Lyria was waiting outside the Arcanery—arms crossed and back against the wall. When I emerged, she pushed off, ready to follow me. It was mid-afternoon. The giant planet floated contentedly in the blue skies, one half lit brightly from the sun and the other shrouded in darkness.

I stared up at it, shielding my eyes and squinting.

“Come on,” Lyria said. “We need to get your room.”

I nodded, following her lead as she pushed her way into the street. People gave her some space, probably because they saw her dark brown guard’s cloak and armor. Likely, people in such a small town simply recognized her. It wouldn’t be a shock with the fiery red hair and pretty features, either. Guard or not, she was the type of person most people would notice.

In the brief time I’d been around the guard, I had been making careful observations. Some people probably would have said you need more time to get a read on a person, but I found you could learn a lot in a short time if you paid close enough attention.

So far, I had decided a few things about Lyria.

One. She was annoyed to be babysitting me. That much was obvious, and I didn’t blame her for it. She clearly wanted some kind of promotion, based on what Jarn said to her, and doing a good job here was some kind of step toward her goal.

Two. She didn’t seem interested in getting to know me or talking more than necessary. I had to admit I was feeling a little starved for human connection, given my current circumstance. I wouldn’t have minded a little innocent conversation and small talk, but I also couldn’t blame her for being guarded. I assumed some of her stand-offishness had to do with my first observation. Why bother getting to know the stranger you’re supposed to keep out of trouble? Her job would be easier if I was just a warm body in her view.

Three. She had no obvious ill-intentions toward me. This was probably my most important observation. There was no careful digging from her—none of the kind of sly prodding people did when they had ulterior motives. Mostly, she just seemed like she was in a hurry to get these errands finished so she could put me in one spot and stop worrying about me causing trouble.

I needed to see more before I really knew I could trust her, but I already thought I could at least risk a few small questions. At worst, I might raise her suspicions about me and where I was from. That, I decided, was a smaller risk to my safety than walking into something called an “infestation” blindly.

I could always sneak away in the middle of the night if it sounded like a death trap, after all.

“Your boss mentioned clearing an infestation in the morning,” I said while we headed down a central path between shops and buildings. My head was on a swivel as I took it all in. “Can you tell me more about the job?”

“Like what?” she asked, always staying one or two steps ahead of me and walking a little too fast.

I had to weave between people to keep up, sometimes jogging as she plowed ahead. “An infestation of what, exactly?”

She eyed me. “An infestation,” she said simply.

“We must call them something else where I’m from… Can you be more specific?”

Instead of looking suspicious, she just sighed, as if she didn’t feel like explaining, but would indulge me anyway. “It’s what we call the places where mana has gone corrupt. Creatures eventually find it, feed on the corrupted mana, and get more powerful. When the supply runs out, they emerge and cause hell on anybody unlucky enough to be nearby. You saw some of it on your way into town,” she said, referring to the broken wall, I assumed.

“Ah,” I said, faking understanding. “And this infestation… what kind of risk would be involved for the group going to clear it out?”

“It’s always dangerous,” she said. “Infestations are highly unpredictable, which is why we commissioned a very large group. Almost the entire town guard is going and we’ve got more coming from the adventurer’s guild. Besides, Jarn isn’t expecting you to fight. You’ll be fine.”

“What does he expect me to do?”

“Help drag the bodies back to town when we’re done.”

“Oh,” I said. I felt vaguely insulted by that. “Why would you do that?” I blurted the question before I could consider if I should. Too late, now.

She looked back at me. She really was quite pretty, with fair skin, a dusting of freckles on her nose, and full lips. Even the fact that she looked like she could likely kick my ass was mildly attractive in a weird way. “Where are you from, exactly?”

I narrowed my eyes. It felt like a slightly dangerous question. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you don’t seem to know much. About anything. And there’s something off about you.”

“It’s like I said,” I tried, “I’m not from here.”

She’d stopped walking now. “You’re dodging my question.”

Yes, I am, I thought. Sometimes, the best way to keep a secret was to throw people off the scent—to make them think you were hiding something entirely different.

“I’m sorry,” I said, thinking fast. “I can’t tell you exactly where I’m from. My family sent me here out of desperation. I can’t say more, except that nothing about what I’m trying to do is going to cause trouble. I swear it.”

She stared at me long enough I thought she might demand to know more. It took effort, but I stared right back into her eyes, unwilling to flinch.

Finally, she relaxed a little. “Alright, then. So long as you aren’t planning to make trouble, I don’t really care if you’re some kind of refugee lordling or smuggler’s son.”

“Thank you,” I said.

