Lukas had a lot on his mind after he returned home from the Northern Quay. Aengus’ words echoed in his ear. They had finished their work early enough that he had time to visit the cartridge shop and sell his Animus, though he only got a paltry four copper pennies for his trouble. Still, that was worth about a third of a fresh loaf of bread so every little bit counted.

He returned to his shack an hour past sundown with Kiruna anxiously waiting for him. Her bright smile welcomed him, making him grin in return.

“You’re late!”

“Couldn’t help it, little sis,” Lukas chuckled. He handed over Kiruna’s loaf, both were fresh for a change. He gave her half of the ham he had for lunch, carefully wrapped in wax paper.

“Thank you!” she replied gleefully and started nibbling on her dinner.

Lukas sat down at their rickety table and served himself some cold well water. While he didn’t do any manual labour, the process of climbing those Chaos-burned stairs always did a number on his legs. He was exhausted, and by the time he finished dinner, he collapsed on the bed and was fast asleep.

The next morning, he ate the other half of his bread and readied himself for work. He needed a fresh shirt, leaving the dirty one for Kiruna to wash and hang up under the sun to dry. He hurried on his way, leaving his sister still snoring in her blankets.

Aengus’ words still in his mind, he trudged the familiar route to the steps of torment, bracing himself for the long climb once he got there. Half an hour later, he was at the top, leaning over his knees and breathing heavily. It took him a few more minutes to recover, feeling a bit dizzy at the exertion.

Still, he arrived at 28 Quartz in good order and wasn’t that much out of breath. Aengus was in the lounge, drinking his first cup of tea. He nodded to Lukas once he saw him and gestured at the breakfast board. Lukas ate quickly. He normally tried to savour the meal but not this morning. Once he and Aengus were finished, he asked him in a low voice.

“Can you tell me what you meant now?”

Aengus nodded, glanced around and seeing no one nearby, jerked his head to the pantry. “Have you ever heard of the Assembly of Freethinkers?”

Lukas shuddered. “Those crazy saboteurs and traitors?” He eyed Aengus sideways. “Are you one of them?”

Aengus nodded. “Of course, but you have to understand that what you’ve heard or read about in the news pamphlets are but what the nobles want the rest of the people to hear. The Freethinkers will not harm the common man and seek to uplift the common citizen from the rut the elites have left them in.”

Lukas stared at him, feeling fear, anger, yet oddly enough attraction to the idea. “You’re talking about treason.”

“And what kind of treason would that be?”

“I...uh, being part of an organization such as that, that’s treasonous.”

“Ah, I see. The Assembly of Freethinkers is no more, unfortunately. Most of the upper members have been betrayed and captured. Another group, with the survivors and some new blood, have created a new organization. I can’t tell you the name yet unless you intend to join the group. There’s a, well, a meeting tonight. You should join it.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason I did,” Aengus said. “When I received my Heritage, my Animus Cap was low. Low enough that it would take a fortune or decades for me to advance out of Novice. Little Animus meant that I didn’t qualify for the Academies, even the lower-levelled ones. My Facet wasn’t good enough, my Heritage wasn’t good enough, well, how do they expect people like you and me to progress? How can we better our lives when we are never even given the chance to learn the tools to allow us to…”

He shut his mouth with a click of his teeth. His voice had risen alarmingly and the gatekeeper looked in on them.

Lukas nodded at the man with a smile, receiving a bemused look in return.

“I apologise, I’ve let my temper get away with me,” Aengus said after taking a couple of deep breaths. “Either way, we are trapped in a cycle and should we even have any kids, well, unless we get lucky and marry a rich or powerful woman, our descendants will suffer the same fate.”

“If you’re interested in more than spending the rest of your life in this hardscrabble world, then come with me tonight,” he concluded.

Lukas shook his head slowly. “Let me think about it first.”

“Think all you want,” Aengus smirked, “but don’t take too long. There are interesting times ahead.”

They took their lunch packets and headed out. The Circuit Tram ride was quiet and while Aengus ogled the pretty women walking on the sidewalk, Lukas turned to his thoughts. Unexpectedly, his expenses had risen with his income. But he couldn’t bear to buy stale or close to stale bread every night when he had more funds to buy fresh. The perks of working for Mazer’s Emporium were numerous, not least of which were the extra food he was given for free. Even now, he would probably only eat half his sandwich and give the other half to Kiruna.

Lukas mentally calculated their expenses and came up with a frightening conclusion. He was saving less money now than before. What with the increasing prices of food, though it had somewhat stabilized by now, it was still twenty percent higher than it had been before. A couple of weeks back, a loaf of bread was thirteen copper pennies. It only went back down to twelve five days ago.

He was spending more, even though he earned more coins per week. His savings, cleverly hidden under a tile in the shack’s bathroom, weren’t increasing at the projected pace. If things continued as they did, he was one rent increase, one food shortage, or some other economic disaster from losing his hard-earned work. And his sister would be stuck in the race, her feet hobbled together, left behind by children riding a flying shuttle.

He shivered. He looked at the people in the Northern and Southern Mid Ring. These weren’t the rich but they were well off. Their faces were unlined and perhaps they were even older than their apparent youth. And here he was, grateful for a free ride from an Emporium that was loaning him out to another outfit for a price that was probably ten times or more what he was being paid.

