Ryan heaved himself up and see-sawed into a dumpster. He held his breath while he ruffled through the rotten food, found the Salamander burrowing around inside of it, and gutted it like a fish.

He climbed through a window and jabbed at another one as it skittered over the walls of a stranger’s kitchen. The frog woman shrieked at him from the hallway over the sounds of shattering glass and ceramic.

He ran through the park and hurled his spear to take a Salamander out of the sky. It had been attacking someone’s pet owl. He had to push through the thickets afterward, thorns snagging on his clothes and scraping along his [Thick Skin], to retrieve the weapon.

He hauled buckets of water from a pump to put out a fire, accosted people on the streets, demanding they tell him in which direction the drakes had flown, and ran from the city guards when they tried to interrogate him.

He lay on the street, arms and legs stretched out, and didn’t move a muscle. The golden roots looked so dim and blurry above him.

Navid stole the words from his lips, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this exhausted in my life.”

Fine grit crunched beneath his grimy hair as Ryan tilted his skull to give him a long, suffering look. But, to be fair, Navid was caked in soot and sweat as well. He’d actually put in some effort once there had been a mess to fix, though it was hard to take that seriously.

Navid had rolled up his sleeves and draped himself over a low stone bench next to a patch of greenery like a damsel posing for a portrait.

Boots scuffed on the stone, and he craned his head up long enough, neck trembling, to see Anne shambling toward them with Jason’s scarf bundled up in one hand and her sword sheath in the other.

Trails of smoke drifted from the central, charred husk of the theatre behind her. And a crowd had gathered around it like a wake.

Lisa sat on the ground between them, completing a triangle of bodies with Navid and him. She was surrounded by empty boxes, sacks, and loops of rope, and she manhandled one of the Draconic Salamanders they’d caught. Like a spider, she spun straps of conjured material into a cocoon around it and added it to the sack with the others.

It was slow work. Navid had given her as much mana as he could without suffering a migraine that would put him out, and she was working on fumes. She didn’t even have enough left to help put out the fires, so she had sat here and focused on this instead.

The other five, including Sam, had been the ones to fight the Salamanders trying to escape the building, and who had organized the onlookers into either helping or leaving.

Jason and Frederick had split off one by one after groups of Salamanders had slipped past them. Those, they could still chase without enhanced senses.

Anne and Navid had stayed until the end, hauling buckets of water as just another link in a chain of people doing the same, until the firefighters and the city’s mages had arrived to take control of the situation. By then, the damage had been done.

One bench over, Jason reached up to accept his scarf back.

Anne didn’t even smile. “You didn’t catch them all, did you?”

He rolled his skull left and right. “Some people at the edge of the city told me, a few made it into the tunnels. ‘Couldn’t follow them past there on my own.”

She slid down the bench next to Frederick’s legs and Lisa’s sack of cocoons. “I warned the firefighters and guards.”

“Same here,” he said, “guards.”

“But we saw how slow they were to handle the Spiderwolves …”

“Yep.”

This had been a disaster. Had any of them truly succeeded if the theatre had gone down in flames?

“We should probably find a place to rest for the night,” Anne said. “If we can find an inn with real food, we can sleep in, consult with the city, and hunt them down tomorrow afternoon. Be home by midnight …?”

“There is still a Kobold camp out there,” Navid pointed out. “If we linger, another group might investigate the rumors of a Theatre entrance and steal our loot.”

“We can’t leave now,” Ryan groaned.

“We could.” Anne shook her head. “But we can’t just leave things as they are.”

Navid held up a listless arm. “What else is there to do? The drakes can’t breed if they cease to exist after our departure.”

Lisa stiffened for a heartbeat but continued to wrap up the last Salamander.

“We failed,” Anne insisted. “Me more than any of you. My quest was to ensure that the theatre was safe. Now the firefighters don’t even think it’s structurally sound. The cost and effort of fixing damage like that … Where is the troupe going to perform? How will they recover? We have to fix this.”

