Chapter 16

Aranos concentrated on the pattern of mana he was holding in his mind.  He’d created a complex, multilayered pattern of Spatial mana that wound around in a misty, entropic spiral.  It took a fair amount of Spatial SP to form, but it had to be complicated; Spatial mana was unpredictable and chaotic, suddenly jumping and shifting randomly, and the multiple levels meant that when one strand of mana vanished, another would be there to continue to hold the construct.  By the time the next layer disappeared, the original layer would probably have refilled as some other strand leaped randomly into that open space, keeping the whole construct solid despite the sudden jumps and shifts.

Once he was sure he had the pattern securely, he funneled a beam of Light mana into it.  The Light mana spun and curled around the whorls and loops of the pattern, spinning rapidly and seeming to sink into an almost infinitesimal point deep within the mana fabrication.  As the light whirled into the center of the Spatial lattice, it shifted from a point into a disc, which widened into a torus, a doughnut-like shape.  The center of the torus gradually expanded until it was over a foot wide, hanging in front of him and filled with a gray haze.  Suddenly, the mists in the center swirled away, revealing Geltheriel, Rhys, and Avalyn sitting at a table in the Black Blade, the elves sipping cups of water and watching the room almost suspiciously while the budding Sorcerer picked moodily at a large hunk of bread. 

Aranos sighed in relief as the three appeared in his sight.  He’d been practicing this for almost two hours, now, and he’d finally hit on a pattern of Spatial mana that would combine with Light energy.  He’d tried to meld the two before without success, but then he hadn’t realized how complex the pattern would need to be to make it work.  That was always the issue; he couldn’t just toss Enhanced and Primary mana types together and have them work, the way Wizards apparently could.  He had to figure out exactly how to combine them, or nothing would happen.

Fortunately, while Wizards didn’t have to create elaborate patterns to combine mana types, their Spells did.  The Spells did all the work for the Wizard, so Aranos had spent his time examining the Spell Radomil kept casting over and over.  Finally, he’d been able to copy the complex pattern of mana and replicate the Spell’s effects.

“Well done,” Radomil told him delightedly, beaming at the Sorcerer.  “I’m impressed; most Wizards require months of study and practice to develop Divining mana.”  The dean shook his head.  “Of course, you Travelers seem to do everything almost ridiculously quickly, don’t you?”

“Yeah, we do,” Aranos grinned, watching the two elves through the eldritch window.  “So, to create a portal to a person, I have to scry them first, then I can use that location as the target?”

“Feel free to try it,” the man shrugged.  “See if you can open a portal there right now.”

Aranos concentrated, weaving more Spatial mana into a construct of Soul energy.  The weave spun and twisted, drawing the energy in until it seemed to collapse in on itself, then expanding out until it created a disc about a foot wide, hanging in the air close to the table.  Aranos quickly let the portal snap shut; he didn’t want to alarm anyone at the Blade, after all, and he definitely didn’t want Geltheriel and Rhys to think someone was attacking them.

He released the scrying window and watched the disc swirl into nothingness in midair.  As he did, he pulled up the notification that had just popped into his vision:

Evolved Aspect Discovered!
Aspect: Divining
The Divining aspect is an Evolved form of mana, consisting of the Spatial and Light aspects.  It can be used to see over vast distances.

Associated Stats: Dex, Agil

Requirements: Dex or Agil 75+ (50+), Spatial and Light aspects unlocked, Mana Manipulation Expert+.

Using Divining Mana: Divining mana can be used to show a distant area to one or more of the caster’s senses.  Typically, this is normal sight, but it’s possible to create Divining Spells that allow other forms of vision, sound, smell, or even nonstandard senses to be used, instead.  Divining mana will penetrate magical shields made of Primary mana but can be held at bay by an Enhanced aspect shield designed to protect against it. 

Damage: You can only use Divining SP equal to the sum of your Agil and Dex Stats per hour without harm.  Exceeding this limit drains these Stats: you lose 1 point of the higher of Agil or Dex for every 1% of your max SP of additional Divining mana you use.  This damage heals at a rate of 10% per hour of rest or meditation.

Divining Mana and Spell Targeting: Typically, Spells with a range of Sight cannot be cast through a Divining-based Spell. 

Special: Your Remote Casting Ability allows you to cast a Spell with a range of Sight and target the area viewed by a Divining Spell, paying the appropriate SP costs.

Detecting Divining Mana: Any creature being observed by a Divining Spell can make an Opposed Check to detect the Spell: the target’s [Per + Class Level + Sense Mana Skill] versus the caster’s [Int + Spell Level + Mana Mastery Skill].  A creature can automatically detect the Spell if they are capable of sensing both Light and Spatial magic and are actively or passively looking for either.  If they can only detect one of those aspects, they gain a +50 bonus to the Opposed Check.

+500 XP

He dismissed the notification with a sigh.  “Thank you, Radomil,” he told the man sincerely.  “You’ve been a huge help.”

“I would hope so; this is literally what I do for a living,” the man laughed easily.  “Just remember; to cast a portal to a place, you need an anchor.  To open a portal to a person, you need to scry them.”

Aranos nodded.  He’d known that he could use an anchor – a specially prepared object – to open a portal to a given location.  What he hadn’t known was that anchors were more complex than that.  He’d assumed it had to be an item he Enchanted specifically to allow his Spells to link to it, like the ring he’d used to open a portal between him and Geltheriel before.  As it turned out, it only had to be an item strongly connected to the place you wanted to go.  If he wanted to open a portal to, say, Eredain, he just needed an item that had a deep connection to the city.  Thanks to the guidance Dean Janeczek had given him, he’d even been able to create a new portal Spell for exactly this purpose:

Spells Created!

Portal Walk
Rank: Novice 4
Open a portal to a specific location.

Effect: You create a portal that is 10’ in diameter to a specific location.  If the location is in sight range, including magical sight, the portal will always open where intended.  If the target area is not within sight range, you must have an anchor to that location present to cast the Spell.  The portal can be one-way or bi-directional at the caster’s discretion, but any creature or object that can fit through the portal can pass through it in whatever direction the caster opens it so long as it remains open.

The chance of the portal opening exactly where intended is equal to the highest of the caster’s Wis, Dex, or Agility Stats plus the Spell’s level, doubled.  It is further modified according to the rules for Dimensional mana:

Location is: ​ ​       % Change
In sight range ​ ​             +50%
Within 1 hour travel ​       +0%
Within 1 day travel ​         -25%
S ame region, > 1day  ​ ​ -50%
A different region ​           -100%
Corrupted/Redeemed           -200%

Intimately known ​         +25%
Well known ​ ​               +10%
Somewhat known ​          -1 0%
Hardly known / studied       -50%
Unknown / heard of ​     -100%

Inherently dangerous or warded areas halve the total chance of success after all modifiers are applied.

Cost: 131 Dimensional SP.  If the chance of the portal opening correctly is less than 100%, as calculated above, the cost of the Spell is increased by 1 SP per 1% the success chance is below 100%.  This total cost is increased by 100% if the target is in a different region and by 500% if the target area has a different Light/Dark affiliation than your current area (these are cumulative).

Duration: 30 seconds + 1 second / Spell level

Casting Time: Opening a portal requires two minutes, minus two seconds per Spell level, to a minimum of ten seconds.

+150 XP

Take a little trip with me.

Farsight
Rank: Novice 1
Physically view a distant location

Effect: You can remotely view any creature, individual, or location with which you’re very familiar.  Your initial vantage point is a random angle from a distance of between three and five feet.  The view will move to follow the target, and you can alter the view’s point of view by 1 foot per second.  The view can’t get closer than 1’ to the target or farther than 10’.  The view only provides normal vision; it can be blocked by darkness or physical or magical barriers that would normally hide the target from sight. 

Cost: 35 Divining SP

Channeled Spell: To maintain the Farsight beyond a brief glimpse, the Spell must be maintained by Channeling.  The caster must pay all costs associated with their Spell Channeling Skill.

+150 XP

You can run, but you can’t hide…

Aranos stretched and rose to his feet, his face creased with a grin.  The Spells and the training he’d gotten were the first steps to the next part of the Cleansing Quest, but they also gave him a way to travel between cities without needing to take the High Roads.  That was honestly just as important; he needed to get back to Antas and Eredain, and being able to do so in minutes rather than days was a huge improvement.

“Now, there’s one more warning I have to pass on to you,” Radomil told the Sorcerer with a smile.  “Well, two, really.  The first is that if someone’s transiting a portal when it closes, there seems to be an equal chance that they’ll be spit out either side.  However, there’s also a very small possibility that they’ll end up going through both directions – which is, of course, pretty much universally fatal.”

“How small?” Aranos asked curiously.  If it was something that could be weaponized, he might have to look into it.

“I’ve never seen it happen,” the dean shrugged.  “There are reports of it, though, so we know it’s possible.  The second – the second you aren’t going to like.  You see, we have a few prohibitions in this School, most of which have obvious reasons.  Don’t scry into bathhouses, for example, or don’t open a large portal inside a building.”

“Wait, why not?” Aranos interrupted.

“Well, bathhouses are private, Aranos,” the dean laughed.  “At least, here in human lands they are.  I’m not sure how the elves do it…”

Aranos rolled his eyes.  “I meant, why not open a portal inside a building?  What’s the danger with that?”

“Because you might accidentally take part of the building with the portal, and that can be catastrophic.  I’ve seen someone accidentally transport a support column and have the roof crash down on their heads.”  Janeczek shook his head.  “Small portals indoors, large ones outdoors.  Also, never try to open a portal inside a creature – the Spell will fail, and the backlash is nasty.

“There’s one rule, though, that all Wizards of the Fathomless in every city follow, even though we aren’t sure of the reasoning behind it.  We never open a portal that lasts longer than a day.”

“Seriously?” Aranos protested.  “I don’t understand!  The Arcane Doors…”

“Were a creation that we can’t replicate,” the dean cut Aranos off.  “They weren’t simple portals, and they had myriad safeguards that we can’t even understand, much less match.  As for why – I don’t know.  It’s been passed down through the College since the Feast, though.  Never open a long-standing portal; it’s actually one of our most stringent rules.  Violating it can result in expulsion, banishment from the city, or even execution.  All of our teachings tell us that breaking this rule can have devastating consequences not just for the caster but for everyone nearby, if not exactly how.”

“Hold on, what about the portals here in the College?” he protested.  “Like the one into the Air College?  That one’s open all the time!  And the House of Stars uses permanent portals to link to the elven cities.”

Radomil shook his head in negation.  “All our portals are activated ones,” he corrected.  “That’s one reason why opening each door requires a specific mana type.  The Enchantment on the door will only activate the portal beyond when that specific mana type connects to it, and the portal automatically closes after about thirty seconds.

“As far as the elves, though…”  He shrugged.  “I can’t say, but I would bet that their portals are activated, too.  Creating a permanent portal that is constantly open would require a ridiculous amount of resources – not just SP, but rare metals, crystals, and gems to build an appropriate anchor to hold such a portal – and even with that, there’s a chance it will collapse after any given usage and have to be reopened.”  He shook his head again.  “No, Aranos, I would advise you not to risk it.  Build an activated portal and create a long-lasting Enchantment on each end to allow people to use it.  It’s safer, more efficient, and smarter all-around.”

Aranos frowned.  That was a pretty vague warning, but it was one he had to consider.  “Thanks for all your help,” he finally told the dean, forcing a smile onto his face.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t have been more.  So, about my day in the library…?”

Aranos laughed.  “I’ll be returning to my world tomorrow morning, but I’ll be back in the afternoon.  I can come get you, and we can portal into the city, then.”

“So long as you provide me a place to sleep that night, that’s fine.  I’ll want to start early and work late – I don’t need much sleep anymore.”

“Neither do I,” Aranos agreed.  “You can even check out the options for a place for your Guild while you’re there, if you want.”

“Someone better suited to that can handle it.  We have Wizards who specialize in building Enchanted and Runecrafted structures; it’ll be wiser to let them choose.”  The man shook his head.  “In any case, we both have other things to do.  Here, I’ll open a portal to the entrance to our school.”  Radomil gestured, and a glowing disc appeared before Aranos.  “Portals and teleportation are the only ways to move around the school, for obvious reasons.”

Aranos bid Radomil farewell with genuine gratitude.  The man had been extremely helpful, and Aranos’ time in the College was enough to finally advance his Cleansing Quest again:

Cleansing Quest Updated: A Door Between Realms

Quest Objective: Discover the secrets of the Arcane Doors and restore them to full functionality.
Difficulty: S
Reward: +50,000 XP, New Title, Cleansed of all accumulated CP, ???
Failure Conditions: Fail to complete any objective within the time limit, Geltheriel dies

Second Objective Updated: Discover the Hidden Secret of Portals

Objective: Learn how to build a permanent portal without chance of failure.
Objective Completed: Journey to human lands to discover their lore of portal magic.
Objective: Discover how to build a permanent portal arch.
Difficulty: A
Reward: +25,000 XP, Title, ???
Failure Conditions: Fail to create a permanent portal within 30 days, Geltheriel dies
Failure Penalty: -25,000 XP

He hadn’t gotten any XP from completing that part of the Quest, which was a bit disappointing, but he wasn’t too upset.  He’d managed to move the Quest forward, and he had some ideas about what he could do next.  He knew that the dwarves had actually built the Arcane Doors, so he assumed that while they probably couldn’t just rebuild them, they could at least teach him how to build a permanent portal.  He also wanted to head back to the House of Stars and examine their portal system; if it was activated, as Radomil had guessed, Aranos would have to see if the elves knew why portals couldn’t be made permanent.

He left the College without incident and walked back through the darkened streets, absently following the path he usually took from the Guild Square to the Black Blade as his mind churned through the day’s events.  It had been a memorable day, to say the least.  He’d picked up another pet – sort of – and a decent amount of XP for Redeeming the leonal and bringing back the six bounties.  That was certainly a plus.  He’d also managed to learn how to target his portal Spells – well, sort of.  He was a little disappointed that it wasn’t as simple as choosing your destination and opening a portal, but then he supposed that might make transit too easy. 

As it was, he now realized that he had several limitations on his ability to create portals.  The first was that he either needed to be able to scry the distant location – meaning he had to know someone there or already be familiar with the location – or he needed an object strongly tied to that place.  He had a few objects that could be used as anchors to both Eredain and Antas, but he couldn’t open a portal to, say, Avendale. 

The other issue was SP.  His pool was enormous, but even if he transmuted his entire well of mana into Dimensional energy, he could only get a couple thousand points out of it.  Opening a portal to Antas for 30 seconds would cost him about 160 SP, and holding it open past that would cost almost 70 SP per second.  At best, he could hold a portal for about – he quickly ran the numbers in his head – a bit over a minute, assuming he drained himself to 10% of his SP.  If he tried to open a portal to someplace like Cendarta, he’d be paying a base cost of almost six-hundred SP, possibly more if all the penalties to his Spell’s accuracy dropped his success chance to below 100%.  Theoretically, it could cost him over a thousand SP to open a portal into Cendarta – assuming he could target the place somehow – and it would only last 30 seconds, because he’d only be able to maintain it for one or two seconds longer even if he wanted. 

That didn’t even touch the vague warning Radomil had given him about not opening a long-standing portal.  Aranos could do it; if he opened a portal from, say, Eredain to Antas, he could use around 16,000 SP to make it permanent.  Obviously, that would take time, but if he Meditated to get the max SP regen, he figured he could create one in about 12 hours.  However, he knew that creating permanent portals required specially designed anchors at both ends – which he didn’t know how to create – and that there was always a chance it would collapse every time something passed through it.  If he were going to go through that much trouble, he needed to be sure it wouldn’t cause more problems than it solved.

He also couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, Dean Greghoff was going to be a problem.  Aranos certainly hadn’t meant to get the man in trouble; he hadn’t even known that the barrier the Wizard created was against the rules, after all.  He doubted that explanation would satisfy the dean, though, especially if he got tossed out of the school.  Aranos had already felt the man attempting to either influence or read his thoughts earlier; he couldn’t assume that the dean wouldn’t try again.  That meant he needed to spend some time working on a couple new Spells to fight back against that sort of thing; those same Spells, he realized, would probably eventually serve him well when he inevitably ran afoul of Golloron.

And, of course, he had to decide what he was going to do about Avalyn.  She needed training, and he needed to come up with some sort of plan to do it.  He’d have to take her back to Antas, and he could get her started on crafting her Mana Armor and maybe teach her the Forge Mana Spell.  After that, he’d help her to train those Spells, but then she’d need to put them to practical use, and that meant adventuring.  How he was going to get an adventuring party for her that was low enough level he had no idea.  Maybe he could talk to Guildmaster Ryder; as Heart-bonded of Antas, Aranos could probably requisition a Quest from the Guild…

Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t realize at first that his Tracking Skill was practically screaming at him, at least not until he Scented the distinct odor of unwashed bodies – and old, dried blood.  He slowed his pace and rose from his reverie, looking around; he was still a block or so from the Blade, walking into an alley that was normally lit with flickering torches.  Those torches had been extinguished, however, and the way ahead was wreathed in deep shadows.  Despite that, his keen Perception easily picked out the trails of a half-dozen humans, all armed and probably wearing light or no armor, most barefoot with only two wearing boots that had nearly worn through judging by the uneven scuff marks.

He stopped at the edge of the alley and waited for his Night Vision to activate, bathing the street in a silvery radiance that cut through the shadows.  His Tracking Skill outlined the skulking forms waiting ahead, and Aranos sighed before stepping into the alley.  “Can we not do this?” he called out with a touch of exasperation.  “It’s been a long day already, and I’m really not in the mood.”

“Sounds like your day’s about to get longer, cove,” a voice chuckled as a man stepped from the shadows into Aranos’ Night Vision.  He was tall, towering at least four inches over Aranos, with a broad chest and wide shoulders.  His torso was covered in a cuirass of stiffened leather that left his arms and legs bare, and he hefted a nasty-looking warhammer.  “You’re the gull that sent Dally and the others straight, aren’t you?”

“If you’re talking about the thieves who attacked us yesterday and suggesting I killed them, then yes,” Aranos prevaricated slightly.  Technically, of course, Geltheriel had killed them, but this idiot didn’t need to know that.  “I gave them the chance to run, and they didn’t take it.  I’ll give you the same chance.  Run, and I won’t have to kill you.”

“You hear that, birds?” the man chuckled.  “We take a rub, and he won’t send us straight.  What an upright cove he is!”  Throaty laughter came from the other hidden figures that Aranos’ Tracking Skill was still lighting up for him.  “No, gull, we’re here to send you a message: your kind aren’t shiny anymore.”

“My kind?” Aranos repeated.  “And what kind is that?”

“Travelers, cove.  It’s open hunting on your kind, and all over the city, a bunch of our boys are having this same chat.”

