I had the same supplies as before. I was sitting in the same camp. I had the same minor magic power. But the difference between where I was then, and where I had been that morning, were worlds apart.

I was no longer an expedition member sent by a billionaire’s passion company. I was no longer an impromptu rescue party. I was not an employee. I wasn’t even a slave. Slaves were fed.

I was nothing. I was a pair of dice rolling on stained green felt. Not even the dice. The roll itself. A $30,000 gamble, made by someone to whom that amount of money is a pittance. I was a bad poker hand, and the player holding me was folding. No use chasing bad money with good money.

They’d have sent Tom more money. He wasn’t a gamble. He was an investment. Now they’re stuck with me. But what, am I supposed to replace Tom? Maybe they thought that at one point, thought they could use me as a budget, backup Tom. Anyone can tell now that’s not going to happen. They’ll probably just send someone else out here, after I die. Someone with a spark of life in them. Maybe they’ll even send them here before I die, just to humiliate me.

If I found Tom, that would convince them. If Tom was worth a million dollars, recovering him would be like saving their investment, or something.

I shook my head. It was just wishful thinking. Once the food ran out, once the bullets ran out, that was it. Only a matter of time.

Why did this all have to happen to me? Plenty of regular, lifeless people live happy, ignorant lives. Is this my punishment for wanting more? For not knowing my place?

I hope they all die, I thought. All of them. Dimen-X, the loan companies, the schools, and all the special people in those organizations who screwed me at every turn. Especially Rhett Nash. I hope they all live short, miserable lives. But they won’t. They’ll live long, fulfilling lives, because they’re meant to be something special, and I’m not. And I can’t even fake it anymore.

I didn’t leave camp that day. There were only a couple hours of light left by the time I had finished having my hopes dashed, and then, what was the point? I retired early, slept and half-slept from before sundown until late morning the next day.

When I awoke the next morning, my nails were halfway regrown.

I stared at the sun for awhile. That alien, uncaring sun. Then I stared at the sky, and the dirt, and the foreign insects that crawled around the dirt, ignoring my presence. I wished I was a bug. Bugs didn’t have debt.

After a day of that, I went back to sleep. I woke up on the morning of what I calculated to be the 5th of the month. Only 26 days left. I’d be dead long before that.

My nails had completely regrown, to the point where I had to trim them again.

“What a superpower,” I said aloud. “Flame nails. I would have preferred, well, anything else, really.”

I sighed. What am I going to do?

As I trimmed my nails, they fell into a little pile on the floor. I stared at the pile for awhile. Despite it all, I’d had an idea.

These are my nails. When they’re on my hand, I can light them on fire. I seemingly can’t light any other part of my body on fire, just my nails. But why? And… and do they have to be connected to my body still?

I took one nail out of the stack, and brought it outside. I set it on the ground, and squatted down next to it. I stared at it again for awhile, thinking. The promise of experimentation distracted me from the impending doom, like video games used to. There was something extremely enjoyable about messing around with magic, testing my capabilities, training, all of it.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

What are you doing, Miles? It’s hopeless. You should just crawl into your tent, lay down, and die. Save everyone the trouble of getting their hopes up. Save everyone some time.

“Shut up,” I said, to the voice in my head. “I’m just trying to test something. Leave me alone.”

I held out my hand - though I had no idea if that was necessary - and dialed my awareness into the flow of energy again. This time, I tried shooting it out of my body again. But not at a bush, or the empty air. At the nail. I focused on that little fingernail, and willed the energy out of me, and directly into it.

It ignited. Painlessly. It burned for a second, then went out.

I smiled.

So I can use magic on my nails, even if they aren’t attached to me anymore. For what it’s worth, that is a huge improvement.

I went back to the tent where I had been clipping my nails. I grabbed the little pile of nails and, as gross as it was, stuck them into my pants pocket. I walked back outside, and took out another one.

This time, I threw it. I threw it with all my might, and then sent my energy to it as quickly as I could. It was so small that I lost sight of it almost instantly, but it didn’t seem to matter. The moment I tried to send the energy, it felt as if there was an invisible string connecting me to the nail, and a nail-sized flame seemed to burst from nothing, right out of thin air. Then it was gone, in a moment.

Could I use this as a weapon? Throw a handful of nails at someone? They’d probably only get tiny little burns, not enough to actually injure anyone. But it would hurt, or at least startle. Unless they were wearing clothes. How many naked opponents am I likely to run into? How many opponents of any kind, for that matter?

Maybe it could burn clothes, if they were flammable enough.

I looked down at my own shirt.

