What does it feel like?

She frowned at this, or would have if her face was less recently painfully pummeled.

In that state, the source you have acquired reaches a tipping point, becoming invested in you and improving you in various ways. As those levels of investiture increase you will experience any number of different increases in power. Stop it, I see you about to interrupt me. They can be almost anything, and it depends entirely on the person. It’s a reflection of you. Maybe your temper is a reflection of the fire hiding in your soul, or maybe it’s the storm inside waiting to be unleashed. It’s something that develops on its own, so you don’t need to sweat the process.>

It's something I can do now? Do some of that investing? Excitement was threatening to boil over, her portfolio was definitely going to beat the market.

Can you show me?

Karen used to do yoga with her friend Becky, or she did until that gossipy bitch started talking behind her back. Some people are so rude. She hoped Becky was somewhere right now getting laughed at by a mindfuck cat as it stalked her in her townhome. Those ugly curtains. Who does she think she is?

Right. Breathing. She drew a slow breath. Exhaled. Drew another. It stung a bit. Her nose wasn’t broken, but it had bled a lot at some point. Now it was all stuffy.

The grass was soft and the gentle wind was cool on her cheeks. The sun had long ago fallen behind the tall trees, and little rays of light danced over her eyelids as the leaves swayed. She imagined her breath as the rolling sea, gently lifting as her lungs filled, gently falling as they emptied.

She was a boat. The open sea all around. Another wave rolled in, lifting her. It slowly fled, lowering her into the trough. Lifted. Lowered. Lifted. It felt nice. Peaceful.

The voice gave her a little shock. She’d stopped thinking, mostly, and somehow the anticipation was still building up. Simmering in the pot, out of thought and out of mind until she acknowledged it. She let it go. This was good enough to do for its own sake.

It was the most natural thing to simply drift in the gentle movement of her breathing, and releasing that anticipation only made it better. The tide came in, the tide came out. She couldn’t explain that.

She was alone on the sea. Every breath taken lifted her, but there was more to it than that. It was swelling her up, like a gentle pressure, then shrinking back down as the wave passed. It left an expansive wholeness that itself expanded with each of the multitude of passing waves. After what felt like too short a time, the feeling faded leaving her refreshed.

The aches in her face had eased and she easily opened both eyes, seeing the twin moons peek back between the branches. She sat up without much discomfort. The little village was brightly lit under their heavenly gaze and bright windows dotted the streets.

“Good. What was that?”

Sourcerer. It felt good. It felt very good.

So, do I, you know, throw fireballs to spite my foes or whatever?

I feel… strong. Stronger than I have been since… I don’t know when. Ever, maybe. Did I get taller? She squeezed a fist and flexed her arm, seeing muscle there for the first time in more than a decade. In her mind’s eye she could see herself kneading pizza dough made out of steel. That’s pizza for robots.

Sounds weird. What do I do next?

Limits them to what? From that? She could see the inn from her spot in the grass. It was bigger than the other buildings in the little village, which made it a really big, red ice cube compared to the other big, red ice cubes.

One other thing, and you need to take this to heart. Source is currency. It’s literally money, and that’s part of the appeal of it. And before you ask, no, it does not give the rich much of an advantage. You need to understand something important, and failing to do so will ruin you in a way I can’t fix. Look at me. Tell me you’re paying attention right now.>

Karen didn’t love the shift in intensity from the spirit. It felt a bit like she’d been caught being bad and was now getting a lecture from daddy, and had to resist the urge to spike the obnoxious ball into the dirt.

What? Seriously?

I understand it’s important, Dr. Drama. Can you spit it out, please?

How could that be right? Obviously, getting a hundred people to do something for you would give better results than doing it yourself. Maybe there was some other way this rube hadn’t thought of. And the alternative, it sounded like a lonely, violent life. Not exactly pleasant. But to move like that woman in white had. To fly over the city…

The spirit spoke, interrupting her musing.

I will not absorb source except from kills. It wasn’t simply a statement; it was a choice. Committing to the lifestyle as described.

“Ughhh. I will never absorb source except from kills.”

“Tiers?”

Naturally, she worried about it. Everything was so new and foreign, but at the same time it was exciting. The way to achieve big goals, in her experience, was to break it up into smaller goals and never stop building. The first employee, the second location, the million-dollar quarter. Each was a simple target, but they were all achieved through a multitude of little targets along the way.

