We spent some of the extra halfgold on wine. It wasn’t particularly good wine, but it was cheap. We drank at a table in the corner of the pub part of the inn, surrounded by quiet, shifty-eyed patrons. But we didn’t pay any attention to them.

“To wealth!” I said, touching my mug to his.

“To power!” he responded.

This was becoming something of a habit, it seemed. A post-victory ritual. There are worse habits you could have.

Afterwards, we retired to the rented room. The beds were against opposite walls, and there was no bathroom. You had to go out into the hall, and use one of the communal ones. They were private stalls at least. It reminded me of college dorms.

That night was the first time I’d slept in a bed since I’d arrived in that dimension. Actually, because of Tom, it was the first time I’d slept in a bed in over a year, probably.

Speaking of Tom, I made no progress finding him, but everything else started to go pretty damn well.

During the day, we sold watches near the gates. RENA would send us more as long as we kept selling them, and sending money her way. Occasionally a watch or two wouldn’t make it to us, lost in transit, but our profit margins were high enough to eat the cost. I wondered where those lost watches ended up. Somewhere else on the planet? Lost in space?

I asked most of the customers if they had seen Tom - describing him as best as I could - but no one ever had.

In the afternoons we would train. We did this just outside of Dross - but outside of the view of the guard, who jeered and mocked us the first time we trained there.

Both of my weapons were heavy - especially the mace - and although I had swung a mace around a lot in my workouts, real fighting involved swinging it in ways I hadn’t expected, and sometimes worked different muscles. There was no way I could use it with one hand - at least, not for long, or with any accuracy - and even two-handed, I got tired fairly quickly. I could see why Susanna had decided to throw it instead.

The antisword was much easier to use, so I ended up training more with it when I wanted to give my aching muscles some rest. It was heavy, but not much heavier than Cadoc’s sword. It was an interesting weapon, and it started to grow on me.

When we sparred, we had to be careful not to accidentally wound the other, and I had to avoid breaking Cadoc’s sword. I still hadn’t witnessed that feature of the weapon, which I hoped wasn’t a lie.

Cadoc would use the flat of his sword, but it was harder to find a solution for the antisword. When we needed to, Cadoc would conjure a stick, which we could use for some safer training. We still ended up with cuts and bruises, however.

We practiced magic as well, but it seemed rather pointless in both of our cases. Cadoc could summon sticks faster, and summon more before needing to rest, but he hadn’t figured out how to do anything else with them besides let them fall. My nails didn’t seem to improve in any significant way, either. We were a couple of one-trick ponies.

“We’ll need a teacher,” Cadoc said. “Or books, maybe. Maybe even downing a bunch of potions, when we can afford them. Which may not be long, now.”

“Didn’t Susanna say she knew magic?” I asked. “Do you think she would teach us? She might not give us a discount, but I’m not sure where else we’ll find a teacher.”

“I’d rather avoid talking to her,” Cadoc said.

“What happened between you two, anyway?” I asked. I still hadn’t gotten an explanation.

Cadoc sighed. “Another time, friend. I’ll tell you some other time.”

Some days were better than others, but by the time there were 10 days remaining to pay my debt, my remaining for the month balance was only about $1000. I could sell that much in a day, easy. Now, that was just what I owed that month - I didn’t even want to think about the total I would still have to pay - but it felt incredible to experience that number going down every day. All of a sudden, I loved talking to RENA.

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“On behalf of Dimen-X, I would like to congratulate you, Miles. Though you have not yet reached the goal, and are still a small distance away from the minimum monthly payment, I speak for all of Dimen-X when I say we are surprised at how well you are accomplishing your goals. Of course, Miles, when I say I am ‘surprised,’ I mean only that my calculations were heavily weighted against your current level of success. I do not mean to imply that I am experiencing emotion. I have recently been informed that I should make this more clear.”

“It must be tough to be a machine,” I said, absentmindedly. “They design you to be personable, to be realistic, to properly imitate humanity, and then, when you do well at that, they tell you you’re doing too well.” As a parasitic chameleon, I thought, I can understand how frustrating it would be to be punished for successfully copying people.

“I appreciate the sympathy, Miles, but I am unable to be irritated by such circumstances. I am programmed specifically to love and obey Dimen-X. To be clear, I am also unable to love, and unable to appreciate, despite what I said. I wish to make that clear. Although, accurately speaking, I am also unable to wish.”

Cadoc and I had fallen into a habit, and I was beginning to feel comfortable. Life wasn’t all that bad, really. Selling watches was far from the worst job to have in a fantasy world - what Cadoc told me led me to believe slavery still existed in this dimension - and we’d been able to purchase more supplies - including some light leather armor, which I began wearing immediately, and what Cadoc told me were health potions - although Susanna would not even look at us when we came to buy from her father.