“I thought you were good at that,” Ryan mused, “fixing things.” He could only see the corner of one of his eyes, but he knew Navid rolled them.

“That’s right,” Jason perked up. “Maybe— Maybe this is just another test. Phase two? The Theatre must have been hard-pressed to create challenges for all of us, so it intentionally created a mess for us to help Navid fix …?”

Ryan gave a breathless chuckle and immediately regretted it because he didn’t want to sound like he was ridiculing Jason’s idea. It was good. Not the idea itself—that was ridiculous. It was good at least one of them wasn’t miserable.

Even Frederick was sulking after everything had gone to shit. The public had turned on him. A few news reporters had shown up to interrogate them. Onlookers had yelled at them to get out of their city.

So much for quests.

“If this is all for me …” Navid sounded amused. “Well, I’m flattered, but I am honestly not so important that you would have to put yourselves through more of this for my sake.”

“Uhm, guys?” Frederick raised his head from between his knees to look at something across the square.

“I don’t need to level up tonight. We don’t have to stay.”

“You’d be the only one to level if we did,” Ryan mumbled.

Jason shot him a wounded look, and Anne sounded surprised, “You think so?”

“People. Look.”

“What—? Oh.” Ryan twisted his head. He found the depleted fountain in the middle of the city square illuminated by a liquid golden glow from within.

“It’s too late,” Jason breathed out, finally defeated. “That’s our exit.”

“Do we have to go?” Frederick asked. “What happens if we don’t take it?”

“It varies. In some accounts, the Theatre just … stops working. People stop moving, then collapse into smoke. The lights go out. Buildings disappear and the ground itself vanishes. One group had to race back to the exit to not be swallowed by the void.

“In others, the Theatre forces you out. More or stronger monsters will appear. Guardians, specters with green eyes, even just the people and animals turning against you.”

They stared at the crowd of firefighters, guards, onlookers, and the theatre troupe. At the sprawling cityscape around them. How many people lived in this fake Hadica? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

He blanched.

“It’s not immediate. We should have a good hour or so. In case there was something you wanted to do before we leave …?”

Was there something he wanted to do? Jason sounded almost hopeful, that one of them might have some way of turning this around, but Ryan didn’t have an answer for him. Or himself.

“We could apologize,” Anne said, “but given that the people here aren’t real, I’m not sure for whose benefit that would be.”

That sort of statement should have invited an argument, but Frederick only glanced at Anne and away, Jason was sad, Lisa distracted, and Ryan saw pieces of himself in their expressions.

The silence lingered until Anne said, “So the Kobold Camp—”

Navid swung up. “Nope. That’s enough of that. There is no way I can allow myself to let you leave this place like … this.” He gestured at them in generalized disgust. “So let’s debrief. That’s something my family likes to do after projects, good and bad. Review. We should talk this out before we throw our emotions at a camp of pure, innocent Kobolds.”

Ryan wasn’t exactly in the mood to listen to Navid waffle on for ages again. He took a page out of the guy’s own book and said in a dismissive tone, “What is there to talk about?”

“What went right. What went wrong. What we could have done better. What was out of our hands. Where our expectations were at the start, and where we should place them in hindsight.” He walked around to face them all. “Come now. We’re doing this. You too, Lisa.”

She blinked and looked up with sunken eyes. “Huh?”

“The Theatre is supposed to challenge those who enter it. What was our challenge?”

“Uhm.” She scratched the side of her face. “Making sure the performance goes well?”

“And what stood in the way of that? All of you, let’s list the stones that lay in our path to make it clear just how much effort we would have had to sink into this to achieve a perfect result. Ryan, you start— Don’t roll your eyes at me, man. One roadblock. Go.”

Maybe it was because Navid sounded vaguely like his old coach, Gardener. Maybe it was because he was embarrassing himself in front of all of them for once. Maybe it was because this was the closest thing to a righteous punishment Ryan could find for himself.

