Nico stood in a vast field of hard yellow dirt. Surrounding him were nine floors of precious stone, and an upward of forty thousand people roaring, screaming, and screeching, until their voices combined into a wave that shook the dirt under his soles. He felt their voice as one strike against his naked chest.

He had black shorts on, an axe in his left hand, and an empty brain in his head. He couldn’t hear his own thoughts. It was his first match in the 40th Game, the most prestigious tournament and most important event in all the cities, and he was going to throw it.

Arxon stood five feet away. He was a Rank III Thermal Emitter-Manipulator. They were matched against each other because this was Arxon’s first duel as well, and both were 16, the youngest age allowed into the Games.

The only unfair thing was that Arxon had a suit on that made him invulnerable to 6 direct hits and a red potion on his belt that removed pain and healed him with a single gulp, but that’s what everyone expected when a Rat goes against a Ranker. It was an unfair fight and an unfair world. Part of growing up was coming to terms with that. Nico wasn’t even supposed to be here. He only had himself to blame for attending the Games unprepared, or at least that’s what he was repeatedly told.

It wasn’t uncommon for people to die in matches, even with Shields, much less those without.

Arxon raised his arms towards the crowd and yelled. The crowd yelled back louder, and louder, and even louder, until their voices stopped becoming voices.

Arxon turned towards Nico with a smirk, but Nico didn’t meet his sight. He crouched to the ground, placing the bone handle of his gray axe on his teeth. He kept his arms upright and stretched his fingers across the dirt. His back was straight, and his right leg was a foot behind his left.

The timer on the screen started the count-down. 10, 9, 8. The crowds kept screaming, but Nico only heard the metal of the digital clock clicking inside his head. It kept him from thinking. That was good. Thinking was dangerous. 6…5...4…The ticking took over. Metal against concrete. Metal against concrete. It drowned everything. 3…2…1…

Nico opened his eyes, the clicking still resounding in his ears more clearly than it was in his dreams. He got to his feet quietly and carefully, the alcohol long gone in his bloodstream. He walked along the bookshelf. In between the books he saw a woman. She had straight shoulder length silver hair and a glossy, short-sleeved purple coat that went down to her belly. Her skirt was a tight-fitting purple that ended below her knees. From underneath her coat two metal tridents slithered out.

Nico didn’t hear the door ring, nor could he sense her. Only when he looked at her did he finally hear her make sound, and the more he listened, the stranger it got.

The spears on her tridents picked up each book with their three points without tearing them apart. It delivered it to her hand. She jumped through the chapters, taking three seconds for every page, then tossed it aside at a perfect, gradual rate. There were no pauses. There were no delays. Every page took the same time. Every book took the same time, regardless of how large it was.

The tridents seemed like it was glossy metal, but it was bone—it had to be. Only Life affinities could hide their life signatures. She’s a Life Manipulator. Agile, from her toned body, and extremely confident. Very few Rankers wore heels, and even fewer Rankers took off their suits. Not confidence. It was something more.

Nico stood there for a while, entranced by that oddly satisfying rhythm.

The curtains stirred, but no one walked through. It was then that Mr. Tensly’s head poked out from under the counter as he climbed onto the stool, his face clenched as if someone stabbed him through the foot. He was a tiny man dressed in plain brown robes, barely any larger than Dan, with so much shriveled skin his eyes didn’t even peek through.

He’s alive. It was usually Nico reading until his eyes burned and Deodo passed out in the back, but he wasn’t the owner, nor the one to hire Nico. It was Mr. Tensly.

Deodo was standing beside him. He had his back leaning against the wall with his flower itched pipe out, the sweet smell of whatever herb he was smoking replacing the smell of dust. There was no hint of drunkenness to him.

At least that makes sense. Just like Nico could sense Life within a 6-meter range, Deodo could sense pretty women within a one-kilometer. But that’s where the normality ended. His casual attire had vanished into the more boring slick black pants, white buttoned up shirt, and black coat.

