“You fucking stabbed me.”

Ethan rolled his eyes, dropping his spoon. “Yes, I stabbed you. With an escrima, in case you care.”

Zahn blanched, his face incredulous. “No, no. You stabbed me. With a wooden stick. Bull. Shit. There is no fucking way a goddamn handle punched through me.”

The Warlock grinned into his bowl, “I can always do it again. I mean it, that’s a pretty standard attack. Your tell showed where you’d be striking, so I stabbed your leg. If we had real weapons, you’d be a gimp good sir.”

The other Player shook his head, dribbling soup around. “Phuck dat. I kicked you, something happened, everything went black, and I woke up here. You’re full of it. I don’t have a tell.”

Ethan snorted around his mouthful, “Mmkay. Still trippin’?”

Zahn looked around the room again, trying to find the shapes of Chaos everywhere. The commons looked clear despite the pile of rubble that once was a tablet, even if a square brick seemed to be eyeing him back. “Nah, it stopped. I’m telling you, it was like unlocking a door and suddenly I couldn’t close it again. Once I saw it, I can’t unsee it, y’know?”

“Not really,” the blond slurped at his dinner. “Well, maybe. I mean, I’ve seen some pretty fucked up shit with my bind to the Chaos plane and all that, but it’s been long enough most of it’s just memories now. I don’t even get hot and bothered at the Sigil anymore.”

The other Player’s ears perked up, “Sorry, what Sigil? I heard that capital letter.”

The Warlock grinned back at him, “Told you it’d be obvious. You just picked ‘em outta midair, from the Locals’ perspective, so keep your lid on about it. Whenever a ‘lock wants to first start with his summons, he needs to spend time communing with the Plane itself first. That’s basically what my page we’re using is, a way to talk to the other side. So, when the ritual is running I reach into that other place, and when you first touch it.” Ethan shuddered, staring into his bowl. “It’s like cold in a place you never felt anything before, let alone the heat you suddenly need. It’s like, like when you’re running hot water and when you touch it, for a second you think its cold. That kind of body shock, and when you can see, you’re stuck with… Well. You see the Sigil.”

Zahn watched fascinated, his food forgotten. “And?”

The other man glanced at him before studying his soup again. “It’s eternal. Constant. Looping over and back on itself, it starts to look like straight lines but then it just, it folds and now you’re looking at curves and it moves again and you’re seeing from the inside of a shape, the lines bending ‘round and then it folds again and you’re staring back at the first one, just from the wrong angle. I dunno, shit’s nuts there man. Watching you spin spells like that in your Grimoire made me think of the Sigil, and I haven’t touched on that bad dream in forever.”

The Custom nodded, raptly absorbing the information. So he saw a spellform, representing Chaos. Probably made out of the smaller runes, like atoms making up molecules. Molecular Chaos magic? Does magic take up space like molecules? Focus! Blinking his train of thought away, Zahn cleared his throat. “So, what’s the shorthand? They can’t just say, ‘The Sigil’ each time, it’s hardly dramatic enough for demon binding magic casters.”

Ethan scowled up from his food as he stood in a huff. “No, we aren’t dramatic.” He crossed the room to drop his bowl in the sink leaving Zahn with, “They draw this shape, a mish-mash between a capital ‘S’ and the number eight. All spiky and angular, standing upright.” The Warlock closed the door behind him, leaving the lowbie with his thoughts as he retreated to the sink.

Standing as well, Zahn strolled around the hearth to his gravel before kneeling to gather the bits. Scooping double handfuls of his pet project, the Custom piled the mess onto the least used couch to keep them together and tried not to stare at the fragments still holding intact Chaos runes. No way that asshole used the stick, he had to have had a sword or something in his other hand. Sneaky fuck moved fast enough, why wouldn’t he be able to draw another weapon? Still trying to deny his loss as he worked, the Player eventually gathered the mess together and tried to stick the rocks back into a whole.

Sorting them by smooth-or-rough and trying to keep consistent bits together seemed like puzzle solving from home at first but quickly became another mess of falling rocks and doubting the fit of pieces. “This shit’s never going back together.” Zahn blinked as he voiced his thoughts, looking around to make sure Ethan hadn’t caught him talking to himself. “Damn right I’m talking to you!” Without a response from the quiet wash closet the lowbie shrugged and turned back to his work.

Noticing his scorched pants still on the ground nearby, he snagged them with a foot to act as a basket and hold the unwanted fragments away from his workspace - kneeling in front of a couch in his shirt and underwear. Fitting together the most likely candidates, Zahn was left with five pairs and a few triplets that needed to be somehow bound back together into a solid unit if he ever wanted to get the Chaos runes figured out.

