I spent most of Sunday online, looking up the specific procedures on how to purchase unclaimed land. Looked like it involved a lot of paperwork, a notary, and an oath of stewardship. And money of course. That would make me an official Gentleman, owner of a bunch of hostile land that nobody wanted and with good reason.

And no house. While I could plausibly raise some very rudimentary shelter up from bedrock with stone shaping, the mana cost was high enough that it would take at least a day or two of painful exertion, and the end product would kinda suck anyway. No, trying to get an actual house set up would require a building crew. They'd need a road built to reach the site, which meant clearing land for one, which meant hiring a team of delvers for security until the road could be built and enchanted with monster-repellent wards. I'd need plumbing, an æther line for power plus an æthernet reinforcing node if I wanted anything better than basic connectivity.

Just considering all these factors was making my head spin. Turns out there were some good reasons why unclaimed land remained unclaimed! Trying to get any sort of construction work done would wipe me out, and would even cut pretty deeply into the expected gains from the gem auction in a few months.

But I could buy the land.

If this is an experiment in faith, I thought, maybe I should listen to the expert. Felicity had said one step ahead was often all the light she had to see by, and right at the moment, that's all I had here. I could afford to buy the land, but not to do anything with it. One step.

Did I really dare to take it?

Did I really dare not to? Both options were kind of scary at this point.

In the end, it was Terenaþ who convinced me. His definition of faith was to take action based on trust in past experience. My first experience with personal instructions from Meþas had led directly to me meeting Gareth and receiving the gems that were the source of all this funding to begin with. I couldn't claim to have earned the money myself, neither rationally nor legally; it was classified as a windfall in the taxman's eyes. It had been given as a gift, and the Guidance had led me to it. So was the money truly mine to withhold? If the next Guidance now asked me to dispose of it in a particular way, well... as unsettling as that voice was, it hadn't steered me wrong so far.

I downloaded the paperwork and started to fill it out.

* * *

Monday morning, soon after I got in to work, I got an æmail from the Big Guy.

Subj: Your status

Mr. Webb,

Once again, I find your name being brought to my attention. This time, as a commendation from your manager, crediting you and a coworker with a breakthrough that will give us a significant leg up on the competition. Our attorneys are currently hard at work on the patent application, and I have personally approved a bonus of 2,000 crowns to each of you for this work.

Mr. Smith tells me that the source of this improvement came as a result of you being well-attuned to the current state of the art in arcana research. As such, perhaps your talents are being wasted on the Feurdanf project. Effective tomorrow, you are reassigned to the arcana research department, working under Elanil Nerafen. Contact her for details regarding seating and equipment. Your salary will remain unchanged, but I note that this new department offers greater opportunities to earn bonuses.

You have a great deal of potential. I look forward to seeing what you will come up with next.

Dyralist

Founder and CEO

Wow. OK, well, it could be worse. Arcana research was in this same building, on the third floor. I knew who Elanil was. I hadn't talked with her, but I'd seen her around the office a few times. Kinda hard to miss, an elven lady with bright blue spiky hair. She's a manager?

So I wasn't being reassigned to some other office in another kingdom, and I had a whole day to say goodbye to the team. Even so, I couldn't help but feel like the transfer was a bit petty. Like, "you disrupted my orderly life, now I disrupt yours because I can."

By the time I had finished reading the message, another one had appeared.

Subj: Sad news!

Brad,

Just want you to know, I never meant for this to happen. It's been a pleasure having you on the team, and you'll always be welcome to join us for team lunches on Mondays, and at the dungeon on Saturdays.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Torrin Smith

Well, it was good to hear that just because I was being transferred off of the team didn't mean the team was going to abandon me. The rest of the day went by in a bit of a blur. Everyone at lunch was commiserating about me getting transferred. Apogee was uncharacteristically quiet and shot me a few guilty looks, like he figured if he hadn't sent me into that conference room, none of this would have happened. Which is probably true, except that if he hadn't, someone else would have and it all still would have happened anyway.

Needless to say, I didn't get much work done. Even minor projects take more than a day.

When I was about ready to head out for the day, my phone suddenly chimed with a text message. It was from Joanna.

You seem pretty down today. Do *you*

need a hug?

That was a far less innocent question than it sounded, coming from her!

