Hunched over, squinting and swaying in the jouncing wagon, Aleem had breezed through four whole pages of the primer before his light cantrip wore off. In that time, his phosphorescent fingers had itched like a skin infection. It was worrying, really, but served to distract him only marginally, because Aleem was just too excited.

From his first conscious moments on Orig, he had understood that he would need to work hard to meet what was lacking in his knowledge base. Aleem had been homeschooled in his past life, and one of his foster parents, Johannes, had raised him to treat studying like an adventure. Compared to any of the stressful situations he’d been forced to deal with so far, reading a book was a cakewalk.

The print was a bit tiny, but he found the style terribly accessible. It was certainly written for children.

One of his initial concerns about magic and the soul schema were answered in the opening pages. Will and Cognition were in fact the casting stats.

Dominantly, Will did the heavy lifting, and Cognition picked up the slack. There was an interesting synergy between both Attributes. Cognition concerned the ability to focus, while Will pertained to the firmness of one's intentions. And the primer insisted that this synergy was behind the very concept of desire moulding.

The Will and Cognition worked together to bring about whatever specific effect a person wanted. The former provided potency and the latter, precision. Desire moulding therefore concerned discipline and various exercises that could help one better direct their intent. Mana followed desire, and while many could simply skip the prologue and jump right into refining their mana control, it was much better to work on the framework as a whole. Desires first, then mana.

By the time ‘light lantern’ had fizzled out, Aleem’s fingers were positively cold and itchy. It hadn’t so much worn off, as he’d been unable to ignore the discomfort any longer. He rubbed the entire hand and even flapped it in that ‘hot, hot, hot’ way, but the weird sensation persisted.

“You kept that up for much longer than I expected,” Serend said from beside him.

Now that he didn’t have a light source in his direct line of sight, the inside of the wagon looked darker. He blinked futilely, an afterimage persistently in the corner of his vision. “It was longer than I’d hoped too,” Aleem admitted. He deactivated [Trance] and the muted sounds and sensations instantly grew fuller. He felt more tired and drained, though there was hardly a change in the sensation he felt from his fingers.

“So you just what, happen to have a few cantrips on hand?” she asked. He could only make out the outlines of her face.

Aleem opened his mouth to give her a nonanswer but paused. He tilted his head sideways. “I’ll give an honest reply, if you humour a personal question of mine.”

“Sure,” Serend said reluctantly. “You first.”

Aleem considered his answer. Wulry’s soft snores were hard to pick up amid the muffled grating sounds their vehicle was making, but it was clear that the man was asleep. “I know quite a number of cantrips and the general idea behind casting them. Same also for some spells. A lot of spells, if I’m being honest.”

“Your peculiarities are something else,” Serend muttered, and there was a touch of wariness in her voice. It almost sounded like disapproval.

Aleem shrugged. Silly thing to do in the dark while conversing with a blind person. And speaking of which. “Are you actually blind?”

Serend let out a low laugh in that delightful way she had back in the stockade. “What was it you said?” she cleared her throat and adopted a pitch a couple octaves higher than either of theirs. “I’d rather not say. It’s not something I can share.”

A little annoying, but it did elicit a chuckle from him. “Fair enough.” She was probably just using a Skill to account for her visual impairment, anyway.

“Doesn’t feel quite fair, though,” Serend said. “Ask me something else. As long as it doesn’t have anything to do with my sight … or lack thereof.”

Aleem scrunched up his lips, squinting at her indiscernible features. He’d recognised the name ‘Beb’, an NPC from the game and one of Wulry’s oldest friends, but Serend and Hetti were functional unknowns to him. “You’re quite … young,” he began.

“Very observant of you,” she teased.

“I mean, how does someone as young as you get invited to work with Wulry on a Quest?”

“I could ask you the same thing, but that wouldn’t be square, would it?” She let out what sounded to him like a satisfied sigh. “I got recommended by a mutual of ours. A [Flamen Ingredi] in Minkaal.”

