In every fantasy movie I’d ever watched, the characters had deep, portentous, magical dreams. Sometimes they were terrifying, sometimes they were prophetic, but they always meant something.

Not me. In my own personal fantasy world, I dreamed that I was a bag of tortilla chips in a kitchen cabinet. Hanging out with the ramen packages and breakfast cereal and a tugboat. Like, a full-size tugboat. Which, in my dream, had seemed completely normal.

I was just chilling with my buddies ... until someone opened the cabinet door. A hand reached for me. A shadow fell across my precious cornmeal contents--and webtouch screamed a warning.

I woke with a start, and even before my eyes opened I felt the intruder reaching for my throat.

“Time to--“ they started.

Time to die? What the hell kind of thing was that to say? I rolled and blocked with one arm while summoning a hatchet into my other hand--

“Ga!” the old woman said, as my blade swung at her throat.

Chettur was alone, unarmed, and a millisecond from death. I couldn’t stop my momentum, so I blipped the hatchet into my domain and managed not to take her head off.

“Sorry,” I said.

She assaulted me with her cane. “Sorry? Sorry? Stupid boy! Time to wake up! You stupid boy!”

“Ow!” I said, hunching against her blows even though she couldn’t really hurt me. “Okay, okay! I said I’m sorry!”

“Stupid boy,” she grumbled, giving me one last whack. “You come out now.”

“Fine,” I grumbled.

“First wash your face.”

“I already wa--“

Chettur glared.

“Fine!” I said.

She left, muttering under her breath, and I washed my face with the now-cold water. Look at me, getting bullied by a little old lady who looked like Mrs. Butterworth with horns. This shit never happened to Bruce Wayne. Though I guess Spider-man had Aunt May.

Anyway I dried my face then stupidly left the bedroom without checking under the door. Which was why the sight that greeted me made me stop in surprise.

Six ollies stood in a line facing me. The were levels four to seven, but I’d figured out an odd fact about levels. If you put a level two cat in a cage with a level two mouse, that wasn’t a fair fight. That was a snack. So levels depended not only on skills but on species or base skills. Like, I was a Gemmed Level Seven Anomaly with Boons, which was badass. Still, those ollies outweighed me by an average of a hundred and fifty pounds each, and my back was literally against the wall.

Also, on second glance, one of them was level ten.

I almost called upon my gem, but the ollies moved before I did: they knelt and bowed their heads.

“Uh,” I said, and glanced toward Chettur.

She made shushing gesture, so I shut up.

“You saved our children,” the biggest ollie woman said, after a moment. “You risked your life to save them, with no expectation of gain or reward. You saved our families, you saved our futures, you defended them with the shield of your own flesh and blood and for that we declare ourselves in your debt.” She raised her head to look at me. “I, Maryne of Ryetown, acknowledge my debt.”

The man beside her raised his head. “I, Hollis of Ryetown, acknowledge my debt.”

The smallest-though-still-large woman raised her head. “I, Tansy of the upper village, acknowledge my debt--and I will repay with my service.”

A wrinkled old ollie man said, “I, Garhearten of the upper village, acknowledge my debt.”

The last two repeated the phrase, though I missed their names, then I stood there in awkward silence until Chettur elbowed me.

“Thank you,” I said. “But I, uh, I didn’t do much. I mean, the young woman--Alice?--and her friend, they did more than I ever--“

“Ga!” Chettur interrupted. “Stupid boy. Tell them that you hear what they say, then we eat.”

“Oh. Um. I hear you?”

“Then let’s eat and enjoy,” the biggest woman said, rising from her knees to tower over me. “My name is Maryne, if you didn’t catch it.”

“And I’m Hollis,” the man said.

“I’m Alex.”

“Alec,” Chettur said.

“I’m pretty sure it’s Alex,” I told her.

“Ga,” she said.

“Ignore her,” Tansy, the smallest one, told me. “She’s got shoe-leather where her personality should be.”

Chettur whacked her with her cane. “No respect!”

While they bickered, Hollis gestured to me, inviting me to join him. He was probably eight feet tall, though leaner than most male ollies I’d seen. He was the level ten, too. He was wearing an armored robe that cinched at the waist and fell in draped skirts to his massive boots. His gray hide gleamed with blue highlights in the flame of the torches, and one of his tusks was broken near his face.

He led me toward the main table, which was laid with a feast, then offered me the chair at the head. When I hesitated--not eager for the spotlight--the woman Maryne said, “How about the three of us sit in the corner?”

“I’d like that,” I told her.

She smiled at me. She was shorter but heavier than Hollis, with a long blue-black braid, and her skin also had a bluish tint. And even though she looked, y’know, like an elephant-person, she had a rough, blunt, honest face. She pulled out a seat for me in the corner, then took one herself and called for Tansy to bring us some plates.

