"Hoooo…" I let out a breath and raised my pistol. In a flash, my mind cleared and my hands steadied. Part of it was my Gunner class coming into play, but part of it was also the fact that I'd been running and hiding and scrambling to survive for a day and a night, and actually being able to lay my sights on a problem was an incredible relief. If I could pull through this, I could get some real sleep, and maybe reverse this downwards spiral.

"Voice of the World, audible, pause."

"Acknowledged."

No blue boxes messing up my firing lines. I took aim and squeezed the trigger.

BLAM-crack!

The report was deafening in the enclosed space. There was a flare of powder and a plume of dust, and a stone fell out of my barricade. Something blue flashed past the hole, and I fired again.

BLAM-crack!

I felt the tingle of pneuma in my lungs, soul-fragments streaming into me from my kill, and grinned. Score one.

BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!

The tingle grew as I fired again and again. Each bullet threaded the hole in the barricade, each bullet hit a butterfly. Not every shot got a kill, but the tingle in my chest grew stronger as I fought. I was doing some sort of damage. The questions was—

Click.

Did I have more bullets than butterflies?

"Damn." I flung my pistol towards the hole as a blue shape darted through. "Incarnate!" Magic swirled, and the fizz in my chest subsided. If I was drawing power straight from accumulated pneuma, I must be really low on magic. Or maybe that's how magic worked…? I'd never used it before, or heard more than the bare basics from mages.

A pistol materialized out of thin air. I snatched it up and leveled it.

BLAM-ZING-ZING-ZIIIIIP-THOK!

The bullet halved the invading butterfly and zipped around the inside of the crevice - before ricocheting into my barricade, knocking another hole.

"Damn damn damn!" I raised my left hand. "Incarnate!" For a moment, the icy pull of magic stole my breath and left my head spinning. I snatched the new pistol as it fell and firmed my aim, trying to split my attention between the two entrances. I was obviously low on magic; I couldn't afford to do that again.

Dual-weilding wasn't really my style. Splitting my attention between two hands and two targets never seemed as good to me as simply doing everything twice as fast. Still, I'd done it before, and I was probably better at it than most. I continued squeezing off rounds, and butterflies continued dropping. There was a scattering of them on the floor now, like fallen leaves.

Click. Empty.

I dropped my right-hand gun and swapped for my left. I lined the barrel up with unsteady hands, and wished with all my strength that this one bullet would be enough; I didn't have it in me to incarnate another.

Slowly, the chill subsided.

"...Unpause."

"Congratulations on repelling your first invasion."

The Voice of the World was calm and flat, and I nearly fell over in relief.

"Your class, Lord of the Land, has advanced from 'new' to 'inexperienced'. Lepidoptera cryogenica, 'Queen Snow Moth', has been added to your Archive. Your body is on the verge of collapse. Find a place to rest soon, or risk permanently injuring yourself.'

I picked up the pistols I'd created with shaking hands, gathered my spent brass, and stumbled through the door, back into my Sanctuary.

For a moment, I hesitated on whether to lock myself in. Finally, with a shrug, I closed the door after me. It shut easily, and vanished in a flare of light. I blinked, wondering if I should be worried, but something in the back of my mind told me it would be okay. Probably my new class.

I turned and headed for the hut.

The inside of the Sanctuary was calming. By the time I'd reached the top of the stone steps, the adrenaline was subsiding and I was starting to feel achingly hollow. I'd scraped up everything I had for that last stand, and although I'd pulled through, I was well and truly spent.

I paused for a moment at the door and looked around. The cabin was small and neat, wood beams with stone walls, built in the style of my hometown. I'd hoped to live in one like it, when I was small. Thinking back, that dream had been childishly shortsighted. Looking at it now, it was quaint and rustic.

I swung open the door. Inside, it was warm and neat, with golden wood and glowing sunbeams. I dropped my guns on the table and collapsed in a nearby chair, simply letting the tension drain out of me as I reveled in not being at sea, not being chased, not breathing smoke or running for my life.

It was good.

Finally, the aftereffects of the adrenaline subsided, and I fell asleep.

I woke cramped and thirsty.

The sun was in exactly the same position as when I'd closed my eyes. I stood and stretched, feeling my muscles complain. Unsure of what my next steps were, I wandered around, opening cupboards and peering through doors.

The cabin was a simple place, with three rooms: bedroom, kitchen, and study. There was an outhouse out back, and the tree, spreading behind the house, had apples growing on it. I picked one and munched it as I stared into the void.

It was white. White like paper, or clouds, or newfallen snow. There was no feeling of depth to it; it was almost as if the Sanctuary was wrapped in wax, or someone had turned a snow-globe inside out. I paced along the edges, until I found the stone walkway that led to the exit. A wave of my hand and a twitch of some innate power resummoned the door; I left it closed and headed back to the cabin.

Inside, I sat down again and organized my thoughts.

Firstly, I turned my attention to the pneuma I'd gathered from killing the… what had the Voice called them? "Queen Snow Moths"? It swirled in my chest, knotting together in a vivid ball of life. A lot of it had been absorbed by my battered and bruised physique, but there was enough left to use. It had been a while since I gathered this much pneuma; smuggling paid well, but it wasn't exactly rife with monster-slaughter.