Aleem’s brows rose at that. Minkaal had been a very important industrial city in-game, and it housed the largest temple to the god Mhetep. [Flamen Ingredi] were his spokespersons, very highly placed in the god’s holy Order. If the priest of a god directly recommended her for a private Quest, then Serend was much more remarkable than he’d first assumed. Aleem knew one Ingress priestess who had been a friend of Wulry’s in ‘Tales of Woe’. He ventured a guess. “This mutual wouldn’t happen to be Chalpona, would it?”

Serend was quiet for a moment. “I’m starting to think you actually enjoy doing this.”

Aleem narrowed his eyes. “What am I doing?”

“Trying to maze me,” she accused, though he could hear a smile in her voice. “It’s annoying.”

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “you’re the third person who’s told me as much tonight.” He’d always been a know-all in his past life. Homeschooling hadn’t helped with that. Maybe he was being a bit smug about his privileged information. It might explain why Luctari had reacted so ferociously.

“When did you meet Chalpona?” Serend asked. “I didn’t think you’d ever left Ontacreese before.”

Aleem wasn’t sure that the original owner of this body had ever left the province of Ontnmor, to say nothing of the wider nation. Chalpona had been a good sort in the game, and Aleem was pretty sure that their parts would be crossing soon. “I know a lot of people I’m yet to meet, Serend.”

“So you knew about me before today,” Serend noted, not so much asking.

Aleem laughed. “You think that highly of me, do you?”

“That’s not exactly an answer,” Serend said.

“I met you for the first time tonight. I didn’t know about you till you walked into the gallery.” He thought he heard a sigh of relief. His eyes had adjusted a little better to the dark, and Serend was silently stroking her shlöck.

There was little conversation between them after that. With the cantrip and primer presently incapable of distracting him, Aleem’s mind drifted to thoughts of Orotaz, the [Warlock] in charge of the emanation ritual.

He had not been exaggerating when he’d said that he could easily influence the [Warlock]. A lifetime of the Daibon Cult’s psychological conditioning and grooming had rendered Orotaz reliant on following well-crafted instructions to the letter; the man even had a handler. Aleem was confident that if he got close enough, he could disable Orotaz.

The thought had occurred to him that he might have to kill the man, but Aleem decided to put that off for as long as he could. If any one person deserved to die, Aleem wasn’t so sure that it would be Orotaz. The [Warlock] had not been presented as especially bright in-game, but he was ruthless and had no qualms about killing children to achieve a goal that didn’t directly benefit him.

Orotaz was brainwashed, layered with several geasa, and raised from very early childhood to follow magically charged commands. What would it serve to just immobilise the [Warlock], only for him to be reclaimed by the Daibon Cult, the worshippers of Daranirajido?

Aleem sighed. He’d already decided to put this one off.

He diverted his mind to their intended destination. He knew the Deyegint Stretch, though he’d never explored the location in the game. It was a gorge in the craggy ranges that lay between Faaji and Ontacreese.

He found it a little odd that the ritual circle hadn’t been within Faaji. Though Aleem imagined that the emanation ritual was all but guaranteed to succeed the first time. More importantly, some regions were notorious for being quite low on ambient mana. Faaji and Ontacreese were some of such, but certain sections of either nation had a higher ambient density. He knew that the Deyegint Stretch sat on some very ancient network of untapped tuv lodes that had yet to be discovered. It was probably what was responsible for fuelling the ritual … besides the human sacrifice, that is.

Soon Serend’s snores reached him, making a compelling argument for him to produce snores of his own. He hadn’t gotten much sleep earlier, and his body still ached some.

That was something he could probably attribute to one of his notifications.

Minimal Soul Trauma sustained

In the game, soul trauma was often sustained in combat situations when dealing with arcane constructs or divine entities. Invoking both Luctari and the Consuetude had greatly stressed his soul. And he supposed that his brief conflict with the godling at the end of their meeting hadn’t done him any good either.

A notification appeared in his soul schema.

ALERT

[Cartogram] deactivated

Please return to designated area ‘Wotbourne’ to resume use.