I’m not about to test that one out. And if they’re wearing leather or something, forget about it. Unless I can cover them in gasoline first. Which seems unlikely.

One last test. I walked around the camp, gathering dry grass and branches from the surrounding area. There was plenty of it. I made myself the beginnings of a small campfire, with little branches stacked up like a teepee, and the bundle of dead grass underneath. I placed one nail on top of the grass, carefully.

Then I ran. There was no reason to run, but I was getting excited, despite it all. I ran away from the camp until I was on the other side of a nearby hill. I went down the opposite side until the hill was between me and camp, and then I sat down facing away from it.

I took a deep breath. Then, I sent out feelers of energy - I didn’t know how to describe it, but it was something like that. I searched the air around me, mentally, for that string, that ethereal, invisible connection between me and the nails. I could feel it - many of them, in fact. All of them going into my pocket, except for one, which seemed to travel through the hill and into the distant nail. Locating that thread, I focused on it, and, in a burst, sent my energy flowing through it.

I felt it flow, but there was no obvious change. I climbed back over the hill.

And there, below, was a little campfire, crackling and burning and putting off little wisps of smoke. I had been able to light the nail without even looking at it, from a distance, through solid matter. And it was even enough to light a campfire.

I smiled. “Now that,” I said. “That could be useful.”

-

I hadn’t eaten since the last cheesesteak, but I finally caved, and opened up an MRE.

The one I had used as bait, I hadn’t even bothered looking inside. Blinded by the radiance of seemingly infinite chessesteaks, I had tossed the rest of the package. So I opened up a new one. Chili with beans, it claimed.

Inside was much more than I expected. The eponymous chili with beans - in a little brown bag that no food should ever be served in, I decided immediately - as well as crackers - with a cheese spread which I doubted was really cheese - cornbread, “pepperoni pizza cheese filled crackers” - which sounded straight out of a child’s lunch - grape soda powder - which was “carb fortified,” whatever that meant - a “hot beverage bag,” a spoon, a ration heater, and another little bag filled with miscellaneous stuff. Upon opening it, I found it contained coffee, creamer, sugar, sugar-free chewing gum, a towelette, salt, and toilet paper. Despite the variety, it probably tells you something about the quality of the contents that I was most excited by the toilet paper, Or maybe it says something about what I’d been going through the previous days, without toilet paper. There’s no need to go into detail.

Despite the food heater, I was tempted to use the campfire instead. I had kept it burning, even though it was daytime and I didn’t need the heat or the light. But I wanted to try out the weird little heater thing.

Then I discovered it needed water. Then it hit me how little water I had left. Then my slowly-improving mood plummeted again. This could be one of my last meals.

I warmed the chili in the fire. This involved throwing the unopened bag into the fire, guessing at how long it would take to warm up sufficiently, then using the wettest sticks I could find to try to get it out. This resulted in more burns added to my collection, and a half-hot, half-cold chili. It wasn’t good. It certainly wasn’t cheesesteak-good. I was still bitter.

The rest of the meal wasn’t anything to write home about either, but I was hungry enough by that point. I ate almost every bit that didn’t require water, and saved the rest, storing it in my backpack, just in case. Somehow I doubted that I was going to be saved by coffee, chewing gum, grape soda powder, a hot beverage bag, and a food heater. But you never know.

I tried to ration my water as best I could, but I only had one large canteen. The MRE heater apparently didn’t take much, but I wasn’t willing to spare it. Either way, I could see my time was limited. I’d be out of water by the end of the day.

Which meant I had to get moving.

The plan hasn’t changed, I thought, even though I didn’t really believe it. I’m still going to Eraztun. I’m still finding Tom. I just need to find some water first, that’s all. And a source of food before the MREs run out. And…

I packed up camp while I thought of all the other things I needed. Money. A weapon better than a soon-to-be-ammo-less gun or a baseball bat. More magic. Tom.

I put out the fire before I set off. It wouldn’t do to start a brushfire.

I’d only been walking for a few hours before I heard noise. At the time, I had been thinking about how likely it was that I had already passed Eraztun, that I had missed it completely. Olim hadn’t given me directions, just a direction. But then I heard the noise. Voices, and grunts, and creaking and muttering all joined in a general, low din.

As I cleared the next hill, I saw a wide road, littered with people, wagons, beasts of burden. But as interesting as all of those alien people and creatures were, I hardly even noticed them. What I was looking at was the city.

I realized just how ridiculous it was to worry about not noticing this city as I passed. It would be like not noticing the Himalayas, or the sun.