I was floating.

The world far below me was on fire, flames illuminating a perpetual darkness. Cries of battle wafted up from below and amidst the flames I saw figures entrenched in combat. Spell wielders and soldiers battled dark monstrosities I couldn’t quite make out, save for their piercing red eyes and their throats filled with fire. I couldn’t tell where I was, or what I was even seeing. Was this even New Haven?

A haunting voice suddenly filled my mind.

Find me…Free me…Serve me…

It was a feminine voice but deep and hollow, like a recording played back at half speed. I looked for the source and floating high above the chaos, opposite me, was a dark, winged figure that had to be the size of a castle. I couldn’t make out its shape against the pitch black sky, save for a set of red eyes and a maw of teeth illuminated by flames. The creature stared right at me and my blood ran cold.

Find me…Free me…Serve me…

It spoke the words again and then suddenly it reared back and breathed a column of flame. My breath caught in a panic and I screamed as the flames engulfed me.

* * *

You gain +1 Insight.

I awoke with a start, the images of what I had seen spiking my heart rate like a jackhammer. I glanced about breathing heavily and saw all three of my Guildmates hovering over me, concern on their faces.

“What the hell was that?” I said disorientated.

“What was what?” Phee said.

Phee was on my right, her hand atop my forehead with her thumb gently stroking the side of my face soothingly. Yunni was at the foot of the bed I was apparently in, clutching her hands and looking pensive. Devena was on my left, giving me a sort of scowl, which I quickly realized was a look of concentration as she lifted her glowing palms from off of my body.

The dragon lady huffed out a sigh with a visible plume of black smoke. “Finally you’re awake. That took a lot into me. That thing is getting worse.”

I barely had time to comprehend what she had said before Yunni jumped onto the bed and hugged my legs. “Master Cole, I was so worried! I didn’t know what to do.”

“Hey,” I said, running my hand through her hair and as my head began to clear the remnants of my dream began to fade like half-forgotten nightmare. “It’s okay. I feel okay now. I think. Except for that weird dream.”

“What dream?” Yunni said.

I tried to remember what I’d seen, but there were only vague images left now. “There was a lot of fire I think and it was really dark…and--”

“Look, forget the stupid dream,” Devena said. “Just tell just us happened to you. Yunni said you collapsed suddenly. What were you doing?”

I rubbed my forehead, feeling the evidence of me hitting the floor in the form of a large cartoon bump that was now there. “I guess I really did collapse. I think I was just going at it too hard. How long was I out for?”

“About half an hour,” Phee said. “By the time I got here anyway. I got you into bed, but you just weren’t waking up. Luckily Devena came not too long after.”

“Good thing I was already on my way back here from the markets.” Devana folded her arms haughtily. “I don’t know what would have happened if I’d taken any longer. We need to talk about this.”

“Talk about what?” I said.

“About this problem of yours!”

My stomach twitched at the way she said ‘problem’ and I found myself becoming defensive. “I just overworked myself a little. That’s all. It’s no big deal.”

“It is a big deal,” Devena insisted with a scowl. “We’ve bet our collective futures on you, Cole, and you’re putting them all at risk with your ill health.”

Just her mention of the word health caused me check my status.

Health: Diseased – Touched by Death

Fuck…was it really my cancer that caused me to pass out?

“Look, the illness I have isn’t supposed to act this fast…it just a little growth inside my head, no bigger than a grape. My doctor told me I had a year.” I suddenly thought of Susan and wished she were here now. It’d been less than a week since she diagnosed me. Could I be getting symptoms this early?

“A year?” Devena let out a sharp laugh. “You wouldn’t have lasted an hour if I hadn’t aided you. That thing inside your head is getting worse, Cole—whatever it is. I can sense it.”

“But how?” I looked at my own hands, as if somehow they held the answer. “I had a year....”

“Could it be the effect of you using your magic?” Phee asked.

“Or maybe it was just you thinking too hard,” Yunni added with a smile, perhaps attempting to lighten the mood a little.

