but then I heard frenzied activity on the other side of the bottleneck. Moving the stones? Clearing the blockage? Yeah, that’s what it sounded like. Plus that invulnerable crachen was still crawling toward me through the half-blocked passageway. He didn’t care if he got buried by an avalanche. A few tons of stone wouldn’t hurt him. He’d just nap until rescue crews dug him free.

So I leaned deeply back inside, while keeping most of my awareness on Wren behind me. Ready to turn to smoke the instant she moved to stab me in the spine. She didn’t, though. She just stood there in a ready stance, her sword drawn, prepared to face whatever might come through to threaten her child.

I crawled a few feet into the tunnel then stretched out my right arm and pulled a slab of stone into my domain. I immediately tried to return the slab in a slightly different position, one that blocked the path. There wasn’t enough room, though, so nothing happened. I tried a few different spots, waving my hand around like an idiot. I couldn’t pop the stone anywhere: there needed to be an existing space for it or it wouldn’t emerge.

As I lay on my stomach on the rubble, a cascade of shattered bricks crashed into the passage ahead of me, tumbling down from above. Ah. Apparently that slab of stone had been holding up something important. I tried backing away but the landslide was moving faster, and almost engulfed me.

I turned back to smoke for a couple seconds and surfed the landslide in gaseous form until I emerged beside Wren again.

A cloud of dust billowed from the bottleneck. The rubble inside collapsed into the passageway I’d dug. The dust particles mixed with my smoke, but for some reason that didn’t keep me from returning to my body. As I became solid again, a few last clatters and thumps sounded from the rubble.

“Well on the bright side,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead, “they’re not getting through that anytime soon.”

“Alex!” Tansy called from the darkness behind me. “Hurry! The kid ran into the Old City!”

50 - Earlier

EARLIER ...

After I woke from my nap--with Princess’s advice about traps at the forefront of my mind--I trotted across the basement and cornered Chetty.

“Don’t bother looking for Erdinand,” I told her. “I don’t care where he is. I know something better. I know where he’s going to be.”

She chewed her lower lip, her eyes clouded with thought. Then she exhaled worriedly. “You want to snatch him from Gallows Square?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a bad idea, Alex. That’s a bad idea in so many ways. That’s a terrible, suicidal kind of bad idea.”

“Instead of finding Erdinand,” I told her. “I need you to find Usim.”

“Usim?”

“Command Wren’s son, the one who helped the ollie kids escape. He just arrived here, in the same caravan as me. His name is Usim. He’s the one you need to find.”

“I know who he is, Alex. Why do you need to find him?”

So I explained the plan, then she and Hollis improved the plan. And then, at the height of the urgency, I bathed and ate and strapped into the new armor that Maryne had fitted for me. Padded leather leggings and hauberk with scales embedded between the layers. Not metal ‘scales’ like in scale mail armor on Earth, though. No, these were scales of the banded glide-lizard: very light, and very hard to pierce. The leather and padding around the scales helped absorb blunt damage, and Tansy told me that the armor was good for a mobility-based fighter, which I hadn’t known I was.

I also got three new pairs of socks from an ollie guy who knitted, which was sweet, and well-fitting armored boots from Chettur. After I strapped into my new gear, I sorted through my domain, removing the clutter, and adding anything I thought might come in handy.

Then I paced for an hour until I annoyed Hollis so much that he told Tansy to shoot blunted arrows at me. I practiced blipping them into my domain until Chetty got word about Usim.

He was locked in his bedroom.

“Like ... a teenaged kid being locked in their room?” I asked.

“What else could that possibly mean?” she said.

“Right. So where is he?”

She told me--then gave me a map. And a key.

“Well, that makes things easier,” I said.

* * *

An hour later, I frayed into smoke behind a spiny-leaved bush then wafted across the street. An updraft carried me easily higher until I reached the level of my target window. It felt so much like flying that I would’ve laughed in glee if I’d had a mouth.

Except when I pushed myself toward the window, the draft kept moving me higher. I struggled and squirmed and clawed through the air, trying to surf on air currents and gravity. Oh! The word ‘surf’ made me realize I should stop struggling and clawing.

I relaxed into the motion. Down. Down more, faster ... oops! Up, up, up ...

Anyway. I managed to trickle through the window, then ran out of mana a little too soon. I returned to my body ten feet above Usim’s bed, with my head pounding. I fell directly onto his mattress. Fortunately he was in a reading chair nearby. He yelped, I hushed him, then he spent a minute babbling about me taking shape from ‘mist.’

“I need your help,” I told him.

He took a breath then exhaled slowly. “For what? I don’t have much information, and you don’t need ... ah. I see. All I truly offer is my importance to my mother.”

“Yeah.”

“You want use me to get to her.” He looked uneasy, and scratched his orange chin. “For leverage.”

“Damn you’re quick.”

“How, exactly, do you want to use me?” he asked, then frowned at me. “You want to take me hostage?”

“You’re so smart that it’s a little scary. But yeah, that’s exactly what I want, if it’s okay with you?”

“You’re asking? Like, for my permission?”

“We saved those ollie kids together, Usim. I don’t know about you, but that means something to me.”

“I ... “ He shook his head. “Wait, back up. You’re here to take me hostage, yes?”

“I’m kind of hoping you’ll just agree.”

“And if I don’t?”

I leaned back on the bed and smiled. “Oh, this is good, you’ll like this. If you agree, that means you’re my hero. Fearless, badass, all that. Then we work together to save Erdinand. Just a couple of buddies on a mission. That’s my hope.”

“And if I say no?”

“If you don’t agree to help, that means--well, you’re still smart as hell and twice as brave. But if you’re willing to let them murder Erd without raising a hand, that’s pretty non-heroic. So then I don’t have to feel too bad about kidnapping you?”

“You’re the strangest human I’ve ever met.”

“Oh, that reminds me. I’m Alex. We were never properly introduced.”

“Hello, Alex,” he said. “I’m Usim. What is your goal?”

“To save Erdinand’s life.”

“Is that all?”

“Yeah. Well ... yeah.”

He gave me an orange-eyed stare. “You don’t sound sure.”

“It’s all I want here, now, with any of this.”

“I’m still not sure if I believe you.”

“Okay, well I, uh ... I also want a few words with Miss Kathina about what she did to your friend.”

His orange eyes flinched at the memory, but he just said, “Can I bring a book along?”

* * *

So I freed Usim from his bedroom using the very convenient key, then snuck him from the building using the even-more-convenient servants who actually worked with Chetty. We bundled Usim into a cart, blindfolded him, then led him eventually into the cellar, where the ollies greeted him almost like they’d greeted me. They bowed to him and praised him. Usim flushed and stammered--and looked absolutely thrilled. He was precocious as hell, but still just a kid.

Then Hollis and the other ollies headed for the city center, to begin sifting into position around an alley that opened into Gallows Square. Their job was to escape with Erdinand while I kept a blade at Usim’s neck. Once Erd was definitely out of danger, I’d release Usim then run down the stairs and waft back through the bottleneck.

Nobody could follow me there.

We’d all be safe.

Easy peasy.

Of course, first I needed to clear the bottleneck a little. Just enough for Usim to crawl through to the Gallows Square side, so I could hold him ‘hostage’ there. Then I’d collapse the rubble behind me when I left. I’d considered just showing his mother his shirt or his book, to prove that I had him, but in the end I decided I needed his mother to see him with an axe at his throat.

So after he joined us, Tansy led me and him downstairs, through the buried houses, across the buried streets. Past the maze of alleys, with Usim asking wide-eyed questions the entire time. He loved everything about the cellar: the mystery and the history and even the danger. Meanwhile, I loved watching Tansy swing between hostility to the Sixers generally and gratitude for Usim personally. I knew she wanted to wish a terrible death on his mother, but because Wren was his mother, she kept leaving her more murderous sentiments unsaid.

When we reached the bottleneck I started clearing a narrow passage of rubble. I wafted inside, blipped stones into my domain, moved a few feet, then bamfed them into the sinkhole I’d found. I was scared that I’d unbalance the structure and cause a crash or a rumbling: something audible from outside. So I moved slow and steady ... and eventually made a path. Big enough for me, but not Tansy. Which was intentional. I wanted her behind the bottleneck, to watch my back and help with the retreat.

After I helped Usim through the tunnel in the rubble, we squeezed behind the crates in the sub-basement of the storage tower. We waited anxiously in the cramped space, giving the ollie team enough time to get in place in the square above. Well, I waited anxiously. Usim read a treatise about mountain fauna on tropical islands that’d I’d stored in my domain for him.

We waited.

We waited.

And then, moments before the executioner killed Erdinand, I said hello to the gathered crowd.

Well, I said: “Why would I hurt him? I’m not going to hurt him. Even if you kill Erdinand I won’t hurt Usim. Nah, I’ll slit his throat so fast that he won’t feel any pain.”

Usim swallowed audibly at his mother’s expression, because she looked beyond angry: she looked destroyed. She looked frightened, absolutely mindlessly terrified to the bone. As if the threat of losing Usim was killing her from the inside out. I wasn’t a parent but I was a doting uncle, and I’m pretty sure that even I would’ve looked exactly the same.

She didn’t waste any time, though. She snapped, “Release the prisoner! Sergeant, bring him to that alley.”

One of the soldiers behind her startled in surprise, then strode across the stage to free Erdinand.

“Stop right there!” Miss Kathina snapped at him. “My uncle does not negotiate with--”

Wren backhanded her off the stage. She fell with a flutter of light yellow, frilly fabric, and by the time she hit the ground Wren was already reaching for Erdinand. She gathered him into her arms, his wrists still bound, and leapt from the stage.

The soldiers shifted and stared as she carried Erdinand across the square toward an alley. And as I caught flashes of her through the crowd, Wren grew.

She grew about a foot taller in five seconds, reaching maybe six-and-a-half feet. Her horns stretched and thickened into spiraling ram’s horns and her shoulders widened. And even before her transformation finished she leapt thirty feet across the square. While carrying a full-sized crab-dude. At the apex of her leap, I noticed that she’d grown a tail. A goddamn tail. As thick as my arm and maybe five feet long. She’d hulked out. That was Wren’s gemmed power. She’d hulked out into demon-form.

She landed at the mouth of an alley, where she dropped Erdinand at the feet of Hollis and the other cloaked ollies.

“They got him, they’re picking him up,” I whispered to Usim. “It’s working, it’s working ...”

“Stop them!” Miss Kathina shouted, scrambling to her feet beside the stage, the shimmer of her shield clearing a space around her. “By the order of the viceroy, seize the commander--the ex-commander--and bring me that human, now!”

“Okay,” I said, releasing Usim. “Here comes your mom, and she doesn’t look happy. That’s my cue to leave.”

“Jikon, Jikap--stop that human!” Miss Kathina shouted, running toward me across Gallows Square, her shield clearing a path. “Tiral-ur, bring me the head of the commander. And her son!”

For a second, I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. What the fuck? Now she wanted to kill Usim?

“There will be three executions today!” Kathina shouted to the soldiers in the crowd. “Wren betrayed my uncle, betrayed Krelv. Seize her! Her son, the human--seize them! Her son is forfeit for her betrayal I demand ...”

As she ranted, I spotted a crachen with a speckled green shell approaching and remembered why the name Tiral-ur sounded familiar.

INTUIT: Cachen, Level 19

Shit. He was one of the two gemmed who’d killed Oksar. I hadn’t seen his power, but he was on the very cusp of second tier. Which meant it was time for me to go. Except ...

“They’re going to kill me!” Usim said, grabbing my arm. “Me and my mom. They’re going to kill us both.”

49 - Commander Wren

After only a slight hesitation at the corner, Commander Wren turned left toward the door at the end of the hallway in the Central Building. She balanced her tray in one hand, reached for the key ... then paused. Feeling uncharacteristically nervous.

She was a hero of beachhead seven, a leader of the Ryetown administration, the fifth-highest-ranking officer on Waldhill Island, and a noble-by-marriage. Still, she slumped against the wall and frowned. Not afraid! That would be ridiculous. But ... wary of unlocking the door in front of her.

She’d faced a howling pack of oghurs without flinching. She’d battled the armies of three islands. Hell, she’d survived a Plague. Yet she was afraid to open this door.

Commander Wren took a steadying breath. This was ridiculous. She knew what she needed to do. And whatever her failings, she always did what was necessary.

Balancing the tray in one hand, she unlocked the door and stepped inside. The room was small but pleasant. Three windows opened high in the walls, and sunlight streamed through, highlighting cheerful paintings on the wall, a comfortable sofa, and a bed with a feather mattress. There were even bookshelves that she’d personally stocked, and a reading lamp and a comfortable chair.

And her son Usim, who was sitting on the comfortable chair, reading a book. He glanced at her when she entered, then returned to his reading without speaking.

“I brought pastries,” Wren told him.

Silence.

She set the tray on the table. “Remember that bakery down the block in Rosemont?”

Usim flipped a page.

“We went in so often that they gave you a nickname. Stickboy. People thought--one of your friends overheard them, and thought it meant you were really good at stickball, but it was because of how much you loved their breadsticks.”

Usim kept reading.

“Listen,” she said, sitting at the table and facing him. “I know this isn’t good. Locking you in your room. I know that. This isn’t how I imagined our reunion, either. More than a year apart and then ...” She took a breath. “I know this isn’t good, Usim, but there’s no reason to make it worse. ”

“You’re willing to execute an innocent person,” he told her flatly, setting his book aside. “That makes you a murderer.”

“The--they’re almond-flour cookies?”

“I’m ashamed of you. Dad would be ashamed of you.”

Wren felt a flare of anger--and yes, also a flare of shame. She took a breath, then said, “It’s easy to have lofty principles when you have no power, Usim. When nothing you do matters. Like your father. But things become a little more complex when your actions--or inactions--have consequences.”

“Is that right?” Usim thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, that’s true. I guess that’s the price of power. Those are the dues you pay for having power. Your actions have consequences, so you cannot simply murder anyone who angers or opposes you. You are obliged to think things through.” He met her gaze. “You have to take responsibility.”

To keep herself from snapping at him, Wren took a bite of a cookie. She hated that after such a long separation, her beloved son saw her as a stranger. Not just a stranger, but a brute. They’d been so close when he was little. She’d lived for him, and he for her. She hated this distance between them, but as she reigned in her temper she realized that she was impressed by his courage.

Like that fucking human had said, Usim was brave. When had that happened? He’d been brave to help those ollie kids, and he’d been brave to loudly, far too loudly, oppose the execution of the crachen Erdinand. And he was brave to oppose her now.

“I am thinking things through,” she told him. “I promise you that. I don’t like this either, but it’s the best of a number of bad choices.”

“The best for whom? For Erdinand, who you’re going to behead for obeying me?”

“The best for the world, Usim. and we’re not going to kill him!”

“He’s being executed, Commander.”

Her jaw clenched when he called her ‘Commander’ instead of ‘Mom.’ “No he’s not. He’s bait. The human--that human will come to save him, and we’ll catch him. What’s his name? Alex? Alex killed Six Coves soldiers. He broke out of jail. We cannot let him go free.”

“Because your authority is more important than an innocent life.”

“Yes,” she said. “It is.”

For a long moment, he simply looked at her. This young kid. Her son. The most important person in her world. He simply looked at her. Then he said, “If you kill Erdinand, there will be--”

“We’re not going to kill him! This human has some kind of hero complex. He’ll come.”

“And what if you don’t catch him?”

“Between me and Miss Kathina, and the twins, and an entire company of soldiers, we’ll catch him.”

Usim didn’t respond, but he looked dubious.

“Plus, we have a secret weapon,” she told him.

“What’s that?”

“Who is that,”she corrected. “And it’s a secret.”

He took a sudden, shaky breath, and looked his age again. Just a scared, confused kid trying to be strong. She wanted to hold him, but she knew he wouldn’t let her. So she simply waited until he was able to speak.

Then he said, “I’m not athletic, Commander. I’m not good at stickball. I’m not strong, I’m not big, I’m not tough. I’m fairly smart, though. And more than that ...” He trailed off for a moment. “More than that, I’m realizing that I need to make hard decisions, too. That I have responsibility. That it’s not enough having ... what did you call them? ‘Lofty principles.’ I must act on them. I don’t have much power. I barely have any. But I do have some.”

“You’ll have more once--”

Usim raised his hand, asking her to stop. “Which means I must use the little power that I have. So. Mom. If you kill that crachen, I can’t do anything physically. Or politically or ... publicly. But I won’t forgive you. I’m making that decision now. If he dies, I will not forgive you. I will no longer consider you my mother. That is the price we will both have to pay.”

* * *

Holy shit. That son of hers. Looking her in the eye and saying that. Where had that cutthroat confidence come from? That was power. Wren wouldn’t change her course, of course. She would still do her duty, but she ... she was floored by the little monster’s cleverness and cunning. Floored and impressed. Blown away. So proud. And furious, naturally. Absolutely enraged.

But still: proud.

And furious.

And maybe a little concerned about Usim’s unwavering assurance that he could pull it off. That he could force himself to never forgive her. She was so concerned that she was still thinking about him a few hours later, as she entered a conference room for a final briefing.

“I just heard from my uncle the viceroy,” Miss Kathina announced, smoothing the collar of her dress. “From the Port.”

“We know who your uncle is,” Wren told her.

The woman never shut up about him. Viceroy this, viceroy that. Across the table, the twins Jikon and Jikap glanced at each other, communicating silently. Either laughing at Kathina or wondering why Wren wasn’t smart enough to keep her mouth shut. Which she normally would’ve been, except that conversation with Usim had shaken her.

