I processed Victoria’s words, but more importantly, I understood the unspoken message. If I tried to expose her, she’d do the same to me. That she’d noticed me dusting a single spider at all in the heat of battle and then made the connection to what that meant told me she had to have been the team member that had been spying on me all this time. That meant I had to assume she was the one that had promised Grant to “take care of” me if I became a problem. Sure, it could have been Jay still, but considering he was unconscious, he was obviously not a threat. She knew—or at least suspected—how dangerous I was, and I now knew how dangerous she was. Considering I had absolutely no clue what the limits of her Skill were, I thought it prudent to make sure she didn’t see me as a threat. I’d killed those idiots in the alley that tried to jump me, and I didn’t want to put her in a position of feeling like she had to do the same for me. “You know,” I told her, “in my world, there is a concept called mutually assured—”

“Hold that thought,” Victoria told me. She pointed behind me and I turned to see a coil of smoke building in a crevice of the web covered trees. Looking around further, I could actually see that there were many such embers stoking all around us. It seemed that last Skill Victoria had used while I hid my face in the dirt had burned more than just the spiders’ heads. “Webs don’t burn quickly, but they do burn,” Victoria explained. “Without the spiders to put the flames out, this whole nest will be ash in a few minutes. We have to get the others out of here.”

“Good point,” I agreed. “We can talk more later.”

“Then get to work!” she shouted. “Find them.”

“Okay,” I said. “Alloha and Torra are right here. Looks like they’re unconscious. Jay’s back over there in that cocoon and I saw Grant fly away and get caught in a web.”

“There,” Victoria said, pointing up at a cocoon high in the branches that was away from the older cocoons filled with harpies. “That should be Grant,” Victoria said. “Can you reach him before the flames do, or should we just leave him?”

“Leave him to die?” I asked incredulously. Maybe I was wrong about her working with him in secret. “You aren’t really suggesting that, are you?”

Victoria narrowed her eyes at me a moment before answering me. I couldn’t tell what she was trying to convey, or even if that wasn’t just a reaction to the bloody mess her eyelids had become since activating her Skill. “He tried to abandon us,” Victoria said. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t waste effort saving him, but you can if you want. Looks like he will be the first to burn. If you want to save him, you will have to act fast.” Victoria sheathed her sword and headed first to Jay’s cocoon. She grabbed him from what looked like the feet and started dragging him out of the nest. She didn’t bother checking vital signs or anything, which made sense considering the smoke building up in the nest.

I looked up at Grant’s cocoon. Victoria was right. The flames were growing and would climb up the trees to the elevated spot Grant was stuck quickly. What an idiot. If he had stood his ground and just fought with the rest of us, he would at least be easy to save. I tried to convince myself that it was impossible to reach him in time and I should just leave him, but even as I did, an idea of how to do exactly that popped into my head. Then I tried to convince myself I wouldn’t have time to save Torra and Alloha if I went for him first… but that wasn’t true either. The truth was, I didn’t want to save the cowardly jackass. He’d sent muggers after me and discussed having me “dealt” with if I caused problems for this contract. But… I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just leave someone to die when I knew I could save them. “He doesn’t deserve this,” I grumbled to myself as I headed over to the base of the web-covered tree he was stuck in. I closed my eyes and imagined an aluminum extension ladder stretched out from the ground to where his cocoon was.

MP: 78/96 >>> MP: 23/96

When I opened my eyes, it was there, just as I’d imagined it. The MP I’d built up while I’d been planning to make a last stand against the nest of spiders was used instead on a Manifest Inspiration to save Grant. I started up the ladder, trying to think how I’d get him down. It wasn’t going to be trivial. It looked like he was a good thirty feet up, so if I dropped him, he’d likely break his neck. There weren’t a lot of better options, so I just tried to be careful with him. His cocoon stuck to the webbing wrapping the tree like velcro, but my imagination had placed the ladder perfectly beneath him. I just grabbed him with my hands and let the weight of my body ease the cocoon off the tree trunk. It was sticky, so it was hard to get off, but once it was down, it clung slightly to the ladder. I balanced him sideways, letting most of his weight rest against the ladder as I backed us both to the ground. He wasn’t moving, and by the time I got back down with him, smoke was clogging the spider infested section of forest. Several spots had already broken out in orange flames. I looked around for Torra and Alloha, but they were gone. A path of torn webbing traced a trail to where Victoria was dragging Alloha and Torra to safety. She’d saved three while I fetched only Grant.

“Took you long enough,” Victoria commented. I could tell she was trying to hide how heavily she wanted to breathe from all that exertion. I considered that a needless vanity and let myself freely cough and sputter out the smoke I’d just inhaled. Victoria looked back at the nest that was now billowing plumes of white smoke, with specks of orange flame poking through. “Shame how things went down. We would have made a fortune on all those venom sacks.” She crouched down over Jay with a knife and started cutting him free of his sticky cocoon. He and Grant had been cocooned, but Alloha had protected herself and Torra from the same fate.

I looked down at the others. There were puncture wounds, abrasions, and faces pale with the paralyzing poison the spiders used. I didn’t have anything close to enough MP to heal them all. All those spider bodies were so close, too… just waiting to be consumed by the flames. “Hold on,” I told Victoria. “There’s something I need. I’ll be back.” I took off at a sprint back into the fire, not giving myself time to think about how stupid I was being.