We walked a little more before I risked another question. “What will they use the bodies for? In Riverwell, I mean.”

“The same thing I assume they use them for everywhere. Extracting ingredients. People with crafting focused corestones can pull valuable ingredients from the bodies. Some of the more rare stuff can combine with reward tokens to create specific items. Others just make potions and that sort of thing.”

I pulled the bag of tokens out and shook it, peeking inside again. “Speaking of… the naidu said I could turn some of these in at my ‘personal space’ and some at the ‘furnisher.’ I don’t know where either of those places are.”

She reached suddenly, closing the bag and pushing it into my chest, looking up and down the relatively busy street. “Put that in your slip space before somebody swipes it,” she hissed.

“My what?”

“Your slip space.” She was using that voice again, the one that told me she was explaining something I should already know.

In my defense, I was ignorant. I planned to change that.

After all, power came in different forms. There was the power of my own hands and the tools at my disposal. But there was also the power of knowledge and connections. In my old life, I’d always been good at surrounding myself with the right people.

I couldn’t help wondering about my path to calling myself “Seraphel” and reaching godhood here. I knew I spent 300 years in stasis before waking up in that field. I didn’t know how long it was since I arrived on Eros and started the path that led to godhood. Something made me suspect life might not be limited by my understanding of average human lifespans, here.

What if I arrived here on Eros for the first time thousands and thousands of years ago?

The thought was dizzying, especially when I realized the “me” who showed up here and became a god was the exact same “me” standing in Riverwell. The only thing that changed was the world around us. It was a reminder that I should trust my instincts as much as I could.

I had probably done exactly that the first time around, and my instincts had driven me all the way to the level of a god. But what had that looked like? Did I surround myself with allies and friends, back then? Did I go out into the world by myself, trusting nobody?

I doubted that. I worked well with other people, and imagined I would have tried to build a close group of people I could trust as soon as I could.

I dragged my thoughts back to the moment, though. Lyria was still storming through town, making it difficult to stay at her side. I already zapped the pouch to my inventory, which I assumed was what she was calling my “slip space.”

“What the hell did you do to get so many tokens at once anyway?” she asked.

“A little bit of this and that,” I said carefully. I couldn’t exactly tell her the lion’s share was from a 300-year-stasis. I also thought maybe the genocidal rampage was probably something I should keep to myself. “Do people not usually get this big of a haul? Around these parts,” I added unconvincingly.

“Rich folks with an accomplishment guide, maybe,” she said. “And since I can already tell you’re going to ask, they are extremely hard to come by and expensive lists of accomplishments. People with the coin buy up unusual accomplishment scrips, collect them, and sell it all as a kind of guide for others who want to earn the same rewards. The more unusual, the more they’ll pay for information on it. Some accomplishments are pretty easy if you just know what to do, but the problem is you don’t know unless you know, and most people aren’t going around sharing.”

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Huh. It was an interesting idea. I was in the middle of thinking through the implications when we passed a shop with wavy glass windows and a display of dresses on wooden mannequins. I absently glanced toward them, then stopped when I noticed my reflection. I walked closer, raising a hand to touch my cheek.

What the hell?

I recognized the reflection, but it wasn’t exactly right, either.

My face had changed. It was me, just… not. My jaw was sharper, even if it was dusted with a little stubble. My features were more striking. My eyes were a lighter green, and my shoulders were more broad than I remembered. Given all the strangeness of the last day and a half, this hardly even registered on the “weird” scale. At least this flavor of weird wasn’t trying to eat me or steal my helmet.

Lyria realized I wasn’t following her. She stalked back toward me, then paused and laughed. It was a nice sound compared to her angry grunts and clipped tone.

I turned, curious what she was laughing at. Then I realized it was me. She was laughing at me because I’d stopped in front of a very girly dress on the other side of the glass. And then I’d put my hand on my cheek like I was in love with it.

“Uh,” I said slowly. I couldn’t exactly explain that I wasn’t admiring the dress—no, the real answer was much worse. I was admiring myself.

Lyria grabbed my arm and yanked me back in the direction we were headed. “Once you’re not my problem, you can buy all the fancy dresses you want.”

I fell back in behind her, distracting myself from my moment of embarrassment with thoughts of all the tokens I would soon be able to claim. I had looked over the list enough times in the forest that I could recite them all from memory by now.

[Common Ingredients Token]

[Common Survival Token]

[Common Bed Token]

[Common Weapons Token]

[Common Armor Token]

[Rare Ingredients Token]

[Rare Bed Token]

[Epic Ingredients Token]

[Epic Bed Token]

[Legendary Bed Token]

[Cursed Bed Token]

It seemed like quite the haul, even if I wished all those high-rarity rewards were weapon and armor tokens.