Aranos sighed.  “You know what?  I don’t have time for this.  I gave you a chance.”  He held up his hand, calling all four types of Elemental Mana and willing them out into a maelstrom of ice, wind, and lava that would rip through the alley and shred the lurking thieves in seconds.

He froze as his mana rose within him, crept from his hand – and immediately vanished into the air without creating so much as a whisper of breeze.  He tried again, but while he could weave the Spell without difficulty, the moment it left his hand it evaporated, as if something were tearing it apart and allowing it to dissipate.

The big man laughed heartily at this.  “You think we didn’t know you were a Wizard, gull?  You’ve had eyes on you every time you left old Malcolm’s, and we saw the flash in your hand when that devil-bitch killed Dally and the boys.  We came ready for you.” 

The man hefted his hammer and took a step forward.  Aranos turned to run from the alley – if he could get clear of whatever anti-magic effect the thieves had, he could finish this in seconds – but he found his path blocked by two more evil-looking men, one armed with a short sword and the other carrying a brace of knives.  “Going somewhere, gull?” one hissed.  “Only in a pine box…”

Aranos swore silently as the thieves closed on him.  He hesitated for only an instant before yanking his black, bejeweled quarterstaff from his pack and setting his feet.  He hadn’t used the weapon in a while, and he was still a Student in Staff Mastery, but his only other weapon was his longbow.  If he was able to get some distance, he’d switch to that, but in close like this, the bow just didn’t make a great weapon. 

The big thief who’d first spoken rushed at Aranos, swinging his hammer in a massive overhand smash.  Aranos dodged sideways and slapped his staff into the hammer’s shaft, knocking it out of line and sending it crashing into the stones below.  He swept the other end of his staff up and cracked the man on the elbow, then jabbed the armored cap into his solar plexus, knocking him backward.  The huge man took a small step back as the blow landed, grinning and wiggling his elbow, seemingly unfazed.

“Not bad, cove,” the man laughed.  “Not good enough, though.”

A sharp pain dug into Aranos’ back, and he felt a rush of adrenaline fill him as his Fortitude Skill turned the pain into boosts to his Strength, Agility, and Endurance.  He spun to see that the knife-wielding thief had literally backstabbed him, jamming a knife into his kidney.  Whatever effect is blocking my magic also took out my armor, he realized as he swept low with his staff, cracking the man in the leg.  The thief jumped back, dodging his return strike, but Aranos felt another line of pain cross his shoulders as someone cut him from behind.

He lashed out with the staff in a circle, forcing the thieves to take a step back, then moved quickly through that brief space to put his back to the alley’s wall.  The attackers still outnumbered him, but at least now they couldn’t get behind him.  Anger filled him as he realized that he’d walked foolishly and overconfidently into their trap; he’d assumed his Spells would see him through any trouble, and now he was paying for that mistake.  Even so, he wasn’t about to let a bunch of thieves send him to respawn; he wasn’t helpless without his magic.  Just pretty close to it.

The big thief rushed forward again, his hammer sweeping sideways.  Aranos ducked the blow and cracked his staff against the man’s knee, then rose and jabbed at a woman moving in holding a longsword, cracking the butt of his staff against her forehead and knocking her back a step.  He swung the staff back at the hammer wielder too late and barely deflected a heavy strike, catching the hammer blow in his ribs instead of his head with a crack of bone.  He hissed as the pain spiked his Stats even higher, then dodged an incoming axe blade and slammed his staff into the wielder’s skull.  He stepped to the side as the hammer slammed down again, and as he smashed his staff into the man’s side, he activated his Massive Blow Ability.  The staff sunk deeply into the man’s abdomen, crumpling his armor as it did and knocking him back several steps.

Pain erupted in his shoulder as a small knife sprouted there, and he spun away as a second knife clattered off the stone wall in a shower of sparks.  His adrenaline surged again as the pain faded, and he lashed out with his staff, cracking the axe wielder in the side of the skull with his Massive Blow ability.  The man let out a low groan as he crashed to the ground, stunned for a moment.  In that moment, though, the hammer-wielder thrust his weapon into Aranos’ stomach, knocking the wind from the Sorcerer. 

Aranos’ Fortitude Skill saved him once more, allowing him to shrug off what probably would have been a nasty debuff.  His staff thrust caught the hammer-wielder by surprise, smashing into his throat, but that movement allowed a woman with a rusty broadsword to dart in and slice open his upper arm.  He ignored the wound and smashed the center of the staff into the woman’s chest, knocking her backward a step, then cracked the end on the top of her head.

Another knife suddenly sank into his side, but he ignored it as his body began to fall into a rhythm, moving swiftly and agilely.  He dodged the heavy hammer and axe blows where he could, parried the sword strikes when possible, and slipped past the throwing knives as he was able.  When that failed, though, the resulting wounds ramped up his Physical Stats, and his staff lashed out like a serpent, breaking bones and stunning his opponents. 

He smashed the longsword-bearing woman’s knee hard enough that it bent inward, tumbling her to the ground, then swung an uppercut blow that caught the axe wielder under the chin, breaking his neck with a loud crack.  The short sword wielding man dropped to the ground, unconscious from a heavy blow to the temple, while his female companion watched her blade fall helplessly from a shattered wrist before falling to her knees, choking as the butt of his staff crushed her throat.

That left only the hammer wielder and knife thrower able to face him.  He parried a jab from the hammer and lashed upward, catching the man between the legs with his staff.  The thief howled in pain, and Aranos cracked his staff across the thief’s skull so hard he crushed the bone, caving the skull in.  The thief fell silently to the stones, his body spasming and twitching as he slowly died, his brain crushed and certainly bleeding out in his skull.

The knife thrower took one look at Aranos, turned tail, and ran down the alley. Without thinking, Aranos flung out his hand, weaving together strands of Spatial and Void magic, and flung a Gravity Well Spell over the fleeing thief’s head.  To his surprise, the air thirty feet up seemed to ripple as the Spell took effect, and the thief screamed as he was yanked into the air, followed by the clatter of every fallen weapon, broken stone, and piece of trash within sixty feet of him.  The screams cut off abruptly as the incoming debris crushed him beneath its mass, and Aranos released the Spell, allowing the mangled mess of flesh to splatter to the stones below.

The woman holding her longsword scooted away from Aranos, her broken leg dragging behind her and her eyes wide as she waved the sword threateningly with one hand.  He stepped forward and knocked the blade free of her grip with a sweep of his staff, then raised his hand to wrap her in a Void Prison.  He frowned as the Spell failed to take effect; his Gravity Well had worked, but the Void Prison hadn’t for some reason. 

Curious, he called up his Great Enthrallment and felt the twin tendrils of Mind and Vital mana lash out at the woman, digging into her mind and body and holding her tightly in the grip of his will.  So, whatever effect they used only affects Primary aspects, not Enhanced ones, he realized.  That’s interesting – if I’m ever in this situation again, it’ll be good to know that I’m not totally helpless.  Not that I was anyway – I totally kicked their butts!

Well, sort of, he realized as he glanced at his LP bar.  He’d lost almost seventy percent of his health in that battle; if there had been another few thieves, or one armed with a bow or crossbow instead of throwing knives, things might have turned out quite differently.  Even just one more skilled Warrior would have been the end of him; Aranos knew that he’d only won because his opponents hadn’t been very high-level.  Then again, if you stop a Wizard from using their magic, I guess you don’t really have to be, do you?

He returned his staff to his pack and pulled out his longbow.  He quickly tried to summon a mana arrow with it to no avail; sighing, he pulled out a regular quiver and slipped it over his shoulder before shifting a thousand or so SP into LP, healing most of his wounds instantly.  Probably should have remembered to do that during the battle, he sighed.  He wasn’t used to being injured anymore, thanks to his armor, and if he were being honest, he’d totally blown this fight.  He’d need to spend some time working on his Staff Mastery first chance he got; if this happened once, it would certainly happen again.

He walked over and crouched beside the injured but now-docile woman, quickly Inspecting her:

Smiling Stormie
Human
Badly Wounded

“Well, Stormie, you’re going to answer some questions for me,” he said coldly.  “Who sent you to do this?”

“I don’t know the dark of that,” the woman shook her head.  “None of us birds know the dark of our Shiner’s word.”

“Your Shiner?” he repeated, confused.

“Yep.  Jester gave us the word, and we went,” she shrugged.

“Jester?”

“Big cove with the hammer who’s twitching over there.  He’s the Shiner for our covey, so when he gives us the word, we go and quick, or he’ll send us straight.”

Aranos sighed; he was getting lost in the patois, and he realized that if he were going to question the woman, he’d have to get someone to interpret.  He needed somebody who could speak the thieves’ tongue and translate it into regular speech for him – someone like an innkeeper who used to be a thief, for example.

He spent a minute or two rifling through the pockets of the thieves but found only some scattered copper coins, a note covered with scribbles he couldn’t read, and what looked like the crushed remains of a hollow, crystal ball about the size of his fist in the hammer-wielder’s pocket.  He had a feeling that had something to do with the anti-magic zone he was in right now; when he probed the remnants with his Sense Mana Skill, that guess was quickly confirmed.

Aranos had learned early on in the game that everything in Ka held mana.  It didn’t matter if it was alive or dead, mineral or vegetable, mundane or magical.  Every object radiated some sort of mana; most radiated several types.  The crystal fragments, though, were utterly invisible to his Sense Mana Skill.  From what he could tell, they simply didn’t exist as far as the Skill was concerned; he could sense the mana of his hand through them, but they weren’t there at all.  He shifted to his Mana Sight, trying to detect Earth mana – which the crystal should have been radiating – and got another surprise.

The moment he activated his Mana Sight, the entire alley went dark.  He blinked and switched back to Night Vision, and the alley returned in shades of gray.  He slipped back into Mana Sight and flipped through the different Primary aspects, but his eyes were filled with blackness.  That was strange, because his Sense Mana Skill could still feel the energy in his body, the stones beneath him, or even the faint light mana flowing in from above. 

He shifted back to Night Vision as he dumped the weapons and note into his pack and pocketed the coins.  It looked like the effect around him didn’t affect mana inside of objects; it simply stopped magical energies from flowing through the air.  That was good to know, as well; it meant he could probably still use Spells on himself and perhaps ones delivered through touch, not that he had many of those.  If he’d realized that, he could have Empowered his Strength and Agility during that fight, and it probably would have been over in seconds.  Well, a lot faster than it was, anyway.

In fact, there were a lot of things he could have done differently, had he considered it.  If he’d channeled his Charisma into those same Stats, he could have ended the fight much faster.  He probably should have used his bow instead of his staff; while it wasn’t the most effective weapon up close, his Expert Arcane Archery Skill might have let him kill each of the thieves in a single shot.  He shook his head and resolved to spend a bit more time in combat training when he could – not that he had much time for that, of course – then slipped the remains of the crystal into his pocket and walked back to his Enthralled prisoner.

Stormie wasn’t in any condition to walk to the Black Blade, so Aranos had to pick her up and carry her out of the alley.  To his surprise, her weight felt almost negligible to him, and he had no difficulty hefting her over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and walking her the block to Malcolm’s place.  He hadn’t carried anything significant in a while, and he hadn’t realized how much his Strength had grown.  When he reached the inn, he dumped her in the stables, left her there with orders to stay still and quiet, and stepped inside the tavern.

The Blade was already starting to get busy, but he spotted his companions still sitting at their table, although Avalyn was absent.  They saw him at the same time, and Geltheriel’s eyes narrowed, doubtlessly taking in his bloodstained and torn clothing.  She rose to her feet, but before she could say anything, he sent her a silent message through their rings.

I’m fine.  Got jumped by some thieves on the way back.  One’s in the stable, and I’m going to grab Malcolm to question her; I can’t understand what she’s saying.  Where’s Avalyn?

The spoiled child? Geltheriel replied in an exasperated tone.  I encouraged her to go rest in our room, and she thankfully was willing.  Please tell me she will not be traveling with us, Oathbinder.

Sorry, but she will.  I’ll explain later.  While I get Malcolm, will the two of you go keep an eye on the woman in the stable for me?

Geltheriel nodded, whispered something to Rhys, and led the frowning Druid past Aranos out into the night.  The Sorcerer wove through the crowds, flashing Jenna a quick smile that got him a blush and shy grin in return, and stepped up to the bar.  As he did, he saw a young girl in a plain, and slightly faded red dress kneeling behind it, scrubbing the floors with a thick rag.  The girl’s hair was a lustrous black and cut short, and her skin was deeply tanned.  It took Aranos a moment to recognize the clean, little waif.

“Retta?” he asked disbelievingly.

The girl looked up quickly and grinned at him.  “In the flesh, sir!  Welcome back to the Black Blade!”

Aranos blinked.  “Retta, I almost didn’t recognize you.  You look – different.”

The girl stood up and smoothed the old and faded dress, her face showing her amazement.  “Isn’t it sparkly, sir?  Old Malcolm gave me new wraps and told me I could keep ‘em so long as I didn’t Filch anymore.  Do you like it?”

“It looks good on you,” he grinned, taking in the rough shoes on her feet and the lack of dirt on her skin.  “Looks like you got cleaned up and a haircut, too.”

“Well, I couldn’t have the little one looking the way she was before,” Malcolm growled as he walked over, although Aranos could see the pleased gleam in his eye.  “She’d scare off my customers or ruin their meals, she smelled so bad.”

“Miss Jenna gave me a bath and a cut, sir,” Retta touched her hair.  “Have you had a bath, sir?  They’re wonderful!”

“Yes, they are, Retta,” he swallowed hard as a wave of pity rose up for the child.  “I take it you’re happy, then?”

“Oh, sir, Old Malcom’s made me shiny!” she said excitedly.  “He said I can stay in his kip so long as I work hard and learn to speak like you on the straight path!”

“And I’ve told you, people on the straight path don’t say they’re shiny,” Malcolm growled.  “Now, go in the back and clean the dishes, girl.  It looks like Oran needs to talk to me.”

“Yes, sir,” Retta bobbed her head and darted into the back, and Malcolm sighed.

“Damn Filchers,” he muttered.  “They’ll get into your heart every time.”

“I can see that,” Aranos chuckled.  “Is that why you gave her a job?”

“No, that was to protect her,” Malcolm shook his head.  “The Filchers – the kids who work for the Guild – have pretty hard lives, Oran.  They rarely eat enough, they get beaten regularly, and no one ever shows them an ounce of kindness.”

He sighed again.  “The thing is, like McBane said, no one knows the hiding places in the city like they do.  If they wanted to, they could vanish, and even the Guild couldn’t root them out if they did.  The problem with that is that the Filchers are the Guild’s future.  When they get old enough, they get tossed into other jobs – bashing, tossing, whoring, that sort of thing – and they become the next generation of thieves.  If they disappear, so does the Guild.”

“So, why don’t they?” Aranos asked curiously.  “I mean, if they’re treated so badly…”

“Hope, Oran, and a nasty, little hook that the Guild hangs out for them,” a second voice spoke quietly, and Aranos turned to see McBane sidling up to the bar to stand next to him.  The Rogue’s face looked tired, but there was an odd gleam in his eyes that Aranos noticed.  As he spoke, though, his expression twisted into a mixture of sadness and anger.  “See, if a Filcher can get someone shiny to offer them their kip – that is, if they can get an honest person to take them in – then they’re free of the Guild.  Forever.  They can’t be touched, they don’t face reprisal, and no one is allowed to try and convince them to rejoin.”

Aranos nodded.  “That seems like quite the carrot,” he admitted.  “But I don’t get what’s so nasty about it.” 

“The nasty part is that it does happen – but only just often enough to make every Filcher dream about it happening to them,” McBane shook his head.  “Having hope in a hopeless situation can be a terrible thing, Oran, especially when that hope is eventually shattered.  That hope keeps them running topside, because that’s the only way someone will notice them and take them in.  Almost every time they get caught, they get a beating or worse, but every so often, someone will pity them and take one in, just often enough to keep that hope alive.”  He snorted.  “Part of me wonders if the Guild doesn’t arrange for that just to keep the Filchers above ground.”

“It’s not quite that bad,” Malcolm protested.  “When it does happen, at least they’re clear and safe.  You know as well as I, McBane, that there are only a couple safe ways out of the Guild, and the Filchers’ way is probably the easiest.  Now that Retta’s been given clothes and a job, here, the Scroungers can’t touch her.  She’s out of the game for good, and I’ll make sure she stays that way.”

McBane grunted.  “I suppose,” he acknowledged, looking critically at Aranos.  “Enough of that.  What happened to you?  Rough night?”

“You could say that,” Aranos sighed.  As he did, he caught a whiff of the Rogue and grinned at the man.  “From the smell of you, you haven’t had the easiest time, either.  How’s the Quest going?”

“Well enough.”  The man snorted.  “Well, not really, but I’ll get it back on track.  I got lured into a bit of a trap and had to fight my way out.”  He turned to Malcom.  “You know that Havil Westheim’s a smuggler, right?”

Malcolm guffawed.  “Everyone knows that, boy.  The man’s too rich to just be selling armor to the palace guards.”

“Ah, but did you know he smuggles the Shadowborn into the city?” McBane asked archly.

“That – that I didn’t,” Malcolm admitted slowly.  “Are you sure, boy?”

“Broke into his underground holding cell and got attacked by shadewolves,” the Rogue shrugged.  “They were being held under guard.” 

“That’s very interesting,” Malcolm nodded.  “Nothing to do with me, of course, but there might be some that would pay for that information.”  He looked the Rogue up and down.  “You don’t look the worse for wear.”

“Of course not.  Shadewolves aren’t much of a threat to me anymore.”  He glanced at Aranos.  “The ones who set me up vanished.  Think you can help me Track them?”

“Happy to,” Aranos nodded.  “I actually came to ask Malcolm for help myself.”  He glanced at the old man.  “Do you mind?”

“Depends on the help,” the bartender hedged cautiously.  “I’m out of the game, just so you know, so…”

Aranos shook his head.  “I need a translator.  I got attacked tonight, and the only survivor – speaks in a way that you’ll understand better than I do.”

Malcolm grinned.  “Whole point of the Cant, isn’t it?  If everyone could understand it, it wouldn’t be very useful.  Where’s the dressed-up guest?” 

Seeing Aranos’ blank look, McBane chuckled.  “He means the prisoner.  Where are you keeping them?”

“Oh, got it.  She’s in the stables.  Her name’s Smiling Stormie, if that makes any difference.”

Malcolm stiffened.  “Big woman, lots of muscles, carries a sword?” he asked.  Aranos nodded, and the man sighed.  “I can’t help you, son.  That would put me on the wrong side of the Guild, and I won’t do that.”  He glanced over at McBane.  “If only there were some non-neutral party who understood the Cant and could help, right McBane?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll translate for you, Aranos,” the Rogue laughed.  “In return, we can see if you can help me.  Sound good?”

“Totally fair,” the Sorcerer nodded. 