Fiddling with the edges he sent mana through his fingers to fill the rocks and ignite a glow within each sheared edge his magic eyes could track. Holding up two mostly fitting halves he could see the gaps between their uneven break lines where the mana wouldn’t fill. He hummed to himself and pulled his Grimoire over from its hovering perch to find the Shape page. Nothing in the brief spell description made of Magi seemed to indicate his idea wouldn’t work, and his current problem seemed like the perfect testing ground. “Shape.”

Intoning the spell and pressing the halves together, he tried to intend each rock to mush back into a single unit. At first the left stone wobbled before its broken shear molded to fit the other half perfectly, then the right lost its hard edge to meld around his fingertips from the pressure he squeezed them together with. Sitting back in a huff he dropped the rocks and found they stayed solid even as they clattered across the ground. Was it really that easy? Fetching the bits he found they remained stuck at their mutual border but the line separating them was still clear, and even existed in the middle of the brick when he examined the mana close to his face.

Trying to pull them apart again took a moment of effort as the two halves seemed to stick like magnets. Pressing them together again did nothing, though they now fit perfectly as if melted, and the mana inside each stone seemed to not react at all. Using another cast of Shape to smooth out his grip indents, he set the halves down on their cushion and pressed them together before casting again. This time he didn’t try to use force and pressure, but instead just his will. Join, fuse. Merge, meld. C’mon you fucking rock, stay intact damnit. Staring intently as the green mana swirled, Zahn watched his spell like a hawk until he realized something was changing. Where previously each stone held its own tiny whirl of energy, at the break the two rocks were exchanging their mana. Once he found the connecting stream it seemed to widen, as if a hole were opened between two drinks now mixing. The line of unyielding magic between the two fragments began to erode, the magic swirling inside the brick causing the divide to fuse together from the center until the scar on the edge began to fade. Where the two face halves didn’t perfectly match, their levels blended together into a smooth transition, and when he leaned back from drooling over his discovery he found the rock a single unit as if found out in the wild.

“Hell yeah!” he whooped to the ceiling, both arms raised high. “Who’s the master? I’m the master! Mother fuckin’ Earth master fuck yeah!”

“Will you keep it down?” At some point since beginning his project the pouty Warlock had opted to return to the living, opening the door and joining him in the commons. “One, stop shouting in the commons. Two, you’re really not and the Shaman would probably kick your ass. Three, now that you’ve found your pants will you please get dressed?”

“Nah, I lost the needle in them somewhere. I’ll put them on after I fix them, I just gotta work on this. Have you seen this? It worked!”

Ethan wandered over to the rocks project, stopping at the discarded clothing. “Mhm, yes I see. Rocks. All over my couch. Well done.”

“No,” Zahn waved a hand at him before turning back to his project. “I melded them together, I’ve partly fixed it. I can repair the slab, and we can work on the Chaos portal bit again.”

The Warlock snagged the pants and scattered its load of gravel, “Great. Can’t wait. Why are these burned?”

“I got frustrated. So, you just gotta pump the rocks with enough mana and have them exchange it, then you can make them into the same rock. Helps if you Shape the edges together first, but then you can Shape rocks together better than any glue!” He paused, looking up at the wall. “Can I stick it to other rocks?”

“Why don’t you just ask the Shaman to make you another slab? I’m sure enough begging and wheedling will get you back on his good side,” came the suggestion from across the room as Ethan dug through the cabinet. “Also, where’s the patch?”

“Why would I need to get on his good side? I never had a patch.” Zahn heard the sound of something slapping as he worked, before another grumble made its way to his ears.

“I hate you. So fucking much.” Ethan made more noise as he moved things around before continuing, “You should really check your personal reputation scores, they’re under social. You are not sitting happy with your mentor, little newbie.”

Zahn opened his HUD with a wave and accessed the social tab. He ignored the open window as he selected his next pair and charged them up, reading the screen as he waited for the stones to merge. The relationships window wasn’t one he’d bothered dealing with before and found a number of surprises waiting for him. The list showed a long array of names and how they felt about him, namely a numbered score with a one word description. He found Sasha immediately, her name outlined with gold for some reason, and her reputation sat at five hundred three with the symbol of a metal collar after the number. The description read ‘grudgingly’ and was highlighted a pale green. His relationship with Ethan sat at ninety-five, listed as ‘sympathetic’ and uncolored. He found Burnato, negative two hundred thirty one marked ‘hated’ and even Two at one-twenty five listed as ‘friendly’.

Finally, near the end of the list came the Shaman Brouhaman, marked as negative one fifty and listed as ‘unfriendly’. Zahn closed the window, looking back at the other Player. “Okay, that’s new. And worth knowing. What happened with the old man? I wouldn’t think he’d hold a grudge about the match, and he even won the thing so what the Hell?”

