Jasper stepped out of the inn, swung the door shut, and slumped back against it with a sigh and a stupid grin linging on his face. In the middle of a storm, you took any calm moment you could get– and he felt better for having a few precious moments where he wasn’t nervous, or worrying over the plan, or grimly feeling the seconds tick by. For being free from that, for a little while.

He looked out at the late dawn spreading across the city, and saw smoke dragging fingers across the sky.

Calm wouldn’t last long.

Pulling a borrowed cloak over his hair, he began to walk, heading towards the outskirts. A patrol moved past, dragging and kicking prisoners.

Jasper had known a peaceful city. Saltboon had opened its arms to him, friendly and welcoming. To see this barely underneath, the open aggression between the Ardish and their loyalists, the Midlunder faithful…

There was a gallows in the square ahead. A man hung there, his body awkwardly twisting on the rope, alongside two women. THIEF. ADULTERER. HERETIC. Their crimes were written on their chests.

Jasper moved past them, circling at the edge of the square, along the slat-windows of shops that had shuttered and gone dark in preparation for the storm.

On the next turn he ran dead into a guard patrol.

“You, boy! Off with the hood, let’s see your damn face isn’t blue!” Their commander called, pushing a prisoner down into the mud to free his hand and reach for his sword.

Jasper froze, and then asked. “What if I’m only doing it to be stylish? I could be an impressionable youth, you know.” Fate-Eater. Silently, he placed his curse on the man.

The captain snorted, stepping forward slowly, his blade hissing out of its place.

“Plenty of room on the gallows tonight for those who just get swept along, son. I’m doing you a favor, see? If I arrest you now– you don’t get yourself a hanging charge later.” His footsteps were slow and his voice relaxed but firm, as if he was approaching a wounded animal.

“Gosh, you should arrest everyone for nothing. That’d keep them nice and safe.” Jasper quipped.

And bolted.

He felt Fate-Eater go off– like an invisible thread from his mana-core snapped tight– as chains of luminous light burst from the street, trying to grasp his leg. In a leap he was over them and gone, rushing down the streets, heading towards light and noise and anything that might indicate a pocket of resistance still going strong.

Jasper wove through the city, but everywhere, it was the same. Guards stood at streetcorners. They marched through the street. Jasper had never realized how many there were in the city-- not a peacekeeping force, but an occupying army.

He moved like a shadow, but there was no space for even a shadow to slip by.

Before long he was back at the little square, in the shadow of the gallows.

Jasper looked up--

And an idea began to form. He swung himself up onto the gallows platform, grimacing at the stink and the buzz of flies.

What he needed was a thief's expertise. And as the only thief present was dead, he wouldn't miss his personal effects. Jasper patted down the man's pockets, searching for a hidden pick, a knife, any small thing that might work as a tool. Nothing.

His gaze lowered to the padded boots on the man's feet.

He yanked them off, fighting the swelling of the flesh underneath to peel the boots free. Jasper did *not* enjoy putting them on, cold and damp with the grave, sweat-stained with the last kicking exertions.

But they did the job.

You are mimicking the class

Thief of No Importance

‘Midnight Character’

Gain increased senses, especially while in shadow. Shadows blend to your body to obscure you.

The shadows shifted around him, gaining hidden depths as his eyes adjusted to see through them. The contrast between light and dark grew more divisive, and the sounds of the street broke apart, becoming distinct, easy to read. He could pick out distant drunken calls from footsteps coming down the street.

Jasper smiled and went on his way. The shadows welcomed him.

— — —

An hour later, Jasper darted across the city wall with a running start off a low rooftop. He hit the edge and clambered over in the space between guards passing below. He dropped down into the sand dunes piled against the city's border, and pulled his cloak up as he headed for the tower in the distance.

The sorcerer Sarabas was waiting for him, leaning against the doorway with a long ivory pipe in one hand. "Did you know, every time you give me the pleasure of your company, you set all my instruments in disarray? I have to spend hours tuning them." He said, puffing out a ring of smoke.

"I'm sure the hangman will add it to my list of crimes. Maybe even right at the top. The jury will gasp, shocked that I would do such a thing." Jasper said grimly.

