The colors were all wrong in this purple-colored night. Up in the sky, Yolanthe the Witching Moon cursed the land of the living with her weird magic. Widely held belief held that in such days, Witches, Warlocks, Necromancers, all sorts of evil wizards grew in power and did their wicked deeds. Children went to sleep earlier. Guards redoubled their vigilance.

And I ran away from all I knew.

As I reached the hidden end of the tunnel, I feared I would find Alice there, waiting for me. The perceived betrayal hurt more than I believed. I've known her for as long as I lived but what was that conversation? Why was she trying so hard to peek at my secrets?

A peek out of the manhole told me the alley was deserted. I moved the cover away and pushed my bags out. Then I climbed the rest of the way and replaced the cover. Another scan of my surroundings to make sure I was really alone. Now the really hard part. The city walls were eighty feet tall and twenty feet thick. With Earth magic helping construction and the scale of monsters out there in the wilderness, our city had modest walls at best. Better equipped settlements had walls as tall as mountains. Not that I've seen any of them.

I had a good upbringing. My father often took me to the wild to teach me the way of the forest and how to scout. Even if I hadn't bonded with Scout's Oath, my Class was already predetermined. I wouldn't be anything but a scout. And now, these same skills were my lifeline. I had no idea what craziness overtook Alice but she couldn't be trusted. My heart ached at the betrayal.

I took to the rooftops and checked my surroundings. The buildings here were tall, reaching up to five stories high. The sky was peppered with stars and the arms of the Milky Way. I let my mind relax as it soaked the beautiful night sky. Half of the year, the Suns would cast their light on this side of the planetary ring, making the nights as illuminated as a heavily overcast day. But now, with only Yolanthe and a few moons up there, it was gorgeous.

Somewhere among these stars, the fabled cradle of humanity once existed. A planet of beauty and marvels of ingenuity and craftsmanship beyond compare. A planet without magic or monsters for the majority of its life. It was lost now. Destroyed, if the teachings of the Priests could be believed. The warning was clear. Our ancestors on that lost planet could leap into the stars on chariots of fire and steel. But Koiphyvv was different. The planet was bigger, heavier. The machines that allowed people to escape a dying planet wouldn't work here. The lesson was to have faith in the Gods to take care of the planet.

My pulse softened; my breathing became steady. This little stargazing session let my mind push my fears to the dark corners, letting a refreshing clarity guide my thoughts. It all went back to Alice. Her behavior wasn't normal. She seemed... guilty? Relieved? Hopeful? These three didn't match together and I might be interpreting things wrong.

A faint noise made my ears perk.

I didn't have an elf's senses, but Alice also didn't have the skills to move silently. One thing about her was that she wore the same enchanted jewelry set for decades. For someone who spent as much time in her office than in my own bedroom growing up, the sound was unmistakable. And in this silent night of dread, the tinkling of gemstones and the jingling of metal carried far.

"You can come out. I know you are there," I said. This was something one could use almost all the time when alone. If someone was watching me, they would think I figured them out if I sounded confident enough. If I was truly alone, nobody would laugh at my blunder.

The jewelry tinkled again. Alice leaped onto the rooftop from below and landed gracefully at the end of her ascent. I had no idea what level she was but it was over a hundred. Her lowest Attributes were also over a hundred, making her several times stronger and faster than a normal unawakened elf. A lesson I learned long ago was that I couldn't escape her. Every time I did, was because Alice had let me go. Even the last one.

"George," she started but I raised a hand.

"I can hear you fine. No need to wake the neighborhood. Speak your mind, Alice. And be brief. I'm leaving the city."

"I'm sorry," she said with a sobbing hitch in her voice.

Suspicion and self-preservation begged for me to lash out at her. But a Scout was not a person of impulse, of acting on such emotions. A scout without information was a dead scout. Ninety percent of our toolkit was intended to gather information.

"You are not forgiven. Speak your mind," I insisted.

Alice the Magus chanted in Elvish and a ward of privacy took the shape of a hemisphere around the rooftop. The faint sounds of the night became mute. The cityscape and stars blurred as if seen through stained glass.

"I had an idea on how to improve quest confirmation for guild members," she started. "I know how Scout's Duty work. Your father had the same Trait. It's granted by the combination of heirloom item and Class."

I sat down on a raised section and crossed my arms, working to unclench my jaw. She filled the silence with her own entrancing voice. But instead of words, it was a symphony of sobs. Alice wept. I hated it. Hated the situation. Hated the breach of trust. Closing my eyes, I replayed the debrief meeting after we returned. I tried to figure out what she intended, why she said those words, what was the real reason behind that.

Did she want me to, did she expect me to be so naive and open as to confess I didn't attack the Goblins because of Scout's Duty? She just confessed she knew. It made sense. My current bias against Alice caused my already incensed anger to flare. Did she really believe I would be as stupid as to admit that? Or that I placed such blind trust on her to...

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

It could be. Alice was there for my birth. She watched me grow. But it was too condescending of her to believe I would place absolute trust in her. She was a close friend but not family. Even if she was. The only person I would trust with the details of my status was my father. Alas, I never developed such a bond with my late mother.

"That was dumb," I grumbled when her weeping paused for a while.

"I see it now."

"You're supposed to be more than a dozen times smarter than a normal elf."

"It doesn't work that way."

"Then Intelligence is a shitty Attribute."

"It might be. It only let me subvert the laws of physics and bring the universe under my will."

"Bullshit. If it did so, mages would live in the Goddess' Ring."

She laughed.

"Alice."

"Yes."

"Your mistake was to believe I was still a child. A naive stupid child who would tell you all my secrets."

"I see it now. I'm sorry."

"You said that already."

"You didn't accept it then."