When I sat in the ollie-scaled chair, my feet dangled like I was in a booster seat. Yet another thing that never happened to Batman.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“We do owe you everything, Alex, whatever you say.” Hollis took the chair opposite me. “The village sent a runner with the news. Twelve kids you saved. We’ve been looking for you and ...” He scratched his short trunk with blunt fingernails. “We owe you.”

“Well, I’m not the kind of guy to turn down gratitude,” I said. “But anyone would’ve done what I did, if they could. It’s no big deal. I’m just happy the kids got away.”

“What kind of guy are you, then?” Maryne asked, her deep voice gentle. “Who thinks that risking your life for strangers’ children is no big deal?”

“Average?”

“You’re gemmed,” Hollis said.

“Shush, Hollis,” she told him. “We’re talking about more important things than power.”

“Is there anything more important than power?“

“You’ll have to excuse my husband,” Maryne told me. “He’s still a little bitter from having lost the town to Six Coves.”

“I’m a lot bitter,” Hollis admitted. “But I’m mostly weak. I’m not powerful enough. If I had been, we wouldn’t have lost.”

“They outnumbered us five to one,” she said.

“Not pound-for-pound,” he grumbled. “The scrawny little infenti.”

She gave a gruff, elephantine laugh. “On a weight basis, they outnumbered us two to one. And they had gemmed, and professional soldiers. And mind your manners, calling people ‘scrawny.’”

“Alex doesn’t care,” he assured her. “You heard old Chettur nagging at him. She likes him. And she never likes anyone who takes themself too seriously.”

“Then she’s going to stop liking you soon,” Maryne told him. “You’re dry as a desert, these days.”

“Chettur likes me?” I said.

“Did she assail you with her cane and call you stupid?”

“Only a hundred times.”

“Then yes, she likes you.” Maryne leaned back as Tansy started placing plates on our table. “Tell us about yourself?”

“You first,” I said. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Start with the pickled radish.” Hollis pushed a bowl toward me. “Maryne’s family recipe.”

“I’m farmer,” Maryne told me. “And a mother. I was born here, in Ryetown. I’ve only been to the Port three times. I’m a small-town girl, I reckon. I met Hollis when he was stationed here. Strapping young lad, he was then. He’s ... well, he was a corporal in the Waldhill militia. Big city boy.”

Hollis’s trunk quivered when he snorted. “The Port’s still small potatoes. I spent a few years on Larkspur Island, and there they have proper cities.”

“How’d you get to another island and then back here again?” I asked.

“Where are you from?” he asked me. “That you don’t know that?”

“Oh. I was raised in a remote, uh, place. In solitude, pretty much. You’d be surprised, the things I don’t know.”

His bushy brows drew together. “Is that where you got the gem? In your remote place?”

“Yeah. After I was given the gem, I didn’t roam too far. For reasons you can imagine.”

“A gem is a mixed blessing,” Maryne said, with a nod. “People wanting to dig for treasure in your body.”

“I’d give my right arm for blessing like that,” Hollis told her. “Mixed or otherwise.“

A squeal sounded, a long, high-pitched shriek as Tansy dragged a chair across the room our table, along with another plate. She plopped the plate in front of Maryne then plopped herself on the chair and said, “Are we talking about his gem yet? Are we talking about killing Sixers? What’re we talking about”

“Alex is from off-island,” Maryne told her.

“Which we are talking about,” Hollis said. “Not you.”

“Well, I need to know. I’m his bodyguard now.”

“You’re not his bodyguard,” Hollis said.

“Am too. That’s my pledge.”

“You couldn’t even honor a pledge to stay quiet for five minutes.”

Tansy made a face and mimed locking her mouth shut.

“Tides help me,” he sighed, then told me, “I got back here from Larkspur Island because the navigators can calculate--roughly, and occasionally--when two islands are in orbit. That means they pass close a few times before floating away.”

“Ah,” I said.

“So you found yourself on Waldhill?” Maryne prompted me.

“Yeah, unexpectedly.” I shrugged. “I missed the bridge back. I stayed in the forest for a while, uh. Then I fell in with the wagons coming here to Ryetown.”

“With Wren,” Hollis snarled.

“Nah, she wasn’t there. Just her son Usim, and his ... I don’t know, governess? Kathina. And these infenti twins.”

“Jikon and Jikap.” He touched his broken tusk. “I’d like to meet them again.”

“Meet them one at a time, please,” Maryne said. “I’m not ready to be a widow.”

“Maybe me and Alex can meet them together.” He drank from a mug, then peered at me. “I hear you fought one of them to a standstill.”

