The brilliant glow of Naomi’s ritual abruptly blinked out, plunging the room into darkness. A moment later, the entire family collapsed to the ground in a chorus of exhausted thuds.

Angela lay where she’d fallen, starfished on her back and not caring in the slightest. She was utterly spent. Every ounce of energy had gone into that ritual. She was almost surprised she had enough left to lie motionless on the ground.

A rock plunked off her forehead. For once it was a just small piece of pumice, which was a welcome change. Apparently, her Tome guide had decided she’d seen enough abuse for an evening:

Quest: “Find Jack” Part 1 Completed!

Hell of a show you put on there. You found your great-grandfather, which is super, but there’s still some meat on that bone. Until you hook up with the old man again, this quest will continue.

Reward for Success: 1,000 XP

Quest: “Find Jack” Part 2

He’s still out there! But what is he doing? Why is he attacking people? Super important questions with far-reaching implications. You should get on that.

Reward for success: XP, Grandpa Jack (eventually).

Penalty for failure: Loss of your grandfather and potentially other, greater consequences.

ACCEPT? YES/NO

Greater consequences? Why would there be extra consequences to not finding Grandpa Jack?

Not that it matters, she thought as she mentally accepted the quest. As nice as it was to find him, that wasn’t the same as getting him back.

Rolling onto her side, Angela looked through the darkness in Naomi’s direction. “Hey, what did you mean when you said the lady attacking Grandpa Jack ‘fell apart?’”

“That she literally fell apart,” Naomi responded in a raspy voice. A glow appeared, revealing the woman sitting cross-legged with a ball of light in her hand. “And trust me when I say I’m just as surprised as you.”

“Meaty chunks?” Angela asked. “Like, Resident Evil movie laser style?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘resident evil,’ but based on your ‘meaty chunks’ comment, I’d say not quite.” Naomi tossed the ball into the air, where it separated into four smaller orbs that took position in the corners of the ceiling, once again gifting the room with illumination. “From what I could tell, the woman simply collapsed into dust. Most likely a quirk of the magics she was drawing upon, though it’s not a power I recognize. I can say for certain that your grandfather was quite thorough in either killing or incapacitating his foes, so he should be safe for now.”

“Does it mean anything that you don’t recognize the woman’s magic?” Angela’s dad asked.

Naomi shook her head. “Not necessarily. The world is full of many kinds of magic users. Some classes are common; others haven’t been seen for hundreds of years. Some are simply very regional or species-specific. Most likely, my not recognizing an aspect of her magic simply reflects a gap in my knowledge.”

“Well, I’m just glad it’s over,” Angela said, groaning. “I feel like a steaming pile of monkey shiiiiheywhatnow?”

A sheet of black rock had appeared on the ground in front of her:

Hidden Quest: “Mediocre Stats” Completed!

Congratulations on being average! Literally. You have climbed all the way to the middle, so consider this your “Participant” ribbon.

Criteria for Success: Human. Average of at least 20.0 across all Base Stats.

Reward for Success: 1,000 XP

RENOWN LEVEL UP!

Level 13 Achieved

XP: 35,125

XP to next Renown: 6,375

“There are hidden quests?” Angela asked, looking up at Naomi.

“Why wouldn’t there be?” the woman answered. “The Tomes don’t lead you around on a leash; they reflect your overall accomplishments. If you do something notable that isn’t accounted for elsewhere, it manifests as a hidden quest.”

“That makes sense,” Angela said. “I got this one for getting my Base Stat average over 20. Hooray for mediocrity.”

Naomi shook her head. “Don’t be too down on yourself. While that is the mean for a human, you are still ahead of the rest of your family. Yes, your parents have higher Renown, but that is largely a result of their Skills being more developed due to their age. A higher Base Stat average is much harder to achieve and will lead to more Renown in the long run.”

There was a groan from Mark, who was still lying flat on his back and staring at the ceiling.

“Cool,” he said, his words slightly slurred. “Good to know that despite being the biggest gamer in the room, I’ve somehow managed to end up with the lowest Renown and worst Base Stat average in the family.”