“Where are you going?” Victoria yelled after me. “I already got everyone! You don’t even know how to harvest venom sacks, you idiot!”

She meant well, but I ignored Victoria’s warning. I wasn’t heading back in for the spider silk or the venom sacks, but for the bodies. There were hundreds of them. Sure, they were dead, but I could still drain some MP out of all of them. If I left them, they were just going to burn in a few minutes anyway. Coughing, I stumbled into the first spider corpse. It was riddled with bullet holes. I dropped to my hands and knees where the air was a little less clogged and drained it. Then another next to it, and another, and another. Every spider within reach I reduced to dust. I wasn’t even sure how many it was before I couldn’t easily reach anymore. The smoke was stinging my eyes pretty quick.

MP: 23/96 >>> MP: 146/96

I’d seen enough safety videos to know I was probably going to pass out any minute from smoke inhalation, so I used Manifest Inspiration to imagine myself wearing a firefighter’s jumpsuit, complete with a facemask and a clean bottle of oxygen on my back.

MP: 146/96 >>> MP: 91/96

The fresh air coming through the mask was an instant relief. I still coughed a bit, but at least I wasn’t getting worse. I used the flashlight built into the shoulder strap of the firefighter’s suit to find my way through the smoke, keeping my distance from where the actual flames were building. I reached down and drained more spiders on my way, needing to remove one of my gloves to contact them. One of the spiders I found was impaled with Alloha’s wooden spear. I grabbed it, then headed back for the exit. There were no more bodies in easy reach and I’d managed to collect a decent supply of MP. The firefighter suit had even paid for itself, as it helped me find and dust dozens more spiders before the heat of the approaching flames got too intense to bear.

MP: 91/96 >>> MP: 277/96

I emerged out of the smoky nest in my yellow suit. I waited until I was well clear of the smoke before pulling off the mask. “Look what I found in there!” I said, holding up Alloha’s spear.

“You are an idiot!” Victoria yelled at me. “You should have died. And for what? A stick?”

I gave her a meek smile as I dropped the spear next to our unconscious companions. “I knew the risks,” I assured her. “This is a special outfit I manifested from my world. It’s fireproof.” That wasn’t strictly true, but it was close enough that I didn’t think it was worth explaining the difference. I started stripping off the heavy fabric and looked down at the survivors. Victoria had cut Grant and Jay free of their cocoons, but they didn’t look great. All the companions we’d rescued were beaded with sweat and unmoving.

“She looks the worst,” Victoria said, nudging Alloha with her foot. “Are you going to use that Healing Brand of yours on her?”

“Of course,” I said. I kneeled down next to Alloha’s frozen body and pressed my hand over a bloody gash on her torso that looked like it’d been caused by a spider leg, rather than their fangs. I activated my Healing Touch.

MP: 277/96 >>> MP: 270/96

The wound didn’t look like it improved at all, so I tried again.

MP: 270/96 >>> MP: 263/96

Still nothing. “Why isn’t this working?” I asked Victoria.

Victoria looked down at Alloha and frowned. She slapped the side of Alloha’s face, then pressed a finger against the side of her neck. After a second, she looked up. “You can’t heal a dead person,” she explained with complete indifference. “Move onto the next one. Jay looks pretty bad, but he might still be…” I tuned out the rest of her words.

Alloha… dead. My stomach felt like it turned inside out. “No,” I said. “No. You’re wrong. I can still save her. She’s just paralyzed.” I tried again, pressing my hand fully into her bloody stomach wound so I could get as much skin-to-skin contact as possible.

MP: 263/96 >>> MP: 256/96

The MP was consumed… but the wound didn’t heal. Alloha’s skin felt cool.

“Just move on,” Victoria argued. “You can still save Jay.”

What could I do? This wasn’t a fact I could simply accept and move on. I’d grown closer to Alloha over these last days of travel than any of the other companions. She was so happy, and full of life, and far too pretty to be adventuring, let alone dying. Someone so full of life couldn’t just die like that! She wasn’t the one with an incurable illness. “A defibrillator,” I said. “I can restart her heart.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Victoria said. “She is dead. She probably died before I even finished killing the spiders. Stop wasting your MP and heal the others before they join her. All of them need healing.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “You don’t know how long she’s been dead, and you don’t know the limits of human medical technology. I can bring her back. I just have to move fast.” For all the time I’d spent in hospitals, I’d never actually seen a team of doctors using a defibrillator before. I’d seen them before, it was just that the only ones I’d seen used were on medical dramas. I’d need more than just a defibrillator though, I’d need a whole crash cart. I’d seen those plenty of times in the hospital. When I’d still been getting treatments, they kept them close by. I closed my eyes and imagined one sitting in the dirt next to me. I made sure to get all the details exactly right, from a battery back-up to the tray full of syringes. I didn’t actually know what any of them did, but it didn’t seem like it would hurt to have all of it.