Miss Kathina smiled gently. “Well, Commander Wren, you don’t know what I just heard from him. A bird came, with a message. My uncle the viceroy is quite determined that we capture the human fugitive. He sees this, in fact, as a test of your control of Ryetown--and your quality as a commander.”

“Mm,” Wren said.

“I hope I made that clear,” Miss Kathina said, and adjusted her necklace.

“You have.”

“Oh, good! I’m pleased to hear that. Clarity is so important.”

“Agreed.”

“In other news ...” Miss Kathina slid a slip of paper to her. “This was attached to the message.”

Wren noted the official seal before she read the words: At her sole discretion, Kathina Limt is empowered to assume command of Ryetown and all associated forces. If she so chooses, Commander Wren will function as her second-in-command.

The official signature read: Viceroy Limt.

A worm of anger writhed in Wren’s gut. Small, controllable, but furious. The fucking viceroy was demoting her below Kathina? And not even in person, not even face-to-face, but with a fucking note? She couldn’t speak a moment as she tried to grapple with the scale of the insult.

Then she said, “I see.”

“Perhaps you should show our colleagues,” Kathina told her.

“Oh, happily.”

She handed the paper to Jikon and Jikap, who passed it along to the other lieutenants. A murmuring sounded as the officers expressed quiet unease at the change. Which no doubt wasn’t helped by the fact that Kathina was the only person in the room not wearing a uniform.

“What is the current chain of command?” Wren asked, as if she didn’t know. As if by granting Kathina the power to take command, the viceroy hadn’t already given her command.

“Oh, nothing is different!” Kathina said, her triguld-angled face serene. “Not yet. No, so long as you do your duty, Commander, I’m sure there’s no call for me to step in.”

“Very good,” Wren said, and tried to focus on the briefing. “Now, then. The crachen prisoner will remain in the ... secure location with the new asset until--”

“Secure location?” Kathina interrupted. “New asset? Could I trouble you to speak more clearly?”

“The target ...” Wren took a breath. “The human known as Alex is gemmed. We don’t know his full capacities. There’s no reason to suspect he can eavesdrop on us, Miss Kathina, but there’s no need to take the risk of speaking openly, either. We all understand where the crachen is being held, no? He will remain there, guarded by the new asset--that is, by the gifted soldier the viceroy send to assist us--until shortly before sunset.”

“And what of the decoys?” Kathina asked.

Wren just stared at her for a moment. Apparently she hadn’t understood ‘no need to speak openly.’ The decoys were three crachen soldiers locked in various cells and ‘guarded’ by several squads each. If the human managed to infiltrate the prison, he’d stumble upon one of them--at which point the crachen ‘prisoner’ would stab him in the back, while the others closed in on him.

Even if he did flee, Wren couldn’t imagine he’d escape without a scratch. And, of course, discovering that he’d wasted time trying to rescue the wrong crachen would anger and frustrate him--and make him sloppy.

She tried to answer Kathina’s question without revealing details, then she discussed the disposition of forces for the execution itself. She planned to repulse a full assault of the local militia plus the gemmed human hmself, but she didn’t expect anything quite that spectacular. What she expected--which she’d never admit to Usim--was that the human would surrender. He’d risked his life to save a bunch of olifarn children he didn’t know. He sounded catastrophically naive. Admirable, in his way--even heroic--but also like a gormless idealist.

After the briefing, she returned to her room and took a few minutes to wonder what the fuck Viceroy Limt was thinking. Threatening her with his niece? Putting Kathina in command of Ryetown? Sure, Wren knew that Kathina had a history with the intelligence services. She was a beast in a fight, too--at least in the right kind of fight.

Still, she’d never commanded a military outpost.

Wren managed her anger via the ancient method of eating a half-dozen almond flour cookies, then she gathered her escort and headed for Gallows Square.

The sun was low over the rooftops of Ryetown. The silhouettes of archers looked stark against the pink sky. The square was packed with soldiers and Sixers and probably Krelvites, relocated here to seed the population with loyalty. She climbed onto the stage from the stairs in the back. Five of her better soldiers were already there, in position behind the executioner’s block.

She nodded to them and moved to the front of the stage. Without quite looking for them, she picked out the twins in the crowd. Them and eight elite fighters--very much her best soldiers

She said a few words about the charges against the crachen, then Kathina stepped beside her as if to address the crowd.

So Wren fell resentfully silent and Kathina raised her arms and called: “Make no mistake! The condemned man, by his own actions, has proved himself our enemy. He may have deluded himself into believing that he was simply helping some lost citizens, but if we do not chain islands to a continent, we all lose. The condemned crachen abetted not just the local resistance, but the Plagues. We cannot fight them if we are divided. We must join together or we will not survive. Our parents, our children, our future will die. We must obey our superiors or we all die. We must do our duty to Krelv or the Plagues will destroy us. That is the reality. And anyone who keeps us apart? Anyone who is disobedient or who promotes disobedience? That is the enemy.”

She kept speaking as the new asset--a gemmed crachen named Tiral-ur--led the prisoner onto the execution platform.

Tiral-ur was one of the viceroy’s handpicked guards. From what Wren had seen, his power was invulnerability, along with the normal gemmed boosts to speed and agility. And while invulnerability wasn’t a flashy power, it was--obviously--almost impossible to defeat. The reports claimed that Tiral-ur had survived a direct hit by a 400-pound stone thrown by a trebuchet. He didn’t inflict extraordinary damage, but how could you defeat someone like that?

Good thing they were on the same side.

The gifted crachen soldier brought the prisoner to the chopping block, and the human fugitive still didn’t appear. Miss Kathina said a few more words, then stepped aside as the executioner approached ... and still nothing happened.

Maybe Wren had misjudged the human. Maybe he wouldn’t act. After the sergeant called for order, Wren read the official document sentencing the prisoner to death and--

“Hey Erdinand!” a man’s voice called from across Gallows Square. “Did I miss anything?”

The crachen prisoner’s eyestalks bulged toward the voice. “Run, Alex! It’s a trap!”

“Of course it is, Erd.” The human took one step forward from a storage building archway. “I love a good trap.”

The crowd parted. The civilians moved the sides of the square while the soldiers reoriented toward him. Alex was a youngish man with a neatly-trimmed beard and shaggy dark hair. Tall for a human, and more ... physical than most humans. He had presence. Even now, faced with a hundred enemy soldiers, he looked confident and bold. Not unhandsome, either. Pity she’d have to kill him.

“Hey, Wren!” he called toward her. “I owe you for the lesson.”

“Do you?” she asked, as the twins slipped through the soldiers toward him.

“Baiting a trap with someone I care about? That’s clever. Evil as fuck, but clever. Effective.”

Then he pulled someone toward him from the darkness inside the storage building. A skinny infenti of a nice orange hue that reminded her of--

Usim.

That was Usim, and the human’s hand was vice-tight around his upper arm.

A hatchet appeared in the human’s other hand, with the blade already touching Usim’s throat.

Wren’s blood turned to ice. Her vision tunneled. She’d never been afraid before. She’d thought that she’d known what fear was, but she’d been wrong. Her pulse crashed in her ears and her thoughts gibbered, yet she still managed to hear herself make a low horrified noise.

“This is how this is going to work,” the human said. “You release Erdinand to my friends in the alley over there to my left.” He jerked his head. “Once they’re safe, I release your son to you.”

“Don’t hurt him,” she heard herself say.

“Why would I hurt him? I’m not going to hurt him. Even if you kill Erdinand I won’t hurt your son. Nah, I’ll slit his throat so fast that he won’t feel any pain.”

48 - Gallows Square

I paused just inside the archway to check what was in front of me.

Gallows Square was--shockingly--a square. It reminded me of a smaller version of the square outside the Six Coves administration buildings with the spire. It was about half the size of a soccer field, and was surrounded by two-and-three story buildings that had once been much higher. Even from the archway, I could see jagged lines of breakage on the upper stories. New roofs had clearly been added atop half-fallen walls. Lower down, vendors clustered in three section. One group formed around a well and two others formed gauntlets around the entrances of the wide boulevards that led into the area.

I scanned for other exits, just in case, and spotted five narrow alleys leading off between the buildings.

Directly opposite me, a stage stood at the base of the largest perimeter building. The execution stage. What was that called? An elevated platform where the executioner stood with his black hood and his huge axe and the basket for the chopped-off heads? There had to be a word for it, but silly me, I wasn’t up on executions. It looked sturdy, though, and bigger than I’d expected. Like if they’d wanted to behead ten people at once, there’d be plenty of room.

A semi-circular balcony jutted from the stone building above and behind the stage. It looked like the perfect place for a handsome prince to address the adoring peasants. Or for an evil vizier to issue orders to his cruel troops.

After a moment, I stepped from the archway and ambled into the square, pretending to consider the wares at a few stalls. The chatter of conversation filled the air, as did the scent of grilled chicken. The savory herbs made my mouth water. I didn’t buy a kebab, though. Instead, I peered with fake interest toward a green-skinned infenti woman selling carved wooden utensils and what looked like clumps of wool, then glanced back at the stage.

There was an open space beneath the platform. Bigger than a crawlspace. Maybe I could hide there until they dragged Erdinand into place for the execution?

Yeah, then I’d just need to fight my way across a square full of soldiers before I ended up in streets full of soldiers. Plus, there were archers on the rooftops, even now. I caught glimpses of them lounging in place. And, for that matter, there were plenty of soldiers in the crowd. Strolling around in groups of three and four.

Hm.

Too many soldiers. Like they’d expected someone to reconnoiter the area. With Tansy’s words echoing in my head--what could go wrong?--I headed for the nearest cart with ollie vendors, two old ladies in long, roughhewn, peasant-looking dresses, each about seven feet tall ... then angled behind them. I fiddled with my shoe for a moment, looking as innocent as a saint with two halos, then ambled back the way I’d come. Because I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I was extremely sure that I was in enemy territory ... and that some of them knew what I looked like.

My stomach tensed. I waited for the shout, for the pursuit. For the hail of arrows suddenly pelting me.

Nothing happened.

With my heart pounding, I reached the archway from which I’d entered. I managed not to sag in obvious relief. Instead, I scratched the back of my hooded head like a man with no worried, then slowly started downstairs. At least until I was out of sight of the square, at which points I began trotting.

The couple was still arguing in the storage room, except they’d moved on to disagreeing about sesame seeds. I unhurriedly walked past them, and a minute later was behind the crates again, breathing slowly to stay calm.

I tossed my borrowed apron into the corner and considered what I’d seen. I paused there for a long moment, waiting for a brilliant plan to occur to me. When that didn’t happen, I turned to smoke and seeped back through the bottleneck.

For my return journey, I knew that I wasn’t in a huge rush before my mana ran out. So I wafted slower and found another empty space, a kind of sinkhole off, to one side of the caved in hallway. The ceiling of the floor above had crashed through to this level, but three wide wooden beams kept most of the rubble overhead.

I turned solid there, crouching awkwardly on the bricks and stone. The space was the size of, well ... an SUV. Shut up, it was. An entire SUV, too, not just the interior. It would make a nice hidey-hole if I needed one. Though frankly, the entire cellar would make a nice hidey-hole.

After my mana ticked up a few points, I wafted off again, drifting between the fallen rock and tumbled brick, and returned to physical form beside Tansy and Hollis. Who were sitting on the stone floor, enjoying what looked like a lovely picnic.

“Really?” I asked.

“That’s so weird,” Tansy said, she tossed me a purple pear. “How you turn from smoke into skin and bone.”

“It’s not as weird as having a picnic in a dungeon.”

“What did you think we were going to do? Just stare at the bricks? Also, how come you don’t smell smoky?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” I sniffed, and noticed a familiar scent. “Is that wine?”

Tansy offered me her mug. “Cherry wine. You want some?”

“No, I want to get my ass in gear. I need to know if Chetty found Erdinand.”

“Did you learn anything?” Hollis asked me, as he stood.

“Only how little I know,” I said.

“I could’ve told you that,” Tansy said.

I showed her my middle finger again, then led them away while she asked what that meant. I headed with great confidence directly across the first junction, instead of turning left and getting eaten by acid-worms. Then I immediately forgot which way to go next. So Hollis took the lead, and I drank cherry wine and Tansy complained that she hadn’t found any Sixers to massacre.

* * *

“Erdinand is in the drunk tank,” Chetty told me, when she reappeared after dinner. “Which is the lowest-security part of the prison.”

“That’s good,” I said. “That’s great.”

She shook her head. “No it’s not.”

“Why not? How is that bad?”

“It means he’s bait. They want you to think you can rescue him. ‘It’s only the drunk tank! How hard can it be?’”

I chewed my lower lip. “Oh. Okay, but ... how hard can it be?”

“It can be impossible, Alex. They have more soldiers then we do by a factor of twenty, and stronger ones too, who are also better-armed. You want to fight them on their ground, on ground they prepared? Where they’ve already established an ambush?”

“Do I have any choice?”

She lowered her voice. “I hope so, because if you go, the ollies will join you.”

“Good!”

“They’ll try to protect you, Alex. Especially Tansy. She’s ... she pledged herself to you?”

“I mean, yeah?”

Chetty shook her head. “She’s, uh ... well, congratulations, now you know a young woman who would throw herself in front of a blade for you without a moment’s hesitation.”

My stomach soured. “Really?”

“What do you think? And all them owe you for their kids. If you go, they will go with you ... and they’ll die.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I’ll learn more tonight, Alex. I promise. By tomorrow morning, we’ll ... “ She put her hand on my arm. “We’ll know something, at least.”

“They’re killing him tomorrow night. I’m not sure if ‘something’ is enough.”

“You need to rest,” she told me. “Sleep for a bit. I’ll wake you when news comes, actionable news.”

“There’s no way I can fall asleep right now,” I told her.

She told me that if I didn’t try, she’d sic her mother on me. Which was such a cute threat that I retreated to my room ... then paced and fretted for an hour.

Then I placed my golden beads carefully, one at a time, just behind my teeth, and from there I popped them into my domain. That gave me instant heals, invisible to my adversaries. I wouldn’t even need to use my hands. I thought for a minute, then I headed into the underground larder and did the same with cubes of cold meat and these delicious steamed buns packed with greens. I’d already stored food in my domain, but what if my hands got tied? What if I needed to eat and couldn’t even move? So I threw a few dozen mouth-ready meals into my domain. After that, I did the same with what Intuit labeled as watermelon. They weren’t like Earth watermelon, though. They were spherical, watery strawberries. Tasteless but extremely juicy. More of a liquid than a solid, really. Enough to keep me hydrated.

Finally, I returned to my bed and sat there, wondering what else I should tuck away inside my mouth. I closed my eyes and ...

* * *

... found myself in a resplendent world of criss-crossed rope bridges and arching staircases leading to various layers of an elegant treehouse manor, past swaying tapestries and harp-like instruments. Everything was smooth and rounded, flecked with color and iridescent with shimmering.

“Well,” I said, inspecting the ballroom around myself. “At least this isn’t the tortilla chip dream.”

“Alexanadine!” Princess called happily, scampering down a curved stairway toward me on eight legs. “You’re here!”

“Princess! You’re looking resplendent.”

“Only because I am resplendent.”

I smiled, but only for a moment. “Did you, uh, catch the news?”

“About the Plagues, or about Erdinand?”

“Take your pick, I guess. I meant about Erd, though.”

“Mm, yes. He strike me as the correct priority. Apparently we’re here to end the Plagues, which is ... rather like sending two butterflies to kill a wolf, if you’ll excuse the metaphor.”

“I don’t mind being a butterfly,” I said, feeling better just from seeing her.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that part, Alexeri! I mean calling the Plagues wolves. I know that you fancy wolves, but there is nothing beautiful or noble or even necessary about the Plagues, if I understand correctly. Which, as always, I do.. In any case, let’s take for granted that before we consider thinking about discussing the possibility of perhaps modestly opposing the Plagues, we must grow almost-unimaginably stronger.”

“Which mean, in your case, learning to stay awake for more than a minute at a time.”

She tilted her huge spider-monster head at me coyly. “Perhaps if you were interesting for more than a minute at a time!”

“Ha! Oh, is that the problem?”

“Well, your tediousness is certainly not helping, my yawnsome knight!” she said loftily, then stood on her rear legs and took my elbow with a fore-limb. “In any case ... Erdinand.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Tell me what I may have missed?”

So we strolled the balcony overlooking the dreamscape of her inner world as I told her about Gallows Square, and the drunk tank, and everything else I could remember.

“I think that I, uh ...” I swallowed. “I think that to save his life, I might have to surrender.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Hey! You’re supposed to talk me out of it!”

“I know you from the inside, Alex. You’ll surrender if that’s the only way to save him.”

“Shit.”

“Language!”

“Darn.”

She mentally shared her amusement and fondness with me, then said, “However, I know a great deal more than your insides. I am wise in the ways of the world, my moonlit major. Of one world, at least, if not this one. I am a scholar and an artist, my lovely trunkless terror, and I am blessed with the bloodline of a--”

“Okay, okay!” I interrupted. “Does this mean you have a plan?”

“Not a plan so much as an inkling.” She squeezed my arm gently. “Answer me this. How is Commander Wren attempting to control you?”

“By, uh, setting a trap?”

“Much like a spider does. Precisely. And with what is she baiting her trap?”

“Um, with someone I care about? Someone I can’t--I won’t--leave behind. That’s the problem.”

“So your fondness for Erdinand is what forces your hand?”

“Yeah.”

“Which is a rather cruel turn of fate, to suffer for one’s affection. However! Listen and learn, my greatest of all apes. There may be people so unfortunate, so wretched, so tragic, that they care for nobody but themselves. However, Commander Wren does not strike me as one of those people.”