“You don’t know that,” Angela’s mom said. “Maybe Grandpa Jack is behind you? It’s impossible to say.”

Mark lifted his head enough to frown at her. “I don’t know if you blacked out for the last fifteen minutes, but apparently, Grandpa Jack is an immortal ninja who’s had 95 years to build up his Skill list. I’m pretty sure he has me beat.”

Angela started to laugh, but it died away when she gave her brother a closer look. She knew he’d intervened in the ritual somehow—his staff had started glowing just before the pressure on her and Naomi dissipated—but there was no telling what kind of fallout might arise from his efforts. Right now, he mostly just seemed tired. Kind of like when he’d had a seizure, and his—

What the fuck?

Angela immediately looked at her parents and Naomi, but they had started a conversation and were no longer paying attention to Mark. Which was good. It meant Angela was the first one to noticed that Mark now had four fingers on his left hand and seven on his right.

“Dude…” she hissed, thankful that he was closest to her.

He looked over, and she glared pointedly at his hands. When Mark followed her gaze, his eyes went wide in shock. He looked back at her and silently mouthed the words, “What the fuck?” It seemed appropriate, given her own reaction.

Shooting him another glare, Angela looked pointedly at the gloves on the ground beside him. He immediately understood her meaning and jammed his hands inside the worn leather before anyone else could notice what had happened, though he had more than a little difficulty getting seven fingers into a five-fingered glove.

Angela glanced over at Naomi, who was regarding her brother with some curiosity.

“Holy shit, I’m exhausted!” Angela shouted, pulling Naomi’s attention away from Mark. “I’m gonna sleep sooo well tonight in my real bed.”

Naomi smiled. “I would be surprised if you didn’t feel that way. A ritual of this magnitude is extremely draining. You’ll feel better tomorrow, but I recommend plenty of rest and another meal before you retire for the night.” Naomi then shifted to her knees and began to quickly and efficiently pack away her spell components.

Angela gaped at the woman, her brother momentarily forgotten. “Uh, how are you still moving? Shouldn’t you be more exhausted than the rest of us combined?”

Naomi chuckled. “You’re still thinking in Earthen terms. My Base Stats are much higher than yours, and thus my recovery is correspondingly high. I also don’t have the luxury of time. I may have ‘borrowed’ most of these components from the Mage’s College and need to get them back before anyone notices. If you have questions to ask before I leave, now is the time.”

Angela’s mom tried to stand up, only to stumble and lean against the wall. “I…whew, okay, I think the world has stopped spinning for the moment.” Taking a breath, she refocused herself. “Yes, I do have a question. Will it be easier to see my grandfather now that you’ve done this ritual once?”

Naomi hesitated, pausing her packing for a moment before continuing. “Normally, I would say yes, but in this circumstance, I don’t think that’s the case.”

“Why is that?” Angela’s mom asked.

“Because of your turkey.”

Her dad looked at Naomi in confusion. “The turkey?”

Naomi nodded. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe any of you are related by blood to your turkey?”

“Hard no,” Angela said.

“I didn’t think so. Yet despite that, I found your turkey without any trouble. Meaning the logic behind my ritual was sound. Your grandfather, on the other hand, was blocked. It was only when that block was removed that our scrying succeeded. I don’t know why the block existed or why it was removed, and that makes me concerned.”

“Why?”

“Because this was no simple obstacle. Someone or something powerful is aware of what happened here today.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Angela’s dad asked. “Whatever it was, it did let us watch.”

“Yes, but without knowing why…?” Naomi let the question hang. “All we can say for sure is that something is preventing people from scrying on Jack, yet they chose to make an exception for us in this instance. The intent behind that decision raises many questions.”

Ugh. More powerful forces taking an interest in them? At this point, it was practically the family business.

Angela could tell from her mom’s body language that she was getting worked up, so she decided to defuse the tension.

“Come on, mom, don’t overthink it,” she said casually. “Someone had the blinds pulled, then they decided to get kinky and let us watch. We got what we wanted, they got what they wanted, and what’s done is done. Bro, back me up here.”