“Good.”  McBane stepped away from the bar.  “I’ve got to chat with Malcolm really quickly, and I’ll meet you down there.  Only be a minute.” 

Aranos turned to leave, but Malcolm caught his eye.  “I’m not taking sides, Oran, but I can tell you this.  Smiling Stormie – that one’s dangerous, and she holds grudges.  She took the time to learn the blade, when most Bashers never master any weapon more complicated than a club, and I heard she did it so she could go back and find everyone who mistreated her when she was a Filcher and make them pay.  You won’t be able to just let her go, or you’ll be dealing with her again and again.”

“Thanks for the advice, Malcolm,” he nodded.  “I wasn’t planning on letting her go, though.”

“Good.  Second thing – whatever you decide to do, don’t do it here.  My kip is neutral territory for everyone, no matter how shady their path.   It’s a place where people can meet safely and know that they won’t be stabbed in the back.  If you violate it, I’ll have to do something about it, and I’d hate that.  You seem a decent sort for…one of your kind.”  The old man smiled grimly, but Aranos simply inclined his head.

“I wouldn’t do anything that would cause you problems, Malcolm,” he assured the man with an even smile.  “And I’d hate it if you tried that, too.  You’re not too bad, yourself, for…one of your kind.”

“Then we’re understood,” Malcolm waved his hand dismissively.  “Go on, do what you have to do.”

Chapter 17

Aranos rejoined his companions in the stable.  Geltheriel stood over Stormie with an angry expression on her face, while Rhys looked somewhat amused.  Aranos quickly wove his air shield around them so they wouldn’t be heard and sat down on a hay bale with a sigh.  “McBane should be here in a minute,” he told them.  “In the meantime, we should be able to talk freely now.”

“McBane has returned?” Geltheriel asked archly in Elvish.  “I did not see his entrance.  He must have some hidden way to pass upstairs without going through the common room.  Knowing that such exists is somewhat unsettling.”

“I wouldn’t put it past Malcolm to have a hidden back entrance,” Aranos agreed.  “And I assume he’d have told McBane about it.”

“One notices that you have had an interesting evening, Liberator,” Rhys chuckled, changing the subject.  “Between the new addition to our numbers and your disheveled state, I can sense quite the story.  Do you wish to share it?”

Aranos grimaced.  “Avalyn’s a fledgling Sorcerer,” he explained.  “I’m literally the only Class trainer she has.  Since I’m not planning on staying in Stoneleague to teach her…”

“She must come with us,” Geltheriel sighed.  “Very well, Oathbinder, but that one will test my patience severely.”  She looked him up and down.  “And how did you end up in such a state?”

“Ambush.  Six thieves were waiting for me in that alley we go through all the time a block or so from here.  They attacked me, I killed five of them and wounded this one.  I Enthralled her so we could question her, and here we are.”

“There is more to the tale than that, Oathbinder,” Geltheriel contradicted.  “Six thieves would not have given you the wounds I see you sustained.  As well, this one has a fractured leg but no injuries from Spells.”

“I guess they’d come prepared to deal with me,” he agreed.  “They had some sort of effect that stopped my Primary mana from working.  It shut off my armor, and I had to fight them off with my staff.”  He pulled out the remains of the crystal he’d found.  “I’m pretty sure it was caused by this thing.”

“A null mana field?” Rhys murmured speculatively.  “That is…a rare Ability, Liberator, usually the province of truly powerful creatures or Spells.  It seems unlikely that simple thieves would walk around in possession of an item that could generate such an effect.”

“You know, this sound barrier is almost too effective,” McBane’s voice suddenly sounded in the stable as he stepped through the wind wall, his clothes fluttering in the breeze.  “A person expects to hear some noises coming from a stable – horses aren’t exactly quiet – and making it totally silent is kind of suspicious.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Aranos frowned.  “I suppose I could make it so sounds were just muffled to the point where you couldn’t distinguish what was being said.  I’d have to turn it into a Spell for that, though; right now, it’s just an Ability, and doing anything that precise with it takes too much time.”

“That might be more effective in keeping people from paying attention.”  McBane frowned as he looked at the crystal shards resting in the Sorcerer’s open palm.  “Where did you get that?” he asked slowly.

“I got ambushed tonight, and this was in the pocket of one of the people who attacked me.  I think they used it to try and shut my magic down.  Fortunately, I’m not helpless without my Spells.”

“Sadly, most Wizards are,” McBane grunted.  “Thieves call that thing a flashglobe, since the term for magic is ‘flash’.  They’re very rare and very expensive; I guess only a handful of Wizards can make one, and they charge an arm and a leg for them.  You break it, and there’s no magic around you for about five minutes or so.  That’s usually more than long enough to finish your average Wizard.”  He shook his head.  “These things carry a death sentence for anyone caught with them, thanks to the Mages’ College.  You can imagine that they don’t like them very much.”

“That seems reasonable,” Aranos chuckled. 

McBane looked at Stormie, who was sitting quietly and staring straight ahead.  “What did you do to her?”

“Remember the Spell I used to train your Mental Resistance?  This is what it looks like when you don’t resist.  She’ll basically do what I ask for the next hour or so.”

McBane whistled in a low tone.  “That’s a nasty Spell, Aranos,” he admitted.  “Total control over someone – I shudder to think how that could be misused.”

“Which is undoubtedly why my Oathbinder so rarely uses it,” Geltheriel spoke up.  “However, if it allows us to question her without resorting to torture, surely that is a worthwhile use of the Spell?”

“True,” the Rogue admitted with a sigh.  “Honestly, there were a couple times today where I could have used a Spell like this.”  The man shook his head.  “In any case, you wanted me to translate the Cant, right?”

“Yeah,” Aranos nodded.  “I was talking to her about who set up the ambush.  She told me that the Shiner for her covey told her to attack me or go straight, I think.  Any idea what that means?”

“It means the boss of her little group told them to attack you, and if they don’t do what they’re told, they get killed.”  McBane glanced at the girl.  “You mind if I ask the questions?  Might go faster.”

“Feel free,” Aranos gestured to the girl.  “Stormie, answer whatever McBane asks you.”

“Who was the Shiner for your covey, dove?” Malcolm asked, sitting down on a hay bale with a grunt.

“Jester Coren,” she answered in a flat voice.

McBane sighed.  “Of course he was.”  He glanced up at Aranos.  “I found out about him today; he was on my list of people to talk to.  He’s one of the middle-ranking Bashers in the Guild’s organization, close enough that he might have known what’s going on.  I couldn’t find him, though, probably because he was too busy setting up his ambush for you.”

The Rogue turned back to Stormie.  “What’s the dark of the Guild’s word to Jester?”

“It wasn’t the Guild that gave the word, I hear.  It was an upright man, though, and that’s good enough for us.  Jester told us we were having a chat with a gull, and that the cove was a Wizard.  He told us the upright man gave us a flashglobe, so it should be a job for a thin girl.”

“What about the Wizards?  They wouldn’t lie down for one of their own being sent straight, and the Guild won’t take a nap for that.”

“The Guild?” the woman scoffed.  “Whisper is, the Guild ain’t speaking about the rules, no more.  It’s each for his own, and take what’s there to grab.”

McBane’s eyes grew wide.  “How upright are the whispers?”

The woman shrugged.  “Enough that the Cutters Guild is getting on the action and the dogs have been barking about it.”

“Damn,” McBane shook his head.  “And did Jester have the dark that the gull was a Traveler?”

“Travelers aren’t shiny anymore, is the word.  The trade is open to them all.”

McBane leaned back, his expression stunned.  “Has the Guild turned their table?  Or just this upright man?”

“His Highness is a layabout, for sure,” the woman nodded.  “He plays the game with the knife, and he wanted the Wizard dead.”

“You know the dark of why?”

“The cove and his devil-bird set Dally and his boys straight, and Dally was supposed to go upright soon.  The bash should have been shiny; no one was supposed to go straight, but the Traveler messed with that.  His Highness wants the word out that Travelers aren’t shiny anymore.”

Malcolm leaned back, his face looking a bit stunned.  “I’ll be damned,” he shook his head.  “The man’s asking to be put in a box.”  He glanced at the others.  “You get any of that?”

“A little,” Aranos nodded.  “Some of it I can pick up from context, but not most.”

“Those thieves that tried to mug you yesterday?  Turns out one of them was fairly high in the organization of this upright man – which means someone almost at the top of the Guild rankings, a Thief Lord or very close to one.  In any case, this Dally was almost ready to move into a higher position in the Guild – usually, when that happens, the thief goes upright, or becomes openly respectable, so they can present a front for the Guild.  Someone like that has made friends in the Guild and usually had a lot of training to prepare them for their new life – which makes me wonder why anyone would send him out on a job, especially one where’s he Bashing, or attacking people.  That sort of thing ends in blood way too often.” 

McBane frowned.  “In any case, when you killed him, or set him straight, you disrupted that entire group, and the upright man put a bounty on you.  It doesn’t sound like it’s Guild-sanctioned, but the Guild isn’t acting to stop it, either.”

“That makes little sense,” Geltheriel objected.  “I was the one who slew those men, but the Druid and I passed through that alley safely some hours before my Oathbinder.  Why would they not have attacked us, as well?”

“Because you’re not Travelers,” McBane shook his head.  “According to Stormie, here, the gossip is that the Guild has stopped enforcing the rules, so the gangs have been able to do whatever they want – and the rumor is serious enough that the Adventurers’ Guild and the guards have both gotten involved.  They specifically chose you to attack, tonight, to send a message.”

“That Jester guy did say that the King wanted to make sure I knew Travelers weren’t shiny anymore,” Aranos agreed.  “And that other gangs were going to be ‘chatting’ with other Travelers around the city tonight.”

“That’s insane,” McBane said in a stunned voice.  “Attacking Travelers all over the city – and attacking a Wizard Traveler with a flashglobe, knowing that he’ll come back to talk about it – is just crazy.”  He rubbed his temples.  “I asked Stormie if she thought the Guild had gone crazy, and she told me that she thinks they might have.  She’s not dumb; she knows attacking either of those groups is just asking to be slaughtered.  Normally, the Guild leaves Wizards and Travelers alone.  It’s too dangerous; Wizards have ways to find people that the Guild can’t avoid, and we tend to respawn with a vengeance.  The Guild’s already lost a Thief Lord who pissed off the wrong group of Travelers and didn’t realize the party would keep coming after him, over and over, until they got him.  They don’t want to lose more.”

McBane sighed.  “In any case, you were supposed to be a message to both the College and the Travelers.  The upright man is ‘playing by the knife’, which means he’s out for blood instead of money or some sort of arrangement, the way these things usually turn out. 

“Tonight was supposed to have have been a simple killing, one that even a thin girl could do; a Wizard without magic is usually an easy mark in tight quarters like that.”  He shook his head and looked at Stormie.  “Where’d you get the dark to set the bite?  Did someone sing?”

“The addled cove walks the same walk every time,” the woman said simply.

“Seriously?” McBane sighed in exasperation, turning to stare at Aranos.  “You take the same route from the Blade to the Guild Square every time?”

“Honestly, I never thought someone might try to ambush me,” the arcane admitted.

“Rule number one of the dodgy path, Aranos: someone’s always trying to kill you.  Now that we know the Guild is out for Traveler blood – and you in particular – that becomes rules number one, two, and three.”

Aranos sighed.  “I’m going to have to do something about this, aren’t I?”

“I’m on it,” McBane assured him.  “If you help me Track the ones who trapped me today, I’ll work my way up the ladder until I find this upright man.  Hopefully, dealing with him will be enough to stop all this.”  He sighed and rose to his feet.  “And since the man’s playing by the knife, my options for dealing with him are limited.  Normally, I might be able to find him and do a deal with him to start following the rules, but now, this will only end when he’s dead.”  The man’s eyes glazed momentarily.  “And that updated my Quest objective, so I guess I’m right.”  He glanced at Stormie.  “What are you going to do with her?”

“I don’t have much choice,” the Sorcerer shrugged.  “I’ll take her back to the alley and deal with her there.”

“We will take her,” Geltheriel said firmly.  “After tonight, you will not travel alone in the city, Oathbinder.”

The Sorcerer opened his mouth to protest but saw the look on the woman’s face and clamped his mouth shut.  Once Geltheriel had that determined look on her face, nothing was going to change her mind, and honestly, she was right.  If she’d been with him tonight, the fight would have been over in a minute, and he wouldn’t have gotten hurt at all.  “Okay,” he agreed.  “I’ll carry her, though, so your sword arm’s free.”

“Or I could heal her leg, and she could walk,” Rhys said amusedly, reaching out to touch the woman’s leg and muttering under his breath.  The leg straightened with a crunch of bone, and Stormie cried out briefly before settling back down.

“Tomorrow’s logout,” McBane pointed out.  “If the Guild’s hunting you, it might not be safe for anyone to stay in Stoneleague while we’re all gone.”

“Fortunately, I think I can fix that after today.  Meet us upstairs after we deal with this?”

“Yeah.  If you can get us out of the city, it’s probably best we all go.  Those thieves today will have spread my name and description around, too.”

“Okay, we’ll see you there in a bit.”  He turned to his captive.  “Stormie, come with me.”

When they returned to the alley, Aranos wasn’t particularly surprised to see that the thieves’ bodies were gone.  The man Stormie called Jester had said that they’d been watching Aranos; maybe there was a Spell to detect that sort of thing he could work on.  He sighed as he realized that there just wasn’t any way he was going to be doing combat training any time soon.  He had Spells to craft, Skills to work on, and while he was at it, he really should spend some time leveling his Spells, too, especially his newer ones.  Plus, he needed to teach Avalyn, and that promised to be a major undertaking in and of itself.  That meant no staff training tonight…or probably any night in the near future. 

He ordered Stormie to stand still and quietly while Geltheriel cut the woman’s throat, and they stepped back as the thief bled out, twitching and choking on the stones of the alley.  It was brutal, but they couldn’t exactly let her go; she knew that Aranos could get around the null mana field and had heard them speaking Elvish.  He supposed he could have ordered her to go confess her crimes to the guards and accept punishment, but he couldn’t be sure the Thieves’ Guild couldn’t bribe the guards to get her out.  He felt a slight queasiness at the brutality of the act, but he shoved it down.

Sometimes, the only thing you could do with a dangerous animal was put it down.

The tavern back at the Blade was loud and raucous, but the three of them ignored the hubbub and headed upstairs.  They grabbed McBane and walked to Aranos and Geltheriel’s room.  When they entered, they found the room in shambles.  The thin curtains had been shredded; the beds were torn, the mattresses askew, and their possessions lay scattered across the floor.  Avalyn sat almost delicately on one of the shredded mattresses, and as they entered, she rose quickly to her feet.

“This wasn’t me,” she said hurriedly.  “It was like this when I got upstairs.  I think it was that thing.”  She pointed to the leonal cub sleeping peacefully on the other mattress, curled up in a mound of torn bedding he’d accumulated.  “What is that, anyway?  It’s cute.”

“What the heck?” Aranos said, exasperation rising within him, walking into the room and scooping a handful of shredded fabric off the floor.  “Seriously?  He wrecked the place!”

“It appears that he was not happy being left alone,” Rhys observed with a chuckle.  “One might wonder how the innkeeper will react to this mess, if one was not certain the answer to that would be…badly.”

“Well, I’m not getting blamed for it,” Avalyn said, crossing her arms.  “I didn’t do anything…”

“Be still, child,” Geltheriel snapped, her voice reflecting Aranos’ own annoyance.  “Not everything is about you.”

“How long was he up here by himself?” McBane asked amusedly, poorly concealing a grin.  “And yeah, Malcolm’s gonna be pissed.  He’s got a strict ‘no pets’ rule.”

“Perhaps an hour,” Geltheriel sighed, rubbing her forehead.  “We kept him with us and fed him; when he seemed tired, I brought him to the room.  It appears that he was less tired than I thought.”  The woman looked fondly at the cub.  “You cannot blame him, Oathbinder.  He is but a babe, and in dire need of training – like some others I might mention.”  She gazed meaningfully at Avalyn, who swallowed hard and wisely kept her mouth shut.

Aranos grunted.  “I suppose not, but I guess it’s good that we’re leaving, since we can’t sleep here tonight.  Stoneleague’s getting a bit too hot for my comfort.” Aranos shook his head.

“Too hot?” Geltheriel asked quizzically.  “I have not noticed the temperature changing significantly, Oathbinder.”

“I mean, it looks like the Thieves’ Guild might be looking for us, and there aren’t a lot of reasons for us to keep staying here.  Today, I learned how to create better-targeted portals, and I want to try and portal back to Antas tonight.  It’ll be better for you, Rhys, Avalyn, and Silma to be there while I’m gone – I know neither of you are happy pretending to be humans, and Silma will love being able to run around without having to worry about looking like a horse.  Avalyn can spend the time training; we’ll teach her how to use the crystals, and I’ll show her how to train her Int and Wis.”  He glanced at the sleeping leonal.  “Plus, maybe you’ll be able to take this little one out hunting and level him up some…and train him a bit.”

“That sounds smart,” McBane agreed.  “I’d rather be in Antas during logout, anyway.  It’ll be safer, and I won’t have to worry about logging in to find the Guild waiting for me.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Aranos nodded.  “Rhys, McBane, why don’t you gather your stuff? Geltheriel, can you get our things together and make sure Avalyn is ready to travel?”

“Of course.  And you?”

Aranos looked at the room with a grimace.  “I’ll have to settle up this mess with Malcolm.  I’ll meet you all here in a few minutes.”

“Wait, we’re leaving the city tonight?” Avalyn protested, drawing a withering look from Geltheriel.  The girl swallowed hard and added in a much less whiny voice, “I mean, I don’t think we can.  The gates are closed, and the city’s warded against people teleporting into it.”

“Into it, yes, but probably not out of it,” Aranos pointed out.  “Even if it is, it’ll probably just take more SP to punch through.”  He grinned.  “That’s a good lesson: if brute force isn’t working for you, just use more of it.” 

He left the room without giving the child a chance to respond, closing the door behind him.  He was going to have to have a talk with Avalyn at some point; she seemed a bit sheltered and prone to complaining, and neither he nor the elves were going to tolerate that sort of thing for very long.  She’d have to get used to the idea that none of them were going to cater to her attitude or her outbursts, and if she didn’t, he’d have to think of a way to convince her.  Sighing, he walked back downstairs and flagged down the innkeeper. 

“You look like you could use a drink, Oran,” Malcolm smiled.

“Not at the moment,” the Sorcerer grimaced.  “I’ve actually been thinking; it sounds like your former associates are looking for us.  With that being the case, it doesn’t make sense for us to stay in the city anymore.”

The man frowned while absently wiping down the bar with a somewhat dirty rag.  “I can see that,” he acknowledged.  “Our deal, though…”

“Is still valid, as far as I’m concerned,” Aranos cut the man off, handing him several silver coins.  “If nothing else, it gives us a place to return to when we come back in a couple days.  Here’s the other half of what we paid, plus a bit extra for all your help.”  He hesitated.  “I’m – also going to need to pay to replace the mattress, sheets, and curtains in our room, I’m afraid.”

