Through a curious sequence of events, Vance found himself following an eight-year-old boy through the streets of Cromsville. They walked through the crowds and returned to Old Bastion by an unfamiliar route. Vance expected the city guards to accost them—an outsider and a noble child were bound to attract unwanted attention, like two inexperienced stagehands in a tasteless theatrical production—but neither the guards nor the ruffians made a move. Whenever the eight-year-old passed by, they looked down and seemed to be retreating into their own clothes, just as a timid turtle retreats into its shell. And while Vance was grateful that he didn’t need to deal with any additional trouble, he also became suspicious of the boy’s identity.

“What’s your name?” the boy said at an intersection.

“Vance. And you?”

“I don’t have one,” the boy said plainly. “Why are you looking for Nardeviv?”

“Business.”

“What kind of business? You don’t look like a redspine contractor to me.”

Vance remained silent.

“You can tell me. I can keep a secret.”

This boy … He isn’t human, is he? Vance collected himself and said, “I want some goods fenced, and I heard Nardeviv could help me.”

“Holy dromedary! Who told you that?”

“Lauressa … the woman who accepted your bouquet.”

“Really? But Nardeviv is an exemplary citizen. He runs the largest redspine lab in Old Bastion, and he would never—I say, never—associate with thieves or fences. It would hurt his reputation.”

“Well, Lauressa seems to disagree. And I think she knows him better.”

“Hmm,” the boy smiled, “maybe you’re right. Anyway, we’ll find out soon.”

After a brief walk, Vance and the boy arrived at their destination. They stood in front of a stone edifice, a stately building with five towering smokestacks. It had two floors, one more than most of the ramshackle houses around it, and it was built entirely out of quarried limestone—a choice that wasn’t based on a whimsical architectural design but on the practical need to avoid fires. Several private guards—high-paid mercenaries and former brigands—were positioned at three-meter intervals to secure the circumference of the building. And two guards in heavy armor stood at the front entrance, under the wooden sign that read, “Cromish Redspine Company, Old Bastion Labs.”

The boy walked between the broad-shouldered guards and entered the labs. When Vance tried to follow him inside, however, the guards formed an X with their spears and said, “Proof of employment or federal permit.”

“He’s with me,” the boy said. “Nardeviv gave him permission.”

The guards moved their spears out of the way.

Vance entered the building and said, “It’s time you told me who you were.”

“Nardeviv’s assistant,” the boy said. “One of six, in fact.”

“And where are you taking me?”

“The office on the second floor.”

The two walked through a long corridor dotted with metal doors. Most of these doors were shut tight, but those that remained open revealed spacious rooms where diligent alchemists worked to distill Vermeil Extract from a bushy plant called Redspine Thistle. There were bronze mortars and pestles, glass beakers, red-stained spiralling pipes, brass alembics, and Ezran burners. The alchemists covered their faces with cloth masks and their clothes with thick leather aprons. It seemed that their work was dangerous and demanding, but Vance didn’t know much about alchemy, so he couldn’t tell whether he should be impressed.

After the long corridor, there was a helical stairway, and then appeared the double door to Nardeviv’s office. To be fair, it was less of a door and more of an awe-inspiring gate, with golden hinges and sublime metalwork and a camel skull for a knocker. The boy opened it with visible difficulty: he had to tiptoe to reach the knob, and he struggled to pull the massive weight. Then he invited Vance inside with a few friendly gestures and sibilant sounds: “Step inside. Step inside. It’s a part of Carcassia. A sweet summery mise en scène.”

Vance entered the office. It was a sharp contrast to the rest of the building. The ground was covered with patterned rugs, and the walls with desert-themed tapestries. Next to the only window, there was a quaint painting of an oasis, and the palm trees, so vividly portrayed by the artist’s vibrant brushstrokes, also served as the raw material for the desk and chairs of the office. It was wrong to think of this room as a part of Cromsville; it was in fact an enclave—a small organ of Carcassia that had been torn off the main body and implanted here in the embrace of stone.

But it wasn’t the exotic atmosphere of the room that enthralled Vance the most. The foreignness had a powerful allure, yet it still couldn’t compare to another rare sight. When he entered, he saw a complete set of sextuplets before him. One of them was the eight-year-old boy that he had been following, while the rest had been waiting inside the office. They had the same hair, the same eyes, the same smile, the same posture. They wore identical clothes and jewelry. And although he had spent a good time with his young guide, Vance couldn’t differentiate him from the others, no matter how hard he tried.