"Not accepting it now, either."

"Your idea to improve the Guild was shit. It would never work."

"We will never know for sure."

"No, we won't. Because no workflow that hinges on a single individual would ever work. That's why I'm calling this bullshit. You didn't intend to use Scout's Duty to track quest success. It was something else."

"When did you get so smart? Did you dump all your efficiency points into Intelligence?"

"It doesn't work that way," I threw her own hypocritical excuse back at her. "And it's none of your business."

"If you want to, we can go to the temple tomorrow morning and I'll accept a Geas of secrecy," She offered.

I scowled. "A Geas you can pay to remove or break it yourself. No. Geasa are for people who can't trust each other."

Her eyes shone with hope. "Does this mean—"

She stopped when I raised a hand. "I wasn't finished. For people who can't trust each other and are not wealthy or powerful enough to flip the Gods the bird. We know you are both."

"Is there anything—"

"I don't know!" I roared. She flinched away. Minutes went by in silence. I let my thoughts run wild, then let mocking laughter escape my lips. Damn, I wanted to go out and hunt something.

"Why did you run away?" She asked.

"I can't stop you from spilling my secrets. My only avenue is to escape far away and start anew, with a new name." I stopped for a while, then added, "and hope you wouldn't scry on me. And then teleport to go and fetch me. Do you have any idea how powerless I feel against you?"

"I would never. To me you are—"

Another rude interruption. "An useful minion? Some side project to improve efficiency and reduce costs while promoting synergy at work? A pet?"

Each angry word that left my mouth was a punch to her guts. Alice winced and flinched at my verbal abuse. Damn, I wanted to punch something. I wish I could be strong enough to punch through bricks. But no. I was a stupid neophyte, a level zero. The rush of power and the elation of earning free Attribute points through Scout's Duty were tarnished. By Alice. A small portion of my mind hinted that she might not be completely responsible for the blame but the rest shouted at that small portion to shut the fuck up.

"A pet?" Alice's voice raised an octave as her cheeks became rose with indignation underneath her makeup. "Hells, no. That's racist, George! No elf believes that!"

What was a decade for someone who lived for thousands of years? Our whole family line, as far as our knowledge went, was not even half of the time Alice had walked on these floating continents. But her counterclaim came too close to the "no true Scotsman" fallacy his father sometimes warned during his homeschooling. Whoever the Scotsmen were. I was sure elves on the dark side of things... no, they didn't see the shorter-lived races as pets. They saw us as ants. Vermin.

"My sincere apologies. I let my anger speak over myself," I offered with a dip of my head.

"George, can we put the hurt aside? Just for a moment?" Alice pleaded.

Both halves of my heart were in a tug-of-war. Were my sanity weaker, I might hallucinate the shoulder devil and angel arguing. When I said nothing, she started rambling.

"Automated reporting systems have been theorized and tested by Guild researchers for centuries. Enchanted trinkets who detected nearby deaths and tried to attribute it to whoever struck last. Clairvoyance. Without the ability to interface with the System, none of these initiatives could be trusted. Some even asked for an audience with the System God to ask for a way but the God was adamant. No way to peek into the System of others shall ever be allowed, and any who tried to breach this taboo would be smote out of existence."

My jaw parted from my upper teeth.

"And how a single individual could fix what the most brilliant minds the Guild ever had available failed?"

"I didn't get to that part yet," Alice admitted as she fidgeted. "But as a proof-of-concept, maybe at a local level..."

The egg-head awkwardness was a facet of her I seldom glimpsed upon. I said nothing and let her dig her own grave.

"And you would be greatly rewarded for it. We wouldn't tell the Guild members, of course, and would still demand the trophies, but the discrepancies could tell us a lot. Like when a party defeats the enemies but can't take the trophies because of interference or reinforcements. Or when the Nobles try to defraud the Guild by having a third party collect the trophies."

"That latter part wouldn't work," I replied. "Because I can't see who got the kill."

Alice raised her head, met my eyes, and beamed a bright smile. "Really?"

My ears heated up and I jumped from my seat. "Gods damn you, woman."

She tutted and gazed up. "Yolanthe is up and about, wandering the sky away from Lucia's gaze. Don't try to curse women tonight."

"What are you now, a Witch?" My question came a bit stronger than I intended because I was still annoyed. But the anger had dimmed down to embers.

Alice took a step back and broke eye contact. "No." It was the way she behaved when she didn't want to reveal a secret.

The truth was that we knew too much about each other. Though I wouldn't accept her into my inner circle now, Alice and I were like extended family. A Wizard aunt with a lot of eccentricities and baggage. And one who was a miserable pile of secrets, even though she wasn't a man.

"Witch?" I mused, watching as she shied away again. "What about witches? What are you hiding, Alice?"

When she faced me again, I saw guilt in her eyes. Also, a lot of clear fluid, which ran down her cheeks when she blinked.

"Cards on the table?" She offered as an olive branch. It was a silly game we played back then, one she exploited to peek at a kid's secrets. But one that was more sacred than the Triumvirate of deities who ruled over this water planet.

"Sure. Cards on the table. I start." The strategy was that whoever started had to reveal the least. Since the cards had to be played in ascending order. "You and I may be close but not Status-sharing close. You crossed a line you shouldn't have, Alice."

She sucked a big breath. Such a breach of trust was not something that could be repaired with an apology and Alice was old enough to know that.

"My turn then," Alice said and hesitated.

"All in. If you want my trust, you need to tell everything."

Alice stuttered, then reached out to me with a hand only to pull it back, her whole being wracked with guilt.

"I know who killed your father," Alice confessed. Then she turned on the waterworks.

I reeled back in shock. All I could think was that the cards had to be played in ascending order.