“This is a personal favorite of mine,” Sam told me as we walked through the showroom. We were both fully attired now, I’d pulled up my hood in addition to wearing my normal gear. “It’s called The Last Light of the Sun.”
We were looking at a small glass orb with intricate golden filigree somehow inlaid into it. Floating in the middle of the orb was the tiniest speck of pure golden light. My shadows visibly recoiled from the object as Sam picked it up.
“It’s quite unbreakable, and as you can no doubt see, quite inimical to creatures of darkness. We’re not sure who made it, nor why, but an analysis of the item revealed that it contains an entire solar system reduced to a fraction of its normal size. There are tiny planets in there, roughly the size of a speck of dust. We haven’t been able to figure out if any of the planets are inhabited, but It’s essentially a pocket dimension.
“What’s it do?” I asked.
“Not much really. It is true sunlight, so if you expose a vampire to its light they’ll suffer all the normal effects of sunlight touching them, but as it only sheds light in about a meter radius it must be brought quite close. It has no active effects that we’re aware of, it simply exists.”
“Why do you like it so much then?” I asked, confused.
Sam shrugged. “I’m partial to those items in our collection that appear to be works of art, not just functional in nature. Also, occasionally such things turn out to be the keys to an artifact of incredible power, or secretly a crafting component needed for some legendary recipe.”
He looked at me knowingly. “Or the right person comes along with a very specific skill that can make use of it.”
“I’m not sure it’d be safe to put that thing in my soul-space,” I said cautiously. “If you’re thinking I could craft something with it…”
I trailed off as I thought about the reality seed currently occupying one of my soul-space slots. Could I craft something with that? Was that a suicidal thought? I wasn’t sure.
I turned my attention back to Sam. “How much are you asking for this thing anyway?”
“Only a single scarab token. As much as I love such trinkets, they are difficult to sell for more than the minimum.”
“Had this in stock for a long time huh?”
“Centuries.”
I blinked. “Wait, really? How old are you?”
He just smiled at me. “Here, you might find this one more to your liking.”
He motioned to the second of three tables. This time he didn’t pick up the item featured there, and it was obvious why. The item, which was hovering just above the table, was a ball of fire about 30cm across. It looked like a miniature sun.
“Is the theme tiny suns today?” I asked.
“I call this collection Distant Stars. I’m pleased you noticed.” Sam gave me a small, satisfied smile. “This one actually is a crafting ingredient by the way. It’s just an absurdly rare one. It’s called the Heart of Fire, and it’s the highest tier fire essence I’ve ever seen. It’s supposedly the heart of a now deceased god of fire.”
“Did he die before or after he had his heart removed?” I asked.
“Legend says he tore it from his own chest in grief after being spurned by a lover. Apparently, he lived a long and unhappy life after that, unable to love ever again.”
“Was he unable to love because he ripped his heart out, or were all the women who met him rightfully freaked out by this guy who tore out his own heart at being rejected?”
“Probably both. Gods are conceptual and spiritual beings. Ripping one’s heart out might indeed render them incapable of love just because of the conceptual connection.”
“Huh, interesting. So, you think I could Soul Forge something with this?”
“Almost certainly. I suspect you could create quite a powerful, if somewhat uninspired, burning sword with it if you combined it with that greatsword you have. If your ability works like most crafting skills, costs will be lower with higher quality materials and simpler recipes, so it’d likely be quite cheap to craft.”
“Cheap to craft makes sense, but how much to buy?”
“As you know, we generally sell crafting components for less than completed items, so despite its rarity and power the Heart of Fire can be yours for a mere three scarab tokens.”
“That’s still three times as much as the greater elemental essences you can buy at the Fair Deal. Is it really that much more powerful?”
“Quite.”
I nodded. “One problem though… How am I supposed to touch the thing to get it into my soul-space? I don’t feel like melting a hand off.” I could feel the heat coming off it from where we stood, and even through whatever magical protections Sam had set up it wasn’t too different from being close to a bonfire.