He sighed and massaged his eyes, drawling as he thought about it. “Iunno. The time limit?”

“Go on?”

“We had seven hours to fulfill our quests. That was the first— No, the second hurdle in completing our challenge. The first was finding a quest in the first place, but Jason took care of that while we were distracted with the uh— the radio.”

“Good. We were dropped in a foreign city surrounded by inhuman people. Challenge number one was adapting. Challenge number two, finding our quest. And those quests were …?” He counted and swept his hand from Ryan down the line, pointing. “Lisa, pick it up.”

She sighed as she stared down at the cocoon at her feet and used her right hand to unfold the fingers of her left one as she counted: “Retrieve the missing actors. Drum up business. To do that, catch a thief, investigate rumors of a ghost, clear the roads of a monster infestation. Use the fame of any successful quest to spread word of mouth—”

“I only really wanted you to name one example, but go on.”

“—collect ingredients for the special effects director. Collect illegal ingredients for the special effects director on the side—”

“Wait, what?” Frederick interrupted.

“That was my quest,” Ryan groaned. “Demir wanted me to collect some illegal ingredients for him. He also wanted me to let him lie and say we’d failed so he could sell the ingredients we got him on the side. He offered to share the profits, but I turned him down on that offer.”

“But not the first one? You just blindly did what he asked of you? Did he use that stuff to summon the phantoms?”

Ryan shrugged. “Probably.”

Frederick shifted on the bench, spreading his arms out as he snapped, “Are you an idiot?”

“Stop that,” Navid told him. “The point of this exercise is not to assign blame.”

“That was the next hurdle, wasn’t it?” Jason spoke up. “The quests. The Theatre is meant to challenge us, but I think the true challenge of the quests was to … say no. I don’t know about you, but I hated mine. There were a thousand things I would have rather done in a city like this.” His eyes swept over the cityscape and up to the golden roots. “I tried to make the most of it by inviting Estru back with us. Ryan at least said no to half of his …?”

“That’s …” Ryan closed his eyes and sighed. “That wasn’t good enough.”

“The point of this exercise isn’t to pat each other on our backs, either, but I’ll allow it,” Navid said. “And you were right. There was deception involved and not all of the hurdles in our way were laid out for us. The deceptive nature of our quests, special effects director Demir— I, for one, still have no idea where these nasty little drakes came from.

“Yet, of the hurdles that we were aware of, we completed all but one in six hours. We divided the work amongst ourselves, secured mounts and a guide, slew two giant monsters that may as well have been eleventh-floor guardians, you caught a thief, auditioned for the theatre, learned your lines, improvised a blessing to unite the orchestra—”

“I thought the point wasn’t to pat each other on the backs,” Ryan snarled. Didn’t his pampered brain get it? It hadn’t been enough.

“I’m not.” Navid blinked. “I am stating a factual record of what we have been doing for the last eight hours, not including our journey here. We did all of that. And how many people are we?” He ignored Lisa’s glare and pointed at Anne.

“Six or seven?”

“How many of the theatre’s employees aided us in solving all their problems?” His finger moved on to the next person in line.

“None,” Frederick said.

“So six people did all of that in six hours. And it all went down in flames. I’ll reiterate my question from earlier, what were our expectations for the Theatre at the start?” He looked at Jason, last in line, and the person who had brought them here.

“To be challenged.”He hesitated when Anne peered up at him from where she huddled against the bench. His head dropped. “To go on an adventure.”

“And once we were inside, what were your expectations then?”

“That we would complete our quests,” he said wistfully. “That’d we come back to the theatre like heroes, enjoy the play, and go on a bar crawl, or a city tour, or something …”

“In hindsight, knowing what we know now about the challenges we faced, do you still think we could have met those expectations?”

Jason shrugged. He stared off into the distance, toward the tunnel where they had fought the Spiderwolves and, Ryan knew, a caravanserai beneath a mansion.