“No, she’d definitely not. She’s not exactly shy about revealing her affections, but how does that help us?”

“What did we say about bait again? I’m rather certain it was only a moment ago.”

“Would you just tell me! Stop playing games and--” Then I realized what she meant. “Oh. Oh!”

47 - Lay of the Land

I told Hollis that I was going to waft through the bottleneck, and then didn’t do anything except check my sheet. Well, at least the important part:

Health: 55/55

Mana: 22/24

Yep. Still down a few point of mana after turning my arm to smoke. I decided to wait for that to fill up, so I asked, “What exactly are kobolds and redworms and wraiths?”

“You know what a chameleon is?” Tansy asked me.

“Sure.”

“Kobolds are like knee-high bipedal chameleons. Well, waist-high to you.”

“You’re barely taller than I am!”

“Uh-huh, keep telling yourself that. People think kobolds turn invisible but they just camouflage themselves. Really, really well. They’ve got big heads and nasty teeth that can chew through metal and they swarm like bees.”

“Lovely,” I said.

“I heard they’re pretty smart, but they’re so territorial that they can’t actually think half the time. Like, if two tribes get close, they just berserk all over each other. Then redworms are, y’know ... red worms.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said.

“They’re ten or twenty feet long,” Hollis told me. “And as thick around as your leg. Plus, if you chop them in half, both sides live. Suddenly you’re fighting two of them.”

I squinted at him. “How does a worm fight?”

“Same way she burrows,” he told me. “With acid. A thin coating of slimy acid.”

“Good. Great. So what we’re actually talking about here are acid snake-monsters the size of anacondas? Please tell me that wraiths are the opposite? Like, they sound scary--oooh, wraiths--but that’s actually what you call fluffy bunny rabbits?”

Tansy trumpeted in amusement. “Fluffy little specters.”

“They’re the weakest of the specters,” Hollis told me. “But all specters are deadly. If you see one, run. You can’t hurt them, you can’t touch them. They’re not physical, they’re ... something else.”

“Spectral,” Tansy said.

“Oh,” Hollis said, like he hadn’t considered that. “Yeah. Yes. They’re spectral.”

“Which means ...?” I asked.

“They’re ethereal, sort of like you are in your smoke form. They’re immune to physical attacks. Plus, they drain you with the slightest touch. They’re slow enough that you can outrun them, and they’re deadly enough that you must. At least they don’t roam far from their lairs.”

“The Plagues are partly spectral, too,” Tansy told me.

“I’ll keep that in mind for the next time I’m kicking one of their asses,” I said.

Hollis harrumphed. “I like the optimism.”

SUPPORT: A sufficiently high level in Treasure increases the likelihood of extracting a usable gem from a recently-deceased gem-user.

What? Where the hell did that come from? Also, you already mentioned that.

SUPPORT: Your current Treasure ability already offers a substantial improvement over any other extraction mention

So I can ‘loot’ gems from any of the ‘Gifted’ I kill? Okay. Then I can bond with them?

SUPPORT: Attempting to forge a bond with a gem rarely has a 100% chance of success.

Fine. But I can have multiple gems, right? What do I do, just press a gem to my forehead?

SUPPORT: There is a Boon which will allow you to designate ‘party members’ with whom you’ll communicate telepathically.

Way to ignore my question about gems. And you already told me that one, too, about some mental connection to party members. You said if I put enough points into Support, I--

SUPPORT: At sufficiently high level your ‘party members’ will gain ‘expoi’ in rough proportion to your own, thus becoming more powerful at a relatively jaw-dropping rate.

Whoa. That one was actually amazing. I could help friends and allies get stronger, too? Like, by giving them access to my Secret Level-up Scheme? Plus, relatively jaw-dropping’ sounded pretty damn good. In my head, I asked, “What level does that require?”

SUPPORT: The vast majority of blackbeads are only capable of being activated once every several hours, days, or even weeks.

What? You mean blackbeads like the one that guy Old Phil had in prison? The one that gave him super-speed?

Also, why the hell are you telling me all this right now?

SUPPORT: Precisely like that. Also like Oksar’s defensive ward. They only function once every several hours, days, or even weeks.

Huh. So Old Phil couldn’t have dodged another axe, if I’d thrown one? He’d exhausted his bead for at least a few hours? That would’ve been nice to know at the time.

SUPPORT: Agreed.

“Are you okay over there, major?” Tansy asked me.

I blinked. “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking. Uh, why ‘major?’”

“To make you feel bigger,” she said. “Cause you’re so little.”

“I’m only three inches shorter than you!”

She nodded. “Three long inches.”

“He’s three long inches smarter, too,” Hollis said. “You can tell, because he was ‘thinking,’ which you should try at some point.”

“Thinking is dumb,” she said.

I made a rude gesture at her that she didn’t understand, then did a little more thinking. In particular, I thought: ‘What’s this bullshit about fighting Plagues?’

SUPPORT: Hold your questions for the next available opportunity to consult Support. Goodbye.

Hey! Hey, are you still there?

All I heard in my mind was silence.

Fucker.

On the bright side, my mana was full again.

“Okay,” I said aloud. “Here goes.”

“Stay quiet, check the layout, and hurry back,” Hollis told me.

“Stop worrying, you old hen!” Tansy scoffed at him. “Nothing can possibly go wrong.”

Hollis and I exchanged a look that told me that this world understood the concept of ‘jinxing’ things, but neither of us said anything. Instead, I backed up a few steps. Then a few more. I’d been expanding my repertoire during our spars and this looked like a good time to test a new skill.

I sprinted toward the pile of bricks, leaped into the air--and just before I brained myself on the rubble, I turned to smoke. With a twist of intent, I managed to maintain my forward momentum. Not much, but enough that the smoky cloud of myself kept wafting fairly strongly in the right direction.

Through the cracks in the rubble of the ‘bottleneck.’

I wasn’t sure what would happen if I resolidified inside a few tons of brick, and I didn’t want to find out. So I drove myself forward as my mana lowered. I pushed gaseously against the bricks behind me, I clawed gaseously at the ones ahead.

In the middle of the blockage, the rubble turned from bricks and small rocks to the heavy stone slabs of the collapsed ceiling.

Mana: 17/24

Mana: 16/24

Mana: 14/24

I shoved myself toward the dim glow of torchlight ahead. My smoke seeped through mouse nests and around lizards and mosses and into a small open space where two slabs had fallen against each other like a pillow fort. It wasn’t quite big enough for me to resolidify without squooshing myself, but close.

Not that I needed to, yet, but I liked the possibility of taking a breather in the middle of the obstruction. Except it wasn’t possible, not if I didn’t want to crush myself into jelly. Maybe if the rubbled floor was a foot lower--

Oh!

I could lower the rubble.

I could move six-hundred pound chunks of rock without any effort.

I could blip them into my domain, then drop them later. Hell, I could move an entire truckload of rocks six feet by domaining them with my left hand and then popping them out of my big toe. This wasn’t the best time to experiment, though. Especially since I still had eleven mana, and the end of the bottleneck was in sight.

So I seeped through the final cracks in the cave-in and found myself wafting smokily in a vertical space between the wall from which I’d just emerged, and a stack of crates. Dusty crates. Like they hadn’t been moved in months or even years.

Beyond them, I caught sight of a dark basement. More storage. Boxes, racks, shelves. I listened for a second, then returned to my body, standing between the crates and the wall. Which was an actual wall on this side, as the rubble was being held back with wood scaffolding and chickenwire.

Mana: 8/24

Easy as blueberry pie.

I listened for a minute and didn’t hear anything in the basement beyond the crates. I started to slip forward, then stopped. Better to wait until I recovered all my mana before I possibly exposed myself. Which took a while, but I was in no rush.

Well, except that they were going to lop Erdinand’s head off tomorrow. So yeah, that was a pretty urgent deadline. But like Chetty had said, I didn’t even know where he was right now. You couldn’t rescue someone if you couldn’t find them. And as I stood there wasting time, I realized that the reason behind this whole ‘reconnaissance’ was mostly so I’d feel like I was doing something. Anything. And to keep me from thinking about the execution. I couldn’t take any really productive action, not yet, but if I’d just sat around, I would’ve driven myself crazy with worry.

Well, fair enough. And I was here now. Maybe I would discover something important. At the very lease I’d learn the lay of the land.

When my mana refilled, I squeezed around the crates and stepped into the basement. A few more stacks of crates roses around me, then the room opened into what looked like a vendor’s cart repair area. Roughhewn planks and wheels and carpentry tools were visible in the light of a dim lantern. So if anyone’s pushcart broke, this was where they’d fix it.

I went across the room to the narrow stone stairs leading upward, and listened again. I heard voices that time, but only faintly. I climbed to the next floor, which was more storage--but not dusty. There were jugs and bowls, racks of assorted stuff, and what looked like a food preparation counter. Or food packaging, maybe? A wall of shelves contained dozens of boxes, each one labeled with a different word.

Afternoon light shone dimly from the stairs leading to the surface. I grabbed a smudged off-white apron from the counter, tied it over my ollie boiler suit, then tugged my hood lower and headed for Gallows Square.

Halfway up the stairs, I heard louder voices. It sounded like two people arguing around about olive oil. A moment later, two infenti men came down the stairs, bickering happily, like an old married couple. Who knew you could disagree so passionately about salad dressing?

I kept my head low as they continued beneath me, then I stepped to the archway at the top of the stairs.

46 - The Bottleneck

“Okay,” I said, my heart thumping. “Okay. So If I don’t turn myself in by tomorrow, they’ll kill Erdinand. Okay.”

Harris put his big hand on my shoulder from behind. “What’re you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” I looked at Chetty. “What’m I going to do?”

Old Chettur spat on the floor at her feet. “Lose a friend. Ga. That’s what you’ll do, boy. Lose a friend.”

“That’s enough, Mother.” Chetty gazed into the darkness of the underground chamber. “We could give the Sixers a human body that looks like you, to claim that you’re dead. They might fall for the ruse. Except Wren is not credulous. They’d probably proceed with the execution regardless.”

“Where do they execute people?” I asked

“Gallows Square,” Tansy said.

I snorted a bitter laugh. “I probably could’ve guessed that. So, uh, I need to break Erdinand out tonight.”

“No,” Hollis said. “We need to break him out tonight.”

“Which is exactly what they’ll expect,” Chetty said, rubbing her tired eyes. “That’s what they’re hoping for, and planning for. You lost to one of the twins, Alex. Can you beat both of them, plus Wren, plus Kathina?”

“He can with our help,” Tansy said.

“Ga! You’re a fool if you believe that.”

I grunted. ”I can’t just leave him there.”

“So the first step,” Chetty said, “is more information gathering.”

“What is there to learn?” I asked.

“We don’t even know where he’s being held tonight. How’re you going to break him out if you can’t find him? There’s no question that they moved him before the ... tomorrow.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And other that that?” Chetty chewed her lower lip. “Well, I’m not sure what else we need to know. In fact, that is the first thing we need to know.”

“Stupid girl,” her mother grumbled.

I exhaled. “Okay, so you handle finding him and ... all that, and I, uh, I’m going to take a look at Gallows Square.”

“They’ll be watching for you,” Chetty said.

“I’ll shave,” I said.

“I’ll take him through the cellars,” Hollis said.

Everyone turned to him. Mostly with alarm, though Tansy was bright-eyed with excitement.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll stay out of the Old City.”

“There’s no path between here and Gallows Square,” Chetty told him.

“Alex is impossibly flexible,” Hollis said, meaning that I could turn to smoke. “The bottleneck will barely slow him down.”

“What’s the bottleneck?” I asked.

“It’s like the neck of a bottle,” Tansy explained.

“Yeah, I mean--”

“A collapsed corridor,” Hollis said. “Impossible for most people to pass though.”

They talked for a while longer, but I didn’t pay much attention. I kept thinking about Erdinand. Another decent guy--like Oksar--who could get cut down for no good reason. Like that ollie teenager, too, just trying to protect the kids. And like Lemmy the whipping boy, Lord Usim’s friend. Murdered for ... for what? For disagreeing. For being too weak to defend themselves.

I wasn’t about to lose Erdinand.

Forget about that grandiose quest. Forget about saving the world. I couldn’t fight Plagues--not for the next few years, maybe ever. Hell, I couldn’t even fight elite warriors on small-time islands. But I wasn’t going to hide in the bushes while they killed a friend. Not this time.

“Ready to go?” Hollis finally asked me.

“Yeah,” I said.

I expected him to lead me to a stairway leading deeper underground, but apparently different sections of the ‘cellar’--the top two floors of the underground--didn’t always connect with each other. There were too many cave-ins and regular basements in the way. So we needed to head for the surface first.

We climbed to the street, where Hollis and Tansy led me through the fresh air of the half-ruined city. And, uh, we dressed as an ollie family first. Hollis being the father, Tansy the older sister, and me the young brother, after they gave me a sort of hooded onesie that ollie kids often wore. Which amused the hell out of them, and apparently was supposed to embarrass me--dressing up like a toddler--but the ‘onesie’ reminded me of a boiler suit. Like I worked at a garage or was going to fix your washing machine. I thought I looked pretty good, y’know? Competent and professional.

Anyway, that’s how they smuggled me across the city to a lot of weeds in the middle of an abandoned block. Huge square stones that must’ve tumbled from the fallen tower next door dotted the lot. We zigzagged through the stones until we found a wide space under one that led down a stone ramp.

“What is this?” I asked, tapping the ramp with the sole of my boot.

“A roof,” Hollis told me, and lit a lantern.

I didn’t know what he was talking about until we reached the end of the ramp and faced a drop to the underground street below. Because yeah, apparently we’d climbed down the sloping top of a buried house.Most of the street below us--or the ‘cellar,’ I guessed, even though it had clearly been a street once--was blocked by fallen rock and dirt. But after we clambered down, we U-turned and walked into the house itself, which was pretty clear of rubble. A few torn tapestries decorated the walls and dozens of candle stubs littered the floor around two dingy mattresses.

Hollis looked at the mattresses and said, “So I guess kids are still coming here.”

“Ew,” Tansy said.

“It’s romantic,” he told her. “This is where Maryne and I conceived our first child.”

She trumpeted a soft laugh. “Oh, shut up. You’re gross.”

He chuckled and led us past a fairly nasty latrine to a room half-filled with dirt and rocks. We squeezed beside the rubble--well, they squeezed; there was plenty of room for me--into a space with a dark hole in the ground. Hollis moved his lantern forward and I saw a rope leading downward.

I reached for it, but Tansy insisting on going first. To protect me.

<She’s sweet,> Princess said in my mind.

<You’re awake?>

<Mm. You know what else I am?>

<What?>

<I’m sweet, too.>

I almost smiled at the drowsy, dreamy tone in her voice. <You’re at best half-awake.>

<I am at best half-awake,> she declared, then fell back to sleep.

I kind of wanted to rouse her, to tell her about Erdinand, but there was plenty of time for that. And anyway, I was afraid enough for the both of us.

The rope dropped me into a small square stone room with a single exit. So I went through it and found Tansy in a bigger room, waiting with her sword drawn.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“Nobody comes down here,” she told me. “There’s no reason to. But if the Sixers are searching for you ... well, maybe we’ll get lucky and run into a few.”

Shadows jumped against the wall when Hollis joined us with his lantern. He didn’t bother drawing his sword, he just led us through what I guessed was the lower floor of the same house and then out onto another underground street. That one wasn’t completely clogged with rubble. It was mostly clogged, through, beneath a ceiling of support beams that must’ve been added soon after it was swallowed by the ground. It was more of a narrow path through an ancient road than an actual ancient road.

“How is this the cellar and not the Old City?” I asked, in the quiet. “It looks like an old city to me.”

“It is,” Hollis told me. “But it’s, well, newer old city than the real Old City. You’ll see later.”

“There’s mana in the Old City,” Tansy told me. “Seeping up from below.”

We walked through the half-buried ruins for ten minutes or so. I kept glancing overhead, at the ceiling braced by thick beams like a mine tunnel. Wondering about cave-ins.

“It’s been safe since I was a calf,” Hollis assured me.

“The locals all know about these places? About the big underground tunnels?”

“Most of us.”

“So some of them must’ve told the Sixers.”

“Some definitely told the Sixers,” Tansy said, with a tusky smile. “The cellars are a great place for an ambush.”

“That’s comforting,” I said.

“There’s so much space down here, they could search for weeks.”

Hollis grunted and crouched through a doorway that opened into looked like an abandoned blacksmith’s shop. A wall had fallen, so we had to climb over the hearth before we emerged from the shop into a maze of alleys. With walls to either side, the space was barely wide enough for Hollis’s shoulders. Still, he led us unerringly to another stairway.

“Okay,” he said, his deep voice flat in the quiet. “The bottom of these stairs is on the border of the cellar and the Old City. So we’ll go down here, but under no circumstances will we go any deeper than this.”

“A pity that we don’t need to,” Tansy said.

Hollis grunted and went down the stairs into what looked like a proper dungeon, like the kind I’d seen in movies. Glistening stone walls, embedded with occasional skystones, stretched in both directions. A high ceiling arched above me and the ground underfoot was smoothed with the passage of thousands of feet. I even spotted a flash of a big-eyed rat. Or maybe rat-lizard, considering that ridged tail.

“What is the Old City?” I asked for what felt like the forth time.

“Old,” Tansy said.

“It’s a city, tightly-packed with buildings, that once rose high above the treetops,” Hollis told me. “Until a catastrophe struck. An ancient magic fused the stone together, according to some scholars. Or softened the ground beneath into quicksand, according to others. Many believe that the city sunk naturally, and over the millennia dirt and trees rose around it. In any case, people built on the ruins and then more people built on those ruins, over and over again, across the generations.”

