I groaned as I pushed the door shut. I was exhausted. Today had been my monthly compulsory education download, and those always took it out of me. No matter how many times I sat in that uncomfortable metal chair and let them stick those awful leads to my temples it never got any less jarring or uncomfortable. Still, it was better than the alternative, rumor had it back before the download had been perfected they forced everyone at or under majority to sit in cramped rooms all day and learn everything through rote memorization. That sounded like torture to me.

Luckily, the download didn't actually hurt, it was just tiring and annoying to sit through. I called it a win in any case. I dropped my wallet and scan ring on the table by the door as I slipped off my shoes and headed inside. The lights were on when I got here, but that didn't mean much, so I raised my voice to call for my Uncle. "Hey Zeke, you here?" I got no response, but Zeke could get a bit wrapped up in his work so I headed back to his workshop to double check. The door was unlocked, and pushing it open all I saw was an empty workbench full of creepy painted masks, as usual.

I shrugged. Seemed like he wasn't home. I headed back to the kitchen and popped a mat stick into the materializer, selecting the meal I wanted and pressing the button. I left the food to construct and headed over to slump down on the couch calling out a command to the scan box on the table against the wall. A floating screen of light identical to the one that appeared over my scan ring when it was in use appeared above the table, and I instructed the box. "Local news. Let's see what's going on today."

The scan box brought up the local feeds as instructed. Scan tech was incredibly intuitive, a sort of amalgamation of old style AR and hardlight tech pioneered about a century ago by an Ascendant who went by the name of Dr. Radical. No one was quite sure why he called himself that, but mad scientists tended to be even weirder than most Ascendants, and even the heroic ones were usually pretty nuts, as evidenced by their label. Still, their creations made up about half of today's commonly used technology, so it was hard to be too dismissive.

That attitude, sadly, was not one shared by most people in the Conglomerate, as mad scientists were part of a select group of Ascendant powers that were considered to be high risk for corruption. Any potentially corrupt power was treated with suspicion and scorn, and that was one of the many reasons heroic mad scientists like Dr. Radical were an anomaly. It was a shame too, because they were damn useful, but so many of them got driven off the heroic track and ended up specializing in weapons because of all the disdain.

The feed today was pretty standard. Some heroic Ascendants from the Unity going up against one of the local criminal gangs. Most of the heroic Ascendants in the city ended up working for the Unity, mostly because their training centers were the only real place to get an introductory course on your powers when you Ascended. There used to be other places that would give a tutorial class on power use, but over time they had all ended up being "uncovered" by the Unity as being villain affiliated.

They weren't all bad though, Zeke hated them with a passion but I was pretty impressed with some of the executives. I wasn't really clear on how Ascendant powers worked since non Ascendants weren't really allowed to be in the know on that kind of stuff, but they could do some amazing things, plus the girls were pretty universally hot and almost all wore skimpy outfits, so what was there not to like. My personal favorite was Nightstrike, probably the youngest of the executives based on what you could tell in costume. Some people even claimed she was eighteen like I was.

After watching a light type Ascendant newbie from Unity named Captain Polaris bounce a couple goons who wore the telltale black suits and red heart painted masks of the Queen of Hearts goons I ordered the scan box to open my emails and started sifting through all my messages. I figured it was unlikely that Zeke bothered to tell me he wasn't going to be home but it was always a possibility. I scanned through the list of messages looking for his name but didn't see anything, and I was about to close the client when a name jumped out at me from the list.

Elijah Wyndham. I frowned. My dad never bothered to message me, I hadn't seen him in years and I rarely even heard from him. Still I was curious enough to open the message. It was a video message, and when I clicked it my father's face popped up on the screen. His sandy blonde hair and bright green eyes were only a few of the many features we shared, and despite being much taller than average at six foot three, I lacked the gravitas my old man could project even over the screen.

His piercing green gaze locked onto me as the message opened, almost like he was staring out the screen right into my soul, and I swallowed nervously. He always had that effect on me. On everyone I was pretty sure. His voice was flat and composed as he spoke to me, like I was a business acquaintance. "Hello Shane. Apologies for my lateness but I wanted to wish you a happy belated eighteenth birthday. I realize I'm a week or two behind but I've taken the liberty of sending you a token of congratulations via courier."

I almost fell off the couch. That was...wildly out of character. My dad didn't give gifts. Not for birthdays, or Christmas, or even for special events like weddings. He felt they implied obligation in one direction or another, and despised the concept of favors owed. My father insisted that life was a series of transactions, and that if something was to be given, an equal price should be paid in recompense. I was honestly flabbergasted that he would even think of something like a birthday present. I wasn't really sure how to take that.

His clipped voice continued speaking as if he was reading my mind. "This token is not a gift. It as a form of repayment for my years of absence and for my failure to enlighten you on certain subjects which will later become apparent to you. I felt this was only fair, as this will be the last time I take the initiative to contact you. You are an adult now, and my messages, as few as they may have been, were an attempt to engage with a child." His voice was hard, but not cold, as he stared out of the screen sharply.

I...didn't know what to think. He was just cutting contact with me? He'd never been a great parent, but this was a bit abrupt even for him. I saw a slight softening around his eyes as he finished his message, the last paragraph clearly meant to soften the earlier statements as much as he was able. "Our family is a harsh one, Shane. You have to be strong to survive being a Wyndham. If you can't gain that strength and come to find me, never speaking to you again is more of a kindness than you can know. For what it's worth though, I hope to see you again someday, son. Goodbye."

