Neither of them appeared proud of the confession that the Magi uplifted Earth. That they were indirectly responsible for countless deaths.

Gwen watched Mel with an anxious look, as if she worried Mel might blame her for what was done. In some ways, she was an open book.

Mel wasn’t sure why Gwen cared so much. It wasn’t like they were close.

No, Mel mentally corrected herself. You just don’t remember her. We could have been close, but I don’t even know it.

It was difficult working with so many holes in her memories.

Thomas wasn’t so easy to read, but he didn’t seem apathetic. He owned his mistake and though he didn’t want to tell her, Mel understood why he would want to hold on to that bombshell until they were somewhere safe.

Mel could feel the disturbed dead waking all around them. They were intruders here.

“Nobody meant for it to happen,” Thomas explained. “It was supposed to be just us and the exchange students. I’ll be honest, we were showing off a bit. Trying to showcase what Brookmoors could do.”

“Thirteen Magi working a Grand Invocation is prohibited,” Mel muttered, knowing full well that she probably wouldn’t have cared. What Magi would if they had the opportunity for the grandest adventure of all? Uplifting yourself to a Shardrune, up to the multiverse from a lone Worldshard was supposed to be impossible.

Just like going to Darkshards. Worlds that had completely fallen to calamities.

Thomas couldn’t help but laugh. Gwen glared at him. He grinned to disarm her anger. “It’s painfully ironic that you’re the one to say that–”

“Because I probably argued against adhering to the rule,” Mel finished for him.

“Precisely.”

“Do you remember?” Gwen asked, a tinge of hope in her voice.

Mel shook her head. “No, but I know myself well enough. If given the chance…what Magi could resist?” Then something Thomas said seemed to pierce the veil of guilt. “What did you mean by ‘exchange students’?”

Brookmoors didn’t have exchange students. Where would they exchange from?

Another Worldshard.

“Aw man,” Thomas whispered. “Shrubley is going to be gutted.”

“Shrubley?” Gwen said. “You should be more worried about Cal! He followed her and Charlie around like a lost puppy.”

“Who…are they?”

“Exchange students from another Worldshard. A different magical academy of sorts that has ties to Brookmoors and Stowhr, it’s not important to get into it. You’ll meet them soon enough. Shrubley went off with Jacob and Camilla. I believe Cal stuck with Miranda. They’re both with Hal and Sylvie.”

Mel knew where she remembered hearing Shrubley before.

Heath said something about a “Shrubley” saving him, didn’t he? I thought he was just hallucinating. Maybe he wasn’t.

“Camilla picked Acolyte, so they’ll be—” Gwen began to say.

“Shit!” Mel began pawing at her armor, looking for the pocket she kept the [Signal Coin] that Heath had given her.

Gwen immediately went on the defensive. “What’s wrong?” She looked like she was going to pick Mel up and run away to safety any second, as if she could somehow outrun the problem.

She probably could.

Mel pulled out the coin and squeezed it, injecting a bit of mana into the metal. The metal warmed up and gave a faint electric buzz, indicating Heath’s paired coin received the signal.

Or so she hoped. There was no way to know it worked beyond that slight feedback.

“I totally forgot about this.” Mel tucked the coin back into her pocket. “A friend I met told me a story about how he was on death’s door, but a little shrub showed up and healed him. Nursed him back to health, and called himself ‘Shrubley’, which we both thought he had utterly hallucinated.”

“That sounds like Shrubley,” Thomas said with a chuckle. “I think he picked Defender, but he has some powerful healing abilities, thanks to his race.”

“He’s such a good little dude,” Gwen said fondly.

Mel struggled to imagine a walking, talking shrub. “Is he…really a–”

“A talking plant? Yeah.” Thomas looked over at Gwen. “He’s dating Komachi, isn’t he?”

“WHAT?!” Mel shouted, then immediately clapped her hands over her mouth.

Gwen giggled at her outburst, but Thomas took careful note of what that meant. “You don’t remember us, but you remember Komachi.”

Mel nodded, both hands still over her mouth. She moved them to say, “Chonky brown pobul? Likes to go to the zoo and blend in with the Asian small claw otters and freak people out by talking?”