After they had left the burning theatre, guards had found them and taken Lady Estru away. Home. They had been too preoccupied with the swarm to stop it from happening.

“We had an hour left at the end,” Anne said. “If we had managed our time better, asked more questions, asked for help—”

Navid shook his head. “I don’t like your tone. I am not trying to ask you what we should have done. That is all in the past. There is no changing it. I am asking you what we maybe could have done, and which tools we can take away from this experience to recognize and evaluate both possible hurdles and appropriate courses of action in similar situations in the future.”

He snapped and pointed again. “Round two. From the top. Jason, what is a tool we can take away from our visit to the Theatre?”

He blinked and turned back to the group, startling a little. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting to be called on a second time in a row. “Uhm. Patience …?”

Navid gestured. “Go on.”

“I sort of ran off in the beginning. You were talking about radios, and I thought it was a waste of time when I wanted to find an adventure as soon as possible. After we got our quests, too. We sort of panicked. Maybe we could have taken a moment to consider if we even want to, or can, help the theatre?”

There it was again, Ryan thought. ‘Want.’

“Considering our situation. Planning ahead. Setting goals. All good points, but we did try to plan after we had received our quests. Was it not good enough?” He asked the question like a [Teacher] in feigned confusion.

“We sort of rushed it and took the first best option that would let each of us complete our quests without really checking in with each other.”

“And why did we do that and not those other things? Considering our situation. Planning ahead. Setting goals. These are simple things, yet we didn’t do any of them. Which tool were we lacking?”

Jason looked lost so Navid moved his finger tentatively toward Frederick.

“Communication?” he guessed.

Navid beamed. “Exactly. Communication. Is. Key. You should really be taking notes right now. There were a number of hurdles where communication could have saved us today by allowing us to take courses of action similar to the ones Jason just outlined.

“In the beginning, with the help of communication, we could have discussed our options, voiced doubts, set goals, shared information. Like, say, if a miserable little rat-man was trying to seduce you into helping him embezzle funds from his own company by stabbing your teammates in the back.”

He didn’t even look at Ryan as he said that. He scoffed, looking up and around as if hoping to catch sight of Demir somewhere in the crowd so he could throw a shoe at him.

It was, perhaps, the closest thing to genuine emotion Ryan had ever seen from the guy.

“Anyway, communication can also help in other ways. If we had had access to one of those nifty journals, we could have informed each other of rapid changes in the situation across long distances, like when negotiations broke down and the Spiderwolves attacked us. But even without fancy spells or items, communication is often free. Like when the phantoms attacked the audience and Ryan … ran off? I’m sorry, I’m sounding terribly accusatory toward you right now. It isn’t my intention at all to single you out, but I’m genuinely confused as to where you went.”

Ryan needed a moment to sift through his emotions before he could reply, no matter what Navid claimed his intentions were.

Anne jumped in for him. “To catch Demir.”

He nodded, not the least bit surprised that she understood.

“Ahh …” Navid frowned. “Why? That doesn’t seem like you. You seemed, to me, like the type of guy who would value protecting his team, or the innocent, above most else.”

“I thought I could get him to end the spell.”

“It wasn’t—” Navid and Lisa both spoke up at the same time and stopped.

Lisa, still in a miserable mood, lowered her head and gestured for Navid to go on. She’d been silent ever since she had pleaded with Anne to help her, and silent while she had been focused on her work, so maybe that was the reason. But Navid also had an aura about him. A certain momentum. He had started this exercise and captured their attention.

“The spell was catalyzed by an alchemical anchor,” Navid said. “Demir would have had to have been an exceptionally skilled or powerful spellcaster to end the spell. Especially from a distance.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t know that. And if I had stayed to talk with you guys, if he had been able to end the spell, it would have been a waste of time. He would have gotten away.”

