“The advertised “magical artifact” sold on ebay for seventeen million dollars. It promises a 15% boost to attractiveness. We have Mulitizik, the goblin from Omaha, ambassador of magic to the mundane world of us normies, to discuss this and other developments. So, you’re the expert… is attractiveness even a stat?”

“I don’t think so, Robin. Not for Goblins anyway.”

–Robin’s Couch Convo’s transcript, podcast originally posted to Youtube 6/11/2024.

Rebecca’s face went blank. Owen could almost see her options vanishing as he watched her process their new timeframe. They had one night to earn eighty mana, which meant hunting a player. A player in that narrow sweet spot, naive enough that they stood some chance of outwitting and outplaying him, despite the myriad of disadvantages, but also a newly ascended player so their stats weren’t so overwhelmingly high that they could tank any mundane damage.

Really they needed a second coming of the overconfident STD demon. Owen kicked himself for wasting the opportunity.

Rebecca’s face hardened, and she forced a smile. “If things don’t work out–”

“Don’t you say it. We’re going to do it–” Watching a girl’s hope die twisted at his gut, but as he spoke his conscience twisted the other direction. “I mean, we’re going to give it everything we’ve got. We can’t give up. We’ll do everything in our power to make this happen. Uh, we can do it!” He blushed. He really had gotten caught up in forcing a motivational speech that somehow also didn’t lie. He felt like a politician.

She rolled her eyes and reached out to tussle his hair. Her eyes turned misty, and Owen grabbed his backpack and set off.

He began to plan to keep his mind focused, focused on the positives.

They still had some prospects. They’d attracted a good deal of attention, and many people–and monsters–in the crowd still looked at them with unashamed curiosity. They weren’t a threat, and any one of the minds behind those eyes could be thinking about taking the bait. Bait was perhaps a bit loose here. They were more prey with delusions of grandeur, rabbits hoping to suckerpunch the wolf as it barrelled through the brush.

He had to try. Doomed or not. If he didn’t succeed, Rebecca would– he chose not to think about that.

He didn’t care, he reminded himself. Couldn’t care. Nothing mattered. Not when compared to punishing Nikolai. But he had twenty four hours to accomplish both. He could still try, right?

He grinned. The list of positives hadn’t really lasted very long.

Rebecca caught up quickly. They headed south in silence. Although Quarantine had encircled the city, only the main camps allowed interaction between the magical city and the mundane soldiers. Try to interact at any other site, and the soldiers had orders to shoot on sight.

The main military base, and the new trade route to the outside world was directly south in Bellevue, near the closest surviving bridge. It was nearly a five hour walk. The silence lasted for substantially less than five minutes.

“Why are we picking her up? She’ll have soldiers or guards, right? They’re not just going to send a diplomat into the heart of darkness without support. They know that much.”

Owen didn’t reply. The military occasionally tried offensive actions in the zone. There were plenty of stories anyway. He’d only seen it once. The stories all had the same theme. Someone would come up with a vaguely feasible plan, the military, excited to finally be proactive, would send in a team to test the idea, and monsters would eat the team. Or orcs would slaughter them. Or the unaffiliated masses in the outskirts would mob them for whatever reason. It wasn’t so much that people didn’t understand what the military was trying to do–but armed mundanes made great practice for low leveled players.

Owen ignored the comment. At most waiting in the downtown area would buy them a few hours. Their best chance was to find a new player grinding in the outskirts.

They walked in silence for a while. Rebecca kept glancing behind them. Owen didn’t bother.

He stopped in front of one of the gates into the Orc clan compound. The green skinned clan had claimed the entire south east area, extending from downtown all the way to the zoo, and orc soldiers patrolled the rooftops with bows. Sometime during his ‘vacation,’ their ‘fortress’ had been upgraded. Instead of makeshift barricades made from furniture and heavy machinery, someone had stacked cars into makeshift walls between boarded up buildings.

The orcs kept keen, professional guards. Owen hadn’t much experience, but he imagined they were like modern soldiers–just over muscled, green, and with bloodlust bonuses. People said the leader was former special forces, but people talked a lot of shit, and very few outsiders had met the Orc clan head. He had never been in the special forces. He was some old kungfu master. His second had been a marine gunnery something.

Owen eyed the improvised fortress. Becoming an orc required a lot of mana. Details on joining other species weren’t shared–but most agreed it was different for each species. Joining the orcs cost a minimum of five hundred mana, though women could join for less. Rumors said women could even work off the debt.