If I ignored the planet overhead, I could almost imagine I was just at a medieval Renaissance fair or something. With my… What would Lyria be? My grouchy guide? My reluctant bodyguard?

Of all my rewards, I was most curious about the one I assumed to be the highest tier—my cursed bed token.

“Do you know anything about cursed items?” I asked suddenly, still struggling to keep up with Lyria as we exited the market section of town and entered someplace more residential-looking.

“I know they’re bad news,” she said simply, giving no indication she thought I was asking for personal reasons. “The highest rarity tier is a three-way split. Angelic, Demonic, or Cursed. It's downright terrible luck if you get your hands on a reward that godlike, and it winds up being cursed. Only lunatics ever claim them. There was a story of a famous gold-ranked swordsman who found a cursed weapon token. Turned it in, and he got a weapon so incredible nobody even believed his description of its abilities. The catch was the curse turned his arms intangible. They passed right through anything he touched, including his sword. Couldn’t swing a sword or feed himself properly and retired on the spot.”

“How did he wipe his ass?” I asked.

Lyria laughed a little, then cleared her throat and remembered to keep frowning.

There we go. Hit her with a little of the old charm when she least expects it. She’ll come around in no time.

“So,” I said. “Stupid question, but—”

“Shocker,” she said sarcastically.

One step forward, two steps back, apparently. But if we did that enough times, we’d practically be dancing, right?

“If someone could delete an item,” I said. “Would that also delete the curse? Assuming they didn’t think the tradeoff was worth it.”

“Cursed items curse you once you claim the item. Doesn’t really matter if the item is stashed in your personal space or your slip space or on the other side of Eros. You’re still cursed. I mean, maybe if you could actually delete the item, the curse would go away. But you can’t. The swordsman from the story eventually had a blacksmith melt it down and the curse never left him, so, yeah. Don’t fuck with curses.”

“You mentioned making items with tokens and monster ingredients. I assume that means I could sell my tokens here, if I didn’t want to use them?” If I couldn’t safely use the cursed token, I wondered if I could sell it for a small fortune, after all. But I wasn’t sure that was the correct call, either. I knew I had a divine ability to delete items. Combined with the secret messenger’s implication that I would like the cursed reward, the connection there seemed relatively obvious.

I could likely delete the item and the curse, meaning my divine ability made me uniquely suited to risk accepting cursed rewards.

“You could sell them,” she said. “Or you could turn them in. It’s your call.”

“Which is the smarter choice?”

“If you want to be an adventurer, you should turn them in. The rewards tend to cater to your skills and class. If you just want to sit somewhere and get fat, then you could sell them, I suppose.”

“No,” I said. “I want to get stronger. As strong as I can.”

Lyria slowed her pace for once and gave me a long, careful look. She pursed her lips, as if she approved of my decision.

I was about to ask her more about how getting stronger in this world works when we reached a large crowd and a covered wagon. It was being pulled by a breed of horse that looked far more lean and light than any I’d seen on Earth. The horses also had trails of shadow coming away from their hooves, reminding me of the magical effect on my helmet.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Envoy from a divine house.” She craned her neck, trying to get a better look, but she was maybe five and a half feet tall. The crowd of people was probably blocking her view. “Definitely not the kind of thing you expect to see here…” She sounded concerned.

I squinted at the wagon, noticing a painted sigil on the side. “Red flames behind a white fist?” I asked.

“That’s the sigil of Azmeria.” This time, Lyria saw the look of confusion on my face and saved me from having to ask. “Ithariel is the ultimate divine. The others have been gone for centuries, assuming you believe the stories.”

“Do you?” I asked.

“Believe there were nine gods and eight of them just buggered off suddenly for no apparent reason? Sure,” she said with a tone that said she thought the whole thing was a load of crap. “But whatever you believe, there are four divine houses left. There used to be more, but the story is Ithariel tore down the ones of the gods who weren’t loyal to him. Now the four he left function as branches of governance over the human territory in the inner rings.”

“He’s only the god of humans?”

“Nobody is more powerful than Ithariel, but that doesn’t mean the other races from distant lands bow to his authority. His aura pushes back the monsters enough that humanity has been able to build the largest and most advanced cities, though, along with some of the allied races who agree to bend the knee.”

“What about the races outside the rings?” I asked.

Lyria shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you. Stories from out there are brutal. I don’t know how anyone survives, but some of them seem to manage. Anyway, that sigil there represents Azmeria’s house. They’re the least influential of the four remaining houses. Ithariel sends them out when he suspects treason or treachery. They’re known for interrogation and torture techniques.”