"The priest will refuse to consecrate you, after hearing what you've done."

"Oh that won't matter. The underworld will spit me back out for my crimes."

They stared at each other in steel silence.

"But I can't help but notice you didn't turn me over." Jasper said, finally.

The sorcerer rolled his eyes. "You are irrelevant to the choice. I'm no friend to the angels-- I find once you feed them, they come back for more. And more. And yet more. Justice without self-reflection finds everyone guilty in the end."

"I expect it'd find fault with you pretty fast."

"And to think, already, a paragon such as myself comes under suspicion." He drew a long inhale from his pipe and let it gust from his lips in a thin whirling needle of gray. "What is it, boy? What do you want?"

"If I leave, this angel problem leaves with me. Where I go, it follows." Jasper said.

“Which leaves me in a hurry to have you off my doorstep.” The sorcerer sighed, venting smoke from his nostrils. “Come inside. Ask your questions. Explain to me what it takes to be rid of this problem…”

They stepped inside, into the space cramped with ticking instruments and strange collections of arcana.

Jasper roamed along the shelves, glancing out of the side of his eyes as he asked. “I don’t know what an angel is, or how you’d hurt one. And that’s a problem, because I’ve got a date with one in, like, two hours.”

“Hmm.” For a moment, Sarabas turned away, glaring at a small clock that was ticking irregularly. “A Class is a manifestation of your soul, helping it grow to godly power. A god’s soul, having reached perfection, is capable of splintering many times without losing any power. These splinters are the Talents gods grant to their followers. But a splinter can also be invested with mana, forming a body around it…”

“An angel.” Jasper finished, moving backwards, one hand slipping behind him–

Running along the instruments on the shelf, looking for one that counted as a tool of Sarabas’ class, and contained his abilities.

As his fingers brushed across a deck of cards, he felt the familiar sense of foreign memories rushing into his mind.

You are mimicking the class

Mage of No Importance

‘Mana Weaving’

Gain increased control over your mana, and increased mana regeneration.

For a moment, Jasper felt a dizzying sickness. He was pulling on two ‘threads’ of memory at once, mimicking the class from his boots and the deck. Jasper cut his connection to the cards, shutting it out of his mind with a slow blink, and the instincts from his boots reasserted itself.

No copying two at once. Good to know.

“A fragment of god’s will.” The sorcerer was rambling. “And very hard to hurt. Pure mana beings are resilient, and angels especially so. With mortal weapons, you could train for a decade and barely hope to scratch them once before dying…”

“Solutions.” Jasper snapped. “Not long-winded moaning at how hard the problem is. I’m on the clock.”

And in that moment he took the deck of cards into the palm of his hand, slipping them down his sleeve before stepping away from the shelf. It was smooth, and he felt a certain thrill of victory as Sarabas walk past without a word.

“I don’t have a weapon that will kill an angel. Nobody does. What I can do is provide you protection.” He crossed the room and opened a small box, taking out a brass medallion in the shape of a flower and a length of red string. “Hold out your wrist.”

Jasper did. The sorcerer bound the medallion to him with a strange series of motions, and he felt mana flow through each cross and each knot tied.

“There. It will prevent the thing from taking over your mind, until you can learn some proper mental defense Skills.” He paused to examine his own work. And then he glanced up. “For what it’s worth, I wish you a long run and a quick death.”

“Yeah. Y’know, same to you.” Jasper said, with a thin snort. Guess that’s what passes for an goodbye around here.

But in the sorcerer’s own way, it was probably well-meant.

— — —

“I didn’t expect to see you back so soon.” The horticulturalist said with pointed antagonism. She had only cracked the door open a half-inch, staring out suspiciously. Sable. That had been her name. “We’re not doing our next planting until tomorrow.”

Jasper stood knee-deep in salt-thick water, at the base of the strange series of domes and tunnels that made up the greenhouses of the mana-farm.

“I know. I came out to warn you, things in the city have gotten bad.”

“Bad? What’s bad mean?”

“There’s an angel.”

She sucked in air through her teeth, an inverse little whistle punctuating the silence. “You’d better come in.” The door swung open.

