It took only a moment’s thought.

It rarely took more than that, really. It was, after all, the thought of only a moment that recommended the guilty avoid responsibility. The thought of only a moment that cajoled the weary into capitulation. The thought of only a moment that required the fearful to run.

And so, with that moment’s thought, I avoided. I capitulated. I ran.

I lied.

“Oh, I’m not sure really,” I prevaricated, stretching out my words just as I stretched the truth. “Natural superpowers can be hard to grasp. It seems to mostly just make me a bit more lively. I’m sure you noticed that injuries don’t appear to bother me that much.”

Roy nodded, eyes widened in such a way as to make me feel even more guilty. “But what about the bugs?” he asked.

“They’re just your normal Risen,” I said. “Part of the same thing that makes me harder to hurt seems to have changed my anatomy enough that I can carry them inside me. A bit gross, but…” I let one of the Risen travel up my throat, opening my mouth to display its form, before commanding it to travel back down.

“Useful,” I finished once I could speak again.

“Huh. That’s...interesting.” Roy looked both disgusted and impressed. I wasn’t sure which one I was trying to provoke with that stunt. Eventually he stopped trying to decide between the two, instead latching onto another thought.

“What happened to you in the alley, then?”

“...hold my hand as I go.”

I shut my eyes tightly, forcing the grief back into its box; sending it back to the Dark where I had made its home. It struggled, as it always did. It didn’t like being hidden away - but I had long learned to keep it locked up.

Eventually, I was able to think again.

Roy stared at me with worried eyes.

“What were we talking about?” I asked. I had just shown him one of my Risen, and then...what came next? I shook my head, trying to clear the fog in my eyes and mind.

“Nevermind,” he said, looking troubled.

I shrugged. Something told me to let it be. Besides, there were important revelations that we had passed over.

“Your father,” I intoned.

He winced, the subject contorting his face into something unmentionable. Despite that, the youth didn’t shy away from the conversation. I was proud of him for that - it was better than I might have done. Better than I had done.

His next words were illuminating. Not in all aspects, for my predictions had not been far from the mark. No, instead what it highlighted was Roy himself. The boy had suffered through a hard life; harder than most, surely. Born to a loving couple, but having received none of that love himself. It had the makings of a tragedy.

And a tragedy, it was. A silent one, perhaps; it did not shout itself from the rooftops, it did not accost strangers in the streets. It was the sort of tragedy that sparked within a family’s well-built home, lighting it aflame, yet doing little damage to the houses nearby.

It was the sort of tragedy that left neighbors pointing at billowing smoke as it filled the sky; perhaps they even wondered what had happened. Perhaps they worried for their fellow man. But in the end, the smoke dissipated, leaving only a single ruined family in its wake.

Everyone else simply moved on.

That ruined family, however, could not. The smoke had already entered their lungs; it had blackened their walls. They would not forget. They could not forget.

It was the unfortunate tragedy of a people that lacked the wonders of modern medicine and therapy - only able to heal afflictions of the flesh. Unable to cure a new mother’s psychosis, forged in the wake of childbirth. Unable to rid that same mother of the delusions that she so tightly held. Unable to prevent the noose that wrapped itself around her neck.

It was the unfortunate tragedy of a man who loved his wife with everything he had - only to lose it all at once. A man who buried himself in work. A man who drowned himself in drink. A man who blamed the birth of his infant son for the loss of his most precious love.

It was absurd, of course.

Then again, tragedies so often were.

And so, every day, the boy and his father breathed with blackened lungs. Every day, they walked past burn-scarred walls. Every day, they relived their personal tragedy. All the while, the world outside had long since moved on.

The boy grew up faster than most; harder than most.

Angrier than most - and that anger drove him to forge his actions from spite.

“Yesterday, I realized it didn’t have to live the way that I had been living,” Roy said. “I realized that it would be more satisfying to be better than my father rather than his opposite - to outdo him in one of the few things that he still cares about.” He shrugged. “It’s not an altruistic reason to be a hero, but I figure it’s a start.”