Ethan remained focused on his work, trying to patch the torn pants. “Oh, I dunno. He accused you of not taking him seriously, and you barked back that he’s a fictional creature and you’d be leaving his entire reality for the ‘real world’ as soon as you can. He’s been a master of magic you’ll never learn for a good eighty years, and some pissant twenty-something Player comes along telling him he’s not even real. Can’t imagine.”

Zahn reflected back to their brief exchange, and the other man’s blatant hostility after it. “Well,” he started, trying to find a high ground to stand on. Tracking his word choice, he eventually settled for winning by semantics. “I’m almost forty,” he grumbled to the fused brick.

The other Player’s short laugh echoed around the room, “You sure don’t act like it. Half the time you’re as dumb as a teenager.”

“Hey you knew me with less than twenty int for over a month, shut up. You can’t judge me by that.”

Ethan shuffled the filthy torn leggings around in his hands, “Yeah, sure sure. You don’t even wash these enough, you’re like the worst roommate ever.”

Zahn looked over from his rock-merging game, “Excuse me? I do my dishes, I wash my clothes, I don’t bother your room. I’m a great roommate!”

“No. You have exactly one set of clothing, and while they’re drying you parade around the commons naked!”

The flabby Player gripped his belly in both hands, “It’s not my problem. Don’t look, my body isn’t here for show. Besides, the breeze feels nice on my skin.”

“No, no!” Ethan stood and threw the hastily repaired pants at his other, “Put those on, and keep ‘em there! Damn dude, I do not want to see that!”

Zahn caught the clothing and donned them, muttering “Drama queen,” under his breath. The stones he’d charged were almost done fusing, leaving the scattered gravel to be melded. Sitting back down once clothed, the lowbie gathered a handful onto the cushions and started to fuel the lot as a group. “I’m still going to need your help; I need to see the spellform as it exists within your book if I’m going to get a read on it.”

The Warlock plucked his map from midair, “Just use this. It’s not nearly as private.”

“Nah, it’s not detailed enough. No offense,” he tried to justify his case as the blond displayed more of his expert artwork by scrolling the canvas, “it’s just that you can’t draw in the third dimension and your book already has it like that. I need to see the full shape as it spins, ‘cause I have a grip on what Chaos looks like now.” Each time he said the word out loud, from the corner of his eye the triangle-square anomaly seemed to appear and vanish.

“Dude. You’re not,” Ethan sighed, pacing to the opposite couch and sitting. “This is like, more than a social. More than a passport, you’re asking for some serious shit here. I’m not going to agree without some kind of terms, to protect me.”

Zahn nodded along distractedly, “Sure, I hear ya. Here, you take mine and I take yours. Fair, right?” He didn’t see the snap to attention from his partner, or the man’s face twist with indecision. “I mean, fuck, you have to give me permission just to read that page, right?”

“Not exactly,” the blond’s voice sounded thoughtful. “It’s more like, ‘here you go please be nice’ than anything else. You mean it? Not some, twisted prank of some kind?”

The lowbie turned a puzzled glance at his friend, “What? Like what, I’m gonna draw dicks in the thing? C’mon, I’ll even give you mine. After I finish Shaping these back together, anyways.”

Ethan let out a breath, standing and beginning to pace. “So you don’t mean now, right. Got it. Makes sense.” He huffed out again, pacing the track around the outside of the couches. “Damn, sometimes I wish you never logged in. I would never consider this shit, not with anyone.”

Zahn cocked an eye as he worked on squishing rocks together, “So why do you put up with me? Just ask to have me moved somewhere else, I can’t imagine Burnato would object to his thugs having unlimited access to me.”

“Because I have a quest,” came the reply somewhere behind him. “And fifth does too. Mine is to train you up, and his is to kill you down with his boys.”

The lowbie looked up again, finding the other Player pacing slowly. “So, would I even still be here if you weren’t being made to let me crash?” His question seemed to echo in the following silence, Ethan not breaking stride as he stared at the ground before him. Zahn’s eyes followed the other man for several long breaths, each step bringing him further from answering. The Custom turned back to his rocks, breathing out a quiet sigh. “Wow.”

“Of course I wouldn’t kick you out,” came Ethan’s delayed reply. “Even if we didn’t have a deal around connecting to Chaos, you don’t deserve constant torture. As long as you’re scheduled for the next match, I’m set to train you up for it. With enough Fodder coming in this time we might even get you up another level, maybe some more points to spend?” His voice sounded much like his usual upbeat cheer, somehow ringing a tad hollow.

Zahn nodded silently, bent to task. The blond fighter circled the room again in thought before he realized he wasn’t getting a reply, and quietly entered his own room. Zahn stared at the partially assembled rocks in front of him, trying to keep control over his bubbling emotions. Work. Don’t care, just work. Heaving a deep breath, he let it out with only a minor shudder before turning back to his project.