L’Opal was late. Scratch checked his timepiece, a Watchman original, twice as expensive as it was ancient. The truegold plating shined brightly, radiating a golden aurora even on this moonless night. A beacon in the dark, it caught stray strands of torchlight, stealing them from the night, and multiplying that little luminescence into light and heat like a brilliant lantern. Truegold was not like other cold metals. It burned the demon’s skin the longer he held it, a bit of power, a bit of paradox. A burning reminder from the Watchman to enjoy the time one has rather than watch it go by.

Scratch heeded the Watchman’s wisdom. He did not open the timepiece--no matter what time it was, his master would force Scratch to wait. Such was his master’s infatuation with that tardy smuggler. Instead, Scratch allowed the truegold to soothe him on this cold night, warm him as he twirled it between fingers like a lump of silently smoldering coal, feeling the oddly arrhythmic quake of gears shoot through his arm, running his fingers over the hair thick scratches left by less cautious owners. Stitch felt that these imperfections were an ironic reminder that even the artifacts of a master as high level as the legendary Watchman were subject to the march of time. All things fade and grow useless. A sinister gift from Scratch’s master. When Scratch had purchased his freedom, his master immediately used the money to hire Scratch back as if all Scratch had to do was merely ask to be a freeman. It was not all an insult though as his master had thrown in this timepiece as a bonus. Any artifact of the Watchman became invaluable once the hero had died, then merely precious as the years passed and other [gear masters] copied his designs. Now, something so powerful and sentimental was utterly disposable to his master. Scratch knew his own life would mimic the artifacts timeline but what stage was he at currently?

For minutes or hours, Scratch waited for L’Opal at the dock long prepped for her arrival at the edge of the Rift. The Smuggler’s banquet was at its end. He had done his job, used some of his skills to coax a rabble of drunken smugglers to bid against themselves. Not that he needed to use any at such an irregular banquet. Sweet Erysium nectar seeping from hardwood barrels like molten gold--a clear indicator that it was harvested long ago and half the stock would be rancid by the time it could be sold--went for twice its regular price. Whoever tasted it would be in the greatest drunken stupor imaginable but that only added to its effect. Yes, the only other way to get such wine was by negotiating with the savages in the Green Stretch, hundreds of miles South from anything civilized, but a price like what he had sold it for would make any such journey profitable. Those inflationary prices had Scratch’s legs shaking early into the auction, but when a rare but certainly non-mythical, fifth-tier [seige fireball] scroll was purchased by a smug Tessalophian noble with an exchange of emeralds so vast that one of his master’s rift ships had to be repurposed to solely contain the gems, Scratch had nearly fainted. 

The look of jealousy in the Erysian lieutenant that was bidding on the same scroll was all Scratch needed to know that his master’s hasty decision to hold a Smuggler’s banquet early in the year was working. 

Tonight, weapons were sold as if they held a core of silver beneath a steel coating. Scratch’s master had suspected war would soon break out between the Sons of Erysia and the Empire and apparently so had every other smuggler within any country tickling either’s borders. Scratch had not needed to use his [beautiful lie] skill to talk up the value of any of his master’s enchanted wares as they went for more than even Scratch could price with a straight face. He had given an irregularly distasteful performance at the night’s auctions seemingly unable to keep the dessert’s dryness out of his throat. He could not help but cough at the ungodly amounts of gold trading hands, leaving his master’s patrons bemused at the flustered [auctioneer] who mere hours earlier entertained them and ushered them so elegantly to their seats.

At least he had served some sort of role tonight. Immediately after the last of his master’s special goods were sold, he had been ordered to wait for the budding protege here at the edge of the Rift. Or at least as close as he could get to the edge without going insane. 

The Rift was a wicked thing to demons. It was a wicked thing to humans as well, but to demons, there was a tint of shame to that deep darkness. The last demon king created the malicious thing, vindictively shattering the world before the Slaughterer crushed his head with a truegold mace. The demon king had tapped into a power that transcended levels and cracked the world like the shell of an egg. Those cracks were infinitely deep and from them came a grotesque aura and horrific monsters screaming to escape whatever was at the bottom of the abyssal cliffs. Falling into a rift was certain death, either from the nightmares that hunted meters below the surface or, if one was a demon, snapping of the neck. 

Scratch shimmied backward from the Rift in minor defiance of his master that he hoped wouldn’t be noted. Behind him, smuggler crews wheeled barrels filled with the equivalent of liquid gold or silver onto bellowing rift ships and shouted at [cabin boys] to prepare for departure while the lesser [smugglers] made last-minute deals and shouted about the murderous upcharges. Scratch would give anything to be with that crowd kowtowing before a puffed up [smuggler] to soothe their noble sensibilities rather than stave off madness at the edge of a rift. He rubbed at his right horn, felt the cold thing bulge with excess aura from the Rift. The demon king truly hated his kind to curse them so. His last words were more toxic than spoiled nectar. Demons are drunk with the magic of this small world, so let them drown in it. 

He was told that story as a child and it became history for him and all other demons this side of the hand of God. Even with the forest of gray hair he no longer bothered to trim from his head, he was still young in comparison to the heroes that lived through and finally ended the Demon King’s tyranny. Not that he truly knew how that tyranny manifested. He was much much too young to even imagine what the last demon king was truly like. Decades of stories had made the man into a despot before Scratch had even been born and years of dealing with the Rift had cemented the idea in every human and demon in the world.

Despite that, Scratch thought of what it must have been for all demons everywhere to be united behind a single king instead of integrated in various human communities. Scratch adored the stories of heroes whose powers and skills transcended classes himself. Stories of the Watchman’s precision deployment of armies and the Lady’s charm to lure demons to the right side of history were favorites of his. But what demon didn’t imagine having the sheer power to match those heroes time and time again. That was the power of a king, a mad one yes, but an inheritance for any demon to find and claim. Well, not him. Scratch knew his place. It was at his master’s side and occasionally idling at the edge of the Rift waiting for his master’s most beloved guest.

Still, the madness of the Rift was as ever-present as it was intoxicating. That was why he had taken out the timepiece. Not to reflect on L’Opal’s lateness, or even to criticize the girl whenever she arrived--though he would regardless of what the timepiece showed--but to stave off the consequences of her lateness, listening to the rift call him down. Instead, Scratched listened and focused on the irregular march of the timepiece. Tick-tock-Tick...tick-tock. An unsteady beat, a jarring quake to keep him awake and not lulled into some weightless dream at the bottom of the cliff. Tock-tick-tick-skrkrkrkrk.

    Muffled rumbling forced his eyes open. He had not known that they had shut. Skrkrkrkr. That sound grew louder, pulsed at the forefront of his awareness. His mind went to the timepiece. Broken or not it was still precious to him. He hit a latch at the side, forcing the two halves open with a click. The bejeweled clock hands on the right marched on in their unsteady but accurate rhythm. He realized three things when looking into that unsteady dance. The artifact was fine, it had  been merely fifteen minutes since his master had bathed him to wait for L’Opal at the landing spot, and the sound was not coming from his timepiece but the rift itself. 

Scratch drew on years of experience to not lean over the edge of the Rift and see what horror was coming. He knew. Instead, he adjusted his topcoat, a midnight back jacket with a split tail curved at the back that was all the rage in the Empire, and put his gloved hands behind his back as customary from a [butler] like him. No sooner than he had finished preparations, a roar rang out through the rift, and a krakling burst out of the rift just beyond the reach of his nose.

Scratch paused for a moment. The majesty of a krakling was a sight to behold, especially when it jumped out of the rift like a surfacing whale with a sailboat tied to its back. That’s what it was in a way. A whale-like creature with a maw like an angler fish with long tentacles trailing behind it. This one was a glistened purple. The rift crystals that served as its kind’s scales glowed in the night. It was a youth then as all rift crystals turned black with time and exposure to the Rift’s aura. A krakling was a small beast when compared to other rift beasts but magnificent in its own right. A brisk walk from the creature’s head to its tail would take the rest of the night, and although the beasts were relatively friendly, he did not want to spend any more time around it than he had to. 

    Luckily the krakling’s master was ready to depart. Scratch looked up, and though it was a moonless night, the stars were enough to illuminate the midnight-violet demon gazing down from the rift ship’s tallest mast like some night goddess summoned from the heavens. L’Opal had arrived and after the torture of the waiting by the rift, welcoming her was truly Scratch’s pleasure. 

---

     Jazmine felt conflicted with what she had decided to do tonight. She had the moral imperative on her side, Jocras owed her a debt. Jazmine had done one favor for him. One. And it had torn her whole world apart. After his "profitable" escort mission she had given up everything: new crew, new ship, new life in a way, but like biting into bread only to look down and realize it was slimy with mold and gnashed mealworms, the taste of what she had done didn't go away no matter how hard she scrubbed it from her mouth. She couldn't cleanse herself of this sin. As long as she was a [smuggler], she wouldn't forget. 

     She couldn't do this anymore. How could anyone? Jocras had taken everything from her. It was only right that she take the same. 

     Were Jazmine the woman her mother had raised her to be, Jocras wouldn't have the mercy of seeing his hidden empire burn tonight. Instead, he would retire to his lavish office, lounge in that goddamn squeaky velvet throne of his, wondering why L'Opal never responded to his invitation. He'd lean forward, fat rolls in Erysian cotton squashed against his desk, sausage fingers thumping against Yolewood, then see Jazmine reflected in his old servant's eyes. In the time that sack of shit would have turned around, Jazmine would be done and Jocras' headless corpse would be flailing around like fatty bait for whatever horror swirled around in the Rift. 

     She'd keep the head of course. Her sister collected those, the crazy bitch. It would make a good present if she ever went back to Tut. 

     Indulging in the fantasy had kept her sane over the last few days, but she wasn't the person her mother had raised anymore. She was more like her dad; moral, upstanding, a bit too naive unfortunately. Being good had cost her greatly, and she was too much of her mother's child to just go without revenge, but she could at least do things the right way. 

     Not that doing things the right way didn't feel delicious devious. What she was about to do felt so tantalizingly close to assassination that she may even level up that old class. With the pieces she had in play, smuggling within the no man's land of Erysium and the Empire would end tonight. War was coming, and neither nation would be fond of professional thieves sneaking contraband past their borders. This Smuggler's banquet would be the last, she'd kill the long standing tradition herself, leave its bloated corpse floating for some unwitting patrol to stumble on while she made off with a coin purse fit for kings. Jazmine couldn't help but smile when the corpse she envisioned turned out to be Jocras, his annoyingly smug visage twisted into one of agony for good measure. Her grandfather was called the Slaughterer, and his bloodlust stayed potent through the generations; so no matter how much Jazmine occasionally wanted to distance herself from that legacy, she couldn't help but revel in the opportunity to succumb to her true nature just like her grandparents had time and time again. 

     One more diabolical breath in, and It was time. Five hours after the start of the banquet Jazmine was officially fashionably late. Security would be lax, Jocras would be mildly tinged that he'd have to accommodate her, and all the [smugglers] would be too drunk to properly react to the chaos she was about to bring. It was the perfect time for people to make mistakes and she could sniff the opportunity in the air. Jazmine twirled a couple of opportunistic fingers loosely at her first mate. She performed a sort of upwards signal that roughly meant, "aye time to go ye fucks", and Scaramouch, the old mariner who appreciated the informality of smuggling much more than the rigid authoritarianism of the Empire’s navy shrugged in response. The old man practically fell on his knees in order to pull down a hanging lever which released a good chunk of steam over the side of her ship. A moment later, her krakling roared and her ship began to surface. 

    “Get your sorry hands on deck or find yourself overboard. We’re surfacing now.” Scaramouch bellowed at the top of his voice. An unnecessary warning as between the Krackling’s roars and the sudden increase in G’s, anyone without a deathwish was on the deck and holding onto something for dear life. Anyone with a deathwish, she wouldn't have to pay so no real loss. Jazmine was the only exception to that rule. 

Riftships didn't have sails since the krakling was in control, so they didn't have masts. Instead they resembled Giraffes with their bulbous bodies bolted onto the great beasts back and a long neck leading up to a square bunker resembling a tiny head. This wasn't the bridge like some of the Empire's newer boats. No, all the piloting was done at the bottom towards the head so the pilot could gauge the krakling's mood up close. This was more of a fortified crow's nest so the captain could watch out for threats and force an immediate surfacing if they came upon something larger than a Krakling--which was most creatures in the rift. 

     Jazmine had spent most of the trip outside of the bunker riding the compass, a halfsilver pole that served as her ship's divining rod. The relatively thin pillar added an extra ten feet to the height of the ship, making it officially the farthest away from the Rift she could physically be. There was no seat up here, of course, so she had loosely gripped the compass with her clawed hand and braced the tough metal with her foot like a valiant explorer looking for land. She looked and felt every bit the part of a mysterious and ambitious pirate. What with her black tri-point hat and her Eryasian cotton waistcoat she could be dropped into one of the heroes’ storybooks and not feel out of place. Mostly. The vibe was tainted by her two friends cramping the space up here. 

    The theme had clearly sailed over the head of Stitch. Below Jazmine, her [retainer] had tied himself to the compass with magical red string like a tortured figurehead and was currently dozing off completely unaffected by the whispering horrors of the Rift. On the other side of Jazmine, Ezra had literally stuck her back to the mast with a Potion of Attachment-- which wasn’t in fact a love potion, and just stuck tongues to the roofs of mouths and created uncomfortable dinner dates. The [alchemist] was currently chewing something and had been chewing something loudly for the last half hour, but that was Ezra. The girl was always chewing, drinking, snorting, shooting, or patching something or another. The most humane way to test a new substance was on someone high level enough to tank the effects after all. 

One time the two had gone out to a restaurant and damn near scared the wait staff to death when Ezra had started uncontrollably hiccuping bubbles and breaking out into hives. The girl was crazy, which was why she was also cosplaying a pirate with a skull and crossbones head wrap and an eye patch draped over her right eye. The two made a good pair. 

    Ezra startled when the sudden increase of G’s slammed her head into the compass' tough body. “Jesus fucking Christ,” the girl said rubbing the back of her head with a heavily tattooed hand.

“Wasn’t me,” Jazmine said, digging out gunk from her left hand with her clawed thumb. “But since you’re finally awake, how about you and Stitch get on deck and start doing your jobs. Mission’s starting.” Jazmine gently tapped the back of Stitch's head with her shoe, and Stitch stirred with a hurt look. The [Stitchman] couldn’t talk as the network of thread sewn across his face essentially turned him into a doll but he could emote well enough to tell Jazmine that as her bodyguard he was already doing his job. Nevermind the nap. Jazmine rolled her eyes and redirected her ire towards someone who would actually put up resistance if she said something twice. Ezra had ignored Jazmine entirely and was yawning in a halfhearted attempt to fall asleep. Ezra had spent a good chunk of her childhood with snake worshipers in the Green Stretch, so when the girl yawned, her jaw unhinged and two fangs jutted forward like a knife trap in a dungeon. It was unnerving, but nothing Jazmine hadn't seen dozens of times before. 

    “That means you too, Ezra. We’ll break the surface in a couple of minutes. Go wake up your brother in case he wants to buy anything.” 

    Ezra finished her yawn and stretched out her arms before replying. “Why buy anything if we're just going to steal it all later?”

     Jazmine shook her head. "We're not stealing everything. If the authorities show up to a Smuggler's banquet and find nothing, they'll start a nationwide manhunt for the ones who get away. We're talking about a small country's warchest worth of goods, and while you, me, and your brother may be heirs, the rest of my crew can't hide their [smuggler] class from the Emperor's dogs. 

     Ezra swung about and groaned. "Shopping right now sounds lame. Why can't I go with you and Stich to put that Jocras guy out of his misery?"

 Jazmine's hand slaps her forehead. “We're not killing Jocras. We're not killing anyone. We're not that kind of people. You aren't that kind of person. What? You going to charm him into walking off the edge of the Rift?”

"You're not that kind of people." Ezra says, rapidly swinging around the compass and poking a hole into Jasmine's linen shirt. “I've fought in a war. I'm likely the highest level person on this ship, and I went on the same voyage as you did. Changed in the same way. I want that asshole dead.”

Jazmine didn't flinch, instead she shook her head and lowered Ezra's hand. “I'm not risking you or anyone else. This isn't a war. It's a hit and hope to God we can run. Sure you might be able to take Stitch or I in a drawn out one-on-one fight where you had an arsenal of potions with you, but" Jazmine tilts her head to the side and smiles with blindingly white teeth, "if you genuinely think you could trade your best hit against one of ours and come out the better, I’ll let you come with us.” 

Stitch hears his name and looks up, giving his best impression of a smile. He tries to be friendly but just looks sinister considering the red thread cross-stitching his lips together. Stitch probably has more methods of murder and torture on Ezra than Ezra has centimeters of height on Stitch. That didn't mean everything, mind you, but when those methods literally start with stringing someone up yarn, you have to back down. Ezra shuttered imagining letting Stitch get a hit in on her and dropping her shoulders in a pout.

“And here I was finally starting to feel like a member of your crew.” 

Jazmine went back to picking at her nails. “Hah, you’re not a member of the crew. You’re just a stowaway I owe money to.”

“Hey don’t be like that. I’m a stowaway you owe a lot of money to. Also, I’ve saved your life at least a dozen times. At some point, you have to make me an honorary member.”

Jazmine swung around the mast to meet Ezra face to face just like the girl had just done to her. She pinched Ezra’s cheeks with the very tip of her claws. “And why would I hire you on when I can just order you around for free?” The snake girl wasn’t phased at all. She smiled and the slits of her silver eyes got a little bit larger. “‘Cause maybe then, I wouldn't pilfer all your best items at the end of the night like I always do.” The wood creaked and Ezra slid down the pillar just a bit. “Well it seems like this potion isn't as potent as I expected. I'll take your advice and head out, captain.” With that said, the Snake girl opened her mouth as if she was about to swallow Jazmine’s head whole. Her fangs swung forward like knives on a hinge and she bit her tongue. Tiny red droplets bead on top of pink flesh then turn yellow as they mix with some venous concoction. The [alchemist] always has some concoction at the ready. Ezra nods to Jazmine, and with one last creak as cloth detached from halfsilver, the girl leaped. 

The deck was about a sixty feet drop from where Jazmine was swaying. Ezra was a high-level alchemist, and Jazmine could think of a dozen potions that might save her at half that height. Since Ezra was not falling at a snail’s pace or flying with style, Jazmine had to rule out potions of [feather fall] and [levitation] which meant the idiot had dropped without any real drugs in her system.  

