For the second time in her life— and that day, to tell the truth— Chase had many, many questions and no desire to find their answers. Not at the minute, anyway.

Certainly, the question “How had this many dead clowns managed to sneak up on a watched building?” was worth asking.

Also, it wasn’t like “How did they know to come here?” wasn’t worthy of consideration.

And while “Is it just zombies or is the Necromancer out there too?” would be a really useful thing to know, at the minute Chase had other priorities.

Defying every instinct of her halven genes, Chase flew across the room like the world’s tiniest charging bull, and slammed into the door with the full force that her thirty-two pounds could muster.

Maybe it was surprise. More likely it was luck. But for whatever reason, the door snapped back, as did a number of smaller bones in zombified clown wrists, as Chase tried to close it, cards flying from her hands to join the fallen pastries on the floor…

…but she couldn’t quite manage to shut the portal, even in the face of rotting, honking doom. Some of the zombies had been hurt by the closing door, sure. A few broken fingers, maybe a snapped forearm at worst. But all of them were still fumbling around, and inexorably the door was being forced open again…

“Renny!” Chase shouted, as glass broke to her side, and flapping, torn-sleeved arms reached in to grope confusedly at cakes and rolls. “Help!”

Behind her air rushed and whirled. “Least Elemental!” Renny shouted. “Manipulate Air!”

Least Air_Elemental_01 has joined your party!

Suddenly Chase felt a massive hand on her back, as her hair puffed in her face, and her headscarf went flying. She flattened against the door, shuddering as she rode it shut again, severed arms and hands and fingers rattling in the mini-hurricane. She managed to get her face to the side without breaking her neck and saw a familiar-looking tornado with eyes speeding along the wall, holding back the zombies that tried to get through the display windows. As she’d hoped, the tighter quarters were hindering them, and the elemental had no physical body to grab.

But impossibly, as they clawed at it, red numbers floated up out of its wide funnel shape. It seemed to shrink a bit with each hit, the angry lightning that danced around its eyespots snapping and escaping as it lost substance.

“Oh no!” Greta said, taking in the scene from the top of the stairs. “Chase!”

“Run!” Chase yelled. “Get out the window!”

“They’re out back too!” Her sister replied, head whipping around, taking in the scene. Then she moved out of Chase’s vision, down into the room.

“Careful!” Renny said. “Don’t get between me and the door!”

Greta nodded. “That makes this a little harder. Does this look like ten feet to you?”

“What? Oh! Good idea?”

“What?” Chase screamed. “What’s a good idea?” The door was shaking again, the mob outside pounding on it with fury. The loss of a few arms had slowed them down, but they had smelled brains even through their squeezable rubber noses, and those clowns meant murder.

Sawdust sprayed in Chase’s face, as a hammering, sawing, and pounding noise filled the air. Chase kept her eyes shut, as she tried to figure it out. Wait a minute! That’s the noise I hear when Copper Foomy works in his workshop!

Precisely thirty seconds after it started, the noise stopped, and with a snap, the bar was on the door again, the socket back in place and reinforced. The pressure left Chase’s back then, and she backed away, shrieking as part of her hair ripped away too, caught between the bar and the door. Chase shot Greta a hurt look back and caught her sister putting away a few small carpentry tools.

Greta had used a craft skill to fix the door from a distance.

“When the heck did you get the Carpenter job?” Chase gasped.

“Today. When you sent me to the Camerlengo I needed to recharge my stamina to get back to town quickly, so it’s all your fault. Besides, you took way more jobs than I did so that’s only fair.”

Chase opened her mouth to retort…

Least_Air_Elemental_01 has left your party!

...And remembered that she had other, bigger concerns right now.

“Upstairs! Now!”

She didn’t bother looking at the windows. She knew what she’d see. And behind her, she heard the wood starting to crack again, as the sockets creaked, metal groaning from the stress.

The three of them made it upstairs, and Chase snapped “Use that air push thing! Keep them from coming up here!”

Renny whirled and stretched out his arms, making paw motions like he was playing an instrument. Behind her, she heard groans and thuds, and sad, hungry honks, as the zombie clowns who had managed to reach the stairs met gale-force winds. Cards flew in a hurricane along with buns, pies, and bits of decomposed flesh. The remaining zombies, already stooped to navigate the halven-sized room, kept trying to push forward and up onto the stairs. And there were enough of them filling the room now, that it looked like they might make it, through sheer persistence.

For reasons Chase couldn’t tell, an inordinate amount of cream pies seemed to be finding their way to clown faces, and she fought back the urge to giggle. It was one of those cases where she was sure she wouldn’t stop if she got started.