The message vanished. In fact, it was literally deleted from my inbox, and upon further searches so were all the other messages my father had ever sent me. I kept them in a saved folder, and I'd only ever had maybe a dozen of them in there, but now the emails and the folder itself had vanished, and any searches I did completely failed to bring up even a mention of my fathers name. Even mentions of him in other emails weren't showing up, and when I checked a few emails to Zeke where I knew I'd mentioned him his name had been altered or deleted altogether.

I was just floored. Not only had I never expected this, my birthday had been over a week ago. The email was recent, like from today, and lateness was not a habit my father indulged in. I stood up, walking over to the materializer and taking out the hot steak sandwich I had set to construct before beginning the message, what seemed like ten minutes or even an hour ago, but had been, based on the time one of these took to make, less than two minutes. I took a bite of the hot steak, trying to focus and figure out what the hell had just happened.

Before I could focus much though I heard a knock on my door. I jumped, having been so distracted by my reverie I actually dropped my sandwich on the hard wood of my living room. I cursed and picked the thing back up, checking to make sure it wasn't visibly dirty before wiping up the slight mess with the napkin I had wrapped around the sandwich. I shrugged it off. I was hungry and the wiper unit cleaned the floors while we slept at night so no muss no fuss. I took another bite, pleased it was still just as good and headed to the door to open it.

Whoever had knocked hadn't bothered to try again, just leaving as soon as they'd rapped on the door, because I didn't see anyone in either direction down the hall. I assumed this was the "token of congratulations" my dad had mentioned, so I picked up the dark wood box with my non sandwich hand and carried it inside, kicking the door closed. I carried it into the kitchen and set it on the counter, scarfing down the rest of my sandwich. Then I washed my hands, drying them thoroughly and carried the thing to the table in the dining room nearby.

Opening it proved to be simple enough. It had a brass cypher lock like the ones my father used to give me as tests when I was a kid. A brass dial surrounded by a series of shiftable rings. I had to turn the rings to make a labyrinth, shifting the dial in between turns to extend a metal wire along the path. Once the wire was threaded through the rings to the outside of the lock I would push it in and a short electric charge would be conducted from the dial the rim of the lock, popping the latch and opening the box.

This particular lock had twelve rings and was unusually complicated, but I'd done enough of these to figure it our after some trial and error and after about a half hour I finally pressed the dial button and the box opened with a click. I nodded with a smile, I'd always felt pretty proud of myself after I did one of these, and even my dad was usually impressed. That thought wiped away the smile, since it reminded me he'd just basically cut ties with me completely, so I opened the lid and looked inside to see what he'd sent me.

Inside the box was a rolled up piece of old yellow paper. I frowned, but figured he wouldn't have sent me something useless. I unrolled the paper, but as I did, a small point of metal, something like a needle, which had been rolled up in it, pricked my finger. I dropped the paper with a curse, and it oddly rolled itself out flat as my blood dripped onto the yellowed surface. When my blood hit the paper though, it didn't soak in. In fact the paper did the opposite of get wet. It caught fire. A wave of purple flame rolled across the parchment from the spot my blood struck and I stared in slack jawed amazement as it scrawled out a phrase that was meaningless to me, yet somehow filled me with trepidation.

Welcome, young Wishmaster. It's finally time to begin.

Now, one might think the thing that would scare me in that situation was the purple flaming piece of paper that seemed to have swallowed my blood. That person would be wrong. Mostly because I recognized the name printed on the paper and it belonged to someone even I had heard of. Callus, the planet I lived on, was a pissant backwater production planet on the outskirts of the Conglomerate. We were probably the poorest planet in this solar system, if not the entire galaxy. We were barely hooked into the Conglomerate news media, and even then, I had still heard of the Wishmaster.

The Wishmaster was a universe level criminal. In point of fact he was considered one of the top three on the list of thirteen most wanted criminals in the universe. Exactly where in that top three ranking he fell was a hotly debated matter, especially since the Wishmaster was a legacy title that changed hands multiple times over the centuries, but whoever the current Wishmaster was always had a spot in the top three. The Wishmaster wasn't ranked so high just out of raw power, though no one in the Unlucky Thirteen was personally weak, but more accurately because of his personal force, the Wish Curse Palace.

The Wish Curse Palace wasn't a place, or even a number of places. They were a sort of universal black market. They were known for their strict adherence to contract and were renowned as being the most reliable black market source for illegal goods in any of the known systems. The Wish Curse Palace might not have the manpower of the Empire, the Fairyland, or the Conglomerate, nor did they have the fanatical reputation of the Church of the Red Revenant or the Black Sorrow Cult, but they were hands down the richest of the known factions, and they had eyes and ears everywhere.

For some unknown reason no one had ever betrayed the Wish Curse Palace, and all attempts to infiltrate them had failed spectacularly, leading to an incredibly terrifying reputation that gave even the major powers on the universal playing field pause. This was general knowledge even a hick from bumfuck nowhere like me was aware of, which only served to underscore how absolutely terrifying it was that I was holding something that belonged to the Wishmaster. Did my dad work for the Wishmaster? Had he stolen this somehow? Was he the Wishmaster himself?

As much as it seemed like the third option was the only real feasible choice I just couldn't bring myself to believe it. My father was competent and terrifying in his own way sure, but being the head of a force that stood equal with the whole Conglomerate? The Conglomerate and the other members of the Five Faction Alliance like the Empire spanned millions of worlds. How could my father be involved with something on that scale? Unfortunately that particular question would have to wait because the words hadn't stopped and the thing seemed to be continuing to list more information.