Part of why I'd chosen it, really.

"Voice, visual, basic status."

Edmon Valli

Smuggler

Attributes

Strength:

Passable

Constitution:

Tough

Dexterity:

Rough

Intelligence:

Sharp

Wisdom:

Sly

Charisma:

Nondescript

Statistics

Health:

Stable

Stamina:

Recovering

Magic:

Acclimating

Active Title:

Knight of Metzli

I touched the last one.

Knight of Metzli

Lord of the Sanctum of Metzli.

Hmmm. I pondered that for a moment, looking around. If my title and my Sanctuary were tied together, and my title changed based on what I did… I shelved the idea for later investigation, and returned to the pneuma.

I studied my status for a while, trying to make my decisions. I had magic now, which was new. My stamina should recover naturally, given time. My health as well, especially since my body had absorbed a fair amount of pneuma already. The real choice was… should I channel this energy into an attribute, or into my magic stat? Status improvements were an excellent way to power up fast, but quickly hit diminishing returns if the corresponding attribute wasn't raised. Attribute gain, however, was a long and slow process.

I tended to dump into Constitution, personally; I had enough strength to deal with my daily life, enough dexterity I could tie knots for sailing, enough intelligence to manage my books as a trader, enough wisdom to know when to fight or flee, and as for charisma… in my line of work, no-one cared what you looked like, as long as you were fast on the draw and your gold was yellow. Constitution, however, meant I didn't get sick, I could work hard on four hours of sleep, and I might even live a few years longer. Who wouldn't dump into Con?

The real question was, though… what was my magic at? If I could raise it easily, I needed to pump it up. But if the stat was at or near my cap… throwing all this energy into it would be a waste.

Still, it's not like I had much choice. I had to experiment with magic sometime, unless I happed across a mage on this island. I brushed away my doubts and began.

My magic was easy to find. It glowed in my head like a warm coal, a light pressure just behind my eyes. It had been a long, long time since I generated a stat… I think I'd gotten my first class at six? I couldn't recall what 'health' or 'stamina' had felt like when they first appeared, but feeling magic for the first time was interesting.

I touched the pneuma with a gentle thought. It unspooled at my guiding, a warm thread of power that curled up my spine, rising high into my head and slowly wrapping around my magic. For a moment I tasted honey and blackberries, and then, with a flash, they melded together.

After the rush, I felt… better, I guess? I frowned, uncertain, than sighed. Getting used to new skills and abilities didn't happen overnight. As long as I kept using my magic, I'd eventually get a handle on how it worked. At least it felt like it had gone up, which was a good sign; as long as I could tell it was increasing, I probably hadn't wasted the pneuma.

I stood, stretched, and considered my next options. I gathered the incarnated guns on the table, and looked at them.

Three pistols. Three pistols absolutely identical to the one that was probably still at the bottom of the lagoon, a thaumic-steel handcannon with an extended magazine. I'd had it custom made by one of the best gunsmiths in Lavaille, and it had burned up a considerable chunk of my - then very large - total liquid capital. It was absolutely a beautiful gun, and one that I'd relied on for years. I'd have been sad to lose it… but now I had three.

I sorted the magazines, too. Three of them, exactly the same, down to the gunsmiths' inscription on the bottom. I wondered what sort of a stir this would make if I put them up on the market.

I picked up one of the spent shells and examined it. The brass was blackened, but if I had bullets and powder and primers and tools, I could reload it. Or… I waved my hand, and thought incarnate.

A half-dozen loaded bullets fell to the table in front of me.

"Ooof."

The drain was much less drastic than creating a whole pistol had been. Still, this obviously wasn't a light-weight ability, and I probably shouldn't be throwing it around as much as I did. My magic would recharge over time…

Right?

Suddenly, I was unsure. How did magic recharge? I'd always assumed it was like stamina, where it just returned with some rest. Was it more like health, that took food and sleep and days of peace? I'd seen magic potions before; the mages I'd worked with in the past guzzled the things. Why would they do that if magic simply came back on its own? I frowned.

Once again, I had no real idea what my new limits were.

That being said, I had no real options here. I needed a weapon to defend myself, and if I didn't make it like this, I really had no other way to do it.

No, well, I probably did, I just didn't know what that was yet.

Blergh. I brushed the thoughts aside, and stripped down the pistols. None of them seemed to have taken any severe damage during the fight, so I put one of them back together, and loaded my half-dozen shells in the magazine.

Alright, weapon secured. Onto experiment two. This one needed to be done outside.

Pistol in hand, I walked back to the exit, and slipped out the door. I raised a hand, concentrated on an image, and—

Whoosh.

—Spun around when something landed in the mouth of the cave.

For a moment I saw yellow eyes, wide in shock, long, shapely legs, and a glittering crown of horns. I had a split second to realize this island was, in fact, a wyrmhaunt, before I chose the only logical response to being accosted by a draconian—

I opened fire.