The kitchen knife gleamed as it scythed through a rotting bone skull, the yellowed substance shattering into splinters with the passing of the weapon. One, two, three; the skeleton soldiers were reaped without consideration or concern. A mob of them filled the gap I’d cut through their numbers, rushing for my back, and were promptly cut down with a long range lance of fiery bolts that resounded with a roar as they were spit out by Harrigan’s gun. A crenelated sand castle wall gave me flaking cover, rising out of the dune of Dover’s accord. The others fought on, covering me, or themselves, as they engaged the massed enemy. I didn’t notice. I was busy. Another. Another. Another. Over and over the blade dropped the bone puppets to the ground, brief pauses only to run my fingers down its length, sharpening it back to fighting fit.

And then, after what felt like a lifetime in that crystalized moment, one of their spears stabbed my leg. And the thin strand of Calm that I’d been keeping hovering at a horrifying 1/22 dropped to 0 as my meditation faltered. The Despair debuff, which I’d carved down to a 3 from its previous heart-stopping 8, kicked back into high gear. And suddenly, I was assaulted by the horde of notifications I’d managed to mercifully shunt to the side during my fight.

[Skill improved : Meditation +6

Milestone hit - Meditation rank 10 : +3 Free Path Points

Skill improved : Knives +4

Technique improved : Claw of the Clear Mind +2

Stat improved : Strength +1

Stat improved : Toughness +2

Stat improved : Willpower +4

Connection deepened : Dover Imperison +3

Connection deepened : Mark Harrigan +2

Resistance unlocked : Puncture. You do not get the point.

Triumph confirmed : Kill - Skeleton Grunt x 14 | +7 Free Skill Points

Triumph confirmed : Kill - Skeleton Archer x 21 | +10 Free Skill Points

Triumph confirmed : Kill - Skeleton Marauder x 2 | +1 Free Ability Point

Path unlocked : Reaver’s Trail. Walk the way of mindless violence.]

Not enough.

The rotted wood of the spear haft - and how the fuck was *that* a thing? These skeletons were freshly spawned, why was the wood *rotting*? - snapped off with the point still buried in my calf. I took a swing at the offending bone fucker, and while the majestically sharpened knife cut a line across its skull, without the pool of Calm powering the Claw of the Clear Mind, it didn’t do any meaningful damage. I jerked my arm back, ducking in an awkward, pained way as another one of them swung a still intact rusted sword my way, fumbling in what could charitably be called a dodge.

[Skill unlocked: Dodge. Get down.

Stat improved : Dexterity +1]

Guess the system was feeling charitable.

I was in the thick of the skeleton army. How I had gotten here was mildly unclear, but the broad strokes stood out. I’d let the Calm push aside the Despair, and I’d made the decision in that moment to act as a distraction to buy everyone with a ranged attack time to wear down the numbers. I hadn’t expected Claw of the Empty Mind to be so effective; honestly, I’d been *expecting* to die a few seconds in, and had been… not okay with it, but accepting at least. The Technique hadn’t let surprise or vindication crop up as I’d started tearing through the skeleton army, requiring and pushing for blank thoughts as I ‘worked’. Which was just *awful* strategy, because now I was surrounded by skeletons, and the literal one chance I’d had to survive had probably doomed me again.

This, I thought as I tried to punch through a crumbling ribcage, was actually pretty damn funny.

[Skill unlocked : Punching. Just, I don’t know, hit them?

Stat improved : Strength +1]

A trio of skeleton spearmen moved into a line to cut off my attempted stumbling escape out the corridor of disaster that I’d wrought upon them, and I flicked my free hand in a curling gesture that pulled up a handful of sand from the dune below us, and blasted it through them like they were target practice. When another one came at me from the side, I let out a panicked yell at it, the word “Stop!” tearing out of my throat, and backed by the magic that had infested me, actually caused it to falter. I punched it’s skull off.

[Skill improved : Punching +1

Stat improved : Magic +1

Magic improved : Sandshaping +1

Ability improved : Chanting +1

Chant improved : Cadence of Denial +1

Step taken : Acolyte's Steps +1

Triumph confirmed : Kill - Skeleton Grunt x 1]

We’d killed hundreds of them. Which meant maybe a third of the total army. And they were still here. So many, pouring over the sands in a muffled beat of too-heavy bone on the drifting ground. And my distraction was… not effective. It wasn’t working. I’d tied up a small portion of the onrushing army, but the rest were just flowing around me like a river. An aggressive, shitty, dead-body river. I needed something to pull more of them in, something to focus the enemy.