Malcolm’s eyes went wide, then his face took on a lecherous look.  “Well, well, Oran.  I told you that you had your hands full with that one!”  He sighed, and his eyes took on a faraway look.  “Ah, to be young enough to destroy a room with a night or two of passion.”

“It’s not – that’s…,” Aranos stammered, his face turning beet red.

“No, no need to explain.  You’re a young man, and Theria is a fine-looking woman – and quite athletic-looking, if you don’t mind the observation.  Honestly, I can’t blame you for not being able to limit your activities to the bed.”  He shook his head.  “Normally, I’d gouge you for the loss, Oran, but the damage was done in the name of love, so I’ll charge you cost.  Replacing everything in the room will cost a copper link, no more.”

“Thanks,” Aranos mumbled, fumbling out a large, copper coin and studiously avoiding eye contact with the innkeeper.

“Don’t mention it.  So, will you be leaving in the morning?  Jenna will be devastated.”

“I’m sure she’ll recover quickly enough, and we’re going to leave tonight.”

“Tonight?” the man repeated dubiously.  “Oran, the gates are closed, and the city is sealed.  No one’s going in or out tonight.  If you try to go through the gate or over the walls, you’ll be seen and arrested, if not executed outright.  Wait for the morning…”

“I know a safe way to get out tonight,” Aranos shook his head, cutting the man off.  “Don’t worry, I won’t get in trouble, and I won’t bring any trouble here to the Blade.”

Malcolm sighed.  “If you’re sure, then I guess I wish you luck.  You’re welcome here any time, Oran, you and your lady-friend, too.”  He held out his hand, and Aranos gripped his forearm in farewell.

Everyone was waiting for him with their packs readied when he returned to their room.  Avalyn was sitting disconsolately on the bed, and McBane and Rhys were simply standing, both of them with amused looks on their faces as they stared down at the floor.  Aranos glanced down, and a similar grin spread across his lips as he saw the scene before him.

The leonal cub had awakened while Aranos was gone, and Geltheriel squatted on the floor, playing with the golden-furred creature.  The cub lay crouched on his stomach, his head up and his eyes staring intently at the woman’s fingers.  Every so often, the elf’s hands darted out to lightly touch the leonal’s paws, and the feline kept batting at her gauntleted fingers, looking very serious as he tried vainly to catch the dexterous elf.  His entire body shifted forward with each lunge, but when he snapped at her, she deftly rapped him on the nose. 

“No,” she said firmly in Elvish.  “Be nice.”  The cub recoiled from the light tap but seemed to understand, as he continued trying to pounce on her swift hands using only his paws. 

“That’s pretty cute,” Aranos noted as he watched the two at play.

“Indeed, one might even call it adorable, Liberator,” Rhys agreed with a grin. 

“I wouldn’t,” McBane shook his head.  “At least, not twice.  She threatened to stab me in a not-so-fun spot with my own sword.”

“I am many things, Giantbane,” the woman said from the floor.  “I am wise, skilled, deadly, and perhaps a bit witty, at least compared to my Oathbinder.  I am not adorable, cute, or cuddly.”

“Perhaps you would like to convince her otherwise, Liberator?” Rhys asked with mock innocence.  “Surely, she will listen to you.”

“She doesn’t listen to anyone,” Avalyn grumped.  “I just wanted to play with the kitten, too, and she told me I couldn’t.”

“Because I am not playing, child,” Geltheriel said coldly, not even looking at the girl.  “I am training this one’s reflexes and instincts.  This is not some cuddly pet to be pampered and spoiled.  He will grow to be a powerful and dangerous predator, and he must be trained while young so that he is not a danger to us as well as to our enemies.”

Avalyn made a small sound of disapproval but, wisely didn’t say anything more.

“You know, Rhys, I’m going to agree with Geltheriel, here” Aranos grinned at the man.  “She’s not adorable, cute, or cuddly.”  He looked slyly at the woman.  “She is awfully precious, though, isn’t she?  Training the little kitty!”

“Do not think I will not cut you, Oathbinder,” she replied icily.  “It would be interesting to see if my shadow blade could pierce your magical armor.”

“Fine, you’re tough and scary,” he laughed.  “You and your little cat, too.”

“You are correct.  Now, before you follow that statement with something foolish that will get you a sword blade in your leg, do you not have to contact your Companion and summon her?  You do not intend to leave without her, do you?”

“Okay, I’ll stop,” he smiled, closing his eyes and reaching out to Silma.  A moment later, he chuckled aloud.

“Certainly, you are not still amused by your own wit, Oathbinder,” Geltheriel said with a hint of exasperation.  “It was not that entertaining.”  Aranos heard Avalyn snort in amusement, but the girl remained silent.

“No, not that,” Aranos explained.  “Once Silma dispelled her illusion, I guess she found a way to get over the walls but was seen doing it.  She’s currently playing with a group of Rangers, letting them get close and then slipping away from them.”

“It is good that she is entertaining herself,” Rhys observed wryly.  “Yet, one might wonder how easily she will be able to reach us if she is being Tracked.”

“I am certain she will merely teleport away from them in random jumps until they have lost her trail,” Geltheriel said dismissively, now cradling the leonal in her arms.  “Oathbinder, you have not yet named this one.  Is there a reason for that?”

Aranos shrugged.  “I haven’t really thought about it, to be honest.”

“Then I shall think of one for you,” the woman smiled at the cub curled in her arms.  “We cannot simply call him ‘cub’ or ‘leonal’.  He is far too noble for such uncouth names.”

“Feel free,” the Sorcerer chuckled.  “And we don’t need Silma to come to us; we’re going out there anyway, remember?”  He closed his eyes and reached out to his Companion. 

Hey, are you in a place where you can stop for a bit?  I think I can bring all of us to join you.

You know that I’m being hunted by six of those silly Rangers, pack leader.  How long do I need to stop?

Fifteen minutes or so?

The fenrin sighed mentally.  Fine.  Give me five minutes, and I’ll shake them from my trail. 

“She’s getting free of them,” Aranos told the others.  “It’ll take a few minutes.” 

Not waiting for a reply, he sank into his Companion’s senses, focusing on her vision.  Her Night Vision was superb, far better than his, and she could see almost as well as she could in full daylight.  He watched as the world blurred around her as she teleported, jumping around not just from place to place but into trees, across bodies of water, and even into thin air a few times.  A few minutes later, she stopped.

I think that should give us plenty of time, pack leader.  

Okay, we’ll be right there.

Through her vision, he could see her surroundings perfectly.  She was currently nestled inside a thicket, but her sharp eyesight pierced through the shroud of foliage and revealed the forest floor beyond.  Aranos examined the ground closely until he found an appropriate spot for his Spell.  There was a place between two trees that was relatively open and empty, a perfect location for a portal.

He held the image firmly in his mind while he cast his Portal Walk Spell.  Strands of Spatial and Soul mana rose from his core and wove about him in an elaborate weave, lashing out into the air in front of him.  At first, he felt a sort of resistance, as if the Spell didn’t want to connect to the location he could see clearly before him.  Frowning, he added more SP, pushing the mana into the Spell.  Still, the Spell resisted, and he converted a thousand SP into Enhanced mana, driving the energy into the spellform.  Probably the ward Avalyn was talking about, he reminded himself.  If this is how hard it is to portal out of the city, it’ll probably be best to open a portal outside of it rather than trying to jump directly back in when we return.

He felt a last touch of resistance before the Spell suddenly sank into the air before him, as if it had punched through something solid.  Slowly, a glowing disc filled with silver mists swirled into being, growing until it nearly touched the ceiling overhead.  A moment later, the mists parted, and Aranos could see the dark forest clearing hanging in the air in front of them.

“Okay, everybody through the portal,” he told the others.  “We’ve got 30 seconds before it closes.”  Geltheriel went first, hefting the leonal and stepping through the portal quickly.  Rhys hesitated before following suit, followed by McBane.  Avalyn stared defiantly at the disc, but Aranos gave her a look of pure frustration and she quickly rose to her feet and stepped through, leaving Aranos alone in the room. 

The Sorcerer glanced around; while transporting directly back into the city probably wasn’t the best idea, if he wanted to return here, he’d need something that could act as a portal anchor.  He could take a strip of fabric from the shredded sheets or curtains, but since they were about to be replaced, they probably wouldn’t count as an anchor anymore.   What he needed was something more permanent.  He glanced down at the wooden floor beneath his feet.  Yeah, that’ll do.

He quickly bent down and forged a deepsteel knife in his hand.  With his Carving Skill, he had no difficulty trimming a chunk of wood from the floor.  He slipped it into his pocket, dismissed the knife, and stepped out into the cool, night air of the forest. 

He took a deep breath, feeling the energy of the fertile woodlands filling his body, nourishing him and washing away a faint stirring of hunger and thirst he hadn’t even noticed until it was gone.  He could smell the scents of pine, of fresh loam, and of the myriad animals that made this place their home.  At the same time, his sensitive nose picked up a different odor, one that was harsher and felt out of place in the forest: the musky scent of humans.  They weren’t nearby, but they weren’t too far off, either.

Silma emerged from her thicket and padded over to the party.  Avalyn shrieked briefly before the sound was cut off; Aranos looked over at the girl and saw Geltheriel’s hand gripping her mouth firmly.  The child struggled to escape, but she was no match for the elf’s Strength, even one-handed. 

“Silence, you fool child,” the woman murmured in a low voice.  “We are being hunted, and any sound will lead our pursuers directly to us.”

“Avalyn, this is Silma, my Bonded Companion,” Aranos introduced the pair quietly.  “Don’t worry; she won’t hurt you.” 

The humans are moving faster than I thought, pack leader, Silma told him silently.  We probably only have five minutes before they reach us.  We should do whatever we’re going to do very quickly.

“Okay, we’re going to need to move,” he told them.  “The Rangers are getting close, and we’ll need to put some distance between us and them.”

“It is likely that they will be able to outrun the child, Oathbinder,” Geltheriel pointed out in Elvish.

“Good point,” he nodded, turning to Avalyn.  “We’re going to need to run.  What’s your Stamina?” he asked her bluntly in Human.

“It’s none of your business,” the girl grumped.  “I can…”  Her words cut off as Geltheriel grabbed her by her robe and lifted her from her feet.  The Shadedancer pulled the girl close enough for their noses to nearly touch, and when she spoke, her voice was a deadly whisper.

“Listen to me, child, and listen well,” she said in a tone that unnerved even Aranos.  “I will not die so you can indulge whatever ridiculous notions you have in your head of how you should be treated.  If those humans catch us, we will have to fight them and probably kill them.  Are you ready to kill?  To be slaughtered by them?”

The girl’s face was terrified, but she managed to shake her head violently.

“Then cease your whining and complaining this instant,” the woman hissed.  “Else I will beat sense into you.  Do you have any doubt that I can do this?”  Avalyn furiously shook her head once more, and Geltheriel set her back on her feet.

“It does not matter, Oathbinder,” the Shadedancer told Aranos.  “She is a spellcaster; her Stamina will not be up to the task.  She will have to be carried.”  Avalyn opened her mouth, but before a sound could come out, Geltheriel’s hand lashed out like a snake.  The girl fell to the ground, clutching the spot on her chest where the elf woman had just struck her – far more gently, Aranos knew, than she could have.  “Did you not understand me, child?  You will speak when spoken to, or when you have something valuable to say.  Utter a sound otherwise, and you will pay with pain.”

The girl’s eyes teared up, but she clamped her lips shut and didn’t say a word.

“I can carry her,” Aranos said softly after a moment, quietly relieved that Geltheriel had handled that.  It was a bit harsh, but Avalyn didn’t seem to understand that this was a life-or-death situation.  Maybe a bit of harshness is what she needs.   “I can hold her in a bubble of air and bring her with us.  That way, her Stamina won’t matter.  The Rangers might still be able to Track us, though.”

“I have a Spell that may help, Liberator,” Rhys said just as quietly.  “It will diminish any tracks we leave, at least temporarily, perhaps confounding the Rangers for some time.”

Aranos glanced at the man in surprise.  “Is there a reason we’ve never used it before?”

“We have rarely been hunted ourselves,” the Druid pointed out with a shrug.  “And those few times when we have, we wanted our pursuers to find us, so that we might deal with them on our terms.  This is the first time something has been Tracking us that we had no interest in killing.”

“Good point.  Okay, cast your Spell, and we’ll get moving.”  Aranos looked at Avalyn, slumped on the ground, tears streaming from her eyes.  “I’m going to use an Ability on you,” he told her softly.  “It won’t hurt, but it will hold you in a web of Air so that I can carry you.  We’re going to be going faster than you can keep up, and we don’t have time to let you rest.  Don’t panic.”  The girl simply nodded, her resistance seemingly vanished.  Aranos wove linked strands of Air around the child, lifting her unresisting into the air.  Just to be safe, he also altered the Illusory Cloaks covering him and the elves and added one to Avalyn, making her look older, with long, black hair and a rounded face; if the Rangers did spot them, he didn’t want his identity as Oran to be compromised.

As Rhys finished his Spell, Aranos cast his Zone of Speed, and the party set off into the night, following Silma.  The fenrin led the group through the trees at an almost dizzying pace, and Aranos was forced to keep Avalyn hovering very close to him so she wouldn’t crash into a tree; even if the Rangers were running flat-out, they weren’t going to catch the party without some kind of movement-boosting Spell or Ability.  Which, of course, is exactly the sort of thing a Ranger would have, so it’s probably best not to take chances.

They raced south until they neared the border of the Blightlands, at which point Aranos called a halt in the middle of a wide clearing.  Rhys was looking slightly winded – the Druid’s Stamina was by far the lowest in the party, not counting Avalyn, and he’d had to work to keep up the pace Silma had set.  Geltheriel and Silma looked unfazed – that hadn’t been close to as fast as either of them could travel, after all.  Avalyn’s eyes were wide as Aranos lowered her gently to the ground and removed the web of Air.  The girl’s mouth opened to speak, but she glanced fearfully at Geltheriel and snapped her lips shut.

Aranos reached into his pack and pulled out a single, palmate leaf.  The leaf was bright silver, with veins of electric blue and ruby red mingled throughout, and as he looked at it, his heart lurched.  The leaf had come from Saphielle’s tree, the one that he and Rhys had accidentally created in memorial to the fallen Avenger.  It was the same shade of silver that the fiery Ability Saphielle had used to protect him from Zoridos’ fury had been, and the blue in the leaf exactly matched her hair.  Sorrow rose through him in a wave as he realized that he missed her; their party seemed incomplete without the woman, certainly, but it was more than that.  He missed her acerbic humor, her blunt speech, her steadfast nature.  He’d depended on her more than he’d realized, and part of him still felt…empty without her.

He started as he felt Geltheriel’s hand suddenly rest on his shoulder.  “Are we far enough from the Rangers for you to cast your Spell, Oathbinder?” she asked simply.  He glanced at her and saw both compassion and discomfort in her eyes, and he cursed silently.  It looked like his Charisma was affecting her again; fortunately, she was wise enough to give him something else to think about. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted.  “I have their Scent, but since we’re not Tracking them, I have no idea where they’re at.  Unless they’ve got some sort of Ability to boost their movement speed, though, I should have plenty of time.”

“One might ask if it were not better to continue into the Blightlands,” Rhys offered drily.  “It is likely that the humans would not follow us there, or that if they did, they would proceed far more cautiously.”

Aranos shook his head.  “We’d also have to be more careful, especially since Avalyn probably can’t live through a single amarok or ursusz attack at this point.  Plus, the Spell will cost several times more SP – and be a lot more likely to fail – if I cast it from the Blightlands.”  He looked at Silma, but before he could say a word, the wolf sighed silently in his mind.

Yes, pack leader, I’ll keep an eye on the humans.  You should probably ask Geltheriel to do the same; for an elf, she’s an excellent hunter.

“Geltheriel, would you and Silma keep an eye out for the Rangers, just in case?” he asked the woman.  “I’ll let you know through the ring before I open the portal, so you can come back quickly.”  He didn’t bother to watch as the pair dropped into Stealth and headed back into the trees; he simply laid the leaf on the ground where he wanted his portal to open and began pulling up strands of Spatial and Soul mana.  It was easier than he’d anticipated; this time, there was no resistance to the Spell, and oddly enough, it cost about the same SP as the portal between the inn and Silma had. 

“Can I ask what you’re doing?” Avalyn spoke in a harsh whisper.  “Since you’re supposed to be teaching me?”

“Opening a portal,” he replied, keeping his voice carefully neutral.  “You’ve got a long way to go before you can do this, assuming you even can.  Unlocking Enhanced mana isn’t easy.”  He kept his concentration focused on his Spell as he spoke, and the tendrils of mana thickened as his connection to the anchor solidified.

“To where?”

“To another city, far from here, days of travel along the High Roads,” Aranos replied.  “In fact, I’ll begin your training there tonight…”

He stopped speaking as the power he was gathering swirled through the leaf, which shivered and dissolved into a silver mist that rose into the air and joined the power gathering above.  He felt a pang at that, but Radomil had warned him it could happen; using an item as a focus for a portal Spell put a lot of magical stress on the item, and there was always a chance that it might be destroyed in the process.  The leaf was nonmagical and not particularly durable, so that chance was pretty high, but it still seemed wrong to destroy something he’d created as a memorial.  And Saphielle would point out that’s a stupid thing to think, since there are a ton more leaves, and the tree will grow even more, so don’t be sappy.

The Rangers are approaching, pack leader, Silma sent to him as he poured more energy into the Spell.  They’ll be within sight distance in less than a minute.

Aranos swore silently; even with his bonuses giving him a 300% boost to his casting speed, he still needed at least thirty seconds to open a portal.  There was no way to shorten that time without risking the portal collapsing – or opening somewhere random that could also be possibly dangerous.  “Silma says the Rangers are approaching,” he told the others.  “They moved faster than I’d expected.  Be ready to jump through the moment the portal is fully open.”  Rhys nodded, and a moment later, so did Avalyn.  McBane gripped his sword hilts and gazed at the trees, but he didn’t draw the blades yet.

Aranos forced himself to ignore the approaching humans and concentrated on weaving strands of mana to open the portal.  Okay, you and Silma come back.  This thing will be open soon, and it’s going to be close; the Rangers will probably spot us about the same time the portal’s ready.

The Spell swirled in the air, a misty disc of silvery energy that slowly expanded to ten feet in width.  He felt Geltheriel and Silma return as the mists stabilized and grew translucent.   More energy poured from him, and he was forced to convert regular SP to Spatial and Soul mana as his natural stores ran out quickly.  Just as the mists began to part, his concentration was almost ruined by a shout from the edge of the clearing, and his Scent Skill picked out a half-dozen humans emerging from the trees.

