I told Hollis that I was going to waft through the bottleneck, and then didn’t do anything except check my sheet. Well, at least the important part:

Health: 55/55

Mana: 22/24

Yep. Still down a few point of mana after turning my arm to smoke. I decided to wait for that to fill up, so I asked, “What exactly are kobolds and redworms and wraiths?”

“You know what a chameleon is?” Tansy asked me.

“Sure.”

“Kobolds are like knee-high bipedal chameleons. Well, waist-high to you.”

“You’re barely taller than I am!”

“Uh-huh, keep telling yourself that. People think kobolds turn invisible but they just camouflage themselves. Really, really well. They’ve got big heads and nasty teeth that can chew through metal and they swarm like bees.”

“Lovely,” I said.

“I heard they’re pretty smart, but they’re so territorial that they can’t actually think half the time. Like, if two tribes get close, they just berserk all over each other. Then redworms are, y’know ... red worms.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said.

“They’re ten to twenty feet long,” Hollis told me. “And as thick around as your leg. Plus, if you chop them in half, both sides live. Suddenly you’re fighting two of them.”

I squinted at him. “How does a worm fight?”

“Same way she burrows,” he told me. “With acid. A thin coating of slimy acid.”

“Good. Great. So what we’re actually talking about here are acid snake-monsters the size of anacondas? Please tell me that wraiths are the opposite? Like, they sound scary--oooh, wraiths--but that’s actually what you call fluffy bunny rabbits?”

Tansy trumpeted in amusement. “Fluffy little specters.”

“They’re the weakest of the specters,” Hollis told me. “But all specters are deadly. If you see one, run. You can’t hurt them, you can’t touch them. They’re not physical, they’re ... something else.”

“Spectral,” Tansy said.

“Oh,” Hollis said, like he hadn’t considered that. “Yeah. Yes. They’re spectral.”

“Which means ...?” I asked.

“They’re ethereal, sort of like you are in your smoke form. They’re immune to physical attacks. Plus, they drain you with the slightest touch. They’re slow enough that you can outrun them, and they’re deadly enough that you must. At least they don’t roam far from their lairs.”

“The Plagues are partly spectral, too,” Tansy told me.

“I’ll keep that in mind for the next time I’m kicking one of their asses,” I said.

Hollis harrumphed. “I like the optimism.”

SUPPORT: A sufficiently high level in Treasure increases the likelihood of extracting a usable gem from a recently-deceased gem-user.

What? Where the hell did that come from? Also, you already mentioned that.

SUPPORT: Your current Treasure ability already offers a substantial improvement over any other extraction mention

So I can ‘loot’ gems from any of the ‘Gifted’ I kill? Okay. Then I can bond with them?

SUPPORT: Attempting to forge a bond with a gem rarely has a 100% chance of success.

Fine. But I can have multiple gems, right? What do I do, just press a gem to my forehead?

SUPPORT: There is a Boon which will allow you to designate ‘party members’ with whom you’ll communicate telepathically.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Way to ignore my question about gems. And you already told me that one, too, about some mental connection to party members. You said if I put enough points into Support, I--

SUPPORT: At sufficiently high level your ‘party members’ will gain ‘expoi’ in rough proportion to your own, thus becoming more powerful at a relatively jaw-dropping rate.

Whoa. That one was actually amazing. I could help friends and allies get stronger, too? Like, by giving them access to my Secret Level-up Scheme? Plus, relatively jaw-dropping’ sounded pretty damn good. In my head, I asked, “What level does that require?”

SUPPORT: The vast majority of blackbeads are only capable of being activated once every several hours, days, or even weeks.

What? You mean blackbeads like the one that guy Old Phil had in prison? The one that gave him super-speed?

Also, why the hell are you telling me all this right now?

SUPPORT: Precisely like that. Also like Oksar’s defensive ward. They only function once every several hours, days, or even weeks.

Huh. So Old Phil couldn’t have dodged another axe, if I’d thrown one? He’d exhausted his bead for at least a few hours? That would’ve been nice to know at the time.

SUPPORT: Agreed.

“Are you okay over there, major?” Tansy asked me.

I blinked. “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking. Uh, why ‘major?’”

“To make you feel bigger,” she said. “Cause you’re so little.”

“I’m only three inches shorter than you!”

She nodded. “Three long inches.”

“He’s three long inches smarter, too,” Hollis said. “You can tell, because he was ‘thinking,’ which you should try at some point.”

“Thinking is dumb,” she said.

I made a rude gesture at her that she didn’t understand, then did a little more thinking. In particular, I thought: ‘What’s this bullshit about fighting Plagues?’