“I’m with Angela,” Mark agreed, though with less enthusiasm. “Not on the weird analogy, but there’s no way for us to know who it was. Why bother worrying about it? We’ve got enough on our plate.”

“So, it’s true that we can’t find out who it was?” their mom asked.

Naomi’s face scrunched up. “Possibly, but sometimes it is safer to not know a thing.”

Angela snapped her fingers as something occurred to her. “Hey, who was that other person? The archer helping Grandpa Jack out?”

Surprisingly, Naomi let out a laugh. “Actually, I do know who that was, but only because the woman in question is quite a polarizing figure amongst the Families. She’s an incredible ranger, though—the best in Palmyre—and an excellent ally to have at hand. Last I heard, she was part of a delegation sent to negotiate with the Great Dragon of Bookspine on an issue of city defence, which might explain how she encountered your Grandpa Jack.”

Angela’s mom cocked her head. “Are you talking about Eliza?”

Considering Naomi’s near-constant composure, the shocked expression on her face was borderline comical.

“How could you possibly know Eliza?”

Jack stared wide-eyed at where the woman had fallen, trying to comprehend what he’d seen. Had that woman really just turned to dust?

When the engine finally turned over, and Jack remembered that he was still in a battle zone, his eyes flicked across the campsite to see if any enemies were left.

There weren’t.

Somehow, the fight was over.

Jack’s shoulders drooped as the stress of combat fell away. Still, he didn’t relax. This had been a battle, and like all battles, the worst part came when you were holding the butcher’s bill and had to decide if the price was worth it.

It rarely was.

“Eliza!” he shouted, directing his voice towards the woods where the woman had been hiding.

No answer.

“Dammit,” he grumbled. He could feel the new pages in his Tome flapping around for him to read, but they could wait.

Stepping over the pile of powdered crazy lady, Jack marched towards the woods to see if he could sort out what happened. The sun had set, and he didn’t know how much twilight he’d have to play with, so if she was hurt and not dead, the clock was ticking.

Jack noticed a crunching sound accompanying his footsteps as he entered the forest. Looking down, he discovered a thin layer of frost on the ground.

“Damn…” he muttered. He’d seen the freezing spells the devotee was throwing around, but he didn’t realize how powerful they were. The woods were frozen, like a late cold snap coming in after spring. Some places were even worse, with honest-to-god icicles dangling from the trees.

Damn magic lady and her damn magic, he thought to himself. The clock on finding Eliza had just sped up considerably.

Jack quickened his pace. It wasn’t the first time he’d gone out looking for an unresponsive person in the wilderness—it had happened a time or two throughout his life—and he knew that the most important thing was to take your time and not risk walking past a body because you were rushing. Unfortunately, the second most important thing was to form a line with about a hundred other people, and he was a bit short on resources.

With little else to go on, Jack tried to see if there was a pattern in the freezing. At first, it seemed random, but upon closer examination, he discovered that the blasts had a cone shape, with the most intensely frozen areas being the places where the cones had overlapped. Those would be where the magic lady was focusing her effort, making it the most likely place to find Eliza.

Now that he had something to guide his search, Jack took a more methodical approach, adopting a pattern as he moved through the area. His eyes scanned every nook and cranny as he walked, his breath coming out in great puffs of condensation.

It was cold. Damn cold. Cold enough that he could hear trees cracking as their frozen sap expanded and shattered the wood, the falling trunks and branches adding an additional layer of danger to his search. Cold enough that his mind kept drifting back to the icy hell of Ardennes, his eyes seeing frozen corpses in every twisted branch and snowed-over log. He’d spent 75 years doing his damnedest to bury those memories for all time, only to have them forcibly resurrected by his Well-Aged Trait. It was a hell of a price, and he wasn’t sure he’d have paid it if given a choice.

Pushing the dark thoughts aside, Jack scanned the ground as best he could, his search fruitless until he noticed three oddly straight sticks poking out of the ground at the base of a tree. They were perfectly parallel to each other, and his suspicions were confirmed when he made his way over.

They were arrows.

