Perry opened his eyes and glanced at the clock on the side of Natalie’s bedstand.

3:00 AM

Boosting his Body seemed to have cut back the amount of sleep he needed, which was a pity. Sleep was nice. Despite going to bed…rather sore only a few hours before. Perry felt like he’d been sleeping a full day, relaxed and refreshed…only a large part of him was still sore.

Besides, I’ve got things to do tonight, and there’s hardly a better time to do shady dealings than three in the morning.

Perry gently lifted Heather’s arm away from his chest and slipped out of the covers, tucking the redheaded shapeshifter’s arm around Natalie, who was already snugly buried in between them.

How did my life turn out so strange? Perry thought as he turned away and crept around the room, collecting his clothes and donning them before he slipped out the door, into the dark parking lot of his motel.

Perry glanced up at The Wall. From here, he could hear the faint echoes of the constant battle going on The Wall. The streets were dead, everyone was either working to support the troops, on The Wall, or holed up in their homes waiting for the end.

There wasn’t much in between.

Perry went and got the package from his lair and flew the Mk.6 down to the corner of Gintax Blvd and Manita Way, landing in the street outside a little shop called Mysteries Beyond death.

As Perry landed, a flood of lights from a dozen or so motorcycles made the street brighter than the daytime. In the center of the encirclement, John Gabras leaned against a skeletal horse made of shiny metal. Its eyes glowed with incandescent light, and it snorted flaming exhaust.

“Nice pose.” Perry said, exiting his suit.

“You got the armor?” The nocul asked, ignoring Perry’s jibe.

Perry opened up the heavy cardboard box, revealing the gem-studded chestplate of John The Second, King of the Nocul.

“You got the stuff?” Perry asked.

John walked over to a nearby chest placed strategically nearby and kicked it open. On the top was an ingot of pure Areonite that would last Perry a good long time. Not as long as the armor, but Perry didn’t need it to last forever.

Besides, the things underneath the ingot were more than worth it.

Underneath the ingot of Areonite was a Nocul grimoire and oodles of spell components. Ever since Perry had seen John in action in Washington city, he’d wanted to get his hands on those spells, and bringing the armor back from Chicago had finally given him something worth trading for it.

“Pull it all out of the chest.” Perry said. Unlike with Dave, he didn’t trust John not to pack a few extra surprises.

“Pull the armor out of the box.” John shot back.

“Gladly,” Perry said, taking the individual parts of the armor out and gently laying them out on the asphalt.

John nodded to one of his minions, who unloaded the materials from the chest and laid them out on the ground.

“You can keep the basilisk.” Perry said, glancing at the angry lizard pacing around inside the spring-loaded cage underneath the rest of the materials. He averted his gaze before it locked eyes with him.

“Can’t blame me for trying.” John said with a shrug.

“No harm, no foul,” Perry said, taking slow, deliberate steps forward, while John did the same. A moment later they passed each other, with John arriving at his grandfather’s armor and Perry arriving at the grimoire.

Perry leaned down and grabbed the book, flipping it open.

A demonic spirit launched out of the pages and into Perry’s soul through his eyes…where it proceeded to squirm and die like a bacteria exposed to rubbing alcohol.

“It’s the real deal,” Perry mused, blinking the irritation out of his eyes as he turned to the next few pages, dense with Nocul script and notes from generations of the death-worshippers.

Perry’d been studying his Nocul for just this occasion.

Perry glanced up at John, who was staring at him agog, the Nocul chestplate floating up to encase his body.

“What?”

“I find you highly irritating.” John Gabras said as the chestplate cinched down around him. “And now, with the power of my grandfather’s armor, I will avenge-“

“Before you finish your sentence, lemme stop you right there.” Perry said, holding up a finger. “I want you to smell the armor’s collar. Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

John sniffed the armor, his nose wrinkling up.

“That’s the smell of high explosives,” Perry said. “You’re now wearing about half a pound of it around your neck.”