Well that was disappointing. He’d hoped that the map would continue updating as he moved from place to place. That would have been really useful. ‘Tales of Woe’ had provided something like that for every player character. Aleem wondered how he would even go about constructing something like that.

He dismissed the display and closed his eyes, but sleep did not come. There was an impatience in him. He couldn’t understand it. This was perhaps the best thing that had happened to him since coming to Orig. A group of people who didn’t yet trust him, but were willing to work with him and even offer some assistance in solving his divine problem. Things were actually starting to look up.

Yet he felt troubled. Like a can of soda rigorously shaken and soon to be unsealed. Aleem looked within himself, taking deep breaths, and trying to pin down what this strange emotion was. It eluded his comprehension.

Wulry gasped and Aleem opened his eyes to see that the man had sat up in his seat and pulled away the thick napkin covering his face.

Serend stirred beside Aleem, blinking and rubbing her eye.

“You feel that?” Wulry asked her, peering through his window.

“Mhm.”

“Are we being pursued?” Aleem asked with some consternation.

Wulry nodded. “Seems that way.” He pounded his fist repeatedly on the wall behind his bench.

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A head-sized hatch slid open and light flowed into the wagon. A steady stream of warm air carried the scent of sweat and musty indoors to him. R’shai’s eyes filled the space. She had to lift her voice to speak over the soughing, creaking and pounding of hooves. “We felt it too.”

“Is it the Vriorians?” Aleem asked. He hated not being able to sense these things for himself.

“Still too far to say,” Wulry mumbled. “Nii?”

“We push on past Founts,” R’shai said decisively. “Or would you rather confront them now?”

“No, no.” Wulry shook his head. “Making on sounds good.”

“What if they catch up to us before Founts?” Aleem asked.

“Serend was right,” R’shai muttered. “He does ask a lot of questions.” She slammed the hatch closed, plunging the wagon into relative darkness once more.

“Relax, lad,” Wulry told him, though the man kept checking his window. There didn’t seem to be any twitchiness in the action, but it made Aleem feel as though one of his pursuers would jump in through at any second.

Aleem began to joggle his knee. He hated this feeling of powerlessness. Just sitting around and waiting had never been one of his strengths, but it was one thing meditation had helped him pull out of the ‘this is a weakness’ territory to the ‘only barely mediocre’ zone.

“You should try to get some rest,” Serend suggested. “Staying up and worrying isn’t helping anyone.”

She was right.

Wulry shifted away from his window and put his napkin back over his face.

Even Serend closed her eyes.

Aleem let out a heavy, heavy sigh. He was too agitated to even hope to succeed at sleeping, so he closed his eyes and imagined himself as a pool.

One thing he liked about these visualisations was the fact that it wasn’t mindless work. Not yet, at least. He could fully throw himself into it and keep his mind from stressing over things. Many years of practicing mindfulness had honed his focus, but at times he felt it was something of a double-edged sword. Now, however, he could occupy his mind, directing it firmly to a truly absorbing task.

Or at least, this should have been the case.

Instead, the impatience within him continued to intensify, and he might have started biting his nails already if he was predisposed to bodily mutilation. Aleem had always been one to express his nerves by dissociating from the troubling situation. But beneficial procrastination was terribly ineffective in tense situations that demanded his attention. The world wasn’t going to slow down to let him process things.

He would have to resolve that the first chance he got. Time was a precious commodity in Orig, but there quite a number of methods to stretch it out. Make it last longer.

Aleem opened his eyes and found Wulry peering out the window once more.

Serend was priming her shlöck hurriedly, though no sounds could be heard as she worked. She was doing that thing were she stilled sound around her. He would have to ask about that later.

“They’re getting closer aren’t they?” Aleem asked no one in particular.

“Four Vriorians,” Wulry answered in a muffled voice. He was chewing something.

In spite of himself, Aleem asked, “What’s that you’re eating?”

Wulry turned away from the window, “Eh… how do you say um Serend what’s the word for this thing again?”

