Steerwater’s goon placed a hand on Ortho’s shoulder, pinning him to the sofa. As much as Ortho wanted to slug the man right there and then, he needed a weapon if he was going to fight his way out of this. To get one, he needed time. And levels.

He shifted his hand to a blue arm band lying on the sofa beside him, a two level hoshing weight. The unbinding process began anew, but less intense and easier to manipulate. It didn’t completely drown out the club’s crappy music, unfortunately.

The second of Steerwater’s two goons handed the suited businessman a rectangular device with a low-resolution screen on it. He stood and fixed Ortho with a tired stare. “This will only take a few seconds.”

“Well, I shouldn’t have expected anything better,” Ortho said, while he tried to shift the bangles on his wrists into a less conspicuous position. That didn’t do him much good. They stood out too much, but so long as Steerwater stayed focused on his aftos, he wouldn’t suspect a thing.

Steerwater ignored his provocation. The goon that had handed Steerwater the device circled the table and loomed over Ortho, one hand tucked under his jacket, presumably holding an afto, the other ready to seize him. Steerwater leaned forward and faced the back of the scanner at Ortho’s helmet, which still rested on the table.

Speckles of light flashed over the helmet like static. Ortho’s first instinct was to grab it, but his hand was still on the weight. If he got up to snatch the helmet, he’d need to hold the hoshing weight which would have made it obvious what he was doing. Though it was possible to unbind an afto without touching it or even being near it, the process was far more difficult and therefore more time consuming. So, Ortho sat there and stalled for time.

“Wow, he just goes and grabs it,” Ortho said. Despite his sarcastic demeanour, Ortho was fuming on the inside. “Doesn’t even ask for permission. If this were Huhl Hadem, you’d have to prove your worth in combat against me before you could marry me.”

The scanner stopped flashing. Steerwater stared at it. On his side of the scanner, the screen displayed information on the helmet’s level as well as information that had been stored in the SIN network.

“Dog-faced helmet. Five levels. Registered to Ortho New-bar Kileh-bi.” He looked up and nodded. “A decent piece of armour.”

“That name sucks,” Ortho said. “When I first went to crawl through that pathetic excuse for a dungeon, the authorities went and registered all my aftos. But they threw out the name I gave the helmet and just assigned that crap. I declared a duel of honour right there, but the cowards just called the guards and they—”

“Fantastic story,” Steerwater said dryly. Next, he scanned Ortho’s shield.

Ortho wanted to rush the unbinding but impatience only increased the risk of missing a pattern and having to start again. He carefully followed the sensations. Water falling through stone. He fell down the waterfall. A night sky. He dived at the moon. A dog howling at a burning cloud. Seized. Unbound.

The scanner ended its flashing. “Deflecting shield,” Steerwater read aloud. “Seven levels. Registered to Ortho New-bar Kileh-bi.”

“You know how much money you need to pay to get a custom name?” Ortho scoffed. “Three thousand kin. Three thousand! For what? For it to come up with a name when someone checks it in the system? I’d rather dance in a nest of scornsawls!”

Ortho directed unformed enma into his shield and got to delving. Despite requiring seven levels and, therefore, being far more intense on his senses, the aposyndortion invoked by his shield was familiar. That cut down time. Still, it was seven damned levels. Thankfully, nobody in Anypaxia had a lick of gestalt sense, and he hadn’t seen any of those overpriced eye scanners in the club. If they had, someone would have caught him during the fight.

Steerwater circled around the table and pressed the back of his scanning device to the plain, thin cuirass now latched around Ortho’s chest. “Cuirass. Four levels.”

“I swear, I’m going to have you and your boys apologise with your head pressed to the dirt like a Sylexan once you’re done,” Ortho said.

The images were bombarding him. A skink faced him, opened its mouth, and made a sound like a foghorn. Floodwaters rushed him from the side, which poured into a tiny pond and could barely fill it. The pond water was blood; it was sucked up by the roots of a tree. Once satiated, the tree bloomed skulls.