“Doesn’t look all that ruined to me,” I said, peering around. “I mean, sure there’s no sunlight but it’s stable and stuff, right? Why not use all this space?”

“Well, we’ve more than enough space above ground. But also, people didn’t just abandon the tunnels. Not at first. They used the highest ones ... until the monsters came. They climbed up from the deepest cracks and crevices where they spawned. Now the descendants of those long-ago monsters make their home here.”

“The island floats,” Tansy reminded me. “On an ocean of mana. So the idea is that deep, deep, deep underground the bottom of the island meets the deepest sea.”

“With the most concentrated mana,” Hollis said.

Tansy wrinkled her trunk. “But the monsters this close to the surface aren’t so bad.”

“Bad enough,” Hollis said.

“How about kobolds?” I asked.

He grunted. “Kobolds are territorial, sneaky, and they’ve got the benefit of numbers. And there are wraiths and redworms and the rest.”

“Speaking of which,” Tansy said, as we approached a juncture.

“What?” I asked.

She pointed straight ahead. “That’s where we’re going. Toward the bottleneck that leads into Gallows Square. So when we come back this way, do not turn here. Head straight across, back the way we came.”

I looked to the left branch of the junction, and saw a tunnel collapse twenty or thirty feet away. Then I turned to the right and didn’t see much of anything. “The Old City is to the right?”

“It’s so neat! C’mon, I’ll show you.”

“Tansy,” Hollis said, warningly.

“We won’t go in! We’ll just show him, so he doesn’t get curious himself.”

“Yeah, he’s the curious one,” Hollis rumbled, but he turned to the right.

The tunnel curved almost immediately, and a minute after that an iron gate stretched from wall to wall. A rusted iron gate with posts missing, leaving gaps wide enough for an ollie.

“That’s not going to stop anyone,” I said.

“It’s a warning, not a barrier,” Hollis told me. “Look through.”

So I put my hands on the bars and peered into the darkness. I heard the squeaking of big-eyed rats and the chitter of teeth. When my eyes adjusted from the lantern light, I realized I was standing at the top of a steep slope, not quite vertical but pretty close. An almost-cliff heading deeper underground. Deeper and into what looked like a white marble building. Except the stone glowed faintly, as if chips of sunstone were embedded inside.

“The Old City,” Hollis said.

“It’s all white?”

“In this area. Nobody really knows anymore. We don’t explore, we don’t map. Very few who try ever return, and even they--”

An eerie howl sounded from below us. A strange, inhuman call that rose and trembled and faded

“Well I’ve seen enough,” I said, reflexively calling my hatchets into my hand. “Now show me Gallows Square.”

Tansy squinted at me, like she was disappointed I didn’t want to explore the scary howling depths, but Hollis just nodded and started back. That time we turned right at the junction--directly across from how we’d arrived. We only walked for another fifty yards before we reached a collapsed archway. The sides of the arch were visible, but the center was packed with stone rubble and fallen bricks.

“Gallows Square is through there,” Hollis told me.

“That’s the bottleneck?” I asked, stepping closer. “The cave-in?”

“Mm,” he said.

I listened, and didn’t hear anything. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. I put my palm against the fallen bricks, then turned my forearm to smoke.

Tansy made a happy noise at the sight and said, “That is so horrible.”

My smoky forearm wafted through the cracks between bricks. But this wasn’t just a single fallen archway. The blockage continued for farther than I could stretch my vaporous arm. Fifteen or twenty feet, judging by the light I glimpsed through my fingertips.

“Where’s the square once I reach the other side of this?” I asked, drawing my arm back to myself.

“Two flights upward,” Hollis told me. “Two or three. You’ll emerge in the bottom of a stairwell in a building that faces the gallows.”

“Are there people in there?”

“Vendors, mostly, according to Chetty. But they don’t hang around inside. They store their carts and goods here overnight.”

“They’re not going to hang Erdinand, though,” Tansy told me. “They don’t do that anymore, even though it’s called ‘Gallows.’ I just realized you might be expecting that. But they’ll probably put him to the axe. That or suffocation. You can’t really hang crachen anyway.”

“Thanks for clarifying,” I said.

She lowered her head. “Oh, sorry.”

“No, no! I meant that. I did think they’d hang him and I need to know ... “ I took a breath. “I need to know everything. Okay. I’m going through.”

“Keep your head down,” Hollis told me. “This is just reconnaissance.”

I nodded. “Will do.”

45 - A Plague of Quests

I spent the rest of the day with Hollis drilling me on the basics of dual-wielding axes. Which he considered an awful choice of weapons. An axe and shield? Fine. Two daggers? Fine. But two hatchets? The very concept disgusted him ... though he admitted that the approach suited me.

“Especially given your advantages,” he added, after hours of throwing-axe practice.

We retreated to an out-of-the-way corner to explore the limits of my ‘gift.’ He wanted to help me learn how to integrate my smokiness into my melee style--and into my broader combat ability. Tansy joined us, but to my surprise, Hollis refused to let anyone except for the ‘indebted’ ollies watch us practice.

“You can trust your life with anyone in this cellar,” he told me. “I’d bet my life on that. But I’d bet my soul that you can trust we five ollies.”

“So ‘ollies’ is okay to say?” I asked. “I shouldn’t say ‘olifarn?’”

“That’s what caught your ear from what I just said?” he asked.

“Oh, uh, I’ve been wondering.”

He trunk twitched in amusement. “We usually call ourselves ollies, that’s fine. Just don’t call us ‘eliphant,’ and you’re good. That’s like calling humans ‘apes.’”

“Which, yeah,” I said.

“Now back to work,” he told me, and I turned into smoke again.

He whacked at my cloudy form, attempting to contain me, to limit my motion. Well, though really attempting to teach me how to deal with getting violently stirred during combat. I wafted around columns, trying to escape him--and then to resolidify a single hatchet-wielding arm to surprise him with a sudden attack.

I couldn’t pull that off, though. Turning one arm to smoke while the rest of me stayed solid was easy, but turning part of me solid while the rest stayed smoke was impossible.

Hollis insisted on pushing me until I drained my mana completely and I returned to my body with a headache. Then we did normal axe forms until I recovered, and after that we repeated the same exercise, except with him and Tansy both stomping on my cloud of smoke. Which helped focus on moving isolated parts of myself--and also made me wonder if I could return to my body at any point in my diffused cloud, not just in the dead center.

Maybe. Not yet, but eventually. Which would mean that if I kept a thread of smoke active, I could basically ‘blink’ back and forth along its length.

Eventually.

Hollis also tested my webtouch awareness, which he’d noticed almost immediately. Apparenlty he’d tested my ability to sense behind my self without me even noticing. At first he’d suspected another gem, because he’d heard of a ‘danger sense’ type gem. I’d told him it was something else, though, and despite his curiosity he didn’t pry.

Tansy, on the other hand, did pry. I didn’t know how much to admit, because being a summoned creature from another plane of existence was a bit much. So eventually I told her that I’d bonded with a gem of ‘sheathed smoke,’ which meant that I sheathed my weapons and myself in smoke, and I’d also gained a smokey awareness of my surroundings. Which didn’t make sense, but: magic.

When we finished, I collapsed exhausted onto a bench for a while. A bunch of infenti came and introduced themselves, and one was named ‘Chetty.’ After we chatted for a bit Ia sked her to get information about Erdinand and the prison.

She was happy to oblige. Not because, like the ollies, she felt indebted, to me. Instead, I suspected that she saw me as a weapon she could point in the direction of the Six Coves forces. Then she’d stand back and enjoy the bloodshed. Which wasn’t completely wrong.

After that I bathed and ate and slept and ... well, fell into a pretty comfortable routine.

For the next few days, I trained hard, I ate loads, and I slept deeply.

One time when I woke, Chettur banged into my room and hurled a pair of well-crafted boots at me.

I thanked her, and she said, “Ga! Stupid boy.”

I chatted with Princess every evening, to keep her engaged and help her shake off her continued exhaustion

I learned a few dicing games from the infenti, and a few pebble games from Tansy, who was one of the top ten fighters, though not quite top five.

I learned a board game, too, called Shores, in which the players needed to fortify the coasts of their islands. At first I expected the game to involve defending bridges and defeating invasions, but no, you needed to defeat some kind of horrible ‘Plague.’

Except when I said that aloud, one of the infentis scoffed. “Defeat a Plague? Ha. We wish.”

“You can’t defeat a Plague,” Tansy told me. “You just try not to lose every single person in your care.”

“It’s a game of attrition,” the infenti told me. “And survival.”

“So how do you win?” I asked.

“By being the last to die,” he said.

“Well, that’s cheery,” I said.

“Turning reality into a game helps us face the horror.” Another infenti raised her mug of ale. “That and drinking. Okay! Who goes first?”

The game was like a multi-player Go, except with the goal of protecting your section of the board, called your ‘shore.’ A killing ‘plague’ spread from a coastline, but there wasn’t much of a story considering what the infenti had said about ‘reality.’

She’d been serious, though. That much was clear. So over the next day or two, I asked a bunch of people a bunch of casual questions about the plagues. And in the interest of brevity, this is what I learned--and what dropped on me like a fucking piano on Wile E. Coyote’s head.

* * *

Every so often, I learned, the still, quiet ocean begins to bubble beyond the coast of a random island.

The mana-rich water roils violently.

Usually, nobody notices. (So you might wonder how anybody even knows this happens. That’s what I wondered, and everyone looked at me like an idiot. This was a culture tale, patched together from the broken stories of broken survivors on islands that only drifted within boating distance of each other once a year. You don’t interrogate those tales, you accept them.)

Anyway. The water roils, and later--a week, a month, who knows?--one of the Plagues attacks.

Except the Plagues aren’t viruses, they’re not diseases carried by water or air or contact.

They’re creatures.

One looks like a slug bigger than the biggest cathedral, with acid slime and impenetrable skin.

One is a jellyfish that hovers among the clouds, lashing downward with ten thousand murderous tentacles.

One is a fleshy bubble that births ten thousand smaller fleshy bubbles that swarm and kill and eat.

Another is just the stench of burning hair, followed by half the people on the island murdering the other half in a frenzy.

Some are weaker, some stronger. Some are just what they call ‘a blood wake,’ which is when an island is struck a glancing blow by a Plague that is targeting a different island completely. Still, all are catastrophic. Whatever their form, the monstrous Plagues burn with the desire to destroy islands, to slaughter every inhabitant. They attack brutally, mindless and murderous, for no reason, with no cause, hungry to rip peoples’ lives apart.

Apparently some believe there is only one Plague, which changes shape. Some believe there are dozens. Some believe the Plagues kill until their appetite is sated, but most agree that they retreat when they suffer enough damage. So armies and the gemmed join together to injure them, even though a Plague cannot be defeated. And they will not stop until every person--every infenti and crachen, every ollie and human and strider and traguld--is wiped from the face of the realm.

“Is this myth?” I asked Hollis. “Or is this true?”

“It’s true,” he told me. “When I lived on Larkspur, I met people who’d fought a Plague. One of the weaker ones. I saw the scars on the earth.”

“Damn,” I said.

“And I’ve fought blood wakes, myself. They’re more common. In the wake of a Plague attack on some far-off island, terrible creatures crawl from the surf.”

“Damn,” I said again. “But, uh, that’s never happened here? To Waldhill?”

“Blood wakes? Sure. Two in the past twenty years. But Plagues themselves? They usually target the larger islands, and the continents. That’s why continents are frantic to grow stronger. The larger the landmass, the more often Plagues attack. So like Krelv needs to grow powerful enough to damage a Plague, to drive it away. They do that by gaining population, which attracts more Plagues.”

“Vicious cycle,” I said.

“Extremely. But Waldhill’s probably safe from the Plagues for now. Focus on the problem at hand.”

The problem at hand was in his hand: a crossbow with blunted bolts that he fired at me while I sparred with Tansy, training me to dodge them, and blink them into my domain. Yeah, he was serious about teaching me to survive.

Anyway, that’s what I learned about this new world.

What dropped on me like a piano came later that night:

QUEST: Stop the Plagues.

REWARD: A second chance at life, after dying tragically to an SUV, in a magical world of adventure and danger and love and pain and friendship.

QUEST: This is why you travelled here, Alex.

QUEST: This is the quest.

QUEST: This is the reason you are here. This is the reason you are alive. This is the reason.

QUEST: Stop the Plagues, Alex. End the Plagues.

How? I asked in my mind.

No answer.

They don’t even come to Waldhill! I said in my mind.

No answer.

Well ... well what tier are they? I asked in my mind.

And that time, a notification answered: Sorrow.

* * *

Maryne joined me for breakfast every day. Just the two of us. She’d clearly told the others to stay away, though at first I didn’t understand why. Yet by day three I found myself enjoying the quiet, undemanding intervals. She didn’t judge. She was only ten years older than I was--in her thirties--but she had a soothing maternal air about her. One that my mother completely lacked, which probably explained why I appreciated it so much.

So on the fourth day, I told her everything.

Well, almost.

I didn’t admit that the notification had tasked me with ending the Plagues. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, and I suspected that it sounded insanely grandiose. Like, “Sure, I can’t beat your husband in a spar without using my magic powers, but I’m still going to defeat a creature that destroys entire armies.”

I did tell her about levels and tiers and quests, though, and she’d never heard of any of them. Not a word, not a whisper. She hadn’t heard of the Billowing Ones or domains or boons, either.

Still, she listened to my story with her bright, placid attention, resting her big hand on mine sympathetically. We talked for an hour, and I felt like a weight had lifted from my soul.

She chased Hollis off with a glance when he approached, then said, “Don’t tell anyone else this. Not even my husband.”

“Oh,” I said, and must’ve looked surprised.

“If he’s captured,” she explained, “they’ll interrogate him. Well, they’d interrogate everyone here, trying to extract secrets. They’d expect Hollis to know things, but not me. I’m just a wife and a cook. They’d never expect that I’d know anything important. I don’t see how anyone could take advantage of knowing about your past, but ...” She squeezed my hand. “There are mighty, terrible people in the world. Keep this between us. And, er, Princess.”

The scar on my wrist glimmered briefly with a rainbow of colors.

“You look after him,” Maryne said, addressing Princess.

The scar pulsed once more before dulling.

“She seems lovely,” Maryne told me.

“She’s like you,” I said, “except flighty and bratty and with a dozen eyes.”

<You big fleshy looming human loomer,> Princess muttered.

When I finally stood from the table, Tansy pulled me downstairs for another training session. She was a fierce fighter, despite only being level five. Like most ollies, she didn’t bother with shields. She was the smallest ollie in the cellar, at only like six foot five, but she wielded a two-handed greatsword that was taller than me and must’ve weighed twenty pounds. Which wasn’t nearly the heaviest sword there.

Most Sixers were infenti, so I mostly practiced against the infenti members of the resistance, when Hollis wasn’t tormenting me. And I improved freakishly quickly. Which confused me. I should advance by leveling, not by training, right? So I hadn’t expected to get better until my quest finished and my ‘minor expoi’ kicked in. Yet after four days of intensive training, with the help of my ‘aptitude,’ I was at the same level but in a different league.

My strikes hit harder, my deflections came faster. My intuitive sense of my hatchets’ positioning blossomed. I felt the orientation of the blades without hesitation or effort--and when I threw them at moving targets, my blades often chunked into the target.

Not every time, but clsoer.

After I finished another circuit of training--fighting Hollis with smoke-form to exhaust my mana, fighting multiple infenti without smoke-form, defending against Tansy while practicing throwing--I rinsed off at the bucket and grabbed a hunk of dried fruit.

A couple of the guys were sparring, but I ignored them and sat beside Chetty at a bench. I had a hard time believing she was the old woman’s daughter--she was just so normal. At least for a dark-green demon woman. Also, she was in charge of intelligence-gathering for this section of the local resistance.

Not that they called themselves ‘the resistance.’ They didn’t call themselves anything, which annoyed me. C’mon, brand yourselves! When I asked what they were called, they said, “Our names.”

Anyway, Chetty gathered news of the invaders from a web of informants. Which meant from pretty much all the locals in town--servants, shopkeepers, everyone. Her people were already alert for any news of the Sixer plan to hack down the spire, which meant they were already spying on Wren and those around her. At my request, she’d also focused on information about Erdinand.

As I ate the dried fruit, Chetty told me that nothing had changed with Erd. He was still locked away. Not in any imminent danger. No good opportunities to stage a rescue. Nothing had changed with anything, really.

“So you’re just training and waiting for the right time to strike?” I asked, a little dubiously.

After days with them, I still couldn’t tell if they were an actual guerrilla resistance or just cosplaying one. Or maybe they simply weren’t sharing their strategy with the Random Human Dude who’d showed up out of nowhere.

“Until we know their plan,” Chetty told me, “we cannot know how to undermine it.”

“I’m not sure that’s true. Shouldn’t you try to seize the initiative?”

“We did. Then we lost the war. This time, we’ll let them think they’re unopposed until the very last moment. Then we’ll hit them with everything at once.”

“And what then?” I asked, because wouldn’t the Sixers in the Port simply send reinforcements?

“Then we’ll lose.”

“Oh.”

“But if we time everything perfectly,” she said, “we’ll have a chance to take the broken Ryetown spire into the mountains to hide it from them. And we’ll hope that’s enough to stop them. There’s a chance they can chain us to Six Coves with the other two spires. They might not need ours. But they might.”

“So you’re going to wait until they chop it down?”

She nodded. “And attacking it in transport is the only way we’ll win, even briefly.”