Wishmaster candidate status.

I-rank.

Ability: Minor Wish- Three times a day grant a minor wish in return for proper compensation. Wish must be feasibly achievable by the candidate's own efforts within a three day period with current statistics (for the purpose of wishes treat all stats as three times the base value). Might 1 Impact 1 Fantasy 1 Vitality 1 Focus 1 Perception 1 Creation 1

That was...a lot. First of all I knew what an ability was. It was what made someone an Ascendant. I'd even seen the occasional reference to Might or Vitality before, and those were definitely words associated with Ascendants. I was presumably an Ascendant now. I might not have believed it but purple fire that doesn't burn things is a pretty convincing method of delivering news. Second of all it said candidate. Which meant I was possibly one of multiple people who had been given this particular ability...however the fuck that worked.

So...maybe dad wasn't the Wishmaster? Maybe he just knew him? But he had mentioned our family so maybe we were related to him? My fucking brain was hurting. This was too much too fast. I rolled up the paper, unable to find the stick pin that had shed my blood despite looking for it everywhere. Still, I wanted to put this thing somewhere safe for now. It was obviously important. As I slipped it back into the box however I found something else. A black metal card with nothing on it but the etching of an old style lamp with a skull emblazoned on the front.

It was the logo of the Wish Curse Palace. I recognized the symbol from the various tags that had been painted across the less prosperous parts of the city. I was pretty much out of fucks to give at this point, so despite being pretty sure this thing would be useful for me somehow I just shoved it in my pocket, shoved the scroll back in the box, and clicked the lid shut, spinning the latch to pop the button out. With that I grabbed my scan ring from the front table, put the box under my arm and headed back to my room.

I'd originally been planning to read, so I left my ring out front so I wouldn't be tempted to game tonight. It was the weekly Doom Sovereign challenge, and I'd already lost more than enough credits betting on myself to enter the finals. I was semi addicted to the game, a widescale rpg that allowed you to pit your character against other players in massive elimination tournaments every week. I actually wasn't bad, but I wasn't in the top ten percent even for this planet, and considering the game had a universe spanning fanbase in the trillions that meant I pretty much wasn't shit.

The elimination tourneys usually went by region though, so I'd tried my luck recently to make some cash and got cleaned out when I realized I wasn't as good as I thought. Despite my addiction to the game though I wasn't interested in Doom Sovereign right now, I was looking to get in contact with my best friend Benny. I fired off a request for a video conference, trying to decide what I was even supposed to tell him, since I knew discussing any of this directly would get me murdered or thrown in prison for sure. The Conglomerate monitored all means of communication, my dad may have been able to circumvent that shit somehow but I most certainly couldn't.

Within thirty seconds the call picked up, and the smiling, olive skinned face of my best friend appeared on the screen. Benny's sparkling green eyes were glowing with amusement as he smirked at me from the screen floating above my extended hand, the call interface generated by the scan ring just as perfect and clear as if I was looking through a hole in the wall at someone two feet away. "Shane, didn't think I'd hear from you today. You lost so badly last week I expected you to spend all day sulking in your room in the dark like a luddite."

I ignored how valid that prediction was and rolled my eyes. "I still kicked your ass, so don't be too smug. But I'm not calling about the game. I need to talk to you in person, somewhere private. Can you get away?" Benny's parents tended to be much stricter than Zeke. My Uncle was a sloppy unreliable drunk, but he was also a generally affable guy who mostly let me do my own thing. Benny's parents, on the other hand, were heavily involved in local politics, and his father was actually the leader of the planet's miner's union.

Despite how that may sound, the miner's union wielded insane amount's of power on our little production planet, and outside the local branch of the Unity Benny's dad Hector was probably the most powerful person on our planet. He was generally pretty affable, but Benny's mom Amber was a total tight ass about image. I half suspected she let me hang out with Benny because it looked good for her precious boy to spend time with a down on his luck local kid like me. Despite that she was incredibly strict about when and where he was allowed to go, and it was almost sundown on a Friday night so there was a decent chance he wouldn't be allowed to leave.

To my relief he just waved me off. "Nah, mom and dad are at some kind of charity gala the Unity is putting on. They won't be back for hours and Maria already took off with her boyfriend. Even if they came home early and somehow caught me out I could just tell them I was out with you and throw her under the bus. You know how much they hate Zack." I did. Benny's younger sister Maria was sixteen and still in her rebellious phase. Her boyfriend Zack was a local street thug our age who did odd jobs for the Queen of Heart's cronies.

Zack liked to act like that made him hot shit, but he was mostly just a sniveling little creep. He avoided Benny and I like the plague because Benny was Maria's brother and I was much bigger than most people, so we mostly did him the courtesy of leaving him alone as long as he didn't get Maria into any real trouble. Besides that Maria never went anywhere without her best friend slash bodyguard Anna, who was an Ascendant, albeit a pretty weak one from what I knew, so even if he did get her into a situation she would be fine.

Still I was glad for her annoying habits tonight as I shot my best friend a grateful smile. "Ok, meet me at the park near your place." I paused, unsure of how much to say over this line, but I figured there was at least one thing I could share without any danger to either of us, since I was planning to visit one of the intake sites to get registered and get a tutorial tomorrow anyway. I swallowed hard and shot him a conflicted look. He paused, his smile falling as he picked up on my discomfort, and I was able to force myself to tell him. "I got an ability."