Level seven aftos were no joke, and his shield was even less so having been forged from the core of a karahia. Three people had been injured fighting that thing for its core, and the only reason the shield had been granted to him at a young age and not some grizzled veteran was because his father had gifted it to him.

Ortho didn’t want to move for fear he’d fall over from the dizzying sequence of sensations the shield blasted into his mind. He tried to keep as still as possible so as not to get lost in it, and just endure whatever Steerwater and his thugs did to him.

“Arm guards—hold still, Mr. New-bar Kileh-bi.”

Ortho waved his arm around to avoid having it be detected. It wasn’t a very good attempt given his state. “You’re damned annoying, you know that? When we’re done here, you and I are going into the ring and—hey! Hands off.”

Steerwater’s goons locked Ortho’s arms in vice-like holds. Fearing his hand would come off the shield, Ortho stopped resisting and gripped his shield as hard as he could. Moving it about only made the delve harder to maintain. The images were going all funky and he was struggling to find the pattern.

Static light engulfed the paper-thin, fuchite arm guard. “Two levels each,” Steerwater said dryly.

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“Why don’t you all kiss me while you’re here,” Ortho snapped at the goons.

Steerwater scanned Orthos’s shin guards next. They were just as thin as his arm guards. They didn’t come up past the knees and the fuchite plating didn’t wrap around far enough to protect his calves. They didn’t have to—aftos obeyed their own rules, and the use of fuchite as a base was only there to provide a last line of protection. Too much of the heavy material and it would have been intrusive.

“Shin guards. Also two levels each,” Steerwater said. “All totalling exactly twenty-four levels.”

Steerwater furrowed his brows at the scanner. He turned to Ortho and peered him up and down. Between the barrage of hallucinations, Ortho could clearly make out the man’s frustration. He would have grinned if he could manage it, but as it was, even keeping his face neutral was a struggle.

The greasy man’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sweating, Mr. New-bar Kileh-bi.”

“I just got out of the ring, you dapper monkilyx,” Ortho spat. “And it’s damned hot in here.”

The binding was taking too long. He was still floundering within the patterns. Then Steerwater’s eyes turned to his wrist. Ortho hadn’t taken off his thick bangles. There wasn’t a way to. The bangles were solid bone, forged to a lustre similar to metal. It had been taken from the corpse of a kelbeyu which, like many monsters in Huhl Hadem, didn’t fade upon its death. They had no latch, no gap on the back, and were bound tight to his wrists. They were Ortho’s wadis, his award for slaying his first kelbeyu with the ceremonial knife. The proof of his place as a warrior of the Nubah Kilebhi clan.

Steerwater’s mouth split slightly. He grabbed Ortho’s wrist and held the scanner to it.

“Level five. Currently bound. Unregistered.” He lowered the scanner. “He’s a cheater! Grab—”

A fierce dog made of shadows. Shadows pouring off the sun. Sunburn on his heart turned inside out. The dog swallowed his heart whole. Bound.

Steerwater was standing directly in front of his shield. The two goons holding Ortho began to lift him so they could toss him to the ground and slap on some enma-blocking manacles. They were too late.

Ortho flowed a pulse of enma into the shield. It flashed. With a great thump, the low table, the sofa, and Steerwater were sent hurtling across the room. Along with that rotten kakaliz on his shoulder, whose camouflage had come undone as it moved. The rot that had tainted his nose was replaced by sweat, alcohol, and fear—a good smell for a fight!

Screams erupted from the crowd. The music kept playing, the DJ having abandoned his station once he saw the fight break out.

Unlike a hoshing repulsor, his shield didn’t push back against its user unless he wanted it to. Standing with his knees bent, he turned around and grinned at Steerwater’s goons. They were staring flabbergasted at the carnage Ortho had just wrought.

“The date’s over boys,” Ortho said in a growl. “Now I’m taking you home.”

Ortho flowed enma into the bangles on his wrists and strength flowed back into him. His body felt lighter, stronger, and he was convinced he could lift a mountain. With strength beyond human limits, he ripped his arms from his captors, then whirled around and slugged one in the face. The hulking man was sent tumbling and he crashed into a table, spilling all the drinks it carried onto his jacket.

