An instant before I splattered on the cobblestones, a thought occurred to me. If I kept a few points of mana in reserve, I could survive a jump from any height. I could skydive without a parachute. I just needed to turn to smoke a moment before impact, and boom.

Or not boom.

Instead of splattering, I’d dissolve into smoke and shed my momentum. Then I’d re-form, a foot above the ground. Or at least much closer to the ground. Which would’ve been a great realization before I’d started falling. Except now I was out of mana, and about to hit the cobblestones from a height that might kill a crachen, which meant--

Princess said in my mind, and nudged me to spend my final point on Spirit.

I hadn’t known she could do that. Nudge me like that. Of course, I also hadn’t remembered that I retained a final free point. I thought I’d spent them all--I’d forgotten about that point from my level up. Princess’s--extremely impolite!--meddling raised my Spirit to twelve and a flick of thought updated me.

Mana: 1/24

Not enough. Not enough! I needed two or three points to turn into smoke in the first place, and then another point per second to stay that way. However, with the ground rising to crush me to death, I tried anyway. I was flexible like that.

I threw everything into the attempt--and for a single heartbeat, I dissolved into vapor. Apparently as my level increased, the prerequisites to trigger my gem decreased.

So for half of a heartbeat, I turned to smoke.

Which halted my velocity completely. Then I returned to my body and plunged face-down onto the cobbles. Well, I only ‘plunged’ about six inches. Hell, it felt like belly-flopping onto a feather mattress.

I said, as I rose to my feet.

She didn’t answer, exhausted from the effort of nudging me.

The headache started a moment later. Which Oksar had told me was called a mana headache, which happened when you spent all your mana and kept digging for more. Still, that was better than splattering. And I hadn’t even made any noise when I’d fallen.

So I simply winced at the stabbing pain in my head and headed for the side gate.

My webtouch tingled, but not with alarm. It was just showing me the proximity of others. A moment later, I fell in behind a group of civilian laborers or clerks leaving the compound. Apparently that big building was more than a prison. Well, obviously. There was no reason the Commander and her son and lieutenants would be hanging around in a prison. Or would be dining there, on a lovely patio with a view.

The towered building could’ve been the central Six Coves administration building, established a little ways from the town itself, for a safe buffer. A few of the surrounding buildings looked like barracks or housing, and that’s where the civilians headed. As for me, I kept strolling along, unhurried, trying to ignore my headache. Separating from the crowd, leaving the administration complex. Turning a corner, ambling along a quiet block.

Turning another corner.

Five minutes later, my head stopped pounding and I had to resist the urge to laugh out loud.

“We did it,” I told Princess aloud. “We’re out.”

Shadows lengthened in the streets around me while, far above, the rays of the setting sun caught the highest points of the city ruins, making them glow with spotlight illumination. I paused at a wide junction and craned my neck upward like a country bumpkin visiting the city for the first time.

Crumbling stone archways and leafy walls shone in the orange light above me. Birds darted above the foliage, hunting insects, and the scent of flowering bushes swirled down, perfuming the air.

Also, I’d just fallen a hundred feet and survived. I’d escaped a cell, I’d escaped a prison. I was goddamn Batman.

Of course, I still needed to rescue Erdinand. Which meant ... what? In the morning, they’d notice that I’d escaped. They’d search for me, first in the city and then in the surrounding countryside. Hm. Maybe I could encourage them to search the countryside immediately, by stealing a horse or ... or something to make them think I’d left. Yeah, then I’d lay low for a few days, while gathering tools and doing recon. And regaining my mana.

And finally, I’d rescue Erd.

Maybe if I started a few fires as distractions, his guards wouldn’t notice me smashing the wall with a sledgehammer. I could bring a sledgehammer for Erd, too, given the size of my domain. Hm. I could bring anything. An eight-hundred pound battering ram? Sure, why not? Except the two of us couldn’t use a battering ram. So I had to figure out what exactly I needed ... and then buy or steal it.

Well, and I also needed to lay low.

I ambled through the empty streets toward the bustling section of Ryetown proper. I’d spend the night among people, gathering information and supplies. Then by dawn, I’d know if I should hide in the empty city or in the populated area. Following a boulevard, I passed a few farms or homesteads built inside ruined buildings between the Six Coves section and the town. An old infenti woman digging roots from her garden scowled at me. A bunch of children who lived in a half-collapsed pagoda vanished behind a chicken coop when they saw me.

I thought.

Princess said.

she said.

she said.

I snorted and left the boulevard for a smaller street, then for an alley between crumbling walls. I blipped my uniform jacket into my domain and tried popping my old clothes straight onto my body. Didn’t work. I could undress in an instant, but when I attempted to put a shirt on myself directly from my domain, it ended up draped on my shoulder or in my arms.