His eyes went wide. "Holy shit man really? That's awesome! I'm so jealous, I wish I had gotten one. I've been drinking those disgusting gene excitement tonics for years now and nothing, and you weren't even trying and you Ascended. Damn man, some people have all the luck. So, what did you get? Is it something cool? Can you shoot lasers out of your eyes? Manipulate fire? Can you fly? Shit I've always wanted to be able to fly." I shot him a quelling look and he shut up, his face becoming serious. "Right. You want to talk in person, no problem, I'll head to the park."

I was guessing based on his mood shift he had picked up on my discomfort and assumed I got one of the powers people didn't like to talk about. Something that people would assume was going to push me toward corruption. People could be huge assholes about that kind of thing, and if I'd gotten one of those it would seriously mess with my quality of life. That said, I wasn't sure I had. The whole Wishmaster candidate didn't seem like something that would show up when I was inducted, and Minor Wish didn't really seem like an evil sounding power. Then again it was related to the Wishmaster so for all I knew it would result in me getting thrown in prison.

I winced and got up, shoving the box in a spare bag I had laying around and putting my shoes back on as I got ready to go meet Benny. I needed advice, and Benny and I had been close as brothers since we were kids. I'd met him at one of the compulsory download buildings when we were five, and we'd been inseparable ever since. He'd even gotten transferred to the local childcare I'd been in before I turned thirteen because Zeke was too lazy to raise a kid despite having the money for private care. If there was anyone I could trust with this it was Benny, now I just had to hope he had some idea what to do. The trip to the park was both way too quick and agonizingly slow. I took a bus to get there, mostly because I blew all my credits on Doom Sovereign but at least had the presence of mind to buy a bus pass at the beginning of the year when I still had a bit of money. The bus was pretty empty at six PM on a Friday night, so I mostly just sat by myself and thought over my options. I'd decided to wait a day or two before I did the intake process for the Unity. If I went now I would probably get thrown in prison or tortured for info I didn't have.

What I needed was some way to disguise my ability, and I was pretty sure I knew where to get that. I reached down to touch the smooth black metal card in my pocket, tracing the faint engraving of the lamp and skull. The Wish Curse Palace was the place to go for that kind of thing, but in order for that to work I had to get some money first. Assuming this card could let me buy things from them, I'd still probably need thousands if not tens of thousands of credits for something like that. Still, having some kind of plan was better than panicking so I felt much more optimistic when the bus stopped at the park and I got off to go meet Benny.

My best friend was waiting in his usual spot, sitting under a tree in the back of the park in the shadows. For a rich kid Benny tended to dress down pretty sloppy, and the usual torn jeans and hoodie over a beat up t-shirt made me smile with their familiarity. As usual Benny's messy brown hair peaked out from under the hood, wavy and too long as usual, somehow managing to fall in his eyes even with his head tilted back, but when he heard me coming he jerked to attention, looking around for me.

When he spotted me he gave a sigh of relief and climbed to his feet, walking over to clap me in a fierce hug. "Oh thank the gods. After that cryptic ass message I thought you might have been hauled off by the Cautious Men or something." Fear flashed through his eyes as he mentioned the Conglomerate's Ascendant identification and apprehension task force. The Unity handled big name criminals, but everyone had heard horror stories of newbie's being snatched up by the cautious men. It was one of the main reasons people were so quick to do the intake despite being railroaded so hard by the Unity.

I squeezed him back and pulled away with a laugh. "No, thankfully, though I wouldn't rule it our for the future, the stuff that's been going on has been kind of nuts." I gestured for him to sit down by the tree and started filling him in on everything that had happened. The message from my dad, the paper, I didn't hold a single thing back, and despite it having been objectively only an hour or so tops this still felt like it had been weighing on me for weeks. When I finished I felt unburdened and smiled, leaning back against the tree just happy to be free of the weight of doing this alone.

Benny whistled. "Holy shit man. That's...heavy. I know your dad hasn't always been around but for him to literally disown you like that? Plus it sounds like he might have been involved with the WCP the whole time, that's pretty nuts." He bumped my shoulder with his. "But hey, at least you got this cool new power, I mean, granting wishes sounds fucking awesome. Can I be your guinea pig?" His eyes were alight with curiosity and a bit of excitement, and all the drama aside I had to admit I kind of got that.

I laughed at the enthusiasm. "I guess so. If there's one person I trust to grant a wish to it's you. So...shit, how do I do this?" I considered taking out the scroll, but it seemed like the whole Wishmaster thing wouldn't exactly be secret if a bunch of people were walking around with a burning piece of paper. I narrowed my eyes before looking at Benny and saying in a clear voice. "Minor wish." I waited. Nothing happened. "Grant Minor wish." Again, nothing. I rolled my eyes. "Ok maybe we're doing this wrong. Make a wish in front of me."

Benny shrugged. "Ok, well you said it has to be within your capabilities within the span of three days, but like...what does that mean? And you mentioned stats too, so do those affect it somehow? Whatever, I'll just ask for something big and we can see what I can get away with." He bit his lip. "Ok, I wish you could give me an ability." I felt a charge run over my skin as he said that, a light rumble of static rolling across my arms, making the hair all stand on end as I felt my power roar up from inside me to answer the call.

Wish detected, grant wish? The words wrote themselves across my vision in purple fire, and from his lack of reaction Benny didn't see it at all. I mentally tried to confirm but the letters rolled across my vision again. Insufficient stat points to grant wish. Requirements: 50 Fantasy, 10 Creation, 25 Impact, 10 Vitality. I blinked. So that was what it meant by being able to accomplish it in three days. Still, the fact that I could even give someone powers was fucking insane. I told Benny what it said and he cursed.