The fight was on.

A short bouncer charged him with a baton that blurred with light. Ortho lifted his shield and aimed a thin pulse directly at her face, causing the woman to flip over backwards. He glimpsed another baton in his peripheral vision and brought his shield up in time to block it.

The batons gave off a weird scent of dry stone and limes. From that, Ortho deduced that they were short ranged weapons, designed to incapacitate without blasting a hole in the club. Ortho’s shield, however, was made for killing monsters. Unlike the bouncers, he needed to hold back rather than press harder. And he didn’t plan to hold back at all. With a strong burst of enma, he sent three bouncers flying, along with tables and couches.

Steerwater’s other, conscious goon drew a gun and fired from behind. Ortho didn’t see it before it was too late and was struck square in the back of his armour. He stumbled forward, but there was no pain. The man looked at him, confused.

Ortho shrugged. “It’s not bound, but it’s still fuchite, brother.”

He swept his helmet off the table, stepped towards the gunman, and cracked him over the skull with it. The goon went down like a sack of potatoes.

Ortho shoved the dog’s face helmet on his head and rapped it with his knuckles. He let out a howl, a war cry. His blood was boiling. Bouncers were positioning around the room. With the patrons mostly gone, the fight was about to get proper.

And Ortho hadn’t had a good fight in a while.

The bouncers aimed their weapons at him. Nets fired from them and sought him Ortho out. The nets didn’t look solid, like they were barely even real. However, Ortho knew they’d be more effective and stronger than rope.

He couldn’t deflect them if he stayed on the spot. They were coming from every direction. So, he flowed enma into a pair of wadis on his ankles, identical to the ones on his wrists. With the new strength in his legs, Ortho leapt at one of the bounces with blinding speed. As he flew, he pulsed his shield a couple times to knock back the net coming at him—the best way to stop an afto was with another afto.

Ortho landed in front of one bouncer. With nothing but his wadi-infused strength, he slammed the bouncer with his shield. The bouncer crashed into the wall behind.

More nets fired at him which he pulsed away, sending more furniture hurling across the room. Some of the furniture was caught in the nets, which snapped around them upon contact and rendered the nets useless.

Ortho went to charge the next bouncer when a force struck him hard in the back. He was sent toppling over sofas, crashing through tables, then came to a halt when his back struck a handrail that lined the staircase down to the ring.

Groaning, Ortho tried to prop himself upright with an arm that didn’t want to listen. His cuirass had cushioned some of the hit and his body was toughened by his wadis, but even that couldn’t override the thumping pain he felt all over.

He looked up to find his shield which he’d lost when he went flying. It was lying next to Steerwater’s unconscious body, slumped against a wall a few steps away from him. However, Ortho wouldn’t have had a chance to use it.

Men and women in checkered blue-green coats were storming in through the stairwell. They pointed stun rods at the bouncers from a distance and shouted orders for them to get onto the floor.

However, Ortho wasn’t paying them attention. His blurry gaze was fixed on the monstrously tall man standing in the doorway.

Staring at Ortho down his scarred nose was a mug Ortho had seen far too many times for his liking on Anypaxia’s many televisions. The left side of his face drooped and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in three days. Ortho thought the man should have retired a century ago, given the deep furrows on his brows and the dark rings under his eyes. His knee-length coat absorbed the light around him, making the man seem like he was walking in perpetual shadow: an expensive dungeoneer’s piece of armour.

Commander Hawthorn, head of the Organised Crime Division of the city guard.

He pointed a thin, straight sword at Ortho. A reek of thorns and rotten teeth rolled over the club, indicating that this sword was forged from something fierce, and also what that had struck him so squarely.

“Ortho of Nubah Kilebhi,” Commander Hawthorn shouted over the blaring music. “You’re under arrest.”

Ortho turned towards Steerwater. Blood running down the once smug businessman’s forehead. His kakaliz had dropped its camouflage and was slowly clawing its way up Steerwater’s unconscious body to perch back on his shoulder.

“See? He got the name right,” Ortho groaned. “What’s your excuse?”