I’d washed and mended the clothes that I’d taken from Oksar, of course, but they were still pretty rough. And the leggings were unusable. So I kept wearing the stolen trousers beneath his shirt. I strapped the three belts around the trousers, which make them look less like a uniform and more like ranger-wear. Well, or ranger pajamas. Except I was human, dammit, so if I wore it that meant it was fashionable.

I lost the boots, too, because they looked military and my hardened soles didn’t mind the cold or the pebbles. Then I bamfed Oksar’s pack into my hands, so I’d look like I was ... I didn’t know. Shopping or something, running errands with a bag.

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And when I passed an infenti family pushing a cart along the alley, they didn’t glower or hide. They kept talking about dinner. Except for the littlest one, who pointed at me and squeaked, “Wook! Wook!”

The mother tsked. “It’s not nice to point, sweetness.”

“But no hawns!”

“He hasn’t seen many humans,” the father told me, with an apologetic smile.

“Not a problem.” I winked at the little kid. “Fingers crossed, maybe I’ll grow horns soon.”

The kid nodded solemnly, and after we separated I heard the older kid asking, “Fingers crossed? What does that mean?”

“Probably a crafting thing,” the mother said.

Oh. I guess that was a pretty Earth-only saying. I was a little surprised that whatever ability had given me fluency in this foreign language didn’t automatically translate all idioms, though. Maybe if they could mean something else, the seamless translation rendered them literally?

Well. That wasn’t my biggest issue at the moment.

I followed the alley to a street that was lined with stores. There was a butcher, a woodcrafter, a bunch of shops I couldn’t identify. One vendor sold barrels, and paintings on slatted bamboo. Another sold herbs--for cooking or medicine, or maybe both.

That street fell quiet a few blocks farther along ... then got busier again. I walked through the twilight and realized that not only wasn’t Ryetown a podunk town of rye-growers, but it wasn’t even a town. There were at least four town-like areas on the fringes of the ruins, like points on the circumference of a circle, equidistant from the center of the ancient city. If that was even a circumference. Maybe I meant perimeter or radius. Geometry wasn’t my subject.

Ten minutes later, I started looping back--afraid to get too far from Erdinand. I didn’t want to lose the entire prison. I stepped aside for a woman herding a bunch of goats deeper into the city ... and I spotted a cobbler.

At least, the sign showed a pair of shoes, and there were a few dusty pairs of boots in the window. I’d been feeling a conspicuous, walking around barefoot, and ‘conspicuous’ was a bad thing for an escaped prisoner.

As I paused there, a bent-backed old infenti woman in a leather apron stepped from the shop door.

“Closing up?” I asked her.

“Ga! Didn’t see you skulking there. What that? Closing up? You looking for a shoe?”

“Two, preferably,” I told her.

She peered at my bare feet. “Naked as a toad. You got any money?”

“A little.”

She looked up at me. “Any foamies or only gels?”

“Foams, if I see something I like.”

“Ga! Then I guess I ain’t closing yet.”

“Though, uh... do you take trade?”

She looked at my feet again. “Come, come, barefoot boy. Don’t haggle on the street.”

Her shop was like the opposite of the TARDIS: weirdly smaller on the inside. It was cramped and narrow and dark, with shelves of hides and nails and ... well, assorted shoemaking equipment. There was an open crate overflowing with shoes, too, a big messy heap of them.

“Sit there,” she told me, pointing to the crate. “Let me see those feet.”

So I balanced my ass on the edge of the crate and showed her.

“Humans! Do you even know what your little toe is good for?”

“Uh, no. What?”

“Ga! How should I know, if you don’t? Useless little toes! Cut them off, that’s what I say.”

“I’ll take that under consideration.”

“Patronizing an old woman ...” she muttered. “Now! Trade. How about them trousers?”

“What?” I patted my pants. “Uh, I’m kind of using these.”

“So what you going to trade?”

My domain contained a complete Sixer uniform, but revealing that struck me as unwise. So I reached into my pack and bamfed the bullseye lantern into my hand. With my Arachrys senses, I didn’t need much light, and a lantern would probably just to give my location away. But mostly, spending beads on shoes instead of combining them later for a pearl bead’s healing ability struck me as lethally stupid.

“This,” I said, pulling out the lantern.

She wrinkled her nose. “Do I look like a pawn shop?”

“You barely look like a cobbler’s.”

“Stupid boy. It’s a deal!” She snatched the lantern from me. “Leather boots, two-layer soles, one hardened. You pick them up the day after tomorrow.”

“Uh, I could use a pair right now. ”

“For a rush job, I charge more--and you choose from the crate.”

“What do you charge?”

“Ga! I give you no change from the lantern.” She waggled her fingers at me. “Shoo. Shoo! I find you shoe. Shoo!”

After I stood, she rummaged around in crate, muttering to herself.

“You wait!” she said, straightening. “Another crate in back.”

She waddled through a crooked door that I’d thought was a shadow, and I waited. And waited. And, in fact, I waited long enough that I started getting nervous about waiting.

Then she called from the back, “Almost done! You stop fidgeting.”