“Ah, of course. The item comes with a containment vessel that can be used to carry it safely. No need to concern yourself with transportation.”
“Got it. Alright, what’s the last item?”
Sam directed me over to the next display. “Our final item in the collection is a bit different, but I think you’ll see the parallels.”
Hovering above this display table was yet another orb, but it was the opposite of the Heart of Fire. It was a black void that somehow managed to be even darker than my shadows. I shuddered as I looked at it. It reminded me of the black sun in the dungeon, and as we approached my shadows seemed to lean towards it, pulling away from me as though the orb itself was using a stronger version of my skill.
“This is called Nemesis, the Dark Star. It has several properties, none of them particularly pleasant.” Sam told me.
He picked up something off the table that I hadn’t noticed, showing it to me. It was a thin silver chain necklace with a black stone hanging from it.
“Nemesis cannot be touched safely by the living. Instead, it may be commanded by the wearer of this necklace. There is a catch however… Once you don the necklace, Nemesis will constantly but slowly drift towards you, even if you take it off again. As long as you actively control it, this isn’t an issue, but any slip of attention will cause it to drift in your direction. As you might expect, allowing it to touch you, even for a moment, is quite lethal. It can pass through solid objects, so not even armor can protect you.”
“It’s like that damn snail thought experiment,” I muttered.
Sam gave me a confused glance but continued his description. “Nemesis’ ability to kill on contact makes it quite dangerous, and so far as we know it works on everything other than the undead. However, this is not its only power. A person wearing the necklace can channel its dark power in a variety of ways, gaining access to a number of skills that allow them to create and control undead minions without expending mana. It can also be used to transform the living into an undead and is one of the most reliable ways to become one of the greater undead.”
“Wait, so if an undead gets their hands on this, are they immune to the negative effect? Is it made to be used by an undead person?”
“You would think so, but apparently not. While the wearer of the necklace can transform themselves into an undead, it cannot be used by anyone who is not alive. If an undead wears the necklace, nothing happens, and if someone uses Nemesis to convert themselves to an undead it will immediately stop obeying their commands. However, it will also stop following them.”
He put the necklace back on the table, arranging it carefully. “It’s my theory that this is the true purpose of Nemesis, to eventually force its wielder to become undead to escape its relentless pursuit. However, some seek it out for this purpose, as it allows them to choose what type of undead they become, ignoring normal prerequisites.”
I whistled. “Not my kind of thing, but damn.”
“Indeed… You know this is one of the few items we sell that comes with conditions. The owner is required to return it when they cease to be numbered among the living. It’s a provision we enforce magically. It allows us to sell it for a very reasonable price of three scarab tokens as we know we’ll get it back eventually. Usually sooner than later.”
I laughed. “So, it’s a rental huh? I guess that makes sense considering. How do you move it around without putting on the necklace?”
“One of my nephews is a necromancer, and we keep a skeleton crew on hand to handle various items such as Nemesis which cannot safely be transported by the living. The undead can handle it with no issues, as they are one of the few things it treats as solid. Nemesis also has the property of always being in the same dimension as the necklace, so it can be transported long distances inside a pocket dimension. Passing the necklace though a dimensional barrier will cause Nemesis to appear nearby, usually within a meter of the necklace.”
We walked around the room again looking at each item one more time as I questioned Sam a bit. “So, has anyone bought that shield you had on display the other day?”
“The Bastion? No, for the time being we are only open to Astran visitors, so unless The Lord Adversary requisitions it, I suspect it will remain in our stock.”
“I was thinking about getting it for a friend of mine, but he’s also in jail and I’m not sure if I can put it in my soul-space safely.”
Sam stopped and looked at me, considering. “You can afford it? Well, I suppose if anyone can it makes sense that you would be able to. Still, that’s a gift worthy of an emperor. I hope your friend appreciates it. As to storing it… Wait here a moment.”