It was almost too appealing. Too relatable to her natural predilections. Did the spirit use its knowledge to manipulate her, or was it simple coincidence? Did it matter? She wanted it, so she would take it.

---

“’Collection of people who are paid to do things.’ Didn’t you call it something else, like a murderers club or something?” There wasn’t a difference between this building and any of the others that she had passed, aside from the sign above the door. The crossed hammer and spear were unique among the other icons she’d seen on the walk. It was a distinctly martial look compared to the flowers and treebullshit the rest sported.

After a moment of kicking mud from her shoes – which were, ironically, advertised as trail running shoes and had found their first experience in something like a trail only earlier that day – she hauled her aching body up the steps and into the COPWAPTDT.

Unlike the inn, this place had covered the brick with wooden paneling. Every second board was then painted white, leaving the natural color between to match the light-colored wood of the floor. It lent a sort of funhouse look to the room that Karen absolutely detested. She had half a mind to make her own COPWAPTDT with a proper name and proper décor. The Karen Gillespie Center for People Who Name Things Good and Wanna Do Others Things Good Too.

One wall of the place was dominated by a board covered end to end in handbills and flyers in every conceivable color. She assumed the colors were to make them more attention grabbing but it all came together to be a jumbled mess. Even the lighting from the sconces was annoyingly colored, staining the white paint a cool blue.

The woman behind the stripey desk was an absolute stunner, which made Karen hate her before they had even interacted. She hadn’t even bothered to look up as Karen entered, the lazy hussy. Probably looking at a magazine she was on the cover of. She groaned internally at the thought of having to deal with her.

The spirit interrupted her studying the bored looking woman.

The woman was remarkably friendly, infinitely more than the dildo of a customs officer, and she seemed excited about meeting a human. She walked Karen through the tedium of the paperwork, listed the benefits received versus going on your own, and explained the facilities available at this branch. Apparently, the handbills were colored by some sort of danger rating, brown being the most basic and common and purple meaning certain death to anyone that wasn’t Elfnan the Destroyer.

All went smoothly until the woman asked for a bit of her source in two small cubes. These were the source crystals that her spirit had insisted she use, apparently just simple quartz that held stuff without leaking.

Possessing neither the knowledge of how to do it or the humility to ask for help, there was a small fuss before the attendant caught on. The process was intuitive and simple enough, and quickly the two cubes were filled with black source. The elf didn’t bat an eye but the spirit batted whatever it is spirits see out of.

Black source, while not exactly rare, was not held in high esteem. The natural source color for necromancers, there was no shortage of cultures willing to wring hands or clutch pearls at the sight of it. They would know when they know was all the reassurance it was willing to add, a transparent euphemism for shut up and do something more productive.

The cubes were stowed under the desk with the completed forms. The desk model explained that one was for having a badge made for her and the second would keep an imprint of her source on record. She didn’t much care for the concept of having some huge organization keeping tabs on her but the spirit explained it didn’t matter that much. They would track her either way, and this planet was for ‘stupid babies’ and she would be on to better things while they pissed away their short lives as ‘miserable servile weaklings.’ Such a way with words.

As she left toward the back room and the lodging that only cost membership to a club that would allow someone like her to join, the elf, whose name she had heard and promptly discarded, discreetly advised her to visit the bath first. Most of the ill will at the comment was lost when Karen arrived. Her face was a mess of splotchy bruises covered in dirt and her own blood.

A spigot poured into a conveniently placed bucket, with the whole mechanism operated by injecting source into some kind of wall mounted crystal. Her arms, weak and battered as they were, trembled every time she lifted it to inject the tiniest amount she could manage. After her clothes and body had been cleansed of grime she’d tried to leave straight away, exhaustion settling hard from anticipation of decent sleep. After the spirit insisted, she cleaned the floor to leave it like she’d found it.

The room was a cell, not the kind where mitochondria are the powerhouse but the kind you find in the big house. It had two cots, both wooden frames laced with rope. It seemed the people paid to do things were expected to put down their own bedding. She had yet to be paid to do things, so all she had were wet clothes, a magic iron ring, and a flying lantern that couldn’t illuminate a room, talked too much, and was a bit of a dick. She put her back to the rope and was out before there was time to complain. Almost.