Rebecca must have seen him looking, because she balked. “Let’s go around. If anyone’s following us, we’ll lose them inside.”

Owen shrugged. If she wasn’t willing to take a chance with the orcs, then he wasn’t going to suggest it.

Still, he had to do something. So he went to work, examining buildings as they passed.

Most were terrible, showing recent signs of being scavenged or even showing signs of people–even players–living there.

Sometimes they’d stop and look inside. Twice he’d gone so far as to examine the second floor of an abandoned home or apartment building, but each time they’d moved on. The first rule of war was to choose your ground. He’d started out picky and only grown more risk averse as tragedies and failures compounded. He’d learned those lessons.

Owen grinned when he finally found what he was looking for. He’d have been forced to stop soon. It was getting late in the day anyway. It was only about four o’clock, but without electricity or mana, they’d be forced to inaction by the darkness, and he had work to do.

Owen moved through it quickly, too rushed to perform a full assessment. But his smiled only grew wider as he made his way through. The building was a massive brick construction undergoing a massive renovation. The first floor had clearly been scavenged to death. A lot of the worker’s tools were missing, but the stairwell had been removed. There was an elevator, completely disabled and crashed into the basement level. When he found the cleaning supply closet overstocked and untouched by any scavengers he actually laughed. It was even on the top floor. “This is it. It’s perfect.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Rebecca settled into their little nook on the third floor. She lined up her tasks and knocked them out quickly. She checked the escape route. The building had one of those old ironwork fire escapes. As instructed, she climbed down, then made sure the ladder was out of reach of the ground before climbing back up the stairs–avoiding the nails Owen was pounding up through them.

She frowned at that. No matter how many nails he set, it would never kill a player. Perhaps he hoped to slow them down, but booby-trapping every stairwell cut off their retreat options too. Owen was betting everything on this one play. She tossed that on her growing collection of guilt.

She’d find a way to pay him back. Somehow. If not, then dying again would hardly be the worst option.

Next task. She searched each floor carefully. The key was to watch the levels of dust. Cobwebs and dust could and did accumulate in the magic zone, but it followed no rhyme or reason. Everything would be squeaky clean and then one day it was like the room had decided to go with dilapidated as a fashion choice. However, it did mean that the slightest disturbance in dust would persist for weeks.

As far as her scavenging went, it was a major bust–a truly poor choice by local standards. The apartments had been in the middle of major renovations. So she found no furniture, no food, and nothing valuable, although the works had left behind a lot of power tools. Probably most of their body parts too, though that part had magically self-cleaned sometime before the dusty look became vogue. Hand tools could be useful, and Owen carried around a bucket for his own renovations, but power tools were useless in a magical world.

Final task. She pulled out three MRE’s and laid out the sleeping bags, not bothering with the pup tent. They were inside, and it wasn’t yet cold enough to need it for warmth. It lacked something, but she settled down to watch.

She didn’t know much about what Owen was doing, but she smiled every time he passed by, which was often. He didn’t notice at all, but that was part of the game. The fourth time he came through she chucked a brick at him, missing by a mile, but he didn’t notice that either. He’d just chugged past, grinning like an idiot. Somewhere he’d found four gallons of cleaning supplies, and for some reason it all needed to be upstairs.

She couldn’t help but grin. She knew something had broken inside her brother, years ago now, but now she was broken too. Sometimes she wondered what would have happened to him if they hadn’t been in Omaha for the Eruption. He’d probably be working with the military compiling databases of known powers or with a think tank trying to figure out new ways to outplay the game mechanics.

She pulled open her MRE’s and began choking down something mislabeled ‘chicken.’ She slipped the package under her shirt. That would at least warm it a bit. Eating it cold was better than trying to heat it. Whatever chemicals they’d used to make them self-heat tended to go very wrong once they mixed with magic. It wasn’t supposed to do much more than warm the pre-cooked food, but sometimes it started a fire, some exploded, others melted. Almost always the already iffy food became inedible.

Whatever magic had done to physics. Chemical based food didn’t seem to like it.

Owen bounced past again, cheerful as could be carrying a length of chain and a bucket. She didn’t have anything at hand to throw, so she blew a raspberry.

He turned to look at her, confused at the outburst. She smiled and waved, but he just continued past, that confused expression locked onto his face.

