I wasn’t sure if I should have been more shocked at the fact that Chanak was talking, or at the implication that Kel might be able to do the same.

“Ah…of course. Asking her.”

I looked over at Kel, who was eagerly exploring the rope binding my arms to my sides. She had sniffed it, and apparently having judged that it would not poison her, was preparing to take a bite. Making a chirping sound, she bit into the rope with gusto, and then, looking as disgusted as a small hedgehog possibly could, she stuck her tongue out at it.

So, at least I know that Kel doesn’t eat rope. I was fairly sure she didn’t, but God, wouldn’t it have been lucky if she did?

Mustering as much seriousness in my voice as I could, I made eye contact with Kel. Her red eyes were gleaming in the dark, and her tongue flickered in and out of her mouth.

“Kel, what would you like to eat?”

Chirrup

Chirrup

I looked over at Chanak, a little confused. Perhaps I’d done something wrong? Was there a language barrier, perhaps? Or did I need to talk to her telepathically?

Chanak looked positively gleeful.

Oh. He was making fun of me. The absolute- And I was going to offer these bandits gainful employment! On behalf of my currently fast asleep Employer! Whom I’d met half a day ago! I didn’t say it was a good plan!

“Did she- snrrrk- did she reply?” Chanak had looked a little irritable, but playing a prank on a hapless Butler seemed to have helped improve his temper.

“Yep, she did.” I deadpanned back at him, still using a serious tone. Okay acting lessons I took when I was nine, don’t fail me now. “Thanks for the advice!”

The trick to practical jokes is not overdoing it. I decided not to say anything else, and to just keep looking at Kel and talking at her. As though it was the most normal thing in the world.

“I’m afraid not, Kel. Well, because it’s just not good manners! You can’t just eat his face. No, even if it looks delicious. Fine, fine, I’ll ask.”

I side-eyed Chanak, whose gaze I’d been carefully avoiding this entire time. He was beginning to look more and more concerned, and when I told Kel I’d ask, he immediately scrambled to his feet.

“Nope! Nope nope nope! Not. Food. NOT FOOD!” He pointed at his own face, almost shouting at Kel as he jabbed a finger at his own face. “NOT. FOOD!”

Normally, I’d keep the joke going for a bit longer, but being physically restrained put a bit of a damper on my comedic chops. So I settled for just taking silent pleasure at Chanak’s distress as Kel, startled by the sudden noise all around her, darted back into my breastpocket. I felt her shudder, and resolved to buy her whatever the equivalent of a treat was for a Spark.

Realizing it was a joke, Chanak relaxed as well, slumped down, and looked me up and down. He was a lot more…relaxed than he had been earlier. In fairness, a robbery had to be a high adrenaline activity, even if it was being run by the bombastic Baldric. Now, deep into the middle of the night, with stars twinkling above and the area drenched in pale moonlight, I can only imagine that he felt a lot more at ease.

“Phewwww….You joke, but I’ve seen some Sparks that would eat a person and come back for seconds. Always pays to be careful.” Chanak had a high voice. Not squeaky, just a higher pitch. Somehow, it reminded me of a well played flute or some other woodwind instrument.

“Well, Kel has discovered that she doesn’t like the taste of rope. And that loud noises are scary.” I used my chin to gesture towards the shivering lump in my breastpocket. I was a little worried for Kel, since I knew that a lot of excitement was fatal for some pets, but she wasn’t just a pet after all. Surely a spellcasting tool like a Spark wouldn’t suffer a heart attack because of some loud noise?

“It’s a nice name. Kel.” Chanak looked thoughtful as he repeated the name absent-mindedly. “Kel. Keeellll…”

“Thank you! I…I guess I picked it out myself.” I didn’t want to talk about the System or the classes or anything just yet. I don’t think it was a common feature of this world, and I wasn’t sure where Chanak was from, but it would derail the discussion that I actually wanted to have. But he was clearly somewhat enamoured by her, so I decided to try to push things along a little bit more. “Would you like to pet her?”