He bit his lip. "Damn. Kind of makes me want to wait, but there's no rule you can only do one per person right?" I shook my head and he grinned. "Cool, then I can do something small time now and we can go from there. I wish I had a steak dinner." The tingle came back again, less intense this time, which I assumed meant this would be an easier wish, but it was still noticeable and still took up a ton of my attention. Once again it asked if I wanted to grant the wish, and once again I confirmed I did. Stat points sufficient. Requirements: 1 Fantasy, 1 Impact, 2 Creation, 2 Vitality. Compensation required.

I blinked, remembering what it had said on the scroll. Right, it had mentioned that. I turned to Benny. "Says I can do that one, but we need to agree on fair compensation. What would be fair?" He just shrugged. I scowled and thught it over, deciding to ask for something more ephemeral since this was clearly some kind of magic bullshit or something. Something he wouldn't miss. "How about your Doom Sovereign skills?"

Benny snickered at that. "I'm not sure you can really call them that, I'm not even as good as you are, but I don't enjoy the game that much anyway so sure. You can have my Doom Sovereign skills." He grinned at me, gesturing for me to get on with the wish granting, so that's what I did. I confirmed the wish after he verified he was ok with it. As soon as I did I felt that electricity on my skin spark up to insane levels, the power feeling like it was filling me enough to burst. I saw a purple flash int Benny's eyes and then there was another flash in front of us, and suddenly we were sitting next to a table, fully laid out with a juicy ribeye and all the fixings.

I gasped as what felt like sixteen hours of non stop sprinting hit me at once, bowling me over as I fell to the ground, gasping. Across my black spotted vision those same purple flame letters danced. Skill Acquired- Minor Doom Sovereign Mastery. Synergy with existing skills detected, merging. Skill Acquired-Lesser Doom Sovereign Mastery. I felt new memories slam into my brain. Nothing crazy, just hours of Doom Sovereign I'd never actually played. I felt reflexes I didn't have engraving themselves into my head.

Benny was up and at my side in a flash. "Holy shit man are you ok? That really took it out of you huh?" He helped me up, sitting me in the chair that had appeared next to the table with the steak on it. It was a tiny square table with a white table cloth, and the chair was cushioned and pretty comfortable. The steak on the plate was a juicy ribeye, with a nice steaming pile of mashed potatoes next to it and a bed of crisp asparagus to one side. There was a small dish of bread with a little plate of butter next to that and a full salad in a bowl to one side. Next to that was a glass of what looked like root beer.

I shook off the exhaustion and chuckled. "I'm good man, shit is just tiring. Still, you got your wish. Take a bite, see how it tastes." It smelled fucking amazing, and I was ravenously hungry after that. I was guessing that the closer I went to my limits the more tiring the wish granting would be. Still, it was pretty amazing I could make something out of nothing like that. Apparently creating a table with a steak wasn't a huge deal, since it only required a single point of fantasy and impact. I was assuming the creation was what made the actual process work, and vitality was probably what made it nutritious.

He looked like he wanted to argue with me but I shook my head, standing up and backing away from the table. He rolled his eyes, knowing that I wasn't going to eat any of it, though I suspected if he'd realized how hungry I was he might have pushed me to at least take a bite. He sat down at the table, scooted the chair in and picked up the knife and fork, cutting off a small piece to pop in his mouth. I was struck by how weird this probably looked from the outside in, and I was glad we'd always come to this park because there were no cameras. Benny was paranoid about his parents checking up on him.

Since no one had seen me conjure this thing it would just look like some weird guy brought a table here to eat. I shook off the thought and focused on Benny. His eyes lit up as he chewed, and he swallowed the bite of steak down with relish as he picked up the glass to sip some of the root beer. He moaned with joy as his took a swallow. "Ok, that's the best thing I've ever tasted man. If I hadn't needed to pay with literal memories from my brain I would eat like this all the time. Wait, do I need to do that? Can I pay with credits?" I mentally consulted my power, which seemed to be happy to answer questions now that I was using it, and nodded to him in confirmation. He could pay in credits, though the price got a little nuts for anything more than basic conjuring like this.

He grinned at me. "Well then, I think I have the answer to your little money problem. If I can pay for food with credits than so can other people, and they can pay for other things too. If we're careful we can get you enough cash to pay for that identity masking whatever it is you wanted." He paused. "Though actually we should probably go see what that would cost." He cut another piece of steak and popped it in his mouth, not bothering to swallow before asking his next question. "So, you feel like going shopping tomorrow?" I had to admit, even knowing I couldn't buy anything right now the idea filled me with excitement. I was going to visit the black market. The Wish Curse Palace did not, oddly enough, move. It was ostensibly hidden, but asking around a bit near where we had seen the symbol tags the next day got us concise directions. It turned out that none of the Five Faction Alliance were quite willing to piss off the secretive force of fanatically loyal spies and assassins who lived hidden amongst their civilian population, go figure. Because they weren't willing to break into an outright war and they themselves benefited from the place, they didn't try to shut down the WCP branches.

Since we didn't have to look around for the location we made good time the next morning on the bus down to the local branch. On the way we sat and discussed what the actual plan was once we got there. Benny was, of course, excited. "I can't believe we're going to the WCP." He whispered excitedly, somehow speaking louder than if he had said it in a normal tone of voice. I glanced around frantically but didn't see anyone staring, so I just glared at him. He smiled sheepishly and lowered his voice properly. "Sorry, but still, I've never been. I wonder what they have there?"