“Won’t the town still suffer?” I asked.

“Yes. There’s danger, especially to the weak and the sick. Like a mana-headache, but worse.”

“Oh. Well, do--“

“Ga!” Chettur whacked her cane on the ground as she approached. “You stop flirting with that stupid boy. I have news.”

“Hello, mother,” Chetty said, utterly calmly.

“You marry her?” Chettur asked me. “Big hips, she give you a dozen babies.”

Chetty ignored her. “You have news?”

“Ga! The news is, you’re too old! Should have married that boy ten years ago. All dried up now like last year’s fig. ” She poked my leg with her cane. “The Sixers know you’re in the city. A human with a shaggy face and two axes.”

“They do? How?”

“You think they told me? No. They announce you have to surrender.”

“Or what, mother?” Chetty asked.

“Or they kill the crachen,” she said.

My heart squeezed. “Erdinand?”

“Public execution,” she said, with a brisk nod. “Tomorrow at sunset. Crack him open like a walnut.”

44 - Sparring

“Don’t break the silverware,” Maryne told Tansy, eying the fork she’d bent.

“Sorry, but ...” Tansy sent a pleading gaze my way. “Can I ask about your gem?”

I lifted an empty hand, then bamfed a hatchet into my palm.

“Sweet garigrass!” she blurted, her brown eyes wide.

Hollis whistled, and I popped the hatchet back into my domain.

“Do it again!” Tansy said. “Do it again!”

I did it again.

“That’s just ... wow.” She tapped one of her tusks in excitement. “Wow. And you can turn them to fog and then reform them?”

“Sort of,” I said.

“May I hold it?” Hollis asked, looking at my hatchet.

“Not at the table, dear,” Maryne said.

Tansy jumped to her feet. “Then let’s clear the plates and--“

“I’ll clear the table,” Maryne told her, with a wry smile. “While you politely ask Alex if he doesn’t mind sharing his private abilities with you downstairs.”

I blipped my hatchet away. “It’s fine.”

“Maryne’s not even old,” Tansy told me in a stage whisper. “She only acts that way.”

Hollis cuffed her head, and said, “And you’re not a child, you only act that way.”

“If I acted like I child,” she told him, with mock dignity, “I’d start whining. Please can we go downstairs now? Please? Pleeeeease?”

He snorted a laugh, then stood fro the table and led us across the big room toward the ‘stage.’ Tansy introduced a dozen other people--all infenti--on the way, but I immediately forgot their names. I was a little concerned that she referred to herself as my ‘bodyguard’ or ‘warden’ or ‘most devoted servant,’ but mostly I just smiled at her hyper energy. A couple of others joined us, though, as we walked to the far side of the stage.

Where, to my surprise, a skystone-illuminated staircase led downward, deeper into the ruins.

“The first few layers below street level are regular basements and cellars,” Harris told me, “like this one and the next floor down. Just ordinary subterranean spaces. But if you go deeper than that, you end up in the Old City. Which we stay away from.”

“Beause we’re boring,” Tansy added.

Hollis ignored her. “Because the Old City can be dangerous.”

“You mean like a dungeon?” I asked him.

“Huh?”

“I mean, an underground city full of dangers definitely sounds like a dungeon.” I almost laughed, feeling a weird thrill at the idea. “Please tell me you’re talking about a dungeon!”

“Uh. Well, I’m sure there a few dungeons and gaols in Old City, but there are more abandoned taverns and tenements and shops and, uh--“

“Everything else,” Tansy said. “All the things that make a city a city were in Old City before it became an underground city. Why are you so interested in dungeons?”

“Oh, no reason.”

“Because you want to lock the Sixers in the Old City!” she said, her dark eyes gleaming. “See? This is why I pledge to you! What a clever idea. So cruel!”

“Well, I--”

“We’ll beat them until they can’t stand then make them crawl into cells and lock them away forever. Starve them. Make them die slowly, in the darkness and--”

Hollis tsked. “That’s enough, Tansy. You’re frightening Alex.”

“I barely even started,” she told him. “And he’s not scared.”

“I’m shaking in my boots,” I said. “And the reason I asked is that I, uh, read a story about a dungeon once. Where there were monsters and, uh, treasures and stuff.”

“I’m pretty sure people picked the place clean of treasures ages ago,” Tansy told me, “so no treasures. Plenty of monsters, though, and that’s the important part.”

“Don’t listen to Tansy,” Hollis told me. “We stay out of the Old City. We have enough problems without picking fights with redworms, wraiths, and kobolds.”

Kobolds? Yeah, that sounded exactly like a dungeon. I didn’t ask about treasure chests and boss fights, though. Partly because they thought I was weird enough already, and partly because ransacking a dungeon wasn’t on my Top Ten List of things to do. Unlike, say, saving Erdinand, finding a source of honeydew candy, and putting a few gemmed assholes to the axe.

“I’m pretty fond of fresh air,” I said. “And my policy with wraiths is to avoid them. I won’t go below the normal cellars.”

“Well, we can’t offer fresh air, but at least the skystones give light.” Hollis reached the end of the stairway. “This here is the bottom of the cellars. And it’s where we train.”

The steps ended in a chamber with a high vaulted ceiling and dozens, or maybe even hundreds, of columns. The basic shapes or construction reminded me a little of the Temple of the Billowing Ones, actually. Though far, far, larger. Like two football fields, end-to-end.

“How old is the Old City?” I asked, as I stepped into the long, vaulted room.

“A thousand years?” Hollis led me to a large circular space between columns. “Nobody knows exactly, though its definitely pre-Sundering.”

“Which we all say was a thousand years ago,” Tansy told me. “Though I think it just means ‘a long, long time.’”

Hollis gestured. “So this is our sparring pit.”

Crude benches surrounded the open space, and crude racks stood between a few of them, displaying not-so-crude weapons. A few armored calf-guards leaned against a column and a chain mail shirt draped a bench, and a second bench held a row of helmets, two of which were ollie-sized. A few battered training dummies stood here and three among the columns, and a row of archery targets lined the wall. There was even a table with what looked like drinks and refreshments.

“So you’ve been here a while?” I asked.

“We started preparing before the bridge fully formed,” Hollis told me.

“Do you have a ... plan?” I said, while offering a hatchet to Hollis.

He started to answer, then took the hatchet from my hand, almost reverently.

“You have two of those, right?” Tansy asked, her eyes hopeful.

“Hah,” I said, and gave her the other one.

In their hands, my hatchets--which were the size of regular axes now, having reshaped after the blessing in the tombyard--looked more like hatchets again. Hell, the one in Hollis’s hands looked almost like a toy. Though he still treated it with utmost respect.

And after he tested the edge on his forearm, he whistled. “Gemmed weapons. Sharp.”

“Yeah, they’re upgraded,” I said. “I don’t really know how that works.”

“Ah, but now you’re disarmed,” he rumbled. “Look at you, empty-handed! You are at our mercy, foolish human.”

He raised my hatchet in mock-threat, not even moving toward me, as Tansy watched with eager brown eyes. I snorted in amusement. I knew what he wanted, so I recalled the ‘attacking’ hatchet from his hand. When it turned to smoke in his grip, he gave a bark of surprise and pleasure.

“You can do that at will?” he asked. “What about from a greater dist--“

Tansy hurled her hatchet toward a cluster of infenti spectators. They yelped and dodged before I recalled that hatchet from mid-air.

She laughed as the spectators swore at her. “Sweet garigrass, that’s amazing. Good balance, too!” Then she made grabby hands toward me. “Gimme gimme gimme!”

I gave her the hatchet back, then handed Hollis the other one, and that time they each went through slow motion weapons forms for a minute or two, then just inspected the weapons before returning them.

“My wife wouldn’t approve of me asking this,” Hollis told me. “Maryne thinks we should focus on paying our debt to you, instead of accruing more debt. She’s right, as always, but ... will you spar with me?”

“I haven’t done much sparring,” I admitted.

“Then how did you train?”

“Trial and error. I, uh, have an aptitude for axes.”

He snorted and grabbed a spear the size of a sapling. “Come, we’ll start slow.”

“Should I use blunted axes?”

“I’m not so fragile.” He smiled behind his trunk. “Still I’d appreciate if you don’t do to me what you did Dordor. Killed in a single blow. Maryne would hate going to all the trouble of finding a brand new husband.”

“I wouldn’t do that to her,” I assured him.

“Good. Now take defense only for a time. No attacking.”

He jabbed at me halfheartedly with his spear, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to reveal my full abilities or not. On the one hand, these people hadn’t attacked me while I’d slept, but instead pledged themselves to me. On the other hand, keeping that information quiet had helped me escape from my cell. On the third hand, Hollis and the others would see my full powers as soon as they watched me fight for real. Which would undoubtedly happen when I rescued Erdinand. And crucially, I wanted their help rescuing Erdinand, and I immediately just liked them, so I should be honest with them. Though that made four hands which--

<--aren’t nearly enough,> Princess murmured into my head. <Any fewer than six hands is simply silly.>

I ignored her, and batted away Hollis’s spear.

He jabbed again, still slowly, and I parried again, also in slow motion.

We did that a handful of times, then he shifted his oversized feet and swung the spear like a quarterstaff, lashing at me faster with the shaft.

I deflected, deflected, then dodged a follow-through swipe.

When Hollis saw that I moved okay, he started attacking more quickly. He jabbed, swung, and slashed--and his ‘spearpoint’ was almost as big as a short sword blade. He circled me, first testing my reflexes, then moving in a weaving circle, darting in and out. I dodged, parried, and deflected as his attacks came faster and faster. Soon we were moving together as if in a dance, and the clack-clack-clack of our weapons echoed in the wide underground space.

Hollis was quick, far quicker than I’d expected given his zie, and his limbs were so long that he managed to be everywhere at once. He lunged suddenly and broke through my defense. The edge of his spear sliced my sleeve but only scratched my skin.

“Okay?” he asked.

I grinned. “I’m no so fragile either.”

“Good. Now defend, but also throw a hatchet whenever you choose.”

I grunted acknowledgement and kept defending for another ten seconds, then another fifteen. After we reestablished our rhythm, I raised a hatchet to block--and at the last second I tossed it at his face.

“Ha!” he said, rearing away and losing his initiative.

He returned, and starting pressing his attacks. I blocked twice with my remaining weapon, then the first reformed in my hand and I parried another swing and I threw that same one again, that time at his stomach. His spear blurred and he barely managed to knock my weapon to the ground.

By the time he closed on me again, I was holding both hatchets again.

He laughed as he renewed his attack. “That’s a sonofabitch to fight. I knew you could do it, but it still changes everything. You’ve got a close-range missile in addition to--“

I threw the hatchet--and a heartbeat later, I threw the other one. The second caught him a glancing blow with the flat of the blade, and I said, “Two close-range missiles.”

“Pity you can’t aim them,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “Okay, now defend, throw, and attack.”

So I immediately chopped through the haft of his spear. Yeah, my hatchets were pretty upgraded. Sharp and blessed to Emerald-tier, whatever that meant.

The bladed half of his spear clattered to the ground and the spectators murmured.

I figured that losing his weapon would stop Hollie, but it seemed to energize him. He spun the remaining half of his spear in one hand as he backed away three steps, his eyes sparkling.

When I pursued, he circled again--then he somehow flipped the broken half of his spear from the ground into his free hand with his boot. Damn. So smooth. Now armed with two weapons again, he threw himself at me, a fighting stick in one hand and a short spear--well, short for him--in the other.

Apparently all I’d achieved was giving him a second weapon.

His spears jabbed and slashed and parried. I pressed my attack, taking two hard smacks on my toughened side to hit him once with the mace-head of my left-hand hatchet. He stumbled backwards a step, cursing happily, but still managed to deflect my thrown hatchet.

Well, he was level 10 after all.

I pushed him harder, trying to get close enough to land a solid blow. When he started focusing on defense, though, I simply couldn’t get inside his guard.

So after a few minutes, I said, “Can I try something new?”

“Please,” he said.

I aimed a flurry of chops at him, shifting completely to offense. A frantic, reckless, berserking attack. He blocked the first few chops, his spears a blur--then he found an opening and slashed at me.

So I turned to smoke.

The lack of resistance to his blow unbalanced him and I reappeared inside his range, my hatchet already swinging at his chest. Not too hard. The edge sliced through his armor but didn’t penetrate his thick elephant hide deeply.

“Mercy!” he cried, with another laugh. “Your match!”

I bamfed my hatchets into my domain then started to catch my breath.

“Ha. Magic axes and turning to fog. Hardly fair.” He seemed pleased about losing, though, judging from his smile. “I thought I might actually beat a gifted for once.”

“A gem is such a cheat.”

“Wait until you meet someone with more than one. Which ... I think I just did?”

“No, I’ve only got the one.”

“So it’s a gem of ... smoke weapon?” he guessed. “And if you consider yourself a weapon, you can turn to smoke, too?”

“Something like that,” I said. “But I can only do it for a few seconds.”

<So far,> Princess said in my mind.

“So far,” Holli said aloud, and clapped me on the shoulder, which almost sent me reeling. “I can’t beat you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t train you.”

“Hollis was a militia trainer for years,” Tansy called from the sidelines, “because he’s old.”

“Your style is your own,” Hollis told me, “and you’re gemmed, which means you must let your powers guide you. Still, your foundation is uneven. And I, uh ...” He shrugged. “I can’t think of a better way to start repaying my debt than to help you develop it.”

“I can!” Tansy said. “This goofy human doesn’t know anything. He needs a loyal servant.”

“He’d beat you in a spar,” Hollis told her.

“Not without his powers,” she said.

“After three days of my training, he won’t even need them.”

“You really don’t have to worry about repaying me,” I said.

“I’m not worried,” Hollis told me. “I’m indebted. And the odd truth is, you can’t decide when I’ve paid my debt. Only I know when things feel even. So please. You’re a natural, but let me teach you what I can.”

QUEST: Train your hatchet skills.

REWARD: Minor expoi and--you’ll never guess--improved hatchet skills.

Thanks, you clown, I snapped at the notification. That was already my plan. I don’t need you poking your red nose into everything.

“I’d appreciate that,” I told Hollis..

“My repayment is way better,” Tansy told Hollis.

“Working as his personal maidservant for a few years?“

“His bodyguard!” she said. “He saved Alice’s life, and all the little ones. Oh! Oh, or if you don’t want a bodyguard, I could bring you the ears of twenty-seven Sixers.”

“Uh.” I blinked at her. “What?”

“I’ll bring you the ears of twenty-seven Sixers,” she repeated. “The left ears, unless you prefer the right, though I don’t know why you would. What I mean is, I’ll chop them off the corpses after I kill them and--“

“I got that much,” I interrupted. “But ... why twenty-seven?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s more than enough.”

“Oh good!” She hugged me, which felt like being hugged by a leather couch. “Then you agree.”

“I don’t agree!” I said, still caught in her embrace. “What am I going to do with twenty-seven ears?”

“Make a necklace?”

I pushed her away. “First, that’s disgusting. And second--no.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’d rather be your warden. Captain of the guard and all that.”

“I don’t know, I like the maidservant idea. You can fold my laundry and brush my hair.”

“I’m too old to play with dolls,” she said, looking down at me.

“Ouch,” I said.

“Ha!” Tansy socked me in the shoulder. “C’mon, make room for the others.”

She led me from the sparring circle toward the refreshment table and poured me a drink from a bucket with water and citrus peels. The other people started sparring, and Hollis called instructions while I slaked my thirst.

Then I told Tansy, “I actually am going to need help with something.”

“If you say ‘tucking me in at night ...’”

“No. Uh, my friend Erdinand is still locked up. He’s the crachen who helped those ollie kids. Give me a hand freeing him and I’ll owe you.”

“If it involves killing Sixers,” she said, “I’ll just owe you more. You have any idea how you’re going to free him?”

“Not a single one. Well, I guess the first thing is to ask what you all know about the prison where he’s being held?”

“That’s easy. Ask Chetty. She’s Chettur’s daughter. She’s also named Chettur, so we call her Chetty. She handles the spying.”

“Oh.” That was easy. “Great.”

“But she’s not here now, so the first thing is, train with Hollis--and me. I never fought a gifted before, and I need to understand your weaknesses if I’m supposed to compensate for them.”

“You’re not serious about that whole bodyguard thing, are you?”

“Nah,” she said, scratching her trunk.

In my mind, Princess said, <She is utterly, entirely, and comprehensively serious.>

43 - Pins and Chains

In every fantasy movie I’d ever watched, the characters had deep, portentous, magical dreams. Sometimes they were terrifying, sometimes they were prophetic, but they always meant something.

Not me. In my own personal fantasy world, I dreamed that I was a bag of tortilla chips in a kitchen cabinet. Hanging out with the ramen packages and breakfast cereal and a tugboat. Like, a full-size tugboat. Which, in my dream, had seemed completely normal.

I was just chilling with my buddies ... until someone opened the cabinet door. A hand reached for me. A shadow fell across my precious cornmeal contents--and webtouch screamed a warning.

I woke with a start, and even before my eyes opened I felt the intruder reaching for my throat.

“Time to--“ they started.

Time to die? What the hell kind of thing was that to say? I rolled and blocked with one arm while summoning a hatchet into my other hand--

“Ga!” the old woman said, as my blade swung at her throat.

Chettur was alone, unarmed, and a millisecond from death. I couldn’t stop my momentum, so I blipped the hatchet into my domain and managed not to take her head off.

“Sorry,” I said.

She assaulted me with her cane. “Sorry? Sorry? Stupid boy! Time to wake up! You stupid boy!”

“Ow!” I said, hunching against her blows even though she couldn’t really hurt me. “Okay, okay! I said I’m sorry!”