Speaking of the man was frustrating enough, and yet Ryan couldn’t help but picture him in that alleyway. His thoughts hung on him for some reason, something he’d done or said …

“‘A waste of time.’ That is a … critical way of looking at communication. Jason, you expressed a similar sentiment earlier. What is it about communication that makes you value it so lowly?”

“I don’t,” he said. “Not normally. I was just impatient but sometimes … Talking takes time. A lot of the time, people will talk and talk but never actually get anything done, or say anything that’s … important? Relevant?”

Ryan groaned and sat up, elbows on his knees. “We were running out of time. People were getting hurt. Dying. There were children in the audience. I had to do something and I wasn’t going to sit around and listen to magical theory. ‘The spell was catalyzed by an alchemical anchor,’” he repeated what he had said in a monotone voice. “‘Demir would have to be an exceptionally skilled or powerful spellcaster to end the spell.’ Do you know how much time that would have taken?”

“I do,” Navid said in a measured tone, “which is why I would not have phrased it that way. In the heat of the moment, it is important to be concise. So I would have told you something along the lines of, ‘He can’t!’ And then you would have had three options: you could have asked, ‘Why?,’ and we would have had a discussion about magical theory while people are dying around us, or you could have trusted in my expertise, accepted this new information, and altered your course of action.

“But, again, I am not telling you what you should have done, I am pointing out what can happen if, and only if, we use the wondrous tool of communication.”

Yeah, right, Ryan scoffed, but only in his thoughts. He looked away and leaned his boot left and right on its heel.

“The third option,” Navid went on, “could genuinely have been you running off without waiting for a response.”

Ryan perked up. Huh?

“You are right in thinking that talking takes time. We might not be able to afford it in many situations and if you don’t think you can trust someone to be concise, or if you do not trust their expertise, especially if lives are at stake, then, of course, you wouldn’t want to take the risk of trying to communicate with them. Like me. I know I do not inspire confidence most of the time, but Lisa was also there, more importantly, the only true lives that were at risk were our own, and most importantly, we trust you, Ryan.

“Did Demir resist you in any way when you found him? Did you restrain him or …?”

Ryan blinked. He needed a moment to sift through his emotions again but for completely different reasons this time. He rubbed his mouth to hide his blush. “Yeah, uh— No. He didn’t fight back. I confronted him, he told me he couldn’t end the spell, I treated my wounds and stabbed him in the foot so he wouldn’t get far if he tried to run away, then turned back.”

“You stabbed him in the foot?” Frederick asked. “That’s brutal.”

“Is he okay?” Anne asked.

“I saw him earlier,” Jason said. “He was arrested?”

“I tossed him some first aid supplies and he immediately started shouting for help,” Ryan scoffed. “Yeah, I assumed he would be fine.”

“That’s a dangerous assumption to make,” Anne said. “People can bleed out from foot wounds and not even notice them. They can easily become infected and— Just don’t try that with a person, okay?”

His guts squirmed when Ryan remembered his speartip sinking into the man’s boot. He shrugged. “‘Kay.”

“So he didn’t fight back,” Navid said again. “But imagine if he had had a vial of poison or— No, I’m doing this wrong. Looking forward, imagine you did something similar in the Tower. You think you know how to disarm a trapped area, or you see a Candletail and chase it.”

“Candletails don’t exist anymore,” Lisa mumbled.

“Not the point. You run off without informing us where you’re going. You are wounded or poisoned, and because we have to search for you, we cannot reach you in time to save you. You die. That can be avoided if you simply tell us what you intend on doing or leave a trail for us to follow. Then we can plan around your actions, or your absence, and we’ll know where to look for you when the fighting is over.

“If the cost of communicating with us is too high, communicating at us and trusting us to deal is better than nothing. Do you understand?”

Ryan nodded and suppressed a sigh. “Yeah. I get it.”

“And? What is the tool we can take away from this? Say it with me—”

“Communication.”

“—is?”

“Is key,” they stumbled their way into saying it together.