I nodded.

“It’s a start; that is more than most,” I said, leaning closer, “and I have an idea of where to begin.”

The blade whisked through the air, coming within a fraction of an inch of its target. Roy crawled backwards, narrowly avoiding the flurry of attacks that were sent his way. The storm of metal ceased, only to be replaced by a booted foot. Unlike the blades, it landed.

Roy was sent skidding across the ground, toppling and tumbling. Already, bruises had begun to form on his recently-healed skin, dying flesh in shades of irritated pink and red. I desperately wanted to intervene, but all I could do was watch. My hands were tied.

“Think you’re tough, boy?” his opponent taunted. Foot met ribs with a meaty thwack, making me wince in sympathy. “Think you can be some hero?”

He rolled his blades over scarred fingers, twirling them in a manner that hardly seemed possible, before leaning down with a sneer. “You have to do better than that, if you want to survive.”

The blades came down again - and again, I desperately wished to throw myself into the fray. Perhaps I had been too eager. Perhaps there had been better ways. Experience was the best teacher, in many respects, but it was also an unforgiving one.

Roy rolled to the side, having recovered from the previous blows at last. The aspiring hero pulled himself to his feet, adopting a rather haggard fighting stance. He swayed, his battered hands trembling with the effort required to keep them up. Still, keep them up, he did.

His opponent laughed gleefully, not bothered by his defiance in the slightest. “Better!” He lifted his arm. A glint of metal flashed across my vision. A spurt of red came next.

Roy let out an undignified yelp. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he yelled, holding a hand to his now-bleeding side.

Jack laughed, waving the question off. “You wanted to join us, didn’t you? Well, this is your test.” In the blink of an eye, his expression shifted into something far more serious. “It’s a dangerous world out there. Best you find out now, where it’s still safe.”

“You call this safe?”

He shrugged. “Relatively.”

I was beginning to regret my hastily-formed plan. The way that I had figured, heroes no longer existed in their original form. Not really, anyway. However, mercenaries like Jack still performed a similar role - albeit with the requirement of payment being offered. Though it didn’t quite embody the concepts of heroism that I had grown up to cherish, it was a starting point. More importantly, it was a safer starting point than simply wandering the streets looking for trouble.

So I had thought, anyway. My hypothesis was quickly being disproved.

Roy yelped again as another blade flashed through the air. This time, however, he managed to avoid getting nicked. Say what you might about Jack’s methods, it was clear that they were effective in eking out every last drop of effort from his students.

I dearly hoped that he had exceptionally good aim, though, otherwise we would need to have words when everything was said and done.

“The enemy won’t slow down when you’re weak,” Jack asserted, flinging another blade. “They won’t slow down when you’re hurt.” He threw another blade, only narrowly missing his target. “They won’t slow down when you’ve given up.” Another blade.

“If you want to join us, you will be none of those. You will do none of those. You will not be weak. You will not feel hurt. You will not give up.” A new blade followed each statement, forcing Roy into a panicked frenzy of dives and dodges. Somehow, he made it out unscathed - barring his pants, potentially.

“Do you understand?” Jack roared, more drill sergeant than the drunk that I had come to know.

“Yes, sir!” Roy snapped, drawn in by the unnatural gravitas of Jack’s demeanor.

The man smirked. “Good.” He threw another blade just before he turned toward me, forcing the at-attention youth to dive away once more.

“Welcome to Katrina’s Killers, kid,” Jack said, waving a hand in the air as he walked in my direction.

I just stared, flabbergasted. He didn’t even check to see if the boy was okay.

That last throw had been uncomfortably close.

I was really regretting this plan.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad, after all.

Contrary to the initial ‘interview’, though I hesitated to call it that, what came next was relatively placid. Jack was running the newly-inducted mercenary through a number of scenarios, trying to get a gauge for the way that he thought. According to him, he didn’t need an ‘idiot with half a brain’. I couldn’t help but notice the pointed look that Will sent his way at that.