SUPPORT: Hold your questions for the next available opportunity to consult Support. Goodbye.

Hey! Hey, are you still there? Hey!

All I heard in my mind was silence.

Fucker.

On the bright side, my mana was full again.

“Okay,” I said aloud. “Here goes.”

“Stay quiet, check the layout, and hurry back,” Hollis told me.

“Stop worrying, you old hen!” Tansy scoffed at him. “Nothing can possibly go wrong.”

Hollis and I exchanged a look that told me that this world understood the concept of ‘jinxing’ things, but neither of us said anything. Instead, I backed up a few steps. Then a few more. I’d been expanding my repertoire during our spars and this looked like a good time to test a new skill.

I sprinted toward the pile of bricks, leaped into the air--and just before I brained myself on the rubble, I turned to smoke. With a twist of intent, I managed to maintain my forward momentum. Not much, but enough that the smoky cloud of myself kept wafting fairly strongly in the right direction.

Through the cracks in the rubble of the ‘bottleneck.’

I wasn’t sure what would happen if I resolidified inside a few tons of brick, and I didn’t want to find out. So I drove myself forward as my mana lowered. I pushed gaseously against the bricks behind me, I clawed gaseously at the ones ahead.

In the middle of the blockage, the rubble turned from bricks and small rocks to the heavy stone slabs of the collapsed ceiling.

Mana: 17/24

Mana: 16/24

Mana: 14/24

I shoved myself toward the dim glow of torchlight ahead. My smoke seeped through mouse nests and around lizards and mosses and into a small open space where two slabs had fallen against each other like a pillow fort. It wasn’t quite big enough for me to resolidify without squooshing myself, but close.

Not that I needed to, yet, but I liked the possibility of taking a breather in the middle of the obstruction. Except it wasn’t possible, not if I didn’t want to crush myself into jelly. Maybe if the rubbled floor was a foot lower--

Oh!

I could lower the rubble.

I could move six-hundred pound chunks of rock without any effort.

I could blip them into my domain, then drop them later. Hell, I could move an entire truckload of rocks six feet by domaining them with my left hand and then popping them out of my big toe. This wasn’t the best time to experiment, though. Especially since I still had eleven mana, and the end of the bottleneck was in sight.

So I seeped through the final cracks in the cave-in and found myself wafting smokily in a vertical space between the wall from which I’d just emerged, and a stack of crates. Dusty crates. Like they hadn’t been moved in months or even years.

Beyond them, I caught sight of a dark basement. More storage. Boxes, racks, shelves. I listened for a second, then returned to my body, standing between the crates and the wall. Which was an actual wall on this side, as the rubble was being held back with wood scaffolding and chickenwire.

Mana: 8/24

Easy as blueberry pie.

I listened for a minute and didn’t hear anything in the basement beyond the crates. I started to slip forward, then stopped. Better to wait until I recovered all my mana before I possibly exposed myself. Which took a while, but I was in no rush.

Well, except that they were going to lop Erdinand’s head off tomorrow. So yeah, that was a pretty urgent deadline. But like Chetty had said, I didn’t even know where he was right now. You couldn’t rescue someone if you couldn’t find them. And as I stood there wasting time, I realized that the reason behind this whole ‘reconnaissance’ was mostly so I’d feel like I was doing something. Anything. And to keep me from thinking about the execution. I couldn’t take any really productive action, not yet, but if I’d just sat around, I would’ve driven myself crazy with worry.

Well, fair enough. And I was here now. Maybe I would discover something important. At the very lease I’d learn the lay of the land.

When my mana refilled, I squeezed around the crates and stepped into the basement. A few more stacks of crates roses around me, then the room opened into what looked like a vendor’s cart repair area. Roughhewn planks and wheels and carpentry tools were visible in the light of a dim lantern. So if anyone’s pushcart broke, this was where they’d fix it.

I went across the room to the narrow stone stairs leading upward, and listened again. I heard voices that time, but only faintly. I climbed to the next floor, which was more storage--but not dusty. There were jugs and bowls, racks of assorted stuff, and what looked like a food preparation counter. Or food packaging, maybe? A wall of shelves contained dozens of boxes, each one labeled with a different word.

Afternoon light shone dimly from the stairs leading to the surface. I grabbed a smudged off-white apron from the counter, tied it over my ollie boiler suit, then tugged my hood lower and headed for Gallows Square.

Halfway up the stairs, I heard louder voices. It sounded like two people arguing around about olive oil. A moment later, two infenti men came down the stairs, bickering happily, like an old married couple. Who knew you could disagree so passionately about salad dressing?

I kept my head low as they continued beneath me, then I stepped to the archway at the top of the stairs.