“Maybe if we had ‘communicated about’ our quests,” Lisa mused, “Anne would have sensed that something was off about Demir.”

Anne shook her head, “These people are like simulacra. I cannot tell if they are lying with my truth sight alone.”

That would have been useful to know earlier.

Ryan thought of all the times they’d looked to her for guidance and matched those to the looks of small betrayals their teammates shot her now, but he could understand why she wouldn’t have wanted to reveal it.

“Your tone is better, and communicating in hindsight is better than nothing at all, but I truly do not wish to dwell on this line of thought. Again, that’s all behind us. At a certain point, hammering in the lesson will only yield negative results.”

“No, but that’s another tool I was lacking,” Anne said. “It should probably come before planning. Research?”

Navid perked up again. “Oh. Good one, yes! But we are exhausted and short on time, so I don’t wish to drag this on for too long. Instead, I would like to take these ideas and apply them, let’s say, to the Kobold camp.

“Our tools, broadly, are patience, research, and communication. More specifically, we have examples like evaluating our situation, planning ahead, and setting goals. How can we use these to successfully face the Kobold camp? Round three. From the top, Ryan.”

He snapped and pointed at him.

Ryan really should have seen this coming. “Ugh.” He frowned in consternation. “First step would be evaluating. So uh, we’re exhausted. Obviously. We’re out of mana and our other resources.”

“Other resources?” Navid smiled. “Can you be more specific?”

“Healing potions. And I don’t know about you, but I’m out of first aid supplies. There are also secondary resources like Anne’s blessing or— I don’t know if your luck is finite?”

“It is,” Frederick said, “and I used it all up.”

“Right. So next would be— Wait,” he remembered. Patience. He was getting ahead of himself. “Do any of you still have first aid supplies or healing potions?”

They took their time planning ahead, to the point where they sat in a circle and laid out their belongings. They talked about their goals—getting home alive—what they remembered about the layout of the camp, its traps, the types of enemies, and their numbers. They sketched it out on pieces of paper and plotted a few different routes.

Kobolds weren’t that dangerous, but escaping from the middle of their camp swaying on their feet without so much as a drop of healing potion?

Aside from their empowered physiques, his aura, and a few magic items, they were practically level one again. One unlucky wound could spell disaster.

“At the end of the day,” Navid said, “you did try your best. And that may be the most important tool of all: commitment. But the odds were stacked against us. The Theatre tried to challenge us and it did, but just because we failed, that does not mean that we didn’t rise to the occasion. That we cannot grow from this attempt. Even if we had used all of these tools, I doubt we would have been able to achieve a perfect result, but we will do better next time.”

Navid had him. This stupid exercise. Fixing this mess at least in part. Learning from their mistakes and putting it all into perspective. Even this awkward motivational speech, despite the fact that this was Navid freaking Madin speaking. He had him—right up until the end.

Next time.

Ryan thought of his parents, of Gardener, of his teachers and instructors. He thought of bringing tests home where he hadn’t scored a perfect grade, of afternoons he kept screwing up an exercise, again and again, the end of the school year, if the grades on his report card weren’t uniform.

You’ll do better next time.

No, he knew with absolute certainty, I won’t.

People had been telling him that all his life. Ryan had told himself that for the longest time, and he tried, but he kept slipping. For the past few years, things had gotten worse and worse and no amount of these ‘tools’ would fix him, only delay the inevitable.

He thought, and it was almost a prayer as that darkness yawned open inside of him, What am I supposed to do?

He pictured Demir in that alleyway and heard his laugh. Don’t you understand it yet? What were you supposed to do? Whatever the fuck you want!

Ryan searched around for a long moment while his friends made their final preparations and said, “Wait a second. I want to do something before we go.” He stood up. “I want to steal something.”

Lisa swiveled on him. “What?”

Anne said, “No, you’re not.” It almost sounded like a knee-jerk reaction.

And Navid beamed in surprise. “Where did this come from?”