“Hold, in the name of King Hugin!” one man shouted.  “Cease your casting!”

Aranos ignored the man and continued to concentrate; technically, he could multi-cast a Spell to block or immobilize them, but he wanted to keep his full focus on his portal.  If it opened somewhere other than his intended target, they might be in trouble.  He didn’t want to fight the Rangers, for obvious reasons, but if this Spell failed, he’d probably have to at least immobilize them or try to explain what Silma was and why she wasn’t any danger to them – which they probably wouldn’t listen to.  Still, if they attacked, he’d have to respond…

His thoughts broke off as he heard Rhys’ voice muttering behind him, followed by shouts and cries from the Rangers.  Moments later, the silvery mists cleared, revealing the darkened image of the courtyard in Antas just in front of Saphielle’s tree.  The tree glowed with a silvery radiance similar to moonlight, illuminating the flagstones of the square outside the Treehome, the city’s equivalent to a palace.  “Okay, portal’s open…”

Aranos broke off as he turned to face the Rangers and saw a wall of stiff, wooden brambles and thorns ten feet high blocking his view of the humans.   From the crashing and cursing sounds, he assumed that the Rangers were inside the wall somewhere, trapped in a thorny hedge and struggling to escape. He turned to Rhys quizzically.  “Another Spell I don’t know about?”

“I am your Healer, Liberator,” the Druid smiled.  “If you wish to learn more of my capabilities…”

“I do, but not now,” Aranos cut the man off.  “The portal won’t stay open long.  Let’s get going before they get out of there.”  Silma needed no urging and leapt through the glowing window, appearing instantly on the other side.  Rhys and Geltheriel followed after, with the Shadedancer practically dragging Avalyn beside her.  McBane went next, leaping through the portal. 

“Sorry about that,” Aranos called to the swearing human Rangers before stepping through the portal himself and allowing it to snap shut behind him.

Chapter 18

“Well, that was exciting,” Geltheriel chuckled as the party relaxed.  Aranos quickly dismissed their Illusory Cloaks, and he could almost feel the sense of relief emanating from the elves as they shed their human disguises.  Avalyn’s face, though, was startled, and she stared at Aranos.

“What – what are you?” she stammered.  “You’re not human – and they’re elves!”  Geltheriel glanced at the girl, and she flinched, but Aranos held up a restraining hand.

“It’s important for you to ask questions, Avalyn,” he told the girl in a firm tone.  “I don’t want you to feel like you can’t say anything; you’ll never learn that way.

“However, there’s a time and a place for everything.  Right now isn’t the time for questions; I’ll give you a chance to ask as many as you’d like in a bit.”  The girl bit her lip again but nodded, glancing fearfully at Geltheriel once more.

“One observes, Liberator, that the Rangers just watched a party of five humans, three males, one adult females, and one female child fleeing the city,” Rhys spoke in Elvish.  “And that this occurred immediately after a party of a similar description vanished from the Black Blade.  Should they make the connection, we may face an unfriendly welcome upon our return to the city.”

Aranos’ mouth twisted as he realized that the Druid was right.  “That’s true, but what’s done is done,” he sighed in the same language.  “We’ll deal with that if and when we have to and hope that Malcolm keeps our departure to himself.”  He straightened, breathing in the crisp, evening air of the city – his city.  He felt filled with energy as his connection to the Tree-heart strengthened; he hadn’t realized just how much stronger that link was when he stood within the city.

“Oathbinder, now that we are within the safety of our home, I am certain you will wish to train the child,” Geltheriel broke into his thoughts.  “While you do that, I would use the training crystals.  I am very close to getting my Endurance above 100, and I would like to see what benefits it will give me.”

“Of course,” Aranos nodded, retrieving the crystals and handing them to Geltheriel.  “Tomorrow, I’d like you to show Avalyn how to use them, though, so she can start training her Stats.”  The woman gave him a flat glance, but he simply stared at her, and eventually she sighed defeatedly.

“Very well, Oathbinder.  I will do as you request.  It will give the child something to do while the rest of us hunt, if nothing else.”

“If it will not disturb you, Shadedancer, I believe I will remain here to train,” Rhys interjected.

“Here?” Aranos asked in a puzzled voice.  “Why not out in the forest?  Won’t you get more mana out there?”

“I would not, Liberator, for two reasons.  The first is that the forests surrounding the city have not yet recovered sufficiently to provide a strong source of energy.”  The Druid walked over to the green-and-white tree, laying a hand fondly on its smooth bark.  “The second is that this excellent creation of ours is an amazing source of energy and functions more effectively than any crystal, at least for my specific type of mana.”

Aranos frowned; he didn’t feel anything coming from the tree, even when he reached out to it with his Sense Mana Skill.  However, that didn’t mean much; he couldn’t sense mana types he hadn’t unlocked very well, and it was very possible – in fact, it was probable – that Rhys used a type of mana totally alien to Aranos.  After all, if the Sorcerer could replicate that mana type, then he would basically be a Druid – which would be seriously broken.

Rhys sat down before the tree and removed his oroloke egg from his pouch, laying it carefully in front of him.  He looked up and saw the questioning look in Aranos’ eyes.  “As I Meditate, I will also be working on my Bond with this creature,” he told Aranos.  “The more such a linkage is developed, the more powerful both it and one’s Companion become.”  He looked meaningfully at the Sorcerer, and Aranos sighed.  It was true that he had never really put a lot of work or effort into deepening the bond between Silma and him.  It was another area he needed to work on, especially if doing so opened up new Abilities for the fenrin. 

McBane watched the elves speaking, his face uncomprehending.  As he saw Geltheriel take the training crystals, though, he nodded in understanding.  “Mind if I join you?” he asked her.  “I could use the boost before heading back to our world tomorrow.”

“Of course, Giantbane,” the woman nodded.  “Oathbinder, where will you be if we have need of you?”

“I’m going to take Avalyn to the Library and get her started on her training.  After that, I’ll probably head over to the Hall of High Enchantment.  It’s likely I’ll just stay there until it’s time for me to return to my world tomorrow morning; I’ve got a couple of Spell ideas I want to work on, plus I want to practice my Enchanting a bit more.”

“Then let me at least send you a friend request,” the Rogue said, his face going blank for a moment.  The request appeared in Aranos’ vision, and he quickly accepted.  “This way, if I need you, I can send you a message.”

“Good luck,” Aranos smiled at the man, who followed Geltheriel past the amazing tree and up toward the door of the Treehome.

And I’m going to go hunting, Silma told him silently.  I’m sure some of the Shadowborn have returned once we stopped patrolling.

As the others headed off in their separate directions, Aranos turned to face Avalyn.  “Welcome to the city of Antas,” he told the girl with a smile.  “Now that it’s just the two of us, I’ll give you a chance to ask some questions.”  He started walking toward the Library and gestured for the girl to follow.  She hesitated momentarily but hurried to catch up with him after a moment.

“Before we start, though, we need to set some ground rules,” Aranos said firmly.  He glanced over his shoulder at the girl.  “I’m assuming that you come from a wealthy family?” he asked.

The girl bit her lip but nodded.  “Yes,” she spoke when he continued to stare at her.  “My father is – a wealthy merchant.  Very wealthy, in fact.  Why?”

“Because it’s apparent that you’re used to getting your way.  It seems like you’ve probably just had to demand something, and it’s been provided for you, and you’re used to everyone kind of doting on you.”  He looked squarely at her.  “Is that right?”

She looked stricken for a moment, and her gaze fell away from him.  She stayed silent, but Aranos simply stared at her until she finally spoke.  “Y-yes,” she said softly.  “That’s – that’s pretty much it.”

“Well, that won’t happen here,” he said flatly.  “Like it or not, you’re a spellcasting Class that’s designed for battle and combat, and that means none of us will coddle you.” 

He stopped and looked at her, taking her chin and gently forcing her gaze to meet his.  “You’ve been acting like a brat since I met you,” he told her gently but firmly.  “That needs to stop.  None of us have the time or the inclination to cater to you, and we won’t do it.  I can teach you to be a powerful spellcaster – more powerful than a Wizard of your level, in all likelihood – but in return, you’ll need to learn to obey.  Sometimes I’ll explain, but sometimes I won’t be able to, and in those cases, I’ll need you to just do as I say without arguing or even hesitating.  If you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ll die.”

“Die?” she repeated.

“Yes, die,” he confirmed as he started walking once more.  “You’re going to be in combat.  I’m going to train you, but there’s only so much you can learn that way.  You’ll need to be in battle and develop your own fighting style so you can see what kind of Spells will work for you.  You’ll need to learn how to use those Spells intimately and creatively so that upgrading them is easier.  Sorcerers are weapons against the Darkness, and the process of forging a weapon isn’t always fun for the weapon.”

She remained silent for a long minute before speaking again.  “Can – can I ask what you are?  What race, I mean?”

“I came to Ka as an aleen, an elf-Fay hybrid.  I underwent an Evolution, though, and now I’m a high arcane.”

“I don’t know what that is,” she admitted. 

“It’s a race that came here originally from another world, as I understand it,” he explained.  “They’re legendary spellcasters, so I get big bonuses to my Stats and casting abilities, but I take a big penalty to training my Stats in return.”

She remained silent for a while longer.  “What language were you speaking?” she finally asked.  “I couldn’t understand what you all were saying.”

Aranos snorted.  “You’re smarter than that.  What do you think?”

“Elvish, I suppose,” she sighed.  “That would make the most sense.”

“Exactly.  Think before you ask, Avalyn.  It’s always better when you come up with your own answers.”

“So, where are we going?” she asked.

“The Library.  I’m going to get you started on some training that’ll take you most of the night.”

“I’m kind of tired,” she complained, and he glanced at her sharply.  “Sorry,” she muttered.  “But – I am tired.  Could I possibly get some rest?  Please?”

“What I’m going to show you will replace sleep, so you’ll be fine.  In fact, it’ll give you a lot more time for training, since you’ll only need a few hours of sleep per day.”

The Library of Antas was a huge building made of gleaming, white stone.  The front was colonnaded and was set above the street by a flight of stone steps that ran the length of the building.  The main doors gleamed with the swirling, prismatic colors of faymetal.  As they approached the entrance, Avalyn snorted.

“That’s a picture of you, isn’t it?” she pointed to a raised image on the door.  “And there’s the wolf, the green-haired guy, and the thief…and that scary woman.  Why are you all on the door?  And who are those other people?”

“I made the door, and I did that as kind of a joke,” Aranos grimaced.  “The others were in my party at the time.”

“Where are they?  Are they in the city, still?”

“No, they’re pursuing their own Quest,” Aranos shook his head.  “You’ll meet them eventually, though.”  He pushed open the heavy doors, which he’d had to unseal after Liberating the city from Zoridos, and led the girl to the huge, dome-shaped crystal that served as the entrance to the Library. 

He walked toward the crystal with Avalyn trailing nervously behind him.  He stopped, ignoring the girl’s startled squeak as a huge, green-hued face with distinctly elven features appeared in the crystal’s depths, one that Aranos hadn’t seen before.  That wasn’t surprising, since he was often greeted by different Parmassae when he came to the Library, and it didn’t really matter.  The dead librarians were bound to one another so that they all knew what any of them did; talking to one was the same as talking to them all. 

“Welcome back, Lord Evenshade,” the face said respectfully in Elvish.  “Do you wish entrance to the Library?”

“I do,” he replied in Human, hoping the face would get the hint.  “I’d also like you to grant access to my apprentice, Avalyn.”  He gestured to the woman behind him.  “She’s a student in the Mages’ College of Stoneleague and a budding Sorcerer.”

“As she is your apprentice, you may grant her access to the Library,” the face agreed in Human.  “What level of access would you like her to have?”

“Student level books, Class-related Skill books, and training rooms only,” Aranos replied.  “Nothing restricted or dangerous.”

“That is acceptable,” the face replied.  “Welcome to the Library of Antas.”  The giant visage vanished, and the dome of crystal started to glow.  The surface softened as the crystal began to slowly rotate, gaining speed until it was moving like a whirlpool.  A hole appeared in the center, expanding steadily until it filled the entire doorway.  As the glow faded, Aranos found himself looking down a long tunnel of the same crystal that had filled the doorway.

“Follow me,” he instructed Avalyn, entering the tunnel and walking briskly toward the end.  The girl seemed to hesitate for a moment before gathering herself and hurrying along behind him. 

“Where are we?” she asked in a hushed whisper, gazing around with wide eyes.

“The Library of Antas,” he told her.  “Before the Feast, this was the center of learning for all the Lands of the Light.  As far as I know, it’s the largest library in this world.”

They walked into a large, high-ceilinged room brightly lit by glowing, crystalline orbs.  Tables were set up regularly around the room, and the walls were pierced by simple doors and more of the crystal domes.  A glowing figure appeared in front of Aranos, humanoid in shape but with indistinct features.  “How may the Parmassae assist you today, Lord Evenshade?”

“How are the copies I asked you for coming along?” he asked the glowing figure.

“They are complete, and I will have them brought to you,” the figure bowed.  “Is there anything else you need?”

“Skill books,” Aranos nodded.  “For my apprentice, I need Spell Channeling.  And for me…Diplomacy, please, and Staff Mastery.”  He disliked asking for the second, but his battle in the alley had convinced him that he needed to train his main melee Skill, if only a bit.  If he could get it to the Adept level, that should be sufficient.

“Of course,” the figure bowed.  “Will there be anything else?”

“That should suffice for now, thanks.  We’ll be in an arcane training room.  Please bring us everything there.”

“Of course, Lord Evenshade,” the figure bowed before moving to one of the glowing plugs and vanishing through it.

“The room I usually use is over here,” Aranos led the girl to a doorway, opened it, and ushered her inside, closing the door behind her.  The room beyond was just large enough to be comfortable without feeling expansive.  Two glowing, clear crystals were set into the walls, one to his left and the other to his right, radiating unaspected mana into the room.  A stone table and chair were the only furnishings in the room.

“This is a mana-rich zone,” Avalyn said wonderingly.  “My SP regen went up by 25% in here!”

“That’ll be useful for what you’ll be doing,” he told her.  “First of all, do you remember the Meditation technique I taught you?”

“Yeah,” she nodded.  “I’ve been using it, working on creating armor, but – it hasn’t been going well.”

“We’ll fix that,” he assured her.  “I’m going to give you another Spell to work on, too.  Don’t worry,” he added, seeing the stricken look on her face, “you can work on multiple Spells at once.  Well, not at once; you have to work on them one at a time, but you don’t have to complete one to start another.  I’ve got several Spells I’m working on right now, in fact.”

As he spoke, the door opened, and the Parmassae entered, carrying a trio of books.  It set them on the table in two piles. “Will there be anything else?” the librarian asked.

“Not at the moment, but thank you,” Aranos nodded, and the figure silently departed.

“Okay, so first we’re going to organize your mana,” Aranos told the girl.  “Then, I’m going to show you how to upgrade your Meditation Skill, and you can start training your Intelligence, Wisdom, Mana Control, and Mana Manipulation.  First, get comfortable and start meditating.”

The girl sat down at the edge of the room, her back leaning against the wall, and closed her eyes.  Aranos waited before reaching out with a tendril of Mind mana, connecting to her meditative mind and following the strand down into the construct of her room.  He opened his eyes and found her seated on the bed, looking up at the chaotic ball of rainbow light that was her SP.  “I love looking at that,” she murmured.

“Good, because you’re going to be spending a lot of time staring at it,” he assured her, sitting on the opposite side of her bed and pointing at the morass of energy.  “See how messy it is?  We’re going to have to organize it to move forward with your training.”

“That’s good,” she sighed.  “I hate when things are messy.  I like things that are neat and organized.”

“Then this will be right up your alley.”  He gestured, and an image of his thirteen three-dimensional, interconnected hourglasses appeared in the air between them.  “This is roughly how my mana looks,” he told her.  “See how organized it is?”

“That looks really complicated,” she fretted.  “I don’t know how…”

“You won’t be doing this right away,” he laughed.  “You don’t even have to make it look like mine, if you don’t want to.  What we’re going to do is choose a pattern that you like and work on getting your mana to flow into that pattern.”

“What sort of pattern?” she asked, still staring at the image of his mana.

“I started with spirals, like this.”  He gestured again, and the complex hourglasses became a flat series of thirteen prismatic spirals, all touching one another and spinning slowly, like gears.

“Oh, that’s hard to look at,” she complained, blinking rapidly and looking away from the spirals.  “I don’t think I’d like that.”

“That’s fine,” he assured her.  “Here are a few other patterns you could use.”  He pictured some of the fractal designs he knew and called them into being.  Shapes like complex snowflakes, patterns of triangles, and clusters of snowmen swam in her vision.  “What do you think of these?”

“I like that one,” she pointed to fractal snowflake he’d called up.  “It’s…it’s pretty.”  She blushed, but he smiled at her.

“That’s as good a reason as any, Avalyn,” he assured her.  “If you like the pattern you’ve chosen for your mana, then you’ll take better care of it, and you’ll develop more quickly.  Now, here’s what I want you to do…”

It took the girl an hour to shape her errant mana into the pattern of six-pointed snowflakes she’d chosen.  Unlike his mana, the girl’s only had seven anchor points underlying the pattern, so he helped her fashion seven hexagonal stars, each of them connected to the ones around them.  The stars weren’t moving, yet, but they didn’t have to be; for the moment, she just needed to create a simple pattern that would guide her SP and allow her to regulate her internal mana channels. 

“That’s excellent,” he finally smiled at her.  “Now that you’ve got the pattern, I’ll teach you how to train it.  Concentrate on your mana stars…”

“Oh, I like that,” she cooed, staring at the rainbow-colored snowflakes overhead.  “Mana stars!”

Aranos chuckled.  “Concentrate on them and try to sense where the mana is flowing into them.  Don’t look too hard, just get a feel for where the mana is flowing into your system.”

Fifteen minutes later, the blonde girl held a steady flow of mana into her stars and was busily cleaning them up as the increased flow revealed small mistakes in her design.  “I can’t believe I missed so much,” she fretted.  “I thought I’d done a good job!”

“You did a great job,” he assured her.  “I still have to clean my pattern up every so often.  No matter how perfect you make it, the mana flowing through it will degrade it over time.

“Just leave it for now and come back later,” he told her.  “I want to show you two more things, then we’ll get to work on your Spells.  You can actually do your training while you’re fashioning your Spells, in fact, and you might find crafting Spells easier now that your mana’s organized.”

He rose to his feet.  “For the next thing, we’ll need to leave the mindscape and wake up.”  He led her back out of the mindscape and walked her over to the table.  “Do you know what these are?” he asked.

“I think you said they were Skill books,” she shrugged.  “I’ve seen them before.  If you read and study them, you get a Skill from them.”