Then a vase went sailing over her shoulder, caught the jet stream of pressurized air, and shot into one of the foremost zombies, sending a red ‘155’ up through the floor, drifting into the upper story, right through a chest of drawers. The zombie dropped and blew backward into its friends, knocking them back.

Chase shot Greta a look, found Greta reaching for a potted plant. “Good idea! Keep it up!” The Oracle yelled and went scrambling to find her own ammunition.

Seconds later, with a heavy pile of plates under one arm and the other hand poised to throw the first deadly dish, Chase paused.

Didn’t I take a job for this?

“Status.”

Why yes! Yes, she had!

And Chase grinned wide, as she tapped into her hitherto unused batch of Archer skills.

“Aim!” she called, delaying her throw.

Your Aim Skill is now level 2!

And the result from her delay was a headshot, and carried by the force of the wind, it caved in the clown-thing’s skull.

“Rapid Fire!” No skill gain there, it didn’t have levels. But it DID result in the plate she threw splitting into three identical plates and making one heck of a mess as they squished into zombies below.

“Ricochet Shot!”

Your Ricochet Shot skill is now level 2!

Chase threw plates until she was out, then went for small pieces of furniture, drawers from the dresser, and finally, pieces of firewood from the fireplace, tossing the poker in for good measure. She found that mixing aim and ricochet shot let her headshot a zombie, and do collateral to his friends. Her skills climbed and climbed, but eventually she got an ominous message.

Your Ricochet Shot skill is maxed! Level up your Archer job to increase this skill!

She paused…

…and only then realized just how tired and drained she was. The skills she was using ate up a lot of stamina and fortune. Well, no matter, they had food up here—

A basket of bread went sailing past Chase, and boosted by the wind, thudded into a zombie. Hard rolls scattered, bouncing off the crowd and mixing with the general gore and mess on the floor.

“You threw the food?” Chase shrieked at Greta. “What the hell were you thinking!”

“I was thinking we’re out of stuff to throw, and we still have zombies!” Greta screamed back. “What do we do, Chase? What do we do?”

“I should have leveled by now. Why haven’t I leveled?” Chase asked, looking around wildly. If she’d only level, she’d be re-energized and could maybe do something more.

“We’re still in the same fight!” Renny said. “You only level once you’re out of a situation that gives you enough experience to level! I think that’s how it works anyway…”

Chase stared around at the now empty room, then down into the mass of zombies. The wind had worked for a bit, but by itself, it wasn’t enough. She could see those endlessly grasping arms, clawing for purchase and finding it. The zombies were able to brace off each other and the fallen bodies of their former colleagues, pushing themselves forward, despite the blasting air. She watched eyeballs get torn from sockets, watched greasepainted cheeks flap until they tore, watched wigs peel away from bald scalps, and it wasn’t enough. Now that the rain of crockery and household goods had stopped, the undead were making progress. They’d reach the upper level in minutes.

Unless…

“Greta, can you use your carpentry skill? Board up the stairway?”

“I don’t have any boards!”

Wordlessly, Chase pointed up at the roof.

Greta followed her gaze. “Ooooh… right.” Greta whipped out her tools and started making sawing motions. Chase coughed as sawdust rained down on her, spluttered, then moved over to stand next to Renny.

“If they get close enough to grab you, I’ll haul you back, okay?”

Renny nodded, saying nothing. His little fox face was screwed up in a look of fuzzy concentration, and Chase found him so adorable that her heart almost broke.

Then Chase looked to the clowns not eight feet away and found the mood quite shattered. She had to concentrate. She had to trust in her sister and hope that there was enough time to finish the job.

There almost wasn’t.

But just as the first ragged arms were within range to snatch Renny, just as she was readying to grab her friend and jump back, Greta shouted “Done!”

With a slam and a hammering noise, a large, shingled cap of wood slammed into place, nailed over the stairwell. Several hands poked out from under it, groping around, arms caught by the mid-combat crafting.

Chase reviewed her options. Her stamina was drained, her fortune was low, but she still had plenty of sanity, now didn’t she?

The Oracle pointed at the nearest hand as she drew backward and said, “Lesser Healing!”

There was a scorching noise, and the zombie shrieked.

You have “healed” zombie_78 for 17 points!

Your lesser healing skill is now level 15!

“Ha! Take that! Lesser Healing!”

Another scorch, more words, and Chase felt elation seize her. “I set up here to heal people, now didn’t I? I can do this all night! Come on you dead jerks!”

Not until she’d maxed her skill at 25, gained a point of wisdom to boot, and burned through most of her sanity, did she finally back off. By that time the only hands left poking out from the rough wooden plug were blackened and unmoving.

“This is good,” Renny said, flopping down on his tail. “They’ll have to clear away the dead ones up by the plug if they want to try and break it down.”

