“… and that’s why,” Wip said, bringing his speech to a close, “if I don’t find some strong party members, Stella will stop smelling like beer all the time.” Wip grinned expectantly for a response.

“Mister, are you going to pay for your drink?”

Wip’s audience was a boy named Mori, who was a couple years too young to be serving drinks. His dreary expression didn’t suit his formal attire. Nor did the eye patch he always wore on his right. Each time Mori blinked—or winked— his green eye squeezed shut for a bit too long, as though he never wanted to open it again.

A pint of beer rested on the wobbly table in front of Wip. Despite Wip having never touched it, the glass was missing a full three fingers of liquid, some of which was running down the side of the glass and sticking to the table. That didn’t bother Wip. Nor did it bother him that the beer was heavily watered down. The Unfortunate Maid’s beer was the first he’d ever tried and, therefore, the best he’d ever had.

“Put it on my tab!” Wip announced.

Mori took a long, deep breath, then exhaled with a sigh. “Sure. Whatever. See if I care what happens to you.”

Mori strode back to the inn’s bar counter where old, wispy-haired Mr. Dagan, the proprietor of the Unfortunate Maid, poured drinks from the tap. As he poured, Mr. Dagan’s hands shook so much that beer sloshed over the sides of the glass. He glanced over the top of the counter and glared darkly at Wip, who waved back with a smile.

Above Mr. Dagan was the only television in the dimly lit inn. It showed a man in his fifties with a scar running horizontally across his busted-up nose. The left side of his face didn’t perk up properly, which somehow made him look more furious—a feat, given that he looked ready to bite the tops off the microphones shoved in his face by reporters desperate to be at the front of the pack.

“The evidence is clear,” he said. His voice was stern, filled with righteous indignation. “Six known members of the Black Talon Cartel ran an operation stealing from low-level dungeoneers and then leaving them for dead. They’re carrion crows, plain and simple. However, the law protected these criminals. That is why I’m calling for the Ranked Privacy Waiver to be abolished and for all dungeoneers—not just those who can’t afford the waiver—to have to submit every afto to dungeon administrators before crawling.”

Speaking of dungeons, that reminded Wip of something.

“Hey, Mori, I’m looking for party members,” Wip called after the boy. “Do you want to—”

“I’d rather kill myself,” Mori said before shoving through a door into the kitchen.

Wip shrugged and took a sip of his beer. He had no idea how to begin searching for party members. He’d never had anything resembling a party before so he had no idea what to look for. Still, Wip didn’t understand why he really needed one, or why Stella made such a fuss over it. He was fine!

His skin’s pink hue, the product of his curse, had faded dramatically along with the burning sensation he’d been ignoring up until now. In the dull light of the seedy inn, he just looked a little sunburnt. By flowing a bit of enma through his body, it would go away on its own. Really, these city people were so strange with their doctors and hospitals and using devices for every little thing!

As he took another sip of his beer, something tickled at the edge of Wip’s consciousness. He looked up to meet the hollowed gaze of a long-faced man with patches of stubble on his pointed chin.

“Heard you was looking for a party,” the man said in a scratchy voice.

Wip hadn’t noticed the man’s presence at the inn until he’d approached, as nothing about him had stood out. Wip decided to show curtesy in the way Anypaxians did, by smiling and giving a vague and dismissive response.

“Yep. I need a party so my fence doesn’t die from lack of beer.” That was Wip’s best attempt at being vague and dismissive.

The man cracked a grin, showing a chipped tooth. “Fences are damn annoying, ey? They do hardly anything and take our money for it.” He dropped onto the bench opposite Wip and held out a hand to shake. “Name’s Lofer.”

Wip blinked at Lofer’s hand in confusion. Realisation struck him and he clasped a hand over his fist. “Respect!”

Lofer’s scrunched up his nose and slowly drew his hand away. “Right. Mind if my party joins us?”

Before Wip could reply, Lofer gestured to another table. Three more people shuffled over and planted themselves all around Wip. To each of Lofer’s party members, Wip offered the same greeting.