MP: 256/96 >>> MP: 201/96

When I opened my eyes, I found a familiar blue plastic cart sitting in the dirt next to me. I jammed the green button labeled “On” and grabbed the pads that were already connected. Each of them had a little diagram showing where they needed to be stuck to the patient’s chest. One had to go near her shoulder and the other on her side along her ribcage. The badly damaged remains of Alloha’s shirt was in the way, so I tore it open until it wasn’t. Victoria shouted some kind of objection, but I wasn’t listening to her. I punched the button that said “charge” then peeled the adhesive stickers off the pads and pressed them against her skin in the appropriate areas. The monitor reported no heartbeat. I stepped away so I could press the big red button with a lightning bolt on it as soon as the machine said it was charged. Victoria tried to drape a cloth over her exposed chest.

“Get back!” I warned her. “If you touch her, this machine could kill you.”

“What are you doing to her?” Victoria demanded. “You can’t rip her clothes like that! Have some cursing respect!”

The charge bar on the display finished filling. I hit the button. Her body convulsed as the shock went through her, but the monitor didn’t report a return to regular rhythm. A computerized voice recommended I resume CPR while it charged again, so I dropped to my knees and started pressing on her chest with both hands. She was… cold. Why was she still so cold? Was I really too late? Victoria said something else. I couldn’t hear her. Didn’t want to hear her say what I knew must be true. The monitor reported a full charge again and I got up to activate it. Her body convulsed. Seeing it happen gave me hope. Like she was moving, like there was still something in there, even as her glassy eyes stared at the sky. I let the machine charge a third time as I gave her chest compressions. It gave her another shock. Again, no heartbeat returned. Wasn’t that what these things were supposed to do? Restart a dead heart? The machine tried to charge again, but the battery reported it was too low.

“Dammit! Not now,” I screamed at it. “I need to make another one.” I waved Victoria back. “Make room.”

Rather than obey me, Victoria grabbed my arm in a vice-like grip. “Stop this at once,” he ordered in a hiss. “I don’t know what that device is you’ve summoned, but it is not working. Alloha is dead and you waste time while Jay and Torra are barely breathing. Is one body not enough for you? You want three?”

I looked at the hand gripping my arm, and Victoria slowly released it. Despite being doomed to die, I’d never actually faced death like this before. When those criminals had jumped me, I’d turned them to dust before I even had to look at their faces. It had been so much easier than this… “O… kay,” I said to Victoria. It seemed like she was right. Alloha might have died while that fight was still going on. The spider nest was a raging inferno before us now. In the chaos we’d faced in there, I probably hadn’t even noticed the blow that had killed her. At Victoria’s urging, I leaned down to attend to Torra and Jay one at a time. They looked clammy, but treating them was much more straightforward. A hand over the puncture wounds was all it took to heal them. Torra took two, as he’d been bitten by a much larger spider.

MP: 201/96 >>> MP: 173/96

After receiving my healing, none of them woke up. Their color improved slightly and their bites closed up, but that was the only change. “How will we know if it worked?” I asked Victoria.

“Either they will wake up on their own, or they won’t,” she told me. “It only paralyzes, so if it doesn’t stop your heart, you will eventually wake up. If we keep them warm through the night, they should be fine.”

“Is that… what happened to Alloha?” I asked in a numb trance. “Her heart stopped?”

Victoria sighed. “Alloha was smaller,” she said. “It took less venom to kill her. That’s all. Sometimes people just die. Why are you so upset about it?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” I shot back. “She was a good person. All she wanted to do was get strong enough to help the people that normally get ignored. She deserved better…” I stared at the crackling fire of the spider nest, dejected. It was burning hot, but no wind was buffeting the smoke in our direction. The one thing about this that was working out in our favor. Maybe it was just the webbing coiling all the branches tight so they didn’t spread fire to the nearby trees, or maybe it was Alloha looking out for us. I sat down for a minute and just watched the flames dance. I knew I should probably help Victoria get our camp back in order, but I just couldn’t find the motivation to get back on my feet once I was down.

Victoria stood off to the side, looking down at me. Her arms were crossed, but I didn’t meet her eyes. If she wanted something from me, she’d just have to ask. After a minute, she did. “Do you know a man by the name Baleth Knotwood?” Her tone was flat. Serious.

I looked up and found her red-rimmed eyes narrowing at me. They weren’t red from the normal way people get that way—tears—but as a holdover to that Skill she’d used to kill the last wave of spiders. Now that I thought about it, I realized she probably had scar tissue built up all around her eyes, and the fact she wore thick eyeliner most of the time was unlikely to be a coincidence. “No. I don’t know him,” I answered. “Why?”

At hearing my response, Victoria’s posture visibly relaxed. She uncrossed her arms and shook her head. “No reason,” she said. “You are not what I expected.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “What did you expect?”

She waved a hand over my body in a general sort of appraisal. “You’re short and young. None too impressive to look at, but your willingness to travel with us spoke either of confidence or ignorance.”

“Probably ignorance,” I supplied. “I didn’t know it was going to be like this.”

“It isn’t always, but then there was Grant. I don’t know what you did to impress him, but he’s afraid of you. I thought you might be hiding some black magic, and I was right, but… you don’t act like them.”

“Like what? A black magic user? What are they supposed to act like?” I asked. “Like you?”

