Ezekiel folded and unfolded his arms and did his best to distract his mind. He leaned his head backward and knocked it a little harder than he intended against the stone behind him. To his right was open air and a calm night, but to his left was a sinister ritual. But even the ominous blood energy rising out of the one-meter boulder sitting in the center of the cave to his left did little to distract Ezekiel from the secret fear that was currently tormenting him.

Ace, who was constantly radiating more lifeblood essence into the Impending Rock, sneered at the Ezekiel when he noticed his distraught expression. But Ezekiel did his best not to pay Ace any mind. After all, Ace had been largely consumed by his strange plot to create an Earth-based threat, rendering any conversation with Ace at the moment a literal waste of time.

To Ace, conversation was currently just an opportunity to sharpen his monologuing. Even Ace’s assistant had started rolling her eyes and walking away when Ace started building up a head of momentum with his strange monologues. Unfortunately, Ezekiel was the one who had no choice but to stay nearby. And the worst part was he had to admit that Ace was getting quite a bit better at his speeches.

Perhaps normally he would be willing to walk away too, despite the need for a lookout while Ace produced such powerful energy and images. But the true reason that Ezekiel couldn’t leave was the deep fear in his heart as he looked up toward the sky.

Did he not like my gift…? Ezekiel wondered. He chewed on his lip as he stood at the entrance to the cave and looked toward the thin sliver of moon that was hanging in the sky above. Was that horrible hunger… related to me…?

A few nights ago, Ezekiel had been awoken by the horrible fury of the image of Randidly Ghosthound, just as he suspected many others across the world had been. It seemed that the effect was lower for those who didn’t possess strong images themselves like it was a calamitous storm that could only be understood for its true destructive nature by those who possessed the capability for flight. And as someone who had been working to heighten and control the image of his unique Class… that strange cry had smashed into Ezekiel.

It had been horrifying. Suddenly he had understood viscerally why developing a powerful image was necessary.

Even with the cold stone of the cave’s wall against his back, Ezekiel twitched as he remembered that feeling. A great black egg had filled his entire consciousness, and for fifteen agonizing seconds, the egg’s gaze had pinned him to the ground and squeezed every drop of emotion it could out of Ezekiel. Those it lapped up greedily, blatantly feeding off of him. Before that egg, his unique Class’s obsessive hunger felt pitiful and weak.

The upside of that night was that Ezekiel’s Class had significantly relaxed its demands on him. He was only required to kill and devour another life once a week in order to maintain the status quo. Which was certainly a result worth celebrating.

The secret fear that Randidly’s outburst was a response to his childish gift made Ezekiel’s face twist and collapse in on itself. He had managed to bury all the guilt he felt over leaving his family in a deep and dark place, but the act of wracking his brain and finally remembering the promise he had made to his son fifteen or so years ago had unearthed that corpse. And the wafting sense of rot and anguish seized Ezekiel’s entire body.

It was suffocating him.

Something inside of him was changing. And Ezekiel was too afraid of what he had been or might become to look too closely at what was going on. So he cowered against the stony mouth to the cave and looked upward to the sky, dreading the return of that horrible oppression from his son.

“I’m… not a good father. Am I…?” Ezekiel whispered.

*****

“Eh…?” Mareen blinked and looked at Bekany Dugg, who for her part, was smiling brightly at the younger woman after delivering her news. Mareen blinked again to try and figure out she had misheard. “You.. what did you say…?”

“I said Ed apparently found us our first client,” Bekany said cheerfully. Their ‘business’ was currently being run by an unoccupied apartment right next to the apartment that Mareen had only moved into a few days ago. It was a business that Mareen had largely been given without asking, and she hadn’t yet done anything about the unasked-for opportunity because it had been less than a week since she had heard about it. Bekany pointed at the mess of papers the covered the round dining room table. “You can find the details there.”

“What… what sort of work…?” Mareen asked almost-unwillingly as she moved to the table. Even if this wasn’t at all what she had intended, she truly did need some sort of job now that she had decided to move to Kharon. And Kharon was already walking across the borderlands, so it wasn’t like she could change her decision now.

The weird series of circumstances aside, Mareen scolded herself for looking a gift horse in the mouth. Having her own source of income would make sure she wasn’t reliant on Naffur for so much. In addition, it would keep her busy during the day while he was handling official Order Ducis duties. In fact, it was quite irresponsible to not get some sort of job now that she lived on Kharon.

“Construction,” Bekany said brightly. Mareen released a sigh of relief and began to move through the papers with more enthusiasm. Since it was the same business she had practically run for Ed, she wouldn’t be completely out of her depth. And then Bekany continued to talk. “Randidly Ghosthound wants to build a house.”

Mareen looked down at the papers in her hands. With trembling hands, she set the papers down. The notes of messy chicken scratch that were smudged with dirt were from Ed. The notes with looping letters and I’s dotted with hearts were from Bekany. Sighing, she began to sort through the haphazard organization and wondered how things had gotten to this point.

A house for the Ghosthound… I think… it would be better if I started with a project that had a little bit lower stakes… Biting her lip, Mareen cast her mind backward.

Mareen had met Ed Dugg six days ago to tell him that she had quit and would be moving to Kharon. She hadn’t had the opportunity to tell him it was because she and Naffur had made up and would be dating from now on, but that was to be expected. Conversations with Ed rarely went the direction that Mareen expected. Dealing with him required the ability to think on your feet.

