Heath backed up slowly, his hands up and spread apart. “Listen, fellas, can’t we talk about this?”

“I saw you take the loot, thief!” the blustery man said, pointing his sword at Heath. His cronies slowly fanned out around him, cutting off any attempt at escape.

With a glance over his shoulder, Heath looked down into the ravine a thousand feet below him. A thin ribbon of glittering water greeted him at the end of a very long drop. “It was a misunderstanding!”

“You stabbed me!” the sour-faced man snarled at him.

“You stabbed me first!” Heath countered, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. “Besides, you were the one snooping around my stuff! I got to the loot first fair and square. If the system wanted you to have it, you would have it.”

That was clearly the wrong thing to say. The others came forward steadily. Heath had grown in strength, ever since hitting Copper, but it was nothing like that one fateful day with Mel.

It was odd how much he missed her. He would have followed her into the pits of hell.

Would have gotten some epic loot and experience down there too!

She had been surly and a little mean, but ultimately he could tell she had a good heart. She never tried to hurt him. It had given him hope for humanity again. Hope which had landed him in one sore spot after the other.

Unfortunately, the coin he had given her stayed silent for weeks. He had given up all hope that she would ever contact him again. She might even be dead, though he couldn’t quite imagine that fiery woman ever dying.

She probably moved onto bigger and better things.

Heath tried to keep his breathing even. He was the odd man out. It was him against the leader, and the leader clearly wanted him out of the way.

It had been a setup from the beginning. Big surprise.

Any group that wanted to take him in always had some ulterior motive. It felt like he had already missed the boat on proper partnerships. He didn’t want to join a guild or whatever the equivalent was here. Who wanted to go back to working for somebody else?

He had an entire life of working for somebody else to look forward to back on Earth. The apocalypse had been the greatest thing ever for the freedom it gave him.

All he had to look forward to on Earth was 60-plus years of working, only to retire and slowly rot away until he died of boredom. But here? Here, he could be something special. He could grasp power and keep it with his own two hands.

How many people on Earth could say that without a bank account that trailed a bunch of zeros?

“Give up the kindling branches, both of them, and we’ll consider letting you leave with your thieving hands,” the leader said.

There it is…he saw that I had another branch.

Heath shook his head. He should have kept everything closer to the vest, but he had thought he found a group that truly cared about its members.

Of course, it was just another example of microscale tyranny. The leader, Lenny, made sure that he always had the best gear. The best loot. And though nobody gave him any tithes like that creepy culty group he had fallen in with before this, he was sure Lenny found a way to get a piece of the rune coins everybody received.

Heath sent a small pulse of mana into his jacket. On his wrist was a small mana device that, when activated, would conjure a throwing dagger in his hand. All it took was mana.

The best part, it didn’t have any telltale signs like when he summoned his weapon. Something that few people knew how to do, which still boggled his mind.

He watched the movement of Lenny’s friends. They weren’t going to let him live, no matter what they said. He had “stolen” from them, and it was the damned wild west out here. You would be lucky to keep a hand, let alone your life.

Did it matter that Lenny had set him up so he could blame him and gang up on him for all Heath’s loot? No, not really.

Should’ve left when you heard them whispering around the campfire.

A slight buzzing sensation in his pocket distracted him. He looked down, shocked.

The coin warmed in his pocket, letting him know that Mel had used it to signal him. She’s alive!

That thought was immediately followed by, And she wants to team up again! Oh boy!

He paused.

What am I going to wear? I can’t show up in the same armor! She’ll think I sat on my hands for weeks just waiting for her. I need to find some new equipment.

Of course, first he had to get out of this sticky situation. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got a much more important person waiting for me. If you’ll excuse me.”

Heath had been planning on fighting, taking one or two out for their Battle Points, then fleeing. With Mel waiting for him to show up, he didn’t want to risk getting hurt.

“Get him!” Lenny shouted.

With his heels already hanging over the ledge, Heath spread his arms wide and fell backward into gravity’s loving embrace. He saw Lenny’s red, enraged features twist with a mixture of glee and disappointment.

Clearly, Heath was a dead man, but at the same time he had managed to deny Lenny and his goons the loot they so obviously coveted.

Heath listened to the air whistling in his ears for a second longer before twisting around and using his [Raven Cloak’s] imprint. The shadowy material went rigid and spread wide, catching an updraft.

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Balls of fire and arrows whizzed past him, but the angle was all wrong for any of the attacks to hit him. A few conjured boulders sailed over his head, making him second-guess his decision.

Should’ve waited a second or two more before deploying the cloak.

Eventually, the projectiles fell short as he glided to the right, following the river’s course.

Gliding through the air would have been suicidal with the ravine’s walls close to either side. Mana made everything better. Heath absolutely loved magic.

Ever since he was a little boy, he wanted to go on a proper adventure like in the Hobbit, Wizard of Earthsea, or the Drizzt books to name a few of his favorites.

The reality of using mana was so much better than anything he could have hoped for. A pulse of mana through his veins and into the cloak caused it to twitch slightly. The controls were remarkably intuitive, which was obvious considering he controlled the cloak with his thoughts in a manner of speaking.