“What kind of game is this?” Vance chuckled. “Where’s Nardeviv?”

The six children didn’t provide an answer. Instead, they raised their hands to their chests and opened the lockets that hung around their necks. Five out of the six golden lockets were empty, but the last contained a red-eyed Carcassian Butterfly—a feeble species of desert monster. It fluttered its white wings and jumped out of the tiny locket. After it circled Vance once, it burst into flames in midair, as if it had been struck with a flaming arrow. The fire continued to grow and swirl until it was large enough to engulf an adult human. Then it began to subside, revealing the humanoid form of the ifrit Nardeviv.

“Forgive me for my delayed appearance. I couldn’t transform in the streets. That would’ve caused quite the commotion and put me in undesirable danger.”

Nardeviv resembled a tall, sinewy man—fit and athletic, but not encumbered by a bulk of muscle—with veinous brown skin and wine-colored monolid eyes. His black hair was as coarse as a camel’s hide, but it was cut short enough to appear straight and soft. On each side of his head, there was a shaven line extending from his temple to a little above his ear. And the hair that was missing from this part seemed to have gone to his thick eyebrows, which parted only a short distance above his aquiline nose. Like the sextuplets, he wore the standard attire of high nobility, but he substituted the fur jacket for a leather waistcoat, which harmonized with his white shirt and close-fitting pants.

“You said your name was Vance.” He gestured at a wooden chair meant for guests. “Have a seat. I hope you like the decor.” He went around his desk and sat on the chair of the lab owner. “You want to sell me your stolen goods, correct?”

Vance sat down and said, “Yes … Lauressa told me you can help. I want—”

“One second.” Nardeviv turned his attention to the sextuplets. “I think you can leave now. Follow the same route and come back in an hour.”

“Should we stay as children?” one of the sextuplets said.

“No, no, it’s getting old and humdrum. You need to stay au courant with the popular taste,” Nardeviv said. “Show me the mad corsairs of the east. Eccentric and flashy. But don’t overdo it with the accessories.”

The sextuplets spun rapidly in place and burst into pale-blue flames, losing their material form and heating the air in the room. When the spontaneous fire subsided, they had transformed into one-eyed pirates—a fairly common sight in the eastern ports, but somewhat of a novelty in Cromsville.

“Perfect,” Nardeviv smiled. “Now go put on a good show. And if anyone asks for a healer, you know where to send them.”

The sextuplets left the room in a hurry, and the last of them closed the door.

“Are they ifrits too?” Vance said.

“Yes, they’re my brothers.”

“But their eyes aren’t red.”

“Red? Oh, you must’ve heard that one from Lauressa. Crazy girl! She’s never met my brothers, so she thinks all ifrits have red eyes. To be honest, I might’ve told her that myself. In the heat of the moment, mind you. She said my eyes were pretty, and I didn’t know what to say!” Nardeviv laughed for a good five seconds. Then he continued, slightly condescendingly, “For all that it matters, though, ifrits are born seven sparks at a time. The strongest turns fire-red and becomes a Marid, while the other six remain blue and are called Zurq. That’s to put it simply for a confused human like you.”

“I see …”

“Anyway, where were we?” Nardeviv interlaced his fingers in front of him. “Ah, yes, the stolen goods. Normally, I would have given you a short letter and sent you to a cantankerous friend of mine. But I got to see Lauressa today, and I’m in a good mood, so there’s no need for third parties.”

“Will you buy the goods?” Vance said.

“Perhaps.” Nardeviv picked up a shiny black-ink pen and opened his business records—a thick ledger with the company’s name on its cover. “How much are they worth? Give me a rough range.”

“Somewhere between 600 and 800 gold.”

“And what’s the nature of the goods?”

“Adventuring gear and weapons.”

Nardeviv dotted three points in the ledger, and then he dropped his pen and began to tap the desk with his right forefinger. The rhythm that he played was from a theatrical production, a widely popular but dismally moralistic work titled Sordid Aspirations, which had been performed at the Cloudspire Theater a few days ago. But as he reproduced the subtle tonalities of the music, although it had brought its audience to tears in the crowded theater, his face remained thoroughly deadpan and emotionless; he was mulling something over, with the careful concentration typical of a time-poor surgeon or cryptographer.