“Stupid boy,” she grumbled, giving me one last whack. “You come out now.”

“Fine,” I grumbled.

“First wash your face.”

“I already wa--“

Chettur glared.

“Fine!” I said.

She left, muttering under her breath, and I washed my face with the now-cold water. Look at me, getting bullied by a little old lady who looked like Mrs. Butterworth with horns. This shit never happened to Bruce Wayne. Though I guess Spider-man had Aunt May.

Anyway I dried my face then stupidly left the bedroom without checking under the door. Which was why the sight that greeted me made me stop in surprise.

Six ollies stood in a line facing me. The were levels four to seven, but I’d figured out an odd fact about levels. If you put a level two cat in a cage with a level two mouse, that wasn’t a fair fight. That was a snack. So levels depended not only on skills but on species or base skills. Like, I was a Gemmed Level Seven Anomaly with Boons, which was badass. Still, those ollies outweighed me by an average of a hundred and fifty pounds each, and my back was literally against the wall.

Also, on second glance, one of them was level ten.

I almost called upon my gem, but the ollies moved before I did: they knelt and bowed their heads.

“Uh,” I said, and glanced toward Chettur.

She made shushing gesture, so I shut up.

“You saved our children,” the biggest ollie woman said, after a moment. “You risked your life to save them, with no expectation of gain or reward. You saved our families, you saved our futures, you defended them with the shield of your own flesh and blood and for that we declare ourselves in your debt.” She raised her head to look at me. “I, Maryne of Ryetown, acknowledge my debt.”

The man beside her raised his head. “I, Hollis of Ryetown, acknowledge my debt.”

The smallest-though-still-large woman raised her head. “I, Tansy of the upper village, acknowledge my debt--and I will repay with my service.”

A wrinkled old ollie man said, “I, Garhearten of the upper village, acknowledge my debt.”

The last two repeated the phrase, though I missed their names, then I stood there in awkward silence until Chettur elbowed me.

“Thank you,” I said. “But I, uh, I didn’t do much. I mean, the young woman--Alice?--and her friend, they did more than I ever--“

“Ga!” Chettur interrupted. “Stupid boy. Tell them that you hear what they say, then we eat.”

“Oh. Um. I hear you?”

“Then let’s eat and enjoy,” the biggest woman said, rising from her knees to tower over me. “My name is Maryne, if you didn’t catch it.”

“And I’m Hollis,” the man said.

“I’m Alex.”

“Alec,” Chettur said.

“I’m pretty sure it’s Alex,” I told her.

“Ga,” she said.

“Ignore her,” Tansy, the smallest one, told me. “She’s got shoe-leather where her personality should be.”

Chettur whacked her with her cane. “No respect!”

While they bickered, Hollis gestured to me, inviting me to join him. He was probably eight feet tall, though leaner than most male ollies I’d seen. He was the level ten, too. He was wearing an armored robe that cinched at the waist and fell in draped skirts to his massive boots. His gray hide gleamed with blue highlights in the flame of the torches, and one of his tusks was broken near his face.

He led me toward the main table, which was laid with a feast, then offered me the chair at the head. When I hesitated--not eager for the spotlight--the woman Maryne said, “How about the three of us sit in the corner?”

“I’d like that,” I told her.

She smiled at me. She was shorter but heavier than Hollis, with a long blue-black braid, and her skin also had a bluish tint. And even though she looked, y’know, like an elephant-person, she had a rough, blunt, honest face. She pulled out a seat for me in the corner, then took one herself and called for Tansy to bring us some plates.

When I sat in the ollie-scaled chair, my feet dangled like I was in a booster seat. Yet another thing that never happened to Batman.

“We do owe you everything, Alex, whatever you say.” Hollis took the chair opposite me. “The village sent a runner with the news. Twelve kids you saved. We’ve been looking for you and ...” He scratched his short trunk with blunt fingernails. “We owe you.”

“Well, I’m not the kind of guy to turn down gratitude,” I said. “But anyone would’ve done what I did, if they could. It’s no big deal. I’m just happy the kids got away.”

“What kind of guy are you, then?” Maryne asked, her deep voice gentle. “Who thinks that risking your life for strangers’ children is no big deal?”

“Average?”

“You’re gemmed,” Hollis said.

“Shush, Hollis,” she told him. “We’re talking about more important things than power.”

“Is there anything more important than power?“

“You’ll have to excuse my husband,” Maryne told me. “He’s still a little bitter from having lost the town to Six Coves.”

“I’m a lot bitter,” Hollis admitted. “But I’m mostly weak. I’m not powerful enough. If I had been, we wouldn’t have lost.”

“They outnumbered us five to one,” she said.

“Not pound-for-pound,” he grumbled. “The scrawny little infenti.”

She gave a gruff, elephantine laugh. “On a weight basis, they outnumbered us two to one. And they had gemmed, and professional soldiers. And mind your manners, calling people ‘scrawny.’”

“Alex doesn’t care,” he assured her. “You heard old Chettur nagging at him. She likes him. And she never likes anyone who takes themself too seriously.”

“Then she’s going to stop liking you soon,” Maryne told him. “You’re dry as a desert, these days.”

“Chettur likes me?” I said.

“Did she assail you with her cane and call you stupid?”

“Only a hundred times.”

“Then yes, she likes you.” Maryne leaned back as Tansy started placing plates on our table. “Tell us about yourself?”

“You first,” I said. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Start with the pickled radish.” Hollis pushed a bowl toward me. “Maryne’s family recipe.”

“I’m farmer,” Maryne told me. “And a mother. I was born here, in Ryetown. I’ve only been to the Port three times. I’m a small-town girl, I reckon. I met Hollis when he was stationed here. Strapping young lad, he was then. He’s ... well, he was a corporal in the Waldhill militia. Big city boy.”

Hollis’s trunk quivered when he snorted. “The Port’s still small potatoes. I spent a few years on Larkspur Island, and there they have proper cities.”

“How’d you get to another island and then back here again?” I asked.

“Where are you from?” he asked me. “That you don’t know that?”

“Oh. I was raised in a remote, uh, place. In solitude, pretty much. You’d be surprised, the things I don’t know.”

His bushy brows drew together. “Is that where you got the gem? In your remote place?”

“Yeah. After I was given the gem, I didn’t roam too far. For reasons you can imagine.”

“A gem is a mixed blessing,” Maryne said, with a nod. “People wanting to dig for treasure in your body.”

“I’d give my right arm for blessing like that,” Hollis told her. “Mixed or otherwise.“

A squeal sounded, a long, high-pitched shriek as Tansy dragged a chair across the room our table, along with another plate. She plopped the plate in front of Maryne then plopped herself on the chair and said, “Are we talking about his gem yet? Are we talking about killing Sixers? What’re we talking about”

“Alex is from off-island,” Maryne told her.

“Which we are talking about,” Hollis said. “Not you.”

“Well, I need to know. I’m his bodyguard now.”

“You’re not his bodyguard,” Hollis said.

“Am too. That’s my pledge.”

“You couldn’t even honor a pledge to stay quiet for five minutes.”

Tansy made a face and mimed locking her mouth shut.

“Tides help me,” he sighed, then told me, “I got back here from Larkspur Island because the navigators can calculate--roughly, and occasionally--when two islands are in orbit. That means they pass close a few times before floating away.”

“Ah,” I said.

“So you found yourself on Waldhill?” Maryne prompted me.

“Yeah, unexpectedly.” I shrugged. “I missed the bridge back. I stayed in the forest for a while, uh. Then I fell in with the wagons coming here to Ryetown.”

“With Wren,” Hollis snarled.

“Nah, she wasn’t there. Just her son Usim, and his ... I don’t know, governess? Kathina. And these infenti twins.”

“Jikon and Jikap.” He touched his broken tusk. “I’d like to meet them again.”

“Meet them one at a time, please,” Maryne said. “I’m not ready to be a widow.”

“Maybe me and Alex can meet them together.” He drank from a mug, then peered at me. “I hear you fought one of them to a standstill.”

“Well, he still stood,” I said, and didn’t mention that I’d been out of mana.

Maryne touched Hollis’s forearm. “First we eat. We’re celebrating Alex, not debriefing him.”

“She ruins all my fun,” he told me with a sigh.

I smiled and ate a bite of the pickled radish, which was spicy and sweet and delicious. I took a second helping, then Maryne started serving the other dishes: lamb and chickpea stew, a fermented milk drink, a stack of rye flatbreads, and lots of pickled veggies. We ate and chatted about her farm and the situation in town, then Tansy asked about her little sister, Alice. So I told the story, passing quickly over her friend being killed.

The mood soured anyway, for a moment.

At least until Maryne offered a cheese plate and asked me to continue. Hollis listened carefully and Tansy looked positively gleeful when I described killing Dordor..

After a dessert of crunchy sweet grains, I said, “That was the best meal I’ve had in a very long time.”

“Now to business?” Hollis asked his wife.

“First we ask Alex if he has questions.”

“Only a thousand, but I don’t even know where to start.” I thought for a second. “So you lost the battle for Waldhill, for the Port and Ryetown, yes? But you’re still trying to push the Sixers off the island?”

“We’re trying to keep them from breaking our spire,” Tansy told me. “And chaining us to Six Coves forever.”

Hollis grunted. “If we’re chained to them, we’re finished as an independent island. Just like they were, when they chained to Krelv. Ten years from now, we’ll just be another province of Krelv, fighting for survival.”

“Sharpened on the Whetstone,” Tansy said.

Maryne sniffed, her trunk twitching. “You can’t hate Six Coves and love Krelv, Tansy.”

“Watch me! I would’ve run away from home to Krelv if anyone asked, but the Sixers had to come take take take. And kill kill kill.”

“Okay, uh ... I was raised on a far-off mountaintop, remember?” I tapped a finger on my mug. “‘Chained’ means that this island is connected, joined or, um, physically bridged to another island?”

Tansy gave a snort of elephantine laughter before she realized I was serious. “Yes. Yes, that’s what it means. Some people call it ‘pinning,’ on account of the spires.”

“Right,” I said. “The spires.”

“You don’t even know that?” Hollis shook his head at my ignorance. “That mountain you grew up on must’ve been very remote.”

“California’s a long way off,” I agreed.

“You never even heard how spires work? Okay. When enough people gather in one spot on an island, when they live together for long enough ...”

“When a village grows into a town,” Maryne interrupted, “all of the residents’ mana combines and concentrates, and causes a spire to grow from the ground. Right?”

“Of course,” I agree, absolutely clueless.

“A spire rises in the center of the town,” Hollis told me. “Made of mana and time and ... sweat and tears, births and deaths, years of the labor people devoted to taming the wilds and claiming a home.”

“Hollis gets a little poetic,” Tansy said, peering at him dubiously. “A spire’s just a settlement marker. You probably saw the Ryetown spire when those bastards dragged you to jail for treason and murder and all that good stuff.”

Oh! Oh, of course! That waist-thick, twenty foot tall unicorn horn of smooth black material!

“Sure. Of course. I mean, yes. That little spire growing from the center of the, uh ...”

“Of the stump of an ancient spire, from back when this was a city of hundreds of thousands,” Maryne said, spooning honey into her mug. “The old spire must’ve risen as high as the highest tree when the Old City was thriving, and this island was part of a landmass that stretched for months in every direction.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And the reason some people call it ‘pinning,’” Tansy told me, “is because that’s how you chain islands together. You pin them. With spires.”

“What, like thumbtacks?”

She squinted at me. “What’re they?

“Tacks you push in with your thumb, Tansy,” Maryne said. “And not really, Alex, no. Spires don’t physically join the island. They alter the, the heft of an island, the balance or pivot point.”

“The direction in which the island will drift,” Hollis said.

“So if you place the major spires of an island near a landbridge,” Maryne told me, “that island will drift into the other one. Will chain itself to the bridged island. Sticking them together.”

“Whoa,” I said, blinking at this new information.

I mean, I’d accepted the whole ‘ocean of mana’ thing. I’d accepted floating islands and even the Sundering. But if you collected an island’s spires and shoved ‘em into the sand like beach umbrellas, you could join two drifting islands together? Damn.

“My education was even worse than I thought,” I said, after a second.

“Shockingly bad,” Tansy agreed. “Can we ask him about his gem yet?”

“After we explain that chopping down a town’s spire hurts,” Maryne told her, turning her gentle face to me. “It can weaken a town, or even destroy it.”

Tansy stabbed her fork into the table. “Which brings us back to killing the Sixers before they steal our spire.”

42 - The Trap Door

The streets were quiet, with only a few early-morning farmers and shop-keeps going about their business. Well, them and bakers. The scent of fresh bread drifted from a corner shop where pushcart vendors bought bundles of what looked like baguettes.

My mouth watered. I considered crossing the street to mingle with vendors. Maybe buy a baguette or three. That way I wouldn’t stick out so much, because it’d look like I had business here, and was just bringing some bread home for breakfast. Except I might stick out even more, as the only human among the infenti and ollies.

And as the only person without a pushcart.

I needed to lose myself in the human quarter. The only problem was, I didn’t think there was one. Humans seemed to work mostly as craftspeople and servants--though apparent some were extremely high-end craftspeople, and often among the richest people around. Though not so much in Ryetown. From what I’d seen, we only made up five or so percent of the population here. Which wasn’t great for a human fugitive from justice.

I had to get my hornless forehead off the streets. I needed to slip into another abandoned shop, or a convenient ruined building, but I was in the middle of an inhabited section of town. Time to head closer to the center of the city, where the population dwindled.

I strolled past the bakery, raising a hand in greeting like a totally non-suspicious person. One of the ollies grunted a greeting. I ambled for a few blocks, my webtouched senses alert for pursuit, until I reached the end of the inhabited sections. Well, there wasn’t a sharp line, but the area looked like it had fallen into disuse. There were higher buildings, more ruined, covered with thicker foliage. Pretty cool, actually. I wandered along, not quite aimlessly, as more people appeared in the streets. I still hadn’t found a good place to hide, so I started looking for adequate places.

Then I turned a corner and my webtouch twanged like crazy.

Because a roadblock stretched across the street at the end of the block.

Guards checked everyone who passed them. They were looking for humans, judging from how they peered at infenti but ignored ollies. And how they made one guy take his hat off, because apparently his orange skin wasn’t enough of a clue.

They were mostly looking the other direction, thank god. They were facing the prison, instead of facing me. Which meant they had realized that I’d escaped, but thought I was still close. They hadn’t heard about the fire or the horses.

Not yet.

Still, if if any of them turned around, they’d spot me immediately. I already felt the eyes of the oncoming pedestrians wondering about me. So after taking five or six steps, playing it cool, I patted my belts and pouches, doing that dumb mime that meant, “Oh, no, I forgot something.”

Then I spun and hustled back around the corner.

My webtouched senses kept twanging, but I wasn’t thinking straight enough to decipher the message. And that’s why I hustled so fast around the corner that I knocked into a woman carrying an earthenware jug on her head.

The jug fell.

The jug crashed and the noise caught everyone’s attention.

Then world stank of brine, and pickled eggs flew everywhere. And I just want to say this: when you’re moments from being discovered by enemy soldiers after your clever, bloody prison break, the last thing you need is a few dozen pickled eggs bouncing around the street like the entire world finds your situation comical.

The eggs rolled and bobbled, the woman yelled at me, and I walked away fast. At least until a soldier at the roadblock yelled--then I started running. So much for playing it cool.

I’d raced halfway down the street when girl’s voice called to me. “Hey mister human! Up there!”

She was one of two young infenti girls bringing a chicken to or from market. Or so I guessed. I didn’t know what they were doing with the chicken, but they were holding it upside-down by its feet and walking along and I almost recognized them. They looked halfway familiar.

“Up there!” one of them repeated, and jerked her head toward a narrow, crumbling stone stairwell between two buildings. “Quickly quick!”

From where I was standing, it looked like the stairs rose a flight upward and then stopped. Still, the soldiers were shouting behind me, and I didn’t have any better ideas. Other than ‘running blindly,’ which, strictly speaking, wasn’t better.

Well, unless those two eleven-year-old girls were, like, in the human-organ-harvesting business. In which case running was definitely better.

But I didn’t even think that far ahead, at least not immediately. Instead, I did as I was told. I swerved between the buildings and started running up the stairs. And that was when the whole organ-harvesting business occurred to me. So I glanced backward nervously and saw the girls sitting on the bottom step, facing the street, prodding at the chicken like they’d been there all morning.

Covering my retreat. Making it seem like nobody could’ve rushed upstairs without disturbing them.

Huh.

The stairs actually did stop one story upward, where they’d clearly collapsed a long time ago. But what wasn’t visible from the street was an alcove, disguised by nothing more than a slight bulge in the wall, that was large enough for me to hide in. So I sidestepped in--and remembered why the infenti girls looked familiar.

They were the same girls I’d seen holding hands the previous day, after I’d left the cobbler shop.

So, what the hell did that mean?

Had someone told them to help me? Who? Why?

I checked my mana. I could turn to smoke, drift off the edge of the broken staircase, and run to ... to where? To hide until the heat died down a little. For as long as necessary, before I rescued Erdinand. Except I had a theory about my rescuers. Who’d use a couple of little girls to help a fugitive? Only locals. Who’d help someone running from the Sixers? The same. Most of the people here clearly hated the invaders, so if they saw a guy trying to avoid a roadblock, they’d step in.

Well, maybe.

On the other hand, they wouldn’t want to expose themselves to the Sixers. So that’s why they’d use kids. Maybe they already had assigned them to spy on me? Maybe that’s why the cobbler woman had taken so damn long in the back room, to call for someone to follow me? That made sense ... if I really had seen the girls before. I could’ve seen a couple of other pre-teen devil-looking girls. I wasn’t saying they all looked the same or anything, but a little.