Despite his borderline bad boy image of himself, my best friend was actually kind of a goody goody. I was the closest thing to a tough guy he spent time with and I was an introverted game nerd with limited social skills. He liked to think of our friendship as rebellion, but he was basically the equivalent of those kids in child care who look both ways to make sure no one is watching before saying a curse word and dissolving into fits of giggles. He never did anything too bad and this kind of thing was a major rush for him. Granted it kind of was for me to. I was just distracted by other issues.

I kept my voice pitched low but didn't bother to actually whisper as I responded. "We're looking for the prices for a masking program or artifact or whatever the hell. I don't know. But we need to at least figure out a price for it." I grit my teeth before asking the next question, hating myself for bringing it up because I knew Benny was uncomfortable with his money. "Did you bring any credits?" He opened his mouth and I hurried to add. "I can grant you a wish for however much you have to spend, I wouldn't ask to borrow cash for nothing."

He rolled his eyes. "Relax man, I'm not going to bitch in circumstances like this. I appreciate you taking my attitude about my money into account but shit like this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I've never been to the WCP but I hear you need an invite to attend. I have a hundred thousand credits in my savings and we can use that. Though I won't say no to a wish if it'll get me another meal like that steak." He bit his lip. "Or should I ask for something else? Shit we should do it while we're on the way right? So you have the credits when we get there?"

He looked around slowly, making sure no one was watching. His brow furrowed as he considered what to ask for. "I wish I was a master haggler. I'm willing to offer one hundred thousand credits." I winced as he decisively offered his entire savings, but I made a promise to myself to pay him back once I had the money. I should be able to earn it pretty quickly once I got this all figured out. I had a few ideas for making money, though I admit a not insignificant part of me wanted to bust out my new Doom Sovereign skills at next weeks tournament and clean up on bets.The purple flames wrote themselves across my vision. Wish detected. Grant wish? I mentally confirmed. Insufficient stat points for Skill- Master Haggling. Requirements: NA Master level skill beyond the capacity of Minor Wish ability. I blinked. Huh, that was new. I frowned but then my eyes lit up. "Right, Master must be too high level. My ability is Minor Wish but I have a Lesser Skill, wish for that." He tried again and I accepted. Insufficient stat points for Skill- Lesser Haggling. Requirements. 30 Focus, 10 Impact, 10 Perception.

I cursed. "Shit. That one is too expensive. I guess I can go up a rank if I need to though, so that's good to know. But how is giving you a Lesser skill on the same level as giving you a fucking superpower? What level is Lesser?" I thought back to when I got my Doom Sovereign Mastery skill. Apparently my power could take most anything as payment as long as it was worth the value of what it gave, but just flat out creating things was harder. I did remember something though. "Ok, try wishing for a Minor Skill. That should be doable. Minor was weaker than Lesser so try wishing for that." Another wish and I accepted again. Stat points sufficient. Requirements: 3 Focus, 1 Impact, 1 Perception. I felt that same tingle in my skin, and I accepted. I saw tiny purple sparks play over the surface of my flesh and leap to Benny, whose eyes once again lit up purple, before subsequently rolling up in his head. I started to freak out slightly, but I felt my scan ring buzz and when I flicked up my display I saw a deposit of a hundred thousand credits. I exhaled slowly. Ok, if my power completed the wish then he was fine, I could feel that it wouldn't have worked if he couldn't handle it.

Still, that had been terrifying. Also what the hell was with those requirements? The stats from Minor to Lesser differed by a full ten times. If that pattern held true what the hell would Master rank skills cost? Judging by the way my power phrased it Master wasn't just a single rank above Lesser. Probably not even two or three. What the hell were Skills? It couldn't just be knowledge. Not at that kind of price. What did they do? My introspection was interrupted however by a quiet groan from next to me.

Benny was coming out of his...trance? Fugue? Who knew. Point was he was waking up. He rubbed his temples. "Wow. That sucked. A lot. Like, more than most things." He blinked his still faintly glowing eyes, the light fading from them as his brain integrated the new skill. He looked at me in awe. "Holy shit, Shane. I...I know so many things now. Shit I never knew before. I know how to read people's expressions and body language, how to tell when someone is willing to fold and when to take the deal, how to detect uncertainty in someone's voice... Damn man, this is wild. Like I'm not a genius at haggling, but it feels like I've been doing it for years and I'm pretty damn good."

His voice was tinged with awe, and I made a promise to myself to test out my new Doom Sovereign skills tonight when I got home. I'd been too excited last night and gone right to sleep so I could wake up and come down here. Apparently you could have a skill for literally anything. I wondered what they were for? What did they do? I couldn't imagine what a skill past Lesser even did. I shook off the thoughts however as our bus pulled up outside the building we had been instructed to head to.

I looked at Benny and we grinned weakly at each other and got up, heading off the bus to make our way into the massive building. The skyscraper in front of us was, much like the rest of the city, massive. Architecture had advanced considerably with the creation of certain hyper alloys and various advancements from Mad Scientists around the universe. Valen city, the city we lived in, was a thriving metropolis, and most of the buildings were absolutely towering monstrosities, packed incredibly close together and filling the sprawling land inside the natural ring of mountains the city used for it's various mining and resource gathering needs.

