“What the hell was that?” Tom asked.

The young man lying on the grass looked confused for a moment before wincing and grabbing his forehead.

“I’m sorry, I must have just prophesied,” he said, levering himself to his feet, stretching out his cramping muscles. “Terribly inconvenient. Where was I?” Grant grabbed the spoon off the ground and resumed stirring, as if nothing had happened.

“You just prophesied?” Tom asked.

“Mmmyes?” Grant said, glancing over at him.

“Like, predicted the future?” Jacob clarified.

“Terribly inconvenient. It always leaves me sore.”

Tom and Jacob glanced at each other.

“Is that something you can just do?”

“Well, no,” Grant said. “Unlike more respected En’hols, I cannot control my…episodes. In exchange, my predictions have a more…prognostic nature.”

He glanced between them. “Did anyone write it down?”

Tom and Jacob shook their heads.

“Oh well, it was probably the usual one about the annual Ornceps migration.”

Tom and Jacob shook their heads.

Grant frowned. “What was it about?”

“Something about the Great Houses getting their comeuppance and an endless army that engulfs the world?” Tom said with a shrug.

“Oh,” Grant said, color draining from his cheeks. “That one was probably important.”

“Well, nothing we can do about it now,” Jacob said, handing Grant the mortar and pestle for grinding ash. “You grind charcoal, I’ll stir the boiling-hot fat.”

Grant shrugged, moving over to the less-hazardous job of grinding charcoal into a fine powder. Tom and Jacob shared a look and went back to work.

The half-remembered prophecy rattled around in Tom’s mind for a good half hour as he quietly removed the symbols from the gold. When he was shifting over to putting in his loan’s payment information, he decided to broach the subject of Lily again.

“So Grant, I was asking you before: You said you knew Lily from before. I was wondering what that—son of a bitch!”

Grant convulsed on the ground, writhing directly in the center of the pile of ashes, covering his clothes in black charcoal dust.

“This year, the ornceps migration will be light in the morning. The temperature will be a balmy seventy-five degrees, with partial clouds. Later in the evening, the flock will thicken to its usual sky-swallowing density, using the cover of darkness to cross above the Great Wall. Sport hunters are restricted to one ornceps per family head; subsistence hunters may bag three of the enormous birds per viable marriage license.”

Tom dragged his hand over his face, groaning. “Could you…”

“On it,” Jacob said, yanking Grant out of the ash pile.

A minute later, Grant seemed to snap out of it, shaking his head and sitting up, stretching out his aching muscles.

“Apologies.”

“It’s fine,” Tom groaned, glancing at Grant askance. “Tell me about your childhood with Lily.”

Grant flopped back down onto the ground.

“This year, the ornceps migration will be light in the morning…” Grant launched back into his migration prophecy, his back arched, arms shivering violently.

“He’s faking it,” Jacob said.

“One way to find out.” Tom shrugged, grabbing his chisel and Grant’s hand. With a careful stab, he punctured the meat of Grant’s palm.

“Subsistence hunters may bag three of the enormous birds per viable marriage license,” Grant finished, convulsing in the dirt, completely heedless of his wound.

Grant’s eyes rolled forward, and he inhaled deeply. He blinked the confusion out of his eyes, then frowned, glancing down at his bleeding palm.

“Ow! What happened?” he asked, looking at his palm.

“You were flailing around so much your palm hit one of our tools,” Tom lied with a shrug. Jacob stifled a giggle. “If this keeps up, you might get hurt even worse, capiche?” Tom hoped the unsubtle threat would expose a faker. Carrying on through the wound was already a point in the ‘not faking’ category.

“It’s fine.” Grant shrugged as he sat up. “I’m used to it.” He parted his hair to reveal a scar right on his hairline. “I got this when I struck my head on my cell’s sink.”

He rolled up his sleeves, and pointed out a handful of scars. “Various prophecies at inopportune times.”

Oh my god, he suckered us! Tom thought, eyes narrowing. Grant was a goddamn severe epileptic, the kind that needed a caretaker to make sure they didn’t break their skull and bleed out. The amount of effort it took to keep him alive for five years was way more than the amount of work they could get out of him. Damn it.

“Hey, Grant,” Tom said.

“Yes?”

“Tell me about your childhood with Lily.”

Grant flopped back onto the ground like a clubbed fish.

“Oh!” Jacob said, eyes wide. “You think that’s his trigger?”

Tom cocked an eyebrow, and emphatically gestured to the guy writhing around on the ground, giving a weather forecast of the next coronation of Emperor whomever.

“Yeah, I suppose.” Jacob said, nodding.

“Maybe he can learn to control it. Or at least, we can learn what not to say,” Tom said, idly pulling out his soul-pulse gauge.