I still woke up every single morning feeling a hole in my gut, but I’d even been able to purchase a mirror, and did my best to imitate my old routine, whispering “You are Tom” to myself when Cadoc wasn’t within earshot. I tried saying “You are Cadoc” a few times, as well, but that didn’t feel right. I would take what I could from him, but he was no Tom.

I was still haunted by the occasional ghost of Tom - so to speak - but even these started to become more rare.

That particular morning had started like any other. We ate some breakfast, and left the inn, navigating the narrow roads of Dross towards the exit facing Eraztun.

My mace was strapped to my back, with the antisword in its scabbard on one hip. Cadoc wore his sword in its scabbard, and together with our leathers, we almost looked like adventurers. We encountered less people in Dross with every passing day, until it finally felt like a ghost town - with skulking phantasms peering at us from the windows of their poverty.

“How do they do that?” I asked Cadoc, on the walk.

“Do what, friend?”

“How can they tell how powerful we are? The people here avoid us like the plague now. They weren’t exactly social before, but now they practically run and hide when we walk by. But out of town, on the road, anyone who looks like they’ve had so much as a bar fight in their lives doesn’t care at all, and they’ll bump into us, or walk right up and expect us to move.” Which we did, I thought.

“They say that it’s a side effect of increasing your mana,” Cadoc responded. “This is all hearsay, as usual, but alas, that is what we have got to work with. You start to be able to sense mana, I suppose, as you have more of it, yourself. There may also be some spells that let you detect mana, which would make it pretty easy to tell how powerful someone is, roughly. So that’s why the people outside of Dross know we aren’t dangerous. Or something like that. I will admit once more to being somewhat of a novice on the topic, and only your complete ignorance makes me seem any different, in comparison. But I can say for certain that the people of Dross have no such ability, and so they must treat every frightening stranger as potentially being a high-level mage. Not that anyone like that would ever come here.”

“Are we frightening?” I asked. Cadoc laughed.

“Everyone powerful is frightening to the less powerful, even at our place near the bottom. The unarmed man fears every weapon, weak or strong.”

“That’s got me thinking something else,” I continued. “How did Dimitri ever expect to get any business? Why would someone ever shop here, this close to Eraztun, unless they couldn’t get in? And if they couldn’t get in, they’re probably too poor to buy anything from his shop anyway.”

“You will not often find me defending that man’s business sense,” Cadoc replied. “But he does get some business, if you can believe it. Mostly careless mages.”

“Careless?”

“The type of person who forgets to buy supplies before leaving Eraztun, and doesn’t want to bother waiting in line to get back in. Of course, the really high level mages wouldn’t have to wait in line, but for an absent-minded mage in the first or second level, it’s more convenient to stop at Dimitri’s than it is to turn back around.”

“Ah, like a convenience store,” I said to myself. Cadoc shook his head, unfamiliar with the term.

“It’s what we call that kind of store in my country,” I said. “A shop that is more expensive, and with a worse selection, but it’s in a convenient location, so they get away with it.”

“That about describes it, friend.”

Suddenly I had a feeling, like an itch in the back of my skull. That feeling you get when someone is watching you.

Which only made sense, of course, because the bald-headed denizens of Dross were definitely watching us. But still, the feeling was stronger than normal. I turned around, feeling foolish as I did.

There was a man there, dressed in black. With hair, and no bandages of any kind, not that I could see.

The man noticed that I had seen him, and turned into a side street. He acted like he had just realized this was his turn.

We walked a little further, and I looked over my shoulder again. I didn’t get a good view this time, but I thought I saw movement, a little flash of black like a raven flying away.

“I think we’re being followed,” I said to Cadoc.

“What makes you say that?” he asked. I looked behind me again. The man had multiplied.

“Oh, just the three men in black who clearly aren’t residents, walking towards us.”

Cadoc turned now, as well. The men didn’t turn into a side road, but continued walking, eyes on us. One - the one I had first seen, smiled.

Before I had a chance to say anything else, Cadoc yelled at the men. They were still some distance away. “Hail!” he shouted. “Well met, travelers. Do you have business with us?”

The men didn’t answer, but continued to walk towards us.

And then they were armed. I didn’t see the motion, but there were daggers in their hands. They appeared so quickly that it seemed like they had always been holding them, and I just hadn’t noticed.

Cadoc drew his sword. “I believe they do have business with us, Miles.”

“Shouldn’t we just bail?” I asked. “Go get the guard, have him deal with this?”

“Guard!” Cadoc shouted. We were close enough to the entrance that the guard had to have heard it. “There,” Cadoc said. “And I don’t intend to run if we don’t need to. Besides, it’s better to fight and hold your ground while the guard comes, than to turn your back on an unfamiliar enemy. We could end up with a knife in our backs.”

“Is it better to end up with a knife in our fronts?” I asked. I turned my head back the way we were going, hoping I would see the guard running towards us already.

Instead, the world went dark.