“Ha! Quick to trust people, aren’t we?” He must have seen the look of confusion on my face, because he quickly realized I had no idea what he was talking about. “Ah, of course. How long has it been?”

“I mean, you just sat down. Maybe…15 minutes?”

“No you dolt. How long have you been on Excelsia?”

“That obvious is it? Is it rude to touch someone else’s Spark?” It was always going to be the small things that gave me away. I could probably keep up with the higher level politics, the overall system of a place, the class structures and geographies in a new world. The large, broad strokes were always close enough to each other that I could play off my experience. But the tiny details, the small differences, the customs that arose from chaotic tide of humanity? I could never predict those, and as a consequence, I couldn’t pretend to be a native for very long.

Thankfully the guise had lasted long enough to convince Baldric that he wouldn’t be able to operate the carriage, and that he should just let Aastor sleep the night away. Baldric had been surprisingly gracious, all things considered.

“Very rude. How long?” Chanak was like a dog with a bone, but Ellem already knew about the last few hours I had spent on Excelsia. No point in lying to Chanak now. If I did, and he compared notes with Ellem, they’d both find out and trust me less.

“Half a day at this point, or near enough to it.”

He whistled at that, and looked at me with a strange mixture of jealousy and respect.

“And you have a Spark? With no idea whatsoever what to do with her? Some people just get lucky, huh?”

“I…I guess?”

“…You have no idea how you got one, do you?” Okay, stubborn and perceptive. Scratch my first impression of Chanak, he wasn’t surly and he wasn’t a harmless prankster. The man was dangerous. Or useful. But definitely one or the other.

“She just kind of…appeared.” Clearly Sparks weren't as common as I'd thought? Or at least, Summons didn't have access to them. There were just far too many unknowns.

Hey System, if you want to spit out some kind of...Tutorial to Excelsia? Now would be a great time for that. XXXXXX, whoever that was, needed to work on tutorializing and writing guides instead of making unasked for revamps to the entire System.

Chanak was still looking at me curiously.

“So, all that about a Spark Operated Carriage? The latest from the S.R.C.? Lies, or…exaggerations?” When I didn’t reply immediately, he pulled out a small shiv from the waistband of his pants and started to flip it nonchalantly. He crept closer to me, still flipping the knife expertly. “I mean, if I were tied up, and someone had a knife near them, and I didn’t know how to use my Spark…I mean, if I was in that situation, maybe I’d talk, you know?”

Gulp. I decided to take his advice.

“It is magical, and since my Employer didn’t do anything that I saw….I mean, it must be Spark Operated. And it seemed safe to guess that the S.R.C. would have the resources to make something like this, right?” I’d been in a lot of situations with knives pointed at me, and nearly all of them ended badly. I was hoping this one would be in the small minority that did not.

“Ah, clever! Not a lie, exactly. More like a half-truth, or a best guess. Very clever!” Chanak didn't seem mad. In fact, he just seemed pleased with himself. He put the shiv away, and leaned back against the carriage.

“You’re not going to gut me then?”

“Pssh, why? Because you tried to get out of a sticky situation? Nah, we’re not barbarians. Plus, what with Balth-Nevermind.”

Ah. Moral high ground be damned, they were recruiting. Of course. No place of work wants to look bad in front of the intern.

“Ellem told me. He’s new. You’re trying not to scare him then? Don’t want to kill an old man and his manservant in front of the new recruit?”

“...Ellem likes to tell Baldric he needs to be quiet more often, but I swear, she enjoys talking about as much as he does.” He paused and then conceded. “Well, not as much. But a lot.”

We sat in silence for a bit. Kel had calmed down, and crept out of my pocket again and began to explore the area around my feet and trousers. She was surprisingly nimble, quite literally scampering from one place on my person to another. It wasn’t particularly bothersome, but just a little bit ticklish.