Whatever had gone wrong in his brain. She’d fully expected it to make him a terror in the new world. He had the talent, she thought. He was driven. And he didn’t let anything distract him. Sure, they’d had initial setbacks. Everything turned against him, against them, even their successes backfired. Now, knowing what little she did, she suspected some terrible karma or luck stat.

Still, hopefully she’d removed that part of the equation. He didn’t need to worry about her anymore. She felt selfish sticking around. She could leave–he probably wouldn’t even notice until it got too dark to work. She knew she should just leave, but it was about Owen now.

He’d played a game before. She didn’t remember the real name, but he’d called it ‘Spreadsheets in Space.’ He’d thrown a party for the two of them when a game update actually made the game files exportable to Microsoft excel. He’d stopped playing for two days to optimize his optimization spreadsheets. She’d bought a gigantic spaceship cake. They’d tried to eat it, but half of it mom had to throw it out.

Tears came to her eyes again. He’d probably never make many friends, but she had still hoped he’d have kids someday. He’d have lived for his kids, as baffled and confused by their developing little minds as he was by everyone else. Except now he lived for the mission instead, that was already in the pile of guilt, but she stacked more on top anyway.

He’d been going to make something of his life. Maybe she could have too. She ruthlessly smashed those thoughts again. There was no room for that. Selfishness was a thing of the past.

Owen would do it. Eventually. He took a lot of preparation, but as a mundane he had all the time in the world. He’d figure it out eventually.

Of course, Nikolai had precognition as an aspect. Who knew what additional powers that unlocked, but he definitely could see his enemies' attacks before they made them. He was, quite undisputedly invincible, and that was before he’d unlocked two more aspects and their powers.

She raised her head proudly. Nikolai was an invincible villain, and his vampire nature made him a global threat. Which is why the world needed Owen. His mind was built to break games, and now the world was a game. He’d break Nikolai too.

His head popped into the room. “Hey, have you seen a saw?”

“Seen a saw?”

“Yeah, like a normal saw. There’s like a thousand electric ones, but I need a handsaw.”

Rebecca didn’t really notice those things. “I didn-”

He was gone. Racing down to check the bottom floor.

She finished her food and glanced around the room. It looked barren and empty.

She jumped to her feet and headed to the basement. She’d found a storage area there. Many of the rooms had left a bunch of stuff in storage during the remodel. It was locked, but when she asked for help Owen pointed out a pair of bolt cutters and hauled a massive sledgehammer upstairs.

Getting the lock off took more strength than she’d expected, but eventually the metal snapped and she got inside. Everything was covered in dust. Almost everything. The corner by contained the electrical gauges for the building. They were clean as a whistle, and beyond them was a deep patch of darkness.

Her eyes scanned the shadows. She’d never heard of a dust aspect, but there was no reason there couldn’t be one. Owen would probably know. Maybe someone had snuck in and covered their tracks. Who really knew what was possible anymore?

She forced down her nervousness. She couldn’t act suspicious. She hadn’t even seen anything. She moved into the storage area marked 301B. The shapes and boxes in the darkness suddenly appeared more menacing, like something hid there, waiting to pounce. Her nerves suddenly on edge she inched up to the first sheet and yanked it away. Underneath was a leather sectional couch.

The basement was quiet. But it was a normal silence, right?

She was letting things get to her.

She looted the place. It took three trips, but the next time Owen passed the stairwell she had the blanket fort nearly finished. She’d cheated and used piled cushions rather than haul up any furniture. A massive yellow Spongebob blanket took pride of place. Owen had loved Spongebob… years ago, but still.

He walked right past.

Rebecca sighed. It was fine. He’d see it eventually. It was just fine.

She lay back on the cushions and watched him head upstairs. He was half jogging now, daylight was fading. Whatever traps and protections he wanted to put up would need to be finished quickly.

She let her mind drift while she waited for him. She hadn’t managed to do anything they’d set out to do when this all started, but she could do one thing. She could keep her brother alive. It was already too late for her.

Her hands drifted over her arms. Nothing felt right about it. Things were fine as long as she was focused, but in the silence everything about her body felt wrong, definitely somehow other, distinctly not herself. It was a creepy sensation, which was ironic. Owen would laugh if she explained it, but his laugh was getting creepy.

The sensation flowed through her. As if her entire body rebelled against her nature before settling down to tingle unsettlingly in protest. She shivered again. She was always cold too. Always.

Maybe it would end when Owen killed her. Probably not.