Sam walked over to one of the satyrs standing around the edge of the room and spoke with him briefly. That satyr disappeared through one of the concealed doors to the room and was gone for a few minutes. By the time he returned Sam had rejoined me and explained what was going on. The man he’d sent off returned with another satyr in tow, an older man, and the first of their kind I’d seen with completely gray hair and fur. Sam introduced him as Elder Wiston, their head researcher.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, young lady,” the elderly man said. “I understand you have a question about dimensional storage and safely transporting some of our items?”
“Kinda, I have a soul-space storage system, and I’ve been given reason to believe that storing something made with a reality seed might be dangerous.”
“Ah, yes, I see. You are right to be cautious, but unless you try to put a raw reality seed into your soul-space you should be fine. Soul-spaces are rare, but I have seen them used to store such things in the past. There is a conceptual difference between a reality seed, and something created with one - the created object always places limits on the reality seed, so they are never as conceptually massive as the original.
“Can you truly conceptualize a fragment of reality itself? Unlikely. But you can conceptualize an item with specific properties. Conceptual storage is a finicky thing, but there are safeguards on it - if you can put it into your storage then it shouldn’t be able to harm you in any permanent way.”
I had reason to believe that wasn’t entirely accurate, but what he said about crafting limiting the conceptual weight of the created item made sense to me, at least in this case. I turned to Sam. “Would you be willing to let me try putting the shield in my soul-space before I buy it? It’s not worth it to me if I can’t store it there, but if I can then I’ll buy it on the spot.”
Sam hesitated for a long moment, but Wiston interrupted his train of thought. “Oh, come on Sam, it’s a reasonable request.” Then he smiled. “Plus, I want to see what happens.”
Sam relented with a huff. “Fine, I’ll have it fetched from storage. This may take a few minutes; I wasn’t expecting to sell that particular item this week.”
Elder Wiston and I chatted a bit while we waited, but I was mostly nervous over how this would end up going. The last time I’d done something like this, I’d felt like I was going to explode. I’d also lost a slot in my soul storage.
Even the thought of trying to take it back out made me feel ill, like a premonition that doing so would take parts of me with it, or otherwise cause some sort of disaster. If this worked though, I might try crafting with it, since that might let me limit it conceptually and make it a less ridiculously massive concept.
Sam eventually returned with yet another satyr, one I recognized this time. She was carrying the Bastion of the Dwarven Lords easily in one hand, despite its massive bulk. Sam introduced her as they approached.
“Infinity, this is Veralis. She is currently soul-bonded to the shield as that is the only way to move it.”
I nodded at the girl, who returned the gesture. “What is soul-bonding exactly?” I asked.
Wiston answered. “Soul-bonding is a process of linking an item to your exclusive use. While an item is soul-bonded it cannot be used by anyone else, and you’ll be able to locate it even at great distances if it becomes lost.
“The bond applies only to magical aspects of the item, so for example a bonded sword can still cut in the hands of another, but if it possesses the ability to light itself on fire then only its bonded wielder could activate that property.
“To bond an item, you need only hold it and concentrate on bonding with it while it is unbonded. Likewise you can unbond with an item by holding it and concentrating on doing so. Not all items can be bound, and it usually indicates that the item is exceptional for its tier.”
Veralis placed the shield in front of me, and simply let go of it. The massive stone shield sat fixed in the air at the exact position and angle she’d left it at. This is why I wanted this thing. It was essentially the proverbial immovable object, and a near perfect one-directional defense.
The elite we’d fought yesterday had made it clear to me that we needed better equipment, particularly on the defensive side. Lucus had needed to blow a three-day cooldown to stay alive during that fight, and if we fought something like that again we’d need better gear or better skills to survive. Fortunately, these were both things I could help with.
I placed my hand on the shield, receiving a nod from Sam. I scanned and identified the item, getting no new information but fulfilling the minimum requirements to store it. That done, I began the process of moving it into my soul-space.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Instantly I knew something was wrong, but it took a moment to figure out what. The shield did not begin to fade, and I felt a sense of extreme weight similar but not the same as when I’d done this with the reality seed. Unlike the reality seed though, it didn’t even start to move into my soul-space.
