I always thought of myself as having a pretty good sense of direction. I suppose that my second day in Ironhold should have clued me in to the fact that being in a familiar forest, especially one that you’d lived near for your entire life, was slightly different than being in a completely new place.

I learned that fact well enough whilst wandering an unfamiliar forest trying to get to an unfamiliar place.

When I eventually did find the person that requested the Job, it was because I happened to stumble across a Hunter who was camping and trying to level their skills. Needless to say, it took quite a while to eventually get there and by that point any hope I had remaining of getting to Ironhold before it got dark was well and truly shattered.

The farmer, an old man who looked to be going on 60 wearing weathered, brown clothes, gave me my payment for the Job and then seemed to notice my predicament.

“Oh, you can stay here for the night if you want. I’d feel terrible if you had to camp out in the forest because you were taking my Job. I think I have a spare blanket you can use so don’t you worry about that,” I noticed a strange amount of guilt in his voice as he spoke, which I guessed was because he was worried about making me sleep outside or something.

“That’d be great actually, usually I bring camping stuff out with me but this was the one time I didn’t. I guess that’ll teach me to take risks like that, huh?” I chuckled at my attempt at a joke, but that old man didn’t seem to find the humour, instead choosing to lead me into the house and rummage around for a blanket somewhere.

The house was actually rather small and had only two rooms, one was probably where he slept and the other was filled with everything else someone would need in a house. He brought out a blanket and laid it on the ground, bringing a straw pillow as well.

“It’s not much, but it’s better than outside.” His voice sounded a little sad, and I felt bad that he felt bad about not providing a good bed for me.

“Nono, this is fine. I still brought a blanket with me, so I’ll be comfortable enough. I’m just glad I’ll be able to sleep peacefully without worrying about wolves or anything.” I thought that would make him feel better, but I guess I made some kind of misstep because he made a strange choking sound and spoke his next sentence quickly, as though he wanted to leave as soon as possible.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it. If there’s anything you need I’ll just be in here.” And he rushed into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

Huh, did I say something rude? I wonder what it was…

I laid down to sleep, various thoughts about magic and my future rolling through my head, until- eventually- I drifted off and fell asleep.

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Several minutes later the old man peeked his head past the door to check on his vi- a shudder ran through him- guest, his guest. It looked like the boy was still asleep.

Gods forgive me, he must be months out of his Awakening.

He softly closed the door and looked under a loose floorboard, finding the ‘stone’ the woman had given him. Though it wasn’t really a stone- he was old, not stupid- he’d found a lot of strange rocks buried in the soil he was tilling, but none of them looked like a shard of bone. But he never said anything, not to the woman and not to anyone else. He needed the money, or he wouldn’t be able to sustain himself once his back finally gave out and farming became impossible.

“H-hello?” He spoke hesitantly into the shard of bone and, as he did so, a dark and murky green light seeped out from deep inside, “T-there’s someone asleep in my house. An a-adventurer.”

“Understood.” A voice came out of the bone, eerily airy and ethereal in a way that made it impossible to recognise the voice, though whether this was intentional or a fortunate limitation was unclear.

“Y-you’ll pay me right? If you come to, “ The old man tried and failed to suppress the full body shudder then threatened to make him drop the bone, “c-collect them?”

“Of course.”

He finally dropped it, allowing it to fall back into the hole beneath his floorboard, and carefully placed the cover back to cover it. He tried to convince himself that it was necessary, that he’d die soon enough if he couldn’t get the money, especially with this Ant problem, and that he shouldn’t feel guilty for what he’d just done. But he never was a good liar.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

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I suddenly woke up, feeling a bizarrely high spike of unease from Sense Danger and not quite remembering where I went to sleep the previous night. After a few seconds of groggily trying to figure out what was happening, I finally realised what was happening, I used a combination of Breath Of Mana and Lightning Cloak to light up the room.

Something startled behind me and I jumped into a standing position and spun around to find a cloaked figure with a dagger at their waist and a coil of rope hanging loosely from their arm. For a crucial second I was looking at them in confusion, which was all they needed to lunge and grab me by the arm.

The first thing that struck me was the unnatural coldness of their hand, the second was the sharpness of their grip, like they were wearing gauntlets instead of leather gloves. Without stopping for even a moment to think, they unspooled the rope and began trying to tie it around my hand.

But I didn’t stop to think either, and before they managed to make any progress I focused Lightning Cloak around the arm they were holding in a vice-like grip. At first, the Lightning had absolutely no effect, but once it had all gathered I stabbed it towards the hand in spikes through each finger, which was enough for Grand Skewer to activate and loosen their grip enough for me to escape.

