Revvel giggled, an unpleasant hollowness contained inside. No doubt she thought they had the game in the bag.

Then Jack threw his arms wide.

“Well then, there is one thing that needs to be resolved.”

He thrust an open hand toward Rowan.

“You have failed to give us your name, little goat.”

A tooth filled grin flashed by as Rowan took the hand.

“Ah, how rude of me. The name is Rowan, Rowan Walker.”

For a second the pleasant visage of the moustachioed bear seemed to crack. An angry and frightened man now stared from the other side of the table. The ends of his moustache twitched and his small eyes seemed sunken in their sockets. But as fast as it appeared, it vanished, leaving nothing but a pleasant smile.

“What a fascinating name, nice to meet you, Miss Walker. Let us end our night here then, full-house.”

Revvel threw down her tree of a kind, but did not seem to mind her loss. All she cared for that was that the newcomers did not win.

Icid checked her hand, but was quite convinced she had nothing.

…

She blinked. In her hand was an eight and ten of hearts. Icid was sure she used to have-

“A pair of threes.”

Rowan threw his cards on the table to a wall of mocking laughter.

“Well, I guess we won’t we cooperating, after all, Rowan Walker. Unless your pet spider has been pulling the wool over our eyes the entire time, and I don’t think she seems capable enough to do so, then your entire side has nothing.

I must say, there are people who are poor at gambling, but those are some disastrous odds to bet on. Do you even know the rules?

Well, I guess it is a befitting level of intelligence for a goat.”

Revvel spoke softly, pleasure dripping from every word. Meanwhile, Jack sunk into his chair, seeming awfully relieved.

“Ughm.”

Icid cleared her throat and stared Revvel straight in the eyes. She knew little about poker, but some bits that are just common knowledge. And this, this was the poker they played in movies and Icid knew her movies. She had thought it was for a while, but after the full-house she was sure.

Besides, she was not stupid enough to not realize that Rowan had swapped out their cards. With a sickening grin, she put her hand on the table.

“Straight flush”

Revvel’s eyes widened and Jack went white. Icid’s grin widened further, who knew cheating would feel this good.

“Well, well, look at that. Seems my ‘pet spider’ had the wool pulled over your eyes after all.”

Revvel knocked her chair over with a bang and stormed from the table, rage oozing from her evry pore. The veterans stood up in a confused flurry and followed her, muttering curses under their breaths. Rid took the time to make a small bow and then took his leave too.

“I must be honest Oil, on the list of people I would never want to see again, you might even rank above my first wife.”

“It’s an honour to have that much-coveted distinction.”

Rowan’s face deformed into a self-stratified smile while Jack’s became stern and cold.

“You know, the reason I got into this whole video game simulation thing is because people like you don’t show up here. And I prefer it stay that way, so go be off. Leave a dead man in peace.”

Rowan put her feet on the table and picked up one of the remaining mugs of alcohol.

“Enjoying life here Jack?

Chasing the skirts of simpletons riddled with mortal imperfections. Scamming locals out of a couple a hundred dollars by cheating at card games. Travelling from bar to bar, night to night, always the familiar stranger.

That almost sounds like work to me Jack, boring work.”

Jack’s expression turned pained.

“I get to be alive tomorrow, Rowan. Well… free. Not behind bars at least.”

Rowan took a large swig from the mug and peered to the ceiling for a while.

“So this is good enough for you now? Just making the rounds till you’re in the ground, forgotten?

I considered you among the best of the best once. Eyes and ears that heard everything, knew everyone and forgot nothing. A snake’s tong so blessed it could convince rock it was water. The mole, the grifter, the greatest con-man.”

Jack’s ears turned a soft pink and his expression softened. Alas, Rowan’s tong gave no reprieves for long.

“But now, it seems I can hardly say so anymore. I had to even tell you my name, pathetic.

The old you would have known it was me before I even gotten through the front door.”

Icid looked into the man’s beady eyes as his moustache quivered. Countless emotions seemed to flash over his face, all mixing into a tangled mess.

“I don’t need this, Rowan. I have left, and I will not turn back.

To slowly become normal is a blessing provided only to the sane. My mind will rot, going senile in the monotony. Until one day the last strands of hunger in me die. And then I will live happily as a sheep forever after.

The end, no more playing god.

I will get you some connections for that bet I lost, but that is all.”

Rowan put the mug back down and stared into Jack’s eyes. The candles flickered and the sounds of the bar swept over the quiet table. The bard set into a slower song, whispering of things long past.

“Never mind, Jack. If you don’t want in, there is no need to involve you further. Forget what I said. I am not going to drag a friend to hell, if he found peace. It would have been a pleasure to take you along. Like in the good old days…

But those times had faded long before any of us started dying, hadn’t they?”

With an excruciatingly long sigh, Rowan got out of her chair. Icid stared at the goat, who seemed to have aged decades in minutes. Her eyes seemed sunken and her furry beard was ragged and uncertain.

“Let’s go Icid, we have plans to make.”

Icid got hesitantly to her feet. Jack expression seemed still stuck between a flurry of conflicting thoughts. She wanted to say something, but she failed to find the words. After a couple of breaths, she threw out whatever drifted to the top.

“It was… interesting to meet you, Mister Goodwill. May fortune smile upon your future endeavours.”

Pointless drivel, menial small-talk, boilerplate water-cooler conversation.

But still, Jack’s eyes seemed to regain some light as they turned to face Icid.

“This is a very, very weird road for you to walk little one. I do not know what debts you owe, but it could scarcely be worth the risk. Especially for someone like you.”

Rowan signalled it was time to leave and started a calm stride to the door. Icid turned once more to face the moustachioed man.

“There are no more debts… I am here because I want to be, Mister Goodwill.”

