Maya returned to where Andy stood opposite the NPC woman, who’d risen to her feet and her volume had escalated, her face red as the argument went on. Maya’s presence soon served to ease the tension, as her high luck offset Andy’s negative, and the discussion returned to heated but not aggressive.

They’d moved on from their original topic and were now arguing the merits of fishing. She wasn’t exactly sure who was taking what position, or what there was to argue about fishing, but they were certainly going at it.

Three more topic shifts later, and Andy exhaled with relief and leaned back, putting one hand dramatically across his forehead. “Done! Finally.” He hastily apologized to the NPC woman, who shrugged and returned to her book, then strode over to Maya. “Back up to -2. What now?”

“You don’t have any suggestions?”

“I’m all yours. Not like I have anything else to occupy me.”

“Then…” Maya considered her options. She could try to continue her spellcrafting, but that would of necessity shut Andy out, and she’d decided she was going to make an effort to include people. But she didn’t want to waste her high luck. “Now, I’m going to do some crafting, and while I do that, we can talk.”

She led the way to the plaza where Nirsym’s elite crafting stations were in constant use by a stream of crafters coming in and going out. “The crafting system wasn’t built with the Trickster class in mind,” she explained. “As best I can figure, Luck provides a flat percentile boost to crafting chances. Which means that on a high luck day, you can absolutely dominate the player crafting market with rare and legendary items. I’m running quite low on funds these days,” she gestured to Snappy and Hunter, who followed at a respectful distance, “and this seems a good time to rectify that problem. I also have some friends who need materials for a construction project, so I’ll be working on some things for them as well.”

She paused to grin. “Any requests? I could make you some equipment too, while I’m at it.”

“I’m fine.”

“Fine, yes. Good? Exceptional? Mmmmm…” She tilted her head one way, then the other, and Andy stifled a laugh. “What?”

“Your bird mannerisms are showing.”

“Oh, are they?” Maya tilted her head again, trying to imagine how she looked. Then she frowned and looked down at herself. “Who am I wearing today, anyway? Mage Stader. Good. So, where to start?"

She had a few materials left after the last time, but not enough to make much of a dent in her crafting wishlist. And her current financial situation left her without sufficient resources to buy enough vendor materials from the NPCs wandering the area.

“Guess we’ll have to do this the slow way.” Craft a few things, sell them, buy more materials, and repeat. She started with the simplest recipe she had, the basic belt, and set about creating several low level copies using materials she’d collected from driles and goblins.

“So, what exactly is it that you want out of this whole affair?"

"Is it sad that I haven't thought that far ahead?" Andy lounged against the worktable next to her, watching as her hands moved in careful patterns. "All the things we were so worried about... the house, having kids, work... it's all irrelevant now. All that really matters to me now is you."

"No pressure." Maya laughed uneasily. "So, if you were to succeed in your quest to reignite whatever lays between us, would you be staying here, or going somewhere else? You've mentioned woodworking a few times, is that something you plan to pursue further?"

He shrugged, his head fins stretching and flaring in sync with the motion. It was actually quite cute. "I don't know. Everything's different here. I don't know if it would feel the same."

"So you wouldn't mind staying here?"

"It's not a place I'd choose to stay forever, but for a while? If that's what you want."

She only got one Rare out of that batch, but it was enough to break even. She sold them to the vendor, bought more materials, and started on some gloves.

"Are you interested in conquering the world?" she asked, playfully.

Andy didn't answer immediately. "Is that your plan?"

"Basically. Domitius is famous and stuff, so if I take him down and beat him to the top, that should mean I'll be famous. At least a little. And once I'm well known, I'll go to another world and do something equally dramatic there."

"I wouldn't mind taking a few years to chase down your brother, but... if it turns out we can't find him, would you consider trying to move on without him?"

Maya worked in silence for several minutes without answering. "Ask me at the time," she said finally. "I probably should, but... it's only been a few months for me. I'm not ready to give up on him yet."

The gloves turned out much better, two Rare, an Uncommon, and a Legendary.