“True, but that’s not the best way to use them, and now that you have Instinctive Meditation, I’ll show you a better one.”  He picked up the Diplomacy book and opened it.  Immediately, a notification popped into his vision:

Do you wish to transfer the Skill book: Diplomacy into your mindscape? (Yes/No)

He chose ‘Yes’, then closed the book.  “That’s it,” he smiled at her.  “With Instinctive Meditation – or any Meditation, I believe – you can transfer a Skill book into your mindscape and study it there without needing the book.  It’s that easy.”

Avalyn stared at him disbelievingly, then opened the Skill book for Spell Channeling.  “Nothing happened,” she said bitterly.  “I thought…”

“Stop,” he interrupted her.  “Don’t whine, ask.”

He saw her bite her lip and take a deep breath.  “Okay.  What am I doing wrong?”

“You aren’t doing anything at all,” he pointed out.  “Put your hand on the book and will it to go into your mindscape.  You have to actually try to make it work.”  Well, unless you’ve got the Master of Skills Title like I do, I guess.

She gazed at him doubtfully for a moment before resting her hand on the book.  Her eyes widened as she read a notification in her vision.  “Wow.  I can just add this to my mind, and I’ll have the Skill?”

“It’s not that easy,” he chuckled.  “Add it, and I’ll show you how to train it in your mindscape.” 

An hour later, Aranos finally left the girl’s mindscape, leaving her to work.  He’d shown her how to send herself into the pages of a Skill book to learn directly from the accumulated memories of the book’s author, but before he let her do that – while he only needed 15 minutes to get a day’s worth of Skill training in, he assumed that Avalyn would need an hour, since she didn’t have his Perks and Titles to assist her – the two of them spent some time working on her armor Spell.  He also taught her his Forge Mana Spell, showed her how to use the room’s mana crystals to boost her Wis and Int training, and left her to work.

“If you push as hard as you can for at least an hour, you should get a bonus of 4 points to your Stats, plus boosts to Mana Control and Manipulation,” he’d told her.  “Plus, the extra energy from the crystals will make it easier to finish the two Spells you’re working on.  If you complete those, do your Skill training, then keep Meditating until you’ve been at it for at least 4 hours total.  That should take care of sleep for you.  After that, I’ll leave some books for you to study.”

The Parmassae was waiting for Aranos with the copied works he’d asked for to complete his Quest to Ruehnar, the Head Librarian of the House of Stars.  The Sorcerer asked the spirit to leave Avalyn with books on arcane lore and some simple, unaspected Spells she could study to get some ideas of what could be done with her mana; hopefully, she’d put in the effort without him having to push her.  He could teach her, but he couldn’t make her want to learn.  That was on her, and it would require hard work, which he got the feeling she wasn’t used to.

He left her in the Library and returned to the square outside the huge building.  While the Library structure aboveground was massive, he knew that it didn’t hold any of the actual Library within it.  That was all underground, buried who knew how far, with probably thousands of rooms all connected by an elaborate portal system that only the Parmassae really understood. 

Rather than walking through the streets, he envisioned the Hall of High Enchantment as clearly as he could and opened a portal, targeting the street before the building.  He was off by a hundred feet or so since he couldn’t see the structure in question and hadn’t bothered to scry it first, but it wasn’t a long walk to the main door. 

The Hall lay still and silent, as if waiting for him, and he passed through the sealed doors with much greater ease this time.  He made only a half-hearted attempt to open the door to the next level; he was reasonably certain that it wouldn’t unseal until he’d reached Master rank in High Enchantment.  Instead, he settled down in one of the alcoves and reached out to connect to the mana crystals surrounding him.  While he’d already realized that they couldn’t help him train anymore, he could drain SP from them to help power his Spells if he wanted.

He closed his eyes, took a deep, calming breath, and dropped into his mindscape.  The familiar, falling sensation was almost a welcome relief as he descended into the depths of his mind.  He could sense the deeper well of mana beneath the veneer of his mindscape, but he slowed his descent and settled onto what felt like a carpet of soft grass.  He opened his eyes and sat quietly in the center of his forest glen for a moment, enjoying the peaceful tranquility of the scene and letting his mind chew through the day’s events and how they affected his plans after logout.

The Quest that morning had an unforeseen consequence, and it was one that Aranos hoped Geltheriel could deal with the next day while he was gone.  The leonal cub was adorable, no doubt, but it was also mostly helpless at this point.  That had been fine for Silma because Aranos had been able to communicate with her, and she was intelligent enough to follow complex directions.  Right now, only Rhys could talk to the cub, and it had only an animal’s instincts; it would be a major liability in battle.  Fortunately, it seemed that Geltheriel was taking to the small creature; with her Beast Lore Skill, she could probably tame and train it, and while it wouldn’t be the same as having a Soulbound Companion, at least she could teach it to fight alongside her.

When he returned to Stoneleague, he’d also have to deal with the whole Thieves’ Guild mess, although he was honestly hoping that would resolve itself.  McBane seemed to have a Quest for it, and hopefully the Rogue would kill whoever was causing these issues before it became something Aranos had to worry too much about.  At the same time, the whole thing gave him a sense of unease; should he have taken the time to do more investigating before leaving the city?  He could easily have backtracked the thieves’ trail to their hideout if he’d wanted.  Obviously, Jester had gotten orders from someone; Aranos could probably have followed the man’s trail from the hideout to wherever he’d met his contact, track the contact back to whoever they met with, and so on until he found the originator of the order and hopefully the upright man Stormie spoke of himself.

However, that would have meant no training or Spell-crafting that night for him, and it might have left the elves stuck in the human city while he was logged out.  All of his party members were happier here, and McBane was right that Antas was a safer place for them to log out of and back into.

He definitely needed to work on Spells, no question.  With his new Divining aspect, he could modify his messaging Spell to scry the target, teleport a message orb to them, and then deliver the message using Illusory mana.  That would be a useful Spell; if he had it, he could speak with Phil without having to go to sleep or send a message to any of his House members.  He’d been fiddling around with it for a long time, but he’d never really committed to making it; it should probably become a priority.

At the same time, though, he now likely had two enemies that were masters of Mind magic: Golloron and Dean Greghoff.  While his Fortitude Skill was useful against those sorts of attacks, he currently only had one defense, a simple shield to protect his mind.  Surely, any Wizard skilled in the Mind aspect would have a Spell designed to deal with that sort of barrier.  He needed at least one other layer of defense, both for himself and for his party members.

That brought up another concern: Rhys.  Aranos was fairly certain that the Druid was free of Golloron’s influence at this point, but it would be nice to have a Spell to make certain of that.  He also didn’t have a good way to deal with someone like Rhys, someone that he wanted to subdue harmlessly.  The closest he had right now was his Void Paralysis, which while effective, left the victim fully aware that they were being restrained – and generally unhappy with him afterward, the way Brutus had been.  He needed something that could stun someone – or even put them to sleep.

And finally, he wanted to improve some of his older Spells, especially his Energy Web.  He had an idea that he could replace the unaspected mana hooks in it with tiny globes of Gravitational energy to hold a target in place far more effectively.  He also wanted to see if he could use Enhanced aspects with his Forge Mana Spell, as well as upgrading his Crystal Prison – which was basically useless right now, since it was less effective than his Void Paralysis, cost more SP, and was easily shattered by anything with a decent Strength Stat.  Add in two new Skill books to practice and some Enchanting to do and…

Well, nothing for it but to get started.  He dove into his mana river and set up his new Mana Mastery and Control training system, weaving strands of Charisma and Enhanced mana into a huge power boost for his modified spirals, but this time he didn’t include Mind mana in the mix.  He was going to need all of that he could get; in fact, he was probably going to have to cannibalize most of the energy stored in the mana crystals around him to get anything actually done, and he might need to draw some of the power he was cycling into his new Spells.

He decided to work first on adding another layer of mental defenses.  His Shield Mind Spell and Fortitude both combined to give him an impressive amount of resistance to mental attacks, but the thing about resistance was that if it was less than 100%, it always let something through.  He needed something that would directly absorb or divert incoming Mind mana, reducing the effectiveness of an attack so that it wouldn’t be able to overcome his resistance, kind of like putting layers of Kevlar in front of a ceramic plate in a bulletproof vest.

In fact, he realized, that was exactly what he needed.  It was a simple construct to create; he imagined his mind layered in thin sheets of mental energy, all linked loosely together so that they could flex, move, and shift but not completely slide away from one another.  He envisioned a piercing mental strike slamming into the loose weave, felt the energy being blunted and channeled away from the point of impact, and saw it thump futilely against the barrier of his Fortitude Skill.  He repeated the vision in his mind, this time imagining someone assaulting him with overwhelming pressure instead of a sharp stab; the layers simply absorbed and cushioned the attack, allowing his shield beneath to withstand it easily.

He continued channeling mana into the Spell, envisioning every possible type of attack he could think of.  Blades of mental mana slid off the tightly woven layers; spears and arrows tangled in the weave and lost their energy.  A buzzing saw blade of Mind energy chewed into the cushioning and hung up in it, as did a whirling mental drill.  He imagined rapid-fire attacks, massive hammer-like blows, and piercing jabs.  The weave accepted and absorbed each of them, although with varying efficacy; in every case, though, it was enough for his remaining defenses to hold out the resultant assaults.

Once the Spell coalesced, he turned aside from it; he’d check his notifications later.  While he was still channeling Mind mana, he decided to work on something that could incapacitate a foe without harming them.  The easiest thing, he decided, would be to make some sort of stunning attack, one that overwhelmed the victim’s mind temporarily and forced it to shut down briefly.  That was harder to create, mostly because to do it, Aranos needed to attack every part of the victim’s mind at once to overload it and force their conscious mind to cease functioning for a bit.  Rather than a sharp, piercing strike that might inflict damage, he imagined a giant, mental hand, gripping the target’s mind and squeezing. 

He pictured Dean Greghoff, imagined the bald-headed man trying to attack him once again.  He reached out in his vision and wrapped the Wizard’s mind in constricting layers of Mind mana, squeezing gently but firmly against the shield that he imagined protecting the man’s mind.  The pressure wasn’t intense at first, but it grew inexorably until the barrier shattered and the construct slammed into the unguarded mind, flooding it with power and disrupting it for several seconds.  The dean dropped to the floor, insensate, and Aranos began the vision once more, this time adding SP to it.

Each time, he imagined different enemies being affected by his Spell.  He envisioned a massive ogrin, whose unprotected mind succumbed quickly to his attack; he pictured a charging, Awakened tigroon dropping to the ground, stunned.  He tried to picture a dragonelle, swooping down on him, but oddly enough, the Spell wouldn’t work.  At first, he thought that the creature’s armor was giving it magical resistance; he changed the image to a giant ursusz, instead, but the bear-like creature was equally immune.  He had no problem stunning uruks, dabruks, and even the magic-wielding kerruks, but amaroks, balayangs, and kondinyas were all immune. 

He frowned; apparently, creatures needed to have a minimum level of Intelligence to be affected by the Spell.  He wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t matter; there was no point in wasting SP trying to use the Spell on creatures that were immune.  He focused on intelligent creatures only, channeling SP from the nearby mana crystals and converting it into Mind mana when his natural stores ran out.  Eventually, the Spell coalesced in his mind, and he let it go with a sigh.

He dove back into his mana core, tying the tiny bit of Mind mana he had left into the training but uncoupling the Soul and Spatial mana rivers instead.  He then turned his attention to his messaging Spell, delving into it and modifying it significantly.  In his mind, he opened a small window in space that displayed an image of Geltheriel at her training.  He poured power into the image, not worrying about completing it; once he ran out of natural Enhanced mana, he tied the remnants of those currents of power back into his training and released the Spell vision.

He then spent some time training and practicing his existing Spells.  His Ball Lightning, Energy Wall, and Great Enthrallment were close to moving to the Student level, and it should be easy enough to push them over through simple training.  He threw himself into practicing these Spells, tapping the nearby mana crystals as needed and shifting Primary mana into Enhanced.  He multi-cast three Ball Lightnings at once, built mazes out of Energy Walls, and created creatures to Enthrall.  It took him over an hour to level all three Spells; this type of training just wasn’t as effective as combat for boosting his Spells.

Finally, he opened the first of his two new Skill books, Diplomacy.  He found himself spending what felt like days under the tutelage of an elderly but surprisingly vivacious woman who coached him in public speaking, negotiation, and the fine art of constructive falsehoods.  It was fairly fun – especially when he had to convince a group of hostile Warriors to leave him be without a single intimidating statement.  He’d failed at that, but he’d almost succeeded, and he was sure that next time, he’d do better. 

He dove into Staff Mastery next and found himself working on not just basic staff forms – some of which it turned out he’d been doing wrong all this time – but on putting more power into his blows and using the rest of his body to augment his weapon, especially his feet.  It was a different method of using the weapon than he’d tried before, one that relied on extensive footwork and stronger, more penetrating blows rather than the swift but less potent attacks he’d been using before.

Before leaving his mindscape, he decided to train his Goldsmithing Skill, as well; he probably wouldn’t gain any ranks in the Skill itself, but working on that Skill helped his Metal Refining, which was close to leveling up.

When he was done, he pulled up his waiting notifications:

Spells Created!

Spell: Crush Mind
Rank: Novice 1
Overload an individual’s mind and render them Stunned.

Effect: When you cast this Spell, you attempt to overload another’s mind with overwhelming pressure and force, briefly shutting down their conscious thoughts.  If the victim fails an Opposed Check, as detailed below, they suffer a Stunned debuff that lasts for the duration of the Spell.  Targets must be within 60’.  Targets with an Intelligence Stat below 3 are immune to this Spell.

Opposable Spell: A victim can resist Stunning by succeeding at an Opposed Check: their [Wis + Class level] versus your [Int + Spell level], or with a successful use of Mental Resistance or a magical mental defense.  However, you can continue to channel this Spell if an attempt is unsuccessful, gaining a bonus equal to 10% of your Mana Mastery Skill (rounded down) per second to the Opposed Check and paying normal Channeling costs.

Cost: 71 Mind SP

Duration: 5 seconds + 1 second / 10 Spell levels + 1 second / 10 Skill levels of Mana Mastery (rounded down)

+150 XP

Buddy, I just shut you down!

Enhanced Mental Shroud^
Rank: Novice 1
Wrap your thoughts in concealing layers of Mind mana to diffuse incoming mental attacks.

Effect: You create a shroud of Mind mana that reduces the effect of incoming mental attacks.  Any Mind-based attack against you requires additional SP equal to half your Wisdom (rounded down) +2 SP per Spell level.  If the caster cannot pay this SP cost, the Spell fails, and the caster suffers the normal effects of Spell backlash.  If the Spell succeeds, you gain a bonus to any Opposed Check to resist or ignore the Spell equal to the extra SP cost.

Enhanced: Mind Spells require 50% more SP than the amount listed above to affect you through this Shroud, and you always receive an Opposed Check to ignore the effects of a Mind Spell, even if one isn’t normally allowed (although, in this case, you don’t get a bonus to the Opposed Check usually granted by this Spell).  If the Spell does affect you, its power is reduced by 50% + 1% per Spell level. 

Cost: 48 Mind SP

Duration: 1 minute + 5 seconds per Spell level.

+150 XP

I’m playing hide & seek with my sanity…

Spell Boost!
Spell: Great Enthrallment* has gained a level
New Rank: Student 1
Completely dominate the mind and body of another.

Effect: Choose a single creature in sight range.  You take complete control of the creature for the duration of the Spell and can command the creature mentally at any distance.  The target can make an Opposed Check to resist this domination: the target’s [Wis + Class level] versus your [Int + Class level + Spell level].  If this Check is failed, the target can make a new Check every 10 s with a cumulative +5 bonus to the Check. 

You can command the target to take any action that will not cause them to directly harm themselves and the target will obey unfailingly to the best of their ability. 

Once the Spell duration lapses or the target breaks free, they receive a +20 bonus to any further Opposed Check against the same Spell for 24 hours.

Evolved: You receive a +20 bonus to your Opposed Check for this Spell.  If the target fails it, they do not receive another Check for the duration of the Spell.  You can order the target to take an action that causes them direct harm, but they receive another Check to resist and gain a +20 bonus to that Check.  If the Check succeeds, they throw off all effects of this Spell.

Corruption/Redemption: If you cause the target to commit acts that would grant you CP or RP if you performed them yourself, you take CP or RP just as if you had committed the acts and the target does not. 

Duration: 15 minutes

Cost: 194 domination SP

Channeled Spell: This Spell can be channeled to maintain its effect beyond the normal duration, paying the normal SP cost determined by your Mana Mastery Skill.

You’ll do what I say, because I said so!

Skill Boosts: The following Skills have gained a level:

Diplomacy (T)
New Rank: Student 2

Student Level Ability: All reputation gains are increased by 25%, while reputation penalties are decreased by the same amount.

Skill: Diplomacy is now considered Trained!

Bargaining (T)
New Rank: Student 3

Skill: Bargaining is now considered Trained!

Speech (T)
New Rank: Student 3

Student Level Ability: You can grant a bonus or penalty of 1% per Skill level to any creature listening to your oration.  This modifier can be applied to Attack, Defense, Mental Resistance, or a Skill check, but which attribute is affected and whether it is boosted or hindered must be chosen before the oration.  The modifier lasts for 30 minutes per Skill level.

Skill: Speech is now considered Trained!

Metal Refining (T)
New Rank: Adept 2

Adept Level Ability: You can smelt and refine Rare ores or create Rare alloys.  Common or Uncommon alloys you create have a 10% chance to Evolve into a Rare alloy.

Skills Gained!
You have gained the following Skills:

Bluff(T)
New Rank: Student 1
You can lie convincingly.

Effect: You gain a +2 bonus per Skill level on any Opposed Check to deceive another, either directly or indirectly.  This Skill functions only against mundane attempts to discern the truth, not Spells or Abilities.

Student Level Effect: You can use this Skill to change your name or Class when Inspected.

Cha +1

Unarmed Mastery (T)
New Rank: Student 1
You can fight effectively without weapons.

Effect: +1% to Attack and damage per Skill Level when striking with your natural weapons.

Student Level Effect: +1% Armor Penetration per Skill level when striking with your natural weapons.

Str +1

He rose from his mindscape with only an hour or so left before sunrise, which is when he knew he’d be logging out of the game.  He quickly pulled a shoddy longsword from his pack, the one he’d taken from Stormie.  The weapon was iron rather than steel and wasn’t in the best shape, but that was something he could fix easily enough.  His mind flitted through the blade, shifting the softer iron into High Steel while smoothing and polishing the blade.  The sword had a number of hidden flaws and fractures in its crystalline lattice; he fixed these and sloughed the rust off into the nearby catch basin, leaving the resultant blade gleaming and mirrorlike. 