It was a Ranker’s armor. While most people had to spend a precious skill slot for the Life Shield skill, the suit provided it on the get go, and it only got more capable as the Ranker ranked up. It was what distinguished true Rankers from common Hunters.

The only caveat was that unlike a typical Life Shield, the protection didn’t extend to the neck and above, but that was only until they unlocked their mask at Rank V.

“Isn’t this interesting,” the Ranker said, though she didn’t sound it. She flipped another page. “Half of them?”

“Half,” Mr. Tensly croaked. His throat sounded like it was full of rust. “I couldn’t help it.” He might have smiled. It was too hard to tell with his face. His skin overlapped, making it harder to distinguish the crevices of a smile, but as far as Nico was aware, Mr. Tensly’s face naturally sloped down into a frown.

“A few dozen would have worked just fine,” she said, tossing the one she was holding away. It struck a random pillar, bringing them crashing down. “Such vile torture, just for a joke.” She walked over to the counter, her feet deftly dodging all the books withering the floor as she glanced at the shelves. She wore purple tinted glasses with a frameless top.

“Knowledge is power,” Mr. Tensly said.

“Knowledge is a tool, old love, just like you,” she said, setting something on the counter with a thud. It was an extremely long 2-meter sword within a mechanical looking scabbard . The scabbard was far too narrow and had a single edge to be a great sword. It didn’t look practical. The thinness and the length should have made it extremely fragile.

Mr. Tensly leaned over, smelled it, then quickly looked up. “You’ve done it!” he yelled, and for a split moment he looked more than a walking corpse. He picked it up and inspected every side quickly, his mouth wide in excitement. “The power of the Deep! It’s…yours?” he said, putting it down. “No…no this craftsmanship…it’s not yours.”

“Not quite,” Devi said. “Not quite yet. Do your thing on it.”

“And yours?”

“I’m a mathematician, not a mathmagician.”

“What?”

“I’m a mathematician, not a linguist.”

“You did not say that.”

“I stuttered.”

“I refuse to believe you have stuttered once in your life.”

They gazed at each other wordlessly for a few quiet moments. Mr. Tensly sighed. “My hearing isn’t what it used to be. Why don’t you get it out of the creator?”

“Getting anything out of her is going to require some unconventional healing. Or a tedious amount of persuasion. I prefer neither.”

“Dead?”

“Stupid.”

“What?” Mr. Tensly said, his eyes narrowing further than was humanly possible. “How--”

“She is as competent as she is difficult,” Devi said. She leaned in, smiling toothlessly and whispering, “And there are two of them, Mr. Tensly, two of them, one crazier than the other, and I haven’t yet figured out which is which.”

“And your plyers?”

Devi sat back. She wore metal extensions on each finger, all purple but her index. That one was a depthless black. She tapped it against the counter. “No.”

“No?”

“She’s a child.”

“Didn’t stop you last time.”

“Mhm,” Devi said. “It did this time.”

“Well, to whatever insanity you’re brewing,” he said, picking up the scabbard , “there is no reverse engineering this. The language is… odd.”

Devi’s tapping went undisrupted, its rhythm still perfect, but there was a tension about it, or a tension to herself. It was hard to tell. Her voice, even her body movement, was ambiguous. It was confusing to look at her. “Every language is to the ignorant.”

“Why yes, each one has its symbols and rules. Combine them together and you get function. Through function you get meaning. But what do you suppose I do with a bunch of 0s and 1s? There is an infinite number of combinations—I always knew you freaks mixing letters and numbers would eventually haunt us. Now look what happened—numbers, as a language. What has the world come to. It’s the en—” he bent forward, coughing violently.

Devi leaned on the counter, resting her chin on her hand. A silver pipe with engravings of clouds was in between her fingers.

As Mr. Tensly panted, Deodo walked up to him. He placed a brown wooden pipe in Mr. Tensly’s fingers. The store went dead quiet as they took deep breaths.