A quick follow-up inspection turned up Eliza’s longbow, lying in the dirt next to an indentation in the frost. Beside it were drag marks showing where Eliza had pulled herself along the ground, away from the devotee’s onslaught.

Jack was off like a shot. He lost the markings once and had to backtrack, but a second attempt took him through the trees until he found Eliza unconscious on the ground, her body half covered in ice and curled up behind a stump.

“Goddammit, woman,” Jack cursed, dropping into the dirt to assess her condition.

The first thing he noticed was how intensely cold she was. Like she’d fallen through lake ice and had just been fished out. The second thing was that her pulse was virtually nonexistent.

“I ain’t gonna lose another one,” Jack growled, his face dark. Grabbing the back of Eliza’s collar, he hoisted her out of the snow and dragged her through the frozen forest toward the enemy camp.

“You damn fool,” he growled to her as he kept walking. “You couldn’t have gotten away? Of course you could, but I’ll bet you were keepin’ an eye on me and got caught by one of those spells. Now I’m stuck trying to pull off a miracle. Pain in my ass, that’s what you are.”

Once the snow disappeared and it got harder to drag Eliza by the collar, Jack turned and hoisted her up by the armpits, hauling her backwards until he reached the campfire. When he got there, he was surprised to discover that it was still smouldering despite having a pot of water and a dead body dropped onto it. The corpse was putting off a hell of a smell, and the aesthetics were rough, but it was doing an excellent job of blocking the wind, so he opted to leave it where it was.

Someone had piled more wood neatly beside the fire, so Jack was able to rebuild the fire before too long. He placed Eliza next to it on a bedroll, but he knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet. That kind of cold was tough to shake off, and she had been on death’s door for so long it was a miracle she hadn’t walked through yet. Still, despite all that, he was maintaining hope that she’d be able to pull through.

That lasted right up until the raindrops started falling.

“You gotta be kidding me!” Jack swore, looking at the skies. The only good thing Jack had discovered about a magical frost was that it froze a person without getting them wet. If Eliza got wet, though? There was no chance she’d pull through.

Jack moved swiftly through the campsite, searching for waterproof material and blankets. The blankets were easy—every merc had a decent blanket on hand—and the still-packed tents would provide a ready source of sturdy, waterproof material. Gathering up the supplies, Jack hurried back to the fire and wasted no time getting the ranger under a makeshift lean-to that would keep her warm and, hopefully, dry.

Jack was just about to set up one of the tents when he spotted one more pack set away from the others. It was the one the devotee had been wearing, so he headed over to scoop the bag up, only to nearly topple over when the thing refused to budge.

Jack looked at the bag in surprise. “What the hell is this, your rock collection?” He grabbed the bag with two hands this time and managed to haul it off the ground, grunting curses as he waddled the awkward load over to the campfire. Apparently, the magic lady had a better-than-expected Strength stat.

When Jack finally got to the fire, he dropped the bag on the ground with a thud and took a moment to catch his breath. He had to contend with a complicated knot before he could get inside the bag, and when he did, he discovered dense layers of thick felt that he had to peel away before viewing the bag’s contents.

He stopped breathing.

It was a dragon egg. That was the only possible conclusion. While it lacked the smooth surface one generally associated with eggs, its pattern of interlocking hexagons and pentagons had a vaguely egg-like shape, like a stretched-out soccer ball. There was no clear colouring; more of a milky black with an iridescent sheen that refracted the firelight. Like those hologram stickers that were big for a while in the ’80s. And it was hot. Not burn-your-hands hot, but enough to be uncomfortable if you carried it for too long. Jack suspected the fabric in the pack wasn’t so much for keeping the egg warm as it was to keep the heat off the woman’s back while carrying it. The thing was dense, too. While only a ruler’s length in diameter, it was a good 20 kilos in weight.

Jack looked at the egg, then down at Eliza. After a moment’s consideration, he took the egg out of the pack and stuck it under the woman’s blankets, pushing it snugly against her belly and wrapping her arms around the small furnace.

“Can’t hurt,” he said with a shrug.