[Skill improved : Planning +1]

My mind hummed. I couldn’t get Meditation to kick back in, but I had other skills now that all pointed me at different lines of approach. The only thing I needed to do, really, was make a choice. So I reached out, and activated a confluence of two different thoughts. What we *needed*, more than anything, was a way to funnel the idiot skeletons into a tiny space where we could take them apart from a distance. What I, personally, needed, was for my Sandshaping to listen to what I needed it to do right now.

[Spell unlocked : Sandstone Rampart. A line in the sand.

Magic improved : Sandshaping +1

Skill improved : Strategy +1

Pool improved : Grit +4

Step taken : Acolyte's Steps +1]

A low hissing rumble erupted from the sand dune around me, as a single line of rising wall hardened out of the material, pulling itself into reality and cutting off the skeleton advance. The cast followed my finger as I pointed, and it got a little wobbly toward the end. The end, which came *very* abruptly, as my supply of Grit bottomed out at zero. I was *covered in sand*, what the hell did it want from me?! A question that I only had a few seconds to ponder before I had to flail my ass backward to avoid another skeleton stab. I may have rerouted half their advance, but they were still, surely, advancing.

[Skill improved : Dodge +1

Stat improved : Dexterity +1]

The skeletons were more clumped up now, and I saw, off to the other side on the higher part of the dune, a wall much like mine coming into existence. Dover must be pulling his sand mage weight along with me. But even as our ranged attacks blew away the boney jerks in twos and threes, they marched on. And behind me, the front line was starting to pour over the earthworks that we’d erected around the parking lot of our isolated little apartment complex. But there wasn’t much left in the tank for me; even as every stat up made me sharper, stronger, better, I was running out of whatever invisible stamina resource I had. And there wasn’t much I could do but keep throwing punches and hoping I could keep myself upright long enough for the others to get to me.

[Pool unlocked : Stamina. Staying power. Stamina set to 1/16

Skill improved : Punching +1

Skill improved : Planning +1

Skill improved : Dodging +2

Ability improved : Feline Grace +1

Triumph confirmed : Kill - Skeleton Grunt x 5 | +2 Free Skill Points]

Thank the stars that having my stamina set to one just reflected reality, and didn’t exhaust me outright. Just as I was starting to get a handle on things, falling into a combat rhythm that I wasn’t exactly comfortable with, but was surviving without being overwhelmed, I noticed something. Something very, very worrying. At the bottom of the dune, instead of funneling themselves into battle like good little chunks of cannon fodder, the skeletons bearing crumbling longbows were pulling themselves into something looking like a firing line.

[Skill improved : Observation - Deduction +1]

Uh oh.

[Skill improved : Observation - Deduction +1]

*Yes thank you*. I had maybe three seconds before they started launching volleys of arrows our way. And when I say ‘they’, what I really meant was ‘about two hundred massed archers, most of which while being dead and bad at their jobs were still spawned by the universe itself to kill us’. So I went with my first instinct, which had been working out well so far, which was to start shouting at them. “Stop! Stop stop stop! No!” I could feel the woven magic of Cadence in the words, but I knew almost right away I wasn’t quite doing it right. The skeletons paused, then shook it off, drew their bows, and loosed. All in unison. Nice teamwork, guys. Great.

[Chant improved : Cadence of Denial +1

Condition changed : Despair +1]

The first few arrows started hitting the sand in front of my feet. Then one went straight through my boot, and foot itself. Then they were falling around me like rain. I knew, behind me, that the other survivors were fighting for their lives; but in this moment, I couldn’t think of anything but how to *maybe* weather the arrow storm. I was out of Grit, out of Stamina, out of range to actually use Assistance, certainly low on Calm. The only thing I had left was either a deus ex machina, or… Kindness?

Oh. Of course. I reached out, and cast the first spell that I’d started this mess off with.

Lost and Found. Five hundred arrows in flight. Return to sender, please.