“She doesn’t like your shoelaces either, it seems.” Chanak was leaning back, but I could see that his eyes were only half-lidded. He was obviously following Kel’s movements out of the corner of his eyes.

“No. I don’t think she knows what food is, exactly.” Kel had moved on to the leather of my shoe. Not quite food either, but closer.

“No, they need to be taught basically everything. They’re like children. Very, very powerful, magical children.”

“So…what do they eat?” I didn’t know if Chanak would actually know, but it was worth a shot. Something about Kel being hungry and distressed made me uncomfortable. “People food?”

“Yeah, normal food will do. They’re magical, so it’s a matter of taste. She could eat your shoes and turn the leather into energy, but it seems like she’s pickier than most.” He sprang to his feet, and gave me a stern look. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Chuckling at his own joke, he took off behind the carriage, and returned a short while later with a small clay bowl half-filled with some kind of brown soup.

Oh great. Yeah, feed my Spark before me! Whatever happened to basic courtesy? I wasn’t hungry yet, but I could have been!

Wait. Why wasn’t I hungry yet? I hadn't really acknowledged my nearly limitless store of energy, but it was beginning to stretch the bounds of even my own disbelief that I hadn't yet felt hungry, sleepy or even tired. I really needed to check my Stats and then dig deep into the Class, but if that didn't answer the question...Well, I was all out of ideas. And on an Isekai planet, you always looked a gift horse in the mouth. That's where the Demon Lord was going to hide.

I watched as Chanak put the bowl down. Kel looked at it quizzically, then at me.

“It’s not poisoned. They can’t be poisoned, as far as we can tell. Shot, stabbed, dissected, strangled, drowned…but not poisoned. Some of them just eat deadly venom and ask for more. Dang useful.”

It was only mildly terrifying that Chanak knew about a dozen ways to kill Sparks. Correction. He had a knife. It was extremely terrifying that he knew a dozen ways to kill Sparks, and happened to have one on his person. I nodded to Kel, who dove into the bowl of soup, but kept a close watch on Chanak, just in case he decided that disarming me required killing Kel.

“Well, thank you. I really do appreciate it.” I smiled at the man. “And Kel says she does too.”

Chanak grinned at me cheekily. “One of us has a knife, and one of us needs to be real polite to the one with the knife. Would you like to guess which role you play?”

I snorted as we both watched Kel make short work of the bowl of soup. When she was done, she didn’t even bother climbing out, instead opting to lie down inside the bowl. Well, as long as she wasn’t going anywhere.

“So, how do you…I mean, what did you do before-”

“I was a scribe at an S.R.C.”

“You couldn’t possibly have learned a lot in less than four months.”

“Ellem told you Baldric was the oldest, huh?”

“Yep.”

He shrugged. “I’m a fast learner. I had help. The S.R.C. is…efficient.”

“And you just…left?”

“Ha! No. You know how you keep calling the old man inside your Employer? Well, I had one too, the man who Summoned me.”

“And? He betrayed you? Framed you for a crime? Tried to run cruel experiments on you?”

It was an age old story, really. Get a young mentee, drain them and exploit them from their talent, and then betray them somehow. Dangerous though, especially if you underestimate your youthful apprentice.

“Huh? No, he died. Natural causes.”

“Okay, so a bit of an overreaction on my part. I apologize.”

“Yeah, just a bit.” Chanak looked grim. “His son technically inherited me, but I decided to go missing instead. This is good though. I don’t miss it that much.”

He was clearly lying. I could tell, because the sad smile, the weary sigh, the resigned tone…that’s also how I lied. He missed it a lot.

“So, why not go back then?”

“Ah, because they’ll welcome me with open arms, instead of just hanging me? Or do you think they’re short on scribes? No, I left because I had a feeling his son was a bit of a sadist…I don’t want to confirm the theory.”