The [Raven Cloak] shifted and took him into a controlled dive toward the river below. It wasn’t flight, as much as he would have loved that, but it allowed him to get down from one plateau to a lower one with great ease.

All he needed to do was keep up a steady stream of mana. He had gotten out of a number of bad situations like that. Even with all the magic that people had now, they never thought that somebody else could fly.

Or, in Heath’s case, glide.

By the time he landed on the gravel riverbank, Heath was at half mana and breathing hard. Expending such a controlled amount of mana for so long was more difficult than it looked.

Shading his eyes from the sun overhead, Heath looked up at the ledge he jumped from. Lenny and his group would take hours, if not days, to find a way down here. He was safe for now.

The ravine was luckily quite empty, so he took a moment to splash some water on his face and get a cool drink of clean water.

At first, he had been deathly afraid to drink any running water. He had heard all the horror stories of the parasites people got. Some even swam up your urethra!

For whatever reason, Heath never got sick. He ruled out cleanliness after having watched several people drinking water downstream from others using it as a toilet.

The only option was magic.

That, or Earth was severely screwed up. That seemed plausible too.

As somebody who was going to USC for a degree in environmental engineering, little things like the purity of drinking water were of particular interest to him.

Things that would have been prohibitively expensive or impossible due to the laws of physics would be easily implemented in a world with mana.

Not that it matters, Heath thought to himself, taking out the coin. I don’t want to be an engineer anymore. I want to be an adventurer. Seeing all this world has to offer and more.

A wedge of light appeared on the coin’s flat surface and pointed toward Mel like a compass needle. Unfortunately, it went straight through the stone walls of the ravine. Heath sighed. Just his luck.

He started walking, knowing that the ravine let out onto another plateau a few miles to the north. Lenny had pointed out the waterfall when they first arrived at the heights.

It was too bad the plateaus didn’t have names. Everybody called them something else. What was the storm plateau to one person was the lightning plateau to another.

Alone again with his thoughts, Heath couldn’t help but feel a surge of excitement. Mel was still alive after all this time! He had actually waited for over a week, expecting her to finish her business and come looking for him.

When she didn’t, he was forced to face the real possibility that she just didn’t want anything to do with him. Maybe she tossed the coin away like so many did to the fliers he handed out for environmental awareness back home.

He hadn’t thought less of her for it though. She was at least nice enough not to do it in his face. Eventually, he forced himself to forget about her.

Which was a lot harder than he figured. You didn’t forget about somebody like Mel easily. She had a way of sticking in your brain, coming out at the oddest times so that you never truly forgot.

He found himself channeling Mel’s bravado more and more. Even his pale imitation of her was surprisingly effective. But it was nothing compared to the real deal.

Eventually, Heath found his niche as a thief. He didn’t steal from anybody who needed it, but the bigger groups always had more food and materials than they could ever use.

He made sure to run whenever he was spotted, and he never hurt a soul that didn’t try to hurt him, but he still felt bad about it.

It was necessary though. There was no way he could have survived those weeks without the food and supplies he stole.

Secretly, he hoped that somebody would see how desperate he was and invite him in. It never happened. Compassion was in short supply these days.

Still, Mel had a lingering effect on him. He tried to trust everybody he met, only to be disappointed time and time again.

A dark hole in the ravine’s wall resolved into a cave when he switched on his [Dark Vision]. The colors were desaturated, but he could still make out the subtle variations of blues and grays in the stone as he stepped into the darkness.

Tunnels raced off in every direction, so he picked the middle path every time. He wasn’t afraid of monsters in the caves because he could see them coming at least as easily as they saw him.

He still wished he had Mel’s heat vision. Seeing the world like the Predator would be cool as hell. There were some very real drawbacks to [Dark Vision]. Chief among them was how it dealt with bright flashes of light.

Something that most groups employed without realizing it. Striking up a flint and steel to ignite a torch was like having hot needles stabbed into his eyes.

Heath knew he had made a mistake as soon as the sound of voices cut off ahead. Soft scuffling sounds echoed down the tunnels flanking him.

Then came the choice he always had to make: announce himself and declare his intentions, or run as fast as his skinny legs could take him. He was fast, even faster in the dark, but running wasn’t always the best choice.

However, as he heard a snicker in the dark, Heath knew that maybe this time he didn’t need to make friends. Besides, Mel was waiting for him.

He took off at a sprint, choosing tunnels at random. He ran across a pair of men in filthy leathers wielding crude spears and torches. They raised their weapons, but by the time they had them in place, Heath was already brushing past them.

His [Raven Cloak] broke up his silhouette when he was in darkness, making it harder to focus on him until it was too late. He could have planted a knife in any of their necks as he passed, but chose not to.

Often, that decision bit him in the ass, but this time, he didn’t care. His only hope was to get out of the caves and continue following the coin to Mel.

His [Gripnail Boots] skidded on stone, throwing up sparks as he came to a dead end.

The sound of bare feet behind him told him the others were coming.

Aw shucks!