Jace had seen a starship only a half hour after arriving in this world. He wasn’t expecting to walk into a medieval inn on the same day.

Like all the other buildings of the Candleshire, the inn had an unassuming profile. Wood walls, misty windows, thatched roof. There was even a vegetable garden along the path to the door—packed with purple tubers and sprouts.

The warm glow of the windows beckoned him along the path. Now that it was dark out, the air was cold. The wind penetrated Jace’s still-wet jacket and scoured his skin. His burns stung even worse. He shivered.

“There isn’t any place quite like the Candleshire in the entire galaxy,” Kinfild said softly. He ducked under the eave, dodging a hanging neon lantern and stepping around a stack of metal boxes. With a puff of steam, the door slid to the side. Between the mist and swirling smoke, Jace could barely see three feet into the inn.

Immediately, an innkeeper—labelled [Level 3 Inkeeper]—greeted them. He was a candlefolk, of course, and he had long hair and bushy muttonchops. Everything about him was rustic. Jace blinked. He had been expecting something more on par with the human scavengers he had seen before.

“Oh! Kinfild!” the innkeeper exclaimed. “I wasn’t thinking I’d see you back here for another quarter-orbit!”

“I wasn’t expecting it either. But duty called, I’m afraid.” Kinfild tilted his head towards Jace. “A Wielder of the Crimson Table Sect has worldjumpers to look after.”

Jace folded his hands behind his back and straightened up. His boots clomped against the flagstone floor.

“You’d best keep that to yourself,” the innkeeper whispered back. “Around here, they’re already naming you ‘Troublebringer’ and ‘Calmbreaker’. You’re not ‘Kinfild the Gentle’ any longer.”

Kinfild laughed warmly. “That would be because of the incident with the fawlgoats?”

The innkeeper dipped his head. “You bet, sir.”

“Well, we won’t cause any more problems tonight,” Kinfild asserted. “Any open tables? And later, a room?”

“I’ll find something.” The innkeeper turned away and beckoned them to follow. “Glad you made it before it got too late. Forests’ve been right teeming with darklings lately, and from what we’ve heard, we’re not the only planet with an infestation. Something’s brewing out there.”

Jace followed the innkeeper through the wafting clouds of smoke into the inn. The bottom floor was a tavern. Tables lined the walls, and candlefolk patrons all sat at them, smoking pipes and drinking. Suddenly, Jace felt incredibly out of place in his dirty, modern coat. He glanced around, expecting at any moment for the merry group of travellers and inebriated aliens to turn on him. They would haul weapons out of their tunics and rush him, and there would be nothing he could do.

He gulped, then looked at the windows. They would be the perfect exit if he needed it.

The innkeeper led them to a table on the other side of the tavern, out of sight and out of the way. Once Kinfild sat down, Jace sat too. The next few minutes passed in a haze. Jace watched the candlefolk, marvelling at their waxy skin and features. Aliens, huh?

The innkeeper returned with two mugs of…well, it looked like beer. Jace swirled the wooden cup and examined the liquid inside.

“They have ale where you come from, correct?” Kinfild asked.

“They did.” Jace took a sip from the cup. It was bitter and yeasty, and he did his best to keep it down. “But I never really liked it.” He put the mug back on the table. “I need to stay alive. How do I do it?”

Kinfild took another long swig from his mug, then slammed it down on the table. “I’m glad you’re up to the task. You saw what happened when you defeated the darkling, correct?”

Jace nodded. He looked down at his chest and stomach. The seed had heated up, and a swirl of golden dust had flowed into him.

“Your power comes from the Split,” Kinfild explained. “For our own good, it doesn’t allow Wielders at the Foundation stages to directly harvest Aes. Your Aes channels aren’t strong enough yet, and to top it off, you can only socket one technique card.”

Jace nodded slowly.

“Fortunately enough for you, the Split offers a bounty to Core Hunters. Instead of relying on elixirs and spirit fruits or grains, you can destroy darklings. Defeat them, and you’ll absorb bits of their Aes.”

“Defeating?” Jace bit his lip. “You mean killing?”

“To call the darklings ‘alive’ would be stretching the meaning. The Split abhors them and rewards Core Hunters for destroying them,” Kinfild told him. “But you claim Aes from other living beings, too—an unfortunate side effect of the bounty. Less, sure, but you still claim it.”

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Jace laid his hands on the table. He had killed those scavengers, and nothing had happened. He told the same to Kinfild.

“But you didn’t have your core seed,” Kinfild replied.

Jace had killed people, and he was certain he would have to again. That didn’t mean he had to seek it out. “Killing to gain power—”

“In our line of work, you are going to encounter plenty of violence.” Kinfild crossed his arms. “The way the galaxy is headed, I suspect it will happen sooner than later. You may as well get something for it.”

Jace folded his hands in his lap. “So…tomorrow, training begins?”

“Well…”

“Tomorrow,” Jace asserted. “Not waiting any longer to get on with my life.” And if he didn’t have something to occupy his mind, he knew everything would catch up to him and overwhelm him.