“Who’d you say your fence was, again?” Lofer asked.

“The cat lady, Stella!” Wip said, beaming.

Lofer and his party all exchanged looks. “That saves us some trouble,” he said. When he caught Wip’s eyes darting between them, he added, “We go way back.”

Wip gasped. “That makes us client-in-laws!”

Lofer winked at him.

“You’ve got quite a mug on you,” one of the newcomers, rake-thin woman, said. She wore odd-looking eyewear which had a single, clear lens that covered both eyes. The temples of her eyewear were bulky and protruded from the sides of her head, giving her the impression of a strange pot with a brown ponytail. “Been in a few scuffles, have you?”

Wip bobbed his head vigorously. “Ever since I could walk, I was learning how to fight!”

“Our guide here, Snik, was talking about monsters,” Lofer said, gesturing to the woman with the strange goggles. “How far you gone down the dungeon?”

“First floor!” Wip said without a hint of shame.

Lofer cocked an eyebrow. “Having trouble with your afto?” he asked. “The collar, I mean. Snik says that thing’s lighting up like a SIN tower on her scanner.”

“Oh, that?” Wip said softly. He put his pint down and stared darkly into its murky contents. “I don’t really like using it.”

Lofer and Snik exchanged a look. Snik gave a slight nod and the corners of Lofer’s lips twitched up for an instant.

“What, too hard to control?” said a hulking mass of a woman who sat beside Wip. She had tattoos covering her arms, legs, and face. A shield was fastened to her back that was bigger than Wip. Her shoulders bumped against Wip’s and threatened to knock him out of his chair.

“Ah, something like that,” Wip said.

The large woman’s nostrils flared. “Pfft! Sounds like you’re scared.”

“What’s that, Saba?” said a gangly man who sat on the other side of Wip. He was decked out in all manner of trinkets. “Is the tank, who cowers behind her shield all day, trying to give lectures on bravery?”

“That’s rich coming from the support, Ford,” the hulking woman, Saba, shot back. “What do you do again, sit back and let everyone else do the hard work?”

“Hey, enough,” Lofer cut in. “We’re a team, remember?” He turned back to Wip and gave a reassuring smile. “Sorry about that. We’re just a little on edge after we lost one of our members. Got poached by one of the big guilds, you know?”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Wip nodded. “Yes, Stella’s clients kept getting poached as well. Those guilds must be pretty mean if they keep eating people like that.”

Lofer and Snik exchanged a confused look before Lofer went on. “Thing is, all we’ve got right now for offense is me, the sole striker of the party. We’re fine against tougher monsters but, without a lambaster, we don’t do too well against hordes. Gets a little hot once we start getting into the twenties, you know?”

Wip’s eyes lit up. “You guys have got to floor twenty? Woah! But you don’t feel that strong.”

Lofer’s party went stiff. Tension filled the musty inn air. Then Lofer let out a raucous laugh and slapped the table. The tension quickly dissipated.

“Hah! This guy’s got an ego, alright. What, because he can sense a little enma? But who cares about that old melding stuff, right? It’s levels that count these days, and having the right aftos to use them.”

Lofer leaned back in his chair and gestured towards his long coat. It shimmered blue under the dim light bulbs, exposing the hexagonal structure of the coat’s afto-powered shielding.

“This coat? Takes seventeen levels to bind with it. Costs about as much as a house in the Pot. And this baby here?”

He pushed the tail of his coat aside to reveal a gun holstered at his side. A faint glow emitted from the crystal, the aftocore that powered it, which lined its barrel.

“This baby here? She’s called Greymaker. Took another twelve levels to bind with her. Found the core on floor twenty-three, I did. And there’s plenty better stuff the lower you go. Crystals the size of your head. Aftocores that are powerful enough to make the Emperor blush. And the thing is, we’re just a B-class party. With your help, er…”

“Wip!” he announced, then clasped his hand over his fist and bowed deeply, his head nearly bumping the table.