I Stepped away and began to Charge a Bolt, but the figure didn’t seem to be concerned by my escape at all, instead almost immediately throwing their dagger at me. Fortunately, by the time it reached me my Cloak had spread out to cover the rest of my body and a quick Breath caused it to turn the blade away from my body.

I stared at the figure, unwavering, and they seemed to come to the conclusion that they were outmatched. They threw something through the slightly ajar bedroom door, that they had ended up manoeuvring in front of at some point, and then sprinted for the open window in the moment that I was distracted trying to figure out what it was.

Seeing them about to escape, at the last second I switched out the Bolt and used the Mana from it to form a Channel for my Telekinesis Equivalent. After a second of building up, a rope of Lightning flew towards the marauder and managed to catch their right arm, keeping them from making it out the window.

Or at least that’s what should have happened.

Instead they ran forward unimpeded, their arm jerking behind them but somehow not slowing their momentum at all. A murky green glow shone from the captured arm and then all at once slammed into it, like it was being pulled inwards by some unseen force. The figure didn’t act like they noticed that it had happened, but I know that they must have felt something because as they ran out of view their arm was left floating in the air where they once were.

A second later, before I had the chance to even think about inspecting it, the leather suit on the arm was ripped to shreds as shards of some white rock burst out of it, leaving behind only a few strips of black leather and nothing resembling an arm.

What the hell?

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I tried to examine the remaining scraps of leather for clues as to what just happened, but predictably came up empty. As far as I could tell it was just a regular, if unusually concealing, set of leather armour. There didn’t even seem to actually be anything inside of it, and a quick search for wherever those bones went revealed nothing of note, like they vanished without even reaching far enough to touch anything.

Weird.

When I finished my ‘investigation’ I turned around and saw that the old man had at some point left his room and was staring at me with some combination of relief and guilt. Just another oddity to add to the pile, so far as I was concerned.

“I think someone tried to rob you.” He glanced down at the scraps of leather then back up at me.

“Y-yeah.” He sounds pretty shaken, I didn’t realise people could get so scared after nearly getting robbed. But he doesn’t exactly have a Path fit for defending himself, so it kinda does make sense.

“Hm. Well, I think I’ll probably just go ahead and leave now,” I fought back a yawn, “I’ve slept enough and I’d rather sleep at home.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll just,” He looked around the room as if trying to find something that would tell him what to say, “stay here then.”

I narrowed my eyes a little, something was off about this whole situation, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Shrugging it off as a symptom of my tiredness, I ignored my instinct and moved on.

“I’ll be off then, see ya.”

Without waiting for his response, I grabbed my stuff and left, putting on my cloak and satchel as I walked. The moon was still high in the sky, though it was beginning to make its way down towards the horizon, so I made a Mage Light and had it hover in front of my chest. Hopefully that would be enough to let me keep my footing, but I’d have to run a little slower anyway just to be safe.

Maybe running in the dark is gonna help level Lightning Steps?

Hours later, as the sun was coming up on the horizon and I could see Ironhold just a minute or so away, I found that the answer was an uncertain ‘maybe’. I had gotten a level, but I couldn’t figure out if it was from the added difficulty or just that I was already relatively close to the next one.

Whatever, I guess it doesn’t really matter as long as it works.

I got into the city with no trouble, I was pretty well acquainted with the guards there by this point so it went by quicker than for most other people, and made it to the Haggard Hoarbear without anything being amiss.

But that was where the good news ended.

I walked through the unlocked front door to find that, standing motionless by the bar, next to a bemused Finch, was Absolute Render. As far as I was aware they spent most of their time at the training grounds, and would probably much rather be there or learning from Kaelan than here at an inn.

When they noticed that I’d walked in he immediately marched up to me, a certain sense of purpose in their gait that I’d never seen in the few times I met them. Sense Danger didn’t warn me of anything, so I wasn’t worried that they had for some reason decided to attack me or something, but I was worried nonetheless.

There weren’t a lot of reasons that they’d purposefully wait here for me, and there were even less good ones.

As soon as they got within 2 metres of me, they dropped to the ground and prostrated themselves, which I was given to believe people usually only did when apologising to nobility, or for some really terrible mistake. But that couldn’t be what it was about, since they hadn’t met me enough times to do anything particularly bad to me.

“I am here to offer my deepest apologies, Robert Zeneki. I came to this city for one purpose only but have failed to achieve that purpose and now, as a direct consequence, have lost something that is dear to me and, I suspect, to you as well.” A feeling of dread began to make itself known in the back of my mind, slowly building as the seconds passed in absolute silence.

Render came here to deal with the Mage Killer, right? How could that have made the both of us lose something that important?

I tried to speak but my voice caught in my throat. Coughing to clear it up, I asked a question that I wasn’t certain I wanted to hear the answer to.

“W-what-” I coughed again, “What happened?”