I thought about what Phee had said. I hadn’t used my metal melding abilities that much, but who knew how magic could affect a brain tumor. Maybe magic itself was like radiation and the whole place was constantly bombarding my brain with gamma rays and turning my tumor into a super tumor.

I sighed and looked to Devena. “Is there anything you can do?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “I can remove it completely.” She then lowered her dark brows at me. “But we have a deal to execute first, remember? And you’d better live up to it, Cole. Literally. You need to win this competition.”

“Devena!” Yunni said with a frown. “Don’t be so cold. He nearly died!”

“Exactly my point! How can he win the competition and save our guild if he’s dead? It’s why I had reservation about choosing him in the first place.”

“Hey, I’m not dead yet, dammit!” I shouted back at her and pushed myself out of bed. I stood on wobbly legs and forced myself to maintain balance. “Look. We’ve got a deal, yes. And I am going to see it through, even if it ki—” I rethought my choice of words. “Nevermind. The point is, this was a minor setback and I’m not going to let it slow me down. No…Slow us down,” I corrected as I looked to each of them in turn. “I’ve made promises to each of you and I intend to keep them. So don’t worry about me dying prematurely. Like everything else, Ill figure it out. Now let’s get cracking and see what loot we’ve scored for today.”

Despite what just happened to me, I had to get the team back on track. My guildmates followed me as I made my way shakily to the workbench. Devena then half-heartedly tallied up what Phee had brought in from the day’s hunt.

“138 gold from monster parts and about 570 mana worth of crystals,” she said.

I smiled at Phee as I looked over the numbers on my spread sheet. “Way to go, Phee. You and Lex have been kicking ass out there.”

The big lady blushed. “We did our best. The raptors were dangerous, but with Lex’s help I managed to take out two whole packs of them.”

I gave her wink and smile and she blushed even more.

Relationship with Phee: +50

“It’s adequate, I suppose.” Devena shrugged nonplused. “But it’s not going to get us to our goal. Now what are you going to do with this, Cole? What’s your plan?”

Despite the risk I could now possibly face by using my powers, there really was only one option for our present resources. “I’ll save them for when I have to craft the water system. I haven’t calculated just how much I’ll need to use as yet, but it’s likely to take a lot. How did you make out with the scrap iron, Devena?”

The dragon lady displayed those numbers next.

“I found two sources,” she said. “The Smiths Guild and the Goblin Trade Union.”

Smith’s Guild $12g per 10lbs Stock 21,000 lbs

GTU $7 per 10lbs Stock, 7,000 lbs

“Why the big price difference?” I asked.

“The Smiths Guild makes iron directly from ore bought through the Earth Guild. Higher quality and more stock. The Goblins basically scavenge their supply from rusted weapons and other junk from the beastman tribes that adventurers bring in. They then melt them all down into ingots. Less quality and less stock, but cheaper. That’s the explanation.”

“Hmm…” I pondered that. With my melding ability, I didn’t really need to have it melted down into a homogenous form, did I? And while quality was always better, I was working on a seriously tight budget at the moment. “See if you can knock down the goblin’s price further by buying all their scrap raw and un-melted. You can sweeten the deal by letting them know I’ll probably buy out all of their current stock completely.”

“You’ll need that much?” Devena said, her eyes widening. “That’s nearly five thousand gold.”

I shrugged. “Takes money to make money. Work on getting that price down and it’ll be even less.”

Devena sighed making a note in her book. “I’ll see what I can do…”

“How about Eldeen?” I asked. “Did you find him?”

“I have my feelers out. I should hopefully know more by tomorrow. Luckily the guy seems to have quite the nefarious reputation. It shouldn’t take long to find him.”

“Okay good,” I said and checked my own reputation which was now sitting at over 200. I noticed it was even higher then when I’d left the crowd back that the wall. Maybe the people there were spreading the word. That was all good news. The more people who would come to the Expo the better. But that also meant I needed to get this water system up and running--fast.

