“Did, uh, she give you a message to pass on with the package?” I thought to ask as I followed the masked man into the alley.

“Yeah,” he said. “But you’ll have to read it yerself. It’s just this way. Round the corner.”

I felt a moment’s hesitation as he disappeared ahead of me. Could this be some kind of trap? In broad daylight? But if so, how would a supposed mugger know me by name? And know about Brookie’s alias? I continued forward the last few steps to reach the T intersection at the back of the alley, where it butted against the backside of another row of walled houses facing a different street behind the one I’d entered. As I hooked around the corner I nearly bumped into the man I was following. He’d turned back to face me with his hands in his pockets. Another masked man loomed behind him. Both of them had black cloth pulled up over the bottom half of their faces.

I stopped. “You know, on second thought, I just remembered something important I need to take care of.” I whipped around, ready to bolt. There was another masked man already behind me. This one had a knife out and he spread his arms to block my retreat. All three of them had me by at least a hundred pounds. The knives were overkill.

“Now, now, kid,” the man with the knife said, “yer not goin’ nowhere just yet.”

“We know you gots money,” one mugger jeered from behind me.

“Lot’s o’ money,” the man that had lured me into the alley added.

Brookie hadn’t sent these men. They were just common thugs. The thought that clicked into my head was that they had to be those Skinners Brookie had told me about. That meant their knives weren’t just for intimidation. They might be pretending it was a simple mugging to get my guard down, but if I let them take me, I realized there was a non-zero chance they’d skin me alive.

I held up my hands. “I don’t want any trouble,” I said.

“Then give us everythin’ you’ve got,” the one with the knife said. The others pulled knives out, too, so that stopped becoming a meaningful distinction.

They had me boxed in. If I tried to run, they’d stab me. If I tried to scream, they’d stab me. And if I surrendered? They probably planned to torture me for information about Brookie. Even if all they were after was my money, I was as good as dead without it. I needed it to buy the Brands that would help me rank up in the Adventurer’s Guild. I couldn’t very well go around using a black magic Skill on everyone I encountered. I didn’t have a choice. It was fight or die. At least if I forced them to kill me fast in a scuffle, I could save myself a slower end.

The only tool I had at my disposal was my Skill. My black magic Skill. But before I resorted to that, I thought maybe I could get off cheap.

“Don’t just stand there,” one of them said.

“Give us the money!” another demanded.

“I’m getting it,” I assured them. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the loose gold Crosses I’d received as change. They filled my hand rather impressively. I let them scatter on the muddy cobblestones. “There,” I said. “That’s all I’ve got. Just take it and let me go.”

One of the three men started to reach for the dropped gold, but his fellow knocked him on the head. “Not yet, Dilly, that ain’t what we came for.”

“Where’re the Marks?” the man across from the other two demanded. “He said you got a whole glittery bag ‘o Marks.”

“Who said?” I asked.

“Yer auntie!” the one called Dilly said. He laughed like that was some kind of joke.

“Forget it,” I told them. “That’s all you’re getting. Take it and go. If you try anything more, I will defend myself.”

“Hear that? He’s gon’ defend hisself!”

“Try it,” Dilly challenged.

“We say what goes,” the other mugger added. “And what we says is you give us them Marks, then maybe we don’t stick ‘ya.”

Talking was over. I made my move. I started with the man that had blocked me off from behind, as he didn’t have anyone watching his back. He had a dagger in hand, but he wasn’t ready for me to dart a hand out and grab him by the forearm, just beneath it.

I got a tight grip on his dirty sleeve and activated my Skill. Or rather… I tried to. Nothing happened. No feeling of warmth or mental energy flowed into me. It was like I hadn’t used it at all, which shouldn’t have been the case. I’d tested it on myself before, I knew it worked!

While I sputtered in surprised at my own ineptitude, the man I’d grabbed pulled his arm free, then shoved me by the shoulder against the wall with his other hand. “I got ‘im pinned,” he told the others. “Search his pockets.” I flailed my arms to try to push against the wall, but the mugger grabbed me by the wrist and twisted my arm painfully behind my back.

That was his undoing. What he thought was a painful hold didn’t bother me, and as soon as his skin came in contact with my own, I felt the rush of warmth and energy that’d I’d been expecting before flow into me. It pulsed with the rapid beat of his heart. I could feel his nervous jitters, how tired he was from lack of sleep the night before. Thump, thump. Thump, thump. His lifeforce poured into me like a firehose. As it did, my MP bar shot up.

MP: 158 >>> MP: 194

The pressure on my arm went slack within about two seconds. I felt another of the muggers paw at my pockets, not realizing his fellow had already stopped fighting to hold me down. He found the money pouch he was looking for and shouted, “Found it!” Before he could pull it out, I grabbed his wrist and started sucking his lifeforce from him.

He didn’t notice right away. He jabbed my arm with his knife, enough to be painful, if not enough to actually cause injury. “Let go if you don’t wanna stabbin’,” he warned me. I ignored his threat. His lifeforce was already being sucked out of him. By the time he noticed his friend wasn’t feeling so well, it was too late for him. The man pinning my arm collapsed first. The man trying to take my money pouch followed soon after. His eyes just rolled up into the back of his head and he fell to the ground.

MP: 194 >>> MP: 320

The third and final would-be mugger was acting as a lookout. Instead of watching me, his head was down the alley. “Hurry up, you two,” he called out. He turned around as I was approaching him from behind. His eyes went wide for just a second before I grabbed at his face with both hands. Skin-to-skin. That’s how it worked, and as I found when I touched the last mugger, doubling the contact surface area seemed to double the speed I drained. “What’re ya—”

He realized something was wrong and decided to use that knife of his. He slashed at me. It didn’t really have much force behind it, but I jumped back anyway. “It’ll be okay,” I told him. “You just need to go to sleep now.”

“What did you… do ‘ta me…”

He stumbled at me, waving his knife even more ineffectually than before. I grabbed his wrist as it went past and pulled in more of his lifeforce. That was all it took. He slumped to the ground and started snoring.

MP: 320 >>> MP: 393

The consequence of draining them was the highest MP levels I’d ever seen. I felt amped up. My mind started racing, running clearer than ever. Staring at the alley ahead of me, the way the sunlight hit the cobblestones reminded me of the day I’d played with rocks in the backyard sandbox as a kid. I’d stacked a bunch of stones together to form a road for my truck to drive over. Wait…as the memory came back to me I was almost sure I’d been wearing a diaper back then. How old would that have made me?

I heard a groan beneath me. Right. The three unconscious would-be muggers. They had to be dealt with.