After the brief lesson on veils, which I actually found to be quite useful, I headed home.

First things first, I let my dad know about the mission, and that I may be gone most of the night, then I went to work.

My suit definitely would present too much of a risk for this mission. Not only would the magic woven into it potentially be a dead giveaway to the Asomatous, but it would also make me stand out in a mix of runaway kids and orphans.

I scrounged around in my closet for a bit, looking for some clothes that would help me look like a queer teenaged rebellious runaway.

To my slight embarrassment, it wasn’t hard. Skinny black pants met with a shirt that had been painted with the logo of an album that I’d really liked in highschool.

I grabbed a backpack, which I hadn’t emptied out after graduation, and stuffed a few extra clothes and toiletries inside. That should be helpful to complete the disguise.

My defensive aura pin…

I waffled back and forth on that for a moment, before Dusk convinced me to keep it in her astral plane. I should be able to call it out if I needed it, especially since it had a spatial anchor inside.

That made me reconsider something, though. I grabbed the suit from the closet and began to spin a permanent spatial anchor through each of its pieces.

I also took the rod that Ed had enchanted and put a spatial anchor inside of it. It probably wouldn’t be of any use against an Asomatous, but I figured that if I put it off, I’d just wind up forgetting.

My newest plant, Stonesprout, got a spatial anchor as well, as well as the jars that I was keeping my potions in.

I considered for a moment if there was anything else that I should put a spatial anchor in. There was my newest piece of equipment, of course, but after that, I came up empty.

My staff already had one, as did one of my spirit gourds, and I didn’t have much other equipment.

A quick drain from the Pointermoss and Transivy restored my spatial mana, and then I shut my eyes and focused inside.

I whipped the mana around the edges of my garden’s walls into a consistent wall, but instead of keeping them perfectly vertical, I made them in an upside down funnel, like someone had taken a tornado and flipped it topsy-turvy.

The slight shift would help the veil stay more stable over a long period. It did take a bit more willpower to get it set up, which was likely why Alvaro hadn’t shown it to me at first.

Once I was effectively reduced to a first gate mage, I started setting up the upside down cyclones in them as well.

If I was going to play the part, I couldn’t look like I had any of my mana-garden open. Ungated mana would be fine, but nothing more.

Once I was confident that I had all of my veils stable, I headed back downtown, to the orphanage – though I wasn’t entirely confident that name was a large enough descriptor.

The caretaker greeted me happily when I entered, making a show of going through the programs they had, before leading me to a community room.

There, my goal was simple. I took my backpack off my shoulder, putting it at my feet, and then took a seat on the couch, looking awkward.

It wasn’t hard to fake. I didn’t know anyone here.

Not too long after the caretaker left, though, a kid who was probably fourteen or fifteen approached me.

“Hey,” she said. She sounded… Tense. I couldn’t blame her, exactly. She’d come here for a reason, and on top of that reason, she’d had a rough few days.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m Morden. You?”

I’d actually contemplated using the name Morden, back when I was shuffling between names. Morden, Malachi, and Maddox had all been in my top three names.

“Did they tell you about the ghost?” she asked, not even telling me her name.

Blunt and to the point, then, even if inaccurate on what the spirit was. I put on a slightly nervous smile.

“I heard. But I’ll be safe. I get… Insight. Flashes of feelings. This place is safe, and the ghost will be gone soon.”

I lowered my voice to a whisper.

“I think it’s my legacy. It’s about time for that sort of thing to start manifesting. But I’m not sure.”

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

The girl’s eyes widened.

“Aren’t those sorts of legacies really rare?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding gravely. “So make sure to keep it a secret, okay? What’s your name?”

“Selene,” she said.

“Make sure to keep it secret, Selene,” I said.

She nodded enthusiastically, and I had to resist a smile. The news of someone with oracle powers saying the ghost would be gone soon should start spreading soon, then.

Not long after the kid left, an older guy, closer to my age, maybe seventeen, approached and offered to let me join a card game.

I accepted, and spent a while playing with him and his group of friends. They were nice enough, mainly complaining about high school problems, parents, and what they’d do when they turned eighteen and got free. I kept fairly tight lipped, which both helped me keep my cover, and ham it up as a new person.

We didn’t bet with money or favors, nor anything more valuable than snacks, but it was still fun. I lost more than I won, but I’d never been any good at card games.

Not long after we finished, dinner was called. It was a simple affair of chicken, roast potatoes, and mushy peas. I felt a bit bad about eating their food, and made a mental note to offer to reimburse the orphanage for it after the mission.

During the meal, I made sure to sit with a different group, and mentioned that I was pretty sure this was a safe place. I tried to do it as subtly as I could, but I did get an odd look or two.

