Maya set off along the main roads, feeling off balance for more reason than one. She missed Sevard’s steadying presence. She hated that Shardlord suspected her of being a spy, as nonsensical as that was. And she missed the local map a lot more acutely than she’d have guessed.

But she survived the trip to the beginner plaza without getting lost more than once, and reclaimed her starting items and, most importantly, maps without difficulty.

She must be getting used to her dire misfortune, because she hardly noticed tripping or stumbling any more. The slight skew to her perceptions disoriented her, but not to the same extent as it had first thing in the morning.

Maya ended up exploring more than shopping, expanding her map of the area once more, but she still stopped in at every shop and looked at everything.

She found everything from cosmetic gear to plate armor, cosmetic and practical horse armor, and even a shop that sold customized gear for exotic pets.

Then she found the store selling exotic pets, and the temptation to start buying at once was almost irresistible. She spent nearly an hour there, looking at all the cosmetic familiars available, and the combat-capable ones, and the cute fluffy ones, and the sleek dangerous ones.

Pets came in two varieties, fragile and sturdy, and either could be either vulnerable or soulbound. Fragile pets would flee combat and could be killed effortlessly, while sturdy creatures could fight and defend themselves or their owner. Vulnerable pets when killed were gone for good, while soulbound could respawn on the same timers as their owner.

Only her limited funds stopped her. The fragile and vulnerable versions were completely affordable, even for a new player, but it cost a flat 25 gold fee to soulbind anything, and the sturdy creatures she wanted were not cheap. She needed to stay focused on her goal, for once in her life.

With great reluctance she left the glittering diamondscale cobra, albino prowler, grey wolf, furry scurrier, golden hawk, fiery microdragon, and silver scorpion unpurchased. She noted them all down in her journal to come back for later, but still barely managed to tear herself away.

The rest of the trip went relatively smoothly. She visited shops, looked over their wares, and made notes. So many notes.

For her Seer build, she’d either need to focus on strength for the health boosts, or something that allowed her to avoid attacks. She wasn’t quite willing to believe she could completely avoid danger even if she did intend to use this save mostly for information-gathering.

Speaking of information, she facepalmed when she realized that she’d been alone in the room with Shardlord and never even thought to use her Truth Sight ability! She could have found out the stats of a top-level archmage, and missed the chance completely.

She sighed, but decided to forgive herself this once. She hadn’t been playing seer for a while, she was out of practice. But just to get back in the habit, she started scanning the stats of every shopkeeper. Most were in the general range of a mid-level player, but every now and then one stuck out as either very low level or very high. She couldn’t be sure what made the difference, as visually there was no significant change.

The secret history of Kalyx City shopkeepers wasn’t important right now.

She finished her round of the merchant quadrant, trade district, whatever it was called, and returned to her apartment to sort through her options and save before making any final decisions.

“Save game: Seer 2.”

Save created: Seer 2

A glance at her penalty showed that she’d managed to bring it down by five hours with all her shopping. Which didn’t count for much, since by loading at all it had returned to max, but it was better than nothing. She’d have to be careful not to spend too much time save-switching, or she’d extend the penalty so far that it wouldn’t expire before her showdown with Standalone and that would be a complete disaster. No way she was going against a tamer with multiple dragons on a -100 luck day.

Fortunately, while the trickster’s price debuff reset its duration to match time elapsed in a given save, the Trickster’s Curse continued to count down as usual, based on server time not character time. Still, less than a day had elapsed.

It felt so much longer. Then again, how long had it been since she’d slept?

Days, if she had to guess. She’d very quickly taken to heart the advice that sleeping was unecessary for players, but right now she felt weary enough that it sounded like a good idea.

She loaded her other most recent save, resaved it as Path of Life 1, and for the first time in a long time lay down to sleep.

Maya woke to full daylight seeping through her closed shutters.

She checked her luck, -100 as expected, then her quest log to see what her trickster quest would be for today. At least that would alleviate some of the worst misfortune, assuming she could complete it. But there was no new quest.

Wait, of course. The trickster quest was also determined by the roll. No roll, no quest, no bonus.

Then time to turn her attention back to her current project.

The new day brought with it new clarity.

Maya Starborn, the mage, was all set. The equipment Sevard bought for her from Dalra was perfect for her main identity. She had gotten a good start on Twinkle, the canary rogue. But that left her with the wide open question of who her seer persona should be.

This version of herself, she would hide from everyone. Sevard knew about Twinkle, but no one would know about. . .

What to call herself?

How about Circe. She liked it.

She’d finished her trip through the shops, taking note of anything and everything that could be potentially useful. All that remained would be to decide on her new persona and narrow things down from there.

Since magic relied more heavily on knowledge than ability, once she learned a spell in either persona she should be able to easily recreate it in the other. So she didn’t need to worry about falling behind with magic.