Kinfild reached into his robes and retrieved a sheet of weathered parchment. Something had been written on it, but Jace couldn’t decipher the script.

The Wielder laid his finger on the top line and said, “These are the tasks I have for you.” He shifted his finger down a line. “First: absorb the Aes of a few more darklings. One or two should do the trick, but we’ll try to hit ten sometime soon.”

Exactly the same quest that his system had prescribed him. “I’ve been getting quests, too.”

“Already?” Kinfild tilted his head. “I suppose you’ve been pushing ahead faster than most, indeed. Ignore the ‘Grand quest available: kill the Enemy Beyond the Wall’ message for now; you won’t need—”

“I didn’t…get anything like that. It just wanted me to get a core seed, and now it wants me to kill a few darklings.”

Kinfild narrowed his eyes and chewed his bottom lip. “That’s not supposed to happen. You’re supposed to receive a large, overall quest. All worldjumpers receive that very same quest.”

“Nothing.”

“We…will worry about that when the time comes, then.” Kinfild ran his finger down the list, mumbling to himself. Once his finger reached the bottom of the page, he said, “We’ll spend our next few weeks here, hunting darklings in the woods and building up your foundation. Keeping you alive, as is my duty as a member of the Crimson Table.”

“That sounds…doable,” Jace said. Maybe not easy, but he was willing to push himself. He leaned closer. “What’s this Crimson Table, then?”

“We’re a sect of Wielders who have sworn to assist the worldjumpers. As a public-facing sect, we have middling galactic influence—the powerful Sects stay hidden in the shadows and make their influence unseen.”

“So you’re…not very strong?”

“In the grand scheme of things, no. Those who are truly strong know better than to live out in the open, making their meddling known. Wielders provide counsel and advice, and leave the speeches and deal-signing to the mortal politicians with no spirit potential.”

Jace nodded. He fidgeted with his hands, scraping dried mud out from beneath his fingernails. His burns still ached, and he would need to get them dealt with sooner than later, but if he didn’t move, they didn’t sting.

A candlefolk woman brushed past the edge of the table. She whisked away Kinfild’s empty mug, but stopped for a moment. She scowled, and snapped, “Fancy seeing you back here so soon, wizard.”

Kinfild cleared his throat. “Ah, Lessa—”

“So you get off without even a slap on the wrist for the fawlgoat incident, but I have to work here for months to pay off the broken windows?” She put her hands on her hips and shook her head. Jace glanced up at her for a moment, trying to judge if she was about to do anything worse than attack verbally. The tag, [Level 4 Candlefolk], didn’t suggest anything special, though it didn’t provide a profession for her. Maybe she hadn’t been working here long enough for the Split to categorize her.

She was young—perhaps the same age as him—and her long hair had been tied up into a ponytail. Her wick horns were a little longer than the other candlefolks’, but otherwise, nothing about her suggested she was going to attack. She pointed a finger at Kinfild. “You, my good wizard, are a bit of a pain.”

Kinfild said nothing for a moment, then he tilted his head towards the candlefolk woman. “Innkeeper was friendly enough…”

Jace wanted to chuckle, but he wasn’t sure if it would be rude. He ended up saying nothing.

“Jace, this is Lessa Kendine,” said Kinfild.

“He roped you into an ‘adventure’, too?” she asked. “You’re not from around here, judging by the”—she motioned at his coat and touque—“getup.”

“I just got here,” Jace said plainly. Any other explanation sounded odd in his head. It’d feel worse coming out of his mouth.

“Sure enough,” said Lessa. She curtsied sarcastically, flicking her burning tail. “You’ll have to excuse me. It’s my last shift, and Mr. Nalburr will expect the best behaviour.”

“I’m sorry about the fawlgoats,” Kinfild said. “But you did beg me to take you with me…”

Lessa spun around and marched away before he could finish.

Kinfild rolled up his sheet of paper and stuffed it back into his robes. “She’ll get over it soon, I figure.”

Jace didn’t know how to respond, so awkwardly, he forced a yawn. “It’s getting late. I think it’d be best if we headed up to our room and—”

He cut himself off. A distant noise rattled the windows, like rumbling thunder mixed with the screech of a truck’s engine. The wind picked up, drowning it out. Jace asked, “Is that…normal?”

Kinfild angled his head. “Is what normal?”

“That noise.”

“What noise?” Kinfild rubbed his ears. “Oh, I’m getting old…or maybe the worldjumper’s hearing things, hm?”

Jace pushed himself to his feet. He ran through the tavern, sprinting to the front door. The patrons all scowled and grumbled at him as he brushed past.

The door hissed open, and he sprinted outside. Glancing around, he scanned the river valley up and down for any sign of a threat. Nothing.

He sighed, then rested his head in his hands. He was going insane, wasn’t he?

But then, out of the corner of his eye, a black speck swirled past. He spun to face it. A bear slunk along the top of a distant hill. Seconds later, it dipped out of sight.

Jace didn’t look away. Seconds later, on a hill much closer, it rose again. A wolf-like shape appeared beside it.

Darklings. Out in the open.

And they were prowling right towards him.