Not sure. Hugs from you tend to come

with baggage.

You up for some baggage then? 😏

Woah! Who are you and what have you

done with Joanna?

I'm still me. I'm just sick of

being afraid of my own shadow.

I don't think it's your *shadow*

you're afraid of...

Well I'm sick of being afraid of

any of me! And I'm sick of being

all alone. I need some company.

You need some comfort. We both

like each other. This is a sober,

eyes-wide-open offer. You really

want to say no?

The question kind of took me by surprise. Far too many things since moving here had happened to me with no regard whatsoever for what I wanted. To get such a painfully honest and sincere question like that from her... I wasn't really sure how to answer it.

It seemed like all sorts of big, important people wanted something from me lately. Felicity, the big high-level paladin, wanted me to abandon my skepticism and devote myself to the Path as she understood it. Gareth wanted help building a revolt against Evil. Dyralist wanted me to stop having stuff beyond my control happen to me. Terenaþ... who even knows what he really wanted from me?

Joanna, though. She wasn't big or powerful or intimidating. Aside from her aura of course, but there was nothing scary about her that was a result of her own choices. Her only 'angle' was the completely ordinary and comprehensible desire to feel loved. As wild of a package as that desire came wrapped in, it was pretty normal. And I could use a bit of normal.

Can't believe I'm saying this, but

I think I'll say yes.

I wasn't blind to the danger, though. Sober, eyes-wide-open me was going to take an important precaution. I drove home and spent a few minutes on a quick inscription and some preparations.

She looked at me a bit funny when she walked in. "Why are you wearing your armor trousers from the dungeon?"

"I changed out the enchantment on them. If I or anyone else removes them while there is a female tiefling within forty feet, it's going to loose a powerful sleeping spell that will blast both of us."

She gave me a wry smile. "Not sure whether to love you or hate you for being so noble. I was actually kind of hoping..."

"I know. Just, not yet, OK?"

That didn't stop us from sharing some pretty amazing hugs, though.

* * *

Joanna eventually went home, and I headed to bed with a lot on my mind; even after my hormones finally calmed down it took a good while for me to get to sleep. But sleep found me, plunging me into a disturbing dream. I was an old-school wizard, with a staff and a robe, running around with a party of adventurers. There was a war going on, wracking the whole countryside with violence as armies and spells clashed. We had tried to stay out of things, not wanting to take sides, but the disruptions Meranas and his band were causing were just getting too hard to ignore.

We accepted a quest to raid his supply lines. But as we moved in on a wagon, a group of wailing ghosts floated out of the wagon bed and accosted us. Their cries, harsh and grating like nothing I had ever heard before, threw all of us to the ground in agony, making me feel like I was being ripped apart, not simply killed physically, but somehow erased, my entire existence nullified.

I woke in a cold sweat. Hundreds of millions of people. An entire world's worth. What had happened there? Had Gareth actually had anything to do with it? Had the panþeon?

It was 4 in the morning, but I felt disturbingly certain that I'd never get back to sleep now, so I rolled out of bed and took a shower to clear my head. I finished up the landowner paperwork and made an appointment online to get the in-person parts dealt with after work.

Finally it was time to go in. I drove to work and made my way to the arcane research department, looking around until I found Elanil's office.

"Oh hi, you're Brad, right?" she asked, looking up from her rune tablet as I stepped inside.

"Yeah. Just got transferred here."

"Apparently you really impressed some people!" she beamed as she got up from her desk, her short hair somehow managing to bounce perkily as she moved even though it was done up in spikes. Must be an enchantment; mousse or gel would make it too stiff to move like that. "OK, come with me, right over here." She led me through rows of cubicles to one with a plaque with my name on it. "You're here, make yourself at home. We're super informal here; as long as we get results, no one really cares about anything else. You can't really command new ideas to work on a fixed schedule, right?

"Go on the network and open a bond to Oak 3. There's a list of topics to work on there; find something that catches your interest and be awesome, 'kay?" Without letting me ever get a word in edgewise, she bounced off back to her office.

Apparently that was my introduction to my new position. Wow. Was this what my job was going to be like for the next however long? I pulled up the list of topics and started looking through them. Ugh, I didn't even understand the names of half the things I saw on there. But halfway down page 2, there it was. "New Rune Discovery."

Time to be awesome, I guess.