Victoria shrugged. “Some are like me, sure. Self-sufficient. Pragmatic.”

“What a generous interpretation you have for yourself,” I commented. “I would have gone with ‘antisocial’ and ‘heartless’.”

“Call it what you want. My attitude is still preferable to most of the others,” Victoria countered. “You don’t want to meet them. They’re emotionless, psychotic monsters.”

“Other, what? Black magic users?”

“We call ourselves Shadows,” Victoria said. “I thought you were one of us. Possibly sent by one of my brothers to spy on me. Initially, I feared you might have been sent to kill me, but you obviously have no talent for that. So, continue what you were saying before we had to get everyone out of that fire.”

“Sorry, I don’t remember what that was,” I admitted.

“Some concept from your world you called mutual-something.”

“Oh, that,” I said. “Mutually assured destruction. It’s a sort of military doctrine from my world that I think might apply here.”

“Explain,” Victoria prompted.

“First, you have to understand that in my world, we have these weapons called nukes. They’re so powerful they can destroy entire cities, and then leave the land poisoned for years to follow. Do you see the conundrum it creates?”

“I’m guessing destroying the land you’re trying to capture wouldn’t make much sense,” Victoria guessed.

“No. The problem is all the major nations of the world have these weapons. So if you use yours on your enemy, they’ll use theirs on you. See what you get? Mutually assured destruction. If either of you decide to use them, both nations are obliterated. The result is an uneasy truce where all conflicts are kept low-stakes enough that the threat of the nuclear weapons never has to be acted on.”

“Neat story,” Victoria said. “That political system sounds as precarious as it is dangerous. Why did you bring it up?”

“You don’t see the connection to our current predicament?” I asked. “You saw me use my Skill, and I saw you use yours. I could tell the authorities about yours Skill now, but so too could you about mine. You see?”

Victoria nodded. “I do. We are in this mutual destruction situation then. We can destroy each other.”

“We can, but we shouldn’t. I’m proposing that we agree not to.”

“That’s not how this is normally done in Earris,” Victoria said.

“Oh? What’s the normal way of assuring your secrets stay safe?”

“I kill you. My father didn’t teach me much, but one thing I’m sure of is a secret known only by one is the most secure.”

I shook my head. I was too tired to consider another fight after what we’d just been through, and I knew Victoria had pushed herself nearly to her limit. I was surprised she’d even consider something like that. “No,” I said. “Let’s not do that. I like my plan much better. It doesn’t require trust in anything more than each other’s self-interest. Besides. You don’t even know what I’m capable of. The weapons you saw me conjure against the spiders isn’t even close to the limits of human technology. Both weapons have been around longer than my grandparents have been alive. I could conjure weapons that could turn your head to red mist from a mile away. Is that translating? Do you know how long a mile is? I could conjure weapons that could fit in my hands that could blow holes in Haemir’s castle if I wanted. Do you get it? While your society has been busy trying to restrict powers that are good at killing, my people have been striving ever onward to figure out how to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as we can. And we’re very good at it. Don’t make me kill you. I’ve done enough killing today.”

Victoria looked down at me. The light of the burning spider nest behind her made it difficult to see if she was thinking about making good on her idle threat, but her body language didn’t change. After a minute, she said, “So, what is your Skill? Your real Skill, not that line you sold the others.”

What I’d told the others was I had a Skill that could generate extra MP. While that was true, I didn’t want to give up all my secrets explaining how I absorbed MP from my enemies. I knew trying to give her the watered-down version wouldn’t work, so I decided to give her an explanation she could accept, but would also continue to hide my true abilities, all while technically being truthful. Better not to be caught in a lie if she secretly had one of those amulets the church used to detect lies. “I can turn people to dust,” I told her.

“A touch attack,” Victoria guessed.

“I didn’t say that,” I objected.

“You didn’t have to. You had your hand on that spider you used it on. No chance that was an accident. Does your target have to be dead for it to work?”

“No,” I said. “If they’re alive when I use it on them, it’ll kill them, then turn them to dust.” Enough of Victoria’s cynicism was rubbing off on me I felt it prudent to let her know how dangerous I was, in case she was still considering if she wanted to kill me.

“Why did you waste it on a dead spider, then?” she asked next. “The one you used it on right before the swarm came for us. You could have at least taken one of them down with you.”

That was a good question. One I didn’t have a ready answer for. “Why should I explain myself to you?” I shot back. “You haven’t told me anything about your Skill. You told everyone your Skill was some lame ‘firefly’ Skill. You didn’t kill all those spiders with a handful of fireflies. Don’t even pretend. Tell me more about yours and maybe I’ll be more forthcoming about mine.”

“The Firefly Skill is a black market Brand,” Victoria said. “I chose it because it wouldn’t be in the public record. My real Skill burns eyes. Burns mine too, a bit. As you can see.” She gestured to her face, where she was still crying a few tears of blood, though most of that had coagulated by that point. “It doesn’t usually kill so easily, but it hits everyone that’s looking in my general direction and… spiders have a lot of eyes.”

“I don’t get it. Why is that a banned Skill? I thought fire was okay, since it could be used for other stuff.”