I took my hand away, disappointed. “Looks like it’s not going to work.”
Wiston nodded. “I thought as much. Veralis dear, could you release your soul-bond on the item please?” He turned to me. “I’d like you to try storing it while it’s unbonded, but I suspect this too will fail. The nature of this item is to be unmovable to anyone but its bonded user, so I suspect you’ll need to bond it in order to store it, but science demands we test each possibility.”
I gave the old guy a wry look as I placed my hand back on the shield just as Veralis removed hers. “You could have mentioned that up front,” I told him.
“I didn’t want to taint the results! It’s possible that thinking it wouldn’t work would make it not work, given the nature of conceptual storage.”
I tried storing the shield again, this time in its unbonded state, but got a similar result. The feeling of weight was slightly different though, and I mulled it over for a moment before describing both sensations to Wiston.
“The first time it was like trying to pick up a mountain range, the second time was like trying to pick up a single mountain. It wasn’t any less impossible, but there was a sense of connection to more weight at a distance that wasn’t there the second time.”
“Likely you were sensing the connection to her soul.” Wiston motioned to Veralis. “It makes sense that you wouldn’t be able to store something connected to another soul, your soul would need to be bigger than theirs conceptually to do such a thing, and that’s not really possible in my experience.”
Once again, I had reason to believe that wasn’t entirely accurate, but I didn’t correct him.
Next, I established a soul-bond with the shield, which was weird. When I made the connection, I was able to feel the shield’s position as though it was an extra limb. I waved it around a bit experimentally and it was essentially weightless. Moreover, the shield seemed to want to go wherever I tried to move it. The shield was taller and wider than me, so even though I could technically wield it, I’d never be able to use it effectively, except maybe as a turtle shell.
When I finished playing around with it, I once again tried moving it into my soul-space, and this time the results were much different. The moment I started the process of moving it, the shield vanished and appeared in my mind’s eye without any delay or effort on my part. It was so easy that it startled me, and I immediately forced it back out.
Both storage and withdrawal were effortless, and when I got over my shock, I grinned at the satyrs around me. That wasn’t how my skill was supposed to work, and I had to assume this was either something to do with soul-bonding, or because of the shield’s desire to exist wherever I wanted it to exist.
“Looks like we have a deal then?” Sam asked, eyes practically glittering at the thought of all those scarab tokens. “You have two tokens in your account, so that will be five more to pay off the balance.”
I put the shield back in my soul-space, then held out my hand over his outstretched one, dropping 5 scarab tokens one after another into his waiting hands, giving him time to pocket them.
“Pleasure doing business with you Sam,” I told him.
“Likewise…” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone acquire so many scarab tokens so quickly, and our system here predates the System considerably. I’d be worried that this so-called ‘bug bounty’ program might be too effective at generating wealth… but you’re currently the only one walking around with anywhere close to that level of funds so far as I can tell.”
I grinned cheekily at him, “I am pretty amazing, yes.”
Then I got more serious as I asked about something that’d been bugging me. “You keep mentioning other worlds and System being new. How did this place work before System? How does it work on other worlds?”
Sam hedged a bit as he replied. “It’s a long story… In brief though, our business model has changed several times. The Exchange as a whole has changed and grown quite a bit over the millennia, and I wasn’t around for much of it. The Exchange itself started as a merit store for servants of The Lord Adversary, a way for him to simplify reward distribution for his agents.
“That aspect of it lives on, particularly at the Infernal Contract. Yet even before System at various times other deities have made deals with The Lord Adversary to allow their servants to use the Exchange as well, piggybacking off his well-established reward system.
Veralis and Wiston said their goodbyes as Sam and I walked towards the exit. Meanwhile, Sam continued his story.
“When I was very young, I reached out to The Lord Adversary through one of his associates. I’d heard of the Exchange and wanted to extend my burgeoning mercantile empire to other worlds. At the same time, I was looking for a patron to protect me and my family against powerful enemies I had made in my home world.