This particular building was basically falling apart, completely run down, though obviously not an actual danger to the citizens or they would have torn it down. We nodded to each other and headed inside, expecting to find some sort of guard or indication of an entrance. The inside of the building was empty. Not empty as in the place didn't have any people in it. Empty as in there was no furniture or object of any kind. There was just a sprawling atrium with nothing in it except empty marble floor.

Benny bumped me with an elbow, pointing to the opposite end of the room. "I think that's where we're headed." It wasn't a hard call. The only thing in this place was a set of brass double doors that obviously led to an elevator. The symbol of the Wish Curse Palace was engraved across the brass. I raised an eyebrow. "Subtle." Benny snickered and we set off across the atrium, each step seeming to take an eternity as we drew closer and closer to the doors, until finally we were standing right in front of the elevator.

Next to the door was the usual panel. The panel had two buttons, despite this being the first floor, but the lower button had a card reader beneath it, the button showing only the WCP logo. I pressed it. Nothing happened. I reached into my pocket and took out the black metal card, sliding it into the reader and pressing the button again. The button lit up, and I pulled the card out, stowing it again as a loud ding made me about jump out of my skin. Benny snickered at me again and I rolled my eyes at my friend as we climbed into the elevator.

Strangely the elevator had no buttons on the inside, as if pressing the WCP button had gotten us a special elevator just for this purpose, which admittedly was more than possible given the WCP's resources. I played with the card in my pocket. What the hell was it? Some kind of membership? Why did I get the feeling it was supposed to be a big deal? Benny bumped my shoulder with his. "Credit for your thoughts? You're spacing out man. Gotta keep your head on a swivel. Things are bound to get crazy."

I gave him a small smile. "Sorry. Just...a lot going on. I'm good though. One hundred percent focused" The door closed and the elevator began to move. Not up into the building as expected but backwards, literally moving away from the doors for what felt like twenty or so feet before coming to a stop. I heard some slight shifting, though I barely felt a tremor, and then we began to descend. It felt like we'd been moved to a different elevator shaft before descending, which was...weird.

I was guessing the main shaft didn't actually go to the WCP and they probably had the the thing protected up the wazoo. As we descended I braced myself for what I was going to see. This was my first real step into a new world, the first time I would be interacting with a powerful force that might be able to help me make some sense of what was going on. I felt a kind of energy run through me, not the electric tingle of my wish power, but a sense of excitement, of adventure. This had all been crazy but I couldn't deny I was enjoying myself.

As the elevator slowed I exhaled deeply. We'd been traveling down for a while, and at a decent clip from what I could tell. We were obviously pretty deep underground. It didn't surprise me the Wish Curse Palace could manage something like this but still, it made me kind of excited for what we were going to see when we got down there. As we came to a stop I stepped forward, brimming with anticipation as the doors slowly opened. Regardless of whether I found what I was looking for down here, I knew nothing would ever be the same. This was going to be a whole new world. The doors opened to a scene I couldn't have possibly imagined. I'd expected some kind of cave or underground room, but this was so far beyond that. Almost a whole city was down here. Granted a very small city, but it was easily several miles in every direction. The elevator must have been moving insanely fast to get us this deep this quickly. I inched out onto what seemed like some kind of grated catwalk, my shoes causing a slight tremor in the metal as I took my first step into the Wish Curse Palace.

Benny was right behind me, gaping around the same as I was as we looked over the side of the ridiculously tiny catwalk that kind of felt like it shouldn't hold our weights. Below us was row after rows of buildings, some small, some large. The outer sections of the "city" were clearly smaller and looked cheaper, they were mostly single story, some without fronts, basically just shells with tables set up inside. Despite that we couldn't get down, we had to head to the end of the catwalk to try to find a way to reach the underground town.

Luckily at the end of the catwalk was another elevator, or rather a platform lift we could stand on and activate by swiping my card. We climbed on and the lift began to lower. Slowly and steadily we descended towards the floor of the cavern. Benny was in awe. "Holy shit man this place is crazy. How did they even make this? Dad controls half the miners on the planet and he wouldn't be able to get a cavern like this built without being noticed. How long did this take to make? What tools did they use?" I had to admit I wasn't actually that into the whole construction aspect, but it was impressive.

When we reached the bottom of the lift platform we stepped out into a semi crowded street and headed for the nearest building. I had zero idea what we were looking for other than knowing it needed to help me keep myself hidden from the Unity when I went to do my intake. So I stopped at the table beneath the first overhand and looked over what they had. It was all pretty interesting stuff, weapons, gadgets, and even a few skill crystals apparently, but they weren't really that useful to me right now and everything really interesting was well out of my price range anyway.

After scanning through the items in the first shop we headed to the next building down. This one actually was a bit more useful, lot's of disguise items and stealth tech, again almost all out my price range and not what I needed. I decided to actually ask the proprietor though, since the stuff here was sort of on the right track. I headed up the counter to speak to the owner, a tall man wrapped in bandages from head to toe, with only his eyes, mouth, and long greasy black hair showing. When he grinned he exposed pitch black teeth that shone like a beetle's shell. "How may I help you friends?"

His voice was rough and low, like he was a heavy smoker who used to be a baritone. I offered him my most confident smile, which to be fair probably wasn't that confident. "Hi there, I was hoping you could help me. I recently Ascended and I was going to do my intake interview, but my ability is one that people might assume was...a bit prone to corruption. I'd really like to avoid the stigma, is there something I can buy to keep my power on the down low?" I tried to keep any sense of urgency or need from my voice, since not showing how badly you want something is buying shit 101.

