We made our way back to Alewife with the utmost haste that our borrowed coach could manage. The previously friendly wagoneer pushed the team of draft horses as fast as they were willing to go, and then some more. They neighed in protest, and he only pushed them further. The closer we got the worse the smoke on the horizon made me feel. There was no doubt in my mind that the source of the blaze was at Alewife's manor. There wasn't anything else for it to be in the isolated region outlying Lille.

The midday sky had gone black with soot as we neared. There was no wind to shift around the smog so it just sat there smothering the lands surrounding Alewife like a blanket that was so warm it'd become uncomfortable. It was difficult to breathe, the dirtied air scratched at your lungs as it went down. Once we reached somewhere around a fourth of a mile away from the walls of the grounds, Tobias spoke up.

"Ghul, we should stop here," I gave him an uncertain look. His suggestion was a little daft, as the actual entrance to Alewife was a ways down the road. "I'll explain it in a second. Driver," he shouted and banged against the roof. "We need to get off now!"

He used a voice that I'd never heard from him before. It was low and powerful, like the crack of a whip. It was the voice of someone trained to speak at an imperial court. The coach ground to a halt a few seconds after. We both climbed out, hopping unsteadily onto the dirt of the road.

"Get out of here! Tell Lille that Alewife has been put to flame!"

Tobias commanded the man at the reins, who then left in a hurry, no doubt grateful to get out of the trip into what was looking to be an inferno. Once he'd gone, I asked Tobias what in Zeus' name he had in mind.

"Why'd we get out, Toby? It seems like time is an important factor here!" My tone was sharper than I'd intended.

"Think about it, Ghul" He replied. "We have no idea if the source of whatever destruction that caused the smoke is friend or foe. The very worst thing we could do would be to ride up in an oversized travel carriage and announce our arrival to an unknown assailant."

I swallowed hard and nodded. His logic was sound. That was a cold hard dose of reality that I was totally unprepared for. I cursed my naivety. What if Alewife burning wasn't an accident, but rather an organized attack? Earlier in the week, Delta had mentioned that the Empire of New Rome was on the brink of war. He'd dismissed it out of hand as both unlikely and premature, and I'd believed him. He seemed like an authority on such matters. Now, a little seed of doubt had settled into the back of my mind. It whispered about the worst possible outcome.

"How do you think we should approach?" I asked him. "Are you capable of climbing the boundary wall?"

The well-kept brick boundary wall that encircled the compound of Alewife was just barely taller than me. I wouldn't be surprised if any other man found it a difficult object to get past. Tobias shook his head.

"You might need to lift me. Let's go."

We ran for the wall. As expected, he needed my help to boost him over its height. Using my hand as a makeshift stepping stool, he peered over. Tobias let out an alarmed gasp.

"The entire orchard has been set alight. I can't see the house through the haze. We'll need to get closer to know anything, but, the coast is clear"

I grunted in acknowledgment.

"Okay, are you ready to go over?"

Tobias nodded. With a quick force of exertion, I brought the other man up with my hands and he slung his arms over the bulwark, muscling his way up it and down onto the other side. I could hear him stumble and curse as he landed. I followed shortly behind him, landing gracefully on both feet in the Orchards of Alewife.

Or, what had once been the Orchards of Alewife. I'd been warned about what had happened to them but was still taken aback when I saw it for myself. They'd been reduced to a scorched waste. The apple trees closest to the wall had been spared the brunt of the destruction, but, everything else that was further in had not been so lucky. The next orderly row of fruit-bearing trees had been turned into ugly spikes of charred wood sticking out of the dirt. The canopies had entirely burnt away, leaving the trunks as all that remained. Smoke drifted lazily off of them.

They must've started burning soon after Tobias and I left. No natural fire that I'd ever heard about burnt wood that quickly. Especially not in an area as wet as the coast of Mane, where there was almost constantly a damp feeling to the breeze.

System-enhanced fire, on the other hand, was a different matter entirely. I'd heard rumors about the capabilities of [Everburn], a System granted ability that gave the User the ability to manipulate fire. It'd been mentioned in one of Delta's lectures when he'd harped on about how rare elemental manipulation abilities were. They were often thought to be reserved for Gods.

The ground was cracked and split. it reminded me of mud after a long day in the summer sun.

"What could've done this?" Tobias asked. "Everything's so dry. It's like something sucked the life out of the place."

"I'm not sure," I replied. "Let's just hope they haven't decided to stick around."

I led the way through the Orchards to where I thought the house stood. Despite the large land area of the grounds, I was generally familiar with them due to the physical conditioning I'd done every morning with the garrison. That said, the landscape had changed quite a lot compared to my morning runs. There was no sign of anyone within the Orchard. We didn't come across anything, living or dead, as we made our way through the destroyed trees. It wasn't clear to me if that was a good thing. The staff of the grounds was sizable, and with such widespread desolation, I would've expected at least one body. There were none. I hoped that'd stay true.

The trip to the house took only a handful of extra minutes due to the now rough, confusing terrain. My shoddy navigation sufficed. The first sign of life came as the manor came into view, and it wasn't what either of us had been expecting.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

A short, heavily muscled man was zipping through the air around the still-roaring flames of the house's burning frame. My stomach sank. The building was entirely engulfed. There'd be no saving it.

I recognized the man, just like I recognized the ability he used. Prospero was [Windstepping] around the bonfire, every few seconds zooming in to pull someone out of the ruined building. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that Prospero's ability had evolved past [Windstep]. With the amount of time he was spending in the air, it looked like it could be [Flight]. When he pulled out yet another person, I couldn't help but wonder how many were still trapped inside.