So I decided to wait there in the alcove, to see what happened. I didn’t want to waste my mana, and I didn’t want to meet those soldiers without a plan. Though a small, brutal part of me wondered how I would’ve done if I’d rushed that roadblock. With full mana and webtouch? I’d turn to smoke an instant before any blade touched me then reappear like a fucking threshing machine.

Maybe. I was level seven now, but level seven gemmed. Of course, every other ‘gifted’ I’d seen was at least twice that. So I was probably still weak compared to them because I was so new. However, I also had domain, and Princess. From what I’d heard, the gemmed gained basic physical traits when they bonded--increased speed, strength, and so on--but they were only gifted with a single power per gem.

My abilities seemed less specialized than that, more flexible. And I had more of them.

I thought about that until I heard footsteps on the stairs outside. Loud, scuffing footsteps. Didn’t sound like soldiers, somehow, but I wasn’t sure. Well, if this was trouble, I’d wait for them to peek into the alcove then put a blade into their throat or turn into smoke, as necessary. And if this wasn’t trouble, it didn’t matter.

Still, I watched warily as a shadow fell across the steps--and then a woman shuffled into sight, leaning on a cane.

“Ga!” the old cobbler lady said, glaring at me. “You in trouble already.”

“Uh,” I said.

“Why aren’t you wearing the shoes? I made you good shoes.”

“Uh,” I repeated.

“Surprised to see an old woman? Stupid boy. They send me because we already met. We talked. Old friends, you and me. Your name is Alec.”

“Alex,” I said.

She whacked my calf with her cane. “What I said! My name is Chettur.”

“Cheddar?” I asked. “Like the cheese?”

“You come now!” she said. “Stop asking stupid questions.”

I looked toward the street. “Is it safe?”

“Safe,” she cackled, then said, “Yes, yes, if you come now and stop barking like a frog.”

Barking like a frog?

But fine, I’d already wondered if she was involved somehow. So I escorted her down the stairs--she took my elbow in a vice-like grip--and past the girls, who were plucking the now-dead chicken. I gave them a little wave but they ignored me. The old woman Chettur pulled me along the street and into a shop with baskets of beans and dried peppers. An infenti man behind the counter ignored us just as completely as the little girls had. We pushed through a curtain into a back room, and from there ducked through a low archway into a cool stone space with shelves of preserved vegetables.

Chettur tapped her cane on the rickety plank floor. “You lift. There, the crack between boards.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“You lift! You lift!”

“Because we’re old friends, I trust you?”

“Ga! Because you stupid boy.”

I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I wiggled my fingernails into the crack and lifted. A trapdoor opened on silent hinges. Below the door, a hidden compartment was scattered with mismatched bits of shitty-looking jewelry and tarnished silverware and gel beads.

“All stolen,” the old woman crowed to me. “Like your pants and lantern.”

“Okay,” I said.

She tapped with her cane harder, and the compartment slid aside to reveal a square hole with a ladder leading downward. A hidden entrance beneath a cache of stolen goods. So if anyone found the trapdoor and saw the valuables, they’d figure they’d already uncovered the secret and would stop looking.

“Come, come, Alec,” Chettur said, lowering one foot unsteadily on the ladder.

“Can you climb down by yourself, grandmother?” I asked. “Or do I need to carry you?”

“Rude boy,” she said, and disappeared into the gloom.

I hesitated to join her, then realized I didn’t know why I was hesitating. I didn’t exactly trust Chettur, but I didn’t suspect her, either. She was just some cranky cobbler I’d randomly met, who happened to have some serious local ties. This was the local resistance, or at least the local opposition to the invaders, and while they definitely had their own agenda, they also definitely had hiding places.

Plus, the enemy of your enemy was your friend, right?

As I climbed down the ladder into the darkness, my webtouch felt a long space extending in one direction. An underground hallway. Chettur tugged on a rope and the trapdoor closed over our heads. The darkness was less complete than I’d expected, though. Either that, or my night vision was better than it used to be. Maybe both.

Either way, I got a dim sense of my surroundings from my special senses--until, a moment later, light filled the hallway from a jagged shape in the ceiling.

“Sunstone,” Chettur said, seeing my interest. “Plenty of them in the Old City. Feels mana and then ga! Turns light.”

“Cool,” I said.

“Of course no heat! Stupid boy. Come!”

She shuffled along the stone corridor, barely using her cane, to an auditorium-sized room that looked like an abandoned church or theatre. There was even a sort of a stage at one end. There was no sunstone in that room, though; instead, torches illuminated the cots and tables. I counted a dozen people, not including the ones sleeping the cots. Mostly infenti, and mostly in the middle of a meal: grabbing fruit from a table, and filling bowls from a vat of what looked like oatmeal.

Most of them seemed surprised when they spotted me. One of the few ollies, though, smiled broadly and started toward me.

“You wait!” Chettur snapped at the ollie. “First I take the boy to a room. Then you talk to him.”

“I just want to say--“ the ollie started.

“Ga! Oaf! You go!”

The ollie shot me a wry look, defeated by this hunched old cobbler. I nodded sympathetically, and Chettur harried me toward the opposite wall with annoying prods from her cane.

“For you, private room,” she said, bustling through a door. “There’s new hot water. You have questions?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact I do,” I said, entering behind her.

The room was small, with just a bed and a washbasin and a single chair. Still, the bed looked comfortable, and steam rose from the washbasin.

“Then you listen!” Chettur said, whacking the mattress. “Sit! You steal from Sixers. You kill them. You do other things. So we keep you safe. You sleep. Awake all last night. Bad for a growing boy. You--“

“I slept a little.”

“Ga! All night! You hungry?”

“Uh, no.”

“Good. You rest. Wash dirty face. They talk later.”

“They who?”

“Dirty face!” She gestured through the door. “I wait outside. Keep them from bothering you.”

“Uh,” I said. “You don’t have to--“

“Don’t have to anything but shit and die!” she announced, then dragged the chair outside and closed the door behind herself.

I ... didn’t know what to make of any of that. I knew, of course, that the whole thing could’ve been a trap. The gem in my head--or in my soul, whatever--was extremely valuable, just like Oksar had warned me. Even if there was only small chance that it would survive my death, people might still kill me for it. Just like the Sixers had planned. I wasn’t naive. I knew that this was possibly the same situation. It didn’t feel that way in my gut, though. Mostly because who’d try to trap me with a cranky old woman who called me stupid and bonked me with her cane? She was completely un-reassuring.

Uh, so maybe I was naive.

<Is this a trap?> I asked Princess. <Do they want to chop my head off to get my gem?>

<No,> she immediately said.

<Oh! Neat. Are you sure?>

<No.>

<So ... do you have any actual reason to think it isn’t a trap?>

<No.>

<You’re just guessing?>

<Yes,> she said.

<Y’know, I bet that somewhere, in all the infinite realms, there’s a summoned anomaly who has a magical companion in his head who is actually helpful.>

<No,> she said, with a burble of sleepy laughter.

I scrubbed my face with a cloth and the hot water. I even used the lavender-scented soap, and I won’t lie: it really enjoyed it. Then I lay on my back on the bed, fully dressed. Resting, but alert for trouble.

I didn’t think that these rebels, if that’s what they were, would start anything. Did they really want to piss off a gemmed guy and make more trouble for themselves? Even if they managed to kill me, they probably wouldn’t get my gem. Oksar had told me here was only a one in five chance of successfully extracting a gem, than like a 50% chance of implanting it. Not high enough to risk me killing them. And also ... I just didn’t think this was a trap. These people didn’t strike me as hardened enough for cold-blooded murder. They were just some locals who’d banded together to fight the invaders. They weren’t about to slaughter quasi-innocent quasi-allies in the off chance that they’d get the power to retrieve hatchets.

Still, there was no reason to lower my guard. I’d laze around for a few minutes, then I’d waft a smokey arm through the gap under the door to scout the other room. I’d eavesdrop for twenty seconds at a time. Maybe longer. My duration was improving, either because raising my level or adding that point in Spirit had helped my mana-stamina. What would you call that? My mannima. My mastamina. My mastanina ...

With nonsense syllables echoing in my mind, I fell into a deep sleep.

41 - Bright Life

My plan was simple. Maybe too simple.

Soon after dawn, the guards would realize that I’d escaped the cell. They’d guess that I’d bolt for safety, far from Ryetown, because that’s what I wanted to do. That’s what anyone with half a brain would want to do. Yet I couldn’t leave, not with Erdinand still behind bars.

Which meant that I needed to give the Sixers a reason to believe that I’d left town, even though I hadn’t. If they thought I was long gone, they wouldn’t endlessly search the city before I rescued Erd. There was probably a smarter way to pull that off that my current idea, but hey, I hadn’t lied about not having any levels in Planning. And to my dismay, Intelligence wasn’t even a stat.

I crept along the guardhouse to the far end, the one facing the cropland surrounding town. A wide dirt road followed the perimeter of the old ruined city, for wagons carrying crops or shepherds driving herds. Beyond that, the fields started, barely visible in the pre-dawn sky. More rye, endless rows of rye, mostly about shoulder height.

“Okay,” I thought. “This can work.”

Princess mumbled, <Funny.>

<What’s funny?>

<Your little human toes.>

<You were listening to that?>

She shared a glow of amusement then drifted back to sleep.

<Thanks for contributing,> I grumbled.

I cracked my neck then checked the width of the dirt road. I checked the neighboring buildings. I even checked the horizon, trying to pinpoint the brightest seep of light so I’d know where sun would rise and where the shadows would fall. Then I checked the stable attached to the guardhouse, which faced the fields. It had a set of high, planked doors, like a barn. I heard horses inside. I didn’t know much about horses, especially not these mutant horned horses, but Erdinand had taught me a few things. I knew the basics.

Kneeling to shove my fingers beneath the barn doors, I checked inside the stable with a smoky hand, and didn’t see a bunch of armed soldiers. I just saw a row of stalls, and walls of tools and tack. I checked the lock on the inside. Then I took my smoky hand back and waited a minute for my mana to tick up.

Then I wanted another minute for the courage to act.

And then, fuck it. I didn’t have a better plan, so I summoned a hatchet. And with a two-handed swing, I chopped at the door, aiming for the sliding wooden bolt that locked the stable from the inside. The cutting edge of my hathchet carved through the planking and then through the bolt so easily that I lost my balance and stumbled inside.

Which caused one door to swing open with a loud bang. I ignored the sound. I barely even jumped a foot in the air. Then I ran the length of the stable, opening stalls. The horses didn’t seem to give a shit at the sudden intrusion. One of them nickered at me, then a young infenti groom peered sleepily down from the hay loft that ran along one side of the barn.

“Wha?” she said.

“Go back to sleep,” I told her, pouring lamp oil on some scattered hay.

“You, you’re not supposed to ...”

“Actually, instead of sleeping you might wake up the other grooms.”

“Um, help,” she said softly. Then she shouted, “HELP! In the stables! Help!”

I pulled a firestarter from my domain and was trying to raise sparks when another groom burst through a door behind the tack wall. A human, which surprised me, holding a pitchfork, which seemed like a cliche. I tracked him through my webtouch as he moved into position to stab me. Still, I ignored him until the hay caught fire, then I reached behind myself, grabbed a pitchfork tine, and domained the entire thing.

Which actually worked. Well, he was only level four, and he hadn’t been holding the pitchfork with any real conviction.

“Neat!” I said, before rising and turning to punch him in the head.

He dropped to his knees groaning as the groom in the loft scampered down a ladder.

I felt bad for the guy, but I needed them to think I was in a hurry, so I snarled, “Shit! I don’t have time for this!”

The guy shook his aching head as the other groom ran to the opposite wall. I grabbed a saddle, and the fire spread. The horses started to give a shit. They smelled smoke, and in a moment the barn was full of neighing and whining and stomping. Then the ones closest to the fire started to freak. I chose a horse at random and started to saddle her. Erdinand had been such a good teacher that I managed to almost buckle the first strap before the soldiers arrived.

Two infenti prowled through the same door that the human groom had. Level four. They immediately separated when then spotted me, working together wordlessly to flank me. I threw a hatchet at one and she barely swiped it from the air with her sword.

My attack stopped them from advancing so quickly. The fire crackled and the first groom, the young one from the loft, start shouting about flames, about buckets of sand, and my horse bolted outside with the saddle dangling from her side.

I threw my other hatchet at the soldiers--then I bolted, too.

I raced from the stables, following the horse across the wide dirt road toward toward the fields. The soldiers took off after me, and my hatchet reformed in my hand and I was about to throw it again when an urgent tug of webtouch told me to juke to the left.

I juked and an arrow flashed past, missing me by inches and digging into the ground. Shot by an archer on the roof of the guardhouse. Horses burst from the burning stables behind me. They whinnied in terror and galloped past me, crashing through the rye fields, eyes rolling in the rising light of dawn. Four more arrows sped at me, but those missed without me dodging, and I reached the edge of the crops before one of the pursuing infenti threw a spear.

My hatchet flashed as I spun to face the soldiers and chopped the spear in half.

Behind them, two more soldiers burst from the guardhouse, and more archers moved into position in the rooftops above. The infenti with the sword slashed toward my side so I blocked with one hatchet then stepped closer and rammed her in the stomach with the spike of the other. She went down easier than I’d expected, half-gutted, and the guy who’d thrown his spear came at me with a short sword.

I threw both hatchets that time, the left a half-second after the first. I could sink the blade into an unmoving target with ease but I still sucked at factoring in the weapons’ rotation, so after he dodged the first, the second just whacked him in the shoulder with the haft.

The fact I’d thrown both my hatchets, and the feel of one hitting--the momentary uncertainty, not knowing if he’d been cut--broke his focus, so I hit him in the face with my palm. Which might not’ve been as hard as a baseball bat now, but wasn’t much softer.

He dropped and I threw myself sideways, twisting to avoid a barrage of arrows. Three scraped me but none penetrated, then webtouch reminded me about the next two soldiers approaching so I scrambled into the rye field.

I followed a path trampled by a panicked horse--and the new soldiers came after me. Which didn’t scare me. I’d taken care of the first two easily. The new ones were level four and six, and I was afraid of jinxing myself with overconfidence, but I didn’t think they’d pose a problem. Hell, I didn’t think they’d even slow me down.

After darting to the side between two tightly-planted rows, I crouched with my hatchets in my hands.

The soldiers paused when they entered the rye, unable to immediately spot me. One of them slowed enough that my thrown hatchet chunked into his chest blade-first. The other, the level six, spun toward me slicing his sword in a dizzying pattern--but every movement tugged on the web of my awareness, so I just blocked the flat of his blade with the side of my right forearm and chopped the guy through the neck with the hatchet in my left.

He fell dead and I didn’t care. I didn’t hesitate. Which surprised me, distantly, yet apparently my mind--maybe my shared mind, full of an arachnid’s predatory instincts--didn’t indulge in moral quandaries, at least not in the middle of a fight.

Instead, I crouched even lower beside him. I stole his beltpouch into my domain with a flick of attention, then crawled through the rye, moving parallel to the town instead of trying to get any distance away.

The archers on the roof called to each other, trying to spot me among the high crops, though the haze of smoke that issued thickly from the stables. Then another wave of soldiers rushed from the guardhouse. Nine or ten of them, including one who was level eight.

“Yah!” I yelled, as if to a horse. “Gee up!”

I didn’t know if the horses noticed, but the soldiers did. They veered toward the sound of my voice and I crawled faster through the rye, keeping an eye on the town buildings that faced the field while staying in close contact with the web of my awareness.

And as the soldiers prowled closer, I turned to smoke. I spread myself wide, to look like haze from the fire, and wafted through the rows of rye toward the wide dirt road that surrounded the buildings on the perimeter of the town.

Mana: 21/24

The soldiers fanned out as the archers called from the rooftops, scanning for shadows in the field, looking for a horse with a rider.

Mana: 17/24

Crossing the road took too long in my vaporous form. It was probably only ten paces wide, but I moved so damn slowly. I pushed for speed, I strained against the ... the air, the faint breeze and the fainter incline on the other side of the road. Without leverage, without a grip on the ground, without any weight, I couldn’t force myself to move faster.

Mana: 10/24

I finally wafted across the dirt road. At the top of incline, I drift toward a heap of stone maybe forty yards from the guardhouse. Vines with trumpet-like flowers, heavy gourds, and wide prickly leaves covered most of the stones. It was like a fantasy-land pumpkin patch. I seeped below the leaves, between the stalks and vines, pressing my smoky self into a low place where the stems thickened into roots.

With four mana left, I resolidified, lying flat on the ground beneath the cover of the wide leaves. I listened to the soldiers shouting and beating the field for me. The archers with their bird’s eye view of the road knew that I hadn’t returned to the city. They hadn’t seen anyone cross the road. So they’d search outward instead of inward, following the horse and then looking for my tracks.

<I really am Batman,> I told Princess.

She sent me a drowsy interrogative.

<He’s a badass hero who sometimes just vanishes.>

To my surprise, she spoke: <Into gourd patches?>

<Well, uh, not usually, but ... maybe.>

<Why doesn’t he fly away?”>

<He can’t fly.>

<Do you know what a bat is?> she sleepily asked.

<Yeah, but he’s not a bat.>

<Why’s he called Batman?>

<Uh, because, I guess ... he’s afraid of bats?>

<Oh, I’m dreaming!> she said. <That makes more sense.>

<You’re not ...> I started, but she’d already fallen back asleep.