Victoria pursed her lips. “Usually that would be true,” she agreed. “But my Skill only burns eyes. Nothing else. So, you see? The church could never allow it. Trying to dust me won’t work, either. I’ll melt the eyes out of your skull before you get close enough to touch me.”

“I think you’re missing the point of mutually assured destruction,” I said. “But, sure. I can see why that would be black magic.”

“Now, I shared my part. Tell me why you wasted your Skill on a spider that was already dead,” Victoria demanded.

I considered my options. There wasn’t really a good way to hide the truth. If she was determined enough, Victoria could always go to the Broker’s Guild and look up the MP cost of the Brands she’d already seen me use. It wouldn’t be hard to figure out I’d already used more than twice the MP most people could manage. Certainly more than could be explained away as coming from my own pitiful vitality supplies. “Fine,” I told her, “I dusted that dead spider to get MP from it.”

Victoria’s eyebrows climbed up her forehead. “You… gain MP when you use your Skill?” I sullenly nodded a confirmation. “And you can use it on living creatures?” I nodded again. Victoria blew out a breath. “No wonder you were so cagey. They wouldn’t even give you a trial if they found out you had a Skill like that. So tell me where you really came from. If Baleth didn’t send you, who did? Why are you here at all?”

“Why is anyone anywhere?” I asked her right back. “I don’t have a clue. I wasn’t lying when I said I’m from a different world. How could you still be questioning that with everything I told you about my world’s military technology? Have you ever seen anything like those guns you saw me use today?”

Victoria frowned. “It just seemed like a cover story. Not a very believable one, but it still seemed like one.”

I barked out a short laugh. “Ha! I only wish my life story was unbelievable. I still sometimes feel like I’m going to wake up one of these mornings and find this entire world was an epileptic hallucination I had while playing video games with my friends.”

Victoria shook her head. “Whatever that means. Look. Story or not, I’m going to need an explanation from you about that spider nest. That was an ambush, and you were the only one that could see through it. Without your warning, even I might not have made it out of there. My Skill only works on targets I can see.”

“What makes you think I would know anything about that? They ambushed me the same as everyone else. If I knew that was going to happen, I would have refused to go in.”

Victoria’s gaze briefly flickered toward Alloha’s body. “Yes, I believe you did not want things to go that way, but that does not explain why no spiders even attempted to bite you.”

“They didn’t bite you either,” I countered. “What makes me special?”

“Oh, they bit me plenty. They just couldn’t get through my armor. You, on the other hand, should have been easy pickings. I saw at least two instances where a spider had a shot at you, then suddenly pulled back its fangs. I don’t believe in coincidences like that. You were the only one that could see them while they were invisible and they didn’t want to bite you? Give me an explanation.”

“I would love to,” I said. “Except I don’t have one. This was the first time I ever saw one of these primordial spiders. I didn’t know they could turn invisible or ambush adventurers. If I had to guess, my seeing them is just because my eyes are more sensitive than yours and them not biting me either was because I smell different or that I was wearing spider silk under my shirt.”

Victoria cocked her chin out and chewed on that for a second. “Plausible,” she concluded. “But when we get back to town, I want to know what Brand lets you see like you do. I want to buy it. I don’t enjoy fighting invisible enemies.”

“You’re welcome to ask the Brokers if they have a Brand that can let you see different colors, but I was telling you the truth about my sight. It’s not a Brand or Skill. What are you trying to imply here? That I was working with the spiders? That’s absurd. They didn’t even seem smart enough to…” My words trailed off as I started to piece together some coincidences about the spiders I hadn’t noticed before. It probably wasn’t hurting my mental clarity that I had such an overcharged MP bar. Before the ambush, both Jay and Grant had agreed that something else must have driven the harpies away… but maybe not. If this nest was so large and could turn invisible, they probably could have managed that on their own. And if they had, maybe the harpies Ferrith had been facing when he summoned me from—

“Well, if you were using the spiders,” Victoria continued, unaware of my internal reflection, “you did an awful job of it. You almost killed as many as I did. No. That doesn’t make sense either. There are just a few things about you that don’t add up. Tell me how that human weapon you used works.”

“Oh, uh, they’re not that complicated. Jay uses a bow. I assume you have some kind of contraption for sale somewhere that lets you load an arrow with the string already pulled back to fire later? On Earth, we’d call that a crossbow.”

“We have those,” Victoria confirmed. “Expensive and slow, but powerful.”

“Right. Well, the weapon I was using is called a gun, and you can think of it as a more advanced crossbow. That’s all. Just the main difference being that it can fire lots of arrows in a short time and instead of being wood shafts, they’re tiny metal slugs. Kind of like arrowheads.”

“Interesting,” Victoria said. “So there’s no magic involved at all? It certainly didn’t appear that way.”

I shook my head emphatically. “Technology is not magic,” I insisted. “That’s why I could conjure a working gun in the first place. That Brand I used can’t make magic objects. Check with the Broker’s Guild if you don’t believe me.”

Victoria waved a hand to stop me. “That is sufficient for now. I need to report all of this to my father. Your concept of mutually assured destruction is something I will try to explain to him. I can’t guarantee he will find it as reliable as you seem to.”

“Just ask him to consider it from my point of view. If I tell anyone about you, it’s as good as telling them about myself, since you’ll be sure to report my Skill once you get captured.”