Jazmine lunged the second she realized Ezra was about to die, but that was a half-second too late, and her hand merely scraped against Ezra’s linen shirt. In a panic, Jazmine let go of the compass and dropped to the ceiling of the bunker, hard leather boots clanging on steel. She was about to take a step off the edge and [shadow step] her way down when she noticed that the crazy bitch was smiling. Thirty-two rainbow-stained teeth and a couple of half silver fangs smiled unabashedly while the girl dropped like a stone. Ezra presented zero illusions about catching herself with both her legs and arms crossed as if lounging mid-air. Still, gravity wasn’t in on her act, and Ezra whirled downward like a cannonball from the sky. Jazmine watched the situation on deck turn from minor commotion at the sudden whistling sound to full-on panic as her crew looked up and then around for anything that could catch the girl. One of Stitch’s nets was quickly appropriated but even if four men held it taut, Ezra would still slam on the deck like a watermelon. The best Stitch’s nets could do was serve as a trampoline to her broken body.

The freefall was nearing its end. Ezra was mere feet from the ground, and Jazmine was seriously starting to wonder if she had misjudged Ezra’s smile and the girl was literally about to commit suicide on her ship. Jazmine had been at this for three years now and had never lost a soul. Then she had lost too many in a night. Now one more. Is this really how that streak ended? Was she really about to lose her best friend like this? Jazmine’s right foot hovered over the edge of the bunker. She was leaning forward, prepared to attempt the farthest [shadow step] in history, but she knew it was way too late. Whatever happened would happen, and what happened was this: Ezra stretched out her arms as if embracing the reaper, and grew wings. The bitch had leveled. 

Ezra was a [Shifter Alchemist], level twenty-six the last time she had mentioned it to Jazmine. She specialized in potions of shapeshifting, but at her level, was only really capable of ones with intangible effects. Potions of [barkskin]  were her bread and butter as the guardsmen and adventurers of New New York always seemed to be running low, but she could push her class with more creative concoctions like breath mints that smelled like lavender and honey or the magical skin dyes that Jazmine was fond of. Party tricks essentially. That’s what Jazmine was used to. So when feathers sprouted from Ezra’s arms and her momentum shifted from vertical to horizontal in a flash, Jazmine had to wipe her eyes to ensure the Rift wasn’t screwing with her mind. Incidentally, that motion took her hand off her chest and Jazmine reddened when she realized she had been breathing heavily the entire time Ezra was falling. Thankfully Stitch wouldn’t tell anyone that Jazmine might actually care about that feathered fool. 

A brief second of levity for what was truly an astounding moment. Jazmine rested her back against the compass and smiled as Ezra did tricks in the air. The girl never went beyond the edge of the ship, less she convince some monster that she was a fleeting morsel, and that alone was proof that Ezra had a level of control that warranted practice. Something like that was in the realm of level thirty and above. Somehow the alchemist had jumped four levels in as many months. That was impossible. Heroes leveled that fast (and only during the war), their heirs leveled significantly slower. Ezra would have had to discover some absurd recipe like a potion of resurrection to warrant that many level-ups. No way she did that... Jazmine resolved to have a sit down with Ezra at the next possible moment to talk about leveling and keeping secrets from her friends. This definitely wasn’t jealousy. Not at all. 

Even Ezra’s stunt couldn’t keep the crew entertained long. Everyone in the world gained a tolerance to the mystical past a certain age. Ezra’s trick was novel, but not incredible, so one by one the crew slinked off to their duties in preparation for surfacing. A rather muscular man rolled up the net that would have caught Ezra and seemed grumpy that he wouldn’t get the chance to show off his muscles. Ezra could sense the interest fading, drama queen that she was, and performed one last loop that took her all the way past the top of the ship and dangerously close to exiting the Rift itself. On the downward swing, she flew past Jazmine while upside down. Jazmine could catch a fly’s wing in between two chopsticks so she had no trouble reading the words Ezra mouthed out at terminal velocity, “see you and Stitch when I have to inevitably rescue you. Also, Stop posing. You look like a dork.” Jazmine raised a finger in the hopes that Ezra had drunk a potion that grew eyes in the back of her head. She lingered there for a few seconds. But before too long, Ezra had two feet on deck, taking congratulations, and looking for her brother. 

Finally, it was just her and Stitch, who was now looking down at Jazmine with the same questioning face. Jazmine sighed and rubbed her head. “I know you can’t leave my side for too long, Stitch. But it’s all part of the plan. I really need you to make sure the nets are ready. I’m not questioning your work, I’m just being cautious, ok?” The boy nodded, and in resignation, detached himself. Stitch fell much as Ezra did in the beginning except he slowed himself by latching onto hanging red strands of thread that seemed to appear whenever he needed him. Stitch was a high-level [assasin]. Heights were nothing to him. Jazmine didn’t bother to look. Her gaze was focused solely on the rapidly approaching sky. 

There were only a couple more seconds before her ship surfaced and Jazmine used that time to enjoy her first few breaths of fresh air in three days. Despite appearances, her demonic blood was thin, so though she could at least cross the Rift, it was an uncomfortable experience deepening on how deep she went. Unfortunately as a smuggler, she had to almost always travel under the detection of authorized rift ships. In the three days since they had left New New York, Jazmine’s hand had found its home on her left side pouch where she kept medicine that could stave off whispers and headaches. The anxiety of what she was about to do seemed to draw the evil aura towards her like sinister spirits, and if she hadn’t spent as much time near the compass as she did, she might have done something as stupid as walk off her ship. 

In a way, Jazmine was glad tonight would be her last night smuggling for a while. She had once convinced herself that the side effects of Rift travel were minor and she could take up respectable work like this, but her old crew had spent enough time with her to know that their captain’s irritability was just a coverup for nausea, and her new crew just assumed she was a stuck up asshole. Smuggling wasn’t fun anymore, especially after her last voyage. Tonight she would pay back Jocras, steal enough to pay back Ezra, and retire extremely wealthy or wealthy enough to be comfortable with her day job at the very least.

She could handle one last mission then. If this would be her last night as the mysterious madam L’Opal, then she would make it a performance whole nations would never forget. So as Jazmine’s Krakling broke the surface with a near-vertical leap, she put on her most sinister face and prepared to show Jocras that side of her he seemed so irritatingly infatuated with. 

The surfacing was smooth, practiced. Scaramouche knew what he was doing despite being a new member of her crew. She'd have to rely heavily on the few veterans keeping everything running smoothly tonight. Her informant had told her that the Emperor's men would be arriving at the tail end of the night and by now, a blockade would be being built on both the Erysian side to the West and the Empire’s side to the East. Her man on the inside could only stall construction on the East blockade for so long. As much as she wanted to watch Jocras get caught, her only chance of being the one that got away was if her crew was fast enough to load the goods and speed away before the net closed in on them all. 

They surfaced. The Krakling erupted from the rift with a bellow like a volcano. High, high up in the air Jazmine was able to make out the two chokeholds where the Rift was at its thinnest and the blockades would be waiting. Looking towards the East, down a gentle mountain slope she had passed a dozen times in her career, she saw large boulders stacked like marbles on either side of the canyons. Clearly, the Eryasians were more willing to destroy a treasure trove than let a single rift ship smuggle anything out. Delightful. If things went south and Jocras escaped her grasp, he’d meet his end there. 

To the west then. Jazmine could hear her heart beat like drums as she turned her head to check the fruits of her labor. So many things were beyond her control. What if her bribes weren’t enough to convince New New York’s young militia to sabotage the blockade? What if the Empire’s men had gotten whiff of her plans and taken over the blockade themselves? She may have enough firepower to break through whatever barriers some newly christened [soldiers] set up, but she was facing actual capture if someone competent lead them. 

She put the doubts out of her mind. Every one of the stories about her grandfather started this way: plans gone awry, heroes backed into a corner. Every time the odds looked inescapable, the Slaughterer brought the team out of it. Jazmine may play at meekness at times, but if it came down to a fight, she'd win.

Violet eyes pierced through the night, her [night vision] and [mark of the target] passives doing the work to extend her sight for miles. Up this time. Way way up into a bony mountain ridge where the Rift transformed from canyon to thin crack, Jazmine saw purple-tinted smoke. 

Against the moonless backdrop, the color was practically indistinguishable, the form imperceivable at range, but Jazmine chose that signal as it was her house’s own colors. Violet and black. She could recognize them anywhere. The bribes had worked. As long as the smoke burned, the passage would stay open. If she took travel time into account, that gave her twenty minutes. Her crew would have twenty minutes to steal a small nation’s worth of goods, and she would have twenty minutes to dismantle an empire. She loved it when the missions were easy.

The smoke disappeared behind tall sand dunes as the Krakling fell back into the rift. Jazmine gripped the compass tightly as the Krakling dipped just below the surface and bobbed in the aura like it was floating on mercury. Jazmine reset her footing and then leaned over the edge to admire the land she was about to conquer. 

Below her, tent after tent after multicolored tent was haphazardly packed together in makeshift rows like a small but extravagant shanty town during a festival. Even from her position, she could hear the muted music of song crystals playing fast-paced music brimming with drums and horns native to the Green Stretch. She could smell the magically infused dishes of Tessalophia wafting through the thin silk walls of the tents. Delights awaited her in the makeshift village and she sighed with a fondness for what Smuggler’s banquets had once been. There were good people here. Sometime ago she had considered herself one of them. She knew better now, and that knowledge hurt. 

    The sprawling tent city didn’t go on forever. There was a clear demarcation line a few dozen feet from the rift where crew members and underpaid cabin boys were loading unassuming barrels and crates onto riftships. To her left, the line of Kraklings stretched nearly a mile. Nearly a hundred smugglers were due to attend this year, and Jazmine would rely on all of them creating enough chaos for her to make it out safely.

    She was just about to signal to Craw to prepare the dock and get the crew ready for phase one of the mission when she noticed a figure down below her. Scratch was down there clearly in wait for her as the old demon bowed when their eyes met. His hands flourished outwards in a ghostly motion then came inward to rest on his chest. Jocras was a cruel man to make a demon as old as Scratch wait near a Rift for any amount of time, and for whatever reason, this indignation lit a fire in Jazmine. All night she had felt something was off about this mission, like she couldn’t bring herself to feel passion for this revenge. It was strange. Jazmine had known what she had wanted to do to Jocras the second when her voyage to Tessalophia ended, but it felt like the rage inside her had disappeared after the first night, and Jazmine had just been trying to kindle the sparks of burned-out anger. But seeing the old man stuck in the cold, fighting madness at the edge of a Rift enraged her. A broken stove had been bellowing out nothing but gas for months and a match was just lit. This was no longer a dispassionate but enjoyable assasination. No. This was vengeance. For Ezra, for Stitch, for Craw, for Tez, for those on her old crew who couldn’t stand to look at her, for those on her new crew who would never know the person she once was, and yes, even for Scratch. She would end Jocras today.

    Jazmine finished her hand signal to Craw and did not look at the man to confirm. Her eyes were firmly on an old man in the cold, and she leapt towards him.

"[Shadow Step]" she said to the wind whirling around her ears. Using a [skill] was like summoning a higher power, becoming a transient incarnation. Her attunement to the world changed dramatically. She took a breath of a power that felt as ancient as it did familiar. Shadows around her changed subtlety. Dreary dark surfaces shimmered into stary voids like an infinite tunnel. She examined those tunnels like one examines their hometown roads, trivially and unconsciously. She picked a sliver of shadow draped against the deck of her ship cast by the crewmate with muscles holding a match to a lantern. Just before the skill started to wear off, she crashed into the shadow, wind blasting away the flame of the match thereby dissipating the shadow’s form, and vanished as quickly as shadows do. In that same instance, Jazmine appeared behind Scratch while the old man was still deep within a bow. 

Jazmine coughed and poked his back. The old man faked a startle--this was at least the dozenth time she had used [shadow step] on him--and pirouetted on his right heel to face Jazmine. Once in position, he bowed again. Jazmine rolled her eyes while he wasn’t looking.

"Ah, Madam L'Opal, you do us an honor by blessing us with your presence. My master will be pleased to know you have arrived."

Jazmine bit back her usual sarcastic reply. The butler played the meek servant but was a fiercely loyal guard dog to Jocras, and as much as Jazmine pitied a dog that was kicked so often it confused pain with love, she wasn’t one to pet a beast while harboring animosity towards its master. Jazmine could clearly see in bright green text that Scratch was using a skill. [Lesser Sympathy], a high-level skill despite the name. Jazmine knew of at least two level thirty skills that Scratch had access to and now she’d have to add a third while doing her best to repress suspicions of a fourth. Everyone seemed to be leveling up but her. Life was getting that much harder. Jazmine calmed herself, frosted over her heart. She had to be shrewd to get close to Jocras without Scratch being around.

"So glad to see you too, Scratch.” Jazmine said, smiling through her teeth. “It's been so long since we’ve last seen each other. These last few months might have been the longest I’ve gone without seeing you since we’ve first met. I hope Jocras has been treating you well without me being around to watch the big man?"

Scratch's humble smile didn't change at all, but he stopped using the skill on her so at least Jazmine had warded away any immediate signs of suspicion. Maybe. Something as weak as [Lesser Sympathy] wouldn't work on heirs or assassins. Both could easily dismiss appraisal skills like that. This was why Jazmine’s grandmother and grandfather had both trained her separately to not do that, as it would be a major red flag if someone’s [skill] just stopped working, and alter the results instead. So while Jazmine tricked the playful butler with her smile and diminished heart rate she also used her [hack] to alter the results from enraged to merely concerned.

"My master treats all who are in his care graciously. It is truly a pleasure to be in his employ. And I am glad to be at your service as well. My master feared you'd want to dissociate with him after your abrupt departure during the last voyage."

"Bygones!" Jazmine shouted, taking Scratch by the back and leading him forward into the camp. If she pushed him in front of her he wouldn't see her grimace at the memory of her last mission.

"Let bygones be bygones. It's a Smugglers banquet, Scratch. Don't bring up the past. Muse about the future. The profits. I know I’m late but surely Jocras has something remaining for me and the crew."

Jazmine leads Scratch towards the tent city and Jocras’ tent specifically. She obtained a bird’s eye view of the gaudy structure when surfacing and was now forging in that direction with pinpoint precision. Behind her came the whirls and clanging as her crew built a dock to load whatever she managed to purchase onto her ship. Despite being new, they moved with the swiftness and determination of veterans.

Scratch didn’t view the hurried steps of Jazmine or her crew with suspicion. He dealt with these “time is money” types all the time and quickly realized that Jazmine wasn’t here for smalltalk but to get out of the banquet with something to show for the cost of attendance. Scratch instinctively fell back on his demure secretary persona, and in his rush to accommodate Jazmine, completely forgot to ask the girl why she was late. 

"That's great to hear, madam. You’ll be happy to know that Jocras has saved you a generous amount of stock in the unusual items and has thrown in several goods that some in the Empire might consider contraband. Rift crystals in both gem and liquid form. Raw magicore, extremely raw, unprocessed, and therefore extremely volatile. Please take care to secure the red barrels. If they tip over, they might explode. Also, a few crates full of ingredients that could be prepared to make what some in the Empire call fluff?”

Jazmine skipped a step but recovered without losing momentum. Her hand unconsciously rested on her front left pouch. “Jocras found demon sedatives? How far past the Hand did you two have to travel to get that stuff?” 

Scratch’s reply was a bow. “Apologies madam, but the crates are not filled with the elixir itself, just the ingredients required to make them. Fresh ingredients mind you, we only recently left the Green Stretch with the boon of their summer harvest.” Jazmine snorted. Scratch was always looking to upsell. “Master is aware you have a high-level alchemist in your employ.” Yeah, Jazmine thought, If you call a stowaway who steals my best stuff an employee. “He has included the recipe to fluff among the goods. 

Jazmine swallowed. “How generous of Jocras.” She started doing calculations in her head. There were four variables that controlled the price of a smuggler’s goods. The difficulty of getting the stuff, distance to move it, time for the whole journey, and illegality of the sale. How much did it cost Jocras to cross the Hand of God into the cursed land, negotiate a recipe with the mad savages of the broken kingdom, and covertly purchase ingredients that the Empire was undoubtedly forcing the Green Stretch to suppress the growth of? How many months, no, weeks, no...days would it take to make a profit if Ezra actually figured out the recipe and started manufacturing the stuff? 

Sedatives were highly illegal in the empire because every demon wanted them to safely cross the Rifts and because every demon failed to use them when they needed to since the Rifts effects were tolerable until they gety much weren't. If Jazmine was caught not just selling but manufacturing the stuff, she would hang. Regardless of what her last name was. Still, if she was giving up smuggling after this, going into underground drug dealing might not be too bad of a career switch.

“Master is quite generous.” Stitch volunteered while Jazmine contemplated. After another few seconds of awkward silence, the sweaty old man continued. “Not only is he generous but he is loyal to those who are loyal to him. Jocras was disturbed when you never took your profits from Tessalophia. He’s brought your cut with him if you've changed your mind. Three chests of holding filled to their metaphorical brim with gold. My master did the work of exchanging the items on your behalf for a measly fee and brought those riches here for you to use upon arrival.

That changed things. A chest of holding had a large room’s worth of volume within it. Three chests of holding with that much gold would be enough to pay off Ezra, her crew, and start an empire spanning distribution network while granting her a life approaching the level of comfort she grew up with. All that wealth from selling… Ugh. It made her sick. That was blood money. She could do so much good with it, but it was...Wait. Why was she acting like a [smuggler] sniffing out their first deal? Why was she pretending like any debt she exchanged with Jocras over the next twenty minutes wouldn’t be voided the moment she broke through the blockade? Jocras was baiting her into making a big purchase here. Hell. He would probably have his own men load up the goods she was planning to steal anyway. This was perfect for her.

Jazmine wrapped a hand around Scratch’s shoulder and brought the slim demon to eye level. “Scratch. I’m guessing Jocras only had you bring out what he assumed I could afford.” The demon nodded uncomfortably as Jazmine thumped her clawed fingers on the nape of his neck. “Have your men double those ingredients. No. Triple them. No. Quadruple everything he’s bought me, and use what remains of two of those chests to buy up every one of those ingredients. If you run out of ingredients for fluff, buy whatever other reagents you’re selling. I don’t care what. Most expensive first. You know how alchemists like to experiment.” Jazmine said with a wink. “Oh. And coordinate with Craw to have your men load it all onto my ship.”

Jazmine pointed backward. Scratch turned to see the man Jazmine had made her first mate. Standing stoically against the desert sky was a pale-skinned man wrapped in heavy cloth of white and red. His head was wrapped tightly in a white scarf such that you could only see his green eyes glimmering like emeralds in the night sky. On his shoulder was a raven, fat and tame from the [beast tamer’s] care. Craw leaned into the raven and whispered a message. The raven nodded and flew off to repeat it. Not long after that, a different raven took up the previous’ perch and Craw whispered sweetly to it too. 

In and out. In and out. The ravens flew, conveying their master’s intentions and Jazmine’s as well. Scratch seemed overwhelmed at Craw’s mighty flock darkening the sky.

“Yes. Well. I remember your right-hand man, but I do not think I’ve ever seen him with that many pets before.” 