“How the hell are we supposed to get any actionable information out of him, then?”

“I didn’t Dream last night,” Tom said, rubbing his chin and kneeling down beside Grant. Last night, he’d dropped all of his soul-pulses into the shield crypt, all zero point four of them.

Next thing he knew, he’d opened his eyes and it had been morning. Tom had almost cried. He’d measured himself in the morning, and it’d been back up to point five. Somehow he’d fallen below the critical mass of soul pulses inside himself that caused him to Dream when he went to sleep.

Weird.

“You didn’t dream. Is that supposed to mean something?” Jacob said with a shrug.

“Help me with his shirt,” Tom said, pulling off the flailing man’s shirt.

“…And if you find a spot on Honor Hill, you will get an excellent view of the procession, but be warned, it’s standing room only,” Grant said, wriggling limply as they tugged his shirt off.

Tom touched the gauge to Grant’s chest.

0.0,0.8,0.0,0.5,0.8,0.0

The needle rapidly flickered back and forth between zero and one as Grant continued his prophecy.

Just to be sure, he tapped it to Jacob’s chest.

0.0

Then his own.

0.5

“Huh.” That certainly is interesting. I wonder if there’s a way to bleed off that excess soul pulse.

Tom was already starting to think of a way to pay off his debt and allow Grant to live a normal life.

“Umm… Why am I shirtless?” Grant asked, glancing around in confusion, then sudden horror at the greedy gleam in Tom’s eyes. He covered his chest, trying his best to shrink away into the grass.

“You’re gonna be fine, I’m just taking some readings,” Tom said placatingly. “To help you relax, why don’t you tell us what growing up with Lily was like?” He pressed the gauge against Grant’s chest.

0.0

“Growing up with Lily?”

0.8

“Well, I mean, she—”

1.2

“She—”

In a flash, the soul-pulses peaked at about three before dropping back down when Grant’s eyes rolled back in his head.

Once Grant was convulsing on the ground spewing prophecies, the needle went back to flickering back and forth between zero and one.

So he needs to build up a certain amount to trigger it, then when it hits, it’s something of a constant draw? It seems like certain emotions build up his soul pulses significantly faster than others. Nostalgia, perhaps? Hmm… Not enough information to tell. He could have hated Lily.

Still, this put Tom on the right track.

“Um… Why am I shirtless?” Grant asked, peering up at the two men looming over him.

“Hold these,” Tom said, shoving the shield crypt and his homemade soul engine into Grant’s hand.

“What?”

“Can you feel that bubbling, sizzling sensation?” Tom asked, pointing at the crypt. Suzie had caught another one last night.

Bored. Suzie sent the thought to him.

Yes, we know you’re bored!

“Yes?” Grant said, looking super confused.

“Okay, I need you to move it from this one, to that one,” Tom said, pointing from the crypt to the soul engine.

“But why?”

“I think we might be able to teach you to rein in your prophesying.”

Grant arched a brow. “The most enlightened En’hols declared my abilities beyond control,” he said, as if speaking to a child. “Marida En’hol herself diagnosed my condition.”

“Yeah, but you gotta ask yourself: Is it better for them if you can’t control your powers?” Tom asked.

“Of course not!” Grant sputtered. “That’s preposterous. If I could control it, that would be nothing but good for my House. If I could reliably see the future on command, I would…” Grant’s jaw dropped.

“Probably take someone important’s job?” Tom asked, raising a brow.

“Oh gods,” Grant said, staring into the distance. “My life is a lie.”

“Welcome to the club,” Tom said, patting him on the back. “You focus on moving that sizzly stuff while we get back to work.”

Grant nodded listlessly while Tom got back to work on the crypt.

This is getting to be a lot to juggle, Tom thought, brows furrowing as he used a pen to rough out the symbols he’d be putting on the crypt.

The problems and revelations were coming hard and fast, not giving Tom time to process or deal with them.

There was still a madman trying to kill him, his soul was still likely to get repossessed, he was no longer sure he was entirely human, he was fairly sure another world existed, and that Lily came from it. Seers actually existed, and they were called En’hol in the other world.

And Tom was one of them. Probably. At least, the Outsiders seemed to think so. And Grant’s face looked like he could’ve been Tom’s cousin.

I knew I was adopted since forever, but I never really gave a lot of thought to my birth parents, Tom thought as he worked.

All things considered, the new stuff really wasn’t the most pressing matter. The pressing matters were:

A: Cop trying to kill him.

B: Soul debt trying to kill him.

Just focus on the stuff trying to kill you, and let the other stuff percolate, Tom thought, eyes narrowed as he began tapping the chisel gently into the soft metal of the crypt. He was working on a viable solution to problem B.