So I waited a little more. I kept fidgeting, though. She wasn’t the boss of me.

“Here,” she said, emerging from the crooked door. “Take! I stretched for your extra toes.”

She thrust a pair of leather shoes at me. Plain brown leather with a strap across the top. To my surprise, when I fastened the straps they felt snug and comfortable.

“They fit,” I said.

“Oh, the old infenti knows her shoes. You think only humans can craft? Now go! No refunds. You see the lantern you traded?”

I looked around, but didn’t. “Uh, no.”

“Because I took it away already!” she told me, triumphantly. “It’s mine now!”

“Right, that was the deal.”

“You steal another one like that from the Sixers?” she said, her eyes suddenly gleaming. “You bring it here to sell to me!”

“I, uh, um ..” I said, in my clever way, my heart suddenly pounding.

“Stealing from the Sixers? That is good. Very good, stupid boy.”

“Right. Uh, thanks!”

I pushed from the shop, then darted into the first alley I spotted. I crouched there, ready to summon my hatchets, my webtouch senses alert for any sign of pursuit. The last thing I needed was to get fingered for theft. How was I supposed to know a lantern was so identifiable?

I stayed there for too long, probably. I didn’t hear the tromp of boots or the squeak of sword belts, though. No soldiers chased me. The only thing that happened was two young infenti girls walking hand-in-hand giggled at the weird human lurking in an alley.

After my pulse settled down, I explored the back streets for a while. I spent a few gels to buy a meat pie from a vendor. It was bland and gooey, so I decided against trying the ‘charred sheep jelly.’

At least my new shoes felt good.

Then I spent another hour wandering around. I worried that I was wasting my time, even though I was keeping my eyes--and other sense--open for any hidey-holes where I could live unseen. I was checking for big empty ruins, cramped nooks and crannies. I took note of a few, but mostly I just strolled. Enjoying the hustle and bustle of the town. After a while, I realized that I’d needed to check in with normal life. I wasn’t some kind of adventure-machine who laughed at danger and had the emotional depth of a goldfish. I couldn’t leap from a pit of crocodiles then race across a rope bridge without pause. Not even the ‘new’ me. I still need a little quiet time to center myself, to stay in touch with my feelings.

I realized how ‘Californian’ that sounded, but I didn’t care. I needed to decompress. Even Batman chills in the cave after after a big day of prison breaks. So I strolled and gawked and enjoyed exploring the various linked sections of Ryetown, watching ordinary people live ordinary lives, even if most of those ordinary people were devil-cosplayers, along with a few oversized elephant-kin.

There weren’t many crachen or humans--and I didn’t see a single traguld--but one thing I did notice was the guardhouses. Every so often a building had been gutted by the Six Coves forces and turned into a reinforced mini-fortress. Well, or just a secure stone house. The rooftop soldiers I’d spotted earlier were usually on the tops of those buildings, too.

I chose one at random, then hunkered down in the doorway of a closed shop across the street. My idea was to perform some kind of surveillance, but what did I know about surveillance? Still, I watched the guardhouse for a while. I didn’t learn much. There was a stables in the back--or the front, the side facing the fields that surrounded the town. There were probably ten or so soldiers inside, from what I could tell, as well as three guarding the entrance.

I considered a few options while twilight turned to night. The streets started emptying, which wasn’t great news for me. Then a bell rang somewhere, and the remaining people starting bustling along faster. Shit. That must’ve been the first warning for a curfew.

I needed to get off the streets. I peeked inside the close shop behind me with smoky fingers, and realized that it wasn’t merely shut for the day but was completely empty.

Princess sleepily said.

I told her.

Anyway, I turned to smoke, poured myself inside, then resolidified.

Mana: 22/24

Hm. That was getting easier. More efficient. And so, to celebrate the advancement of my abilities, I folded my blankets into pillow and lay on the shop floor. I needed to rest if I wanted to stay sharp. I wriggled a few times, trying to get comfortable, then fell asleep thinking about a toothbrush and toothpaste. I didn’t know if I needed them with my Fortitude so high, but I wanted them. And instead of planning a prison break, I thought about dental hygiene until sleep took ...

I snapped awake, my pulse speeding, frightened that I’d slept for too long. I scrambled to the door of the abandoned shop and checked outside. Then I exhaled in relief. It was still dark. Okay, good. I blipped my blankets into my domain and took care of some business in the corner of the store--don’t judge me--and then I waited, peering through a crack between the door and the wall.

I’d woken too early, but I was afraid to fall asleep again.

Patrols of soldiers passed the store a few times. Not on any regular schedule, but they never grouped too closely together. So two minutes after a patrol passed, I wafted from the shop into the exterior doorway. I listened with my ears and my webtouched senses. Neither would warn me if anyone was watching--civilians in windows, soldiers on rooftops--but at least I knew that nobody was nearby.

Then I trotted across the street and pressed myself to the side of the guardhouse.