“No. I am. You don’t have to condone it or help me. I’m just … communicating at you in advance? Because we are probably going to have to bolt for the exit after I do it. In case there was something else you wanted to do, I can wait.”

“You mean, you want to steal something from the item shop?” Jason asked. “To help us fight the Kobolds?”

He shook his head lightly and tapped his chest. “Something for me. It’s not far. I saw someone in the theatre troupe bring it out earlier.”

He tried to go, and Anne stepped in his way. “You can’t. Stealing is wrong.”

“Inherently?”

“I— It can be complicated.”

“I know that,” Ryan said, “but none of the people here are real. And we are.”

“It’s not a good thing to look for excuses like that.”

“I’m— It’s not like I want to live out some fantasy, Anne.” Ryan frowned. There was some heat in his voice, but it didn’t come from frustration. He didn’t know if it was the bewilderment, or the exhaustion, or … something else.

Did she think so little of him?

“I’m not planning on stealing from anyone in Hadica. I just— I want to do better.” That had been his decision. He had to start making commitments to who he wanted to be. Ryan didn’t know who that was, but Lisa had dragged him out of his room and shown him something new. The arena. He had loved it.

It wasn’t a perfect fit, and he couldn’t rely on others to drag him out of his dark days, but what else was out there waiting for him to discover? What he might love?

He had to take a leap of faith.

Anne met his eyes … and stepped away. “Wait a moment. We have to get ready. And don’t forget to strap on your helmet beforehand, too.”

“Seriously?” Navid arched his eyebrows as he glanced between the two of them. But he sounded thrilled. Frederick looked more judgmental, but Lisa and Jason gave him confused smiles. Maybe they understood, or they would if he explained it to them, but he didn’t have to.

Ryan left his spear at the fountain, gave them a grateful nod, and walked away with a spring in his step.

He approached the crowd that had gathered to one side of the theatre. For whatever reason, after they’d helped put out the fire, their wounds been treated, and they’d spoken to the guards, much of the crowd had stayed behind to watch over the ruined building.

Someone had brought them drinks—water, beer, mulled wine and tea—and a giant pot of hot soup. Some of the theatre employees had tried to save items on the way out. Documents, instruments, expensive prop pieces, piles of clothing. Enchanted items.

He had to search for a bit, politely threading his way through the crowd, and he idly kept an eye out for any … statues walking about. But he hadn’t seen the ghost, or golem, or whatever that Micah had been since he had left him behind.

That was probably for the best. Just looking at it had made his heart wrench.

He began to grow worried as he couldn’t find who he was looking for immediately. Until he spotted a group of musicians from the orchestra. A frog woman on the edges of it.

“Hey.” Ryan tapped her on the shoulder and leaned back when she spun around. The crowd was still on edge. He gave her his friendliest smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I was looking for you.”

Her throat deflated as she breathed, and she frowned. “Uh, why? What is this about now?”

“You probably recognize me. Veshim hired my team and me to help out around here? I helped capture Demir after he …” He sighed. “You were so welcoming to my teammates. Anne and Jason genuinely enjoyed their time here. I can’t understand why Demir would do this.”

A tall fire spirit noticed him and turned to back the frog woman up. “He’s always been a poisonous little thing. Trouble seemed to follow him around and people would make excuses.”

She glared, and Ryan didn’t know if it was purely directed at Demir or if the fire spirit was trying to insinuate something about him.

“I guess now we know the truth?” the frog lady said.

“I wish I could have stopped this from happening. I still have so many questions,” Ryan scoffed and frowned as if lost in thought. It wasn’t a complete lie, he still didn’t understand, but it was an act.

He shook the thoughts from his expression and gave the frog lady a hopeful look, reaching out for something she clutched against her chest. “May I see that for a moment, please?”

It was a gilded book. She held it out and only asked the question after he’d taken it, “Why? Oh, if you are looking for Demir’s journal, this isn’t that, it’s—”

“The Muse’s Manual,” he said. “I know.”

