I insist on staying outside that night. Sitting around and watching them all eat delicious food—which probably smells and tastes fantastic—when I can’t do any of that just rubs salt in the wound. I’d rather be out here with my own thoughts. Not to mention, magic.

Rezira was on the right track when she suggested adding something elastic to my glass limbs to simulate tendons. I’m not convinced leather is the answer, though. I won’t be able to sense them until they’re pulled all the way taut, and that sounds like a recipe for accidental limb breakage. No, I need to have more precise control than that.

I’ll start with the hands first. Thanks to practicing signs, I’ve gotten best at simulating finger movements anyway.

Splaying my hand before me, I summon a mental picture of what I want. False tendons bracing the back of each joint. Restricting the motion to just what a normal, human hand could do.

The void reacts immediately, splitting into dozens of tiny pieces to secure itself to each digit. It only uses a portion of the whole Attuned void volume, which is great considering I’m going to need a shit-ton more for all my other joints. But even then, I don’t think it will be enough.

Once the void is settled, I flex my fingers. The void is helping to guide my motions, just as I intended. Of course it is—it can only do what I intend. But even after using it a dozen different times to renew my Core Bond spell, a part of me still regards it with deep suspicion, as if it will develop a mind of its own at any moment.

For now, however, it’s working. I compare it to the hand that I didn’t add void to: even its basic movements look more artificial. Puppeted. I must be doing something right.

Holding it up against the starry sky, the shadows sink into the joints, vanishing beneath the moonlight. Shadow and glass. Maybe it would be pretty if it weren’t so alien—if it didn’t fill me with such a deep instinct of wrongness.

Lowering my hand, I recall the void and have it rejoin the baseball sized blob of ink-like magic floating beside me. Now for the real test.

I start with my ankles and knees: those are the most crucial points, I think. Shadows peel away from the main volume, wicking toward each joint as I picture the forms they should take. Hips next. Back. Feet, probably, something along the bottom…

I suddenly wish I had an anatomy book to help, but I’ll have to make do as is. My limited supply of void runs out before I can add any to my arms or hands, but I don’t need those to walk.

I stretch a leg out, flexing it. The movement feels stiff, a little too restrictive, so I pause to rearrange the void until it feels… well, normal isn’t the right word, but at least a little more familiar.

After a few more minutes of tweaking, it’s as good as I can get it from the ground. Time to try it out.

Bracing an arm against the side of the cottage, I slowly pull my legs beneath me. I push myself up to one knee, then pause. Tense. Don’t hesitate now, this is the easy part—

In one move I push myself to my feet. And I feel… stable, actually. I’m hardly leaning against the cabin. Gingerly, with a tink of glass on wood, I take my hand away. No one holding me. No table to sit back against. Just me, standing on two legs, all on my own.

Like I had before I’d been sucked into this world.

Okay, well, not just like I’d been. I’m a little less fleshy now I guess. Significantly less attractive. But just this much feels amazing.

Choosing to heed Noli’s advice about not taking things too fast (sometimes she might be onto something) I start by bending my knees. The movement feels pretty good, so I pick up one foot, then the other. My balance is actually fantastic. Too fantastic. I wasn’t this good with just the glass. It has to be the void, trying to fulfill my intent. Not just the order to act as tendons, but each subconscious order as well, like “stay balanced, keep me on my feet.” A sort of auto-stabilizer. Begrudgingly, I have to admit that’s pretty useful. I still don’t completely trust it. But I guess even if a hint of the predator lives on in the void, it would still have some incentive to keep me alive. Afterall, without me, it loses its only means to enter the physical realm.

What a comforting thought.

Shaking off memories of the predator, I return my focus to walking. And even before I take the first step, this time I know: I’ve got this.

The grass brushes across the arch of my foot as I take a step. The ground is cool and soft against the humid, warm night—the kind of rejuvenating cold that makes you want to rebel against the summer heat. The kind of crispness that makes you want to run. I take another step.

Giddiness tickles through me. It’s almost effortless. I’m not just walking, I’m strolling. I push myself a little faster. There’s no fear. No uncertainty. I can do this. I can walk! I break into a jog, then a run. Wind is blowing through my glass. I want to laugh. It’s incredible. I feel so free! Finally, finally—

My foot catches on a branch. Panic lurches through me as I crash forward, and I only have a moment to throw my arms out in front of me, desperate to protect my core. The void leaps to my hands, cushioning the fall—

Then I hit, my right knee striking first, closely followed by both hands. I feel and hear something crack as I skid forward. Several somethings.

[41 points of Fall Damage sustained.]

Pain spikes up my right leg and arm. I fall onto my side, and wince with the sting of another crack.

[7 points of Fall Damage sustained.]

My right leg is on the ground two feet away. A chip of glass is next to my hip. A crack has spiraled up my left arm, but it’s still intact.

Shit.

“Well that’s significantly less damage than before,” Zyneth says. “I thought I was about to go fetch a broom.”