“Thus, the nervous-looking crowd,” I noted.

“Thus,” she agreed.

Two figures in red and white robes adorned with strange, pure white metal chains were moving through the crowd. People practically fell over themselves to make room for the two.

I tried to inspect them but remembered I wasn’t wearing my helmet. When Lyria’s back was turned, I pulled it out, slipped it on, and studied the two figures.

[Human, Level 44 (Gold)]

[Human, Level 13 (Gold)]

Even in the commotion and scene, a few people gave me awed looks.

“What are you doing?” Lyria asked.

I hadn’t realized she turned to face me. Reflexively, I put a hand on my helmet. I could snap it into my slip space instantly if she moved to reach for it.

“Relax,” she said. “I’m not going to take it. I’m a guard, remember? I’m the one who’s supposed to keep people from taking your stuff.”

“Yeah, well, can’t be too careful,” I said.

Lyria just shrugged.

I had to admit I was desperate to know more about my helmet’s abilities. Maybe she lied about not wanting to steal it, but how could she, even if she wanted to? I’d have it in my slip space before she could touch me.

I realized a small woman was trailing behind the two robed figures. She was wearing a simple white robe and caked with dirt and ash. But she was jaw-droppingly gorgeous. She had thick golden hair streaked with orange. Her eyes were big and a bright blue. She had plump lips and a figure I couldn’t fail to notice, even in the bulky robe.

I felt a pang of sadness for her. If Lyria's words were true, it looked like she was in some kind of trouble with the divine house of Azmeria.

I inspected the beautiful stranger.

[Human, Level 50 (Wood)]

The woman climbed into the back of the wagon, followed by the two robed figures. The driver gave the reins a little snap, and the strange horses trotted off, nearly trampling townspeople who hadn’t cleared out of the way fast enough.

I pulled off my helmet when I saw how many looks it was drawing from the crowd and zapped it to my inventory.

“What was with all the lenses that naidu had?” I asked.

Lyria frowned at my seemingly random question. But it had just occurred to me that I didn’t know how anybody else here would know people’s levels without a helmet like mine. Maybe they couldn’t know at all.

“Identification lenses,” she said, confirming my guess. “They’re extremely rare and valuable. Usually, you don’t see them outside an Arcanery if we’re talking about identifying people and their qualities. There are other types of identification lenses and tools you usually see in shops.”

I nodded thoughtfully.

From the sounds of it, the identification ability alone on my helmet made it incredibly valuable. The fact that I could also see accomplishments and tooltips probably pushed the value even higher. I raised a finger. “One more question…”

Lyria sighed. “Yes?”

“If I died with my helmet on, would it dissolve when somebody tried to take it?”

“It would depend if you tethered to it or not. If you die while tethered, the item dies, too. Mundane items can’t be tethered, so they would survive if you died.”

“So if I put my helmet on and forget to tether it, could somebody else just… tether it and take it from me?”

“No,” she said, laughing as if that was a silly question. “Tethering binds it to you. Somebody else could put your helmet on and wear it, but they’d have to wait for the memory to fade before they could actually tether to it and make use of its magic. That can mean days or even weeks, depending on how strong the bind is.”

“So,” I said, “in theory, if I threw a little tiny knife at somebody, would that release the tether?”

“It would depend on whether you were strong enough to maintain the tether when it wasn’t in your possession…”

“Mhm, right,” I said, nodding as if I’d already known this. It made sense, though, in a way. That explained why the tomte knives Jinglefoot threw and dropped didn’t dissolve, but the one in his hand did. It also meant there was probably some magical quality to his knife that I hadn’t unlocked because I hadn’t been able to “tether” to it.

Then again, I didn’t think I was actively trying to “tether” to my helmet or Alchemist’s Kit, but both were working. Maybe the “mana manipulation” I retained from Seraphel meant I was doing it instinctively.

“Where are we going again?”

“To get you a room.”

“Any chance we could swing by one of those furnisher places to turn in my bed tokens first?”

“You can turn in your tokens on your own time. I already took you to the Arcanery. Jarn just asked me to get you a room and keep an eye on you. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Alright,” I said. “But I assume you’re obligated to follow me if I leave my room immediately and head for a furnisher?”

Lyria’s jaw ticked with annoyance. “I would prefer if you stayed in your room so I could sit at a comfortable table by the fire, enjoy a drink, and know you’re inside somewhere, not causing trouble.”

“Your preferences have been noted. Thank you for sharing them.”

She let out a sigh through her nose, then headed for a double-doored building that looked like an inn.