“We struck a deal, and I opened up my shop in the Exchange, first as a convenient place for agents of The Lord Adversary to buy and sell powerful artifacts with gold and other local currencies, then later we converted all sales to tokens. For quite some time we were little more than a glorified fence, handling merchandise that was too sensitive to be sold on its world of origin, and indeed we still fulfill that purpose.”
Sam stopped and turned to me. We stood just outside the door to the lobby, but he obviously had more to say.
“The creation of System changed much, but something you may not have realized yet is that for those of us that predate him, it merely codified things we already knew and made them easier to use. We always had magic, but before System it could take a lifetime to learn the sort of magic you’ve learned in a few days.
“I don’t know how it works, but I’ve seen its effects for some time now as the so called ‘alpha’ version of System was trialed here in Crucible. It is The Lord Adversary’s grand project, and he has been generous with those who help him with it.”
I could tell Sam was debating with himself about what to say, so I remained silent. I could understand internal conflict all too well.
“The Lord Adversary is generous with those who help him… still, I’d caution you. You are young, and you haven’t been exposed to the other side of The Lord Adversary’s work. He has been working on building to this point, but soon he will begin testing what he has built, and such tests have been known to end entire worlds if their residents fail them.
“Do not let your guard down, despite your favor, you are not one of his agents and so will not be spared such tests. Indeed, he tends to test those he likes all the more, figuring that they should be able to handle even greater challenges.”
Sam placed a hand on my shoulder. “Bea and I would hate to hear of your passing should you fail such a test. Too many of those we serve here are the worst sorts of people. Monsters in humanoid form, who serve The Lord Adversary only for a chance to spread destruction and be praised for it, caring nothing for his greater purpose. It’s rare we get to meet someone we like, so please be careful.”
Then without another word he turned and walked back down the corridor to the showroom, leaving me standing there alone with my thoughts.
***
Joon was tired of waiting in line. He’d been here for over an hour already, and even though he understood time wasn’t passing in the outside world, he could practically feel his life wasting away as he stood here waiting.
There were still three people ahead of him in line, and it hadn’t moved since he’d arrived. The damn goat behind the podium was of no help either, as when asked all he would say was that only a single customer at a time was allowed in the showroom “for both your privacy and safety.”
That didn’t make sense to Joon, how small a room was it that it could only hold one person safely? Surely there was some sort of maximum time limit you could stay in there as well? Why did everyone else have to wait for this one person?
It had only been three days since they’d been abducted to this strange world, and Joon was still shocked that anyone else had any tokens to spend at this strange store. Joon only had one, and it was what The Adversary had described as a “signing bonus.” He wouldn’t even be willing to pay the cover fee here if he hadn’t won a free entry coupon from completing a quest he’d been given by a representative of the god shortly after he’d spawned into the world.
Joon’s thoughts were interrupted by a quiet “What the fuck?” from the woman at the front of the line. His view was blocked by the rather large man in front of him - some sort of golem? He looked like a statue when he was standing still.
Joon looked around the golem and saw the woman ahead of him backing away from the podium she’d been waiting at. Like Joon she was a devilkin, though she’d gone all in on the aesthetic with red skin and horns holding back her nearly waist length black hair. She backed up right into the golem, who barely seemed to notice.
He was about to ask her what was wrong when he saw it himself. Behind the podium a set of double doors stood closed, baring their entry. The doors were carved wood with fancy inlaid designs and filigree. Until now, they had been motionless and uninteresting.
Now, tendrils of darkness were worming their way through the crack in the door. As he watched, they began to pool in the carved out channels, creating patterns of light and shadow. The satyr standing at the podium seemed none the wiser to what was happening behind him. It finally occurred to Joon that he might want to back up as well, but before he could do so the doors flung themselves open.