There was another click. Devi set a milky white potion in front of Mr. Tensly. “How long?” she said, breathing out a violet cloud. It floated to the ceiling. When Mr. Tensly breathed out, it was a plain white. They mixed, making the air into a bright violet.

“I’ll be long dead before I figure it out,” he said as the pits in his eyes glanced at the white potion. “Decades. Centuries if the maker took precautions to make a more complex language than they needed, just to mess with people like me, which it seems they did. You’ll conquer the world faster through sword and shield.”

Another long drag. Devi sighed the smoke out this time. “We have the sword.”

Something dragged Nico by the ankles. He flew like a kite and smashed the bookshelves like a boulder. He found himself hanging upside down, swinging gently in front of Devi like a pendulum. Blood ran down his head and dripped down his hair, pooling under him. He looked through wide eyes covered in red.

“Now we have the Shield,” she added, pointing her pipe at him. “Mr. Nil, you’re making a terrible mess on Mr. Tensly’s fine floor.”

Nico slowly nodded his head, feeling lightheaded by the second. The violet smoke he was breathing made an odd, pleasant taste on his tongue. He used a Heal. The blood drops in the air reversed course, sliding up his hair and going back into his skin. The wound closed after.

“Much better,” she said, extending her hand towards him.

Nico reached for it, the swinging and the dizziness making him miss the first time. He caught it in the second swing.

She squeezed. Tightly. His hand was squished into the size of a pinkie. His fingertips pointed in all the wrong directions.

“Oh the agony,” Nico said.

Devi smiled slightly. It was just a small tug at her lips.

Nico hadn’t a clue what it meant, but somehow, he knew she wouldn’t let go until he used a Heal. Maybe it was because he was curious as to what would happen himself. He used it. His bones pressed out against Devi’s hand, but they didn’t budge. Nothing happened, though the Energy was used.

A little while after, she let go.

Much to Nico’s surprise, his hand glowed a dense yellow. His hand expanded, the bones inside separating and remolding until it was perfect again.

“One of the most powerful skills in the universe,” Devi said, gently letting down Nico’s back onto the stool next to her. He caught one of the legs and up righted himself. He looked at her and froze. She was casually tossing a green arm in her hand. Etchings of clouds ran down the entire length to the palm, where the emerald metal turned into white-green crystal. The fingers were sharper than human fingers, but not as sharp as claws. In the center of the palm a circle was itched. “And all you have to show for it is a singler performance.”

“Must have been a good performance if it caught your eye,” Nico responded automatically, his eyes and mind transfixed on the arm. He watched it rise and fall in a dumb trance. She tossed it to the same height, and it fell into her palm at the same place and angle. He didn’t need to count the seconds or take the measurements to know each toss was machine perfect.

A human couldn’t do this, and he wasn’t talking about Ascended, either. She was something else.

“Good?” Devi shook her pipe at him with a mirthful smile. “It was beguiling in more ways than you’ve realized, least of all the peace offering that went up in black smoke, and that is the sole issue of it,” She leaned in slightly, bringing the arm closer, and making Nico scoot to it on his seat. “But that is neither today’s nor tomorrow’s conversation—I have a little job for you. A delivery you’ll need to strap in for. Are you interested?”

“Wh—"

Devi pressed her index finger against Nico’s lips. It drew blood. He tensed, and his fingers wrapped around something metal and heavy. From the bottom of his eyes he could see a hint of the green arm, but when he fully looked, he found nothing. He couldn’t see it anywhere.

“Are you interested?” she repeated. Something about the way she said it told Nico she wouldn’t repeat it a third time.

He nodded slowly.

Devi sat back, taking a deep breath. She breathed out the violet, adding more purple to the room. “Get the Locust to the Nightmare Of The 4th City.”

Something inside Nico died. He deflated with a sigh. I’m going to continue living as a cripple for the rest of my life. A second later a more important and far more interesting realization replaced it—the Nightmare was alive.