“Crickets,” she said, not taking her eyes off her task—actually her eyes were focused on the roof while she worked.

Wulry, with both eyebrows raised, shook the cuboid paper box at Aleem and its contents rattled within.

“No thank you,” he said. He doubted he could keep anything down with how nervous he was feeling. Crickets sounded like they might be a … ‘diverting’ snack.

Wulry shrugged as if to say ‘suit yourself’. “Two of them are Second Elevation, while the others are First. They’re closing in on us so quickly they’d have to be on horse back.”

“Are we sure it isn’t a coincidence?” Aleem asked. “They might just be headed to Founts too, right?.”

“They’re far enough that you probably can’t feel it,” Wulry mused, still munching his crickets. “Two of them are really flaring their killing intent.”

Oh. This seemed to explain that unease he was feeling. Maybe he was sensing their killing intent from so far off. Odd.

“Also, we’re not on the main route to Founts. This one’s longer and far more arduous.” As if on cue the wagon lurched sideways and they all swayed appropriately in their seats.

Well, there went that hope. “So, what do we do now?” Aleem asked. “Outrun them?”

Wulry chuckled. “Two horses—and now they’re strong ones, those—but it’s just two horses pulling our kit. And there’s four of us weighing the wagon down. We’d have better luck jogging away from horse back riders. There’s a small crest up ahead. Once we get there, we’ll alight and dispatch those numpties. You? You just stay put, alright?”

Aleem wasn’t going to argue with that. He nodded his understanding. There was nothing he could contribute to this fight. Not unless he intended to light his fingers up and wiggle them menacingly at the enemy.

Serend started playing something on her shlöck, but there was no sound whatsoever. It was almost as though she’d been put on mute. Her movements were crisp and eerily silent.

The wagon slowly came to a stop, and the quiet was rather startling. It hadn’t occurred to Aleem just how much noise the vehicle was making.

The hatch behind Wulry’s bench slid open, flooding the wagon with light and revealing the top half of R’shai’s face again. “Let’s move,” she said simply.

Wulry and Serend left Aleem within the wagon and shut the door behind them.

The night was quiet, though he could hear the chirping of crickets and the crunching of footsteps. Aleem moved over to Serend’s end of their bench to peer through the window.

Serend and Hetti were hanging back. While Wulry and R’shai continued walking forward. Hetti clutched a bow half her height, a fat arrow already nocked.

Foreign anxiety spiked into his chest. Aleem was generally an internally vigilant person, and he quickly noticed how extraneous the sharp emotions were. He closed his eyes and looked inwards. ’You’re going to die’ it whispered. ‘I’ll put you down like the vile cur you are.’ Not very original, really.

It wasn’t difficult to pinpoint the location the Killing intent was coming from. At about the same time, he began hearing the thunderous sound of hooves drumming upon the earth. It began as a distant murmur that rose as the horses drew closer.

A thin plume of dust heralded them before they crested the sudden incline and came into view.

Squinting for all his eyes were worth, Aleem made out four horses.

A filmy effect passed over the window, causing Aleem to flinch back. He realised what it was. Wulry was warding off the wagon.

The horses slowed to a canter. The lead horse was a giant beast of corded muscle and unreasonable mass. It looked like the tougher elder brother of that ripped horse he’d seen on his first day. On it sat a giant of a woman in a cauldron shaped armour. He recognised this as the preferred plating form for pregnant Vriorians. Graviri, they were called. Very dangerous, those. Vriorians could draw power more firmly from the Grand Coral when they were gestating.

It made sense that she was using such a humongous horse, anything else might have fallen under her weight. Her teammates were in black leather armours, but the fourth member was hidden behind the lead woman’s bulk. None of the others seemed to be wearing helmets, though.

It worried Aleem that Wulry and R’shai hadn’t created a wide enough berth between themselves and the wagon, but he supposed there was some value in them keeping close by. He wondered about their horses. Perhaps R’shai had some ways to keep them calm.