I whip my head in his direction. He’s reclining casually against the back of the cottage, watching.

“How long?” I ask, then quickly stop signing as I can feel the cracks spreading through my broken arm like dozens of tiny hot needles. I activate a Sculpt and begin to repair it.

“Just in time for the show,” he says. “You improved remarkably fast. I suppose that’s related to you not shattering into a thousand pieces?”

I glance at the void, sitting idly nearby. I hadn’t even consciously told it to break my fall. And it hadn’t, entirely, but I guess a pint of malleable shadows can only do so much.

I finish repairing my arm, then levitate my leg over and line it up with the stump beneath my hip. It’s strange to look at. Such a seemingly dire injury should hurt more than this. And don’t get me wrong, it does hurt, but the pain is no different from the cracks I’d had in my arm, or the small chip of glass missing at my hip. Like the size of the injury is irrelevant.

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“You going to help?” I ask him as I start Sculpting my leg back in place.

“Seems like you’ve got it handled.” But he pushes off the cottage to stroll my way. I’m done with my leg and working on the hip when Zyneth stops nearby, crouching down beside me. He watches in silence as I finish fixing myself up. I Check my health just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

[HP: 8/10]

[Bonus HP: 312/312]

Good. The last couple bits of HP should heal up naturally in the next few minutes, and it looks like I didn’t miss any chipped pieces, either. I glance at Zyneth and find him staring back.

He sighs. “Kanin. What are you doing?”

“Fixing my body.”

“No,” he says. “That’s not what I mean.”

I call the void over and begin painstakingly reforming the tendons I’d lost when it cushioned my fall. “Learning how to walk?”

“That’s not what I mean either,” Zyneth says.

I start with the feet, working up. “I’m not sure what—”

“This,” Zyneth says, gesturing to the void. “What are you doing? You wouldn’t even let the stuff touch you a week ago. Now you’re incorporating it into your body?”

“Temporary body,” I stress with a tinge of defensiveness. “It’s just to help strengthen the joints.” Just a means to an end.

He shakes his head. “Sorry, I didn’t get most of that.”

“It helps me walk,” I sign, slowing down the movements. This must be what Noli felt like trying to teach me signs when we first met. Okay, she probably still does.

“But why?” he asks. “You don’t need to push yourself like this—compromise your values just to get a little faster.”

I stiffen. I’m not compromising shit. I’m trying to get over my fears, not let them hold me back. There’s nothing wrong with that.

“I need to move faster,” I sign instead. “You’re leaving tomorrow. I’m coming with.”

Zyneth blinks. “Tomorrow? You won’t be ready by then.”

I finish layering all the void back among my joints. Placing a hand on my knee, I push myself to my feet. “I am.”

Zyneth frowns with worry, standing as well. “Maybe you can expedite learning to walk. I watched you run across this clearing before falling on your face.”

“Hey—”

He holds up a hand. “You’re a quick learner and you’re creative, I’ll give you that. You keep coming up with solutions to things I never would have even considered. But once you come up with a plan, you rush into it. You don’t plan two steps ahead of where you set your feet down. Physically, maybe you’re ready to walk out of here tomorrow. But mentally, I worry you’re not ready for the road ahead.”

Pardon me while I roll my nonexistent eyes. “Before, you said I’m free to make my own choices. Even if they are bad.” Which this isn’t, obviously.

“You are,” he says, though with clear reluctance in his tone. “But this is different.”

“How?” I demand.

Zyneth glances away. “Well. For one, I hadn’t planned on you accompanying me just yet. I have… business which I had intended to resolve alone.”

“Oh.” So that’s what this was about. He’s not worried about me being able to accompany him—he just doesn’t want me there at all. “Is it dangerous?”

He tips his head. “Not physically.”

“Then why can’t I come?”

Zyneth taps at his lip in thought, still avoiding looking at me. Then again, I guess there’s really no eye contact for him to make. Staring at a floating glass pyramid probably isn’t the same.

“Come,” Zyneth finally says, holding out a hand. “Walk with me. I’ll tell you what I can, and then you can decide if you want to follow.”

I don’t take his hand, but I do follow.

We step through the moonlit glade, Zyneth’s gaze turned contemplatively to the stars—God, he’s so dramatic—while I carefully watch my feet.

“The short of it is that I have become involved with a dangerous network of people who do not have others’ best interests at heart,” Zyneth says, absently fiddling with the sheath of one of his knives. “They largely deal with selling artifacts retrieved from the Ruins on the black-market. It’s an extremely lucrative business. The more items that are sold, however, the more the revenue stream threatens to dry up. To keep the supply flowing, they needed someone of a particular set of skills to risk venturing into such dangerous lands to retrieve these objects. In my naivete, seeking adventure, I originally entered their ranks of my own volition.” With a grimace, he looks back at me. “I have since had regrets, and have done my best to disentangle myself from their endeavors.”