“Or they could just push on the bodies in front of them, and bull through it that way,” Chase said, shaking her head. “We haven’t leveled, so the fight’s still going on. If we can escape clean, or get to a spot of safety, we’ll level up then, right?”

“I think so. I think that’s how it works. I hope so, because I sure could use level ten!”

“I just need more energy. I can’t believe you threw the food!” She glared at Greta… a glare that turned to concern, as she saw her sister curled up into a ball on the floor and heard her sobbing. “Oh. Oh Greta.”

Chase hugged Greta to her, and the burly halven girl returned the embrace with all her might. But Chase left the discomfort slide and focused her eyes on the jagged hole in the ceiling, where Greta had used her craft to strip out the boards and then turn them into the plug. “You saved us, it’s okay,” Chase whispered.

Then, faster than Chase could react, a black shape shot in from the window, clawing and scrabbling for purchase. Chase opened her mouth to scream… then shut it, as she recognized a familiar dwarf. “Gadram!” she said instead, her voice squeaking. She cleared her throat. “Gadram. What the heck is this? You were supposed to be keeping watch out there!”

“I knoo. I’m sorry,” he said, crouching down next to them. “I don’t knoo how I missed ‘em. Thirty of ‘em were on this place ‘fore I knew it.”

“So why aren’t the others coming to our aid?”

“They’ve got their oon mobs! There’s more around the inn! And the church.”

“What about Millie?” Greta snuffled, rubbing furiously at her eyes.

“She’s safe. I saw that lot comin’ in time to warn her. She’s hiding in the cellar, behind cloosed doors. But listen, there’s dozens of ‘em. Maybe even a hundred or soo.”

Chase fought down her irritation. Greta and Renny were keeping watch up here, and they didn’t see the zombies until it was too late. There are shenanigans at work here. This doesn’t seem like Vaffanculo’s style.

Bam!

She turned her head and saw the wooden plug shake. “We’re out of time. Gadram, can we escape through the window?”

He shook his head. “Still about a dozen or so outside. The noise drew others. I kin make it. Ye lot?” He shook his head. “Not wi’out losing at least one of ya.”

“Unacceptable. We need to… We need to get out of the fight,” Chase said. “Then we can level and regain our energy. And come at this problem better and tougher. But how can we do that?”

Gadram looked at her. Then he looked up, and grinned. “Perfectly good hole in that roof up there.”

“You’re a genius!” Chase said, then ran to drag the empty chest of drawers over. She clambered up on it, reached out to grab the edge of the hole and hoist herself up…

…and paused. She had a little fortune left, now didn’t she? “Hey Greta?”

“Yeah?” Her sister was composed again, face red but out of tears for the moment.

“Come up here next to me. And if I give you a thumbs up, then climb up onto the roof. If it’s thumbs down, then don’t.”

“Did I hear you right?”

“It’s Oracle shenanigans. Trust me.”

“All right…” Greta got up next to her.

Chase smiled and said “Foresight.”

In the now-familiar stillness, she watched herself give Greta a thumbs up. Watched Greta haul herself up.

And gasped as she watched some sort of black glowing energy slam into her, turning Greta into a charred husk.

Chase watched herself scream, and scream, and scream…

And the second that time snapped back into joint, Chase not only twisted her thumb down, she grabbed Greta’s arm with her free hand, moving her lips silently, staring at her sister with mute appeal.

Your Foresight skill is now level 19!

“Chase?” Greta said, with her own eyes widening. “Chase, you’re scaring me!”

The familiar band of tension in her chest eased. Chase was getting better at handling the stress of this, she knew. Well, the stress of the skill, anyway. Seeing her sister die was stress all its own, and Chase took a moment to get her nerve back. “The Necromancer’s watching the roof,” she said, in a low voice. “He’s near. I’m assuming that was him, anyway.”

“What?” Gadram asked, confused. “What was him?”

“How good is he against illusions?” Renny asked.

“I don’t know,” Chase said. “Why?”

Next to them, the plug shook again, and a nail inched upward from where it was holding the wood down. They stared at it. Greta took out her hammer and smashed it back in… but the thumping from the other side redoubled, and more nails started inching out, bit by bit.

Renny hopped up to the chest of drawers. “We’ll have to chance it. I’ll put an illusion up there to make it look like the roof’s bare. Just try not to move around too much and keep your voices down.” He studied the hole above him, then waved his hands. “Phantasmal Picture.”

Chase checked her status and winced. Not enough fortune left for another shot of Foresight. She looked at Greta, then shuddered. I’m not going to watch her die again. Which leaves only one option, here. “Follow me, then,” Chase whispered and scrambled up through the hole before she could lose her nerve.