“I smelt opportunity in the winds. I’ve decided to bring everything for this run. My biggest ship. My best crew, and everything my crew has to offer. Now. Time is money. Can I trust you to carry out my wishes?”

Scratch straightened. “Of course, madam. My master’s best men will help your crew load your goods on. However, if I may be so curious.”

“Spit it out Scratch.”

“Well. What will you be doing with the final chest of holding? Would you like my men to load it onto your ship with the rest?”

“No. Leave it with Jocras. There’s something I’d like to buy from his personal collection. Speaking off. Let’s head to the man now. I’m sure he would love to show me what I’m buying personally.”  

Jazmine knew that Scratch had been trained as a young man to hide his emotions, to present as the humble yet amazed servant for Jocras and his guests. Yet, despite this, he was still a demon, and so was Jazmine in his eyes. The two had a rapport, a sort of understanding that went beyond the social hierarchy. There were demons, and they had a common struggle, a common pain, and though Jazmine never acknowledged herself as a demon, she had never spoken to Scratch as if he was the lessor. To Scratch, that made her every bit a demon in his eyes.

Any indication of that understanding died when Jazmine mentioned Jocras’ private collection. Scratch’s perception shifted and Jazmine became to him just another wealthy [smuggler], making a quick buck through arbitrage. His eyes glossed over and a distance formed between them harder to cross than any Rift. Jazmine barely registered this. She wasn’t a demon, and she didn’t care that much about Scratch.

“Of course, madam L’Opal. Of course. May I direct you this way? Master’s residence is not too far, and I know you and he have a lot to talk about.” Scratch politely broke from Jazmine’s grasps and took up a brisk pace in front of her as was the Tessalophian style for servants. Jazmine congratulated herself on making it past Scratch’s scrutiny. Once they were out of sight of the docs, her left index finger began to wiggle. Her crew was one of communication and coordination. She played her part knowing that everyone else would play theirs. With Scratch’s head firmly faced forward, Jazmine looked down at the red string tied to her finger. From most angles, it looked like just a messy knot of webs, but if she closed her eyes and focused on how the string felt against her bare skin, she could make out a message. “Nets.” Phase one was complete. She returned a hand sign, communicating her intentions through a pulse of vibrations: “Craw: Rush.” “Stitch: Rendezvous.” “Ezra: Feed.”

With the plan updated, she returned to focusing on her own part. They were in phase two, and her job was to get Jocras alone on his ship. Shouldn’t be too difficult. As long as she figured out a way to get the fat schlub to walk over there. 

---

    What else would be at the center of a den of thieves than the vault? What would you find at the center of a banquet but a feast? What would a [smuggler] keep more dear to his heart than his identity? Jocras’ tent, Jocras’ real tent, was an unassuming box draped with a thick and ratty wool cloth that stood out in the center of the makeshift bizarre. It saw so much foot traffic, but few would ever consider entering the ragged place. Distracted by the sights and smells and stimuli permeating the area, a lesser [smuggler] would spare at most a glance at the tent, assume it was an unbefitting latrine, and walk past it on their way to a much more massive tent that surely housed a man as prominent as Jocras. They would find nothing there besides a fanciful simulacrum of the man or Scratch himself if the [smuggler] had caught a modicum of Jocras’ curiosity. Jazmine had been so lucky as to be that curiosity at her first banquet. There Scratch had politely introduced himself to a girl tapping her foot impatient outside of a simulacrum’s office. He had offered her a drink and a question, and Jazmine had given a worthy answer. 

    Then as now, Scratch led her past the sights and the smells to a place so unassuming that trained as she was Jazmine had not even registered. Then as now, Scratch had rounded the tent towards the side facing away from the activity and parted the curtain, revealing nothing but a black shimmer. Then as now, Jazmine stepped past the boundary and found herself amazed. 

    Inside she found a shrine to hedonism. The interior of Jocras’ tent was part club, part circus. Neither sun nor moonlight was found in this place. Instead, flashes of light peppered shadows of gyrating bodies onto marble walls. Bodies on bodies on bodies danced on a golden floor, sweating, kissing, hallucinating, participating in pleasures Jazmine averted her eyes to. Not above though, above women and men and neither entertained in hanging cages and glass bottles rendering their personhood as little more than a colored silhouette on a canvas. There was smoke in the air. Not the kind that burned lungs, the kind that lit a passion in the soul, consumed inhibitions, made one float and forget and drown if submitted to fully. Drowning was a real possibility here. The bodies around her pressed inward like a herd of sheep surrounded by wolves and left with no option but to live to the last.

    Jazmine kept her eyes firmly on the ground, focused on Scratch’s leather shoes, double stepping to keep up with the man that slithered through the crowd like the wind. Her willpower was split, resisting the gluttonous want to partake in everything the banquet had to offer, everything she had been raised to not try, everything that was right there. She caught a model of a woman wink at her and turned away, purple cheeks turning magenta with a blush. She wanted nothing more than to run to Scratch, hold his hand, and have a true adult lead her forward, but she had to resist that too. Jazmine had decided her own way forward tonight, and she was not about to let more tempting paths lead her astray.

    One long, long breath after endearing Jocras’ tent, the two came upon another curtain to another world. This one was golden silk with a regal trim. The insignia of the Midas’ Rose company was expertly embroidered onto the cloth. Scratch would not be going through this portal, but he would open it for her. The demon bowed and beckoned her forward. Jazmine took one large breath in to calm herself, and then another small one to remember what a normal breath felt like. Beyond this point, she would show no weakness. She would show no doubts. She would just step forward.

---

    “What the hell does she mean by feed?” Ezra scratched her head then closed her eyes twice as tight to really feel whatever the heck Jazmine had actually sent her. Stich’s thread tightened on her index finger. It would keep pulsing out the same pattern until Ezra acknowledged it. It had been five minutes at this point, and her finger was almost as red as the thread itself. 

    “Obviously it means to do what I’m currently doing,” Chris said, taking a bite out of magical cotton candy he had paid nothing for. After every bite, special sugar crystals hidden inside the cone would rapidly surge up the remaining snack and reform whatever was consumed. The cone was the conduit for the magic and was one of the many uses for rift crystals you couldn’t find within the empire. Chris had paid two silver for it. An absurd amount for cotton candy, but given that all subsequent crystal refills were free, it seemed like a really good idea at the time. 

    Unfortunately, Chris had only attended four of the Smuggler banquets Jazmine offered a ride to under the assumption that there would be many more to come. Then four months ago, Jazmine and his sister had kicked down his front door, super grumpy and mostly drunk, just to declare that this Smuggler’s banquet would be the last ever. Now Chris was in the tough situation of fitting in six more of his infinite refills in a bit over ten minutes to break even on his investment, and his sister kept asking dumb questions, giving the regenerating snack time to catch up. 

    “Ugh, are you just going to stuff your face for the rest of the night, or are you going to help me figure out what Jaz means,” Ezra leaned in, practically hissing in his right ear, “so we can get the fuck out of here alive, eh?” 

    “I. Am. Helping,” Chris said between munches. “My job was to go shopping. Your job was to drug all the Kraklings so the [smugglers] would have a harder time escaping.” Chris’ patted his bags of holding. In one he kept a bunch of banned tomes and grimoires with a couple of spells he might learn at slightly higher levels. In the other, he stored a bunch of likely volatile unappraised and low-level relics from various dungeons around the world. Adventurers usually dumped these things in bulk because they weren’t shiny and the meatheads cared more about hitting things than discovering. As an [artificer] and a [mage], he was confident he could break down and learn whatever enchantment these trinkets had.

    If he didn’t, all it cost him was some gold. As a prince who actually bothered to take his monthly stipend from his parents, gold was practically worthless to him. He didn’t get why Ezra and Jazmine wanted to do things on their own like they couldn’t snap their fingers and have dozens of the most powerful figures in the world show up to fix their problems.

    A slight exaggeration really. Most of the heroes were busy. Some of them were dead. But a decent chunk of them were bored and old and could easily wipe this whole tent city off the face of the earth. What the hell were they doing here?

    “Goddamn it.” Ezra slapped her head, almost as hard as the realization of what her job was did. They were at the tail end of the banquet straddling the line between the docks and the tent city, literally the farthest they could be from the surfacing point while still seeing it. Ezra looked back at the near mile of Kraklings lined up. She was supposed to feed all of those?

    “Jaz is going to kill me.” Ezra bit a fingernail, a nervous tick from when she was a child. Then her snake eyes dilated. “Wait. If you knew, why didn’t you tell me.”

    Chris sighed. He was never going to make his money back on the cotton candy, was he?

    “Because,” Chris said, “the moment you first asked, ‘What the hell does she mean by Feed?’ That was my que to signal to Craw that you had forgotten your plan and that he should send out birds to fly the drugged meat into the Kraklings. By now, Craw has probably signaled to Jazmine that the beasts will be sleeping soon, and whatever she plans on doing to Jocras she better do before his ship starts swaying back and forth.”

 Chris sneaks in a few more bites of cotton candy while Ezra processes everything he just said. His stomach growls, likely having ingested so much sugar it’s no longer acidic. Chris will need a potion or two and a good night of sleep when he gets back on the ship. At least he doesn’t get rift sick. 

“What the hell!” Ezra predictably explodes. “Jaz just freaking assumed I wouldn’t do my job. I always do my job. The nerve of that bitch.”

“And that’s my cue to give you this.” Chris takes a miniature scroll from his front pocket and hands it to Ezra. It’s sealed with a wax impression of a fingerprint. Jazmine’s. Ezra tears it open and reads it out loud. 

“Chris. There’s no way in hell Ezra is going to be lucid enough to remember the plan. When she inevitably fucks it up, send Craw the word ‘dumbass’. What the hell Jaz?”

“Keep reading,” Chris says, hiding a smile.

“Craw will signal back ‘right?’ when he’s done. That’s your cue to explain to Ezra what her job was and remind her that she’s so scatterbrained, and that moments like this are why I don’t pay her to be on my crew. Why I ought to-” 

Ezra grabs Chris by the shirt and the boy holds up a hand to his taller sister. “Hey, I didn’t say all of that last part. You just read it. And honestly, if you weren’t always high or asleep during the planning meetings you’d have realized that there was no way in hell you were going to put dozens of Kracklings to sleep by yourself with no one noticing. You were set up to fail. Also, that’s not it. Is it?”

Ezra lifts a brow and checks the scroll. There’s still more. She unfurls it slowly while reading, “When Ezra inevitably complains about how unfair I am (probably by saying something inane like ‘I always do my job’) give her this scroll. When she’s done reading it, signal me back.” 

“Keep going,” Chris prompts. 

“There’s no more…” Ezra starts but as she continues to unscroll past blank parchment she reveals a drawing of Jazmine in a cute miniature form. Chibi Jazmine sticks her tongue out and holds up a peace sign over her left eye like it’s a pair of scissors. There’s a little chat bubble coming out the side that reads, “And this is why you don’t get paid.” 

Ezra looks up at nothing but rolling sand dunes much too angry to be anything but dumbfounded. “Fuck.” and the word encapsulates the moment perfectly. 

Chris idles with her for a minute or two as the gears in Ezra’s head start turning again. She has questions. But the most obvious one is, “Wait. She wrote this message to you.” Chris nods. “Mmhm.” 

“But the message told you to give me the scroll after Craw did everything.”

“Yep.”

“And the scroll was sealed, so there was no way you would have read the instructions to give me the scroll. Which made writing the instructions pointless because she would have had to tell you them in another way to have this make any sense.”

“Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“Well, you’re mostly right. The message was sealed, but only after I cast [repair] to redo the wax seal from when I broke it.”

“Wait. You opened it first? But...”

“I am a [letter opener]. Jazmine gave me that scroll the day we were disembarking and told me to give it to you if she didn’t make it. Obviously, as your brother, I needed to know everything you two love birds were up to.”

 “We’re not love birds,” Ezra says, rolling her eyes, “Also. Hah! That means she got you too. Read you like a book.”

Chris shrugs. “That’s Jazmine for you. Always two steps ahead. Or at least, that’s as far as I can tell. A genius like her probably plans out a couple more in her spare time. Anyway, Jazmine's probably getting into phase three by now. Let’s head back. It’s time to leave.”

“You know I have to pay you back for this. You and Jazmine both.”

“You know she only does this because you keep messing with her?”

“Well, I can’t let her get away with it.”

“And so the cycle of violence continues.”  Chris walks back to their docks, hiding how sick the cotton candy has made him. It’s like the snack is regenerating in his stomach and he doesn’t enjoy the bloated feeling.

Luckily, that’s the worst thing that will happen tonight. Chris may not understand why Jazmine’s so worked up about this mission, but he has no doubts that it’ll be a roaring success. That’s what it meant to be part of the crew. That’s why Chris came on these trips. They had fun doing this, escaping by the skin of their teeth most of the time, but it was all planned. He could see that. Jazmine was directing everyone to where they needed to be. He could feel the climax approaching, sense the tension in the air, and through the red string on his finger. It would be over soon, and when Jazmine had told him the Smuggler’s banquets would end. He knew that Jazmine wouldn’t let any of them end with it. 

---

    “Dumbass.” Jazmine snortles under her breath to the red string tied around her finger. Chris had just sent back the words “Done” and “Read” and “Angry”, “Very”, “Angry”. The [mage] alternated the words “Very” and “Angry” multiple times and Jazmine couldn’t help but snort, imagining Ezra’s predictable reactions. She’d get Jazmine back for this at some point. She always did, but for the next three days on the return trip, Jazmine would have all the power to lord this over her. This trip was looking very, very much like a success. 

    “I rarely see you smile like that L’Opal, and never at any of my wonders. Only ever trepidation. May I ask what’s changed?”

    Jazmine looked away from the red string around her finger and matched eyes with the pale skinned man in front of him. Jocras was a round man and dressed as if he wanted to shape himself into a sphere. He was covered in layer after layer of silks in a bright rainbow of colors; purple, reds, orange like the sun, and gold, lots and lots of gold. A pale imitation of Goldhaven’s clothing. 

That woman’s every breath was wealth and fire, but to those who had never met something like Goldhaven, Jocras would look like the next best thing. To Jasmine though he was an ugly golden Buddha lavishly dressed like an exorbitant king. 

    A minor one. The throne room he and Jazmine were in was small, intimate and full. There was some absurd treasure in every corner. Paintings that looked like portals to another world were stacked in piles to one corner. Rows of glowing silk streamed overhead. These weren’t quality cloth from Erysium. The way that they pulse with magic and smelt of offerings to the old gods required the enchanted fingers of the highest level [seamstresses] in the world. These were from the Green Stretch or somewhere powerful that she had never heard of. Jocras regularly went beyond the Hand of God so maybe there was more wealth hidden in this room than she knew of. 

    Jazmine shifted in her seat, a pile of gold coins brushed against her feet. The floor was carpeted with gold coins to the degree that Jazmine couldn’t tell what the floor beneath them was made of--though it would likely be a lavish form of wood and marble. Jocras didn’t let her wear shoes in here for his fear of lessers soiling his wealth with filth dragged out from outside. This was the sole thing Jazmine liked about the room. She preferred going barefoot. Human shoes never really worked for her. 

    Jazmine rested her back against her soft leather chair and rested her hands in her lap. She traced her gaze around the familiar treasures of Jocras’ study, letting the man wait for her response. Jocras creaked forward and rested his elbows on the table between them. The table was the only thing of modesty in the room. A simple wood, as far as Jazmine could tell, level and tough, perfect for writing contracts. Jocras’ immaculate persona only ever slipped when there was business to be done. 

    With enough random scanning, Jazmine’s eyes would meet the blue of Jocras. She could see the unveiled adoration and curiosity in the man’s eyes. Could he see the rage and disgust hidden in her own? The two had been good business partners, great business partners. They thought in similar ways, and Jazmine’s come-up mimicked Jocras’ from long ago. If Jazmine had remained ignorant about who this man was, she may have considered him a mentor. A friend.

    Holding back a shiver, she answered, lifting a lavender palm forward so that Jocras could see. "Every member of my crew has a bit of red string tied around their left index finger. They’re linked in a way, all coming from the same long piece of yarn."

    “A mark of friendship then? Or maybe possession?” Jocras says, leaning in so close he could smell the magic.

    “Nothing like that,” Jazmine says, pulling away. “Just a small comfort for me. It draws a bit of magic from me. Not a lot, something so small can’t hold much magic, but registers just enough to pulse every once in a while. A lingering reverberation like the strum of a guitar. That’s how it was described to me. As long as the string remains uncut, as long as there’s still magic to draw, it will pulse. It lets me know that my crew is okay.”

    Jocras continued to lean forward. If he squinted hard enough and his imagination mixed with his reality, he would see the small contractions and relaxations of the string. 

    “And your laughter just now? Does it tickle?”

    Jazmine chuckles, “No. It’s like...it’s like,” she scans the room again, looking for nothing in particular just trying to catch a glimpse of the words, “It’s like a memory. Feelings and memory are linked. When you hear a song, you remember where you heard it. When I felt a pulse just now, I remembered something familiar.”

    “What was it?”

    “Tessalophia. The pirates that we faced on our way there.”

    “Ah,” Jocras leans back in understanding, “a fearsome fight and a terrible day for many of my [smugglers]. As I recall, you took many sualties but few deaths despite being in the worst of the fighting.” 

    “I did,” Jazmine says looking past him, almost seeing a storm hide an abomination of a man who wielded a massive cutlass in a crab claw hand. Through the rain, she sees a flash of steel as it came down to split Jocras’ head in two. “I lost men. For the first time. A fight had never been what my crew signed up for, and few of them wanted to return to a ship they scrubbed clean of blood and viscera. I let anyone who wanted to leave retire early with a generous pension. Most did. The crew I have now is almost entirely rookies.” 

    “Unfortunate for them. I’m sure they leveled more than they ever had. It must be hard to give up a class after so much struggle.”

    Jazmine shrugs. “Some things are more important than classes. Some of mine I never plan on returning to.”

    Jocras’ blue eyes glint with golden light. He sneaks a glimpse at the ring on his left hand. A perfectly polished orange stone rests on a golden band tight around his fat finger. A truth stone, still orange and pure as the moment Jazmine came in. Neither of them had told a lie this entire time. Jazmine certainly wouldn’t need to.

    When Jocras’ attention returns, Jazmine pretends to not have seen. Jocras pretends to have done nothing wrong. “I can understand the sentiment though I don’t share it. I have only ever wanted to be a [smuggler] and a [merchant] and now I am the greatest of both.” Jazmine snorts. Jocras ignores it. The truth stone’s color doesn’t change.

    “Still, it concerns me that that memory is so close to you now. My banquet is safe. No harm could come to your crew here. No pirates would dear cross a Rift to get to them. Why think of Tessalopha? Why laugh?”

    She shakes her head. “I don’t fear any danger here Jocras, and I didn’t fear anything in Tessalophia, though I remember how close we all came to drowning that day. What I remember now is a stowaway.” 

    “A stowaway?”