“Right, Wip. We’ve got a striker, tank, scout, and support. If we only had a lambaster as strong as you to fill out our numbers, we’d easily break floor thirty.”

Wip blinked at Lofer. “Is that good?”

The others stared at each other in visible confusion.

“If we get to floor thirty-one, we each become A-class,” Lofer said. “So, want in?”

An image flashed through Wip’s mind. He was skipping into the General Counting Room with Lofer and crew in tow. Stella congratulated him on finding a cool new party and said she’d always believed in him. Then she gave him a pass to the bottom floor of the dungeon. She told Wip that he was such an amazing dungeoneer that he didn’t need to pay taxes anymore. Afterwards, the Emperor, Sen Aigos, personally congratulated him, and Wip, the Emperor, and Stella, went to the dungeon together to beat up more monsters, laughing and smiling all the way.

He held his beer in front of him and flashed a gap-toothed grin.

“Cheers!”

He’d always wanted to try doing that. Lofer’s party, unfortunately, had no drinks to join in on the cheer.

*****

The next morning, Wip emerged from the Unfortunate Maid with an empty backpack and a huge smile on his face. He’d done the impossible: found people who didn’t want to punch him at first sight! It was odd that his whole life had been bogged down with violence. Even Stella had threatened to hit him after he came back from his first dungeon crawl, a couple of weeks ago, empty handed. However, much of that was behind him now. He was going to be a dungeoneer. A real dungeoneer with a real party.

However, a real dungeoneer had aftos. Wip’s were all broken and lost somewhere on the first floor of the dungeon. In other words, he needed some cool new aftos!

Across the road from the Unfortunate Maid was a forger’s called Emery Black. People took them aftocores and they made aftos out of them. It was a miraculous place, as far as Wip was concerned. Beside the forger’s was an alleyway. That was where they dumped all their unused aftos. If Emery Black was a miracle, the dumpster behind it was the nectar of the gods.

Set on his quarry, Wip marched across the road without looking. A crystal-powered scooter came to a screeching halt and barely avoided crashing into him. The driver shouted obscenities at Wip, which were casually ignored. Wip wasn’t being rude, he just couldn’t hear driver; a skytrain decided to rumble overhead at that exact moment, drowning out the noise of the busy street.

Hemming Street wasn’t the busiest or largest road on the southern end of the Pot—the sprawling, vertically-stacked section of the city that splayed out from the fort guarding the dungeon’s entrance. The street had a lot of cheap stores that both dungeoneers and the residents of the adjacent Shanties frequented. That brought the street a lot of traffic, and a lot of colourful, sometimes shady, characters as well. Wip found it pleasant here, even if it did smell of mud, sewage, and perspiration.

Once in the alley, Wip approached the Forger’s dumpster, slammed it open, then dived in.

“An icy one. Nice!” he exclaimed, scratching slag off a lump of swirling metal. He bit the end of it then pumped some enma into it through his mouth. “Still has a few uses in it. I don’t know why they throw out stuff that isn’t broken. Oh, and this one makes holes in things!”

Clang clang clang!

Someone banged on the wall of the dumpster, startling Wip. He stuck his head out and saw the owner of the shop, grizzled and scarred Mr. Emery, scowling down at Wip through the smoke of his cigar. On his chest was pinned an intricately carved golden badge. The linework design featured three hammers drawn in such detail that they seemed almost real.

“Boy, I didn’t retire from dungeoneering to deal with rats like you,” Mr. Emery growled. “I’ve given you your warnings; today, you’re getting your stitches.” He raised up a staff. Its end sparked with blue electricity.

Wip ducked as the staff swept across the opening of the dumpster. Taking his chance, he scooped a couple of extra aftos into his backpack before leaping out. Mr. Emery’s staff struck the dumpster just as Wip cleared it. Sparks engulfed the dumpster. Putrid smoke began to billow from inside as it contents caught fire.

“You’re not getting away that easy!” Mr. Emery howled.

The grizzled Forger slammed his staff against the ground. Sparks shot out across the cobbled road and chased Wip.

“Woah, Mr. Emery is really mad today,” Wip noted as the sparks inched closer.

