“All done loading.”

The “cart” was the exact same style as the destroyed wagon had been, down to the leather material of the canopy stretched over the top. It was enough to give Atlas an unpleasant sense of deja vu, though slightly muted by the assortment of produce now squeezed tight inside its frame.

“Already?” The Wife put her hands on her hips with a smile. “I was happy enough when that fool husband of mine managed to bring back such a strapping lad, but sometimes I swear we’ve brought in a helpful harvest spirit along with you.”

Atlas raised an eyebrow but said nothing. From what he recalled The Wife had snapped at her husband for bringing in “another scrawny stray”, but if Phineus wasn’t going to take that rare opportunity to gloat then he could bite his tongue.

The man in question walked over, tapping his way with his cane, one arm wrapped around a thick wooden strongbox.

“Move that bag, boy.” The farmer instructed Atlas while rapping a sack with his cane, looking at neither. Atlas complied with a grunt. While he’d discovered a time limit to the immunity that jettisoned inventory had from being logged again, it was as far as he could guess about an hour. Phineus pressed at a section of boards with his fingers and a plank sprang open to reveal a small compartment into which he put the strongbox.

“Alright, put it back.” The wizened farmer straightened with a creak after snapping the compartment shut once again.

“Is that a standard feature?” Atlas asked as he heaved the bag into place once more.

“Don’t you be getting any daft ideas, boy.” Phineus shook his head. “Even if you know it’s there you won’t be opening this kind of box without the key.”

Atlas nodded thoughtfully, face blank.

If that was a standard feature then there was a good chance that the ruined wagon would have it, making their trip considerably shorter than planned even if he had to rewrite objective reality in order to make it happen. He certainly had enough Broken codes for it.

A porcine squeal derailed Atlas’ train of thought. His had was halfway to his B button when he saw Kleis leading a massive sow towards them.

“Quit gawping and give me a hand, kid.” The man whose shoulders he was currently wearing tossed a bridle at him. Atlas snagged it with a grimace.

TOOL LOGGED

Sigh. He turned away as he “caught it” and surreptitiously deployed the bridle once more. At least his hands knew exactly what to do with it now.

Finally the was cart hooked up, Phineus sat up front with his otter staring down her nose from beside him like the driver’s seat was a royal throne, and Kleis and himself settled in the back “for security”, something that gave Atlas mild misgivings considering that he was fairly sure that Kleis had been the source of his Craven code.

Still, there was little enough he needed to do beyond sit on the hard frame of the wagon and watch the farm shrink behind him. Kleis droned on into background noise with endless tales of life in an excruciatingly uneventful village somewhere east of the farm. Atlas had heard them often enough in the past few days to memorise the parts he was supposed to express the appropriate signs of interest, leaving him free to watch the sides of the road for threats, particularly threats he hadn’t scanned yet.

Soon he’d have to effect a suitable level of surprise at the scene of the boar’s final massacre, find an excuse to check inside the wagon and, if they were lucky, save everyone a trip by discovering the peddler’s “already broken” strongbox, assuming it existed and hadn’t suffered the same fate as the rest of the wagon’s contents.

Except…

“We’re not turning down there?” Atlas stared down the unmarked path he’d travelled from on his way to the farm.

“Hm?” Kleis looked up from a tale about scrumping from Phineus’ orchard as a youth. “Nah, not unless we were headed towards Helos, and they don’t generally trade for coin, if you know what I mean.”

Atlas had, in fact, no idea what he meant.

“Anyway, there I was-”

Atlas stopped paying attention to the man, his oversized shoulders slumped as he stared at the turning as it faded from view. Somehow he’d taken a wrong turn, either putting him into the boar’s path in the first place or back in front of the boar once he’d lost it once before. Because it was a wrong turn they were going to pass by the caravan without ever seeing it, and his silence until now stopped him from saying a word about it for fear of raising even more suspicion than he’d been trying to avoid in the first place.

Though the sow pulling the wagon only managed a speed best described as an “amble” it was early afternoon when their uneventful trip through the woods came to an end and the fiery canopy and endless trunks gave way to blue skies and rolling moors, populated by nothing more exciting than a few shepherds and their flocks of scraggly fleeced sheep. Atlas managed to scan one for yet another beast code as they passed, and another form variant from its attending shepherd as she followed close behind, which helped improve his sour mood somewhat.

“Why are you always messing with those bracelets of yours?”

Atlas blinked, taking a moment to register that Kleis had actually said something that wasn’t one of his banal stories.

“Because I don’t know how to take them off.”

A technical truth. If he knew how to take them off he’d probably mess with his physics defying bracelets of mystery slightly less than he did now. Besides, if his brain was hijacked to prevent him from removing them himself, getting someone else to help would neatly circumvent the issue.

Kleis tutted, tapping his bulbous nose.

“Can’t be trusting all those fancy city gadgets, kid, you take it from me. My cousin Cygnus went to the city last year and never made it home again.”

From what Atlas remembered from his stories Cygnus was, at best, an unrepentant petty thief with a problem with authority, but he frowned gravely all the same.

“Do you have any idea what happened to him?”

“Oh yeah, they caught him sneaking into the citadel and threw him in the dungeon.”

“What’s that got to do with gadgets?”

“Well they wouldn’t have caught him if it wasn’t for one of them gadgets, would they?” Kleis grunted, rolling his eyes as though that should have been self-evident.

“Look lively, you two.” Phineus called from up front. “We’re almost there. Unload the cart and set up while I go talk to Anders.”

Guess there went his hope for Kleis offering to help with his bracers then. Probably for the best he supposed. What if they stopped working when he took them off?

By the time Phineus emerged from the grocers with Betsy in tow, Atlas had deposited the wagon’s contents discreetly in a nearby alleyway and almost finished helping Kleis set up the makeshift stall on the side of the street. The old farmer threaded his way through the gathering crowd towards them.

“Good news. Anders has two coins he’s willing to exchange if we carry some of his stock up to the city for him.“ He paused midstep, cane hovering in midair. “Done already? You may as well go book us some rooms for the night, boy.”

Phineus reached into his tunic and withdrew a small leather pouch from which he withdrew a handful of coins and dropped them clinking onto Atlas’ armoured palm. Atlas snapped his hand closed around them as they vanished.

MATERIAL LOGGED

“And this-” Phineus pressed a smaller clump of metal into Atlas’ other hand. “Is your wages to date. Don’t waste it all on drink.”

Atlas blinked in surprise. The matter of payment had never been discussed. He’d thought he was working for room and board, plus passage across the river, now he felt like a child given pocket money for the first time.

“Thank you very much.”

Phineus snorted. “You’ve earned it. Now get. And don’t you make that face, Kleis, watch the stall while I go make the exchange.”

The farmer disappeared into the back of the wagon, leaving Atlas wondering as usual how he did that while never actually looking at anyone. Still half dazed he pushed his way through the crowd, hands still clenched on nothing as he walked towards the Magic Bed.

… Wait a minute. Atlas slowed as he broke through the crowd, raising his status screen with a sense of dread.

Four golden drakes, fourteen silver talons, and five copper scales. His inventory had combined both piles together with no indication what had been in each.

Atlas resumed walking with a groan, considerably less enthusiastic than before.

His bracers had struck again.