R’shai had her large sword out. What even was that thing? It hadn’t been her weapon in ‘Tales of Woe’. She’d actually preferred to use a spear, and had done so till she’d acquired the perfect artefact, one that worked too well with her Class: a collection of flying swords.

Wulry was holding a long metal cylinder in one hand and a firearm in the other. Aleem recognised both items. Expensive junk. But Wulry had always been marked by his propensity for high-priced consumables. They were effective, and that was what mattered.

The horses came to a trot, and the giantess peered down at them, though Aleem couldn’t be sure. Her helmet concealed her face perfectly. Odd, considering that all of her companions were bare-faced. One was a withered-looking, pink-skinned man who wore his old age with more grace than Aleem had ever seen in an elderly person. The other man spotted a goatee and had a permanent sneer on his face that paired well with the horizontal tribal marks on his cheeks.

The last member of the giantess’s party made Aleem’s heart skip with panic when he saw her face.

Sheilu Fir-lilla.

A player character in ‘Tales of Woe’. She had become the last avatar of Zraazrondre, and had turned out to be such a perfect vessel for the goddess’s power. It definitely helped that Sheilu had been endued by the goddess from birth, a very rare thing.

This was several years too early, and she would be weak. Relatively, that is. She could still squash him like a bug and could possibly give even R’shai a run for her money. Her leather armour was shaped in the same cauldron form as the giantess’s.

“Give me the untethered!” the giantess commanded. “I will spare you if you present it to me.”

She felt to Aleem from this distance to be impressing her significance on the world. He wasn’t sure how he could tell. There was a willingness to the surrounding mana, Aleem noticed. An eagerness to it. As though it were exhilarated about something she was doing.

ALERT

[Mana Sense] has levelled up!

[Mana Sense] Level 2

Perplexing timing, but whatever.

“Here’s an idea,” Wulry said, leisurely. “Why don’t you zealous folk get off your horses so we can kill you without wounding those beautiful animals? You’ve worked them so hard, can’t have them dying pointlessly.”

“You have faced me before in larger numbers,” the giantess said, unimpressed, “and you failed. You will fail again. I cannot be stopped. I will not be stopped. So step out of my way. This matter does not concern you, and this is the last time I will show you mercy.”

At her last sentence, the two men in her party trained evil-looking crossbows at Wulry and co. Those things might as well have been mini-trebuchets.

Aleem was doubting the safety offered by the wagon and Wulry’s hastily erected wards now. “Serend,” Aleem hissed from the window. “Serend.”

“Kinda busy here,” she sang to him through clenched teeth.

“You need to tell Wulry that the young woman at the back of the group is endued.”

“What?” Hetti squawked, turning fractionally.

“I said the young—”

“We can all hear you, lad,” Wulry called back, without taking his eyes off the giantess. He pointed his jolter at her and said, “Come on, Biggie. Let’s settle this without bringing harm to the animals.”

“I gave you the chance to flee,” the giantess said with overbearing gravitas, but she began to get off her horse. “We will all dismount and then I will show you the might of the Corror.”

Her companions looked at her, trepidation stealing over the face of the younger man with a goatee. He hissed some unintelligible syllables at her in a pleading tone.

She dismissed him harshly, and the fellow seemed to reel backwards from whatever she’d just said. She repeated it again to them and pointed forcefully at Wulry’s group. The older crossbowman shook his head insistently and remained on his horse, but Sheilu and Goatee got off theirs.

“Excellent,” Wulry purred with such resonant satisfaction it might have lulled a baby to sleep.

The world slowed to a crawl, and everything happened all at once.

Serend strummed a lasting note on her shlöck. All four horses, including the one with the old crossbowman, turned ninety degrees and cantered off.

The giantess took one very powerful and plodding step forward. She closed the distance between the groups, much faster than anyone her mass should have been able to. She lifted her glaive.

Wulry’s right arm blurred upwards, riding a deafening boom, and the left side of Goatee’s head popped like a rotten tomato.

The mounted elderly crossbowman twisted back with great dexterity and released two arrows.

R’shai swatted the first, but the second sailed over her head, pierced through the top of Wulry’s ward and slammed into the top of the wagon.