“Is something wrong?” Vance said.

“No. Not at all,” Nardeviv smiled. He picked up his pen again and wrote 800 gold under miscellaneous expenses in his well-organized ledger. Then he looked Vance in the eye and said, albeit with some hints of hesitation, “I hope I’m not overstepping my boundaries, but could I ask you a few more questions?”

“Only if they’re reasonable.”

“They are, I assure you,” Nardeviv said, closing his ledger and interlacing his well-shaped fingers again. “First things first—I want to know where you got your goods from. Did you break into any shops in Cromsville?”

“No,” Vance said. “You could say I did some banditry.”

“Splendid. In that case, my friends in the Mercantile Union might consider restocking their shelves with your goods. But they are hard to please, mind you, and they really hate quarrels and squabbles, so you have to tell me now: will anyone appear at their stores and claim that the goods are stolen?”

“The original owners are all dead, if that’s what you’re asking. Your friends shouldn’t have any problems, except maybe with a few poltergeists.”

“Ghosts aren’t an issue,” Nardeviv laughed heartily. “For merchants, that is. They only fear red balances and rotten deals. And judging by your answers so far, they would consider buying your goods an absolute win.”

“Do we have a deal?” Vance said.

“There is one last question,” Nardeviv smiled. “It has no effect on our current transaction, but I would love to hear your answer before we proceed.”

“Again, if it’s reasonable, I can answer.”

“Would you like to work for me, Vance?” Nardeviv asked. Then he stood up abruptly, walked around his palm-tree desk, and sat opposite Vance, on a chair meant for guests. “800 gold is quite the sum. It could be that you killed one or two high-level adventurers and took their pricey gear. But … I highly doubt it. You’re not wearing professional armor; you’re not carrying any fancy weapons; you don’t exude as much self-confidence as you should. And all of this means that you couldn’t have defeated any high-level adventurers.”

“What are you getting at?” Vance said.

“You killed beginners to collect your goods,” Nardeviv said, with an insight much sharper than anything Vance had expected. “I don’t know how many, but your hands are stained with a lot of blood, enough to get anyone in trouble with your Church of Amirani.”—mimicking an ardent priest—“Bless us and forgive us, O Lord of Our World!”

“I haven’t been in your office for 10 minutes, and you’re already calling me a murderer? Is this how you do business?”

“Am I wrong?”

“A monster did the killing,” Vance said. “I just looted the corpses.”

“How modest,” Nardeviv laughed. “Blaming a monster is a classic move, but it rarely works. You know what I’m talking about, right? You will fail your next inspection. The priests will see your crimes in your Chaos Factor, and you will be put to death—a piteous end and a devastating loss of talent. But I can save you before it’s too late. I can bribe the right people so that your next inspection never comes. I need someone with your unique mindset, someone who can kill on my behalf.”

“Why would a shapeshifter like you need an assassin?” Vance said.

“The Aureate Concord.”

“What’s that? A treaty?”

“Yes. Between subjects and subjugators,” Nardeviv said. “When you humans conquered Kuthbaan and renamed it Carcassia, it became necessary to define the terms of human-ifrit coexistence. The Aureate Concord was drawn up, and one of its terms stipulates that ifrits go through a humiliating ritual at birth. The ritual limits, let’s say, the amount of harm we can inflict on humans. I don’t know what my ancestors were thinking when they agreed to such a thing, but I guess they were concerned more with survival and less with the inconveniences that I have to suffer today.”

“So you can’t kill humans?”

“I can,” Nardeviv smiled, “but such an act will have … dire consequences. It would suit my interests much better that another human does the killing.”

“And why did you choose me for the job?” Vance said. “You told the Zurq that I wasn’t a threat, and you invited me to your personal office. It seems you trust me much more than you should.”

“I have my reasons,” Nardeviv replied, handling his words as a miser handles his coins. “If you agree to work for me, I will explain everything. But there’s not much I can say now.”

“I’m sorry,” Vance said, “but you’ll have to look for someone else.”

“I’ll pay you well, and you’ll be safe from the Church.”

“I have other plans. Sorry.”