The man snorted a bit at that. "Hah. If you want an obfuscator you're looking in the wrong part of town boyo. That's high end goods. I happen to know a place that has one, which is lucky because usually you need to buy them at auction. I can point you to the place, but you'll need to buy something first. I ain't running a charity for I rankers." I winced, mostly because literally everything here was horrifyingly expensive, but it's not like he was charging me for the info. I would get a new toy to play with and some information at the same time. Perfectly reasonable.

I started to look around. I wanted to pick something and go, I got a weird vibe here. There were little signs under the products telling what they did, but they were mostly at the I grade with one or two H's. I focused on things I'd find useful. Invisibility was neat, but not really something I needed. Disguise was good, and I could see it being key once I did my intake, but considering how low level this stuff was I was guessing anyone from the Unity would be able to see through the illusions. There were some other neat things I liked the look of. A pair of glasses that let you see through low tier objects and a pair of gloves that could stick to walls.

But I finally settled on something kind of niche. The item was only about forty thousand credits, practically cheap by the standards of this place. A small black ring that could hold a single object that I could pick up. I picked it up, handing it to the man at the counter. "Good choice. Spatial items are almost always higher tier than this and are usually much more expensive. This one only holds one item so no one has really wanted it, but it's a prototype for a line of smuggling rings the creator is working on. The object inside is undetectable to anyone under C rank. It probably would have sold anyway but it bonds to the item put inside, so after it's used it'll only hold that thing."

I nodded, not caring much. I'd planned to use it to store my scroll anyway, so the fact that it would only ever hold one object wasn't a downside to me. I passed over my black metal card before using my scan ring to send the money. As he wrapped it up he filled me in on the specifics. "It takes a few seconds to get things in or out, so it isn't much good for weapons, but once something is in there almost anyone you meet will overlook it. Most people won't even be able to tell its a spacial ring." He finished wrapping it up and passed it to me, since I'd decided not to wear it out given where I was. Finally I got it put away and looked at him expectantly. He smiled unpleasantly, exposing his beetle black teeth. "A deal's a deal. Up the road about a mile. The Wick and Candle. Tell them Ivan sent you."

We nodded and headed out, and as we got further away I pulled Benny off to the side. "Should we get out of here man? I think we'll need a lot more money to get anything good. I'm kind of curious what the obfuscator costs but I'm almost positive we can't afford it. We can just come back and check for it when we have more cash. Or wait for the auction like he said." I didn't want to stay down here too long. I was getting nervous. It might just be the normal nerves you get when doing something that was a little out of bounds but whatever it was I doubted it would hurt to leave and come back another time with more money. The extra sixty thousand credits would be enough for some Doom Sovereign bets.

Benny looked pensive. "I mean...the thing you want is right down the road man? I mean sure, no way we have enough for it anyway but we should at least know what to aim for right? Otherwise we might save up for like weeks and come back and not have enough. Or spend months doing it and find out we had what we needed the first day. Come on, we can just dip in and look, we won't even talk to the counter guy so he won't know there's a reason to pay attention to us. As long as we don't actually tell him that Ivan sent us we'll be just another random pair of guys."

I bit my lip, but in the end he was right. I was being silly and letting my fear control me. I smiled sheepishly. "Right, sorry man, you're right. as long as we don't mention Ivan we'll be just another couple of kids. But I don't want to ask about the obfuscator. Ivan seemed to get more interested when I brought it up. For all we know they kidnap uninitiated Ascendants down here. We just look around the shop to see if it's out and what it'll be worth, and if we don't see it we can just use the name to do our own research so we know a ballpark amount to bring with us when we come back."

With that settled we both made our way up the street, looking for the Wick and Candle. The buildings as we got further in got nicer and less crumbling. As we'd seen from up top it seem like they built the best facilities in the middle of town to start and the lesser shops just radiated out. I got the impression from looking in windows that we were even leaving the area where H and I grade stuff was common and were starting to run into thing that looked fancy enough to be higher grade. We finally found the Wick and Candle at the edge of what looked like some kind of demarcation in the ground.

The quality of the cobblestones on the road had a marked improvement and even the floor of the cavern had been polished smooth, but the Wick and Candle sat just outside that line. Like it was waiting to get into the nicer part of a town. The next building up was actually much nicer looking than any of the others, conforming to that line of improvement. Despite that the Wick and Candle really was much more upscale than the other shops even if there was quite a gap, which made me a bit less worried about going in, though I still decided to stick to my plan to be low key.

When we stepped up to the door however I stopped. I could feel something off. At first I thought it was the shop itself, but then I finally realized that it was the sense of being watched. I'd actually had it since we got down here I just hadn't been able to put a name to the feeling. I turned slowly, looking behind us, but there was nothing there, and I let out a relieved sigh at how silly I'd been being. I was just being paranoid because I was in a new place. I turned back to the shop door and reached out for the knob, opening the door and slipping in as quietly as possible. I browsed around for a while, looking for the obfuscator, but nothing had that label on it and I had no idea what I was looking for.

Before I could decide what to do however, a text arrived on my scan ring, a function I barely ever used, the words scrolling across the band. 'Come up to my office' it was from Zeke. Which was strange, because Zeke only had a work room not an office, and if he was home he should know I wasn't there. I was getting creeped out, so I turned to leave and bumped smack dab into a pair of men in suits wearing VERY familiar painted masks. It didn't take long to understand what my Uncle's text meant as one of the suited goons growled out a command. "The Deacon would like to see you." Huh, so that's why Zeke was never home. Fuck it, time to get some answers.