“I don’t believe the logic is as sound as you make it out to be,” Victoria said, “but as I said, I will make my report. Stay here and watch the others while I am gone. I may be some time.”

“Wait, now?” I asked. “I thought you were going to write up a report to send later. Is he nearby, or do you have some magical means to contact him from a distance?”

Victoria gave a single, precise nod. “I do,” she confirmed in the most unhelpful manner. Before I could ask a follow-up question, she slipped away into the woods. I got up from where I was sitting to see where she went, but she was already gone. It was still early morning, so the woods weren’t even dark. It was impressive she could disappear so easily.

Based on our conversation, it seemed she was hiding nearly as much from the rest of the party as I’d been. It made sense when I considered her black magic Skill, but it still didn’t quite explain her secret conversation with Grant. I’d have to ask her about that later. She’d also mentioned a black market Brand, which wasn’t even something I thought existed. According to the Brokers, they controlled all access to the Brand Skill. The political ramifications of that were immaterial to me. What piqued my interest more was the existence of an entirely separate library of Brands I could look through. If Victoria could grant me access to that black market, it would probably be worth playing nice with her. She seemed somewhat connected to this underworld of “Shadow” people. For all I knew, the lack of regulations in the black market might mean they had even stronger Brands for sale.

I gave one last look at the inferno of the spider nest that was still burning, just to make sure it wasn’t going to spread. That didn’t seem likely, as it was already cooling from its hottest, though Grant would likely throw a fit when he found out how much silk and venom was lost in the blaze. Sure that the fire wouldn’t be a further issue, I returned my attentions to the rest of our party that was under my care: Grant, Jay, Torra… and Alloha. I went to them by turns to check their pulses. They appeared to be sleeping, and for all but one, that was even true.

I thought about how the others would respond to the news of Alloha’s death when they woke up, as it now seemed they all would. Torra would take it the worst, I was sure. They’d been close. With how viciously Alloha had fought to save Torra after he dropped in the opening salvos of the ambush, it was obvious how much she cared about him. With how concerned about profits Grant always seemed to be, I thought his reaction would teach me a lot about his character: would he care more about the lost companion, or the fortune of spider silk? Victoria didn’t seem to care at all, but then again, she probably wasn’t normal.

That made me wonder about my reaction. I also had a black magic Skill, and the people in this world seemed to think that spoke to an internal character flaw. I felt like I cared, but was I just convincing myself I did because that’s what I thought was expected of me? What was the appropriate reaction for someone I’d only known for three days? I wasn’t a puddle on the ground, but most of my sadness was of a type I would offer to anyone struck down before their time. It was no personal sorrow at lost memories.

Victoria returned while I was reflecting on the nature of grief. She was different. Most obviously was that her eyes were two black pools of darkness that defied the early afternoon sun coming down through the trees. She had her sword out, which seemed unnecessary considering our earlier talk. I stood up to face her. When she spoke, I knew there was some kind of magic at play. Her mouth was swallowed in the same dark void as her eyes. There was nothing natural about it. The voice, as well, was not her own. It was a man’s. Deep. With maybe a touch of her same slight accent, which was implacable to me. “Vincent Koutz,” the man’s voice that came from her lips said in a commanding tone. “Who is your employer?”

“Uh, what?” I replied. “Who am I talking to? Is this Victoria’s father?”

“You are in no place to turn the blade of inquiry back at me, child,” the man’s voice said. I decided it probably was her father. Nothing else made sense. “If you refuse to answer my questions, I will not hesitate to kill you.”

I held up both my hands as I backed up. “That seems like quite the unnecessary escalation,” I said. “You haven’t even tried asking nicely yet. I just want to know who I’m talking to, since it’s obviously not Victoria.”

“The niceties of polite society are denied you, Vincent Koutz. My questions are not requests to be considered and summarily discarded or replied to at your whim. That would imply choice. You have none. If you do not answer every question I have for you without obfuscation, I will see the life drain from your eyes on the end of this sword. I say again with diminishing patience: who is your employer?”

“What’s with the death threats?” I asked. “Can we just have a normal conversation? I don’t need to hide anything from you, uh, sir. But that question you’re asking I already answered. Did you even talk to your daughter before you decided to puppeteer her body with… whatever it is you’re using? I’m not working for anyone.”

“An—Victoria’s explanation was insufficient,” the man said. “I sense no deceit in your response. That is a point in your favor. If you need a name to call me by, you may refer to me as the Shadow King. I am the scourge Kalendil, Lord of the House of Black, and Master of the unholy Darkscar. Know to whom you speak, child, so you shall never again seek to bandy about familiarities while under the threat of my interrogation. I make neither threats nor needless questions. Any that you refuse to answer will result in your immediate end.”

I wasn’t sure what this meant about Victoria. Was this really still just her father, or had her father handed this questioning off to his boss? Because if he was some kind of king, that would make her a princess, would it not? And a king would have lots of enemies, which would necessitate treating me like one until I proved otherwise. Or maybe it was all just a bluster… If he knew I was an Outworlder, maybe he’d also know I was likely to be gullible to whatever lie he wanted to feed me as long as it resulted in getting the information he wanted. I bowed my head in what I hoped he would find a respectful gesture. I’d try to keep my interpretation of events as open as possible. “Well, I’ve never heard of this Shadow King,” I said truthfully, “but I’m not working for anyone in the way you mean. I work with people like Grant, but he doesn’t tell me what to do. I am just an adventurer out on my first contract.”