    “Yeah. An oddly persistent stowaway who’s a regular on my ship at this point.”

    “You trust this stowaway? Many in the empire would gush at an opportunity to turn a [smuggler] in.”

    “I trust her with my life. She was there that night. I was on the deck fighting, focused on every pulse of my finger to ensure that all of my crew was safe. I’m so accustomed to this bit of string that I could tell who’s heartbeat was the most erratic of all of them. If ever their wave pulsed too rapidly, I’d jump over and thrust my sword in the path of an upcoming cutlass. Back and forth I went, sensing out which of my crew was in trouble, and saving them at the last moment. I was completely unaware the stowaway was doing the same.”

    “Ah,” Jocras said guessing the rest. “I see now.”

    Jazmine nodded. “The pirates figured out what I was doing. Their captain noticed that I was always where the fighting was most intense. I don’t know-how. Probably some [tactician] skill. It doesn’t matter. He set an ambush, surrounded one of my men with three times the force required to kill him. His victim’s heartbeat wasn’t three times faster than anyone else though. I [shadow stepped] in expecting the usual number and found a dozen swords trained at me. I panicked, dodging most, getting nicked by a few. And the moment I couldn’t control my fear any longer, the stowaway fell in.”

    “Fell?”

“Yeah. She was drunk, completely wasted, but crushed one guy and threw a glass bottle at the man who was about to stab me. That idiot turned to see what was going on and got some acidic concoction dumped on his face. His pain only lasted a moment because whatever that potion was, it exploded once things got bubbly.

“The stowaway saved me. She started drunkenly throwing potions, missing more than she hit, but what happened to the first guy was enough to send the pirates running. The captain noticed this, of course, snuck behind the drunk girl. Wasn’t hard. The stowaway was half asleep at this point. The captain raised his cutlass, and just before he swung, I stabbed him in the heart and kicked his body off my ship.”

“Incredible. You never told me what happened.”

“Well, you hired us to escort you, not to regale you with bloody tales. Still, It was a moment I look back on fondly.” 

“Fondness, hah.” Jocras sipped from a golden goblet of wine. He whipped the dripping red from his mouth. “I never know what to expect with you L’Opal. Half your crew quit because of the trauma of that night, but it’s merely a fond memory for you.” 

Jocras chuckled to himself. Jazmine dug her claws into the palm of her hand. “My crew quit for other reasons than that night.”

    “Ah, of course, of course. Many things may happen on a journey. A true [smuggler] takes them in stride. What about the sting?”

    Jazmine bit back her retort on what a true [smuggler] did. “What about the string?”

    “You haven’t explained the string. Why do you laugh? Was it the memory of stabbing that brigand through the heart? What was it?”

    “Oh,” Jazmine said, sipping at her own wine. “The stowaway is drunk right now. I can tell because the string is pulsing the exact same way as it was on the ship.”

 “Hah. Such a good artifact. You know, L’Opal, you and I are very much alike. I mark my things too, in a way that suits me of course, a bit of loose string would never decorate my figure, but I understand your need to know that everything is in its place. That you are in control. A true [smuggler] owns the situation as much as they own their goods. You’ll level far and fast as long as you keep that close to your heart.”

Jazmine nearly draws blood the way her nails are biting into her skin. “I’m nothing like you,” Jazmine starts. Jocras seems quick to reply, but Jazmine sighs before he opens his mouth. “Or maybe I am. I’ve come to make a deal.”

Jocras smiles. Brilliant white teeth stained red with wine. “Oh,” he says, leaning an elbow forward on his table. “And what do you need from me, Madam L’Opal.”

One last drink. Then it’s time for phase three. “[Slaves],” Jazmine says. “I’ve come to buy [slaves].” 

---

    The last few months have given Jazmine time to reflect. She’s always hated Jocras. That stupid smile of his whenever he thinks he's cornered her into a deal. Those piercing blue eyes that act as if they could [appraise] a soul. Jocras knows nothing of who Jazmine is. But he thinks he does. He thinks he’s molded her into some corrupted protege that did more than tolerate his [slave] trade. One who embraced it. Pretending to be this way made her sick and that only made Jocras’ smile wider.

    “I need to check on my crew.” Jazmine says, lighting one of the Dreamleaf cigars Jocras’ has offered. She breathes out into the night sky and watches the smoke dissipate like her sense of morality. 

    The two are outside now. It didn’t take any prompting for Jocras to volunteer to escort Jazmine onto his ship so he could see his private collection of [slaves]. She was in luck tonight. The Tessalophians wanted more. 

    “Of course. Of course. I’m sure Scratch has worked diligently to get your lesser goods onto your ship, but it would do no good for a [smuggler] to not inspect their cargo themselves. Why, I knew of a man who had purchased barrel after barreled Tuduk wine for silver not gold, only to open it at his destination miles away and find nothing but piss. Take caution with who you buy from. Even me.” 

    Jocras smiles friendly. Jazmine sends a mocking one back. “You don’t have to remind me twice. Now. If you would excuse me.” 

    Jazmine breaks away, leaving the man at the edge of the tents and the docks. The greatest [smuggler] in the world never lacks for entertainment though. Every [merchant] [salesman] and [performer] in a mile smelled his money, and formed a trail of beggars behind the two on their private walk. Jocras merely turns and there’s someone there to offer a joke or a trick for potential patronage. Jocras can pretend like the best of them, and Jazmine hears his boisterous laughter as she walks away. She turns unconsciously and catches his gaze from the side of his eyes. It’s a signal to her that there’s one person who has Jocras’ curiosity at this point, and though she may be walking away, he won’t let her out of his sight.

That’s fine. It’s all fine, Jazmine thinks with her hands still in a balled up fist. It’s one thing to come up with a plan. That’s all logic and foresight. But executing the plan is something else. That’s when emotions get involved. 

She feels sick with who she’s pretending to be, who she could see herself being honestly. Classes compelled you to be who you really are. She had nineteen levels in her [Profane Smuggler] class. Two less than she had as a [Shade], and giving up assasination was one of the hardest decisions she ever had to make. More than giving up the thrill and identity and sense of purpose that came with the class, giving up assasinatoin was like giving up her family. She looks away from her feat and towards the riftship and her crew loading crate upon crate into the hold. Giving up smuggling meant giving up this family too. 

Jazmine found Craw and the rest hanging around a barrel at the center of the dock. As she came closer, she saw that all of their looks were directed downward. Ezra and Chris were playing a game of chess. Craw and Stitch were watching. 

“Really trying to pin my queen there,” Ezra says, hand on her chin. “So aggressive like dad taught us. You need to grow up from that.” She moves a knight, forking Chris’ king and threatening the attacker. Chris groans. Jazmine takes that as her cue. 

“Since you’re all slacking off, I’m guessing everything is ready?” She raises an eye to Craw. The man caught the look. “Yeah. Almost everything is done. The birds can manage themselves at this point and no one seems to have caught on.” 

“And since some of us were never given any actual jobs,” Ezra says, butting in, “We’ve got nothing to do but chill and talk about all your mistakes.”

“Mistakes?” Jazmine tilts her head in concern. She moves it back before Jocras notices anything.

“Well, we can talk about that later. How’s your day been? Glorious leader.”

“Don’t mess with me like that, Ezra. What happened?” She looks at Craw but before he can get a word in, Chris loudly grumbles. 

“There’s still a game going on. We can talk about the minutia later.”

“Screw your game, Chris,” Jazmine says through her teeth.

“Yeah, screw your game, Chris,” Ezra repeats. “Mate in three by the way. You take my knight with your bishop, exposing your king again. I move my queen to check. Your bishop blocks. I accept its sacrifice with my queen, and then that’s mate because my queen’s protected.” Ezra wipes the board off the barrel before Chris has a chance to check, then she puts her elbows on the barrel and leans forward to ask Jazmine about her day again. 

Before Jazmine can take out her knife and stab Ezra in the eye, Chris interrupts. “If you were telling the truth, that’s mate in four. Not three.” The kid looks smug as if it matters. 

“Mate’s inevitable. It’s mate in one if I gave a fuck. It’s mate in negative eight since you were never going to beat me. Anyway Jaz. Before you stab me, take a guess at what’s in the barrel.” 

Jazmine unclasps her sheath and takes out her knife. Craw stops the fight before it begins. “My birds found some Empire soldiers on the other side of the Rift. They were watching us with binoculars.”   

Knife goes back into the sheath. Jazmine asks tentatively, “Was there a fight?” 

Craw shakes his head. Stitch snuck upon them. Tied them up before they could make a report. No one died.”

Jazmine breathes a sigh of relief. “So in the barrel…”

Ezra does the honors. She opens the large container and inside are three men with rags stuffed into their mouths. They look up, hungry for light. And start shaking. Ezra takes the stopper out of a bottle, she lowers it beneath the nose of every soldier. One by one, they fall asleep after one waif of the sleeping serum. Ezra puts the stopper back in, and puts the bottle away in her pouch, replacing it with a thin black cylinder. 

“They brought a flare with them,” she says. There are probably Empire soldiers all around us. Erysian men too if the nations are coordinated. If this flare had gone off before we found it, it’s likely this entire place would be under attack.”

“They were watching our ship though,” Craw says. “That’s the only reason I spotted them. The Empire wants us for whatever reason. Our escape is compromised.” 

Jazmine nods. She waves a hand over to Ezra for the flare. The girl lifts it above Jazmine’s head. Jazmine jumps, the flare goes higher. 

“What are you doing, Ez?” 

“If you want it, come and get it.”

    Jazmine jumps again. Left hand reaching up, then the right. A giggle escapes her lips.

    Craw coughs. Jazmine freezes in a squat. She forgot that she’s not alone and a non-insignificant number of her crew is looking at the scene right now. Does she dare look back at Jocras? No. No way her heart could take a look from that smug bastard. Something hits her head and bounces. Jazmine catches the flare by instinct. She looks up at Ezra’s smirking face and scowls. “I’ll get you for this,” she whispers.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    “I know,” Ezra winks. “And I’ll get you back.”

    Chris shakes his head. “The circle of violence continues.”

 “Anyway…” Jazmine draws out the words as she looks the flare over. It’s smooth, but she can see a mechanism on the side. A bit of magic goes in here, and it’s amplified like a lightning storm. Everyone in miles would see it. 

“You captured the scouts which means they haven’t checked in in a while. Why hasn’t the Empire assumed they were taken and started the attack?” Jazmine asks, assuming the answer, but ensuring that no more assumptions are made tonight. How did she ever convince herself that a bribe would be enough to stop the barricade?

One of my songbirds is up there, mimicking one of the soldier’s voices. Whenever someone calls in on a speaking stone, she answers. She’s not going to fool anyone for much longer. We need a plan now.”

“[Pocket]” Jazmine casts the skill and the flare disappears and an apple appears in its place. A dimensional skill tiers below what Jocras must be using for that tent of his, but good enough for her to store something like a flare. She takes a bite of the apple while she speaks. 

“The plan now is the same as before,” Jazmine says, putting the flare with her knife.” 

“We’re just going to sail through an ambush?” Chris asks. 

“Yep.” Jazmine replies, unfazed.

    “And if they have [spells] and harpoons and bows, what? Are we going to tank those?”

    “You know [barrier] right? That’s enough to get us through.”

    “What? They probably have half a dozen Exzusis graduates who specialize in breaking [barriers], especially thin ones, cause if you’re forgetting, I’d have to cast it across an entire freaking ship.”

    “It’ll be enough, Chris. Don’t worry.” Jazmine says, stroking her chin. She’s got a plan. She’s always had a plan.

    Ezra snorts. “Jaz is probably planning on flying us over the barricade. I can’t think of anything else.” Ezra wonders too. 

    “If I have to. That’s what we’ll do.”

    None of them were expecting that answer. They double check their glorious leader to make sure she hadn’t suddenly gone insane. Individually, they all realize they wouldn’t be able to tell insane Jazmine from regular Jazmine anyway. Ezra shrugs first.

    “You heard her. That’s that. Nothing to worry about. Just the entire empire vs the aerodynamics of a giant fucking ship. Call me when yall are done.” Ezra turns and walks away with her arms stretched behind her back. She’ll probably find some secure location to watch the fun. Jazmine wasn’t planning on giving anyone an opening where the stowaway would have to swoop in and save her life. Again.

She turns to Craw. There’s more to discuss. “Just to make sure the ship is ready to fly... Where’s Scaramouche? I need to talk to him.”  

Craw scratches his head. “Well. That brings me to the second thing that’s wrong.” The mummified man points and Jazmine follows the line to see her pilot and a few others huddled around a bunch of crates put together.

It’s a good thing Jazmine put the flare away because she would have crushed it in her grip. 

    “Craw. Why is my pilot not on my ship, at the ready for an emergency getaway as planned?”

    Craw swallows. “So it turns out there’s a stowaway…” Craw never gets a chance to finish his explanation. Jazmine stopped listening when she started talking. She marches towards Scaramouche in a barely contained rage. Craw watches, grateful that he doesn’t have the onus of that rage. 

    His relief is interrupted when something pokes him from the side. He looks down and finds Stitch with an open palm. Craw sighs, takes out his coin purse and starts counting silvers. Who would have thought a drunk would be good at chess?

    Jazmine is huffing as she stomps towards Scaramouche. She never bothered to put her shoes back on when leaving Jocras’ tent, and leaves temporary footsteps in the sandy ground underneath her. 

    That absolute lazy sack of Krakling crap. Why the hell did I take a chance on a geriatric old navigator of all things? Waste of my freaking time. For every freaking minute he wasn’t on that ship I’m docking a silver from his pay. 

    “Scaramouche!” Jazmine calls out a half step away from grabbing the old man by his beard and bringing him eye level. The navigator turns, his bulbous white ponytail flailing in the wind like a mace. Scaramouche looks like a tough man with tree trunk arms and scars that almost amount to the number of wars he’s fought criss crossing his face. He’s a big softy though, so when Jazmine is about to reach up and pull, she sees the mark of dried tears and hesitates. 

    “Scaramouche. What’s going...on.” Jazmine follows the old man’s gaze. Lying on the crate next to her  is a boy, shivering like he’s had the worst pneumonia imaginable. His arms and legs are strapped down to keep him from conversing and there’s a pillow under his head to keep the seizures from snapping his neck. 

    His horns are almost entirely black. A sliver of red stripes here and there are the only thing remaining of the original color. Jazmine touches the boy by the chin and he’s burning hot enough to singe her fingers. She bares with it and turns his cheek to get a good look at him from all angles. She knows him.

    “Syls.” She says caressing the boy’s cheek. “Why would you come here?” 

    Syls stirs at her voice. His eyes open, his lips quiver, but then he falls back as the seizures begin again.

    “He overheard us speak back at the inn.” Scaramouche makes his way to Jazmine’s side. He presses a palm against the boy’s forehead, whispering some skill to help children sleep. “He’s always wanted to travel, thought it was his chance. He cornered me when you left, asking if he could come, begging for the class. I told him no and he kicked my shin and ran to his room. He thinks he can be like you.” 

    Jazmine’s not a demon. She’s got horns that she shaves and claws that she clips, but that’s just an unlucky mix of recessive traits from her grandmother. She’s human. That’s why she doesn’t fear traveling Rifts any more than a sailor prone to seasickness fears rivers. 

    Syls is a demon though. Being anywhere near a Rift is like drowning. Syls has been drowning for three days. 

    “How did this happen? How did he get on?” Jazmine reaches into her left pouch and pulls out the elixir. It’s a sedative and cure both. She tilts Syls head and pours it in his mouth, massaging the liquid down. Two doses were in that bottle, and it's not until she’s used both of them that she can start to see red returning to the boy’s horns.

    “One of the men noticed a food crate was shaking. He went to check it out expecting rats and found Syls in it. I ordered him off the ship as soon as I heard. I followed since I’m the only one on the crew with the skills to calm his mind.”

    Jazmine nods to the [innkeeper] as she checks the boy’s temperature. Is he getting colder or is she just imagining things? She wants to be angry at Scaramouche for leaving his post but she would have done the same thing. She’s told her men time and time again, no one dies on these missions. No one. If Scaramouche hadn’t acted like he did and the boy died, that would be traumatic enough for the [carer] to lose a class. Traumatic enough for her to level. 

    She doesn’t want to think about that. “See to it that he’s okay.” Jazmine tosses a half silver key at Scaramouche. The man catches it in both hands. “In my cabin, there’s a potion bottle just like this one,” she hands the empty phial over. “Much larger though. Every hour from now, have someone pour two drops into his mouth. We’ll need to do this every hour until he’s back at the inn and maybe a day or two after if his horns don’t go back to normal.”

    The man nods. Jazmine turns to two other men surrounding Syls. “Follow Scaramouche and take Syls to my cabin and let him rest on my bed. The room is reinforced, he should be safe there. You two get the first couple shifts. If I find a single thing out of place, I’m taking both of your heads. Understood?” 

    The two sweat and nod rapidly. They don’t know Jazmine, but they’ve had nothing to do for the last three days but listen to the stories of the veterans. They undo Syls bindings and lift him up. One takes him by the shoulders, the other his legs. As they walk away, Scaramouche can’t help but ask.

    “You’re taking him back to the Rift?” His tone is accusatory. A bit of spittle flies from his mouth. He’s shaking almost as much as Syls as he holds back his anger. Jazmine turns, arms behind her back, a calm voice. “He will be fine in my cabin. The walls are lined with truegold, and we don’t have any more time. We leave in ten minutes.” 

    Scaramouche sees that the dock workers are done. Jocras’ men mix with theirs, leaning on crates and clinging mugs of liquor together. Scaramouche was no slouch either. His Krakling is the only one ready to leave at the moment, even if the other navigators are too drunk on the night's festivities to notice the minute swaying of their ships. To him, all this slack means Syls can rest outside for a few minutes more. 

    Jazmine interrupts before he says anything. “We may leave sooner than you think. We may be forced to fight our way out. If it is between Syls and the rest of my men...” Jazmine huffs in a breath, “You don’t want to see me if I’m forced to make a choice like that, Scaramouche. Syl's will be safer on the ship than somewhere we might abandon him.” That’s not enough for Scaramouche. He’s a kind man now, but he was still a [champion navigator] and a high level adventurer. He has levels on Jazmine. What right did this girl have to order him around? 

    Jazmine looks Scaramouche in the eyes one last time, violet eyes pierce amber. Scaramouche’s [danger sense] goes off, and he looks away. Scaramouche fears the monster that wears the mask of the young woman next to him. He doesn’t mean monster as an insult. The thousand years war had been over for far too long by the time he had met his first demon. Scramouche knew they weren’t monsters. He made a career hunting actual monsters. No. Demons weren’t monsters. Jazmine was.

    Once he took the money to fix up his inn, he’d separate himself from whatever dark path this monster was leading those she called her crew upon. 

    Scaramouche nods. Jazmine walks back to Jocras. There is nothing more to discuss.