Hetti put an arrow of her own straight through the man’s neck.

Aleem began to shout as the wagon shook from the impact of being shot.

Sheilu had barely pulled out her sword from her scabbard. She looked lost.

Serend added another note to the previous one.

The giantess brought her glaive down on R’shai’s head.

Wulry’s arm blurred once more, hand-cannon roaring, and the armour around the giantess’s kneecap shattered in a spray of sparks and blood.

R’shai bobbed aside, dodging the giantess’s interrupted overhead swing and checking the woman from behind.

Hetti trained her arrow at Sheilu and shouted, “Don’t you fucking move.”

Aleem shouted some more.

Serend was playing a combination of frilly notes now. The giantess fell on her face. Wulry stumbled to his knees. R’shai placed a foot on the giantess’s backplate and began clanging away at the woman’s injured knee.

Hetti shot an arrow into Sheilu’s shoulder just as the younger woman made to jump to her companion’s aid. “I said,” she nocked another arrow faster than Aleem could blink. “Don’t. Fucking. Move. Hey! Did you hear what I said? Next one goes through your neck like your friend over there.” Sheilu held her shoulder, staggering like a drunkard.

“Wait!” Aleem’s heart was pounding in his chest and his breath was short. Clanging, clanging, clanging. He scrambled away from the window and clambered out of the vehicle’s door.

“R’shai, wait!” Aleem called as he hurried to the other side of the wagon. Serend’s music cut off abruptly.

“The fuck are you doing outside the wagon?” Hetti demanded, looking between him and her already wounded target.

“Don’t kill her,” Aleem said to R’shai, his mind whirling.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Hetti moaned.

R’shai had stopped her hacking, and she was frowning at him.

Wulry was sitting on the floor, panting. His right arm looked messed up. “What part of ‘stay put’ didn’t you understand?”

The place smelled like heated ammonia. Aleem saw Goatee’s blown head, mashed sludge connected to shoulders by a thin strip of mangled redness. He threw up. He wiped his mouth and made to talk, but was interrupted by a dry heave.

Sheilu fell on her butt, clutching her punctured shoulder.

“She’s going to blow herself up,” Aleem wheezed out. “If you kill her, she’ll explode.”

Hetti glanced at the dead males. “Why didn’t the others do that?”

“It’s ... complicated,” Aleem said, thinking his head. He didn’t have the presence of mind to explain how Corror Bonds worked. He filled his air with lungs. “We’re not going to kill you,” he said to the woman. She was muttering under her breath and in the silence of the night, her fevered words could be heard by all.

“Let nothing hold me down. Let nothing keep me back. Release the chains… release the chains that bind… that bind me… release—”

Aleem staggered backwards. “We need to leave. We need to leave now.”

“Twenty-two,” Serend began, “you—”

“It’s an invocation!” Aleem said desperately. “We can’t stay.”

R’shai hopped over to Wulry and picked him up as easily as one might lift a child. She, Serend and Hetti rushed for the wagon.

“You too,” Aleem called back to Sheilu. “You don’t want to stick around for whatever she’s doing.”

They helped Wulry into the cabin and immediately set off. Hetti drove the horses a little harder than she had all night.

Wulry had a glim-stone glowing inside the wagon, and Aleem tried not to feel a bit of resentment at that. The man was wrapping his arm in a bandage that seemed to have inscriptions on it. He’d politely refused Serend’s assistance.

Aleem kept glancing at Serend’s window, though it wouldn’t have been possible to see the remains of their assailants from it.

He joggled his knee as the wagon moved farther and farther away from the giantess. Hopefully, Sheilu had taken his advice. It wasn’t until ten minutes into their trip that Wulry and Serend perked up.

Wulry whistled. “Good thing we left when we did. She popped herself just now.”

Aleem sagged in his seat. That was more than enough excitement for one night. A dreamless, bone-weary slumber took hold of him, and he was too exhausted to resist.

When next he woke, it was the middle of the day, and they had just arrived at Lons Encampment.