Victoria, or rather Shadow King, huffed out a breath of annoyance. “Do not insult me with such provable falsehoods. We both know you are much more than that. Where does a simple Outlander acquire the funding to purchase over ten thousand Crosses at the Broker’s Guild?” He held up Victoria’s index finger to forestall an answer I hadn’t even been ready to give yet. “And do not speak of Oxenraith. I am aware you have a sizable debt with their university, which hasn’t been cleared. Your funding came from an untraceable account at the Porter’s Guild. Tell me who that account belongs to, and if you utter the words ‘Lady Moxie’ in your response, I’ll see you on the end of this blade.”

The attempt at a disarming smile on my face froze. I hadn’t even been thinking of Brookie when I’d answered the first time. How could this guy have pieced so much evidence together so quickly? He had me backed into a corner already. “Okay,” I said. “You got me. I don’t have an aunt. The name of that account at the porter’s was an alias. But I don’t work for that person. Honest.”

“I know not how you are speaking a truthful statement when I have the evidence of your employment. For what purpose were you sent such a large sum of cash, if not as an engagement for employment with a Shadow agent?”

“That money was just a… a bribe, I guess you could say. A bribe to encourage me to work with the party in question at a later time. I told them certain conditions had to be met first.”

“What conditions? Who were you to kill once these conditions were met? Who was your employer? Was it Baleth Knotwood?”

“What? No! I’ve never heard of that guy before.” I saw Victoria’s sword arm twitch at that and realized my mistake. “Wait, no. I have heard that name before, but only once. Victoria asked me about him too. That’s it. An hour ago I’d never heard of the guy, and if I never do again, it will be too soon.”

The Shadow King twitched the borrowed blade in his hand, making me question what options I would really have if he lunged at me. I didn’t really want to hurt Victoria if I didn’t have to, but I wasn’t going to let myself get impaled to save her. If he decided to come for me, I prepared myself to jump back. In the meantime, I slowly backed away from the black-faced specter waving a blade at me. “What about the conditions of your employment?” he prompted.

“The main one was that I’m dying,” I explained. “I have what you would call an uncurable. Cancer. I look strong now, but it’s not going to last. I said I had to fix that before I’d consider any other work.”

“And who is this person? Who controls the Lady Moxie alias at the Porter’s Guild?”

I hesitated before answering. The last thing I wanted to do to Brookie was betray his trust by outing him, but I thought it would somehow be worse to give his name over to a murderous psychopath of a monarch. I weighed the shame of betrayal against the sword pointed at me. Death from it wasn’t a sure thing, but it was far more certain than what Brookie might do to me if he found out I gave up his secret under duress. I thought he’d probably forgive me. “Okay, fine. It’s Brookie. My contact is Brookie. I was told to keep in touch through the Lady Moxie account at the Porter’s.”

The dark-faced Shadow King paused at hearing that response. “The simpleton?” he asked. “The talking ogre?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s the one.”

“So you don’t know who you are working for? This ogre is your only contact?”

I blinked for just a second before quickly agreeing. “Yeah. That was my only contact,” I confirmed. “I got the sense that whoever was in charge was extremely paranoid, so I don’t expect to meet anyone else.” If this Shadow King couldn’t conceive of Brookie being a player in the political landscape, I wasn’t going to be the one to dissuade him of that fact. Maybe all the work Brookie had done to keep up his public persona was worth the effort after all.

“Very well. And tell me of this job you are to complete once your uncurable is dealt with.”

“Like I said before,” I reiterated, “the guy in charge is extremely paranoid. I don’t even have any of the details of the job yet. Brookie told me I’d get that only after I agreed to accept it.”

“Almost believable,” the Shadow King said. “But you are withholding something about the job. You said you did not receive any details. That is untrue. You have received some details. What are they?”

“Damn,” I cursed. I needed to be more careful with my word choice in the future.

“Out with it,” the king prodded. “I’ll have every detail.” I couldn’t be completely sure with all the shadows covering his borrowed face, but it almost seemed to me like the corner of his mouth turned up in something like amusement. Perhaps he enjoyed feeling clever. At least he wasn’t feeling murderous.

“All I know is the job requires an Outworlder like me to do, as it makes me above suspicion. It was the only way he could be sure I hadn’t been planted by another faction. I think that’s why he uses the other ogre as well, but I can’t be sure. The fact that I can pass for a rissian is also important. That’s all I know about the job.”

“That afraid of infiltration? I have had issues in that regard myself. I can see the appeal to the strategy. Did you not meet this hidden employer, even hidden from beneath a mask, perhaps?”

Hearing the third mention of masks struck my heart like a thunderbolt. I tried to not show it on my face, unsure of how successful I was at it. “No. I only met with Brookie,” I confirmed. “But… he shared a common fear of masked agents. Said he’d been ambushed by them before.”

“Did he, now?” The darkened eyebrow of Victoria’s face rose at that revelation.