That spoiled Gwen’s amusement.

“That’s the one,” Thomas said.

She still couldn’t imagine Komachi dating a shrub .

“She does have a certain je ne se quis that makes her incredibly hard to forget. Even if you really want to,” Thomas said.

That didn’t seem to help Gwen very much. She crossed her arms petulantly.

Mel shrugged. “I don’t think anybody could forget Komachi. She’s probably written into the source code of reality itself.”

“There are actually some theories on that,” Thomas pointed out.

“Of course there are.”

Mel took a deep breath. “I think…I’m okay now. Thank you for telling me.” She turned to Gwen. “Thank you for not smothering me or trying to stuff me into a pocket. I see the way you’re looking at me, like I’m some skittish animal about to bolt. Really, I’m fine. I am already used to blaming myself for things outside my control. What’s a few more million deaths on my conscience?”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Gwen gave Mel a guilty grin, which then fell once Mel finished speaking. “That’s not on you.”

“Nobody could have foreseen what would have happened,” Thomas explained. “It is unfortunate, but it is not your fault.”

Mel grimaced. “And I assume you don’t think it’s your fault, either?” For some reason she couldn’t define, his explanation felt rehearsed. Then again, from what little she knew of Thomas, he had probably prepared for this eventuality and knew exactly what he was going to say to her when the time came.

Turbo nerd.

“No,” Thomas said, sharper than Mel expected. “I was one of the deciding votes. I knew the risks, but even I was surprised by the extent at which the spell diverged. It was...far more powerful than I would have thought possible.” For the first time, he truly looked shaken. “I accept responsibility, but wallowing in pity helps nobody.”

“It shouldn’t have happened,” Gwen said darkly. “There must be a deeper reason, but there’s no telling what truly happened yet. Charlie was…broken when you were missing.”

Mel had the suspicion that Thomas hadn’t moved on as much as he wanted her to believe. He had the look of a man that had found a thread and was intent on pulling it no matter what it unraveled.

It was enough to satisfy Mel’s conscience though. Neither of them took the events in the typical blasé attitude that many Magi adapted.

Largely for good reasons. Similar to the way doctors often found humor in the most morbid things, it was a defense mechanism. A bulwark against the horrors a Magi contended with each and every day.

She looked at Thomas. “If you need help pulling that thread, you let me know. I’m sure you already know, but I’m very good at messing things up by being too nosy.”

“We know,” Thomas said with a tight grin. “I might need your help more than you know, but…first?” He motioned to the hallway. Shuffling feet could be heard just inside the other darkened room.

“Right,” Mel said. She summoned her twinblade in a flash of silver ash. “I’ve got a top three spot to hit!”

Gwen squared her shoulders and stepped into the hallway, butting shoulders with Mel as she tried to get in first as well.

“This hallway isn’t big enough for both of us,” Mel told her as she tried to wriggle ahead.

“No, it is not,” Gwen said, trying to do the same with much less luck due to her size. “Wouldn’t you rather I take the brunt of damage?”

“Children, the both of you,” Thomas said, shaking his head behind them. “I do believe we have company. Perhaps you would like to speed things along?”

Gwen and Mel growled and grumbled as they tried to both be the first through. Gwen tucked her shoulder and took a step’s worth of an advantage before Mel popped out like a pea squeezed out of its shell.

She bolted forward, bringing her twinblade to bear on the unfortunate skeleton that appeared in the entryway.

It raised a rusty buckler, blocking her first strike, but Mel’s twinblade was designed to hit multiple times in quick succession. A single shield and a corroded scimitar were no match for her. She pivoted and reversed direction, cutting into its outstretched arm.

Mel shifted her grip and brought the twinblade around the other way in one smooth motion, turning the recovery into another attack that split the skeleton’s skull in half.

The bones fell to the ground, with the skull stuck to Mel’s blue blade. She watched with interest as the creature’s body began to shiver and shake, streamers of pale light flowing off its reanimating corpse.