I began immediately thinking of what I could work on next. My head still hurt a little but time was of the essence. I knew there were all the little parts I needed to design, like the pipe itself. It would be easy to meld the complete pipeline as a single structure, but if I wanted to be able to expand the system I would need make standardized lengths that could be fit together with flanges and bolts. That meant I needed to make flanges and bolts. And that mean working out thread pitches to achieve the desired wrench torque, gaskets…maybe leather could work?

As I continued to ponder through my mental to-do list, my dream from earlier came back to my mind like a nagging afterthought. I was about to pass it off as a mixture of a concussion I’d gotten from hitting my head on the floor combined with perhaps my imagination conjuring up images of what had happened at Phee’s village. But then something on my HUD forced me to acknowledge that what I’d seen couldn’t be ignored.

You gain +1 Insight.

How do you gain a level of insight from a dream?

“Guys,” I said. “Do people get visions here?”

“Visions?” Yunni said, her eyes widening with interest. “Do you mean your dream? What did you see?”

She was right on the money, but knowing her background, she was probably quicker than most to put two and two together. I struggled to recall the details of what I’d seen and recounted them as best I could: The battle in the darkness. The monsters. The fire. And then finally the enormous winged creature in the pitch black sky.

“It spoke to me,” I said, trying to recall the words and then like magic, I almost heard them again in complete clarity. “Find me, free me, serve me…That’s what it said.”

I looked about to my companions. Phee looked puzzled, Yunni looked enthralled, but Devena looked like she’d just seen a ghost. I focused on her. “What? Do you know what it means?”

“It sounds like Kardith,” Yunni said.

“Who?” I said.

“Karthis, the dark goddess,” Yunni said. “She’s Lythandra’s sister according to the holy texts. Where Lythandra represents justice and order, Kardis is the embodiment of chaos and destruction. The two are locked in an eternal struggle for power…or balance, depending on how you look at things.”

I looked back to Devena for a reaction, but whatever had spooked her before seemed to have passed and she responded with a scoff. “Kardith my ass. He’s not receiving vision from the dark gods. It’s that stupid thing growing inside his head.” She then lowered her gaze at me with a glare. “Which means you need to deal with it swiftly, Cole. This plan of yours needs to pay off, because I need to increase in power by a hundred fold to remove that curse of yours.”

With that she spun on her heel and started walking away.

Relationship with Devena: -200

What the hell?

“Hey!” I shouted after her. “Where are you going? What was that all about?”

But the dragon lady didn’t stop.

“I going out for some air,” she said as she reached the door. “Don’t wait up.”

As the door slammed shut I looked back at Yunni and Phee who seemed as bewildered as I was. “What the hell was that?”

Yunni shook her head. “Don’t ask me.”

Phee however let out a scoff. “Seems perfectly normal to me. Bitchy to the core.”

I frowned as I continued to stare at the door. Part of me said just let it go, but fuck that. There was too much riding on this to have some loose cannon on the team. I needed to straighten her out. “I need to go talk to her, guys. Wait here.”

I headed downstairs where the evening crowd was gathering, expecting to see Devena at one of the tables perhaps, but she was nowhere in sight. I dashed outside next and saw her already at the far end of the street.

I picked up my pace to catch up to her but then slowed as she suddenly leaned her head back and then let out an agonizing cry. What the fuck? I realized then that she was cradling something in her arms and my heart froze as she stooped down and dumped whatever it was onto the side of the street. I was pondering whether I should call out to her or not, when she suddenly leapt into the air and transformed into a sleek black dragon. With a powerful flap of her wings she soared into the twilight sky and then headed towards the jungle, quickly disappeared amongst the treetops.

I didn’t know what the hell just happened but my curiosity got the better of me and I edged towards the side of the street where she had been. As I got closer a coppery scent filled the air and I halted when I saw what Devena had thrown into the gutter.

There in a bloody mess…was Meep.