---

    She’s kept Jocras waiting long enough, but she still makes a quick stop to bring Stitch and Scratch with her. Jocras eyes the two as they trail like floating pillars behind the girl. The two butlers seem to be having a slight contest on which can be more uptight. Stitch with more levels as a [trusted retainer] walks forward in a regal fashion, and Scratch who has never been to the Empire proper does his best to copy him. Scratch being the taller and better dressed of the two seems to be winning. 

    “And so the small queen returns. L’Opal. I had hoped we’d be able to talk more privately about my collection. I can have my [butler] send you the goods once a deal has been made.”

    Jazmine starts walking towards Jocras’ ship. The man smirks and walks, following behind her but in front of the two servants. “You’ve met my second before, Jocras.” Jazmine calls out. “He watched over you during the pirate raid as the red knight. He goes by Stitch.”

    “Ah.” Jocras remembers Stitch fondly, a warrior clad in not steel or leather but simple silken cloth of red. A single sword in his right hand, and a wadded knot of white silk in his left, by the end of that raid, both had turned as red as his clothes. “I remember him, of course. Your servant fights like a spider, wrapping those brigands in a cocoon of silk and stabbing them once still. I remember how he sewed a man’s lips together before they could use a [skill]. Such a majestic way of fighting. An expensive one too.” Jocras stops laughing. “Why is he here?”

    Jazmine stops allowing Jocras to catch up. The two stare each other down in the center of Jocras’ busy dock, “Because depending on what you show me tonight, a trade might be involved.” Jazmine continues walking. Jocras pauses and the two servants pause with him. He glimpses Stitch from the side of his eye, a small boy, stitched up like a doll, and dressed like one too with clean leather pants and a stainless linen shirt. He can think of four Tessalophian [ladies] who would love to have him as a gift for their daughters.

    “His armor would be included in such a trade, correct?” Jocras calls out. 

    “Of course,” Jazmine replies unfazed. 

    It's simple arithmetic to know that this is a good deal. Jocras laughs and smacks his grubby palms together. “It’s a deal then.”

    Jazmine calls out nearly at the gangway leading to the maw of Jocras’ massive ship. “Only if you have something of worth to show me.” 

    “Of course I do.” Jocras whispers into Jazmine’s ear, crossing the distance without a sound. Jazmine suppresses a shiver as she feels his cool breath tickle her ear. “I have everything you want, madam L’Opal. I have everything you don’t know you want yet as well. And most importantly,” he says with a soft breath, “I have what you need, Jazmine.” 

    He knows my name. He knows who I am. Jazmine’s hand goes to her knife sheath, but she hesitates to take it out. If Jocras notices the gesture he says nothing and uses the conversational momentum to get ahead of her. Jazmine’s mind races with hows and whys. Her body unconsciously follows Jocras onto his ship. She sneaks a look around like a budding [assassin] and realizes that no one else follows into the depths. As Jazmine crosses that threshold, she realizes that no one would see them. That no one would check for bodies in Jocras’ private collection. 

No one would notice if she killed this man. The thought makes her pause, one foot in the ship, one foot touching the gangplank. No one would notice if she killed this man. All the plotting, the set up, the pretending, she had actually fooled herself into thinking she wanted some elaborate justice. That's why it didn't feel real. No. What Jazmine wanted more now than ever was her and Jocras alone, so she could put a cold knife to his throat and demand back everything he had taken from her: her class, her morality, her identity. She'd flick a blade, and all of it would come flowing back to her. That’s what she wanted. That’s what she needed. She hadn’t changed at all. 

---

     It was a question of when. Jazmine trailed behind Jocras as he led them down the depths of his ship, and these truly were depths. Most riftships were essentially rectangular buckets bolted onto the back of a Krakling. Not this one. Jocras had drilled down to the belly of the beast. A process that must have been excruciating for the Krakling and those who had to tolerate it’s screams as they grafted teak and halfsilver onto its skeleton.

    It stunk. The lower they went, the more something waifed upwards from the bottom that made Jazmine want to wretch. Joocras’ ship wasn’t like his tent. It wasn’t covered with gold and treasures, only practical items; half-filled chests of holding, empty barrels of liquor tossed to the side, and cages. Rows after rows of empty cages. If you stuffed one full of people, they could hold an extended family. Jazmine hated that she knew that now.  

    Deep then went, then deeper still. At a point, Jazmine realized that they had gone past the height of any Krakling. The lack of windows made it difficult to tell, but once she started counting floors and guessed how many she missed, they were far enough to be in hell. 

    And it still felt like they were nowhere close to his private collection. 

    “You surprised me, Jazmine. I would have thought you would be itching with curiosity by now. Are you not going to ask me how I know who you are?”

    Jazmine shrugs. “Believe me, I’m curious who told you my real name, but I doubt you know anything beyond that. You don’t know who I am, Jocras, because if you did, we wouldn’t be down here by now.” 

    “Where would we be then? Hypothetically.” 

    “Hypothetically, I would be back on my extremely full ship, making my way back to New New York. You on the other hand, well, I wouldn’t know where you would be. I doubt anyone would ever know ever again. But, that’s all hypothetical, of course.”

    “Of course.” Jocras sneaks a peak behind, Jazmine nods. 

    “Indulge me in some hypotheticals. What if I could guess who you are?” 

    “Well then, this deal would go south.”

    “Hasn’t it already, Jazmine Gaiene?”

    Jazmine’s a half step behind Jocras’ back, her knife is posed to end the man’s life when she pauses. Jocras keeps walking, ignoring the threat. 

    “That’s not my last name, but if you know that name, then-”

    “Then I know who your grandmother was and therefore know who you are.”

    “How long have you known?” 

    “Since the day I met you. Your skin color. Your skills. Either you’re a wayward [shade] from the other side of the Hand, in which case I wouldn’t have made it back from Tessalophia, or you’re the Slaughter’s least impressive grandchild.”

    They come upon a double door. Jocras holds a palm against the richly engraved wood. The parts where his hand meets wood glows. “This door will only open to my touch. There’s no way in or out of the room except for it. You therefore have three choices Jazmine. One, do what you came here to do, what you really came here to do, and kill me, right now, right here, and consign the [slaves] beyond this door to a horrible cannibalistic death.

“Two, you do what you pretended to come here to do, force me inside and ransom my life for all my best things including the [slaves]. If you go down this route, you’ll find that I am a much better negotiator than you assume.”

“Three, you follow me into the room and I show you what you truly need.”

Jazmine flips the blade and digs the handle into a bundle of nerves in Jocras’ back. The man winces but does not open the door. “What is it that you think I need Jocras?”

Jocras huffs and heaves. The pain makes it hard to say anything but one word. “Purpose.” Jazmine eases up on the knife. Jocras coughs. “What you want. What you’ve needed for so long is purpose.”

Jocras stands to full height. Jazmine takes a step back. She could kill him at any time. She doesn’t fear a taller man. Still, it feels like a difference in ability, knowledge. Still. Her curiosity gets the better of her. 

    “I know what you struggle with Jazmine. You know that you’ll never be a great assassin like your sister. You’ll never be a great ruler like your brother. You’ve failed to follow down the path to riches your father has left for you in Goldhaven, and your mother sees you as a great disappointment. Even after all these years on your own, you’re looking for your third main class because as much as it pains me to admit this my protege, you don’t have the stomach to be a great [smuggler].”

    “What will I be then?” Jazmine snarls. “Huh? What does a fuck up like me become? Since you know everything I’m so bad at. What is my purpose?”

    “Follow in the footsteps of your great grandfather. Obtain the first red class.”

    Jazmine eyes Jocras from a different light. She’s seen men beg for their lives before. They come up with all sorts of ideas and bargains. Jocras doesn’t give off that feeling though.

    “The world doesn’t need another [demon king], Jocras.” 

    The man shrugs. “Maybe it does. Can I open the door?”

Jazmine’s notices that she has already put her knife back in it’s sheath. She nods, the door creaks open, and the stench hits her like a wave.

Jazmine steps into a putrid place. She hears moans and coughs echo around her, but those horrid sounds are nothing compared to sights. In the cages of Jocras private study are men and women in the early stages of mummification. They lay on top of each other in heaps of nearly necromantic skin and bones crying out for water and food. All of them are thin enough to squeeze through the bars and Jocras tortures them with this freedom by keeping them too weak to move. 

She holds her vomit in. Jocras continues onward into the small room, leaving Jazmine two steps into his makeshift prison. He starts rummaging around a desk that serves as the study’s centerpiece. Jazmine needs to catch her bearings.

    She feels a tug on her sleeve. It’s Stitch. Jazmine can’t see any emotion on his face but she feels all of his rage and trepidation through the shaking on his hand. They had a plan for when they saw this room, though they never imagined it would be this horrible. Open the cages, free the [slaves] and fight their way off the ship with Jocras held hostage. None of that is possible now. She sees runes of preservation carved onto the floors of the cages. Those runes helped food from expiring and now it was used on people. If she took them out of the cages, they would die. 

    Still, she needs to give Stitch hope that she’s accounted for this. That there’s a plan. That there’s still away to save these people, even though there’s not. Jazmine gives the signal, “Pick”, speaking the word out loud because at this point, she knows Jocras has the entirety of her plan down. It won’t matter how covert they are.

    Yet, Stitch isn’t trained like that. He nods discretely and starts covertly weaving thread through the locks of the cages in the room. There are dozens on each side. It will take a while. Jazmine turns to Jocras. A seat is prepared for her. She takes it.

    Jocras doesn’t waste time. “You’re great grandfather has the legacy of a god. He unified demon clans that had fought for hundreds of years to such a degree that their remnants praise his name to this day. He made war on the human kingdoms on a scale unseen, and nearly brought the thousand years war to an end in barely a decade of his accession to the throne.

    “Your grandfather was and is the greatest warrior this world has ever known. He reversed siege after siege, won the heart of the demon king's daughter, and brought that powerful god to his knees. He ended the thousand years war at great cost to all of us, but if half of what the stories said were true, then your grandfather winning the war was inevitable whether or not the demon king pulled off his last revenge. 

    “Demon’s worship your grandfather, you know. Even on the other side of the Hand, they speak of the Slaughter’s name with such reverence. It’s insane to me. Worshiping a man whose name is a reminder of a whole people’s genocide. What did the Slaughterer do to deserve such love?”

    Jocras looks up in expectation. Jazmine looks down at her own hands. Her claws are growing back in. 

    “He reminded the world that we’re...that demons are people too.”

    Jocras waits for more. Jazmine gives him none. He shrugs, returning to his notebooks, looking for the right pages. 

    “Have you heard of red classes, Jazmine?’

    Jazmine snorts, “Of course I have. [Abominations] and their ilk. The only way to get them is to be truly evil. People with those classes are hunted on sight. I’ve done it. It’s a family tradition in a way.”

    “Close, but very very far from the truth. Having a red class means that you are free.” Jazmine raises a brow but says nothing. Jocras continues. “Do you know why the thousand year war started?” 

    Jazmine sifts through the mythos in her head, but even having access to the greatest libraries in the world only gave her more origin stories than most.

    “The Historian used to visit my family often when I was younger. An army of [keepers] came with. Every time he came over, they would tell us a new version. A spurned demon noble made war against her human lover. The child the two conceived hated humans so much that he became the [demon king]. Aliens from outer space experimented on a poor demon boy and that boy became the first [demon king]. My favorite is-” 

    “All of that is hogwash, Jazmine.” 

    “I know, but they are fun.” 

    “Knowing the truth is real joy. Here’s the truth, stolen from the Keepers themselves. The first [demon king] was a messiah. He found a way for his people to leave the world, and the God who controls us all, marked him for death to stop a mass exodus. To stop us from being free.”

    “Us?”

    “Everyone who calls this small patch of land between the green stretch and the end of the sea home.”

    “That’s the entire world, Jocras.”

    “No. That’s the world you know. The world that God imprisons you in.”

    “What God is that? Jesus?”

    “No. Nothing from the hero's world. Or, perhaps...No. I’m talking about the Voice. That voice in your head when you level. Haven’t you thought it was strange that some other tells you what level you are, what classes you’ve coalesced, what skills you’ve earned? Who's granting that power? Who is powerful enough to lend us that power?”

    “Of course I’ve asked these questions, Jocras. Everyone has. We don’t know and we don’t make conclusions because we can't know. Some things are impossible to discover. The heroes never figured out how to recreate their flying machines, and they can't rediscover that knowledge. I don’t understand magic and neither do most mages, but it doesn't matter when I need a [fireball] tossed at someone.”

    Jocras shakes his head. “You’re like a [slave[ who rests his head on his chains to sleep at night.” 

    Jazmine draws her knife. 

“Bah. Put that away and think. Why are you so ready to shut me up.” 

    “Because you’re stalling. Nothing you're saying makes any sense.”

    “You are being led," Jazmine breathes. "Think.” She does. Something inside her makes her put the knife away. She realizes that that something is her. She’s not an assassin anymore. She doesn’t kill people. 

    “When you were an [assassin], you went against your better nature in the pursuit of levels. When you were a [smuggler] you did the same. You and the rest of the world are hardwired to go against what you want for what that voice in your head wants. You’re [slaves], and [slaves] can be a worthy force in numbers.

    “Here’s the truth of the thousand year war. The first [demon king] tried to get us all out of this prison. The voice turned the whole world against him by making his earned class red. Every subsequent [demon king] tried to fulfill the promise of the first, and as soon as one got close, the Voice summoned the heroes and nipped it in the bud.

    “Or, the heroes thought they did.”

    Jocras reaches into his desk and pulls out a glowing red crystal. He offers it in his open palm for Jazmine to take. She does. It feels warm to her, almost like truegold, but it doesn’t burn.

    “What is this?”

    “When the demon king shattered the world, he shattered his soul and class as well. If he didn’t, the heroes would just hunt down the next demon king immediately. By separating himself into pieces, he ensured that the legacy could continue once all the heroes turned old and died. There are twelve of these shards. One for every level the [demon king] had. Can you imagine that? The most powerful being in existence only had twelve levels. It’s absurd, but it’s true.”

    “What, you want me to go on a world spanning adventure for the other eleven pieces?”

    “No. Absolutely not. You’ll die. The Voice would figure it out and have you hunted down for sport. No. You'll have to do so much more with just this chance. Break the crystal, absorb the class, and set us all free. Earn more levels along the way.”

    “But if I only have one level how on Earth-”

    The ground beneath them shakes. Jazmine hears a thumping sound on the outer wall.

    “I hoped we’d have more time.”

    Time. What time is it? Jazmine checks her timepiece. She’s late. Four minutes late from when they were supposed to leave. She’s doomed her crew to be arrested with the rest. She wouldn’t end the night without doing what she planned to do though.

    She grabs Jocras by the collar and pulls her knife back. 

    “[Pocke-”

    “[Mute]” Jazmine interrupts the skill and silences Jocras. The man clutches his neck and fights for sound to go through. Jazmine hides how tough it is to make the effect stick. She puts the knife up to Jocras’ neck and the man raises his hands. 

    “You fool. If you kill me, you’ll be trapped in her forever.” 

    “Oh really.” Jazmine nods to Stitch. The boy makes a gesture like pulling on a rope and the double doors open. Jocras’ eyes go ride, but in the glint of candle light he can see the silken thread holding the two halves apart. The doors never really closed. She doesn’t have the time to gloat though.

    “Okay, Jocras, Here’s how things are going to work. You’re going to call your men and help me throw all of these cages overboard.” A brow lifts on the fat face, but Jazmine continues. “If you do it before twin armies blow us to smithereens, I’ll let you live. Not because I like you, but because I’m not a murder.”

    “Jazmine, you fool. You could have had all of that. But I’m afraid that since you’ve threatened me. I’ll have to leave you with nothing but the crystal.”

    The voice doesn’t come from Jocras. Jazmine turns and she finds Stitch held in the arms of Scratch.

    “Let him go, Scratch, or Stitch will take off your arms.”

    “[Greater strength]” a voice from the cages cries out. Stitch’s struggling stops as Scratch becomes like a bolder. 

    “What?” Jazmine yells at the slaves.

    “[Vine prison]” Another voice. Jazmine realizes what the skill is too late. She jumps, but vines crack from Jocras floor and lash her to the ground. The man, released from his bindings, walks over to Jazmine facing towards the doors. 

    “My poor, sweet, naive protege.” The voice comes from the slave on his left. “I’m sorry to leave you like this.” Another voice to his right. “But I can’t let the empire get a hold of my work like this.” 

    “[Greater Strength]” The skill comes from her right and is used on Jocras. He picks up a mummified Jazmine by the hair. The girl cries out, but Jocras ignores her. He goes to his bookcase and lifts a book off the shelf. The bookcase moves and so does the wall. Jazmine stares into the heart of the Rift and instinctually fears it.

    “Remember what I told you,” Jocras says with his own voice. “You have one chance.” Then he throws her overboard. Stitch follows suit as Scratch casually tosses the boy afterwards. They fall away, but it feels like Jocras’s ship gets twices as far twice as fast as it should. Jazmine eventually acknowledges that it’s not a trick in perspective. He’s flying. The Riftship that should be sleeping is flying. Jocras is going to escape and Jazmine got nothing for it. Just the crystal. 

The two fall, but not for long. Soon they hit an oof. A net of silk lies deep within the rift. The two roll downward into a funnel and land on the deck of Jazmine’s ship. 

“Holy crap. There you two are,” Ezra says. “And here I was about to go rescue you.” She pulls the vine off Jazmine’s mouth.

    “[Silence]” Jazmine screams and magic dies in a pulse across her ships. The vines go limp and she cuts her way out of them with a flourish of her knife. She launches herself to standing, and stairs up at Jocras’ ship up ahead. It’s not moving. There’s still time to catch up.

    “Scaramouche! Punch it now. We need to get going now.”

    Whatever bad blood simmers between the two goes cold as Scaramouche can feel the rage radiating from Jazmine right now. 

    “On it boss.” He pulls a lever and lurches forward, towards their planned exit route and away from Jocras’ ship.”

    “Not that way,” Jazmine says, stomping towards the wheel, zigzagging around her deck that is full to the brim of looted goods drilled from the other ships. Jazmine places a hand of Scaramouche and pulls the lever back. “Up. To the surface. We’re ramming Jocras.” 

    “What,” the old navigator says, “you’re insane.” 

    “Follow my fucking orders, Scaramouche.” Jazmine squeezes Scaramouche’s shoulder. If her claws hadn’t been shaved down, she would have drawn blood. The two lock eyes and Jazmine doesn’t have time for a stare down. She grabs the lever herself.

    Scaramouche swats her hand away. “Fine, fine.” He says, retching his other hand from beneath Jazmine’s. He bellows into a horn. “All hands. We’re surfacing. Get whatever you can tied down and then get the hell below deck if you want to live through it.”

    They rise, Scaramouhce inches the surfacing lever down. Jazmine is moments away from yanking it when someone grabs her by the shoulder and pulls her off the navigation platform.