More interesting by far was the light that returned to its skull. Mel stepped back and swung her twinblade like a baseball bat, slamming the wedged skull into the wall.

It shattered like pottery, causing the rest of the bone pile to stop its incessant rattling just as Gwen stepped into the room. She swept her ball-and-chain off her back and used it like a wrecking ball to crush three more skeletons as they came at the pair.

Mel shot her an annoyed glance, but Gwen merely grinned back at her.

A horde of skeletal monsters, both humanoid and bestial, rounded the corner up ahead. Mel grinned at Gwen. “You’ve only got two on me. Watch this.”

In an upraised hand, Mel summoned the black orb of [Bane of Tartarus]. She judged the distance and threw the orb. It sailed through the air, but before it ever reached its destination, the ground quaked beneath the monsters’ feet. The horde was smashed to pieces before Mel’s [Bane of Tartarus] was halfway to them.

Thomas casually walked between the pair, taking a few extra steps ahead of them. The savage quakes were still going when the necromantic energies attempted to bring the monsters back to life.

They all died.

Thomas didn’t even bother to look up as the runes flowed from the 20-plus bodies into the three of them. He glanced back at Gwen over one shoulder, then at Mel over the other. “Ladies. I do believe the first round goes to me.”

“Show off,” Gwen said, shouldering the chain and summoning her [Blindbeast Claws] to her fists. The claws were sheathed in greenish currents of wind, suggesting an ember was used to impart an affinity.

“More like kill stealer!” Mel blurted out. “Come on, I can’t get that close that fast!”

“Sounds like a skill issue,” Thomas said, twirling his wand between his fingers like a drumstick. It was a common Magi trait to be dexterous due to their expression of Cinder relying on hand sigils. Almost every Magi could roll coins across their knuckles or do some other feat of greater dexterity, but Mel hadn’t seen anybody do it with a wand before.

Gwen glanced between them, moving forward. “He’s right, just not in the way he means. Close range classes need mobility aspect skills to close the gap swiftly. Superior agility alone is not enough.”

A large snake skeleton slithered out from a gap in the crypt wall to the left. Mel was on it in a flash, shattering its skull before it even reared up to its full height.

Gwen clawed the thing to a second death the moment it started to rattle. She looked at Mel. “That counts for both of us.”

You defeat the [Minor Narasa (Copper Rank)].

You gain runes of Divine, Mist, Blood, Serpent, and Omen experience.

You gain Battle Points.

A snake skeleton? Now that she thought about it, several of the skeletal monsters looked like they were strange snake hybrids. Many that she had first took to be beasts had humanoid upper bodies, rib cages, arms, neck, and the like, but below their hips their bones looked like one long spine.

New Quest: Snakes in a Tomb

In a graveyard filled with humans, you have noticed a suspicious amount of serpentine creatures buried within. Discover the source of the strange snake skeletons within this place of Death.

Objective: Reach the bottom of the tomb (0/1).

Reward: (50) [Copper Rune Coins].

Runes of Divine, Mist, Blood, Serpent, and Omen experience.

Battle Points.

Ohhh, another quest!

It had been too long since she had a proper adventure-based quest.

The quest did a lot to improve her grumbling as she stomped toward the dead monsters. Their bones littered the ground like Link had just stormed through a pottery shop.

Despite her disgruntlement, Mel was happy to be in the presence of two people who understood her as a Magi. There was always an undercurrent of competition. Sometimes it was subtle. Sometimes not.

No matter what, Magi pushed each other to be better, stronger, faster, smarter. It felt good to no longer be on her own, facing down monsters and men.

I’m the weak link in the group, she thought, taking what Mel figured was a painfully accurate assessment of her peers.

She hung back as they turned the corner and began their exploration in full. Thomas’ magical prowess was without peer. Gwen wreaked slashing havoc at the front, shattering bones to powder and leaving mini craters in the stone beneath their feet.

They made it a level deeper into the tomb and came upon their first obstacle. An animated statue came to life moments before they would have exited the room. The door slammed shut, sealing them in just as the oversized human soldier started to rise.

“This looks fun,” Thomas said, studying the sentry with clinical interest.