As they opened, the room seemed to dim around him, and Joon swore he saw shadows crawling across the walls and ceiling, trying to get closer to the person framed in the doorway. For a moment, all that could be seen in the crawling darkness was a toothy grin, and a pair of burning red eyes.
The golem Joon had been standing behind vanished with a slight pop as air rushed in to fill his spot. Joon suddenly found himself with the girl from the front of the line falling into his arms as the golem she’d been pressed up against ceased to support her. He managed to catch her even as he watched the grinning darkness resolve itself into a humanoid figure wearing a cloak of night that writhed like it was alive.
Joon realized he was now holding the girl in front of him like a human shield. He tried to recover from this blunder by turning to place himself between her and whatever was emerging from the darkness, but again he was surprised as the girl shook him off and took a step forward.
Joon watched in morbid fascination as she walked to the edge of the stupid theater style padded rope barriers. It was as close as she could get to the living darkness that had just entered the room with them.
The girl reached a hand out over the ropes towards the figure, and Joon realized that the newcomer was shockingly small. The sheer presence of the thing had skewed his perspective. The girl was shorter than he was, horns included, and she was reaching down towards the hooded figure.
“M… Master Nyx?” The girl said, confusing Joon. Did she know this entity? “Will… will you please teach me?” she asked.
Now Joon understood what was happening. The girl was risking everything for a chance to learn this creature's secrets. It made sense, but she was far braver than he was. Or possibly just dumber. The two often went hand in hand, in his experience.
The creature halted its advance, a mere step from the exit. The shrouded face turned back towards them, and Joon shuddered as its grin got somehow, impossibly wider. It was like something out of Louis Carol’s worst drug induced nightmare. Then it spoke.
“No.”
Its voice was somehow gravely, yet higher pitched than Joon was expecting, like an old witch cackling over a bubbling cauldron. It delivered its response with a simple weight of finality that left no room for doubt. It was the sort of pronouncement that judges and kings used to deny parole or sentence a man to death by hanging.
It was a denial of hope, of the very idea of hope, and the girl withered in the face of it. Her hand drooped and her entire body slumped. The creature turned away, and something that might have been an arm reached for the door.
Then, incredibly, the girl spoke up once more.
“I can pay!” she said, holding up three scarab tokens. Joon blinked at this display of wealth. How had she gotten so many so fast?
The darkness halted once more, and though Joon couldn’t see any change, he felt as though it was now looking at them once again.
“Why?” asked the terrible voice.
“Why…? I… I want to be stronger? You look really strong, and maybe important? Also shadow thief sounds cool?”
A shadowy claw the size of Joon’s head reached out from the darkness cloaking the figure, extending across the room. The claw hovered in front of the girl menacingly for several seconds, until she held up the scarab tokens toward it. The claw descended and almost gently plucked a single token from her hand, withdrawing almost immediately with its prize.
“First lesson,” the thing said. “You probably shouldn’t hold out money to someone whose title is Master Shadow Thief.”
Then it made contact with the door and vanished.
The girl let out a strangled cry of indignation, and turned to look at the satyr doorman as though he should be doing something.
“It seemed like a good lesson to me. I suspect most would have charged three times as much for the same,” he told her, shrugging.
Joon noted that people with red skin turn dark purple when overcome with apoplectic rage. Perhaps coming here so soon had been a mistake after all. If stuff like this was the norm, he needed to do some serious leveling up before he could stand in the same room with monsters like that.
The satyr continued as if nothing had happened. “Madam, I believe you are next if you’d like to visit the showroom? If so, there is a single token cover charge which will be held as credit to your account until you make a purchase.”
Joon watched the girl furiously slam down one of her remaining tokens on the satyr’s podium, then the two of them exchanged some words Joon couldn’t hear for some reason, and the satyr wrote something in his book. The girl then walked past him into the hall where she was met by an older satyr who began walking with her. Joon listened to her complain to the older man until the doorman closed the doors behind them.
“Is that sort of thing normal around here?” Joon asked him.