Yes, while Mazer’s Emporium had already finished auditing their cargo, other shops hadn't finished. There was a shortage of people like him but he didn’t have the credentials or the education to qualify to work the Quay. Further, he was too young to do it alone. He could cut a deal himself but he was sure they’d give him just as bad a deal. There wasn’t that big a shortage. Aengus was probably with him to make sure he didn’t do what he was just thinking of now too.

If he closed his eyes, he could see his cage. He could see a piece of bread dangling just out of reach, forcing him to run after it, shackled to a cart carrying his master’s goods. At the end of the day, he might get that piece of bread, but he would still be in the same place. Tomorrow would be another bread, another hard road, another load.

He glanced at Aengus. While Lukas’ senses weren’t well-honed, he thought he could see the other boy’s Animus growing stronger over the past weeks.

They arrived at the Northern Mid Ring’s cargo quay, and with a fresh set of orders, Aengus led Lukas to the corresponding corridors, columns, and shelves. He worked on the crates slowly.

He summoned his Animus from his core, a vortex of lights around a core of darkness. Each of those sparkles was a representation of each lumen of Animus. He never had trouble with pulling out a specific amount that some of his yearmates had. Unsurprising considering each of them had at least two to three times the amount he had. He could measure it down to the last lumen. Maybe it had more to do with how he envisioned his core?

Each sparkle was a lumen and he needed exactly one in order to activate his Facet located behind his eyes. He hooked one of them, tumbling around in the void, and pulled it out of his core, sending it flying up to his eyes and into his Facet pattern.

The pattern was a simple spiral, with the lumen coming in from the outside and moving along until it was at the centre. Once active, he had the choice of sending his Animus to his eyes or his finger. If he sent it to his eyes, he would be able to know not just how heavy something was, but also how dense. He didn’t get a specific measure for density though, just whether it was above or below average for its volume.

Crates were always below average since they were essentially hollow with items inside. How far below average would tell him how full the crate was.

If he sent the charge to his fingers, he needed to touch the object. HIs Animus would then coat the object which made it glow with his hue, orange. If he used the first method, only his eyes would glow.

The advantage of the second method was that he could recover the Animus he used. He couldn’t put it back inside his core though, no, it had already been transformed by his Facet. But he could touch another object and measure it. He could keep it up for about a dozen tries if they weren’t too big before his Animus dissipated. Not quite what he told Mazer but since it generally took about an hour for him to examine a dozen crates, it was a moot point.

He marked down a crate that weighed significantly less than what it did on the manifest. This particular client already had three misses. He should report it immediately. He glanced around and didn’t find Aengus, as usual. Where would the other boy be?

With a sigh, Lukas decided to finish his auditing before making a report. It would save him time and maybe there were more underweight declarations than the three he found.

He continued on his task, spending a couple more hours before it was time to break for lunch. There were more crates to audit, for sure, and probably a couple more days to finish this particular client. He wandered into the cafeteria, wondering where in the Burning Moon was Aengus. He ate alone, ignoring the buzz of the other workers and saved precisely half of his sandwich.

He returned to work and spent the next four hours doing much the same thing. Near sundown, he came back down the shelves. Aengus was leaning against a column, looking somewhat winded.

“What happened to you?” Lukas asked curiously.

“Never you mind,” Aengus answered. “Let’s go back.”

They took the evening Circuit Tram back to the Southern Mid Ring and got off at the nearest waiting shed to Quartz. They reported to the office warehouse. Mr. Mazer was in his office with a pile of paperwork, furiously scribbling on a piece of paper.

Lukas wondered if the man knew about Aengus’ group. While the news pamphlets hadn’t written about the Assembly of Freethinkers, what was on the news every morning was the Ivalans’ increasingly hostile actions down south and the Empire’s efforts to protect their territory. Well, other than humans, the Legion Agminis protected them from the varied beasts and twisted monsters that came out of the Chaos Channel, from underneath the earth, and from the parasites in Zarek.

The annual migration of the barbarians up north was creeping closer with the nomads seeking shelter from the extreme cold up north. There would usually be clashes along the border when the Season of Air came about before it eased up by the end of the Season of Water.

No barbarian had even made it past the border forts but they weren't the only threat out there. There was at least another Tidelands there and, if the Empire were to find out where, then there would definitely be an expansion in that direction.

That was a thought, maybe he and Kiruna could join the push for the frontier. He could have gone west to the known frontier but travelling by any other means than the Commuter Tram was tantamount to suicide. Besides, where would he find the two silver crowns needed for the both of them? It was better to save up for his sister’s Atavism Ritual.

So his only prospect was to scrape for a living while trying to cough up enough coins for his sister’s ritual, and even then it was a coin toss what she would get. More to the point, it was far more likely that she'd get their mother’s Heritage and that wasn’t much better than Lukas’s.

Lukas wasn’t a gambling man. He believed that gamblers were fools who cannot control their own impulses and eventually led themselves and their families to ruin. But if losing the bet wasn’t that much worse off than doing nothing, then maybe it wasn’t a foolish choice. Maybe it was…hope.

Lukas had started heading out of the warehouse barely paying any mind to his surroundings. Aengus was giving him a wounded look and there was even a trace of anger behind his eyes. Lukas stopped walking and stared at the other boy straight in the eye.

“I’m in.”