"That's one of Grady's lieutenants," I told Tobias. "The one who climbed onto the back of the Spineback, Prospero."

He let out a sigh of relief.

"That's good. I'm glad he's on our side. I don't think I could outrun someone capable of [Flight]."

[Flight] was one of the System's blessings that every child wished they had. It was also heavily dependent on the build of the User, preferring those of smaller stature. That meant it probably wasn't something I was ever going to be capable of.

Prospero did another lap of the house's perimeter, then settled to the ground after finding no one to assist. A grim expression had settled on his face, jaw clenched and eyes worried. Only a handful of stray souls were on the lawn in front of the house, most of whom looked like they'd been saved by Prospero, not even a fraction of the total population of the complex. Where was everyone?

Tobias and I approached the now grounded man from the tree line. We took it slow to try and observe our surroundings. Personally, I wasn't convinced that danger wasn't lurking around some nearby corner. Prospero was still watching the burning building and didn't make note of us walking up to him.

"What's going on? Where'd all this fire come from? Where is everyone?" I unleashed a torrent of questions at the man. If he was capable of answering just one, I'd be happy.

Standing next to him, I was taken aback by how small Prospero was. Physically, I was two of him. But I knew he could wipe the floor with me any day of the week. His beard was now stained black, dyed the color of ash. His face morphed into a snarl when he spoke.

"Fishbrain decided to make his presence known because we offended his benevolence somehow. Don't you worry, Grady's dealing with it."

He said the last part with obvious enough sarcasm that I picked up on it. It was a parody of the language often used to refer to the divine, but I didn't know who Fishbrain could've been. He couldn't have been Zeus. To refer to him like that would be sacrilege.

Tobias' words echoed my thoughts.

"Fishbrain? Who in the hells is that?"

He'd said hells, plural. That was odd. There wasn't any time for me to ask him about it.

Prospero scoffed and then spat on the ground nearby.

"The local sea god, if you can even call him that. Beluga."

My heart skipped a beat when my head registered what he said. Beluga was a deity known to be a special kind of spiteful. Sadistic, even. He sunk every boat that dared to stray too close to the water he considered 'his own.' Moreover, his cruelty had become something of a local legend.

"Beluga's here?" I asked. Something in my gut told me that I wouldn't like the answer.

"Indeed, at least until Grady can drive him off. The Centurion's been trying to keep their fighting away from the shore, where Beluga is most powerful, so that's made it difficult." Prospero reached down and plucked some brown-looking grass from his feet, and then motioned toward the ruined trees with it in his hands.

"We thought it'd keep him from the water. The annoying bastard simply drained it out of all the nearby foliage. Nasty trick, I've never seen an ability like it before. One spark was all it took to make a blaze."

Grady was standing toe-to-toe with the local aquatic boogieman. That was great, except for the fact that last I had checked Grady was no god.

"Where are they now?"

Prospero eyed me warily. "You should stay out of this one, lad. They're slinging abilities entirely outside of your weight class. Some of 'em would even give me pause."

He'd misunderstood my intentions entirely. I wanted positively nothing to do with that fight. I was asking so that I could take Tobias and try to run as far as I could in the opposite direction. I wasn't a coward- I just wasn't suicidal. There was no point in throwing myself into a battle so far beyond me that I wouldn't understand most of what was happening. To do so would be asking for death.

Unfortunately, Fortuna seemed determined to bring that fight to me.

The only warning we got of incoming danger was the sound of splintering wood in the distance. Seconds later, Grady's limp form flew through the flames of the manor and onto the ground nearby. His momentum carved a path through the dirt as he skidded against it. It was the first time I'd ever seen a person leave an impact trail.

The man that followed after him was a monster. Held aloft by a miniature cyclone of water and wind leading up from the ground, he clutched a bident in one hand and a glowing perfectly spherical orb of swirling water in the other. It looked like he was holding a miniature sea in his palm. Beluga wore armor of hundreds of interwoven, glossy segments. It was the color green and had fin-like appendages along both the arms and legs. It reminded me of the scales of a fish. It probably was the scales of a fish.

He hovered lazily atop his cyclone. He looked relaxed as he moved through the air toward Grady, his fallen prey. His nonchalance scared me more than the weapon he had in hand. I turned to Prospero and spoke urgently,

"Get Tobias out of here! He's Systemless!"

It was easy to forget how truly vulnerable my friend was. I didn't want Beluga to even look in his direction. In the world of the System, he was less than nothing.

"Aye."

Without missing a beat, Prospero grabbed the bookish boy and began [Windstepping] him away to safety. They made it out of sight in less time than it'd take me to count to five. Traveling through the air like that looked vomitous, but it beat dying.

That left me, the unconscious Grady, and the angry god Beluga alone on the yard in front of the burning building. I tried to make myself as small as possible. Unfortunately, that didn't do much because I was by far the biggest person there. Now probably wouldn't be the time to note I'd only continued growing into The Behemoth. Faced with no other options, I sent a quick prayer to Zeus that the other divine wouldn't notice me. I'd never been one for prayer, but I figured better late than never.

Beluga settled slowly onto the ground, his cyclone feeding through tendrils into the swirling orb in his hand until nothing remained. Somehow, it remained the same size. He stabbed his bident hard down into the earth and walked toward the prone Centurion. The ground crunched after every step beneath the weight of his armored form until he stood over Grady.

"Such a shame." He lifted the commander of Alewife with a single hand, the man who'd just proven himself my physical equal despite his unremarkable constitution, and squeezed his neck until it audibly snapped. He let go. Grady's body fell into an ugly heap at his feet. Dead. Then, he swiveled his neck, his gaze settling upon me.

"Will you be a challenge, young giant?"