He opened it. The pages were blank.

Huh?

Ryan began to leaf through the manual. He was certain there had been writing in it earlier when he had seen the musicians consulting it before their performance. Why were its pages white? He had thought but— Was it not a ‘real’ magical item?

Oh no.

He stopped, ready to let his disappointment sink in, but the pages continued to flip on without him. The edges of his awareness blurred and he felt a tug on his thoughts like an unspoken question, Which instrument do you play?

None, Ryan answered. He’d never learned to play an instrument. He had never asked his parents about it or thought about it for more than a few moments at once.

The pages slowed, hesitant, but they didn’t stop. The manual sounded hopeful in his mind, Which instrument do you want to play?

None? His second response was as small and uncertain as he felt most day when he looked to the future, because that was what he was used to telling himself and others. The truth was, I don’t know if I even want to play an instrument or not.

He barely knew what he wanted out of life. Then again, had he ever given himself a fighting chance?

How about we find out together?

The third thought was his and the book’s both. The pages reversed course, flipping back to the beginning as a dark breeze spun tendrils of ink to fill them in.

He glimpsed texts, sheet music, illustrations, chapters on drums, trumpets, guitars, cellos—a bit of everything. Passing too quickly to read but their meanings pressed themselves in on his mind. There were exercises to get a feel for each instrument and see if they were something he might like. And, if he did, there were even more to teach him the basics. It was more writing than should have fit on its pages.

The cover slammed shut and Ryan smiled. “I’m taking this.”

“Huh?” the frog lady said.

He turned, waving an elbow with the book in one hand and slipping his helmet on with the other. “Thanks, I uh— Thank you. So much.”

“What, do you m— You can’t jus— Stop. Thief!”

“I’m grateful for this!”

“Thief!” she croaked.

The fire spirit lunged, but Ryan had already ducked into the crowd. He picked up the pace and jogged, body aching, toward the fountain. His team was waiting for him.

People in the crowd tried to trip him, tackle him, and grab him. He leaped, wove, and spun to break free, groaning as he forced himself to run the short stretch.

“Thief!” they shouted. “Thief!” And that was him. Ryan, [Thief of His Parent’s Future]. [False Idol]. [Bad Friend].

Lisa hefted her bag of cocoons, Sam at her side. Navid drew his sword. Frederick cast one last look around the city and held up his backpack like a shield. Jason stood on the ledge of the fountain.

Anne tilted her chin up and ran a hand along the strap of her helmet.

Yeah, yeah. Ryan reached them, shoved the manual in her hand, and fastened it.

She furrowed her brows when she saw what he had stolen, but it wasn’t to judge him or ridicule him. Oh, the curve of her brows read. I didn’t know you wanted to be a [Musician].

Me neither, he shrugged, but maybe I could be?

Jason handed him his spear and Ryan remembered what Navid had said, We trust you. Lisa has already given him permission, and his painting of her was a warm comfort in his chest. He wondered if these people would let him paint this moment if he asked. Because he wanted to.

Maybe I will ask them, he thought and followed Jason off the ledge.

He was a [Cowardly Dreamer], a [Shameful Fighter], a [Wishful Knight]. But, for now, he was also a [Beloved Son], a [Trusted Peer], and a [Someone Else’s Friend]. Open to anything.

His boot touched the portal and it took him elsewhere.

[Fighter levels ‘9’ consolidated!]

[Fighter level 2!]

[Scout levels ‘5’ consolidated!]

[Scout Class consolidated!]

[Mage levels ‘2’ consolidated!]

[Mage Class consolidated!]

[Conditions Met: Drake Class obtained!]

[Drake level 14!]

[Skills: Hot Skin; Lesser Fire Resistance; Thick Skin consolidated!]

→ [Skill — Flamescale Armor obtained!]

[Skill — Draconic Leap obtained!]

[Skill — Breath Attack obtained!]