[Spell improved : Lost and Found +3

Stat improved : Cunning +2

Stat improved : Willpower +2

Stat improved : Magic +2

Ability unlocked : Spell Adaptability

Triumph confirmed : Kill - Skeleton Archer x 94 | +30 Free Skill Points]

I was not really expecting that to work. I was absolutely not expecting that to work quite so well. I was actually expecting, properly, that it wouldn’t hit all the arrows. And what happened as half the incoming storm diverted to rain down on the attackers was that a good chunk of the things still slammed into the dune around me. And into my delicious, still perfectly puncturable flesh.

[Stat improved : Toughness +1

Resistance improved : Puncture +1]

Was the last thing I saw as I toppled backward onto the sandy ground. Well, I mean, I saw the darkening sky, and my Grit bar climbing back upward at a snail’s pace. But mostly that notification, and the sand around me growing darker with my blood. It was bizarre, I thought then. For everything this day had brought, every power, every unlock and upgrade that ceaselessly flooded in? I hadn’t gotten anything for health. Or blood, or vigor, or… whatever. Well. Too late now, probably.

[Philosophy improved : Nihilism +1]

Everything was going dark. I could still hear bones snapping in the distance. And some shouting. Screaming, really. I guess it wasn’t going well, since the noises were kinda cutting off bit by bit.

[Skill improved : Listening +1]

I was sorry I couldn’t do more. That I hadn’t taken it seriously. None of us had; we just hadn’t *understood*. At least it didn’t hurt, for some reason. I was having trouble breathing, though. And the sounds were getting softer. Though, a second later, an explosion rippled across the dunes, spraying hot glass around me in a sudden burst that came with a series of perfectly visible notifications.

[Bond Lost : Mark Harrigan

Bond Lost : Zane Magnuson

Skill improved : Listening +1

Resistance unlocked : Glass. Refract and redirect.

Triumph confirmed - Challenge : First Wave | 10 Free Path Points

Path unlocked : Leader. The banner and the lord.]

Goodbye Mark. I barely met you, but you seemed… sad. Maybe there’s an afterlife now that you can be at peace in. You sure as hell wouldn’t have liked this world, if it’s going to involve this much combat. I was just thinking that I was about to join him in that afterlife, when boots slammed into the dune right next to my head, and I felt the rough impact of hands on my chest. And then, a minute later, light flared into my vision, and I was looking up at the newly unwrinkled face of Martha.

[Pool unlocked : Vim. Blood and thunder. Vim set to 1 / 8

Bond improved : Martha Giles +1]

“Get up!” She was rasping at me through harsh breaths. “Get up you bastard! Not you too!” I didn’t know what she was yelling about, but, even with whatever Vim was pushing my body to keep moving, even sans blood, I knew I wasn’t long for the world. And Martha, it seemed, was so obviously drained of whatever it was that she needed to make that work. So, I did what came naturally to me.

I reached out and helped. And my lone point of Assistance flowed into her hands. And with a gasp of shock, and a shock of light, whatever spell she was casting transformed into something *more*.

[Pool improved : Vim +8]

I coughed up blood, but it wasn’t a wet mess. I found myself rolling over, hacking out the clotted scabs that had suddenly healed and replaced themselves. Dry and rough old blood joined the fresh stuff on the arrows around me that apparently Martha had ripped out of my body when I was just this side of death. I pushed myself up, dusting sand off my hands, and flicking my wrist to snap off a chunk of dried blood on the back of it.

[Ability unlocked : Scab Acceleration]

I was quickly finding that sometimes, these abilities made me angrier than they did relieved. Why now? Why this? Why did Martha get the ability to heal, but I got the ability to stab?

“Who’s left?” I rasped, as I offered Martha a hand and hauled her to her feet next to me.

“You.” She said, and I saw tears on her face. “Me. Dover. Katie. The kitty’s gone, though. Everyone else…” The old woman trailed off. And in that moment, no amount of vitality stat could hide the sheer *age* that showed in her eyes. Everyone had died around her, again. Without thinking about it, I flared Analyze Heart, and saw lines running from her regret and sorrow to her stats for Constitution, Vigor, Health, and Life, as well as to a spell set labeled as Repentiturgy. She’d lived through so much, and apparently, lacked the ability to quit or possessed the drive to keep going.

[Ability improved : Analyze Heart +1]

“I’m sorry.” I whispered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. I’m sorry. Because that was just wave one, and I don’t know how we keep going.”

[Chant unlocked : Whisper of Remorse. Hushed tones and sorrowful blessings.]