The doorman just shrugged. “Not really. We have a very strict rule against non-consensual skill usage within the establishment. I’ve never actually seen someone just hand out tokens like that before.” He laughed, shaking his head at the absurdity of the situation.
Joon debated leaving again, but ultimately he stuck around. If creatures like the one he’d just seen shopped here, then this must be the place to get powerful artifacts. Plus, he wanted to see… at that moment the thing he’d been waiting for finally happened.
The girl who’d been ahead of him in line stormed out, still looking furious. Joon nodded to himself, suspicions confirmed. Whatever was inside, it would take three scarabs to buy anything worth having.
With this knowledge in hand, Joon resolved to return tomorrow and try again. This was an information game, and he’d learned something interesting today. If he returned tomorrow, he could learn more than if he proceeded with his plan today.
Joon smiled and made his excuses with the doorman, who seemed quite used to this sort of gamesmanship. It was a game Joon reminded himself. Yes it was also real, but he couldn’t afford to forget that game logic still applied. What had worked for him in the RPGs of the past would help him here too, and patience was ever a virtue.
***
I rested in my bed in jail for a few moments, catching my breath. Hands of Night was a passive with no costs, yet it was mentally and physically taxing when used to manipulate physical objects.
Even its ability to grow and stretch was, I suspected, emergent behavior from its interaction with Embrace of Shadows. Since embrace pulled shadows to me, and hands of night let me treat any area of connected shadow as part of me, it effectively let me connect shadows to myself and treat them as parts of my body which then sucked in more shadows without any apparent limits.
While I kept them close to me it was fairly easy to control, but when I extended them away from my body as I had when I’d plucked the coin out of that girl’s hands it had taken all of my concentration and willpower just to maintain the shadow appendage. Another moment or two and I’d have lost control of the entire thing.
I’d only wanted one of the girl’s coins, mostly to keep her from being tempted to buy Nemesis, but the truth was that I couldn’t have taken all three if I tried.
I hadn’t been expecting anyone to be out there when I’d opened the door, and it had caught me off guard for a moment, so I’d just stood there grinning stupidly at them. When the girl had basically thrown herself at my feet asking to become my apprentice I wasn’t sure what to think.
Did she know that my title meant there could only be two shadow thieves in the world? I’d seen the notice that she’d inspected me with something called “Size Up,” but it had only been a tier 2 skill, so I wasn’t sure what she’d learned. It would certainly explain her offer though. Too bad for her I wasn’t accepting applications.
I hadn’t deactivated my skills before leaving the Exchange, but here it was somehow still nighttime on the previous day. I had no idea how that worked, but it wasn’t important right now.
For the moment I was catching my breath and examining my sense of the darkness around me. Embrace of Shadows wasn’t doing much right now, considering there was nothing but shadows here, but that also meant that Hands of Night had a lot to work with. I could feel… everything.
Well, not quite everything. I could feel everything the darkness touched for a good area around me, but the connection got more tenuous the further it went. After experimenting with it for a bit, I finally realized that the range of my senses under these conditions roughly corresponded to the radius of my minimap.
I didn’t know if these were connected, but it seemed like too much to be a coincidence. It was far, far easier to manipulate things under these conditions as well, with no light to fight against I could easily create solid shadows anywhere in the area.
This was a terrifying skill in the dark, and I spent several minutes just thinking of ways to use it, in combat or otherwise. I couldn’t wait around too long though, as I still had things to do tonight.
I’d waited until evening before leaving Sam’s, spending most of that time chatting with Bea, reading through the help docs I hadn’t had time to fully investigate yet, and poking at the Soul Forge skill to see how it worked. However, it was still going to be a while before I could sleep, and I had some plans for that time.
First, I needed to take a trip to the Infernal Contract. I was very curious what that place was actually supposed to sell, considering my first experience there had been… non-standard, at best. I didn’t plan on spending much, if anything, but I wanted to know what was there before I made any more purchases. I popped a scarab token into my hand and activated it, returning to the Exchange for the second time that night.