The fact that her two saves would be from this point onward completely decoupled from each other meant that she basically had two entirely different characters to play with. Maya’s build and Twinkle’s build would be the same. Or at least with the same statistical overlap. But Circe? She could be anything.

Which left the question. With mage taken care of, who else did Maya want to be?

She’d never been much of a fighter. Tanking didn’t appeal to her. But she already had something of a start with thrown weapons. She could go for a ranger hybrid of some sort.

But not with knives. That was already too obviously Maya Starborn, and she wanted Circe to be as far removed as anyone with the exact same set of spells could be.

Disregard her previous skills entirely. What would she enjoy playing as?

Sniper? Assassin? No. She wasn’t much of a sneak. Stealth would require a serious investment, and she still wanted magic as a major focus.

But the Seer specialization was entirely focused on information. How to capitalize best on that? Wouldn’t sneak attacks and precisely calibrated spells be about the best possible synthesis?

Which reminded her of the arcane archery Jaydu and Hoortis had used in the arena. Clearly, mage wasn’t the only class with access to magical effects. From what she’d seen, most classes had some magic-esque effects, even if they didn’t necessarily rely on the material itself.

An arcane sniper? She remembered Jaydu’s overcharged bolt of dark energy, and slowly smiled.

Circe would be a ranged/magic DPS build. Starborn and Twinkle would be average attackers: Path of Life was built for survivability. Circe would be the one to hit hard and fast.

She opened her notes to review with that build in mind, only to come up short against the fact that they were missing. She paused a moment in confusion, then remembered that she was in Path of Life right now.

A quick save and load later, and she opened her list of notes.

An enchanted bow would be essential, since she assumed a standard one wouldn’t be able to channel energy as well. If she was focusing on DPS, her weapon had to come first and foremost.

She hadn’t spent particularly long in the archery shops, mostly taking note of the general quality and price of items rather than comparing the specific stats of every single one.

After that, she’d need dyes at the very least to disguise her appearance. And a new home as a base of operations. She couldn’t very well let Zarene find Maya Starborn and Circe coming and going from the same apartment every time she needed to change saves.

Time to stop hesitating. She was going to spend whatever it took to establish her new persona, and no one could stop her. With Sevard around to exploit her bad luck to their mutual benefit, gold wasn’t as out-of-reach as it used to be.

Speaking of Sevard, did they have a set meeting time? If so, she’d forgotten to write it down anywhere.

“Sevard, Sevard?” she asked to the empty room, but there was no response. He was probably still off on his other server, then.

With a quick sigh of relief that at least she hadn’t messed up that relationship yet, she turned her thoughts back to her new ranger build.

70 gold on hand wasn’t so much when she considered all she’d need. She was very glad she hadn’t wasted any of it on pets, as much as she wanted them all eventually.

To the archery shops, then.

But that’s where her plans came up to a total standstill. None of the shops in Kalyx City had magic bows. They had powerful standard ones, but every time she asked if they could be used to channel spells she was met with denial. Somehow, shooting pointy sticks at other players didn’t have the same appeal. Besides, how was she supposed to overcharge a standard arrow into a oneshot kill? That required magic.

Disgruntled by her failure, she nonetheless bought a standard mid-range bow and an overpriced quiver of 200 standard arrows. If she couldn’t use magic with it yet, she could at least practice her aim.

Of course, once she’d already made the purchases and tucked them into her inventory, she remembered that she had access to Shadow’s armory when fighting in the arena. All she’d need to do was tell him that she wanted to try fighting as an archer and he’d get her the equipment for practicing with so long as she was there.

She sighed, briefly considered returning the equipment and trying to get a refund, but with her -100 luck she knew she’d be lucky to get back even a tiny fraction of the price she’d spent.

Well, whatever. She’d talk to Sevard about how enchanting weapons to use magic worked, maybe get Dalra to make something— no, no, Circe was going to be her secret. So keep the questions generic, don’t mention archery at all.

Maybe look into getting a magic sword for Twinkle? Yes. That would be the perfect cover.

Maya leaned back against the nearest wall and sighed. No wonder Shardlord suspected her of a double life. He was wrong about the particulars, but she was already trying to juggle so many different obligations and desires, why not just add a few more into the mix while she was at it?

“What are you doing with such a sad expression on your pathetic little face?”

Maya sighed. “Zarene? Why are you still bothering me? And I thought you wanted to be friends now, or have you decided being nice is too much effort?”

“I told you, I’m not going to let you go until I know what you’re so desperate to hide. And today, luck is on my side.”

“Great. Have fun with that. But I’m not going to tell you anything.”