The air inside was cool and refreshing, the half-buried structure providing a sanctuary from the heat. Jasper glanced up through the open skylights to see the sun already on the latter half of its daily journey. He was running out of time.

“Angels. Peh.” Sable spat into the corner, a surprisingly crude gesture. “Gods.” She snorted.

Jasper let her lead him in towards the center of the complex, past the rows of plants growing in their mana-fed containment cells.

“And you’ve got your face painted up like you want to join them. Is that your idea of glory? Rioting in the streets?”

“I don’t know about glory. I thought it was about, I don’t know, Midlund’s freedom? The old gods?”

“Oh, you don’t know, do you?” Her tone was dripping acid. “Well, let me tell you. It wasn’t the Ardish who made this desert. Your old gods? They ravaged the earth and ripped up its veins, corrupting leylines, undoing the weave and weft of the land. Anything to win…”

“Funny. People left that part out.”

“They would. People’s memories are funny like that.” She turned to him. “You should stay here. Ride out the bad weather. Smart kid like you, you’d be wasted in an angry mob, doing what? Hurling bricks and chanting slurs at the Ardish?”

Jasper winced– feeling a sudden guilt for what he was about to do.

“What’s this?” Changing the subject, he nodded towards a bell jar containing a single flower. A huge, imperial lotus, but with two colors on its regal petals, patterned like streaks of flame and glowing luminously. Motes of mana drifted above its heart, slowly spiraling down as the plant breathed in and out.

“Hmm? Oh, that. That’s my beauty.” She grinned, an awkward and crooked expression. Jasper got the feeling she didn’t use it often, out here on her own. “Sometimes, instead of just adapting to a new environment, a specimen will develop a split affinity. The ability to consume two different kinds of mana. It’s called a breaking. Very rare, and quite useful. Once upon a time I thought I could shift the whole desert back if I could just get this specimen to replicate, but all the buds I plant come out as one type or the other…”

As she spoke, Jasper slipped towards the desk where she kept the wringer, leaned over to fake examining a specimen of rose– and slipped the device into his pocket.

“You’re not staying, are you?”

“No.” Jasper admitted. “I can’t. I have people relying on me.” He felt a slight pang of guilt for taking the wringer but– he needed it and didn’t have the luxury of asking. Like he said. There were people relying on him.

“You’re better off without them.”

Jasper made a small, cracked sound, like a laugh strangled in its crib. “I used to think that.”

And then he was on his way.

— — —

By the time he’d slipped back into the city, there were more and more shadows filling up the alleys, more places to hide, less watchful eyes. The guards were moving in towards the core of the city, where the executions would be held.

Jasper felt a certain sense of exhaustion– adrenaline and excitement could only last so long. But it would be over soon.

People were moving in the streets again. All the brutality and violence from the guards had only shoved them down for a time, and now there were so many blue-faced fools out and about, there was no point in trying to arrest them all. They’d have to burn the city.

Jasper heard prayers to Bell and old war songs.

He felt the air itself crackling with the potential for violence.

In the center of the city they’d put up a platform, like a theater stage. A good two-dozen people were bound by thick chains to a post. Jasper saw Thorn among them, hair cast down over her face, obscuring any expression or emotion.

But she was alive.

The mood of the crowd was strange. They were drinking, singing, buying food from the merchants who moved among them, serving up crepes stuffed with honey nuts and slabs of fatty fried meat on skewers and a dozen other delicacies. It was an angry atmosphere, but it was a laughing anger– they were confident of overwhelming the guards, who stood nervously by, drumming their fingers atop their weapons.

It was three to one, at least.

Amun caught him at the edge of the crowd, grabbing his shoulder. “Jasper.” He hissed. “You need to explain this.” He pushed a scrap of paper into Jasper’s chest– one of the proclamations the priests had been nailing up, describing him and calling him an outsider.

Jasper looked down at the pamphlet, then back up. “No, Amun, I really don’t.”

“But–”

“What we need to do is save Thorn, right?” Jasper cut him off. “Does anything written there change that?”

Amun paused. And then his fingers squeezed into a fist, crushing the proclamation. “No.” He admitted.

"Then can we save the argument for after? It'll be fun. I'll win."