My cell in the basement of the big building was about the size of a closet, with three walls of solid stone and one wall of thick iron bars. An ollie guard threw me inside and locked the door.

I told Princess.

She sent me a sleepy interrogative.

She sent me a sleepy acceptance.

I wanted to check my wrist for my Princess bracelet. Er, although I didn’t want call it my ‘Princess bracelet’ ever again. My, uh, ‘spider bracelet.’ Yeah, I wanted to check my wrist for my spider blanket, because the soldiers had stripped everything else off me, and left me in a threadbare tunic. I didn’t understand how they’d missed such a colorful bracelet, yet while I still felt Princess in my mind, I couldn’t even see the bracelet because my wrists were still bound behind me.

At least those enclosing gauntlets were gone.

So what I did was, I blipped my final pearl bead onto the ground, then slurped it from between the bits of dirty straw. Then I lay there wondering if I should use my free points. I could add them to Spirit, like Princess had suggested, but I sort of wanted to add them to Agility. That’d been my biggest weakness when I’d fought the infenti twin.

“Hey, Erdinand?” I called, because I’d seen them drag him past me, maybe to another cell.

He didn’t answer. Probably still asleep. Lucky lobster. So I decided to stay put, waiting for him to heal--and waiting for me to heal, too.

I managed to doze off for a while before the jangle of keys woke me. An ollie guard opened the door and two infenti crossbowers stood behind him, pointing their weapons at me. I eyed them for a second before an elderly human man stepped inside my cell.

“Here, Alex,” he said, “you must be thirsty.”

“Also bored,” I said.

“Perhaps I can help with both problems,” the old man told me, and lifted a cup of water to my parched lips.

I drank.

“My name is Philomel,” he told me. “I understand that you can summon axes?”

“One more sip and I’ll tell you all my secrets.”

The old man gave me another sip.

“Yeah, two axes.”

“The commander locked them in her vault ...” he prompted.

“No she didn’t,” I said, because I’d already felt them blip back into my domain. It was just like that huge ash-and-ember shade had told me in the tombyard: if I was separated from my hatchets, they’d return after a while.

“Will you show me?” he asked.

“Sure, if you untie me.”

“Do you see all these wrinkles, all this white hair?”

I snorted. “Your point being that you don’t take stupid risks with prisoners locked in cells?”

“Indeed.”

“Mm. what’s your name again?”

“Philomel.”

“And you don’t go by Phil? Huh.”

“I’ll wait outside, if you don’t mind, while you gather your hatchets.”

Philomel stepped out of my cell and the ollie guard locked me in. Then the old man told me to turn around, and said a few words to the guard, who hefted a huge spear in front of himself--and slashed at me between the bars. The tip sliced through my bonds. I spent a minute untying the knots and rubbing my ankles and wrists--and realized what had happened with my spider bracelet.

It had changed shape, texture, and size. Just like Chirotry, the shape-changing spider I’d fought in the tombyard. Instead of a bracelet, a thick rope of scar tissue now surrounded my wrist.

I said to Princess.

She sent me a self-satisfied murmur.

The ollie pointed his spear at me from behind his shield. The infenti crossbowers aimed at me from opposite sides of the room outside my cell. And old Phil said, “Now, if you’d be so kind.”

I cracked my neck, then summoned my hatchets.

“Oh, well done!” Philomel said. “I understand you throw them and retrieve them?”

“Not all that accurately.”

“Still, in the interest of experimentation, perhaps you might demonstrate?”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“You want me to help you, so you’ll learn more about how to rip my gem out of my head?”

“Well, ‘rip’ is hardly the word I’d use,” he said. “But yes. Still, the more I know, the less unpleasant the process will be for you. So in some ways, our interests coincide.”

“Except for the bit about me ending up dead?”

“Yes, that is where they rather ...” he considered. “Diverge.”

“And here we’re getting along so well.”

He smiled. “Can you apply your power to any weapon?”

“Sure thing, Phil,” I lied, because why not? “Well, weapons of this size or smaller.”

“So you effectively cannot be disarmed.”

“Not for long.”

“And your weapons’ quality is improved, as well.” He stroked his chin. “Apparently you killed a rather notorious ollie with a single blow. Curious. Will you toss an axe gently into the air, and then recall it to yourself?”

“No problem.” I lifted a hatchet into a few inches. “As long as you tell me how the crachen is doing.”

“He is recovering extremely well. The soldiers didn’t beat him nearly as energetically as they claimed. And Lord Usim ... is taking an interest.”

“Yeah?”

Old Phil considered me for a moment, then nodded. “His lordship claims that the crachen was merely obeying his personal orders. And the soldiers’s statements seem to support that.”

“Oh. So what’re they going to do with him, then?”

“There’s some disagreement about that,” Phil said. “Some officers are asking for execution, others for servitude.”

“But Usim is trying to help?”

“Lord Usim,” he corrected me. “And speaking of crachen ... When you bonded with your gem ... well! Judging from the marks left on your skin from your chains, you are far, far thicker-skinned than most of our race.”

“Huh. You can tell from that?”