“Are you sure?” a voice replied. There was a rustle in the dirt next to Jack, and he looked over to see toes wiggling within a pair of soft red shoes. Raising his gaze, Jack saw red socks, a pair of neatly pressed red slacks, then a gold and white marching band jacket. The idiot even had a matching shako hat and a baton with tassels hanging off one end.

Jack closed his eyes and counted to ten slowly. “Now ain’t the time, Nochd.”

The god plopped cross-legged onto the ground, his mouth splitting into a wide smile. “But now is the perfect time!” When Jack looked pointedly at Eliza, the god waved him off. “Jack, please. I’m the god of Death. If anyone can promise you a few moments to chat before she expires, it’s me. Though I think you’ve done a smashing good job of making sure that doesn’t happen.” He leaned in and nudged Jack conspiratorially. “To be honest, it’s incredible she even lasted this long. Her suite of cold resistances is remarkable.”

“She’s gonna make it?”

“Why yes, I believe she is,” he said. Then he looked around the campsite. “Most of them, not so much.” He pointed at the guy blackening in the firepit. “Especially not him.”

“That’s great,” Jack said, “though it does raise the question of why you’re here. You gonna ask me to be your cleric again?”

The god rolled his eyes theatrically. “As much as I enjoy our little game of ongoing rejection, that is not the case today. I am far less concerned about you”—he booped Jack on the nose with his baton—“than I am with that”—he shifted the baton and tapped the egg where it lay beside Eliza. “That dragon’s quest you have is more significant than you think.”

Jack raised a bushy eyebrow. “What, am I off to save the world now?”

Nochd laughed. “Jack, please. Do you really think I’m someone who would get involved with saving the world?”

For the barest of moments, Jack took in the sight of Nochd’s ridiculous bandleader costume and thought the god meant he wasn’t a serious enough deity to trust with the fate of a planet. Then he remembered that despite the god’s apparent idiocy, he was still the singular, universe-spanning incarnation of Death.

The fate of a world wasn’t too much for Nochd. It was too little.

“That bad, huh?” Jack asked, frowning.

“Indeed,” Nochd said solemnly. “Soon, you will have to make some choices, and when you do, you will need to remember that the choice of not choosing is also a choice. And like all choices, that choice has consequences you don’t get to choose—other than through the choice you have chosen, of course.” Getting to his feet, he stepped towards the fire, then paused.

“Jack?” he asked.

“Yeah?” Jack responded, still trying to sort out the god’s words.

“Remember that time I told you about how incredibly important the dragon’s quest is?”

Jack closed his eyes. “It was about six seconds ago you dingbat, of course I remember.”

Nochd nodded. “Good. Why don’t you take a moment after I leave to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, I want you to take my class for reasons beyond my own personal aggrandizement.”

Jack frowned, but the god didn’t wait for a response before stepping fully into the fire.

Nochd’s red shoes burst into flames immediately. The blaze spread, racing up his pantlegs…only to stop abruptly.

“Oh! Did I mention that your family got to watch that fight?” he asked.

“What?” Jack said. “How the hell did that happen?”

“I know, right?” Nochd agreed. “Not only did they find an Eṉakkumancer capable of scrying on you, but they also convinced her to do so right at the beginning of your battle. You truly do have stupendous Luck.”

Jack frowned. That fight had been a brutal affair. He wasn’t so sure he liked the idea of his family watching it unfold. “How much did they see?”

“Hmm, when did they join in…” Nochd said, tapping the baton on his chin. “I believe it was from the first time you were thrown across the campsite up until that woman, err…fell apart? I’m not sure how to phrase it.”

“Could they hear what was happenin’?”

“The person scrying would certainly know what was being said, but whether they passed it along to your family?” Nochd shrugged.

“You don’t know?” Jack asked. “I thought you were a pan-galactic mega-god?”

“I’m not a peeping Tom, Jack. I’m merely everywhere, always.”

“Ain’t that the same thing?”

The god sighed. “You’re telling me you’ve never tuned out your kids despite being in the same room as them?”

Jack thought about it for a moment. “Guess you got me there.”

“Of course I do. Oh, and your friend is waking up. Toodles!”

With that, Nochd burst into flames.