He decided that he was going to try something relatively simple with the blade.  He etched only a pair of runeforms into it, one designed to hone its edges with supporting runes that described how the blade would remain sharp and just how razorlike it would be, while the other made the weapon lighter and quicker.  He then placed four Enchantments in it in two layers; the first two in the topmost layer gave the sword the ability to do Void damage and boosted the wielder’s Strength, but the second layer Enchantments linked those two and modified them.  If he’d gotten it right, a wielder with a Strength under 50 would do Void damage, one with a Strength over 50 would do Death damage, and a wielder with a Strength over 100 would do Necrotic damage. 

He connected the runes to the Enchantments, then turned the inside of the pommel to hauratite.  He filled the runes with auril to help channel the energy and traced links of auril down to the pommel.  Before taking the next step, he laid the sword on the floor and cautiously wove a shield of Air in a dome over it.  If it exploded, at least the blast would be slowed by the barrier, hopefully enough that it wouldn’t send him flying once more.  Taking a deep breath, he connected a tendril of mana to the pommel and fed it several hundred SP.  Slowly, carefully, he connected the mana sink to the initiation point of the first rune, then stepped quickly back as the power flowed into the blade.

The sword shivered and flexed menacingly as power flowed through it, and Aranos winced as he pressed his back against the wall.  He was tempted to summon his Mage Shield, but last time, the explosion hadn’t been enough to get through his armor.  The blade seemed almost to writhe as the Enchantments flowed through it, and a moment later, the steel started to glow red-hot.  Aranos watched in dismay as the blade turned cherry-red, then brilliant orange, and finally blazing white that was hard for him to look at.  When the radiance faded, all that was left was a pool of molten steel in the rough outline of a sword, slowly cooling on the floor. 

Aranos swore softly as he channeled the heat back into the metal, returning it to a glowing liquid.  He used his High Mastery Ability to guide the molten metal into the shape of an ingot before draining the heat from it.  The radiated warmth washed against his face, making his skin briefly feel tight and flushed; there had been a lot of energy in that blade, far more than he’d put into it.  He glanced at the surrounding mana crystals, which were glowing much more faintly than before.  Did the sword drain power from those crystals, or were they like that because I’d been drawing on them for my spell-crafting earlier? 

He shook his head as he tossed the ingot into his pack.  He’d try to turn it into a sword again later; he didn’t have time now before logout, since liquefying the metal would have given it all sorts of weaknesses and fractures he’d need to repair.  Then, he could try to recreate the Enchantment and see what went wrong.  He’d have to do it before any other training this time, so he’d know for certain if the blade was drawing power from the surroundings the way he thought it was.  Of course, then he’d need to figure out why that was happening…

His thoughts broke off as a screen flashed in his vision, one that couldn’t be ignored.

Congratulations, Traveler!
You have completed another week in Singularity Online!  As part of the Beta Testing, you will be logged out in one minute and will return in after medical and psychological evaluations.

Prepare yourself for logout in 52s…

“Time to go,” he said to the air, waiting patiently as the timer wound down.  He sent mental messages to Silma, Geltheriel, and Rhys, but he received no response; hopefully, that meant they were resting.  He didn’t blame them; part of him wished he could sleep in, too.  That is, if I actually slept in game.  

He focused his thoughts; he had a lot to do when he returned to the game, but he also had some things he wanted to do IRL before he could log back in.  Once again, he was stretching himself thin, but realistically, there was no one else who could do most of what needed being done.  Maybe if I get Avalyn trained up fairly quickly, he laughed silently.  Then I wouldn’t have to be the only one doing some of these things.

The counter in his vision slowly wound down, until it had less than 10 seconds remaining. 

3…2…1…Logging Out.  Thanks for playing Singularity Online!

Chapter 19

Lily watched eagerly as the sun rose above the horizon.  In just a minute or so, the players would all be logged out and back home in their stupid-ass real world.  A pang of jealousy flashed through the woman at that thought; Lily would never be logging out.  That wasn’t an option for her anymore, thanks to those assholes at Neo-Dyne.  They’d trapped her here, forever…

Anger rose in her, and she reveled in it.  Anger was good, so long as she didn’t let it get away from her.  Anger let you do shit you wouldn’t have the stomach to do, normally, like cutting the cock off a rapist stepdad or any of the other asshole losers like him.  Anger made you stronger, more focused, more intense.  It made you powerful, so long as you controlled the anger, and it didn’t control you.

That’s usually the problem, isn’t it?  It’s usually in control.   Lily couldn’t argue.  The voice in her head was always right.  That was usually her damn problem.  She let anger get the best of her, went too far, got too near-sighted and lost track of the bigger fucking picture.  That wasn’t happening here, though.  She’d kept her focus the whole time, and she wasn’t letting it get away from her sorry ass.

Her minions in the city had done their work well.  Ever since that damn tower had fallen, everybody in Northmoor had been living in a state of near panic, waiting for the fucking hammer to drop on them.  Their scouting parties vanished like a fart in the wind, their magical efforts to find the attackers had shown them only whatever the hell Lily wanted them to see, and the random fires, murders, and accidents in the city convinced everybody that their own damn neighbor was the monster in the fucking closet, which was stupid.

She was the monster in their fucking closet, and they were just about to learn why they should be afraid of monsters.

She stood alone atop a nearby peak, watching the city magically; she couldn’t see inside the city that way thanks to its wards, but she could damn well see the walls, and the soldiers lining them looked – well, their asses looked downright terrified.  Lily had creatures moving around the city all last night, making as much noise as they could and basically being as scary as shit, and it had worked.  The soldiers were convinced that something was going to hit them at any second, and their nervous gazes scanned the slowly lightening field before the walls, searching for signs of their foe.

Technically, their asses were right; something was about to try and eat them.  The idiots were just looking the wrong, damn way for it.

Lily cast a quick Spell that turned her into a shadow and flashed her across the miles to join the mass of her minions.  It was an improvement of a fairly basic Summoner’s Spell; the original let you teleport to the side of any one of your minions in sight range, but this one worked over any distance so long as you were in the same region.  And because it used the fucking Shadow Realm, it bypassed the wards and barriers surrounding the city and deposited her squarely at the head of her army, which was perched at the innermost entrance to the city’s exit tunnel.

Lily watched as the notification popped up in her vision that suggested she’d be logging out in a minute and waited as patiently as she fucking could while it counted down.  She still got all these server-wide announcements and shit, even though they didn’t apply to her very much anymore.  There were a shit-ton of them that had literally been just for her in the time between the Alpha and Beta trials; she’d been the only damn player in the whole game, not just the server, but the asshole AIs had made sure she saw every update, every patch, every alteration to the game they made during that time.  None of it had made a damn difference to her, but she’d read the things anyway, just in case.

When the timer hit zero and the AIs thanked her for playing – like she had a damn choice – she sent a mental command to the hulking ulundo buried in the field just past the walls.  The monster was a freaking nightmare – it had four arms, four legs, no head, and a giant mouth in the center of its damn belly – but more importantly, it was fucking powerful and could regenerate a shit-ton of damage quickly.  She’d only been able to capture it by burning through a ton of her Spells; the thing had trouble regenerating damage that was pure Darkness or Acid, as it turned out, so she’d used a lot of both of those.  She used another minor Spell to watch through its eyes as it charged the main gates, absorbing the rain of arrows and those giant damn crossbow-things lining the top of the wall and pulling every eye in the place toward it.

Which meant that the assholes weren’t watching when her strike team rushed the gate, slaughtered the guards there, and unbarred the damn thing so that the ulundo – and the forty or so monsters that dragged their asses out of the dirt and rushed in behind it – could simply charge into the city unopposed.  She heard the screams and shouting even inside the tunnel, and she smiled cruelly; step one of the plan was working. 

Despite the ulundo’s power and the small horde of monsters supporting it, Lily knew it didn’t have a chance against the combined forces of the city.  There had to be five thousand soldiers still left there under arms, plus a couple hundred Rangers – and the damn Mages’ College, of course.  Fortunately, she had plans to deal with each of these, and they started by giving the hulking ogrins at the tunnel entrance the signal to smash open the doors and charge inside.

Sadly, the assholes who’d built this tunnel hadn’t built it directly into the palace, but Lily supposed she could see why.  After all, they were probably worried about someone doing exactly what she was: using the tunnel to bypass the city’s walls, wards, and defenses.  Even so, the tunnel exited in a quiet part of the city relatively near the palace, so the two thousand or so troops swarming into the city didn’t have far to go.  Lily quickly directed the mass of them to charge the main gate and take the defenders by surprise, while she took a select handful and raced toward the Mages’ College, taking out a heavy satchel as she did. 

The Mages had already begun to respond to the attack and were pouring out of the stone tower that served as their main headquarters here.  Lily had spent a lot of time Dream Haunting these assholes and knew more or less what she’d be facing; five hundred Wizards of various levels, with the most powerful, the Headmaster, having an Evolved Class and being an expert in myriad magical types – including a type of Primal mana against which Lily wouldn’t have any defense.  That would have been a huge, fucking problem for her, if she hadn’t been prepared, and it might even have cost her this entire battle.  Hell, the damn Headmaster by herself probably could have killed Lily and every creature here – at least, she could have if she and the other deans weren’t all curled up in their rooms, suffering from the magical poison she’d arranged for some of her disguised aswangs to give them, laced with their own blood so it disrupted the magic running through the Wizards’ veins.

She passed out the small, glass globes in her satchel to the humanoid monsters in this group – primarily aswangs and kerruks, with a handful of the powerful annablis hags that looked almost like fucking black-skinned demons with long, slimy hair and oversized feet instead of hooves – and sent the monsters charging at the mages.  A few of the older ones recognized the threat this particular group of creatures represented, but most of the assholes simply lashed out with their Spells, confident that all their magical firepower would wipe the relatively small number of creatures right off the fucking map.

Lily savored the looks on their faces when their Spells rebounded off the magically resistant munjuins she’d carefully collected and had scattered throughout the horde or were absorbed by the aswangs and annablis.  Their own Spells tore into them, and even the ones who’d been smart enough to have a damn shield or armor or some shit up were out of luck once her minions tossed the globes they were holding.  The crystal globes shattered in the midst of the massed mages, and instantly their magic winked out.  Their faces as her monsters ripped into them were priceless, and Lily joined her minions with savage glee. 

Most of her own Spells had been cut off by the anti-magic effect of the flashglobes she’d stolen from the merchant trying to bring them to Stoneleague – some asshole had wanted three dozen of the damn things, probably to do exactly what Lily was doing here to the Mages’ College there, but they were never going to get their shit now – but she’d learned by playing with these things that she could cast Spells that only affected herself or her summons just fine.  She cast a Spell that boosted her Physical Stats a lot and those of her nearby minions by a lesser amount, then just laid into every black-robed Wizard she saw with her fun, new teeth and claws.  She’d become an actual, goddamned vampire with her Evolution, and the blood she drank from their gaping wounds empowered her and gave her even greater strength. 

Soon enough, every Wizard there, from the most junior novice to the most senior, was lying either dead or dying at the feet of her minions, and she wasted no time adding their asses to her army.  The dead ones rose as vangolors, sort of like short, bat-eared elves with gray skin and a nasty resistance to magic, while the live ones ceased bleeding as they became her slaves and her bonuses to their LP regen kicked in.  She chose a living one from each College to lead her into the school and guide her and a quartet of the annablis to the poisoned, weakened deans and Headmaster and sent the rest to join the battle raging at the main gates. 

She chanced a quick look through the ulundo’s eyes; her forces had formed up just as she’d instructed and were attacking in classic formation.  She had tanks engaging the main shield wall, DPS out on the flanks slowly carving up that wall, and ranged DPS up on rooftops raining death down upon the haggard defenders.  Her flying units were atop the wall, hitting the city’s archers and crossbowmen and tearing their asses to shreds, so the humans were without ranged support and were basically doomed despite their initial numbers advantage. 

The deans of the nine different Colleges put up almost no fight; they’d been badly weakened by the arcane poison flowing through their veins.  It was a nasty piece of work that Lily originally had made to deal with the fucker Aranos but never got the chance to use on his ass, and it turned a caster’s own SP into a toxin that drained their Stats.  The annablis seized each of their asses, and Lily drained them of their blood and LP – she was immune to poisons, even this one, so the shit in their blood didn’t bother her.  Instead of making them her summoned slaves, though, she tried something new, an Ability that came with her race change but that she hadn’t used, yet.  Before the fucking Wizards could die, she fed them her own blood, forcing the black liquid down their throats until she was nearly empty herself.  It took her some time to recover from each one, but her hope was that by the next sunset, they’d be undead like her – but in thrall to her, the same way she’d been to that fucker Zoridos. 

The Headmaster put up a bigger fight, and Lily was badly wounded and lost two of her annablis to the bitch.  The woman had a fucking domain, an area around her where she could do magic without needing mana or Spells or any shit like that, and it had been a damn Order domain that let her turn the air into Ice, Crystal, and Void magic with a thought.  At the end, though, Lily drained her of her life and filled her with Lily’s Corruption; she wanted the bitch as a slave but also as a teacher.

The battle before the gates had mostly wound down by the time Lily arrived thanks to the presence of the enslaved mages, and her Spells finished up the last pockets of resistance.  She gathered the fallen soldiers into her army – even with her losses so far, she now had six thousand people under her command – and sent them out to gather as many civilians as they could.  Once a sizable number of what someone like Aranos would call ‘innocents’ was present – as if anyone other than a damn baby was really innocent – she herded them all into the square before the palace of Queen Ysabelle to stand between her army and the palace’s defenders.

Ysabelle’s palace was a gleaming pile of gold, silver, steel, and stone.  It had tall towers like some damn fairy-tale castle and was surrounded by a glowing wall etched with runes that would shrug off most magical bombardments, including her Voidfire Spell.  Soldiers in plate mail lined the walls; these were supposed to be the best of the damn best, the royal guards, and they and their fucking palace were supposed to be impossible to beat.  That might even have been true – Lily could probably have ground her army into dogmeat against those walls and never made it through, at least not without magical siege engines that she didn’t have – except that Lily knew the secret to the runes protecting the walls, and they weren’t going to hold her out.

She cast her Darkwings Spell and rose above her horde, laughing as the asshole guards on top of the walls vainly shot crossbow and arrow bolts at her.  Those just bounced off her Shadowshield; it’d take a hell of a lot more than that to hurt her.  Of course, the palace had more powerful siege weapons, but they couldn’t use them, or they’d kill their own people.  They’d probably do that if they had to, but she guessed they’d try to talk her down, first.  Sure enough, a man in bright, gold armor shouted out a command, and the rain of projectiles stopped. 

“Creature of Darkness!” the man shouted, his voice powerful despite his slightly advanced age.  “Your assault ends here!  You will not pass these walls…”

“Goddammit, General Highcliff, are you really gonna give me some fucking hero speech?” she laughed, her voice amplified by her Spells so that everyone in the palace probably heard it.

The general seemed startled, probably that she knew his name; he was about to be a lot more startled once he found out everything she knew.  “Release our people and flee this city!” the man shouted, golden tongues of fire erupting from his massive, two-handed sword as he spoke.  The general was an Evolved Class called a Champion of Light, and he had all kinds of Abilities and Spells to deal with someone like Lily.  However, to make those work, he had to believe in them – and Lily had dug pretty heavily into that faith over the past few days.

“Big sword you got there,” she laughed.  “I’d ask if you’re overcompensating for something, but we both know that you are.  I wonder if your soldiers know that you cry like a little girl when someone sets fire to that tiny, little cock of yours?”

The man blanched and winced visibly at her words, and his next speech was definitely less convincing.  “Go – go back to the Darkness, fiend…or I – I will be forced to…”

“I suppose I should thank you,” Lily continued.  “You’ve taught me a lot about being a good general.  Hell, I’d never have been able to do all this without you.”  She gestured at the army stretched out behind her and the plumes of smoke rising from where the battle had set fire to some of the buildings near the gate.

“What?  I – I would never help…”

“You say that, but once your Queen had your little dick roasted all nice, you swore you’d do anything to make it stop,” she chuckled. “You probably don’t remember the taste of your own, cooked cock when she made you eat it, over and over again…but I’ll bet you remember waking up screaming, sweaty, and terrified, don’t you?”

The man’s eyes had grown wide, and he fell silent, his mouth working futilely.  “Yeah, you remember,” she laughed.  “And to make sure you never forget, I’m going to do that to these people I captured.  I’m going to make you and your men watch as they go through everything your sweet, little Queen did to you in your nightmares, General.  I wonder if you’ll recognize the smell of burning cock once it hits your nose…”

“Kill her!” the General screeched, his face beet red.  “Kill the witch!  Fire the ballistae!  Burn her from the sky…”

Oh yeah, ballista.  That’s the name of those giant crossbow things, Lily thought with amusement as her tame mages completed the Spell they’d been casting…and suddenly, the runes lining the palace walls fell dark as their power fled them.  That was the secret she’d pried from the general’s mind; the palace wards had a failsafe, a way to deactivate them if a hostile force held it and the city’s army needed to get inside.  It was a complex key, a series of Spells that had to be cast in the correct order and time, but Lily had forced the general to repeat it until she’d had it down. 

The general’s eyes bugged in fear as he realized what she’d done – and probably that he’d been the asshole to give her the key.  The victims of her Dream Haunting never fully remembered her time with them, but they were left with a dim, hazy sort of memory of their nightmare.  The more she repeated it, the better they could recall it, and the general had been having the same fucking nightmare daily for almost a week.  It turned out, the man had a huge crush on his pretty Queen, so when his surprisingly tame-ass dreams about going on picnics and reciting poetry to her suddenly turned into her torturing and mutilating his cock and balls over and over again, it was the kind of thing that would stick with him.  Lily almost wished she could take the young woman’s form just to fuck with him even more, but she couldn’t do that unless she’d killed her victim…and she had no intention whatsoever of killing the fucking Queen.  She needed the bitch if her plan was going to work.

Whips of black flame surrounded her as she cast her Voidfire Spell, and twenty globes of ebon flame slammed into the gleaming gates, tearing through the steel like paper.  The ulundo rushed forward at her command, smashing its four arms into the torn and hanging remnants of the huge portal, and the gate slammed open with a mighty clang, allowing her army to rush into the courtyard beyond.  The battle quickly became a slaughter as her flying minions tumbled armored knights off the walls and into the mass of enemies below while her spellcasters hit them with waves of fire and ice or crippled them with debuffs.

Soon enough, only General Highcliff was left, his stupid penis-sword no longer blazing but sputtering fitfully as he watched his own, wounded men rise and join Lily’s army.  His face was pale as Lily glided forward on her flaming wings, a familiar tendril of fire whipping around in her fist.  “You remember this, Allister?” she purred at him, using the name Ysabelle always called him in his damn dreams.  “Do you remember how your Ysabelle slowly pulled down your pants – how excited you were – and then how she wrapped this little tongue of fire around that pathetic thing between your legs?  Remember how you screamed and begged her to stop?  She didn’t, though, did she – not until you told her what she wanted to know.”