“So be it … I seem to have rushed things, when patience was due.” Without hiding his disappointment, Nardeviv stood up and walked to a cabinet in the far corner of the room. He opened the second drawer, removed its false bottom, and retrieved an unornamented scroll. Then he handed it to Vance and said, “Open it and tell me if you can read it.”

“It’s a map of Blackmoss Forest.”

“Yes. The marked location is where you should drop your goods. Leave them in the hollow trunk of the oldest tree in the area. My men will pick them up and smuggle them into the city.”

“And my payment?”

“Check the same tree the next morning. You’ll find your gold.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Vance stood up and put the marked map in his bag. “I might have more goods in the near future. Would you be interested?”

“Of course,” Nardeviv said. “Use the same drop point. I’ll have my men check it periodically. But I’ll deduct 15% from the total value of your goods—my share in all future transactions.”

“Sounds fair. Nice doing business with you.”

Vance walked to the door without looking back. He had an uneasy feeling, and although he had brought up the prospect of future transactions, he was already having doubts about how much he should get involved with this ifrit. Their relationship, if it continued, would require a delicate balance of trust and mistrust, of caution and incaution. But the stable income that the besuited devil promised was an enticing reward for any courageous devil dealer, and it seemed to counterbalance the clear drawbacks. As he reached for the doorknob, Vance decided that he would try his luck and see how much gold he could siphon before things went south.

The doorknob refused to turn.

“You have to click the small button in the center,” Nardeviv said, now sitting comfortably behind his desk, with a theater programme in his hands.

Vance clicked the button and turned the knob.

“One last thing.”

Vance turned around.

“I’m an outsider like you,” Nardeviv said, without raising his eyes from the bright-colored programme. “Engelian or Carcassian, northerner or southerner, everyone’s just called an outsider around here. And Old Bastion is a dirty place. If you find yourself covered in grime, you can come to me for help. We’ll clean it off together, even if you don’t want to work for me.”

No more was said, and the door closed tight.

***

Despite the lingering unease, Vance did some shopping and returned home in a good mood. He deposited his loot at the designated drop point. Then he spent the rest of the day with Timathor, training the goblin to use its weapons better and learning from it more about its language.

An hour before sunset, he started preparing dinner. He cooked long-grain rice in his pot and grilled two Gillgians—a blue-finned freshwater fish—over the flame of his firepit. It seemed that Timathor had never eaten fish before, and the prickly bones proved to be a terrible nuisance for it. When it learned to remove them, however, the meal turned into a delightful delicacy, and Vance acquired a new menu item to combat the obsession with meaningless hoarding. One day, I’ll give the little rascal a rod and teach it to fish on its own.

After the sky turned dark, Timathor retired to the underground room with a full stomach and a wide grin on its face. Vance checked on it one last time to make sure that it wasn’t rummaging through his belongings. When he found it sleeping peacefully on its camel-hair bedroll, he smiled and left to take care of his nocturnal business. He hadn’t spent the past few days resting without valid reason; he was preparing himself for this night, for the challenge that would grant him his Class Ascension. The bandages were no longer wrapped around his body, and his burns were no longer stinging or aching. With full HP, MP, and Stamina, he traversed Blackmoss Forest and arrived at the shrine.

He crossed his legs and settled in front of the black flower. His surroundings underwent the same transformation as before, and a female voice replaced the maddening buzz of Honeydew Flies.

“You are back. Who do you offer us tonight?”

Vance remained silent.

“Eight humans you serve us. All eight we accept.”

Ghost by ghost, the fallen adventurers materialized, and the last of them was none other than Kaz, who looked as tormented and afflicted as all the others. The ethereal shackles that bound them had no keys. Their dismal fate had been sealed as far back as when the spectral dagger touched their bodies. After a few moments, the ghosts of Water Slimes appeared from the darkness of the forest. They absorbed the helpless ghosts of the adventurers, who began to suffocate and decompose inside acid and alkali. Then they jumped away and disappeared from the world, leaving scattered stains of ghostly liquid, which bubbled as if with wrath and vanished as if with appeasement.

“Your offering is a promise fulfilled,” the female voice said. “How may I help you, Adventurer Slayer?”

I want to level up.

“Very well. May your strength be a curse upon humanity.”

Level Up Alert You have leveled up. Please distribute your new 25 stat points.