The Nightmare of the 4th City was a Ranker Killer, and probably the worst and best one at that. It killed numerous Rankers, including a few Ascended, without ever being identified, inside the city walls. It was unheard of. No one even knew its skills, much less what it was or what it looked like, or whether it was even a human. They only knew that it hunted during the night, leaving no corpses and no evidence. When empty suits would fly in the morning light the city would know another Ranker was gone with it.

A year and a few months later, the 4th Fall happened.

“Where do I find them?” Nico asked.

“Beguiling,” Devi repeated, though it didn’t feel as if she was speaking to him. She lacked the mirth that seemed to be engrained in her voice and posture. “In more ways than you’ve to realize.” She paused. “She’ll find you.”

She, Nico noted with excitement. Before he knew nothing. Now he knew something. It wasn’t much, but it did narrow down the population by half.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I take it you know my circumstances?”

“Besides little Lilla,” Devi said, waving her hand.

Figures she knows. But how she did was important too. They never officially adopted Lilla, and he wasn’t even sure that was her written name. Devi must have had some type of surveillance on him. “Can I have something like that?” he asked, referring to the inconspicuous arm.

“It’s one of a kind,” Devi said, leaning in. “You’ll never see something like it again, and you know you’ll never be able to fight the way you used to without it. But stealing from the Nightmare tends to have terrible consequences—I highly recommend it.”

That’s fine. It would be cheating if he could get his arm back, or any arm in general, but for a few involuntary moments he still found himself imagining holding an axe in his left hand, sprinting through the forest trees, swinging through the tree’s branches, blocking and striking, climbing and running.

He took a deep breath, which only worsened the light headedness. “Wait, then why have you been enticing me with it all this time?”

Devi smiled. “Are you certain you choose that question to be your reward?”

Nico was tempted, but he shook his head. So the reward can be knowledge.

“State your desires, my evil imp, or lose it forever and ever,” Devi said wistfully.

“Wait—wait, you said besides Lilla. Does that mean you won’t be—”

“Saving the livestock that are preventing one of my precious players from reaching their full potential?” Devi said, sighing. “Now, why would I do that?”

Nico clamped his mouth shut. He could hear his heartbeat rise louder in his ears. I almost threw their lives away again. Even worst, this time it would have been because of diction. He wondered why she was saving Lilla in the first place, it’s what made Nico misunderstand, but he was far too afraid to waste his reward on that. “I want Lilla, Dan, Uhan, Yen, and Jarl to live in comfort and safety for the rest of their lives.”

“It will be done,” Devi said.

“Really?” Nico said carefully.

“Upon completing the delivery, of course,” she added.

There it is. As if it would be that easy. If he had to guess the delivery location would be the moon.

“What are you going to put as collateral—in the off and extremely rare chance that you would refuse to give the Locust?”

Nico barely owned a body, much less anything of value. Did she want his glove? It really wasn’t worth that much. Or maybe she knows about my boxers. It would fetch her a decent 10 Energy in the used underwear market.

“I’m not greedy,” Devi said, smiling. She paused, and her toothless smile stretched further. “You’ll only need to wager half of what you have.”

I really don’t have...oh. He laughed. He knew it was bad to, but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t understand why Devi wanted collateral. He couldn’t imagine himself breaking the deal for any reason. He nodded.

“You know what they say, Mr. Nil, it takes Energy to make Energy.”

It takes life to save life. Or make life, if they wanted to be kinky about it.

“So…what do I do now?” he asked.

“You’re going to start wondering,” Devi said, flicking the arm in his direction. It pierced his chest and dragged him back until he struck the far wall, bringing down the shelves and their books on top of his head. He heard her voice through the pages. “Whether the you who wakes up is still you.”

Nico pushed aside the books and froze.

Devi crouched in front of him, her hand extended out. Her index finger went into his forehead without meeting any resistance. It felt hotter than his senses should have allowed him to feel. “Speak of what we discussed today to anyone, and you would forfeit everything,” she said, looking below Nico and tilting her head slightly. “You know better than to repeat the same mistake twice, don’t you, Mr. Nil?”

Nico stared back at her. He relaxed and activated his Heal.