“How did you get out?” I ask.

Zyneth laughs, but there’s no mirth in his tone. “I didn’t.”

He rolls up a sleeve of his shirt, and I’m just now realizing I’ve never seen him in short sleeves or a vest—and that’s because of what’s etched over his skin.

There’s three spiraling marks tattooed into his arm, each a different style of a gold snake appearing to eat its own tail. The first tattoo is whole, while the second tattoo only has an outline of a snake, as if the drawing has yet to be filled in. The third tattoo is partially complete, the head and half of the body filled with the gold coloring: it’s also glowing with a subtle light.

“Spent too many years digging myself into this trench,” Zyneth says. “Turns out it’s twice as hard to climb back out.”

I reach out to touch one, then hesitate. “What are they?”

“Debt,” Zyneth says. “Not of the monetary variety. They won’t eat themselves away until I’ve paid back the original balance two fold. The enchantments start burning when they have new jobs for me, and they don’t go out until I accept one. Sometimes it’s days between jobs—sometimes months—sometimes, I’ll have two lit up at once. Those are the best scenarios. When more than one granter has use of me, sometimes they can be pitted against each other. I cleared two more debts that way.”

Why do I feel like cleared isn’t just a benign metaphor for cash exchange? And how exactly is he paying off these debts?

A particular set of skills, he’d said. An image of Zyneth fighting off the nightbanes flashes through my mind, throwing daggers into skulls and electrocuting his assailants.

A chill goes through me. “Zyneth… have you hurt anyone?”

Zyneth’s gaze trails up from my hands to my face, looking straight at me for the first time since this conversation began. His expression is blank. “Yes.”

A shiver goes through me. “Have you killed…?”

With that same dead expression, he says, “Do you really want to know the answer?”

For a moment my mind stutters to a halt—and that’s all the break in concentration it takes for me to miss a step. My knee buckles even as I realize my mistake. I try to stop my fall, mentally reclaiming my grip on the glass, but I’m already overbalanced, tipping forward—

Zyneth pivots and catches me across my chest, his shoulder jamming into my shoulder while he grabs the one opposite. I stumble another foot forward as Zyneth braces, and we come to a halt.

“Good,” I sign, waving him off. “I’m good.”

Carefully, he lets go. I roll the shoulder he’d slammed into, but it doesn’t appear broken. That was smart. If he’d just grabbed an arm it probably would have snapped off.

But I guess he knows his way around the weak points in bodies, doesn’t he?

“You shouldn’t come,” Zyneth says. “I suspect your opinion of me would change.”

That’s probably true. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that he’s killed someone—maybe multiple someones.

Then again, so have I.

I shove the burgeoning nausea aside.

“Were you protecting yourself?” I ask.

Zyneth rolls his sleeve back down, hiding the tattoos away. “In most cases. If you ask, I will tell you the details.”

I’m not sure I want the details. “Why?”

The facade finally cracks. Zyneth looks away, pain scrunching his features. “Because I’m trying not to be that person anymore. The whole reason I’m now paying back debts instead of garnering more is to get out of that world. I want to be better—honest. To tip the scales back by helping people instead of hurting.”

I tilt my head. “Like me?” Am I just a weight on his scale of morality? Is that why he’s stuck around this long? Why he even decided to help in the first place?

“No,” Zyneth says quickly. “That’s not what I meant.”

It sure seems like it. Zyneth must realize this too, because he sighs. “It might have started that way. But at some point I realized it doesn’t really count if I treat it as a transaction. A wrong and a right don’t cancel each other out. I need to mean it. To want to help for the sake of helping. Noli—she’s a good person. I see how she interacts with everyone, and it makes me want to be better. Which is why I said I’m trying—I’m not there yet. But I’m trying.”

His words sting. Noli’s actions have given me similar thoughts. I know I probably will never be as selfless as she is, but she gives me a North Star, at least. And just being around her makes me want to be better. How can I fault Zyneth for feeling the same?

“I’m coming with you,” I sign. His background is… surprising, but it still doesn’t change what I need to do.

His eyebrows pinch, skeptical. “Even given what you’ve learned? I can attempt to keep my work separate, but there is still a good chance that if you travel with me, you will get caught in the web as well. It will be dangerous.”

Can’t be more dangerous than towing a murder void around with you everywhere. “Doesn’t matter,” I sign. “I still need to learn a way to get my body back.” Then I add, “If you want to help people, you can start with me.”

Zyneth’s mouth quirks with the hint of a smile. “A bit self-serving, don’t you think?”

I never claimed I wasn’t selfish. “Sounds familiar.”

That gets a quiet laugh out of him. “Alright. I’ll agree to this. Tomorrow we’ll leave for Miasmere.”

Warmth fills my chest, relief and hope trickling out from behind the anxiety that he’d say no. Finally. Finally I’m making progress.

“But first,” Zyneth says, amusement returning to his eyes as his gaze dances over my body. “We need to find you some pants.”