And then she followed Rowan into the cold night.

Rowan leaned against a nearby railing, staring into the flowing rivers of dust. Dustmites swamed restlessly under her gaze. They snapped their long jaws and made small leaps attempting to eat her toes.

Icid settled against the railing as well. Bones drifted by, a poor soul who must have fallen in upstream.

“Say Icid, do I sound like an old man when I talk?”

She blinked at the unexpected question.

“An old man?

Well, sometimes you display the grumpiness of an elder chasing the children of her lawn. Why do you ask?”

Rowan stared at the glistening stream, her expression sullen.

“My actual age does not bother me. What matters is that the world seemed to have moved on without me.

…

Bear with me for a little, I have got some complaining to do…”

Icid stared into Rowan’s black lumps of coal and made a small smile.

“I am all ears.”

“Our greatest heists have happened more than a decade ago. We were of the highest calibre, legends, the best. Alas the important word in that sentence is ‘were’.

As time went on, more and more things started going wrong. Brothers and sisters dying, getting caught, turning traitor…

Our targets shifted from being the best, to staying alive. And we have not topped our past deeds since. But the mistress of time is relentless, no matter if you take less changes. Our bodies and minds kept on decaying and slowly we became worse and worse.

I sunk so far that even a low tier assassin could put me under the ground, apparently. And now I had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting an old friend. Once the best of the best, who has become a fat slug whose flame has gone out.

It leaves me to wonder if I have become that delusional fool stuck in the past. Trying to poke the bear that mauled him by going into its cave. Just to prove she still has it.”

Merry voices sang slow songs in the distance, sounding far away and hollow. The dustmites snapped their fangs and the cold wind chilled to the bone.

In the silence and the cold Icid once again grasping for words. But this time they came easier, almost without effort.

“You are mad, absolutely mad. But that doesn’t matter to me, Rowan. Nor does matter to this world.

You are dead, outside the bounds of age and time. Video games are cauldron made to crystallise the fantastical and the impossible. Every one I have ever played rewarded the mad, the bold, and the inventive far over the safe.

The laws of the real world reward conformity and safety by its very design. But humanity has always dreamed of more. Magic, gods, fairies, and dragons, searching for a world were wanderlust is the order of the day and the other is the norm.

So when given the possibility to create worlds outside our own, those principles were the first inserted. The more impossible the mountain seems to scale, the more likely a video game is to let you scale it.

So, my little mad robber goat, let us find a way to scale it together.”

A faint smile appeared under Rowan’s sunken eyes.

“I think the mysteries of your mind are slowly falling into place, my dear Icid. But that does not change the fact we are in a problematic situation.

We are both the size of children, and judging from the conversation, we will not grow naturally. The people we came across the last few days made it awfully obvious that superhuman abilities are the norm here. Strength less than a human, like ours, is an oddity in the upper layers of society.

Well, you at least have a somewhat useful body. But I must amid I am starting to find it hard to figure out what to do with mine.”

“It might not be as hard to make alterations to that as you think.”

A third voice cut through the conversation from behind.

Jack strolled in and took place at the far end of the railing.

“This place is maintained by people hungry for money after all. And they happily incentivise you to go extract cash from the economic layers and hand it to them. It is true that being a Capra places you in a bad spot, but not an insurmountable one for people with skills like yours.”

Rowan and Jack turned to face each other once again.

“I thought I would at least hear what you planned to do, Rowan. It will leave me wondering while I try to sleep otherwise. The members of Scha’vun are a troublesome bunch to get involved with. Especially if you have no clue what you are doing.”

“Ah, the ring. That was merely incidental. We came across a stack while robbing some bloke’s mansion.

Some otherworldly goddess strolled in and nicked the rest. She was wearing a one like it when she came in too. I was hoping to invite the lass for a nice dinner, but otherwise, the ring holds little relevance to me.”

Jack let out a deep sigh, his very life seemingly escaping from his longs.

“What is it then?”

Rowan smiled, deeply and calmly.

“It is Olivier Oldward the Third I am after.”

Interlude: Everywhere Always Worms

Finch looked down at his half-eaten bowl of bleak root porridge. Many of Aard’s low-quality produce was grown underground. Both land and water were very sought after, making sun grown crops expensive.

Food could be grown in the endless network of underground tunnels, but its taste was limited. The flows of dust or ‘aard’ as it is called contain a degree of magic, allowing for certain plants to grow without light. But all of it tasted ‘ok’ at best, especially the fast growing roots.

He fiddled with a hole in his brown coat. From the corner of his eye observed the goat and spider while they followed a moustachioed man. Part of them did not want to see it at all. The girl, especially, the youth and innocence in her eyes pained him. But it was them, no doubt.

The two who had robbed the baron’s house. His arm still stung when he thought about the bite the girl had given him. He had been a fool for presuming them to be harmless when attempting his arrest. But few could blame you for assuming incompetence when going up against a Capra and a Spiderling Arakne.

Not that he wasn’t blamed, of course. The chief had been looking for a reason to get him shipped out of sight and this bit of negligence was the final drop. So now he was stationed in a place where no right mined guard wanted to be, the bloody heights.

But his chief had not been the only one that took his failure to secure the criminals poorly. Not long after his failed capture had been reported, a group of thugs had assailed him in an alleyway and spread his face over the floor.

He had no clue why the wanted info on the suspects of a simple robbery, but they certainly had no qualms about blooding their hands to get it. And then he still had before the baron, who seemed to have turned into a screaming ball of rage when he arrived. When he left Finch could be sure that he would be last in line for a promotion as long as the stolen belongings were not found.

He placed his bowl on the counter and started a slow walk as the trio turned the corner. His shift might have stopped many hours ago, but an old bird’s duty never truly ends.