    “What the hell are we doing, Jaz?” Ezra holds Jazmine by the shoulder tight. Jazmine lunges away and then turns back. “We’re surfacing. I am not letting Jocras get away. This is our only chance to save those [slaves] and get our classes back. We’re not leaving until we do both.”

Ezra runs up the stairs and catches Jazmine before she kills all of them. She doesn’t bother with nicessness. She locks her arms around Jazmine’s waist and pulls the both of them down the stairs. Ezra rotates her back downwards to bare the brunt of the fall, but she releases Jazmine in a painful “oof” when she gets to the bottom. 

    “Don’t listen to her, Scaramouche. Get us the hell out of here.” 

    Jazmine rolls to her feat and practically snarls at Ezra. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? This is my ship. My crew.” She looks around noticing the worried faces for the first time and bellows. “All of you prepare for battle. We’re boarding that ship, and we're going to fight our way down to Jocras.” 

    She glares daggers at every soul on the deck but none of them move. Even Craw has his head turned.

    “We’re not [soldiers], Jaz.” Ezra says getting to her feet. “We’re just [smugglers]. Ordinary people are just making a bit more of a living. You promised everyone that no one would die. Are you really going to break that promise again?

    “Don’t you fucking dare-”

“Dare what, Jaz? Remember all the dead we had at the end of the last mission? Remember how our classes changed for the worse because of what we helped that bastard do? If we had turned back the moment we found out we were carrying [slaves], shit would have been different, but we didn’t. We followed you to the end of the world and we died for it. So yes Jazmine. I am fucking daring right now.”

She looks back at Scaramouche. The ship is at a standstill. 

“Full steam ahead or whatever the fuck it is that you do. We’re leaving.” 

Jazmine pulls her knife. “You don’t want to do that, Scaramouche.” Ezra steps into her line of vision. 

“Or what? You’re going to fight him? You’re going to fight me, too? You’ll win, and then what? What the hell are you trying to be, Jazmine? A [murderer]?”

The question hits Jazmine hard. She bits her lip. What is she trying to be? Her left hand idles, it finds the gem rolling around in her pocket, caresses the facets of it. If she had a twelfth of the power of the demon king, she could end Jocras’ herself right now. No need for her crew to be involved. They would be safe. She damn near crushes the thing and takes the class, but then she remembers the question. What the hell are you trying to be?” 

She lets go of the jem. Knife goes back in its sheath. “I’ll be in my quarders.” She turns and stomps off to her room. Two people stand guard on either side of her door. They stiffen at her approach and when she grunts to tell them to leave, they seem relieved. Jazmine kicks down her door as they scurry away. 

Jazmine has no fondness for her chambers. They’re new and therefore not hers yet. They’re lavish with immaculate wooden trimmings along the walls and a beautiful hardwood dresser just beyond her curtained bed, but it’s too pristine for her. Her old cabin was carpeted with maps and notes and sketches of drunkenly created plans. The walls were peppered with little holes where she practiced her knife throwing, and her old dresser was missing a foot because she had drunkenly stumbled into it and decided to repay that enemy ten fold. Hence the notebook strewn floor. With her combination dresser-slash-table tilted, there was no way she was going to write on it.

Her old chamber had history, mistakes. She decided to remodel this one.

    The moment Jazmine burst into her room, she was huffing for a fight. Her dresser was the first thing she noticed, it’s deck lined with various trinkets and bottles of glowing liquids. She swept her arms across the surface, potions and notes and makeup crash onto the floor. She doesn’t mind the desk, she steps in front of the mirror and looks at herself. Sees the demonic reflections, her two red gnobs of horns, her crazy frizzled hair, her oversized canines, her muddy face of purple and brown. She punches her reflection with all the hatred she’s ever felt for herself. Her fingers bleed in rage, and she uses her other fist to finish the mirror off. 

    It’s not enough though. Jocras’ is still getting away. She hasn’t been redeemed. She takes out that anger on the dresser drawers. She kicks and kicks and kicks until the hardwood door hangs loosely from one hinge. Then she kicks more, breaking it into two. She doesn’t stop with such minor destruction. Stopping has done nothing for her. She continues to kick her drawers, she feels a crunch in her foot, but the pain isn’t numbing enough to get rid of the guilt she feels. She imagines her dresser as the steel cage that girl was in. She imagines kicking the lock. Over and over and over again until finally-

    “Jaz.”

    She snarls as she turns, “who the hell is-” Pause. There’s no one at her door. Her eyes scan the room, fearful that someone has watched her madness, but find nothing. Nothing, but a hand gripping the right edge of her bedpost. Jazmine walks around the curtain, and a boy’s face comes into view.

“Syls.” Of course the boy was here. She had ordered it.

“Jazmine?” The boy says tentatively as if unaware of who the person standing in front of him is. His ignorance is fair. Jazmine’s been hiding who she is from most people.

“Your hand is bleeding.” Syls points a shaky finger to her right. She looks down and brings her hand up to the light as if she couldn’t feel the warm blood dripping down her cool skin. 

    “Yeah.” Jazmine says, “It is.” 

    She reaches into her left pouch and digs around for a small bottle, no bigger than a thimble and therefore always partially lost. She brings it out and swirls the red liquid until the bits of maroon precipitation dissolve back in. As she does the familiar gesture, she notices that her left hand is bleeding too.

    “Are you okay, was there a fight?”

    Jazmine looks back at her ruined furniture, she nodes her head and takes a seat on the bed next to Syls. “Yeah. You could say there was.” Jazmine tears a bit of her bed sheet and forms a makeshift bandage around her hand. The two don’t say anything until she’s halfway finished.

    “Did we win?”

    Jazmine stops. No. “We don’t do anything,” she says coldly, then with more warmth as she adjusts her tone. “You’re not part of my crew. You should be at home. Scaramouche is going to be very cross with you when we get back.”

    Syls wraps his arms around his knees. His horns are more red than black now, but black enough that he’s definitely still in pain. Jazmine finishes wrapping her bandages and places her hand gently on Syls shoulder. 

    “We’re glad you’re okay. You gave us the worst scare. Rift’s are nowhere for demons.”

    “Then why are you here?” The boy adjusts his position so he can look Jazmine in the eyes. “Aren’t you a demon?”

    “I’m not a”, Jazmine holds off on the final word. She doesn’t want to explain that the only demon in her family was her grandma. Both her parents were human...mostly. And that makes her different...somehow. She doesn’t explain this because Syls will ask the same questions she did as a kid, and Jazmine still doesn’t have answers to those. What makes a demon a demon? What makes a human a human? Why does it matter?

    “I’m special.” Jamzine decides on those words. Syls waits for more but she doesn’t have anything else. 

    Kids get bored, Syls is no exception. The eight year old turns away and looks with focus at his toes wiggling off the edge of the bed. 

“I want to be like you,” Syls says. Jazmine’s heart sinks at what the child doesn’t know. “I want to be special too. I want to see the [knights] of Erysium and meet [princesses] in Tessalophia.” The boy's eyes sparkle as he projects something that Jazmine can’t see unless she stares real hard, but then she can because she once wanted the same things. “I want to be an [adventurer] and fight dragons and get quests from dragons and steal from dragons. I want to go to the other side of the world. Thales says that at the end of the world, there’s nothing. It just stops. There’s a waterfall and no one who looks over the edge ever comes back. I want to be the first to survive looking, and then I’ll come back and tell Thales what's there.” The wonder fades from his eyes until there’s just a void look on his face.

    “I want to do all of that, but I can’t because of the Rifts.” 

    The demon king imprisoned his people when he created the Rifts. He shattered the world, leaving all demons to pick up the pieces at whatever shard they landed in. Before the heroes made an empire, they helped relocate demons so they could pick where they wished to settle. The empire continued the tradition but poorly and with a lot of bureaucracy. The sedatives required for a demon to cross a Rift were controlled substances and the empire wouldn’t allow children to use them even though it was perfectly safe. Jazmine sighed. What was an orphan like Slys to do? 

    If the diaspora was bad, the wars were worse. The empire couldn’t help but grow. Demon’s couldn’t help but fight because what else were a bunch of father and motherless people going to do but join the empire’s army? [Smuggler] was a class for the already rich, not for someone whose parents had fought for the empire and had never come back. 

    Jazmine searches for words of comfort, but Syls finds them first. “I want to be cool like you Jaz. You can do anything.” Syls explodes his arms outwards and Jazmine snorts. If only the kid knew that she was a level four [Scholar] and a half step away from picking the class back up if being a drug lord didn’t pan out. 

    “I’m not cool, Syls. [Smuggler] is just a class, and it’s days of nothing but flying slow and quiet for a bit of gold at the end.”

    Syls shoots up and stands on her bed which is not the reaction she was expecting. It takes her back a bit and when Syls pushes his glowing face right up against Jazmines, she inches back a bit more.

    “It’s the coolest thing ever. I’ve seen you run circles around the [guardsman]. Every time you come back there are dozens of guards waiting for you, but you and your crew just burst out of the rift on those shadow horse things and run past all of them. I’ve seen it. When Thales goes outside to wait for his delivery, I climb to the top of the inn and I can see the whole thing. I watch you every time.”

    “You see me?”

    “Yeah. It’s hard because you always make those [shadow clone] things and draw a bunch of the guards away, but most of them are always on you. I’ve seen you jump over a building on horseback and I’ve seen you fight off like ten people with a rapier. You’re amazing. Are all [smugglers] like that?” 

    “No. Not all.” Jazmine laughs. “I only have to fight my way through things because I’m so bad at smuggling. I’m crazy low level for the size of the crew I got. If New New York was a bigger town, I would have been caught by a level thirty [guard captain] by now. I’m just lucky the town can’t attract one of those.

    “Anyone can do what I can do.” Jazmine looks at her bandaged hands. “I’m still trying to figure out if I have anything to offer.”

    “Teach me.” Syls bounces enough that Jazmine has to get a grip on her turbulent bed. 

Teach you what?” Jazmine asks, steading herself.

“Teach me how to be cool. Teach me how to fight with swords and summon [shadow clones].”  

Jazmine laughs. The idea that Syls could go through half of what her grandmother put Jazmine through at a younger age was absurd. The kid would die immediately. Syls wasn’t laughing though. He had all the ambition and naivete of a kid who discovered [lesser strength] was an easy skill to obtain and thought he’d be able to punch through trees afterwards. She felt bad for laughing. Syls was so honest and brave and stupid. 

“Fine.” Jazmine says. Syls eyes go wide. “Really?”

She nods and slides off the bed with a creak. She stretches a hand over her side to hide her rolling eyes. “I’ll teach you.” 

Syls jumps off the bed with glee. The boy corrects himself instantly. Straightening his back like a just fired bow and saluting her. “Yes captain.”

“We’re not in the military. I’m not your captain, and you're my stowaway who I’m tolerating because he’s so cute.” Jazmine pokes the boy in the nose and Syls blushes. She uses the embarrassment to buy her time to think.

“Let’s start with…”  ripping your shadow from your feet and seeing if you have the affinity to summon it back before you pass out from being separated for too long? That’s how her grandmother taught her at least. Everyone starts off as a level two [shade] because the process is so traumatizing that the voice gives you a bit more to make up for it. Jazmine sees a glint of metal in the corner of her room. She strolled towards it. 

“Sword Fighting.” She picks up two rapiers, halfsilver in her left and truegold in her right. She keeps the heavier gold and carefully hands Syls the silver, showing him how to grip it before letting a single finger off the hilt. The boy struggles with the weight but manages to keep it straight as long as Jazmine’s blade holds up his. “This will work,” Jazmine says.

“Should we be using actual swords?” Syls says, already breathing hard. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Jazmine chokes down a laugh. ”Don’t worry. Anyone can learn to use a sword. My grandfather hadn’t even seen a sword before the first time he trained with one and he went on to become the greatest fighter in the world in a couple of years.” With a mace, not a sword, but Jazmine leaves that part out. 

“How did he do that?” Syls asks, mimicking a few poses Jazmine makes on the side.

Jazmine reaches into her pouch and pulls out another clear bottle of red liquid. “Lots and lots of healing potions.”

---

    “This isn’t looking good,” Chris says about to down a mug of ale. Ezra touches a painted fingernail to the rim and eases the mug down and away from the boy. Chris shoots Ezra an angry look. The girl just rolls her eyes. 

    “Well it could be a lot worse.” Ezra looks around at the chaos surrounding their table. The mission was a success so obviously everyone would want to celebrate. The deck is packed with barrels of heavily dutied wine so of course the crew would clean up the place a bit.

    The new members of Jazmine’s crew clank bottles and mugs as they gulp down literal gold. The older hats glance sideways at Ezra who does nothing but wave back. Somehow after their fight, the newer members had assumed that Ezra was Jazmine’s second mate or someone of any credibility or authority, so they looked to her instead of Craw for what to do. Ezra had looked back at the extremely anxious crew who had only just realized what they had actually signed up for and decided that everyone needed a drink. Once she had given the orders, not even the old members of the crew who actually feared Jazmine bothered to back up Craw when he ordered everyone to get back to work.

    “Jazmine is going to kill me.” The man himself was sitting at the same table, head in hands. A flock of crows circled his head in an ominous ring signaling the end was nigh more than anything. Why did Jazmine only recruit weirdos?

    Ezra takes a bottle of sweet Erysian nectar and pours Craw a glass. “Cheer up buddy. You don’t want to be sober when Jazmine comes after you.” 

    “Me neither.” Chris says, topping off his mug. When he finishes, Ezra snatches it from him. Before the boy can pout, half of it is down Ezra’s gullet. “Me neither,” she says, wiping a bit of beer from her lips. “I’m the one who gave the orders.” 

    “You can’t give orders.” Craw moans.

    Ezra shrugs.”Yeah, but the festivities are on me. Though, the worse that Jazmine would do to me is wipe the cost of all of this off her debts. The worst she could do to you is tar and feather you until you resemble one of your birds.”

    Craw’s face flushes. Ezra inches the mug towards him. He grabs the offered nectar with two hands and gulps it down.

    “You know,” Chris says, drumming his fingers on the table, “If Jazmine’s smart about this, and Jazmine’s always smart about this, she’ll wait a bit until the empire’s at war before she starts selling any liquor. The price for Erysian nectar would double or triple if we actually went to war with Erysium. You might end up owing Jazmine money when all is said and done if she defers tonight's debt.”

    Ezra finishes her drink, wiping the last droplets of it from her lips in her usual, slovenly manner. “Yeah right. As if I would ever owe Jazmine money. I’m an [alchemist]. I bleed gold. If I need money, all I need to do is throw open my cabinets and New New York’s guard will come running like dogs.”

    “Really,” Chris says, “tell me again how much supply you have after selling literally everything for Swapna’s funeral and buying Jazmine a new ship, at zero interest mind you. If this ends up being a massive windfall, are you going to sell the guards dust to cover it?”

    Ezra snorts, but looks down at the golden drops pooling at the bottom of her mug. 

“Jazmine might make you pay back with favors if you're unable to pay with cash.” Ezra shivers imagining that demon’s maniacal laughter if Ezra ends up in her debt. Lightning flashes in the distance. That compass is a hell of a lightning rod in the desert. 

    Ezra attempts to drink some more, but then remembers that the glass is full. “Haha. Like that would ever happen.” She says looking across the ship. Suddenly the deck doesn’t look as full as it once was. “Say, where’s Jazmine’s cabin again? I got to talk to her about something.” 

    Chris smiles ear to ear. “It’s that way,” he says pointing, “What are you going to talk about though?” 

    “Girl stuff.” Ezra rises from her seat, catching it before it tips to the floor. She leaps around it and speed walks to Jazmine’s cabin. She doesn’t turn back but she can hear her brother’s annoying laughter in the distance.

    Ezra hears clanging metal from behind the door as she approaches. Jazmine’s throwing a tantrum again. She pushes open the door slowly, and steps into a battlefield. 

    There’s broken wood and glass all over the floor. Jazmine’s dresser is a pile of rubble and the curtains surrounding her bed are in tatters. This was beyond Jazmine’s usual level of destruction, but Ezra quickly sees what’s going on. 

    Swords clang at the other end of the room, one silver, one gold. Syls, the boy, lunges after a retreating Jazmine with killing intent. He’s slow but fast for someone of his age. She can tell that Syls isn’t used to the weight of halfsilver yet--if he’s even used to the weight of a sword--by the shivering of his arms. Sweat rains down the boy's clothes and drips off his sword like a pierced hold. Ezra’s seen Jazmine fight ten people off, she could end this fight at any time.

    Jazmine doesn’t. Ezra has to wipe her eyes, but Jazmine is clearly on the defensive, moving much slower than she normally does and focusing intently on Syls sword as if every blow might be lethal. She retreats back and back and back until she hits a snag of rug. 

    “Jaz!” Ezra yelps as Jazmine falls back. The girl catches herself and blocks one of Syls moves, but the sudden noise of her name takes her out of whatever zone she was in. Jazmine turns towards Ezra and speaks with a gurgling voice, “Ez?” Once her head is turned, Syls doesn’t hesitate, he stabs her. 

    The halfsilver pierces through Jazmine’s right eye like a sword through an eye. The tip goes out the other side of her head. Ezra gasps as she watches Jazmine grip the tip of the sword and then slink to her knees. “Ezra.” Jazmine wheezes out and then...melts?

    Jazmine dissolves into a black shadowy pool. Once whole the pudle shoots off towards Ezra. The girl jumps back, but the shadow curves to the left at the last moment. Ezra peaks around the door to see what it was and finds a befuddled Jazmine on the other side. Jazmine waves. “Ezra. What are you doing in my room?”

    Ezra steps in, the door closes behind her. “I thought I was watching you die.” 

Jazmine snorts. “Don’t tell me you actually thought I would struggle to fight a kid, Ez.”

    “Hey!” Syls shouts from across the room.

    “I mean. Of course, I would struggle against such a cool warrior.” Jazmine corrects.

    Syls crosses his arms and nods with pride, nearly poking himself with the end of the rapier. “I am a cool warrior, and don’t you forget it.”

    “Oh I won’t.” Jazmine says, rolling her eyes. She sticks out her tongue. Syls returns the gesture. 

    “Sorry to interrupt...whatever this is Jaz.” Jazmine turns to Ezra with not a hint of her earlier anger on her face. It’s uncanny. 

“There’s a bit of a situation up top and maybe the ship’s commander wants to enforce some discipline.” 

A brow is raised but if Ezra was hoping for more, she’s not getting it. Jazmine sips some of her tea in the longest and most drawn out fashion ever. Ezra bites a quivering lip. Every second is costing her silver. Every minute, gold. 

After an agonizingly long sip, Jazmine sets her tea cup down and says two words that Ezra didn’t want to hear. “[Shadow Clone]”. Jazmine’s shadow bubbles but the bubbles don’t pop. They stack up and up and up like a frozen eruption until they are nearly Ezra’s height, forming a crude caricature of a bulbous Jazmine. The bubbles drip with shadow, but that odd liquid seems to dry up as the black form freezes. Jazmine looks at this abomination of herself and only after peering into some soul of it Ezra can’t see, she snaps her fingers.

