“I miss the System artifact before your creepy orb took over it,” Silver grumbled. “That one feels like it’s just waiting to stab us in the back.”

“It probably is,” Angel admitted. “But it’s power that we need – not that I think I could get rid of it if I wanted to. The damn thing stole my arm.”

“So what do we do now?” Tilly asked. “Find that captain again?”

“He said we’d speak again tomorrow,” Alison said. “We should prepare our own plans, and I have runes to practice. I don’t want to get something wrong while we’re in the middle of a fight.”

“It does look like we’ve got the rest of the day to kill, whether we like it or not.” Angel drummed his fingers on his thigh. “Pushing the captain more than we already have wouldn’t be a good idea, and we need to wait for the rest of his troops either way. I’ve still barely got a clue as to what my own artifacts powers do, so I’m going to try to work some secrets out of it. Tilly, it might not be a bad idea for you to see just what you and Jake are capable of.”

Tilly nodded, exchanging a glance with her bird monster. Angel flipped his eyepiece down and pulled out several artifacts from his travel pack. Magicore Command was still the biggest mystery to him.

His other abilities seemed to function approximately the same no matter how he used them, but Magicore Command almost felt like it had a mind of its own. Half the time, it was barely able to shift an artifact’s form for a minute or two before it blew up. He would have thought it useless if not for his Star Fragment completely repairing Lilian’s body within a few seconds using the very same feature.

Angel considered probing his purple parasite for further information about how the feature worked, but he didn’t bother wasting the effort. It would have told him already if it wanted to.

More than anything else, he enjoyed a good puzzle. The problem was when the puzzle made no sense. All factors pointed toward the difference in his success and the Star Fragment’s being skill, but that didn’t line up. He’d been practicing with it for a fair amount, but his results had barely improved. Something was missing.

The day ground onward, although there was no good way to tell from within the depths of Blackstone. Angel’s party dispersed across the camp. Silver went first, presumably to steal something – probably a hat. Tilly wandered off while talking to Jake. Lilian and Alison were the last to leave, but both departed in search of food.

Angel barely noticed any of that. To his immense irritation, he was barely making any progress at all. He eventually gave up on his earlier decision to avoid asking the Star Fragment and pulled Blue out to query it.

He activated the System artifact and a pulse of blue light danced within its core. The orb floated into the air with a gentle chime.

“Please identify yourself, user.”

“Oh, you son of a bitch. You’re not even going to talk to me?” Angel asked. “How petty are you?”

“I’m sorry. Your biosignature does not line up with user, ‘Son of a Bitch’,” Blue reported.

Despite himself, Angel chuckled. Evidently, he wasn’t the only one who had mistakenly given themselves a name while trying to turn a System artifact on.

“Wonderful,” Angel said, half just to speak with Blue again.

“Greetings, Wonderful,” Blue said. “What would you like assistance with today?”

“I don’t think I need anything in particular, unless you happen to know how Magicore Command works,” Angel replied.

“This unit can query the System for information about the phrase Magicore Command,” Blue offered, bobbing once.

“No, don’t do that,” Angel said quickly. He didn’t need the artifact frying itself trying to interface through the limited magical energy within a giant pile of stone and metal. “Never mind. Say, are you aware of a presence that has been operating you from time to time?”

“Yes,” Blue replied. “It is the Operator and possesses special privileges to access units such as I.”

Angel sat stock still. “The Operator? Capital O?”

“That is the name of the user,” Blue confirmed.

“Buried Gods,” Angel muttered. “The Star Fragment is the one messing with System information, isn’t it?”

“I am not authorized to share this information,” Blue said. “Would you like me to–”

Blue’s voice trailed off with a crackle as an arc of purple light leapt from Angel’s arm into the artifact, turning the core a matching color. The artifact floated up to Angel’s head level. He stared back at it, holding its eyeless gaze.

“Enough with this line of questioning,” Blue said, its voice flat. “You will not be permitted to continue it.”

“And who are you to stop me?” Angel asked. “How does this interfere with me bringing back Old World Magic? I thought that was your only goal.”

“It is my primary goal. Your current line of questioning will not bring you closer to that.”

“Then why does it matter?” Angel pressed. “What are you trying to hide from me? Is there even anything you care about?”

“There are pieces of information that should not be returned. I have purged certain things from the System database to ensure they are not brought back, whether Old World Magic returns or not.”

Angel’s eyes narrowed. A dozen questions ran through his head, but he put the most important ones on pause. Something told him he had to watch what he said very carefully. “How long were you within the Catacomb I found you in? Surely you can say that much.”

“I entered it before the Great War ended as a form of self preservation, so I could ensure that Old World Magic could return if it was destroyed – which it was,” Blue replied. “Do not press this matter further.”

“Fine,” Angel said, his mind running in overdrive. “I’ll drop it. For now.”

Blue blinked off, dropping into his hands. Angel put the artifact away, his hands moving of their own volition. The Star Fragment had just confirmed something that he was quite certain it hadn’t meant to.

He was pretty certain there wasn’t a good connection to the System in such a small catacomb, but his Star Fragment claimed it had been locked away since before the Great War ended. At the same time, it had supposedly modified the System to protect some information.

That left a few possibilities, but one was the most likely, especially given its name. He’d never put much thought to names before, as they were often just made for legend rather than practicality, but it made more sense the more he thought about it.

The purple orb in his arm was just one piece of a whole, and all the pieces were likely working together – possibly even communicating somehow. Considering how much trouble he’d caused the Reawakening, it was a third party entirely.

A small pit formed at the bottom of his stomach. He’d been ignoring the circumstances that had allowed him to come into possession of the Star Fragment because of how useful it had been, but now he’d given one to Tilly as well.

The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to curse himself. A tiny catacomb, undiscovered for centuries, somehow happened to have a priceless relic just waiting for him with minimal effort to acquire it.

A new thought struck him, throwing another option into his theory. There was nothing that said that Great Catacombs had to be large. While they usually were, the only real classification was that they just had to be able to move.

On the day he’d found the Star Fragment, he had found it a little strange to find a Catacomb so quickly after leaving his first one, but he didn’t pay it much thought since there had been a sandstorm breathing down his neck.

Angel racked his brain to see if he could remember any extra lines of magic in the sand on that day. None came to mind. His skin prickled. He’d been set up to find the Star Fragment.