“I am a man of logic and deduction.” Phil peered at my wrists. “In fact, I’d estimate that your skin is very close to the average crachen toughness.”

That was exactly the same thing that Big Sid had told me. I almost said, “Yeah, my toughness is fifteen,” just to fuck with him, but instead I barked a sudden laugh.

Because holy crap, I’d just realized something. Okay. My Toughness score was currently fifteen. Which was superhuman, but only average for a crachen. Not as good as a crachen warrior, but average for your random crachen baker or farmer or groom. Now, my Design had started fifteen. And I wasn’t good at design... relative to other humans. I was average for a human.

Still better than non-humans, though.

When I’d come here, my strength had been six, even though I was at least average strength for a human. However, I was apparently a little weaker than the average infenti and pathetically weak for an ollie. So maybe my attributes were graded according to the average abilities of the race with the best natural aptitude in that specific thing? Fortitude was graded against crachen, strength against ollies, and so on.

Whoa, that almost made sense!

IMPROMPTU QUEST: Discover a non-obvious element of your status.

SUCCESS: Look at you, connecting the dots!

REWARD: Plus one to your Support Boon.

Great! What a wonderful reward. I’m so grateful. Except, y’know what the hell did my support boon actually do?

SUPPORT: At level one, Support provides one ‘free point’ per level and unlocks one gem ability or facet per tier. At level two, Support also provides brief and frankly-insufficient explanations of Support abilities, such as this one.

What? What? Support was chatting to me? Now I had two voices talking in my head? A drowsy spider princess and a ... a system helpline? ‘Brief and frankly-insufficient?’ Once again, I wondered what the fuck was going on with the constant editorialization.

“Apparently,” Old Phil said, pulling my focus from my realization, “you very nearly defeated an elite guard in single combat.”

“I’m gemmed--I should’ve axed them both without breaking a sweat.”

Phil cocked his head. “The full extent of a gem’s gifts often doesn’t manifest for several months, in humans. So I’d expect you to continue to see gains ... if you were keeping the gem. Your strength and speed increased, but mostly your durability?”

“Yeah. So what’re you, a surgeon who dissects people for gems?”

“I like to think that I primarily dissect them for knowledge,” he told me.

“You enjoy your work?” I asked.

“There are unfortunate aspects, but overall, I confess that I find it fascinating.”

I considered him. “I can’t tell if you’re creepy or the subject is creepy.”

“Perhaps the situation manifests creepiness.”

“Now you sound like the princess I know,” I told him, and threw a hatchet at a crossbowman.

The ollie shifted to block with his shield, which moved him out of position--exactly as I’d hoped. I immediately threw my other hatchet at Philomel, figuring that killing the surgeon might buy me some time to find Erdinand. I recalled the first hatchet an instant before it impacted the ollie’s shield, but the old man dodged the second hatchet freakishly quickly, so just I stood there like an idiot with the first hatchet back in my hand.

“Goddamn,” I said, frowning at him. “Is everyone gemmed?”

“As far as I’m aware, there are no more than five gifted in Ryetown, excluding yourself.”

“But you are.”

“I am not.” He touched an embossed leather bracelet on his wrist. “My reflexes are enhanced by a blackbead.”

Oh. Huh. Apparently those did more than establish campfire wards. And maybe when they were enchanted they were called ‘blackbeads’ instead of black beads? A pretty subtle difference. Oksar had mentioned something about that, but I’d thought he’d been pulling my leg.

“As far as I’m aware,” Philomel continued. “You are the only human gifted on Waldhill Island. Gemmed of our race are exceedingly rare. However, successfully removing a gem requires enhanced speed--so that one might act between the moment of death and the departure of the spirit--and a delicate surgical touch. The former is why I was offered my blackbead. The latter, of course, is not entirely uncommon among humans.”

“Yeah,” I said, wondering how else I could kill him.

Which he apparently read on my face. “If I can’t perform the procedure, Alex, they’ll still cut you open in an attempt to extract your gem. They’ll simply have a lower chance of success.”

“Oh. Damn. So killing you won’t make all my problems go away?”

“Tragically,” he said with a faint smile, “the only person whose problems will be solved by my death is myself.”

Huh. Part of me almost liked the old guy. Well, considering he was an insane vivisectionist who wanted to drill into my skull. At least, I found him interesting--and friendly in a creepy way. Sadly, he was also smart enough to realize that he needed to board up my cell so I couldn’t hurl an endless stream of hatchets through the bars at passing guards.

The ollie wanted to come in and ‘subdue’ me first. I pretended that the idea frightened me, because that sounded like fun, but Old Phil didn’t fall for that, either. Not that it would’ve helped me much even if I’d beaten the ollie; I still couldn’t leave without Erdinand.

Well, unless the alternative was getting dissected, in which case I’d have to come back for him.

“So what now?” I asked, as guards started lugging thick wooden boards into the room outside my cell.

“Preparations,” Philomel told me. “We shall meet again tomorrow.”

“Bring honeydew candy,” I told him.

The guards clamped the boards to the bars of my cell, until only trickles of torchlight seeped in through the cracks.

Fine with me. I could use some time alone.