Martha’s eyes blinked once, and when she looked at me next, the tears were gone. “One foot, then the next.” She told me. “It’s worked for seventy years. Why should it stop now?” The woman, who’d probably done just as much violence as I had, sighed. “We made it. And the magic handed us all that extra power. We’ll keep going, you’ll see. Just take it one step at a time.”

All that power. The free points. I hadn’t even thought of them, hadn’t had time to think of them. I did a quick check, and looked at what I’d accumulated.

Forty nine skill points, sixteen total path points, and one ability point. I didn’t even know what they *did* yet, but I already knew they were a guided jump forward, instead of the capricious whims of the system. My mind was already thinking of ways to make them work for us as I trudged back up the dune toward the apartment complex, now cut down to only four mourning residents and one reinforced sandstone wall around the exterior.

[Skill improved : Planning +1]

“Did you get the path for leadership?” Martha asked me, and I nodded back at her. “We all did, then. You should take it.”

“Alright.” I agreed instantly, and then paused and frowned, my social resistance fighting whatever she’d just done. “No, wait. Why me?”

“Someone has to.” She said quietly, as we approached the earthworks. “Do those two look like they need followers, or leaders?” Martha didn’t point, but I saw what she meant.

Dover and the girl, Katie I deduced, sat slumped on a bench past the shattered remains of the wall. There were bones everywhere, as well as blood and more human bodies. The corpse of the majestic feline that had been my downstairs neighbor’s cat lay alongside its owner, the two of them looking almost peaceful together. Where Mark had died was just a crater, and it looked like Magnus had gone out in a similarly spectacular fashion. And then, the two kids. And they were kids. They looked hollow, and I knew then that if there was a trauma stat, they’d be racking it up in spades.

“Okay.” I nodded to Martha. “I understand. But only until someone better comes along.”

[Stat improved : Charisma +1

Bond improved : Martha Giles +2]

She gave me a pitying look. One that said that we both knew that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, and patted me on the arm. “Spend your points, dearie.” She told me. “There’s work to do.”

|| Free Points ||

Skill : 49

Ability : 1

Path : 16

|| Resources ||

Calm : 0/22

Kindness : 1/38

Assistance : 0/1

Grit : 4/13

Stamina : 1/16

Vim : 16/16

|| Conditions ||

Despair : 8

|| Stats ||

Strength : 11

Toughness : 5

Balance : 8

Agility : 4

Dexterity : 5

Intelligence : 11

Cunning : 9

Control : 4

Perception : 8

Willpower : 12

Magic : 15

Charisma : 6

Empathy : 6

|| Skills ||

Observation : 6

-Deduction : 4

-Forethought : 6

-Listening : 5

-Taste : 3

-Scent : 1

Planning : 13

Bike : 3

Meditation : 11

Cleaning : 1

-Laundry : 1

-Dishwashing : 1

Gardening : 2

Farming : 1

Strategy : 2

-Wargames : 1

Bluff : 1

Etiquitte : 3

-Military : 2

-

-

-

Animal Husbandry : 1

-Cat : 1

Knife : 7

Scavenging : 2

Dodge : 4

Punching : 3

|| Abilities ||

Chanting : 3

-Cadence of Denial : 5

-Whisper of Remorse : 1

-

-

Arcane Gardening : 1

-Floral Connection : 1

Low-Light Vision : 5

Feline Grace : 2

Sharpening : 1

Analyze Heart : 7

Spell Adaptability : 1

Scab Acceleration : 1

|| Techniques ||

The Claw Of The Clear Mind : 3

|| Magic ||

Compassionurgy : 7

-Lost and Found : 5

-Lorwyn's Smile : 9

-

Sandshaping : 3

-Sandblast : 4

-Sandstone Rampart : 1

|| Philosophies ||

Optimism : 6

Nihilism : 3

|| Connections ||

Zane Magnus : Lost

Dover Imperison : 4

Martha Giles : 4

Mark Harrigan : Lost

|| Knowledge ||

Religion : 1

-Mormon : 1

|| Resistances ||

Food Poisoning : 1

Fear : 2

Social : 1

Puncture : 2

Glass : 1

|| Paths ||

The Way of Compassion : 7/25

Travel Preparations : 2/10

Acolyte's Steps : 5/20

Persuit of Unity : 1/100

Reaver's Trail : 0/50

Leader : 0/20

|| Achievements ||

The Practice of War

|| Ranks ||

Netrunner : 456,111 / 17,215,016