“I tried being nice, I tried offering you anything you wanted, but you acted like you’d never tell anyone. Well, fine, defeat is defeat, I can accept that. But that was yesterday. Now I have a few new ideas to get you talking. So many ideas. I’m really a lucky girl to have such thoughts.”

“Congratulations. Now leave me alone.”

Zarene slapped her.

-2 health.

It hardly stung, more a brief confusion than any actual pain, but Maya spun on her, furious, knives in hand, Truth Sight activated by instinct.

Trickster

Health: 1400

Will: 80

Stamina: 1055

Energy: 865

Usually, when using Truth Sight she got the specialization and class. Why didn’t Zarene’s specialization show up?

But that wasn’t important right now.

“Leave me alone,” Maya hissed.

Zarene smiled beautifully, holding out her hand like a welcoming angel. “If you want to do this nicely, my offer still stands. Anything you want. I’ll help you, mentor you, pay you, supply you, anything. Name it.”

Maya almost gave in. The Trickster would be angry, the Diviner’s Orb would be destroyed, but she would be part of the team. Would it be so bad to throw her lot in on this side for good?

What gain did it really give her to insist on playing both sides? The Oracle had made it clear that she wasn’t going to give Maya any special concessions, even if Maya did fulfill their original agreements to the letter.

So why not give up on her? Why not give the Trickster what he wanted? Why not gain the alliance of a second powerful player? If Maya attacked Standalone’s house with Zarene, Sevard, and her entire Fire team, what would his dragons matter? And Sevard knew all the other tricksters on the server too. They could even make a bigger team still. Didn’t he say Cydrin was also a trickster, the third-highest ranked player?

It would be so easy. So sensible.

So final.

So unchangeable.

She’d already bound her class to the Trickster. But she wasn’t going to sell her soul too.

Every time, the decision became harder to make, but every time she became more convinced it was right.

“Never.”

“Are you so heartless?” Zarene pouted, looking utterly desolate by Maya's rejection.

She was either an incredible actress or completely insane, the way her moods shifted so quickly and completely. Maya wasn't sure which was worse.

Maya shrugged. “Sure. I’m heartless. That’s why I’m going about my business, doing no one any harm whatsoever. That’s why everyone seems intent on making my life miserable for no reason. Because I must be the heartless one.”

Zarene slapped her again, and this time the damage registered in Maya’s mind.

Zarene could damage her.

Maya had loaded an earlier save.

Her PVP toggle?

Yes. Still set to PVP allowed. Stupid! Why did she keep not checking that? She tried to flip it, but received an error.

PVP cannot be deactivated when in combat.

Well, so much for that. With her current luck, Zarene would get everything when she killed her. There was no possible way Maya could deal 1400 damage. She was astonished that she’d managed to whittle Zarene down in the arena, even with her actively helping.

Maya sighed. “Look, I don’t have anything against you. I wish you well. Seriously, go be happy, live your life, whatever. Just don’t keep barging into mine with your insanity. Okay?”

“Insanity? No, no. You don’t know what insanity looks like, naive child. I could show you. But that would be counterproductive. You’re going to tell us your secrets, and for that you need to be sane.”

“Well, thanks.” Maya wondered why Zarene hadn’t killed her yet, if she was so set on disrupting Maya's life. Could it be she hadn’t noticed? Did she not realize Maya was vulnerable? Or was this just more of her insanity?

Heart racing, she raised her chin defiantly. “You don’t matter, Zarene. You can’t do anything to me, and I’m done talking with you.”

She walked away, fully expecting to be run through from behind.

Instead, Zarene laughed. “Final answer? Not willing to trade, no matter what I offer? Then so be it. Viros, Pizza, come on out and greet our guest.”

Maya froze as a vampire appeared from stealth right in front of her, grinning evilly.

Burning Spirit Trickster

Health: 885

Will: 222

Stamina: 2374

Energy: 10

She took a step back, turned, and nearly ran into the armored human standing behind her. He grabbed her before she could react, holding her tight by both arms.

Spiritheart Trickster

Health: 835

Will: 192

Stamina: 999

Energy: 323

She kicked at his leg, but the vampire blurred forward and grabbed her legs before she managed anything.

“You see,” Zarene said, slinking up beside her, “as much as I’d love to be the only one to know your secret, some things I’m just not suited for. If I weren’t so distracted yesterday I’m sure I’d have realized it sooner. But luck? It compounds. If I can’t manage something on my own, it’s time to admit that I need help.”

Maya wriggled and bucked, but the two tricksters easily kept hold of her. The human clamped his arms around her arms and chest, while the vampire held her legs off the ground so she couldn’t gain any momentum or force.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I’m not used to playing the villain. But these boys? They know what they’re doing.” Zarene giggled, then gave Maya a little wave. “See you soon, little trickster. Good luck, boys! She's a stubborn one. Try not to break her too badly.”