Vance paused for a moment and considered his options. To achieve his first Class Ascension, he would need to fight a Middlerift Beast, so it felt logical to spend his points on his defense stats. He wanted to give them a boost so that he would be better prepared for any surprises. Accordingly, he spent 13 points on Magic Resistance and 12 on Endurance. A pang of guilt attacked his chest, but he felt that he was doing the right thing: these points weren’t lost, and he could compensate for them in the coming levels by spending nothing on defense and focusing instead on Intelligence and Duplicity.

Level Up Alert

Stats updated successfully.

Name Vance Wolfe Age 24 Class Adventurer Slayer Level 26 → 27 HP 440/440 → 455/455 MP 830/830 → 860/860 Stamina 830/830 → 860/860 Strength 30 → 30 Endurance 76 → 88 Intelligence 262 → 262 Magic Resistance 76 → 89 Duplicity 201 → 201 Faith 5 → 5

While Vance checked his new vitals, the female voice said, “Is there anything else I may help you with, Adventurer Slayer?”

My Class Ascension.

“Do you wish to begin the hunt?”

Yes.

“Very well. Drink the nectar of the Teneb Rose.”

Vance stood up and approached the black flower, which was still nursing in its bloody cradle. He bent down and scooped a handful of its sweet nectar, with as much care as possible, to avoid inflicting any harm on the murky petals. The nectar had the viscosity of honey, but it smelled more like white oak. When he was much younger, Vance had spent a few months working at a sawmill, so he found the vanilla-like scent both nostalgic and soothing. But he still hesitated to put the substance in his mouth. After all, he couldn’t tell what kind of effect it would have on his body.

“Adventurer Slayer, what is there to fear when you have pledged yourself to Thurvik?” the female voice said. “The nectar gives you the gift of elevated consciousness—eyes for the blind; ears for the deaf. Drink, and you will make the leap to Middlerift, the immortal plane of our lord.”

Vance closed his eyes, raised his hands to his mouth, and drank the nectar. He felt it as it filled his mouth and dripped down his throat. Was it coagulating inside his narrow esophagus? Would it condense at the opening to his stomach and block the path to his intestines? No, the nectar wasn’t traveling down his long digestive tract. It was oozing out of it and seeping into his chest cavity. It was coating his heart and lungs and encapsulating them in a thick, viscous layer—a baleful packaging that overwhelmed him with a burning sensation.

He thought that his heart would fail, that it would surrender to the stickiness of the treacly mass and resign its long-served duty; but a moment later, it was pumping blood at a fast rate. Rather than decelerate to a lethal standstill, the constant beat had become an accelerating tempo, and it wasn’t only blood that was being propelled through the arteries and veins of his body: the nectar itself had become a component of his plasma. It permeated his body until it reached the farthest outposts, with the highest concentration now in his brain. Then he opened his eyes and screamed his lungs out.

For the first time ever, he perceived that he wasn’t alone at the shrine. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of Honeydew Flies all around him. They were up on the tree branches, down in the bushes, among the grass, and among the stone pillars that were coruscating in purple. They had eight red eyes, four on each side of their pincer-equipped mouths. Two hairy antennas extended out of their round heads, and four brownish wings grew out of their curved backs. Some were the size of an adult man’s tight fist, while others were larger than Vance himself.

“Surrender yourself to their pincers,” the female voice said, “for they are the gatekeepers, and they are the deliverers.”

The Honeydew Flies began to flap their pterostigmal wings, and a clamorous drone thundered through the night as they gathered to create a formidable swarm. It was the same noise that Vance heard whenever he was leaving the shrine, yet it felt different now that he was no longer blind to its source.

The flies circled in the air and closed in on him from every direction. They were hideous creatures, whose sight filled even the most sympathetic human with revulsion and awakened the most violent instincts from civilized slumber. But he decided to listen to what the female voice had said, and he didn’t attack them, even when they got uncomfortably close. Focusing on the big picture, he thought that the flies were testing him and believed that they would eventually carry him to Middlerift. He was confident that it was only a matter of time before they deemed him worthy of passage, but then the largest of the flies landed on his back and opened its pincers wide.

What’s happening? What’s it doing?

“May you be successful on your hunt.”

The Honeydew Fly clenched Vance’s head and ripped it off his neck.