After the meal, the caretaker hosted a mana manipulation and ungated spellcrafting class. I followed along, pretending to fumble with concepts that I’d long ago gotten a handle on.

In a way, my veils actually helped me keep up that act. Since I had to focus on keeping them up at all times, the additional mana manipulation within my ungated mana was actually a bit challenging.

The kids all hung out in the common area for a while longer once the lesson finished. Some worked on homework, while others played games. I occupied myself with an old, undone algebra assignment that I had leftover in the backpack.

Finally, I was shown to the dorm room where I’d be staying that night. It was small and cramped, with a thin bed and small desk. But all things considered, it wasn’t too bad. I’d toured a college, and their dorms had been about the same.

Waiting for the Asomatous to attack was the hardest part of the entire mission.

I just had to lay there, pretending to sleep, without actually falling asleep. I couldn’t bring out Dusk, practice alchemy, talk to anyone, or even read.

I couldn’t even let myself doze off, because if I did, my veil would drop. I was nowhere near good enough to maintain it in my sleep yet.

Finally, after hours of torture, I felt something brush at my mana senses.

A moment later, I heard maniacal laughter fill the room as the blend of mental and death mana that made up an Asomatous filled the room.

It was peak second gate. Stronger than me, but not by much.

“Are you prepared to die, false prophet?” it asked, its voice echoing, amused.

It looked like a man, middle aged, balding, and paunchy, with a horribly unfashionable and patchy mustache.

I slid out from under the blankets and stepped forwards, meeting the fear spirit head on.

Then I smiled.

The spirit’s power quavered for a moment, and it actually slid backwards.

“I’m afraid you have the power dynamic backwards,” I said calmly. “The person who should be afraid here isn’t me…”

I dropped my veils and unleashed my mana around me.

I ripped open a portal to Dusk’s realm and she shot out like a lightning bolt, her own power blazing, intermixing with my own.

I called my suit from her realm, and it layered around me.

I called my pin, and it appeared on my lapel.

I called a spirit-gourd, and it materialized in my hand.

Then I grinned at the spirit.

“It’s you.”

It may be cheesy, but if the Asomatous got to act like something out of a horror story, then I felt like I got a pass for acting like an action hero.

The Asomatous turned and fled.

“Wait, no!” I called, Foxstepping in front of the spirit and channeling mana into the spirit gourd.

“Be Afraid,” the Asomatous commanded.

A wave of psychic power flowed out from the Asomatous, and I called for one last item from Dusk’s realm.

My last, and newest piece of equipment.

A third gate mind shielding ring.

Oh, sure. Technically speaking, it was my reward for completing the mission. But when dealing with an enemy that could attack the mind, it was better to have something that could block it.

That was where things could get sticky, though.

The caretaker had been the one to enchant this ring, and as they’d mentioned earlier, the asomatous’ origin seemed to have given it a legacy that allowed it to slip past their magic.

Enchantments weren’t… perfectly the same thing as a spell, since they used solidified mana and often incorporated natural magical sources.

But they did still carry some of the user’s magical signature.

So when the Asomatous’ spell struck my mind, I wasn’t sure if it would bounce off the shield or ignore it entirely.

The actual result was somewhere in the middle. The attack struck, but instead of striking the shield like iron, it was more like it was pushing through molasses.

I readied myself against the fear and redoubled my attempts to suck the Asomatous into the Spirit Gourd. When the fear struck my mind, however, my attempt slowed as I fought through a bone-deep fear of being in the face of a predator.

My channeling of mana into the gourd slowed, and it started floating backwards.

No. It could mess with me, that was fine, but it couldn’t get to the kids.

I slammed as much power into the gourd as it could handle, and the Asomatous struck at my mind with another spell.

“Nightmare strike!” it screamed.

Then it was in the gourd. Dusk leapt up, grabbed the gourd from me, and sent it into her realm.

Then the spell worked past the shielding of the ring, and I fell to my knees with a heavy thump.

Nightmares began to assail my mind, illusions of Ed, Kene, and my dad dying, of Meadow and even Ikki being tortured. There were other things too, dark images of me, cruel and callous.

But like any spell, it had limited power. The Asomatous had only cast a brief spell, only empowered it for a few seconds.

Inch by inch, I began to push through the images, and rose up to my feet. I shook myself off, and felt Dusk holding onto my cheek, softly babbling to me, telling me it was going to be okay.

“Thank you,” I whispered to her, then glanced around the room. To my surprise, the kid, Selene was standing in the door, wide eyed.

“You… Got rid of the ghost?” she asked.

I smiled at her and nodded, tapping Dusk.

“We did. Not every spirit out there is an angry, bad one. You just have to trust that eventually the scales will even. And sometimes, you have to even the scales yourself.”

Then, before she could respond, I teleported out of the room, then down the hall, then over to the caretaker’s office.