“Now, try and kill me once or twice, and that’s just business. Try and kill me three times, and I might start taking things personally. And if I start taking things personally, I will detonate your grandfather’s armor, rendering your brain into a fine mist and filling every person here with areonite shrapnel.”

“And we all know what areonite in the bloodstream does to a man.” Perry said, scanning the surrounding Noculs. They backed away from him.

Areonite in the bloodstream was not a pleasant death.

“Now…” Paradox locked his gaze on John Gabras of the Nocul. “What were you about to say?”

“…There’s some ghostmach dust that…got accidentally spilled on that box of spider eggs there. Should probably watch out for that.” John finally admitted.

“Noted,” Perry said.

“Johnny, have you seen my grimoire?” An ancient Nocul woman asked, poking her head out of the shopfront and frowned at the circle of Nocul riders gathered around Perry and John.

Then her gaze landed on the book in Perry’s hand, causing her expression to turn thunderous.

Her expression softened a bit when she spotted ‘Johnny’ wearing the former Nocul king’s armor, but it was still pretty angry.

The slender woman hustled out of the shopfront with a slipper and began beating the leader of the nocul with it…and no one was brave enough to stop her.

“Johnathan. Gabras! The. Fourth! Did. You. Try. To. Sell. My. Grimoire. For. Your. Grandfather’s. Armor!?” She shrieked, punctuated every word with a slap from the rubber-soled footwear.

“I wasn’t gonna let him keep it!” John cried, cowering under the relentless assault.

It seemed that the nocul had borrowed without permission, but with every intention of giving it back.

Perry shrugged and turned the page on the grimoire. Might as well get some light reading done while the nocul was screwing around. He had powerful magic, but it was no use against grand-maternal rage.

“And you, who are you, where did you get my husband’s armor, and why are you still alive?” She asked, pointing the Slipper of Atonement at Perry, glancing at the grimoire in his hand. “The protection on that book should’ve killed you.”

“Paradox Zauberer,” Perry said.

“Didn’t recognize you in the dark,” she said, her eyes narrowed, a snake of Essence emerging from her heel and burrowing towards him through the ground. “My eyes are getting old.”

“Retract the spell or I kill your grandson,” Perry said, pointing at the thread travelling towards him through the asphalt.

“Worth a shot,” she muttered with a scowl, essence folding back into her. “I met your friends the other day. Lovely girls.”

“Oh, so that’s where they got the spell to manifest Anya.” Perry muttered to himself.

“I can’t let you keep that grimoire, unfortunately. It’s not John’s to sell.”

“I wasn’t gonna let him keep it!” John protested again.

Perry scoffed.

Perry glanced over at the ingot of pure areonite and the spell components carefully arranged on the asphalt. In the short-term, he really only needed three or four spells, as long as he got to keep the materials for them.

“I’m not a greedy man. You can have your grimoire back.” Perry said, closing the book and tucking it under his arm. “How many spells would you say your late husband’s armor is worth to you?” Perry asked.

“One.” Amelie Gabras said.

“Ten, and I’ll spare your grandson for free.”

“Two, and you’ll give me back any components without a use in the spells you purchase.”

“Eight. Same deal, excluding the areonite.” Perry said.

“Four. Other terms agreeable.”

“Deal.” Perry and the two stalked closer under the watchful eye of the entire Nocul state military – a dozen guys on motorcycles – and shook on it.

Perry half-expected the old woman to try something again, but she’d seemingly decided to play it safe for now since he’d survived the booby trap and spotted the spell underground.

Older and wiser. When she tried to kill him, it would likely be a bit more sudden and lethal than John.

I wonder how I can make her an ally against my grandmother, Perry thought, smiling back at the ancient nocul witch, handing her grimoire back to her.

“What spells were you looking for?” She asked, opening the book.

“This one, this one, this one, and this one.” Perry said, flipping through the pages from memory and pointing them out to her.

