Khorun trod through a meadow, scanning left and right for a particular kind of flower. Tailor Wing needed it to make a dye.

Khorun had the kilt Wing had given him, as well as a tunic and a bag for storing things. This time, Wing offered a few coins. Khorun had done little favors for other townspeople as well, earning him a belt and some decent shoes, but he kept returning to Tailor Wing's crowded little shop. Khorun listened carefully to everything he had to say, but never had the magic word passed his lips since the first time.

Khorun tilted his head to the side, listening. He stood perfectly still. He waited for the nearly imperceptible sound to get close enough, then spun, whipping his staff around and killing the snake it struck. Khorun heard the sound of a tiny gong, distant but compelling. The words "NEW SKILL: OAKEN SPEAR" appeared before him.

He performed a couple of practice thrusts with the end of his bo staff, using the dead snake's head as a target, then tried using the new ability. The only thing that happened is another message appeared: "Requires internal energy."

Khorun had a zero rating for qi energy, with no idea how to raise it. Perhaps someone in town would know. Picking through the flowers he'd torn up while striking the snake, Khorun found the last dye flower he needed. He considered the snake's corpse. He knelt down to it, looking around in case anyone was nearby, and pressed it between his hands. He pulled his hands sharply apart; there was now a conical hat between them. He put the hat on his head and returned to town.

Tailor Wing was delighted to get the flowers, and handed Khorun a few coins, three brass and a larger one of dull grey metal. It was enough for a night at a lodging-house and a few luxuries.

"Thank you," Khorun said. Then after a pause: "Do you have anything to say to me?"

"Um... 'you're welcome'?" Tailor Wing said. Khorun sighed. No magic word. He bowed to the tailor and began to leave, then stopped and turned. "Tailor Wing, do you know how I get internal energy?"

"Ah, you wish to cultivate your qi? Good for you! I don't know anything about it myself, but I am certain you can find a teacher some leagues up the road, in the town of Ten Fields. There are often other explorers and seekers after fortune like yourself passing through toe town; perhaps one of them could teach you."

"Thank you, Tailor Wing." Khorun bowed, waited another moment and, sensing Tailor Wing had nothing more to say, threaded his way out of the cloth-clogged shop. He got onto the widest road heading out of town and began to walk. He considered whether a horse might someday be available to him. Moving more quickly would mean more time accomplishing things.

Far above, he saw someone flying across the sky on a sinuous dragon. Khorun sighed and hung his head. It would be walking for now. It was equal parts encouraging and depressing to see how much some other people had, and him with only a stick and a sack.

Some distance into a large stand of poplars, Khorun stopped and cocked his head. A wild dog was trotting along parallel to the road. Khorun stepped slowly and quietly to the furthest edge of the road, knelt down, and waited. The dog trotted past without noticing him. Khorun wondered if there was a way to use internal energy to heighten a stealth skill. First, he supposed, he would need to acquire a stealth skill.

The forest began to give way to fields. The rolling green expanses were likely what gave Ten Fields its name. Khorun went to a travelers wayhouse, had a meal, and arranged for a room for the night. Then, with the late afternoon sun leaning toward distant hills, he looked around the town. The ideograms above the doors of the handful of sleepy little shops barely give a hint as to what each one contained. Off in the distance, however, Khorun spotted what looked like a temple, with heavy wooden beams painted red. He went to it and entered.

"Hello, hello," a man said. "Welcome to the Ten Fields temple."

"Thank you," Khorun said. "I hope you can help me. I'm looking for--"

"Qi cultivation?" the man asked.

"Yes. Are you able to teach a beginner?

The man grunted. "Yes. But not today. It's too late." He stood up with a little grunt. "Come tomorrow. Bring a lot of water to drink. You'll need it after first learning to cultivate. And bring a bottle of rice wine, too."

"Does the wine help with cultivation?"

"No. It helps me put up with the beginners I have to teach all the time."

Khorun returned to the main clutch of storefronts in the town. One shopkeeper was already closing a bamboo gate barring the door of their shop. Dusk was fast approaching.

Khorun stepped into a shop that carried--well, dowels, by the look of the sign. It seemed to be a woodworking and carpentry shop. There was a man in a quilted overcoat carving down a length of wood, but also another person, picking out short lengths of plank. He turned around, and Khorun bowed. "Greetings. My name is Khorun."

Before the other man had time to speak, a third man barged into the shop. He wore leather armor reinforced with metal plates at the joints; these shone brightly and had fancy scrollwork on them. "Hey! That's my Flunky. You don't talk to him unless I give permission. Biero! You got the crafting stuff yet?"

"I apologize," Khorun said. "I was merely introducing myself to... Biero, was it?" He addressed the man getting wood.

The man in armor muscled in between them. "Listen, I pay good money for him. Get your own Flunky, scrub." He turned. "Biero! Get that shit paid for and meet me at my mount." He stomped out of the store.

Biero wouldn't meet Khorun's eyes, just silently handed some coins to the shopkeeper and left.

"'Get your own Flunky.' Perhaps I should." Behind Khorun's eyes, Clay was taking in as much as she could about the player and Flunky. Her eyes danced underneath her eyelids. She followed them outside, observing and recording the notations in PERSEUS that distinguished them and identified a paying player as opposed to a Neuronet-controlled character. She opened a coding window and started work on her crawlbot to trace Raf's movements--once it found him, of course. The "Bletchley" code word might be the key to finding him, she hoped.

The first step would be gathering more data. She wanted to get an idea of what markers would definitely identify a Flunky. There had been assets in PERSEUS for motion-activated cameras and similar things for battlefield use. She hunted around in the documentation for something suitable, and used that as a base. She set it to capture certain metrics she thought would be tell-tales for a Neuronet-operated entity--ultra-low latency, for instance. She also set it to record state changes: any NPCs that got taken over temporarily by the Neuronet might have a different digital signature for the duration.

She needed to "pin" the altered code-bundle to an object in the world. She had Khorun do the conversion trick again, folding down the conical hat, molding it, and emerging with an ugly little gargoyle, which he stuck on a corner of the wayhouse. She would spend time as Khorun doing other things--tedious combat grinding, specifically--while the little gargoyle-spy gathered information on everyone who passed within its field of view.

Clay thought she smelled something when Khorun bedded down in the wayhouse. There was no PERSEUS data on it, and she remembered she still hadn't programmed the Crown of Thorns to feed her sensory data from the game. She lifted her head up and sniffed.

"Orange chicken, Miss Clay," Vonzell said. "This is the second time I warmed it up for you. You were in your own little world earlier."

"Thank you," Clay said distractedly, feeling around for the dish and chopsticks while PERSEUS dominated her vision. "That's very thoughtful of you."

"Mm-hm." Clay didn't hear Vonzell turning and leaving. She cocked her head and listened. "Miss Clay, you really wanting to go around-the-clock with this? IV, catheter, all that mess?"

"Oh, no, no, Vonzell, no," Clay said. "Not until I've amped up the feedback power on the Crown of Thorns." She could hear Vonzell sigh as they walked away.

Vonzell didn't understand. This wasn't just family: this was a race against the clock. Better that she suffer ICU psychosis than Raf. He was a bit of a soft boy, bless him, and hadn't had Clay's training in mental discipline. Besides, it was a hell she was already familiar with.

She sat, ate her chicken, and contemplated her intention to submerse herself in the game--possibly more than any human being previously had.