The bubbles pop, and a perfect clone of her down to the ruffles in her coat forms. The figure is shorter than the material it comes from, but once it straightens its back it has all the towering authority that Jazmine herself exudes at almost every moment. The  black thing turns and tilts a head at Jazmine.

“Distract...entertain Syls for a bit while I’m up top.” Jazmine says standing up, she stretches an arm overhead and the clothing of the clone mimics the original’s movement. It’s still merely a shadow after all. 

“Don’t die this time.” Jazmine says circling the table and adjusting her coat. She makes her way behind Ezra and catches a glimpse of what’s going on outside. Ezra waits for the spark of rage to ignite across Jazmine’s face, but it doesn’t come. Instead, she merely turns to Ezra.

“Leading isn’t as easy as you think it is, is it?” Jazmine walks away, Ezra sticks her tongue out. Jazmine either senses the gesture or figures it happens enough to lift a finger at Ez as she walks up the steps to the deck of the ship. 

It’s a party. The floor is sticky with spilt wine, and several members of her crew or passed out on the floor or furniture. She knew Erysian nectar was addictive, the seat and spicy wine being like nothing else this world had to offer, but the aftermath of a bit of carousing was much more than she thought it would be. 

Of course, she figured the crew would do something like this the moment she had her back turned. They were new, didn’t know what type of person Jazmine was, and most importantly, they had won. Despite what the crew had drunk and were still drinking, there was still a massive fortune just below deck. Compared to that, this was nothing but a way to make Ezra squirm a bit. Ezra had a habit of throwing random parties whenever things seemed to get tense, so Jazmine had gone down below and left her in charge for this moment. The moment when she could scan the deck and start noting down Ezra’s itemized bill. 

Jazmine strolled forward with her hands behind her back and Ezra tentatively trailed behind her breathing her anxiety down Jazmine’s throat. Despite the state of her ship, the crew hadn’t actually drunk that much. It was just really potent stuff. Ezra would be able to pay especially after she got her cut. 

Craw, Chris, and Stitch were sitting together at a table in the middle of the room. Well sitting was a rough way to put it. Her first mate was passed out with his head in his hand and one buttocks sliding off the barrel he made his seat. Chris was in worse condition. The fourteen year old merely touched the barrel as his head was slumped against the thing and his ass was stuck up in the air. The only person who did anything that could be called sitting swung his legs and waited patiently on his barrel for Jazmine’s return. 

Stitch hopped off the barrel as Jazmine nodded to him, then he took up a position next to Ezra behind Jazmine. Jazmine stopped at the table and poked Chris. The boy groaned, but ignored her summons. She stepped on his hand and he woke with a yelp. 

“What in god’s hell!” Jazmine didn’t watch the boy get his bearings, but she did wince when he tried to push himself up on the barrel and the barrel tipped over. Both of them fell to the deck hard and that was a better wakeup call than anything she could provide.

Next was her first-mate. Jazmine was polite at first, poking him once, twice, then slapping his face hard. The boy sat up almost immediately and then grabbed at his reddened cheeks with both hands. Unfortunately those hands were the only thing keeping him upright and he instantly fell over the barrel and onto his head. Another good wakeup call. Time for her crew.

“Craw, I need one of your Song Birds.” The boy groaned instead of answering her, rubbing his head and his jaw. She poked him with the tip of her shoe and the boy wasn’t about to wait for what the second and third poke felt like. He groggily pushed himself up onto all fours and then searched for the table. After a couple of tries sweeping his left hand everywhere but where the table could be, Craw found the rim and that was enough to get himself on two feet.

Mostly, the boy staggered as he straightened. He gave Jazmine some weird form of salute where you shoot her hand out from the base of your chin. “Yes, mam. I’m ready for anything.”

Jazmine shook her head. If there wasn’t one last phase of the mission to get through, she’d do something to enjoy this more. Instead she just said in a gruff voice.

“I need your songbird.”

“My name’s not Bird, but I got a song.” Craw started to huff in a bunch of air. 

“No, no. I need your-”

Craw exhaled the prettiest stench Jazmine had ever smelled. “What do you do with a drunken sailor.” The boy started to sing, and Jazmine had to admit, Craw had some pipes. Still…

“Not a song, a songbird. I need to use your songbird.”

He keeps singing. “What do you do with a drunken songbird?” 

“What do you do with a drunken songbird?” 

“What do you do with a drunken songbird?”

“EARL EYE IN THE MORNING!”

Those last few meters didn’t come from Craw alone. Jazmine turned her head and saw her crew watching her, laughing and singing. Somehow Craw has roused fourty or so men into a drunken choir. If she wasn’t pissed, she would be impressed. 

“Don’t do anything rash, Jaz.” Ezra said barely audible over the yelling soldiers. 

“Rash. No. Why would you assume such a thing? I'm not angry at all, Ez.” Jazmine started laughing, humming the tune of the voices around her. Ezra started backing away, and nearly tripped on a shadow? Ezra fell over nothing as it raced away from her towards Jazmine. Nothing raced towards Jazmine from all corners of the ship. Shadows pooled under her feet, and every shadow she didn’t take stretched towards her like the back of a sundial.

This was her domain, Ezra realized. Within the rift there was little light but that of hanging red lanterns and the eerie spark of the occasional rift crystal. With so little ambient light and great walls all around, all was shadow, and Jazmine’s form of royalty ruled over shadow. 

Ezra crab walked backwards onto her feet, stealing her brother away from the power gathering beneath Jazmine. She feared Jazmine in these moments. Who wouldn’t? The only things that came near her were shadows and Craws birds. They dropped from higher places making their perch closer to the humans on deck. Rows after rows of curious crows cawing along as a craven choir. Jazmine herself laughed at all of these and the ravens cackled with her. She held a hand to her forehead and spun a knife in her other hand. The chorus bellowed around her like some sort of ancient ritual, a maniacal chant that the drunks couldn’t stop. And then it did.

“[SHADOW STEP]”

The ship goes silent. For a moment, it’s like there’s no air, but only for a moment. Ezra gasps as the moment ends, nearly falling to her knees when the ship lurches from the skill. The shadows exploded from where Jazmine was and both she and Craw disappeared, but only for a moment. Jazmine came back in a burst of smoke standing on the very table they had all huddled around. She held Craw by the collar of his coat over the rim of the table. Her knife was pointed at his stomach. 

"What do we do with a drunken sailor?"

She sings her own tune to the song. 

“Shave his belly with a rusty razor?” 

Jazmine moves the knife higher. 

“Scrape the hair off his chest with a hoop-iron razor?” 

Higher still. “Shave his chin with a rusty razor? Earl I in the morning.” 

Jazmine slashes. Ezra watches the silver trail helplessly. She screams and the crew grasps, but when Jazmine drops the very somber man to the ground, they all notice that there’s no blood.

Instead Craw just sits up and rubs his neck. When his hand moves, Ezra sees that his collar is torn. She returns her gaze to Jazmine. The girl holds Craw’s pin in between her fingers, holding it up to a sun she can’t see. She moves the silver glint towards her mouth.

“What do we do with a drunken sailor?” The song continues, but not from the crew. Not from Jazmine either. From the crowd. They all mimic her voice but poorly in a high pitch scratchy way. 

“What do we do with a drunken sailor?” Jazmine lets the last word echo around her for half a minute. Then she shrugs.

“Earl I in the morning.” 

Her hand shoots up, the knife is replaced with the flare from earlier. Jazmine launches it and a sun is born in the sky. 

Ezra holds a hand over her eyes. The crew does the same. It takes a long time for eyes to go from the excess darkness of the rift to any sort of light, and Jazmine’s given them none of that time. By the time Ezra rubs the fuzzy figures from her vision, Jazmine’s changed again. 

She’s no longer wearing her pirate costume, she’s wearing armor. She’s clad in a leather so black it bends light around itself. Her jacket is lined with halfsilver blades and her eyes are glowing red. In hand is a bottle of Erysian nectar. She takes a long swig and then tosses it to the ground besides Craw. The golden liquid pools on the ground and seeps into the wood. Craw slides away, then gets to his knees and walks backwards from the mess. Ezra doesn’t like this. Jazmine’s wearing the armor she wore on her last run. Stitch is too. 

“Are you all awake now?” The crows echo her words in the same eerie tone. It takes time for them all to finish, but Jazmine doesn’t mind the pause, no one needs to answer her. “Good.” she says. “Because you’ve been doing it all wrong.” Jazmine takes a lazy step off the table and allows herself to land off the floor. The crows synchronize better with every word until there’s no echo, just a loud pulsing reverb. 

“Look at me,” Jazmine says with a flourish of her hand, “I don’t mind celebration. In fact, I revel in it like the best of them.” She walks forward and then stops in the dead center of the ship. “You all know this is true. Every time I return from a run, you all are there to distribute the goods. All the barrels of wine, all the bottles of liquor, all that your heart desires. I provide all of it.” She says pointing to herself, “You all take what I give you.” She points at one [smuggler] but her shadow splits infinitely and points to all of them. 

“Don’t I celebrate with you, when it’s time?” She says to a [smuggler] on her left who nods reflexively. “Don’t I give you all a free night of carousing when I’m done.” More nods. Even Ezra. 

    “Aren’t I caring, aren’t I good?” She walks forward, the crew parts away from her. Jazmine settles at the railing of the ship. She looks out at the rift longingly. Then dissolves in a puddle of shadow. 

    Dozens’ of eyes trace the shadow as it races back across the room. Jazmine hasn’t moved from her spot on the table. She stands there in the same pose as ever, talking into the little badge that controls the crows. Ezra tries to rewind her memories to check if there were ever two Jazmines at the same time and she can’t find the image. Every time Ezra thinks she knows what the hell a [Shade] is, Jazmine scares her with something different.

    “I understand your impatience to celebrate.” Jazmine picks under a fingernail with her knife. “You’re all new. Recently promoted from mule to crewman. You don’t know how things work.”

    A shadow falls over the ship. Then another. Then another. This is no trick. Ezra looks up and above her are three riftships. The empire’s lion crest embrasoned in gold on the side of each. 

    “I’ll enlighten you on how things work here.” Jazmine ignores what's above and the crew does two, somehow finding the girl cleaning her nails more interesting than three Empire ships up ahead. Jazmine herself doesn’t say another word until all five fingers on her left hand are clean. After a painfully long wait, she holds them up to the flare light and smiles.

    “I come up with a plan. You all follow the plan. And we all go home and celebrate when it is done.”

    The empire ships fire. Three [siege fireballs] spiral towards them from overhead. Ezra grabs Chris and holds him close. She turns her back to the fiery death incoming, waits, and then shivers at the boom.

    It’s a long time before she has the confidence to turn around but even she in all her hazy fear comes to realize that she isn’t being burned to ash at the moment. Behind her, fire rolls off some [barrier] of the ship like rain. She turns towards Chris, but the [mage] shakes his head. He couldn’t do it anyway. 

The rest of the ship is as astounded at her. They wake up so to speak, changing from ghost back to human, near death being the reverse of its sibling. They stand straight, sober. Even Craw manages to find the awareness to get the crows back on his side. One by one his flock return to their original perches, out of sight but not out of mind for any of them. 

Jazmine, through all of this, stands at the table and smiles.

“If only the emperor knew what my family could do with rift crystals and a few runes. He would have conquered the world by now. How’s it looking, Scaramouche?”

The old navigator who hadn’t once turned to watch the grand performance behind him answered coldly. “Ship’s holding steady. Whatever you're doing is working. I hope you got something more for what’s up ahead though.”

At those words everyone turns. In front of them is a great wooden fort constructed deep into the Rift. Ezra remembers what Jazmine once said about flying over the trouble, and her heart sinks. The fort seems to be as high as it is deep. 

“War is coming folks. The empire isn’t going to let any one through this pass anymore.” Jazmine laughs. “So it looks like we’re gonna have to force our way through. Full steam ahead, Scaramouche. Or whatever you [navigators] call it.”

“You know exactly what we call it.” Scaramouch bellows back, but follows orders. He pulls a lever and the Krakling beneath their feet bellows before lurching forward. Ezra wobbles a bit on deck trying to find her balance. “You’re going to crash this ship into the fort at this rate.” Ezra calls out. 

Jazmine twists her head back at the shaking stowaway. “Nope.” She replies. “I’m going to ram it. [Shadow Step].” 

Jazmine disappears and this time Ezra can’t find her. The thought that Jazmine abandoned them all flashes through her mind, but that would never happen. Would it?

“Up here.” Ezra’s eyes follow the sound. Up and up and up to the very top of the compass. Jazmine hands loosely from the halfsilver pole like a flag.

“She’s crazy.” Ezra looks down to her right. Chris has sobered up, and he sees what’s going on clearer than Ezra’s snake eyes ever could.

“I thought she was smart, but she’s actually insane.”

“What? What’s going on?’

“It’s the halfsilver.” Ezra checks again. Nothing seems off about it. It’s not glowing or anything.

“What about it?”

Chris groans. “It’s halfsilver. Don’t you get it? Halfsilver cancels most magic but it greatly amplifies certain others.”

“Like what? Just tell me. Don’t make me guess?”

“You’re a freaking [alchemist]. You should be able to figure this out if you stop being hysterical.”

“I am not hys-”

“Dimensional magic! Dimensional magic okay. Jazmine is going to try something she absolutely doesn’t have the levels for. She’s going to get us all killed.”

“What?” But there’s no time to evaluate that question. 

“[SHADOW STEP]!” and Ezra’s world goes silent. 

---

    Jazmine’s mother never wanted her to be a [Shade]. Jazmine had to do that herself. The night after her eight birthday, her grandma sat Jazmine in her lap and told her stories about the war. Toned down of course. There were battles won, classes gained, but never lives lost. Without the bloodshed, war seemed like an amazing adventure, and her grandmother was the greatest adventure of all.

    [Queen of Shades]. That was her class though she rarely had need of it in the peace Jazmine had grown up in. What little skills she did use only enhanced her legend in Jazmine’s eyes. [Shadow Puppets] creeped around the corners whispering like the spies and corrupt allies her grandmother weeded out. Tiny distorted [Shadow Clones] played the part of the hero and the queen, falling in a greater and truer love than Romeo and Juliet had ever known. That night her grandma told the story of the hero sneaking into a demonic masquerade to be with her. Her grandmother sat Jazmine down in a rocking chair twice Jazmine’s size and replicated her dance with a clone of Jazmine’s grandfather when he was younger.

It was a show like she had never seen before. Jazmine’s grandmother spun, and stepped and [shadow stepped] to an immaculate waltz with the masked hero. The hero never lets the queen get too far, always twirling her back with a firm but loving hand. The queen sneaks around the hero, looking for an angle, her hand tentatively touching a myriad of hidden weapons, but never unsheathing one. That dance was so powerful, so vulnerable so graceful that Jazmine made up her mind that night to be the kind of woman her grandmother was. 

Unfortunately [shades] don’t learn [dance]. 

A few nights after Jazmine begged her grandmother to teach her the class, she was spirited away from her bedroom. She found herself in her grandmother’s arms still wearing her pajamas. Her grandmother wore a gown that Jazmine had only seen at ceremonies. Dark as midnight with a long and flowing tail. Her grandmother walked silently up stairs of a long spiralling tower so all Jazmine could see was that tail stretching around the corner like a curving shadow creeping up behind them.

In time, they came outside to the top of the tower. Jazmine was set down and had to blink herself awake. She could see little, not having obtained [night vision] yet. She knew intuitively where her room was, dozens of feet below. She also knew instinctively where her grandmother was, right in front of her. Yet, both were invisible. Her room without torchlight blended into the shadowy castle below her. Her grandmother and her midnight dress filling into the night sky, her grandmother’s face, ghostly, hovering in the sky like a veiled moon. 

Focusing on anything was difficult though. High enough to touch the clouds, the wind whirled around them like a tempest. Jazmine shivered and cupped a hand over her eyes but true sight was impossible here.

Her grandmother raised a hand. “A shadow is [silent].” She closed her fist and the wind stopped. Everything stopped. Jazmine stood unbuffered and looked around for a hint of a gust and found nothing. She could see everything she hadn’t seen before, but she couldn’t find the wind. 

Her grandmother continued. A violet figure slipping off the ledge. Her grandmother didn’t fall of course, shadows didn’t do that. “A shadow [casts] itself on anything. Even nothing.” 

Jazmine’s grandmother hovered in the middle of the air a dozen feet from the ledge, floating on her shadow like a platform. Jazmine, merely a girl, crawled to that edge and dipped a finger down expecting some trick. She felt nothing. No invisible pathway, no flying carpet, just air. Jazmine looked up to her grandmother. She was crying, the cold air frosting her eyes. Some instinct of hers knew what was coming next.

Her grandmother stuck a bony finger towards her. And curled it upwards. “When the queen summons, a [shadow steps] forward.” 

---

    That was ten years ago, and the basics were still the essentials. Jazmine listened to the wind around her and [silenced[ it. Listened to the crew shouting below and [silenced] that too. Her focus was entirely on [shadow stepping] forward. 

    Before her was a great wooden barricade. If her krakling slammed against it, it would be crushed under its own weight like a rotten tomato thrown to the floor. It didn’t matter. “A shadow has no weight.” 

    Behind her, three empire ships were in hot pursuit. She could feel the heat of [siege fireballs] getting ready to fire upon them all. Feel the light. “A shadow fears no light.” 

    The barricade had no holes, just row after row of thick wooden palisades arrayed against her. No shadow could slink through that, but Jazmine wasn’t just a shadow. She was a [shade], a blade in the darkness. “The shade pierces through all.”

    She spoke all this to the halfsilver compass. There was a soul to halfsilver, a soul to all things as she understood it. A soul that could be molded to her liking. She whispered to the halfsilver and it conveyed her message to the ship in the language of things. It wasn’t merely a ship. It wasn’t merely a krakling. It wasn’t merely cargo. It was a [shade], and when a [shade] steps forward, nothing stops it. 

    Jazmine says the words and it goes dark. 

---

    “Somebody catch her.” A buff [smuggler] screams but the crew remains motionless. They all feel a deep wrongness pass through their bodies as if the butterflies in their stomachs threw a rave and are dealing with a hangover. They feel like it does to wake up after not knowing you had gone to sleep. An instance before, their captain was shouting madness at the barricade high above then. Now, the barricade was far behind and their captain was falling to the ground. 

    A human bird swooping in save their captain likely didn’t help their discombobulation. 

    Ezra caught Jazmine with all the grace of a hawk catching a falling brick. It was a brief fight with gravity before they both fell at the same speed. Ezra wasn’t one to quit though and flapped her newly grown wings as hard as possible. Their descent slowed down into something resembling a feather falling. Speaking of, Ezra would remember to always have a potion of [featherfall] at the ready. Wings were supposed to replace it, but they only had the capacity for one passenger.