“Resolution & Inheritance, Threads of Gintax, Bloodskip, and Totem Steed?” Amelie Gabras clarified.

“Yup.”

Perry’s spellbook already contained Threads of Gintax and Totem Steed, but the Nocul methodology and recipe was likely to be WAY better, and he needed the components for them anyway. Plus Threads of Gintax used Death Crystal, something he needed to study.

The spells he was really excited about were Bloodskip, that John had used to dodge him in Washington, and Resolution & inheritance.

It wasn’t that Perry was interested in consuming spirits to raise his talent. It was the fact that the spell itself seemed to mimic a facet of The System.

In order to one day manipulate The System itself, Perry would have to figure out what made it tick, without destroying himself in the process.

In order to do that, he would have to reverse engineer the thing first, and the first baby step was identifying spells and technology that could do similar things.

Bloodskip was a no-brainer because it was an inexpensive teleport spell, whose components were easy to come by, as compared to a traditional teleport or portal spell, whose ingredients were highly exotic.

Sure, Bloodskip needed an anchor in the form of blood, which was somewhat limiting, but with a little planning in advance, it could be very handy.

“All these seem rather pedestrian,” Amelie Gabras commented. “I expected you to go for some form of immortality or a spell that would allow you to rule over your lessers.

“Like I said, I’m not a greedy guy,” Perry said with a shrug. Plus Perry got the spells he really needed. Immortality was a whole can of worms Perry wasn’t interested in opening up yet, nor did he need to. Plus the need to sacrifice someone important to him as fuel for the spell was kind of a buzzkill.

I wonder if my Manitian Grampa died to fuel my grandma’s immortality…or my aunt. Note to self: Keep own children away from the old bird until it’s confirmed she doesn’t eat family members to sustain herself.

“Not even a charm to make you more popular?” Amelie Gabras asked, cocking a brow.

“Where was that one, in the back!?” Perry demanded, standing on his tiptoes to try and read the book in the tall Nocul crone’s hand.

Amelie Gabras let out a quiet chuckle at Perry’s antics, holding her hand above her grimoire.

Four pages tore themselves out of the grimoire and settled into her grasp.

“Here you are.” She said, handing it to him as her grimoire grew the spells back.

Perry accepted the four spells, examining them critically.

“You think you could remove the copy protection on the methodology? This would kill me.” The spells looked correct, but Perry had noticed that the methodologies described in the book were all off just enough to ensure the spell would backfire violently.

Some of the new spells he couldn’t tell if that was the case, but all the spells he’d seen before in his mother’s book had subtle sabotage in place in this one, so it was prudent to assume the new spells were similarly coded.

He didn’t take it personally. Most wizards had some kind of copyright protection like that on their spellbooks.

“That wasn’t part of the deal,” Amelie Gabras said with a shrug.

Perry took a deep, calming breath.

“Look, we’re all probably going to die within the week, and I’m heading out to dive into that mess out there in about…three hours. Would you mind terribly removing the copy protection so I can get out there and either die or save the city without wasting my time dicking around with it?” Perry asked.

“Since you asked so nicely.”

Amelie Gabras passed a subtle beam of Essence over the spells and the text squirmed subtly, changing a word, number, or measurement here and there.

“Much obliged, Ma’am. Enjoy your new armor,” Perry said, tipping a nonexistent fedora.

“It was my pleasure. Tell your grandmother to rot in the deepest bowels of hell for me, would you?” the old woman said in ancient Nocul, her voice sickly sweet despite the forbidden language making the shadows from the lampposts writhe in pain.

“With pleasure,” Perry said, performing a Manitian bow before his armor scooped up the ingredients he needed, shoving them in its chest cavity and blasting off with Perry clinging to the back.

It wasn’t the most dignified exit, but Perry had more important things to worry about at the moment.

He had three hours to design and implement his soul surgery, and an evil idea for a spell was tickling the back of his mind.