“It – it was you,” he whispered as the last hint of flame flickered and died on his sword.  “You did that…”

“And I’m about to do it again,” she chuckled almost seductively as she sidled closer.  This was the closest Lily ever got to being turned on; the feeling she got when she was about to break a man, a man who thought he was strong but was really just a disgusting pervert led around by his dick, was better than any sex or drug could ever be.  “Then I’ll heal you and do it again, and again – it’ll be like your dream, but you’ll never wake up.”  He swung his blade at her half-heartedly, but she caught his wrist with a Strength that matched his own, thanks to the fear and shame that left him weak and pathetic.

“And I’m going to make Ysabelle watch – I might even make her help me.  We can make your dream a reality, Allister.  One that can last the rest of your life.” 

“No,” he mumbled, falling to his knees, tears streaming from his eyes.  “No, please…not Ysabelle.  I’ll do anything, just – just don’t hurt Ysabelle.”

“Oh, I don’t want to hurt her.  I need her, alive and sitting on her throne.  But I also need a general, Allister; someone to help me run my new army.  If you agree to be it, I’ll let her live past my use for her. If you don’t, I’ll enslave her just like your soldiers and force her to fuck every, single one of them, right in front of your eyes, in between your torture sessions.  I’ll even make her like it; you can watch her, panting and begging for what you could never, ever give her.”

“No!” he screamed, clutching his head.  “Please!  I’ll – I’ll serve.  I swear it.”

“Then don’t resist,” she hissed as she grabbed his armor and yanked him to his feet, tipping his head back and exposing his throat.  His blood was warm and salty and strangely potent in her mouth; she knew that it should be burning her – one of his Abilities was immunity to things like Life Drain – but he’d given himself to her willingly.  That meant he gave up all his defenses; he’d surrendered to the Darkness, all for the sake of some dumb-ass idea of love.

He struggled a bit when she fed him her blood, but in his drained and weakened state, she handled him like a baby.  She forced his mouth open and held it against the spurting wound on her throat.  He choked and gagged as his mouth filled with her black essence, but she pinched his nose shut, and he had no choice but to swallow.  After the first mouthful, he relaxed in her arms and drank willingly, drawing in her undead essence and forever binding himself to the Darkness as her minion.

In a way, Lily realized, this Ability was probably too fucking powerful.  It was supposed to bind these things to her will as helpless but smart servants until she died, at which point their asses would be free.  The minions she got from it were a hell of a lot more powerful than they’d been before and still had their own thoughts and minds, unlike her slaves that lost their own free will and would only do what came naturally to them unless she made them act differently, but their asses would be constantly scheming to bring her down and gain their freedom.  The thing was, she didn’t know if that could ever happen for the poor fuckers.  Were they freed when she was sent for respawn?  Her summoned monsters weren’t; it followed that they wouldn’t be, either.  They were fucking immortal servants bound to her will forever, and she really liked the sound of that.  These assholes would be like the start of her own little, dark coven.

She took some time to recover before summoning a specific group of creatures and leading them into the palace with the general’s near-dead body in tow.  The place wasn’t unguarded – Highcliff hadn’t been an idiot, after all, banking everything on the idea that the palace gates would never be breached – but the soldiers inside attacked her in small groups that she and her creatures could handle easily enough.  She added their beaten asses to her little group and let them fight each other as much as possible; she really wanted to keep all these monsters with her for a very specific reason. 

The doors to the throne room were barred, but that didn’t do shit to stop Lily’s Voidfire Spell or to keep the powerful ogrins from smashing the mangled remains of it open.  Queen Ysabelle was young and pretty, maybe in her early twenties with red-gold hair that trailed down to her ass when she stood.  A line of soldiers stood in front of her, protecting her, and there were archers up in the gallery above.  Lily sent her captured soldiers to deal with the assholes on the ground and cast a Shadowshield that kept the bowmen from adding to her problems as she led her tame creatures forward.

Ysabelle rose to her feet, her hands moving, but Lily shook her head.  “Ah, ah, ah, Ysabelle.  You don’t want to piss me off like that, do you?”

“Who – who do you think you are, to talk to me like that?” the woman stammered.

“Who am I?  I’m the monster that lives under your bed – and in your dreams, Ysabelle.”  She saw the woman blanch as her eyes jerked involuntarily to the menagerie that trailed behind Lily.  “Do you remember my little friends, here?  The ones that join those naughty, little dreams of yours?  You do remember them, don’t you?”

“I – I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Queen stammered, but her hands had fallen still.  That was good; Ysabelle was Heart-bound, meaning her ass could draw on the city’s power for her Spells if she wanted to.  That made her a lot more dangerous than she looked, and Lily really didn’t want to fight her if she didn’t have to – there was a good chance that the woman would kick Lily’s ass.

“I think you do, honey,” Lily purred, stepping around the last few of the Queen’s knights desperately fighting against their own and losing; Lily’s slaves got a big boost to their power, after all, and Ysabelle’s knights – well, their asses didn’t.  “You recognize them.  Do you remember how they felt?  What it was like, being used by them, over and over again?  Or do you just remember waking up terrified and ashamed, crying yourself awake and not able to stop?”

Ysabelle’s face had gone deathly pale, and she fell back onto her throne, her hands trembling and her eyes filled with panic.  “What – what do you want?” she stammered.

“I came to make your dreams come true,” Lily laughed.  “Right here, right now!  I even brought someone to watch the show!”  At her mental command, one of the ogrins hauled the limp but still-conscious form of General Highcliff up to the front where the Queen could see him.  “I’ll bet he’s excited to watch.”

“No!” she sobbed, curling up on her throne, her knees drawn reflexively against her chest to protect her.  Lily recognized that position; she’d taken it any number of times in that small, dark room so long ago.  It was an instinct, but it didn’t work; it didn’t offer you any real protection.  “No, please – please, not that!”

Lily stepped forward and cupped the Queen’s chin in her gray, undead hand, feeling the pulse of blood beneath the woman’s skin.  It was tempting – the woman would make a decent minion – but Lily needed her alive and unharmed.  “I can make those nightmares become your life,” she whispered to the woman.  “I can turn your world into one eternal horror, one that lasts for every minute of every day, for the rest of your life.  Unless you do exactly as I say, Ysabelle”

“Please, I’ll do what you want,” the woman sobbed, not even attempting to resist. 

“Good,” Lily grinned as her soldiers stormed up into the balconies and removed the last, pesky bit of resistance.  “Here’s what we’re going to do…”

Jeff awoke in the Mark I pod, blinking rapidly as the green nano-gel drained away from his face and down his body.  He remained still as the IV lines that had been feeding and hydrating him slowly retracted and the restraints were released from his body.  The first time he’d woken up like this, he’d panicked, but now he’d gotten pretty used to it. 

“Welcome back, Jeff,” a chipper, young man with short, brown hair and black-rimmed glasses beamed at him as the pod opened.  “Just relax while we rinse the nano-gel from you, okay?”

“No problem,” Jeff nodded, clearing his throat a bit as he used his voice box for the first time in a week.  “I remember the drill.”

“Awesome.  So, how’s the game going?”

“Pretty well,” Jeff shrugged.  “I just returned to my base after completing part of a Quest in the human city of Stoneleague, where I made some friends and pissed off a master wizard.  Oh, and I guess a Thieves Guild is targeting me for some reason.”

“Sounds exciting,” the man said wistfully.  “I can’t wait for it to get released; I might have to take some vacation days to really get into it the way you guys get to.”

“It’s worth it,” Jeff grinned as air jets blasted him dry.  “Off to the tests, now?”

“Absolutely.  Gotta make sure you aren’t suffering any ill effects from the pod, after all.  After that, you get to dive right back in, right?”

“I’ve got a couple things I have to do first; work related,” he hedged.  “Shouldn’t take more than a couple hours, though.”

The man shrugged.  “Doesn’t matter to me.  The word is that you get to go back in as soon as you want.  When you’re ready, let the guy out front know, and I’ll get you set back up.”

“Thanks,” Jeff replied with a sense of relief that he didn’t let show on his face.  He’d been worried that the Neo-Dyne CEO, David Newsome, might have given orders that Jeff had to go back in immediately.  Jeff could have ignored that, since his initial contract included a mandated 24-hour logout period, but he really didn’t want to piss his ultimate boss off if he could help it.  Even if Newsome couldn’t technically fire Jeff for not jumping right back into the game, he could definitely make the programmer’s life miserable or even decide that Jeff should be taken off the Beta testing, yanking him from the game completely. 

He ran through his medical battery, which had become almost perfunctory at this point.  Once again, his fitness level had increased decently from spending the week in the pod, and he was actually starting to show some muscle definition for the first time in his life.  After he dressed, he took the elevator up to his floor, walking past the skeleton crew who held the place down on Sundays as he made his way to his workstation.  None of them glanced up from their work as he passed, which he was fine with; while his presence at his terminal would be noticed on the myriad security cameras, no one would remark on it unless someone realized he was supposed to be in the game rather than at his desk.

He unlocked his terminal with his biometric data and quickly loaded up three of his custom-built routines.  One would hide his activity from the keystroke logger, making it look like he was working on a random bit of old code – not an unusual thing for most programmers, who were always looking for a way to make things work just a little bit better – while the second would randomly scramble his workstation id every minute so the system couldn’t tell who he was and where he was working from.  The third was something he was most proud of; it used a backdoor he’d built into the system to mimic the credentials of any other user, right down to their biometric data.  He couldn’t access that data, but he could return a positive check to any attempt to verify his identity.  That’s what you get when you let a hacker design parts of your security system.

Neo-Dyne’s computer system was arranged in multiple layers of increasing security named after Greek numbers.  The public layer was Éna, where unsecure information was stored.  Dío was secured only with basic encryption methods and had information like the staff directory, the building map, or upcoming releases, but nothing vital; that was good, because dío got hacked all the time, which was kind of its purpose.  It gave wannabe crackers, or people looking to break into the system from the outside, an easy target and just enough juicy information to make dabblers happy.  Jeff had access to the third level, tría, which was heavily encrypted and protected by biometric locks that couldn’t be brute force hacked. 

Previously, to get into the deeper layers, he’d piggybacked on the account of a higher executive who hadn’t bothered to activate their biometric controls – some people felt that giving their biometric data to the company was an invasion of their privacy, which Jeff thought was pretty foolish.  After all, most people used biometric information like fingerprints, eye scans, and even DNA sampling for everything from locking their phones to paying for things with cryptocurrency, and the systems storing that data were more susceptible to breach than Neo-Dyne’s was.  In this case, though, he was glad for the executive’s paranoia, since it gave him access to the fourth and fifth layers of the system, something he couldn’t get with his own credentials.

However, the unknown executive’s reach ended there, and that meant Jeff had to go hunting for someone with more access.  It took him nearly an hour to find an appropriate account and clone their biometric response with his routine.  His program basically pinged the account as if checking the biometric data a few hundred times, read the unique responses received, and cloned those into a data string that would fool the system’s check into thinking that executive had logged in with correct information. 

Jeff took a deep breath.  So far, all he’d done was violate his work contract; the tésera and pénde layers had secure information on them that the company considered proprietary.  If he’d been caught, he would have been fired and would probably only be able to find work as a white hat hacker, finding security vulnerabilities in supposedly secure systems so that companies could close loopholes and vulnerabilities.  That wasn’t great, but it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Layer éxi contained classified information, data that was deemed confidential by the government.  While Jeff had clearance to view that sort of thing, he didn’t have a need to know as far as the FBI was concerned, and if he were caught, he could be looking at serious prison time.  At the same time, he was pretty sure that even the AIs maintaining the system wouldn’t be able to tell who got into the layer; as far as they’d be able to tell, the terminal using the hijacked account would be jumping randomly not just around the building but around the world.  Jeff even made sure that there was a chance his own terminal would be included in the random id’s, since if every terminal in the building but his was involved, it would be a dead giveaway who penetrated the system.

He steeled himself and jumped in, using the cloned credentials to access the sixth layer of security.  His search for the term “Ultra” hit a dead-end, but a scan for the name “Tamarank” – Lily’s true last name when she’d been a living, breathing person – gave him several hits.  He scanned through the documents, reading them but not making copies or screenshotting them.  Reading classified material was one thing; copying it was something totally different and was the difference between getting a couple years in federal prison and doing a 20-year minimum sentence. 

The first few files were just more background on Livia Tamarank, the woman who’d gone on a years-long murder spree across several states.  It detailed her mother’s death and the abuse she’d suffered at the hands of her stepfather, who it appeared ended up being her first victim.  Jeff felt a surge of grim satisfaction at reading how the girl – she’d only been sixteen at the time of the man’s death, which made all this so much worse – had mutilated the man before killing him.  Honestly, that spoke to Jeff’s sense of justice.  Any person who could do that to a little girl deserved to die painfully.

Statements from several psychiatrists were included, all of which confirmed what Longfellow had guessed in-game.  Livia had a dissociative personality disorder and held exactly zero value for human life.  She reveled in causing others pain and misery, and she saw herself as a crusader that found men that reminded her of her stepfather, made them think she was going to sleep with them, then killed them the same way she had him.  The doctors noted that if the men spurned Livia’s advances, she let them live; she only preyed on those who would have preyed on her. 

Another file was written by a psychiatrist who strongly urged the company not to allow Livia into the Alpha trials.  The woman claimed that, unlike most of the people on death row, Livia had never expressed an ounce of regret for her actions and seemed almost to welcome her sentence.  The doctor pointed out that Livia had deliberately chosen a high-visibility target, a fairly famous politician in a state that still held the death penalty, and that she had refused any appeals of her death sentence.  The psychiatrist summed up that Livia Tamarank simply wanted to die, and she’d wanted to take as many men like her stepfather as she could with her on the way, making her the worst possible candidate for the Alpha testing.

The last hit was a video file, and watching it made Jeff’s blood go cold.  It was the security footage of Livia’s execution, and he watched it with a strange combination of fascination and revulsion. 

Livia Tamarank had been a small, somewhat pretty blonde with an elfin face and waifish body that made her look younger than the 22 years she’d been when she was executed.  Jeff understood now why she’d allowed the men who refused her to live.  The girl looked sixteen at the oldest, and she’d spent the last two years in prison; when she’d been out hunting these men, she probably looked thirteen or fourteen.  If she’d hit on Jeff, he would have been shocked; she looked like a freaking kid, and he’d have tried to help her instead of sleeping with her.

She was dressed in prison orange, and as she walked down the hallway, her face was filled with acceptance – and, Jeff thought, a touch of relief.  The moment they’d opened the door to the room with the pod in it, though, she began to struggle for the first time.

“No!” she shouted, trying to yank herself free of the guards holding her without success.  “No, I don’t fucking want to go in there!  I just want to die!”

“Livia, this is what you agreed to when you joined the Alpha testing,” an older woman in a suit said in a cold voice.

“No, I never agreed to this shit!  I said I’d play the fucking game until it was time to die, that’s it!  Let me go!”  The girl’s face was panicked, now, and she struggled even more fiercely.

“Exactly.  And now that time has come.  You’ll play the game until you die, just as you agreed.”  The suited woman shook her head.  “You should feel lucky, Livia.  You won’t even know it when it happens.  You’ll be in the game, not sitting here waiting for the chemicals to end your life.”

“You don’t understand, bitch!” Livia shrieked.  “When you’re in the game, all of you is in it!  There’s none of you left in your fucking body!”

Jeff watched in horror as they forcibly stripped the woman and strapped her into the pod.  “Please,” she begged, looking at the guard restraining her with tears flowing from her eyes.  “Please, I won’t fight, I promise.  Just kill me, okay?  Kill me before they put me in the game, please.  Oh, fuck, no!”

The woman’s pleading turned into incoherent screaming as the IV tubes plunged into her arms and the gel started rising up along her body.  She thrashed wildly, trying to escape, but as the pod closed, her struggles ceased abruptly.  Like it or not, Livia was in the game.

A white-coated individual walked up to the pod and opened a port that Jeff had never noticed before on the side of it.  Over the next minute, he stuck three syringes into the port, injecting their contents presumably into Livia’s bloodstream before walking over and looking at a computer screen being monitored by another man in a button-up shirt and slacks seated on a chair.

Several minutes later, the white-coated man spoke.  “I’m calling it.  Time of death, 3:01 a.m.”

The video cut off at that point, and Jeff stared at the now-blank screen for several seconds before logging out of the layer, shutting off his routines one by one, and closing down his terminal almost mechanically.  His mind kept replaying the woman’s last moments in stunned disbelief.

He’d already guessed that Livia had been put to death while in the game, and that the AIs had kept a digital copy of her in the server, although he’d half-assumed that was accidental.  He figured that the company was using death row inmates because if something went wrong with the pods or the brain-mapping, at least they wouldn’t have to live with any consequences for long, plus he guessed they’d be grateful for something that took them out of their cell and let them forget their looming executions for a while.

What he hadn’t realized was that Livia hadn’t wanted to die that way.  Some part of her had known, he thought, that the AIs would be preserving a copy of her, and she hadn’t wanted that.  She’d wanted to die, and instead she’d been given essential immortality.  No wonder she’s so angry all the time.  Her life was such a hell that she figured anything would be better, and that got taken from her. 

He pushed away from his console and wandered down to the cafeteria, purchasing a synth-ham sandwich and eating it mechanically while his mind raced.  What had happened to Livia had been wrong.  The female psychiatrist had been right; the girl only wanted to die, and now that would never happen unless her data was erased from the server.  Jeff wasn’t arrogant enough to think he could do anything like that; player profiles were the most encrypted data in the entire system, and he doubted even the AIs could wipe it.  He’d seen the algorithms designed to prevent the AIs from being able to do that, because no one knew what the consequences would be if it happened in-game, and they were incredibly complicated.  Multiple copies of every instance of a profile were kept, scattered across different servers and constantly recirculated and updated.  Erasing a profile was very close to impossible, as far as Jeff could tell.

He swallowed the last of his food and washed it down with a sip of water before returning to the testing area.  He had to wait for about ten minutes before his pod was ready for him again.  As he walked up to it, his finger traced over the side of it. The port the doctor had used to inject Livia with whatever killed her was gone; that had likely been a modification to her pod specifically for that purpose.  He supposed it could still be useful – he envisioned extremely ill or very elderly patients using the pod to escape their body’s infirmities, and those ports would allow medical providers to administer any medicines they needed – but he felt vaguely reassured that it wasn’t present on his device, although he couldn’t say why.

He stripped down and settled into the pod, not even wincing as the IVs slid into his veins again.  As the gel rose, his mind couldn’t help but recall Livia’s terror as she went into the game for the last time.  The gel no longer felt warm and comforting but had a vaguely sinister and foreboding quality to it that he knew was entirely in his own mind.  As the liquid neared his chin, he silently cursed his overly curious nature.

Sometimes, you have to leave well enough alone, dude.