No bolt of dark energy fried her.

No alarmed voices shouted.

Chase was met only with silence and shadows, and she inched herself out carefully among the sloped shingles, trying not to rush, despite the hammering on the plug below and the splintering that she could hear after every strike.

Behind her, Greta scrambled up, and Chase winced at the noise, so loud in her ears despite the groaning, honking, and hammering from below. But the zombie racket helped to cover her sister’s own lack of grace, it seemed, for she got through without trouble.

Last of all was Gadram, hauling Renny along. And once he was up, Greta looked to him and said, “Hold me in place, please.” Puzzled, the veteran burglar did so… and looked a lot less puzzled when Greta let go of the roof, bracing her feet on the shingles as she hauled out her carpentry tools and got to work.

Ten seconds crawled by, and the hammering and sawing noises seemed like thunder to Chase’s twitching ears. Twenty seconds, and she was sure they were going to be found, sure that this risk was one risk too much.

But at precisely thirty seconds the hole in the roof vanished, as the now torn and battered shingles and beams that had made up the plug now returned to their former place, now with a few bits of decomposing fingers, clown teeth, and rubber noses jammed into them.

Chase sagged in relief and almost fell off the roof.

But as she scrambled to keep a hold, her worries vanished as words appeared in her sight.

You are now a level 3 Archer!

DEX+3

PER+3

STR+3

You are now a level 4 Archer!

DEX+3

PER+3

STR+3

You are now a level 6 Oracle!

CHA+3

LUCK+3

WIS+3

All of a sudden the roof got a lot easier to cling to, Chase’s vision sharpened and pierced through more of the dim light of the evening, and she felt her body lose every bit of tired exhaustion that it had built up over the course of this very trying day.

It was a good feeling but a disturbing one. Because she wanted to feel it again, and again. It was almost too good a feeling, and her vastly-boosted wisdom was telling her that that was actually sort of dangerous in its own way.

Chase narrowed her eyes and took a second to try and talk some sense into herself. You know what else is dangerous? Zombies! And Necromancers! So shut up long-term worried Chase, and let’s focus on being getting through tonight, Chase. Okay? Kay. Glad we had this little talk.

Amazingly enough it worked, and Chase shook off lingering doubts, pulling her mind back to the task at hand. She looked over to her companions…

…and found them looking at her, eyes white and wide in the darkness. Well, all save for Renny’s eyes. Still glass, still green in the flickering firelight.

Wait.

“Flickering firelight?” Chase asked and turned again, rising up slowly, remembering to avoid fast motions while she was in the illusion. Her earlier worry returned with friends, because she felt there was no way this could be good.

And across the village, the Dewdrop Inn burned, shedding its light on the dozens of zombies milling around outside of the blazing structure.

CHASE'S CHARACTER SHEET

Name: Chase Berrymore

Age: 15 Years

Jobs:

Halven level 9, Cook level 4, Archer level 4, Grifter level 5, Oracle level 6, Teacher Level 1

Attributes / Pools / Defenses

Strength: 55 Constitution: 31 / Hit Points: 86 / Armor: 0

Intelligence: 53 Wisdom: 81 / Sanity: 134 / Mental Fortitude:30

Dexterity: 88 Agility: 57 / Stamina: 145 / Endurance: 0

Charisma: 108 Willpower: 43 / Moxie: 151 / Cool: 35

Perception: 58 Luck: 106 / Fortune: 164 / Fate: 30

Generic Skills

Archery – Level 1

Brawling – Level 7

Climb – Level 15

Dagger – Level 2

Dodge – Level 11

Fishing – Level 14

Ride – Level 10

Stealth – Level 14

Swim – Level 7

Throwing – Level 23

Halven Skills

Fate's Friend – Level N/A

Small in a Good Way – Level N/A

Cook Skills

Cooking - Level 14

Freshen - Level 10

Archer Skills

Aim – Level 6

Missile Mastery – Level N/A

Quickdraw – Level N/A

Rapid Fire – Level N/A

Ricochet Shot – Level 10

Grifter Skills

Fools Gold – Level 1

Forgery – Level 1

Master of Disguise – Level 3

Pickpocket – Level 1

Silent Activation – Level 5

Silver Tongue – Level 3

Size Up – Level 1

Unflappable – Level N/A

Oracle Skills

Absorb Condition – Level N/A

Afflict Self – Level 1

Diagnose – Level N/A

Divine Pawn – Level N/A

Foresight – Level 19

Lesser Healing – Level 25

Omens and Portents – Level N/A

Transfer Condition – Level 2

Teacher Skills

Lecture – Level 2

Smarty Pants – Level N/A

Unlocked Jobs

Farmer, Herbalist,