So I just lay there under the leaves and listened to the soldiers while my mana slowly recovered. I didn’t think that the Sixers had even realized that I’d escaped from prison yet. Which was, I guess, the downside to boarding someone up in a cell. You couldn’t watch them. That was one reason I’d thrown my hatchets so visibly: so the soldiers here would know for certain that the guy who’d stolen a horse before vanishing into the rye fields was the same person as the imprisoned gemmed hatchetman.

Now I just needed to sneak away from the pumpkins and into the maze of city alleys and ruins. I didn’t want to rush, though. I wanted all my mana back. Well, though I’d settle for as much as returned before sunrise chased the shadows from the streets.

Except as I lay there, I started feeling a little shaky as I thought back to the fight. To killing those soldiers. Yet to my surprise, the shakiness passed in a few seconds. Because fuck them, they would’ve killed me without a second thought. My only lingering worry was that I found it easy to kill ollies and infentis because they weren’t human. Like that didn’t count as murder, because their deaths didn’t activate my taboo against killing.

Of course, a pumpkin patch probably wasn’t the best place to examine my ethical shortcomings. But also: fuck that. I had a really hard time imagining that I would’ve pulled my punches against human soldiers. Because I wouldn’t have. Life burned brighter in this new world. Life burned hotter. So hot that I felt as if I’d stumbled off the path of civilization.

I wasn’t afraid to fight, I wasn’t afraid to bleed.

I wasn’t afraid to kill.

I wasn’t even afraid to die--though I wanted to live. More than ever. Because life burned hotter in this world, and my pulse beat stronger in my veins. I felt more alive than I ever had and--

And I heard a pack of dogs barking.

Shit. Shit. Okay, enough thinking. Time to focus on surviving. Because those were hunting dogs, for sure, brought to search for me. They’d catch my scent in the barn, which hadn’t burned to the ground despite the conflagration of oiled straw. Then they’d follow my trail across the dirt road and into the field and--

Oh!

I almost laughed. They’d lose my trail in the rye. It would just disappear. The trackers would naturally figure that I’d pulled myself onto a mount. How else could my trail simply vanish? They’d focus on tracking the horses, scattered across the fields and into the woods. On the other hand, the hounds might know my scent even if they lost the track; if they passed by this pumpkin patch, would they alert? Hm. I didn’t know how sniffer-dogs worked. As far as I knew from movies, they needed to follow a trail, they couldn’t just identify a target by walking past them later.

On the other hand, magic existed. So I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Though the fact that some people did run away meant there were no infallible trackers. That was good news, at least.

Still, I switched my leather cobbler-bought shoes for my stolen militia boots just in case. They’d smell different, and leave soldier-looking footprints.

Then I checked for alarming twitches on my sensory web. I didn’t feel anything, so I turned briefly to smoke and reformed in the side-street closest to the vine-heaped pile of stones.

And after that, I walked away.

40 - Cobbler

An instant before I splattered on the cobblestones, a thought occurred to me. If I kept a few points of mana in reserve, I could survive a jump from any height. I could skydive without a parachute. I just needed to turn to smoke a moment before impact, and boom.

Or not boom.

Instead of splattering, I’d dissolve into smoke and shed my momentum. Then I’d re-form, a foot above the ground. Or at least much closer to the ground. Which would’ve been a great realization before I’d started falling. Except now I was out of mana, and about to hit the cobblestones from a height that might kill a crachen, which meant--

<This!> Princess said in my mind, and nudged me to spend my final point on Spirit.

I hadn’t known she could do that. Nudge me like that. Of course, I also hadn’t remembered that I retained a final free point. I thought I’d spent them all--I’d forgotten about that point from my level up. Princess’s--extremely impolite!--meddling raised my Spirit to twelve and a flick of thought updated me.

Mana: 1/24

Not enough. Not enough! I needed two or three points to turn into smoke in the first place, and then another point per second to stay that way. However, with the ground rising to crush me to death, I tried anyway. I was flexible like that.

I threw everything into the attempt--and for a single heartbeat, I dissolved into vapor. Apparently as my level increased, the prerequisites to trigger my gem decreased.

So for half of a heartbeat, I turned to smoke.

Which halted my velocity completely. Then I returned to my body and plunged face-down onto the cobbles. Well, I only ‘plunged’ about six inches. Hell, it felt like belly-flopping onto a feather mattress.

<Thanks, Princess,> I said, as I rose to my feet. <You’re the queen.>

She didn’t answer, exhausted from the effort of nudging me.

The headache started a moment later. Which Oksar had told me was called a mana headache, which happened when you spent all your mana and kept digging for more. Still, that was better than splattering. And I hadn’t even made any noise when I’d fallen.

So I simply winced at the stabbing pain in my head and headed for the side gate.

My webtouch tingled, but not with alarm. It was just showing me the proximity of others. A moment later, I fell in behind a group of civilian laborers or clerks leaving the compound. Apparently that big building was more than a prison. Well, obviously. There was no reason the Commander and her son and lieutenants would be hanging around in a prison. Or would be dining there, on a lovely patio with a view.

The towered building could’ve been the central Six Coves administration building, established a little ways from the town itself, for a safe buffer. A few of the surrounding buildings looked like barracks or housing, and that’s where the civilians headed. As for me, I kept strolling along, unhurried, trying to ignore my headache. Separating from the crowd, leaving the administration complex. Turning a corner, ambling along a quiet block.

Turning another corner.

Five minutes later, my head stopped pounding and I had to resist the urge to laugh out loud.

“We did it,” I told Princess aloud. “We’re out.”

Shadows lengthened in the streets around me while, far above, the rays of the setting sun caught the highest points of the city ruins, making them glow with spotlight illumination. I paused at a wide junction and craned my neck upward like a country bumpkin visiting the city for the first time.

Crumbling stone archways and leafy walls shone in the orange light above me. Birds darted above the foliage, hunting insects, and the scent of flowering bushes swirled down, perfuming the air.

Also, I’d just fallen a hundred feet and survived. I’d escaped a cell, I’d escaped a prison. I was goddamn Batman.

Of course, I still needed to rescue Erdinand. Which meant ... what? In the morning, they’d notice that I’d escaped. They’d search for me, first in the city and then in the surrounding countryside. Hm. Maybe I could encourage them to search the countryside immediately, by stealing a horse or ... or something to make them think I’d left. Yeah, then I’d lay low for a few days, while gathering tools and doing recon. And regaining my mana.

And finally, I’d rescue Erd.

Maybe if I started a few fires as distractions, his guards wouldn’t notice me smashing the wall with a sledgehammer. I could bring a sledgehammer for Erd, too, given the size of my domain. Hm. I could bring anything. An eight-hundred pound battering ram? Sure, why not? Except the two of us couldn’t use a battering ram. So I had to figure out what exactly I needed ... and then buy or steal it.

Well, and I also needed to lay low.

I ambled through the empty streets toward the bustling section of Ryetown proper. I’d spend the night among people, gathering information and supplies. Then by dawn, I’d know if I should hide in the empty city or in the populated area. Following a boulevard, I passed a few farms or homesteads built inside ruined buildings between the Six Coves section and the town. An old infenti woman digging roots from her garden scowled at me. A bunch of children who lived in a half-collapsed pagoda vanished behind a chicken coop when they saw me.

<Maybe I should lose the uniform,> I thought.

<Mm,> Princess said.

<When you wake up, we should talk about you choosing that Spirit point for me.>

<Mm,” she said.

<I didn’t know you could even see the points.>

<Mm,> she said.

<You’re not listening to a word I’m saying, are you?>

<Mm,> she said.

I snorted and left the boulevard for a smaller street, then for an alley between crumbling walls. I blipped my uniform jacket into my domain and tried popping my old clothes straight onto my body. Didn’t work. I could undress in an instant, but when I attempted to put a shirt on myself directly from my domain, it ended up draped on my shoulder or in my arms.

I’d washed and mended the clothes that I’d taken from Oksar, of course, but they were still pretty rough. And the leggings were unusable. So I kept wearing the stolen trousers beneath his shirt. I strapped the three belts around the trousers, which make them look less like a uniform and more like ranger-wear. Well, or ranger pajamas. Except I was human, dammit, so if I wore it that meant it was fashionable.

I lost the boots, too, because they looked military and my hardened soles didn’t mind the cold or the pebbles. Then I bamfed Oksar’s pack into my hands, so I’d look like I was ... I didn’t know. Shopping or something, running errands with a bag.

And when I passed an infenti family pushing a cart along the alley, they didn’t glower or hide. They kept talking about dinner. Except for the littlest one, who pointed at me and squeaked, “Wook! Wook!”

The mother tsked. “It’s not nice to point, sweetness.”

“But no hawns!”

“He hasn’t seen many humans,” the father told me, with an apologetic smile.

“Not a problem.” I winked at the little kid. “Fingers crossed, maybe I’ll grow horns soon.”

The kid nodded solemnly, and after we separated I heard the older kid asking, “Fingers crossed? What does that mean?”

“Probably a crafting thing,” the mother said.

Oh. I guess that was a pretty Earth-only saying. I was a little surprised that whatever ability had given me fluency in this foreign language didn’t automatically translate all idioms, though. Maybe if they could mean something else, the seamless translation rendered them literally?

Well. That wasn’t my biggest issue at the moment.

I followed the alley to a street that was lined with stores. There was a butcher, a woodcrafter, a bunch of shops I couldn’t identify. One vendor sold barrels, and paintings on slatted bamboo. Another sold herbs--for cooking or medicine, or maybe both.

That street fell quiet a few blocks farther along ... then got busier again. I walked through the twilight and realized that not only wasn’t Ryetown a podunk town of rye-growers, but it wasn’t even a town. There were at least four town-like areas on the fringes of the ruins, like points on the circumference of a circle, equidistant from the center of the ancient city. If that was even a circumference. Maybe I meant perimeter or radius. Geometry wasn’t my subject.

Ten minutes later, I started looping back--afraid to get too far from Erdinand. I didn’t want to lose the entire prison. I stepped aside for a woman herding a bunch of goats deeper into the city ... and I spotted a cobbler.

At least, the sign showed a pair of shoes, and there were a few dusty pairs of boots in the window. I’d been feeling a conspicuous, walking around barefoot, and ‘conspicuous’ was a bad thing for an escaped prisoner.

As I paused there, a bent-backed old infenti woman in a leather apron stepped from the shop door.

“Closing up?” I asked her.

“Ga! Didn’t see you skulking there. What that? Closing up? You looking for a shoe?”

“Two, preferably,” I told her.

She peered at my bare feet. “Naked as a toad. You got any money?”

“A little.”

She looked up at me. “Any foamies or only gels?”

“Foams, if I see something I like.”

“Ga! Then I guess I ain’t closing yet.”

“Though, uh... do you take trade?”

She looked at my feet again. “Come, come, barefoot boy. Don’t haggle on the street.”

Her shop was like the opposite of the TARDIS: weirdly smaller on the inside. It was cramped and narrow and dark, with shelves of hides and nails and ... well, assorted shoemaking equipment. There was an open crate overflowing with shoes, too, a big messy heap of them.

“Sit there,” she told me, pointing to the crate. “Let me see those feet.”

So I balanced my ass on the edge of the crate and showed her.

“Humans! Do you even know what your little toe is good for?”

“Uh, no. What?”

“Ga! How should I know, if you don’t? Useless little toes! Cut them off, that’s what I say.”

“I’ll take that under consideration.”

“Patronizing an old woman ...” she muttered. “Now! Trade. How about them trousers?”

“What?” I patted my pants. “Uh, I’m kind of using these.”

“So what you going to trade?”

My domain contained a complete Sixer uniform, but revealing that struck me as unwise. So I reached into my pack and bamfed the bullseye lantern into my hand. With my Arachrys senses, I didn’t need much light, and a lantern would probably just to give my location away. But mostly, spending beads on shoes instead of combining them later for a pearl bead’s healing ability struck me as lethally stupid.

“This,” I said, pulling out the lantern.

She wrinkled her nose. “Do I look like a pawn shop?”

“You barely look like a cobbler’s.”

“Stupid boy. It’s a deal!” She snatched the lantern from me. “Leather boots, two-layer soles, one hardened. You pick them up the day after tomorrow.”

“Uh, I could use a pair right now. ”

“For a rush job, I charge more--and you choose from the crate.”

“What do you charge?”

“Ga! I give you no change from the lantern.” She waggled her fingers at me. “Shoo. Shoo! I find you shoe. Shoo!”

After I stood, she rummaged around in crate, muttering to herself.

“You wait!” she said, straightening. “Another crate in back.”

She waddled through a crooked door that I’d thought was a shadow, and I waited. And waited. And, in fact, I waited long enough that I started getting nervous about waiting.

Then she called from the back, “Almost done! You stop fidgeting.”

So I waited a little more. I kept fidgeting, though. She wasn’t the boss of me.

“Here,” she said, emerging from the crooked door. “Take! I stretched for your extra toes.”

She thrust a pair of leather shoes at me. Plain brown leather with a strap across the top. To my surprise, when I fastened the straps they felt snug and comfortable.

“They fit,” I said.

“Oh, the old infenti knows her shoes. You think only humans can craft? Now go! No refunds. You see the lantern you traded?”

I looked around, but didn’t. “Uh, no.”

“Because I took it away already!” she told me, triumphantly. “It’s mine now!”

“Right, that was the deal.”

“You steal another one like that from the Sixers?” she said, her eyes suddenly gleaming. “You bring it here to sell to me!”

“I, uh, um ..” I said, in my clever way, my heart suddenly pounding.

“Stealing from the Sixers? That is good. Very good, stupid boy.”

“Right. Uh, thanks!”

I pushed from the shop, then darted into the first alley I spotted. I crouched there, ready to summon my hatchets, my webtouch senses alert for any sign of pursuit. The last thing I needed was to get fingered for theft. How was I supposed to know a lantern was so identifiable?

I stayed there for too long, probably. I didn’t hear the tromp of boots or the squeak of sword belts, though. No soldiers chased me. The only thing that happened was two young infenti girls walking hand-in-hand giggled at the weird human lurking in an alley.

After my pulse settled down, I explored the back streets for a while. I spent a few gels to buy a meat pie from a vendor. It was bland and gooey, so I decided against trying the ‘charred sheep jelly.’

At least my new shoes felt good.

Then I spent another hour wandering around. I worried that I was wasting my time, even though I was keeping my eyes--and other sense--open for any hidey-holes where I could live unseen. I was checking for big empty ruins, cramped nooks and crannies. I took note of a few, but mostly I just strolled. Enjoying the hustle and bustle of the town. After a while, I realized that I’d needed to check in with normal life. I wasn’t some kind of adventure-machine who laughed at danger and had the emotional depth of a goldfish. I couldn’t leap from a pit of crocodiles then race across a rope bridge without pause. Not even the ‘new’ me. I still need a little quiet time to center myself, to stay in touch with my feelings.

I realized how ‘Californian’ that sounded, but I didn’t care. I needed to decompress. Even Batman chills in the cave after after a big day of prison breaks. So I strolled and gawked and enjoyed exploring the various linked sections of Ryetown, watching ordinary people live ordinary lives, even if most of those ordinary people were devil-cosplayers, along with a few oversized elephant-kin.

There weren’t many crachen or humans--and I didn’t see a single traguld--but one thing I did notice was the guardhouses. Every so often a building had been gutted by the Six Coves forces and turned into a reinforced mini-fortress. Well, or just a secure stone house. The rooftop soldiers I’d spotted earlier were usually on the tops of those buildings, too.

I chose one at random, then hunkered down in the doorway of a closed shop across the street. My idea was to perform some kind of surveillance, but what did I know about surveillance? Still, I watched the guardhouse for a while. I didn’t learn much. There was a stables in the back--or the front, the side facing the fields that surrounded the town. There were probably ten or so soldiers inside, from what I could tell, as well as three guarding the entrance.

I considered a few options while twilight turned to night. The streets started emptying, which wasn’t great news for me. Then a bell rang somewhere, and the remaining people starting bustling along faster. Shit. That must’ve been the first warning for a curfew.

I needed to get off the streets. I peeked inside the close shop behind me with smoky fingers, and realized that it wasn’t merely shut for the day but was completely empty.

<Maybe abandoned because of the Six Cove invasion?” I thought.

<Either that,> Princess sleepily said. <Or for some other reason.>

<At least we narrowed it down,> I told her.

Anyway, I turned to smoke, poured myself inside, then resolidified.

Mana: 22/24

Hm. That was getting easier. More efficient. And so, to celebrate the advancement of my abilities, I folded my blankets into pillow and lay on the shop floor. I needed to rest if I wanted to stay sharp. I wriggled a few times, trying to get comfortable, then fell asleep thinking about a toothbrush and toothpaste. I didn’t know if I needed them with my Fortitude so high, but I wanted them. And instead of planning a prison break, I thought about dental hygiene until sleep took ...

I snapped awake, my pulse speeding, frightened that I’d slept for too long. I scrambled to the door of the abandoned shop and checked outside. Then I exhaled in relief. It was still dark. Okay, good. I blipped my blankets into my domain and took care of some business in the corner of the store--don’t judge me--and then I waited, peering through a crack between the door and the wall.

I’d woken too early, but I was afraid to fall asleep again.

Patrols of soldiers passed the store a few times. Not on any regular schedule, but they never grouped too closely together. So two minutes after a patrol passed, I wafted from the shop into the exterior doorway. I listened with my ears and my webtouched senses. Neither would warn me if anyone was watching--civilians in windows, soldiers on rooftops--but at least I knew that nobody was nearby.

Then I trotted across the street and pressed myself to the side of the guardhouse.