Problem A is a little more touch and go.

******

Hours went by before Grant hollered at them.

“I got it!” he shouted, holding up the soul engine.

Tom could tell just by looking at it that he’d succeeded. The soul engine was crackling with invisible energy and the crypt was depleted.

“Excellent,” Tom said, going over the script he’d carved into the gold, painstakingly making sure it was exactly right—as close to a photocopy of the text as physically possible. Soulmongers thrived on fastidiousness, according to the book.

“Now, I want you to set the big one down and put the same stuff that’s in your chest into the empty crypt there,” Tom said.

This would serve as an excellent proof of concept. If Tom could harness his own passive generation of soul-pulses, paying his debt was basically trivial.

Under the right circumstances, he’d even be able to use Grant as a soul engine.

Tom immediately thought of strapping Grant to a table and talking about Lily at length while a specialized Spell phrase sucked out the soul pulses that resulted from Grant’s emotional distress. It could be quite profitable.

Am I a bad person?

“I think I did it!” Grant said, pulling Tom out of his ruminating.

“Let’s see…” Tom tapped the gauge to Grant’s chest.

0.0

“Alright, you’re empty. Now we take this to the next step,” Tom said.

“What next step?”

“We’re gonna practice controlling your triggers while you dump that sizzly sensation into this. Wait, no.”

Tom switched the rough soul engine in Grant’s hand out with the newly refurbished debt repayment crypt.

He took the buzzing fist-sized block of gold and placed it into the center of the spellwork on the plywood.

A moment later, Ilspeth’s replacement blinked into existence in the center of the spell, directly above the soul engine.

“Tom Graves, how can I help you?”

“Can you see exactly how much debt I have remaining on my loan?” Tom asked.

“Of course.” She glanced off to the side and typed for a moment.

“Twenty-five hundred and four point six.”

“Why is it higher!?”

“Interest compounds daily,” she said with a shrug.

You evil bastards.

“Fine. Can you keep an eye on it? I want to verify my debt repayment crypt is working.”

“Of course.”

Tom glanced back at Grant, who was staring wide-eyed at the beautiful Outsider on the screen, his jaw slowly slackening.

“Grant!” Tom said, snapping a finger in front of the hobo prophet.

“Eh?” Grant’s attention snapped to Tom.

“We’re about to talk about a sensitive subject that seems to set you off. I want you to focus on moving the energy in your chest into the crypt as it comes, okay?”

“…Okay? But I don’t really have a sensitive subject—”

“Tell me about growing up with Lily.”

“Growing up with…”

“Grant, focus!”

“She was…”

Grant’s eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed face-first onto the ground.

“The war rages on without an end in sight. Without drastic action, none of us will see another year as the lords of Orsoth. We simply cannot win against something without limits. Perhaps a trade, then? Give it back. That is what started this, after all.”

Grant’s voice changed pitch, like he was doing voices.

“I think it’s too far gone by this point. Unless he decides to help us, we are doomed. Perhaps I can reach backwards and warn an earlier version of myself.”

“You know how dangerous that is, Grant!” Grant said, sounding like a speaker echoing a distant conversation.

“We get anything?” Tom asked, turning to the Outsider, ignoring Grant’s ominous self-conversation. I mean, I’m sure it’s important, but whatever. I’ll deal with that later.

“Yes, you lowered your debt by point seven soul pulses before your friend collapsed. You now owe twenty-five hundred and three point nine.”

“Fantastic.” Tom snatched the debt repayment crypt off the ground and channeled the faint energy inside him into it.

“How about now?”

“It dropped by another half a soul-pulse,” she said.

“Excellent, thank you… What was your name again?”

“Luz,” she said, nodding to him.

“Thank you, Luz.”

Now, I’m not sure if it can be done, but if I can do the soul equivalent of pumping iron, maybe I can pay my debt without even needing Suzie.

Abandon Suzie? His frog-familiar’s emotions caught him in the gut like a haymaker.

Nononono, Tom hastily amended his thoughts. I’m saying everything you bring in would be pure profit. You’d be allowing me to succeed to a tremendous degree!

Yay!

Whew, that was close. Tom wiped imaginary sweat off his brow, glancing up at the moon rising above their little arts and crafts circle.

Looks like I’ve just about solved problem B, Tom thought. They had one more night in the double-wide before Reese ‘buried them in the backyard’.

Maybe I’ll figure out the solution to problem A tomorrow.

RINNGG!

His prepaid phone went off, with the hideous default ring. Grampa’s hotel number.

Expecting Grampa to be complaining about something, Tom lifted it to his ear.

“I fucking warned you,” Ken’s voice came across the phone.