“Want some Legendary gloves? They’ll increase your flexibility and control a decent amount even at tier 2.”

“You don’t need to sell them?”

She held up the rares. “These will cover the cost of the materials and then some. The higher rarities would be best sold on the player market than to NPCs, but I don’t have time to wrangle the economy at the moment.”

Who controlled what economic factions and how to sell things to people was a whole ball of snakes she did not want to poke just now. Domitius and Shardlord grappled for economic control of the city as much as for physical or magical control, and getting caught between player factions was hard enough just on a tangible level, without bringing money into it. She’d rather just do her thing and quietly conquer the world without getting tangled in any more faction conflict.

“Alright, if you’re sure.” Andy swapped out his gloves for the new ones, which looked much sleeker and more rugged at the same time. Higher quality tiers had a visible advancement over their base forms. It was a good look. She was tempted to try for a full Legendary set just to see how he’d look in it.

She haggled with the NPC vendor for a few minutes to get the best possible price for the Rare gloves - almost trivial with her insanely high luck - and purchased a larger batch of materials this time.

“Tell me about us.” Maya started work on a set of armbands. “What are some memorable events from our lives together? Maybe some details will help jog my memory.”

Andy’s eyes lit up and he spent the next hour regaling her with stories of a life she still couldn’t recall. Of gardening, and a full social circle; of mishaps and misunderstandings, chaos and fun, failures and triumphs.

None of it sounded familiar. Some, she could imagine herself doing, but never quite remember. Others sounded blatantly made up, perhaps retold so many times they’d passed the fiction event horizon without any of the participants noticing, and only someone outside it all would be able to tell.

Still, they were enough to start to get a feeling for the person she might have been once, and… Maya found she envied her. The Maya of Darrow’s stories was self-assured and kind, stubborn at times, yielding at others, but had a sort of integrity, a cohesiveness to her that Maya could never see in herself.

Maya often felt like a transient, a passenger in her own life, tossed from whim to whim, without any through-line to guide her. Darrow’s version of Maya was grounded in a way she’d never imagined possible. Life flowed around her and dragged her along with it, leaving no real impact but the constant passage of time.

The more Darrow talked, the more she learned about her alternate version self, the more she wished she could have still been that version of herself. The one who’d figured her life out. The one who’d gotten over her fears and made a choice, and stuck with it.

It would be so easy to accept the authority of that other self, to drop herself back into Darrow’s life and try to pick up where they left off.

But as much as she wanted that settled surety, she also didn’t want to tie herself down. She had so many things to do first. So many plans and ambitions and dreams she didn’t want to throw aside.

She finished the armbands, only one coming out Uncommon, the rest ordinary, and moved on to larger pieces. These came out much better, netting her two Rare and an Exceptional. Enough to finance another set of struts for the Diviner’s temple.

The one part of Darrow’s stories that never felt right to her was his stories of her brother. He insisted he’d died before Maya herself, and that he wasn’t involved in computer programming at all. And called him ‘Lewis’, but by now Maya wasn’t at all confident in her own memories.

One of them had to be mistaken in their assumptions.

Had it not been Drew who created Otherworlds? Or, rather, had it not been her Drew? Was Andrew Stader a stranger, and her Drew someone else, either with the same name, or one similar enough that Maya in her early confused state latched onto it without bothering to consider the fact that it might not have been her brother who created the entire virtual universe? Had he instead lived and died without ever making a mark on the world?

She didn’t want to believe it, but she had to admit to herself that from what she remembered of him it seemed infinitely more likely than the fact that he’d created the biggest advancement in virtual technology basically ever.

Was this whole thing a fool’s journey? Was there any point in seeking out Andrew Stader, if it turned out she was a nobody instead?

No. She’d set her course, and she would not be so easily dissuaded. Darrow was wrong. He was either misremembering the details, or he was an imposter trying to ingratiate himself with the future empress before she came into her own.

So she continued to craft, and continued to listen, and continued to plan her ascension.