    Jazmine and Ezra crash land on a table and they manage not to break it in half. The sudden jolt wakes Jazmine from her bout of unconsciousness and the girl instantly thrusts her head over the rim and vomits.

    “Did it work?” Jazmine asks no one in particular as she hides her face from everyone who saw that ungraceful scene. 

    “Somehow.” Chris says walking forward. He offers a handkerchief to Jazmine and she gratefully snatches it away. Once her mouth is clean, she can take a good look towards the back of her ship. The barricade is far enough away that even her [night vision] is having trouble making it out. She breathes a sigh of relief and collapses onto the table. 

    Ezra slides off to let the queen have her throne. Once she’s on her feet, Ezra places a bottle in Jazmine’s hand and winks. Jazmine smiles back.

    “Now it’s time to celebrate.” She pops the cork with a clawed finger and the crew goes wild as the liquor sprays. They go back to carousing as if nothing happened, which thankfully, nothing did. 

    Jazmine feels good at the moment. She’s reasserted her authority. The crew understands how powerful she is, and she’s about to make way with the biggest freaking hull the world has ever known. Kindof. It would be the largest she had ever known, which was more than enough to start a new life doing whatever the hell wasn’t this.

    Once the bottle calms, Jazmine puts it to her lips. Then her ears twitch. The hair on her hand stands up. The shadows around her shimmer. [Danger Sense]. She puts the bottle down and turns. 

    Behind her is a portal, a dark swirling thing. Her crew can’t see it, but she knows what it is. It’s a void tunnel. The kind that she’s [shadow stepped] through hundreds of times in her life. Jazmine doesn’t believe what she’s seeing, but reality wasn’t one to respect beliefs, was it?

    Through the portal shoot three empire ships. Before she can warn a single person, three [siege fireballs] are launched.

Everyone turns when night turns to day in an instant. They see the fire raining down on them and scatter. “Everyone calm. Prepare for battle.” Few heard her words. The rest try to find something to hide under or behind as if a flimsy bit of wood could stand up to a fireball. Jazmine scowls. The crew needs more work.

She turns back to the fireballs. Their barrier will hold, probably. Then again she just expended whatever power was available teleporting a who-knows-how-many ton ship half a mile forward. Ugh. Whatifs like that don’t matter. She would either die or she would live, and if she lived, she’d have to fight. Jazmine draws her daggers, one halfsilver and one truegold. After a moment of thought, she puts the halfsilver one away. There’s no question of who she’ll be fighting. 

The fireballs arrive. One booms against the barrier but slides meekly across the dome like sludge. The other does the same but causes the barrier to shimmer. The third shatters it. Looks like she was going to die. 

“[Dispel Magic]” Chris shouts from the side. His arm seems to extend fifty feet and punch the ball on its way down. Momentum stalls and then explodes. Chris is thrown backwards but his sister catches him in soft arms. The boy is either dead or unconscious but Jazmine doesn’t have the time to check. 

“Stitch!” The [Stitchman] slinks to her side. “Web those ships up. Don’t destroy them, just stall them. No one dies tonight, understood?” Jazmine looks at the boy in his red eyes. It’s all she can see through his threaded armor. Stitch nods. He bows as usual, and then disappears. 

“Ezra.” The girl manages to break away from monitoring her brother’s pulse. She’s scowling but it’s more fear than anger. “What  Jazmine?”

    “Protect the crew.” Jazmine replies looking forward at something Ezra can’t see. She looks around but when she sees nothing she asks the reasonable, “What will you do?”

    At that point, three [shades] step onto the ship. Jazmine crouches into a low stance with two hands on her knife. She whispers a few words and then three Jazmine’s replies to Ezra. “Buy some time.” Then the three shoot forward towards their enemies. 

--- 

    Ezra isn’t drunk enough to handle this. She’s a coward deep down, that’s what her father had always told her, a disappointment in more ways than one but her complete lack of bravery caused a larger divide between the two than anything else. To her father, war was simply how one took what they needed. To Ezra, fighting was just a way to bully the weak and run from the strong. 

    Fighting wasn’t fair. Not when it was rarely one on one. Not when levels were involved. Ezra had spent more of her childhood at skirmishes near the border to the Green Stretch than she had in Deadviel’s palace. The older she got the more of her days were spent sandwiched between three level thirty retainers, powerleveling by hunting for pockets of poorly trained savages. They’d set up ambushes on the fly. A group of retreating [warriors] too far from the main army, a stray [beserker] wandering the battlefield, dissociating from the horrors around them. Whatever. Once a target was found, and once Ezra confirmed that their levels were below her retainers and over her own, the group would lower her lances, Ezra would close her eyes, and they would [charge]. 

    Ezra had trouble keeping her eyes closed during a [charge], so she learned through observation every way a person could face their death, but there were really only two options: run or fight.

 Most would run, but this was always the worst option. The armor their horses wore was enchanted with [swift foot]. Ezra always caught up, and when you were stabbed with twenty pounds of truegold, you wanted that to end as quickly as possible. Not slowly being penetrated from the back. Not being trampled under hoof when you fell. 

The ones who fought got the quick end. There was always one. One young sub-twenty who thought an iron-breaker shield and a [fortify] or [stand the line] skill would be enough to deflect the danger. But even if Ezra dropped her lance on “accident” there would be three more barreling down on that shield, and the [soldiers] behind those arms would have actually bothered to use [precision strike] or [lightning bade]. On the slim slim never-before-seen chance that the shield didn’t shatter under a level thirty lighting strike, the artifacts her father decked them in would guarantee their safety in a few more charges. A lot more charges. Enough for the deed to be done. 

Classes, levels, skills, enchantments, artifacts, and numbers. With all those in play, there were no fair fights, only stats. You won the numbers battle or you lost your life. So when Jazmine flashed her sole truegold knife and her three opponents flashed six of theirs, Ezra knew how this was going to go. She tried to close her eyes, but like in her childhood, she wasn’t brave enough to do that.

It wasn’t over quickly. [Assassins] fight differently. Usually half of an [assassin's] skills are dedicated to escape. It seemed like all of Jazmine’s were. Jazmine’s two clones met the three hooded figures ahead of the true copy. Those didn’t have [skills] so it only took one of the [shades] a flick of each wrist to dispatch both. 

The clones disappeared into a thick puff of smoke that rolled into the [shades] like a dust storm. A flash of gold lit the dark clouds like a lantern. Jazmine had [shadow stepped] into range the moment she had cover. Her knife managed to nick the foremost [shade] on the nose but did no more than that. The [shade] retreated, [shadow stepping] out of Jasmine's follow up swipe. A second [shade] replaced the first, seeking revenge by thrusting a golden dagger at Jasmine's belly. Jazmine disappeared into the smoke and the dagger tip found nothing. 

The [Shade] looked around anxiously as if she was the one surrounded. With the smoke boiling over the ship, she just might be. Jazmine struck when the [shade's] eyes flickered in the wrong direction. 

Leaping out of the smoke like a lion, Jazmine scored a hit on the girl's shoulder. Blood sprayed as the girl spun in place to lash out wildly at where Jazmine was, but Jazmine was deep in the smoke by the time the [Shade] could retaliate. 

From then on, the fight looked like Jazmine had ambushed the three. Each of them spun madly as Jazmine inflicted wound after wound, not to kill-there would be no deaths this time-but to disable. After four lunges, one of the  [Shades] dropped their knife. Their arms hung limp and twitching. Trugold was a demon killer and the pain this [Shade] was under had to be immense. The other two were close to resembling their sister, each hugging wounds and ducking low to avoid another strike. 

For a second, Ezra thought that Jasmine had this fight in the bag, but the [Shades] plan was never to hide and die. It was to learn. 

Jazmine grew cocky, spending less and less time in the shadows and more and more time in the open air to the point where her dagger actually clashed against steel rather than flesh. Jasmine realized her mistake a half step too late and tried to back away but her weapon was caught on a snatch in her foe's blade. With her other hand, the [shade] summoned a [fireball] and blasted it into Jazmine's stomach. 

Illusionary smoke dissipated in the bright flash of light. Jazmine was thrown back like a smouldering cannonball to the railing of the ship. All three [shades] ran after her. Even the one that was injured fought through the pain and brandished her dagger with killing intent. 

This wasn't fair. It was three against one. They had levels and classes. Jazmine had nothing but a single dagger and her crew. Ezra looked around. Jazmines crew was stuck in her position, unable to look away but also unable to help. No one was crazy enough to risk disembowelment by an Empire shade. They told stories about that. 

It wasn't an excuse to not try. There was all sorts of ways to help at a distance. 

Ezra cupped her hands to her mouth and bellowed, "Scaramouche evasive maneuvers. Get us out of this God damn rift."

     She didn't have to tell the old [navigator] twice. The Kraking roared and the ship lurched upwards as if it was about to capsize. Ezra grabbed her unconscious brother under arm and ran for the nearest object bolted down to the floor, a group of crates held down with white nets. Her feat slapped the ground as if on ice as the ship's tilt overcame any traction even a sticky beer stained floor would have. She jumped at the last second just as the ship turned near vertical and latched onto the nets with her fingernails. 

    Each [smuggler] on the crew faced a similar struggle, slipping and rolling on the sloping deck. Ezra kicked one of the fatter members to the side, punting him just far enough to get tangled in a group of nets. It was a sudden and absurd situation, but everyone had lived through one of Scaramouche’s surfacings before and knew the ropes by now. The [shades] obviously didn’t. 

    They were still struggling against Jazmine when the ship started its tilt. Jazmine was somehow managing to hold them off, but Ezra couldn’t be proud when she looked at her friend. Her armor was covered in numerous nicks and scratches, but no blood was leaking from her body. Instead the girl was dripping with sweat, a small puddle of it forming around her ankles. Jazmine was keeping up but only through the power of her [skills] and she was dangerously close to overloading. 

    Then the ship pitched upwards and the situation reversed in an instant. Jazmine heard Ezra’s cry and immediately [shadow stepped] backwards and up in retreat. One [shade] followed up, but not immediately. The [shade] exited the shadows with a quick lurch into the wooden deck, hitting her nose, and bouncing off to fall all the way down to the back of the ship. 

    The other [shades] scrambled for cover, but they were stuck for the moment. Ezra saw Jazmine catch her breath. The girl pulled a stamina potion from her pouch and drank the contents down in a manner that had Ezra impressed. 

    Ezra used the lull to shout down to Jazmine, “What the hell do we do now?” 

Jazmine opened her mouth to answer, but a hot burst of wind buffeted the ship. Ezra couldn’t hear anything through the whirling winds around her, but she could see. The empire ships behind them had caught up to them once Scaramouche directed their momentum upwards. The lead one was preparing a [siege fireball] and it was bigger than the last three combined. 

“Fuck” 

Ezra could feel the spell about to fire, but it didn’t. Instead the Krakling of the ship to the lead right gave a great big roar and turned. The lead ship launched the [siege fireball], but not before the Krakling tackled the ship right into the cavern walls. A collision to rival any alchemic explosion bellowed down the Rift. Ezra could feel the hard teak shatter in her bones. She couldn’t tell if this was a disaster or a miracle.

She’d chock it up to the later. By some act of god, both ships stayed afloat even after the catastrophe. Each Krakling radiating a pained warmble all around. The third ship was forced to stop to aid the survivors, and in the worst case, evacuate both ships. That would be costly for the Empire, but so was this whole endeavor. Was chasing off a couple of low level [smugglers] really worth the carnage?

Ezra didn’t know, and she couldn’t see much of the crash as Scaramouche surfaced. Even with her [snake eyes] all she saw was...Stitch? 

A knight in red armor was trailing behind them. A rope of red in his hand tied around something at the back of the ship. Ezra’s evaluation of Stitch ticked up a notch at that. Well two. He took down a freaking Krakling with ease, you had to respect that.

“Ez!” Ezra looked down. Jazmine was shouting at her with her hands cupped to her mouth. When she confirmed Ezra’s gaze, Jazmine pointed at something behind her. 

The [shade]. The [assassin] was making its way upwards towards Scaramouche, stutter stepping her way up the ship through shadows. Ezra didn’t even know a [shade] could [shadow step] vertically. At the very least, Jazmine had that limitation. Which was why Jazmine was tasking her to take care of it. 

Ezra gulped. She had talked big before but she really, really didn’t want to fight. Especially without a lance and a horse given her skills that could only be activated with a lance and a horse. A horrible limitation of the class when she taught about it. 

Still, it was Scaramouche or her pride and Ezra really wished she was a bigger narcissist than people told her she was. She secured her brother in the overhanging nets and then bit her tongue. She fell with the sharp sting of pain.

The potion coursed through her veins in an instant, burning her from the inside, and reforging her into something new. It felt strange for such a fleshy transformation to be so metallic but that’s what it felt like. Like her arms were molten iron and her tongue was tasting steel. 

Feathers popped out of her arms in an instant, a much sharper pain than fangs biting her tongue. Her toes twisted into talons and her eyes melded from something like a snake to something like a cat. 

[Class Harpy obtained!]

[Class Harpy reached Level 6!]

[Skill Flight learned]

[Skill Sky Lion’s Dive learned]

    “[Flight]” Ezra whispered the word, but she didn’t need to. The [skill] felt so instinctive in the form that it was almost just a skill. Maybe at a higher level and with better reagents she could get there. She couldn’t wait to make it home with all of that Green Strech stuff. She didn’t know what Jazmine’s plan with this haul was, but she owed Ezra a debt. A lesser one, but still.

    No time to waste. Ezra tilted her new rings back and soared towards Scaramouche. The old [navigator] was tangling with the assassin, when she arrived. He had his [sea legs] activated, and was able to fight as if the deck of the ship was still horizontal. The assassin kept lunging at him, but he just kept kicking her back down like a ball. This [shade] didn’t seem to have any skills but [shadow step], so it was almost a fair fight. Almost. 

The assassin lunged again, [shadow stepping] behind Scaramouche just as the old man unleashed his foot. The assassin ended up behind him, and the old man didn’t have the reflexes to turn in time. A knife came down towards his neck and a talon came down on the shoulders of the [shade]. 

Ezra snatched the [shade] away like a hawk snatches a fish. Ezra didn’t give the [shade] any time to realize what was happening.  She kicked her legs upwards and caught the [shade] in a bear hug. The [shade] was stronger than her, especially when transformed, but Ezra only needed to do one thing. Just as the assassin broke Ezra’s grip, Ezra pushed out her fangs and bit down. Hard.

The [shade] went limp immediately. The dose of tranquilizer was enough to put even Ezra to sleep--which was why she kept that potion loaded at all times, not because she was fond of biting people and dragging them into her den like some rumors said. 

Ezra caught the falling assassin in her talons and then swooped down to Scaramouche. 

“Good catch, laddie. You saved me there.” 

“Pay me back with free drinks at the inn when this is all over.” Ezra shouted, flying away.

“Yeah. Yeah. Free drinks for everyone once we’re away from this hell.” Scaramouche walked casually back to the controls. The ship was starting to tilt forward. Kraklings couldn’t fly outside of the Rift. At some point they had surfaced much above the edge of the Rift and were starting to free fall. Ezra was high enough to see the morning sun peak just above the sand dunes. She reveled in the warmth for a moment before diving downward.

Her eyes found Jazmine and the two assassins fighting her immediately. She furled her wings in a free fall. 

“[Sky Lion’s Dive!]” This skill she had to say. She had to feel it. She tapped into an ancient power, feeling like a queen of the harpies and crossed the length of the ship in a moment. The [shades] didn’t see her coming. Jazmine felt it though and ducked. 

Ezra kicked her legs forward and threw the unconscious [shade] at her buddies. The limb bodied sailed over Jamzine crouching down low and caught both of the enemy [shades] in the chest. All three flew backwards to the back of the ship, slamming against the door to Jazmine’s cabin. 

One of the [shade’s] hit their head hard. She didn’t stand back up. The other [shade] broke her fall on the backs of her two unconscious buddies. She limped upward to stand. The shade’s legs were shaking as she pulled her weapon, likely suffering from overload. Jazmine strolled over, no weapons in hand. Ezra landed by Jazmine’s side. 

All of a sudden it was two against one and then twenty against one as the rest of the crew suddenly found their bravery. The [shades] eyes flickered under her hood, looking at all the men, but stayed firmly on Jazmine once the captain got too close.

“Give up.” Jazmine said. “You’re outnumbered. You’re isolated. Drop your weapons and we’ll let you and your friends off my ship.” 

The [shade] crouched lower into her stance, but she made no further moves. Ezra couldn’t tell if she was considering the offer or catching her breath.

Jazmine kept moving forward unfazed by the armed opponent. 

“Look. I don’t have anything against [shades]. And you don’t have anything against me. The empire doesn’t care about demons like us anyway. We’re not enemies.”

The [shade] narrowed his eyes. Then put her dagger away. Her hands went from her sides to the tip of her tattered hood. The [shade] pulled it off. She wasn’t pretty. 

Scars covered the girl's face and a nasty one started at her left cheek crossed her lip all the way to the bottom of her chin. The girl was pale skin and sickly looking. No hair was on the top of her head. No horns either. 

Well that’s another thing she learned about [shade’s] today. She didn’t know humans could learn that class. 

Jazmine stepped forward, stunned, with a gentle hand outstretched to touch the girl. “You. What are you?”

The [shade] opened her mouth but then one of her allies started to groan. Killing intent returned in an instant. The bald shade remembered her duty and roared.”[Shadow ste-]”. 

The skill stopped. The heavy “ee” lingered in the air. Ezra touched her cheek and blood came back. It wasn’t hers. She turned back to the [shade]. A halfsilver rapier stuck out of her side. The [shade] stepped backwards, clutching around the wound, sword peeking through her fingers. As she moved back, Ezra saw the culprit. Syls. The hilt of the halfsilver rapier in his right hand. 

Syls pulled the hilt of the sword and it caught in the [shade’s] belly. Blood and bone like mortar and stone to the weapon. The boy fell on his ass dislodging the sword merely a painful inch more. The [shade] swayed across the deck of the ship. That wound was fatal. 

Jazmine was stunned. Ezra was stunned. She felt like vomiting. There was so much blood, flowing out from the wound like a water spout hastily clogged. It was happening again. People were dying. 

Everyone was motionless except the [shade]. They watch the girl sway to the edge of the ship as if nothing could be done to help her. Trauma was like that. Paralyzing. When Ezra saw the shade, she saw a Silveran soldier at the tip of her lance. When Jazmine saw the [shade], she must have seen much worse.

But Jazmine had also dealt with much worse. Maybe Jazmine thought she could save someone from that bad of a wound. Maybe, she thought she could turn it back, but whatever she thought, she made the wrong move.

Jazmine took a step forward. The [shade] took a step backwards, off the side of the ship. Into the Rift she went. A painful pause later, Jazmine followed suit.