“Now, tell me,” Jack said. “What would you do if Markus over there decided he wanted to kill you?”

Roy answered uncomfortably quickly. It almost made me think he had thought about that very question before.

“Run like hell, sir.”

“Oh? So you’re not completely stupid. Glad we’ve got that covered. Now pretend that he’s going to kill our entire company if you run. What do you do?”

“I don’t...think he could really do that?”

“It’s a hypothetical situation, just answer the question.”

Will whispered something to Katrina, causing them to both break out in laughs. Jack turned and gave them a scathing glare.

“I...fight him?”

“Is that a question?”

“I fight him!” Roy asserted.

“Fucking wrong! You just bought us two seconds and now we’re down a man, useless as he turned out to be.” Jack declared.

The young mercenary was becoming annoyed. “Well, what do I do then, oh wise leader?”

Despite the unprofessional snickering of Katrina and Will beside me, Jack took the sarcastic remark at face value. I, too, smirked slightly at the words. I had a feeling that Jack rarely had the opportunity to flex his teaching acumen, rough as it was.

“You make sure we know he’s coming from the moment he decides to do it. If we don’t know ahead of time, you’ve already failed.”

Roy looked dumbfounded, though I was beginning to see where Jack was going with this.

“Tell me, why do you think we would agree to take you? Do you think it was your brute strength? Maybe your expert swordsmanship? Of fucking course not, and it probably never will be. Life’s not a fairytale, and skilled fighters are built in years of hard effort - not a few weeks of can do attitude.”

Though the words may have been tough to swallow, Roy appeared to be mulling over his answer earnestly. Eventually, he came to an answer.

“[Unity], I would guess.”

“What do you know? He got it in one,” Jack congratulated.

I hardly thought it was that surprising, given my own thoughts on [Unity] and its potential applications - applications which, unfortunately, I was unable to capitalize on due to my particular situation. In my mind, [Unity] was tailor-made for the purpose of information gathering. Given enough time to prepare, one could have one thousand eyes and one thousand ears spread throughout the city - each connected to a single mind. Though I had once imagined that the sensory overload would be far too severe, I had come to understand that there were more factors at play than I initially realized - my own quick adjustment to the multitasking required for [Unity] was a clear example. Though it didn’t always come easily, it did come eventually.

Jack appeared to be of the same mind, extolling the virtues of a proper network of miniature spies. Of course, they would have to be miniature to make things feasible - the life requirements made that the only option available. This, unfortunately, created a key vulnerability; the same vulnerability that had meant the end of my spider-self, in fact.

Small things were simply far too squishy.

Roy did object to this plan, and for what I figured to be a good reason. It was, I also presumed, the major reason why I had not seen hordes of Risen insects crawling all over every nook and cranny of Dihaim: the drawback that was the tithe.

I had noticed it before, but a Risen did not return all of the donated life to those who raised it upon death. Instead, it simply returned most of it. A small portion of the life that had been expended was pulled away, given to Neladrie in return for the use of her power. Presumably, the same sort of phenomenon rang true for the other Saviors’ Marks as well.

As grateful as they were for their borrowed powers, most of humanity was still loath to part with something so precious as portions of its lifespan. Not recklessly, anyway. While the tithe was relatively small for tiny corpses like insects, it added up; the Risen died far too easily for most to be comfortable with their use.

Jack, however, took a different perspective. As the mercenary explained it, there was a clear and everpresent risk involved with such tactics - but a mercenary - and a hero, too, I silently added - was always risking their life. Which was worse: dying early or dying a little earlier?

That was without even taking into account that Jack claimed the only somewhat-reliable way to receive new conduits was to tithe greater amounts of life and be rewarded for it. That, I found as a bit of welcome knowledge. If that were true, my main body - Victor’s old body - was likely to receive new conduits sooner rather than later. However, because the tithe was extracted upon a Risen’s death, it would require quite a few members of my horde dying. For now, I simply tucked the thought away - but it was good to know that I might receive more powers in the future.

I had a feeling that I would need them, when all was said and done.