“Well, he still stood,” I said, and didn’t mention that I’d been out of mana.

Maryne touched Hollis’s forearm. “First we eat. We’re celebrating Alex, not debriefing him.”

“She ruins all my fun,” he told me with a sigh.

I smiled and ate a bite of the pickled radish, which was spicy and sweet and delicious. I took a second helping, then Maryne started serving the other dishes: lamb and chickpea stew, a fermented milk drink, a stack of rye flatbreads, and lots of pickled veggies. We ate and chatted about her farm and the situation in town, then Tansy asked about her little sister, Alice. So I told the story, passing quickly over her friend being killed.

The mood soured anyway, for a moment.

At least until Maryne offered a cheese plate and asked me to continue. Hollis listened carefully and Tansy looked positively gleeful when I described killing Dordor..

After a dessert of crunchy sweet grains, I said, “That was the best meal I’ve had in a very long time.”

“Now to business?” Hollis asked his wife.

“First we ask Alex if he has questions.”

“Only a thousand, but I don’t even know where to start.” I thought for a second. “So you lost the battle for Waldhill, for the Port and Ryetown, yes? But you’re still trying to push the Sixers off the island?”

“We’re trying to keep them from breaking our spire,” Tansy told me. “And chaining us to Six Coves forever.”

Hollis grunted. “If we’re chained to them, we’re finished as an independent island. Just like they were, when they chained to Krelv. Ten years from now, we’ll just be another province of Krelv, fighting for survival.”

“Sharpened on the Whetstone,” Tansy said.

Maryne sniffed, her trunk twitching. “You can’t hate Six Coves and love Krelv, Tansy.”

“Watch me! I would’ve run away from home to Krelv if anyone asked, but the Sixers had to come take take take. And kill kill kill.”

“Okay, uh ... I was raised on a far-off mountaintop, remember?” I tapped a finger on my mug. “‘Chained’ means that this island is connected, joined or, um, physically bridged to another island?”

Tansy gave a snort of elephantine laughter before she realized I was serious. “Yes. Yes, that’s what it means. Some people call it ‘pinning,’ on account of the spires.”

“Right,” I said. “The spires.”

“You don’t even know that?” Hollis shook his head at my ignorance. “That mountain you grew up on must’ve been very remote.”

“California’s a long way off,” I agreed.

“You never even heard how spires work? Okay. When enough people gather in one spot on an island, when they live together for long enough ...”

“When a village grows into a town,” Maryne interrupted, “all of the residents’ mana combines and concentrates, and causes a spire to grow from the ground. Right?”

“Of course,” I agree, absolutely clueless.

“A spire rises in the center of the town,” Hollis told me. “Made of mana and time and ... sweat and tears, births and deaths, years of the labor people devoted to taming the wilds and claiming a home.”

“Hollis gets a little poetic,” Tansy said, peering at him dubiously. “A spire’s just a settlement marker. You probably saw the Ryetown spire when those bastards dragged you to jail for treason and murder and all that good stuff.”

Oh! Oh, of course! That waist-thick, twenty foot tall unicorn horn of smooth black material!

“Sure. Of course. I mean, yes. That little spire growing from the center of the, uh ...”

“Of the stump of an ancient spire, from back when this was a city of hundreds of thousands,” Maryne said, spooning honey into her mug. “The old spire must’ve risen as high as the highest tree when the Old City was thriving, and this island was part of a landmass that stretched for months in every direction.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And the reason some people call it ‘pinning,’” Tansy told me, “is because that’s how you chain islands together. You pin them. With spires.”

“What, like thumbtacks?”

She squinted at me. “What’re they?

“Tacks you push in with your thumb, Tansy,” Maryne said. “And not really, Alex, no. Spires don’t physically join the island. They alter the, the heft of an island, the balance or pivot point.”

“The direction in which the island will drift,” Hollis said.

“So if you place the major spires of an island near a landbridge,” Maryne told me, “that island will drift into the other one. Will chain itself to the bridged island. Sticking them together.”

“Whoa,” I said, blinking at this new information.

I mean, I’d accepted the whole ‘ocean of mana’ thing. I’d accepted floating islands and even the Sundering. But if you collected an island’s spires and shoved ‘em into the sand like beach umbrellas, you could join two drifting islands together? Damn.

“My education was even worse than I thought,” I said, after a second.

“Shockingly bad,” Tansy agreed. “Can we ask him about his gem yet?”

“After we explain that chopping down a town’s spire hurts,” Maryne told her, turning her gentle face to me. “It can weaken a town, or even destroy it.”

Tansy stabbed her fork into the table. “Which brings us back to killing the Sixers before they steal our spire.”