After my conversation with Ellem, I'd had a suspicion that Chanak's answer would be similar. But it was always good to get two data points instead of just the one.

“And you need some kind of paperwork to work officially anywhere else?”

“Pretty much.”

So, Chanak wants a job. One that doesn't involve banditry, preferably. And he needs it to be under the table, with someone who won't just report him to the government?

I couldn't have planned it more perfectly if I tried.

“Well, I’m sure that my Employer could use a scribe, if you’re interested?”

Chanak didn’t show incredulity like Ellem had. He just looked thoughtful. Maybe it was the Charisma buff at play, or maybe the fact that he missed a cushier job that involved not flipping knives for anything more than a party trick.

“What’s the pay like?”

“….Negotiable.”

“Does it include food and housing?”

I'd been imagining that Astor had a massive estate, but come to think of it, I really didn’t know if that was true. It probably was, because a disgraced member of the Queen’s court ought to still be living in style. But….who knows? Maybe Aastor was a hermit of some kind, or thought that worldly possessions were a sin or some other insane ideology.

“You could ask him in the morning. I’m pretty sure the answer is yes.”

I wasn’t sure if Aastor would wake from the stupor on his own or not. But I had to make some promises, and at this point, my entire plan hinged on recruiting the members of Baldric’s gang. I had been hoping to successfully complete my sub-Quest, but maybe it was impossible after all.

“If you know basically nothing about him, why should I trust him? Or you?”

Ellem had needed the whole story. From the way Chanak had jumped to business, and from his background, I didn’t think he’d need quite as much.

“My Employer is the disgraced Archmagus Aastor VII, and from what I’ve seen he hates the Queen and he hates using Summons like tools. So…”

I was sure that would convince Chanak, but instead he burst out laughing. He mimed wiping a tear away from his eyes as his giggling died down.

“Yeah, sure. Sure, Ol’ Man Aastor is sitting in this here carriage, fast asleep, while we rob him. Okay, whatever you say.” He looked at me and snorted. "And I'm actually Queen Anastasia herself. These are just my travelling clothes."

“I assure you-”

“Listen, maybe if you’d said it was someone…well, more believable. Like a mid-ranking Magician or one of the many heads of the Guild of Summons, or something like that.” He was still chuckling. “But everyone knows Aastor figured out how to travel to a different world after he was disgraced, and hasn’t come back since. And that was years ago.”

I had…no way of assessing how true that statement was. Was it possible for Aastor to do something like that? Or was it one of the rumors that tabloids and conspiracy theorists liked to propagate without even a shred of evidence? Ellem hadn't brought up anything like that, but she'd only been on the world two weeks, and had barely reacted when I'd mentioned Aastor in the first place.

Either way, I needed him to take me seriously. And from my experiences on other worlds, there was one universal language that everyone spoke.

Gambling.

“Are you a betting man, Chanak?”

“Ha! I see where this is going. I could be. If only you had something you could bet.”

“Can I…bet Kel?”

I know. But I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t completely sure that I was right. I mean, Aastor could have been lying about who he was entirely, but at that point, I was in deeper trouble than I realized. Kel likely would have been safer with Chanak if that turned out to be true.

“Nah, Sparks are like a part of your body once you get a hold of one. Especially the wild ones.”

“Uhm…”

“Tell me how you got her.” Chanak was trying to play it off as a casual trade. Nothing he was too interested in, because that would put me at an advantage.

“If it's not Aastor, I swear, I'll tell you exactly how I got Kel.” Again, I was either going to win, or information about the System wouldn’t be helpful. "But if it is, you have to consider a job."

If I could convince Aastor to hire the bandits. Which was already a big if.

The rest of Chanak’s watch passed uneventfully. The howling of a wolf in the distance startled Kel out of her sleep (much to Chanak’s delight), and she scampered out of the bowl and up my clothes, leaving small, greasy pad prints all over.

Sigh. I needed to find her something less messy to eat than soup.