Wip sent a spike of enma into his legs. In a burst of red electricity, Wip kicked off with one foot and he was soaring towards the end of the alleyway, wind snapping at his hole-laden shirt. Two steps later, Wip had reached the exit. The sparks from Mr. Emery’s afto fizzled out far away from him.

Mr. Emery shouted after him, “You’re going to get what’s coming to you, boy!”

Wip turned and bowed to Mr. Emery from the crossing street. “Appreciation!” he shouted.

He pivoted, and with another spike of enma he was weaving along the footpath towards the next Forger.

*****

Stella had been pacing for two hours outside the dungeon entrance. Two hours! Under any other circumstance, she would never have stayed so close. The thing was creepy! An unnatural darkness loomed within the colossal stairway, the Kimaw, which seemed to swallow the light and anything else that was crazy enough to walk in. Right now, however, Stella’s mood was even darker.

Dungeoneers eyed her weirdly as they passed through the Ravelin, the stone walled, open roofed structure that housed the dungeon entrance. She knew how odd she looked, but she couldn’t help it! When it came to Wip, even the simplest things were stressful.

Stella’s hand inched to her pocket where she kept a hip flask, specifically for emergencies like this. She’d repeated this motion tens of times today and had managed to hold off. This time, however, she wasn’t sure she could resist any longer. She needed a drink.

“To Gul with it,” she sighed, then stuffed her hand in her pocket.

“Ready!” someone cried from the other side of the Ravelin.

Groaning, Stella released the hip flask. She crossed her arms and waited for Wip to approach. She was going to give him a piece of her mind, partly because he’d stressed her out by making her wait and partly because he’d denied her some liquid ease.

Wip rushed up to her with his backpack stuffed to bursting. Twisted canes and bent blades poked out of every available hole. Some of those holes Stella was certain had been made today. He was grinning ear to ear, and that only made Stella want to dress him down further.

“Let me get this straight,” she said, spitting each of her words. As soon as Wip heard her tone, he braced himself. “You send me a message saying to meet you here because you’ve found a party, but when I ask for details, you don’t respond! Is this a prank?”

Wip scratched at his collar. “Er, nope. I actually found one.”

Stella glared at him for a few seconds. “A party. You found a whole party? In one day?”

“Uh huh.”

Another pause. “Okay, you’re too stupid to lie.” She stepped closer and scowled up at Wip. She oozed so much rage that Wip took an involuntary step back. “What are their names? Their DIDs? I need to perform a background check to make sure you didn’t invite half the Cartel in. Do they have a fence already? Did you give them my AAN so they can nominate me for a temporary contract?”

“Hey, Stella. It’s been a while.”

Stella froze as Lofer and his party approached. Her eyes settled on each of their faces in turn, then went back to Wip. Her hands went numb. Anxiety tightened her dark, fatigue-puffy eyes. “Wip, when did you—”

“Still wearing the old cat ears, ey?” Lofer cut in.

“Um, yeah,” Stella mumbled, barely audible over the hubbub of the Ravelin.

“Well, that’s good. That’s good. Glad to know not much has changed.” He hooked an arm around Wip’s neck and dragged the taller boy close, causing Wip to bend at the knees. “Wip here says he was looking for a party, and we was looking for a new party member. Coincidence, ey?”

“Yeah…” Stella said.

Lofer’s eyes lit up. “Oh, since you’re here, Stella, you mind setting up a contract for us? Our guy couldn’t make it.”

“Your guy,” she breathed. “He’s not a—I mean, sure. Is a temporary contract okay?”

“Perfect. You’ve got our details right? Great. We’ll just be off then. Get all the paperwork sorted for us. And make sure you do it right. I don’t think you want our friends to have to clean up after your mistakes, ey?”

With that, they were trudging into the Kimaw. Wip waved at Stella over his shoulder, who waved back in a stupor.

Stella watched their silhouettes vanish into the dark mist of the great staircase. Once they were out of sight, she put a hand to her mouth.

“What have I done?”