But what Mareen hadn’t expected was for Ed to jump to the conclusion that she was taking another job in his field. Or, when she truthfully said that was not the case, he would immediately assume that while she wasn’t taking another job, she was founding her own company. His followup acceptance of a position she didn’t offer at a company that didn’t exist left Mareen struggling to gather the words to explain the misunderstanding.

There were just too many factors to address. It left her speechless.

Mareen had left that meeting bewildered but hopeful that Ed’s follow up investigations would allow him to realize the mistake that he had made. Now, several days later, Mareen realized that her thoughts at the time were almost childishly naive. Ed Dugg had the strongest case of Confirmation Bias that she had ever seen.

Ed would interpret Mareen’s untimely death as a PR stunt to drum up more business.

Ed had sent her a message on the day following that misunderstanding filled meeting to the effect of, ‘I can’t believe you forgot to file for incorporation of your new company! Luckily you hired me, an experienced hand. I’ve taken care of everything.’

The day after that Ed had reported to her that he had met with local material providers to establish a working relationship. Bekany was hired as a receptionist and Ed began gathering quotes for various materials and contractors into a haphazard pile on a dining room table. When Mareen had first seen it, she hadn’t been able to resist the impulse to organize and file everything so it would be possible to actually reference the gathered information.

Yesterday had been reassuring bereft of further messages from Ed, but this morning she had been distracted from her mental training by Bekany’s soft knock at her door. They had a job. Her company, that Mareen had very little to do with, had a client. It was not just any job either, but the opportunity to build the house of Randidly Ghosthound.

“Jesus Christ,” Mareen whispered as she read through some of the notes that Bekany had made. The size and scope of this project… the amount of money that the Ghosthound was willing to pay… her heart began to pound.

Despite her misgivings and intentions to confront Ed and get him to stop spreading misinformation, Mareen was intrigued. She couldn’t deny that she had grown to like the construction work while serving in her position at Ed’s company in Donnyton. She also knew that by the end of it, Mareen was essentially running the company while Ed did all of the hands-on work. Their current arrangement was perhaps just the true reflection of their work dynamic, which was why Ed had agreed to an offer that she hadn’t even made.

For all that Ed could be incredibly oblivious, he did have a rather powerful knack for sniffing out good opportunities. Hence the mess that Mareen was currently sifting through on the dining room table. The same factors that made her nervous also meant that if she succeeded in making this client happy...

Hell, even if its just Kharon that hires us to do buildings, we will be set. But we need an actual office if we are going to do this… Mareen bit her lip and looked down at the papers. If she was reading Bekany’s notes correctly, it seemed that Randidly Ghosthound would be providing almost all of the materials himself. The only requirement that whoever was hired for the job would be able to handle them. There was even a note that, assuming he had some spare time, the Ghosthound might be able to assist with refining…

Mareen had been at the Ghosthound’s birthday’ She had felt the powerful images of all those individuals and had felt rather small. It made her realize that although she was getting better at the organization required to juggle a construction project, that was a small thing in a big world.

But isn’t this part of the reason I left Donnyton and quit my old job? It wasn’t just about Naffur, but about getting a new start… For several long seconds, Mareen stared down at the papers.

Then Mareen knocked her fist onto the table. A strong resolve formed in her heart. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

“Well you have to do it,” Bekany replied. “Ed already accepted the commission. We have a meeting with Tatiana scheduled for this afternoon.”

Instantly, Mareen’s expression turned sour. But still, she had made her decision, so she wasn’t going to flake just because Ed had already-

Mareen’s breath hissed through her teeth. Then she sent Ed a vicious message about professional bounds and the chain of command at the company. Especially considering the importance of the client, this sort of behavior was absolutely unacceptable.

To her surprise, Ed’s response was positively penitent. In addition, he called her ‘Boss’ several times throughout his string of apologies. It made Mareen suspicious, but it was enough to cool her temper for the moment. So Mareen could focus on going through the paperwork more thoroughly in preparation for the meeting. In addition, Mareen sent Ed a string of instructions to find out the exact specifications of the materials that the Ghosthound offered to provide.

All this would be moot if they didn’t have the expertise to use the materials.

Right as she was walking out the door of their apartment office, Ed sent the specifications back to her. Seeing them, Mareen blinked. She quickly typed a message back asking if Ed had made a mistake in typing down the hardness and structural integrity of the materials. Ed replied that he had not.

“Holy shit,” Mareen muttered. The strength of the materials was practically ludicrous. At this point, it wasn’t a matter of expertise. It was a matter of whether they could even shape the materials at all. But simply by dint of inertia, Mareen kept walking down the street.

Tatiana met Mareen alone in the industrial sector. The two women chatted for a while before Tatiana led Mareen to a platform covered in those dense Engraving that allowed the moss spirits to grip and levitate the platform. Mareen hadn’t seen the effect up close before, so she was grateful for the chance to ask some questions about the functional limitations of this method.

Tatiana laughed. “Honestly, we don’t really know. We’ve been steadily upping our experiments, but we haven’t yet reached a weight where the moss spirits couldn’t eventually lift the object. There does appear to be some corrosion to the Engraving at higher weights on smaller platforms, but it certainly is an extremely useful ability that we didn’t expect to discover in the making of Kharon.

It was only after Tatiana stepped up onto the platform that Mareen blinked. “Uh… our meeting…?”

“Oh, I figured since we were going to be talking about it anyway, we might as well give Randidly a surprise and pay him a visit.” Tatiana’s smile was sharp as she looked up toward the floating island above them. “He deserves it after all the work he has thrown on my plate recently…”