“My sense was that these masked agents were a large part of the reason behind the paranoia he operates behind. The Skinners. That’s what he called them. Though I doubt that’s what they call themselves.”

“I am intrigued by the details which match investigations of my own,” the Shadow King spoke with Victoria’s mouth. “I believe I would like to arrange a meeting with this employer of yours.”

“I’d be happy to arrange it,” I said with a smile, finally relaxing. He still had his sword out, but the tension was gone from the conversation. I hadn’t even been caught trying to lie to him. “No guarantees he’ll agree to anything, of course.”

The Shadow King cocked his head to the side. “Why would I need you for that? I have all I need. I can find this ‘Brookie’ you spoke to, and if not, I am capable of passing messages through the Lady Moxie account.”

I shrugged. “Oh, well, I was just trying to be helpful. If there was nothing else you needed from me, I’d appreciate getting Victoria back. She and I are the only ones that can make camp right now.”

“No,” the Shadow King answered. “Victoria can resume control of her body when you are dead. You know too much to be allowed to live.”

“What? I’m not going to tell anyone anything! Why would I do that?” I hustled back a few steps, mind racing for what I could manifest that would save me.

“Your intentions count for exceedingly little, child. Even unwilling, the memories you gained here today could be extracted from your head. Were it anyone else, you realize, I might take that chance, but not when it comes to my daughter. Had you children of your own, I am sure you would understand.”

Perhaps it was intended to appear gentlemanly of the self-stylized king to warn me of his intentions before acting on them, but that warning gave me no comfort as he lunged at me in a burst of speed. The sword came at me, crossing the intervening space between us I’d been so sure was a safe distance in a decidedly unsafe interval of time. I fell backward as fast as gravity would take me, and he still got me in the throat. Hot blood splashed out in a thin ribbon. I couldn’t tell if it was a lethal blow or not. I clutched my hand over the wound, trying to stop my lifeforce from leaking out.

I’m dying. I’m dying. I’m dying, was all that rushed through my head as I watched the dark-faced stranger approach me. My overlay helped calm my overwrought nerves.

HP: 92/100 >>> HP: 88/100

No warning about how I was bleeding out. No countdown timer to my last breath. It seemed even a rather deep cut across the front of my throat wasn’t as serious as I’d feared. Panic was taking me, more than anything. It’s not like I was bothered by any pain. Knowing that no major arteries had been severed and my windpipe was still functional gave me the presence of mind to refocus on the threat approaching me. The Shadow King stalked towards me, wearing the body of someone I’d so loyally counted as a reluctant companion for all of three days. Though the betrayal was a somewhat predictable one, I still counted it as double.

“Lay still and bleed out like a man,” the king told me as he stood over me with a bloody-tipped sword, “and you can have a dignified end. Seek to continue squirming and I will puncture you in imitation of a spider’s fangs while you still live. We need not make the staging of your death for the benefit of the others more gruesome than necessary.”

I ran through my options. I could manifest a gun and try to shoot him, but that seemed unlikely to work. Beyond the fact that my aim was pretty bad, I’d seen enough videos online to know that anything less than a headshot would give him the retaliatory time needed to finish me off. I went with subterfuge instead.

“E-e-e-em-pl-ployer’s r-r-real n-n-na—Ack!” I pretended to hack and cough with effort as I fed the shadow king the thing he’d most desired in our talk.

“Eh?” he asked. “You hid the name from me? Who is it?”

I moaned and turned my head, letting some more of the blood from the superficial cut leak out from between my fingers. Let him think I was moments from death and harmless. Better yet, I wanted him to think I was fading. There was only one name I knew might interest him. He’d wanted to know if I’d been hired to kill the guy, so let him now wonder if I might be revealing that this unknown stranger had been the one that hired me. “B-b-bal. B-balllle…” I dropped my voice to a whisper as the shadowed head snapped down at me.

I had no idea what implications an accusation like that might make, but I’d been correct that naming this “Baleth Knotwood” as my employer would interest the Shadow King. He leaned down over me and grabbed my shoulders with gloved hands. “Yes, who? Are you trying to say ‘Baleth’? If you cannot speak, just blink twice if Baleth was the one that hired you. That cursed bastard!”

Gloves were enough to stop me, but beneath gloves were wrists. I whipped my hand out from Victoria’s wrist as quick as a striking cobra when it got close enough to me. The Shadow King howled and tried to pull his hand back, but it was too late. As soon as I touched flesh, I started draining as fast as I could. I pulled the arm in so I could wrap the wrist in a double embrace of blood-smeared hands. The Shadow King tried to reach back from Victoria’s forgotten saber. Too late. Too late for that.

First, the shadow covering Victoria’s face faded. Then her real eyes went wide in shock, before closing a moment later in exhaustion as I continued draining her. I stopped when her eyes rolled into the back of her head. She might have played a part in it, but I couldn’t convince myself that it had actually been Victoria that had decided to have me killed.

MP: 173/96 >>> MP: 187/96

A mere fourteen MP didn’t seem like near enough to kill her, but it would give me enough time to figure out what I wanted to do with her. “Sorry about that,” I told Victoria’s unconscious form, “but your dad is kind of a dick.”