For the time being, I have to wait out the night. Though I far outpaced my pursuers I glance around the edge of the woods that brushed against houses until I find a suitable one; a door near the backyard of the house. It would be a perfect lower-level dive. I hop out of the tree and approach it.

I step out of the blackness between worlds into a small farmhouse. A little wider than the backyard of the house in front of the door. Half of its roof was missing. Dim light bled in from the close by fogwall, and one ratman sat at a table by the fireplace, with a small flame flickering in the stone hearth. It's the perfect place to wait out the storm. I feel the weight of the rifle on my back had vanished as well. Good. Whenever a gun is brought into a dive, the gods take it. I don’t know the reason, and whenever I ask Reynard, he gives me a different one.

I shift back into my regular form, and the ratman’s head immediately turns toward me. It pushes itself off its small chair and grabs hold of its spear leaning against the stone hearth. It charges after me, just as I set my bag on the ground by the Door. It charges after me and stabs forward. I grab hold of its spear and jam it into the wall by the door. It punctures the packed mud walls, and I send it sprawling to the ground with a heavy shove. I step on its chest to stop it from moving. I point the wooden staff down at it.

“By the order of Gob, king of the spirits of the earth, I command you, on gnomes, seize my enemy.”

An earthen hand reaches up from the ground and holds it in place. It tries to squirm against it while I dig through my bag for the Shard I had stuffed inside. Once I feel it, I pull it out of the bag.

“What is the objective of this dive?”

Destroy the shrine.

Ah, so he’s not worth keeping alive. Good to know. I end the Ratman’s life with a heavy stomp to his head and drag his body outside. I didn’t want him stinking up my temporary living abode. Outside, I see the shrine; a small wooden one set up beneath a red-berry tree barely within the confines of the fogwall.

I use Create Hole once more to bury the Ratman before returning inside. I point my staff at the bed set up catty-corner to the wall.

“O’ companion of mine, come to me.”

Clio drops out of the air on top of the bed. Her fur is slicked with water and she shakes. She runs up to me and stands up to be picked up. I bring her up to my shoulder and she licks my cheek.

Master? Thank you. I was scared. Cold.

What had happened?

“O’ companion of mine, come to me.”

Something invisible plops down on the center of the bed.

Mister?

“Are you both okay?”

Clio still shivers in my grasp.

“What happened, Clio?”

Some men came and grabbed me. Threw me in big, loud, water.

Big, loud, water? The river. Bastards.

“What did they look like?”

White and red hoods. Red masks.

I hug her close and wrap her in some of the ratty blankets on the bed.

I was hiding. Shadow says as she brushes up against my leg. Following

them.

“The men in white hoods?”

Yes.

“Do you know where they are?”

Yes. Cross the bridge, south of the city.

“When we’re out of here, tell us where they are.”

Are we staying here, mister?

“Yes, for a couple of days.”

Cold…

Clio still shivers. I hurry toward her. She’s cold, very cold. I glance around the room and rush toward the fireplace. The small flame won’t be enough. I tear up some of the bedding and feed the scraps to the small orange flame. It grows a little bigger, so I smash the rickety table and feed it into the burgeoning fire. Too soon. The added wood smothers the life out of the flame.

Cold...her voice in my head is barely a whisper at this point. No. No. I can’t lose her. No.

“I allow the breath of the salamanders to flow through me.”

I cycle the flame mana through my heart and blast it at the bottom of the pile of barely charred wood. It ignites the wood, and I quickly carry the freezing dog and place her by the fire. I place my bag in front of the flames as well to dry, and sit there to do much the same. I comfort her until she stops shivering, and she crawls in my lap to fall off to sleep. Shadow curled up beside me. I spend the night beside them. Watching the door for any movement, I waited out the night. I can only pray to whatever gods would listen to make sure that Monica tells the others what I had told her.

I don’t wanna go.

Clio curls into my lap, still shaking and shivering. I suppose we’re waiting another day. Not a bad idea, actually. The longer I’m gone, the wider they’ll cast their net. The wider the net, the larger the holes to slip through. Or so I think. This was the second day in a row that she had done this. I suppose I’ll take it as an extended rest, though a part of me just wanted to scoop her up and carry her out and get on my way. I wanted to know if Monica had gone through with the plan to attack the level 70 dive in the bowling alley yet or not.

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The night had fallen once again. It would have been dumb to go out during the day, anyhow so I spent the day getting things ready. I looked around the house, first of all, and found a small copper pot covered in dust, and cleaned it off with some conjured water, and wash myself in much the same manner; scrubbing all the mud and residual gore off of my body.

During the long night, I lay down to try to sleep; confident that no one would be coming through the door. Images of the battle play out in my mind. Images of my father’s pained face above me. Images of the spike through his gut, and the warmth of his blood flowing onto me. I roll around the bed and press my forehead against the wooden slats beneath the thin mattress, and I feel the cold brush of my father’s fingers falling off of the back of my neck.

I flop over and watch the slowly stretching shadows cast by the flickering flames. Each appears to me as the ghost of one of the fallen screaming at me from the depths of hell. I guess I’m not sleeping again. With a sigh, I push myself up off the bed and hurry outside. I need a drink, I press my back against the farmhouse wall, and watch the world beyond the fogwall shift as the shrouded moon above moves through the skies.

After an hour of this, I find myself beginning to drift off to sleep, but something within the small farmhouse stirs me awake. The sound of something scraping against the sod floor. I stay seated, but send a trail of mana into the house to follow the sound. It's too heavy for either Clio or Shadow. Was there another creature in here other than the ratman? Or had someone come in through the door to chase after me? If it’s the latter, I don’t want to kill them, so I’ll keep the Earthen Spike short.

“Lawrence?” A hushed whisper breaks through the night as it nears the door.

I hop up, and ready myself for combat just as the owner of the voice peers through the doorway.

“Nyt?”

The Ir’s wide eyes peered at me through the shadow of a too-big, black hooded sweatshirt.

“How did you know I was here?”

“You still have my translation magic on you. I just followed the strand of mana.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m not going to be a prisoner again. You’ve given me hope that we can actually defeat Roki and reclaim Efra...how can I relegate myself to a cage with that flame reignited in me?”

“I told Monica to tell you to betray me. Didn’t she do that?”

“That hue-man woman? She did, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I had gone through with it, so I told the others what to do, and waited for my opportunity to leave.”

“What happened after you were captured?”

I sit back down on the ground by the door, and she sits on the ground on the other side of it.

“We were gagged and brought into a large room. There we were sat and questioned in front of a screen with a woman on it. They asked us the same question: were we loyal to Roki? Were we loyal to you? What had happened in the dive? By then that hue-man of yours came and spoke to me. I passed on the message, and they all denounced you; telling them that you had forced them to fight for you against a rebel force.”

“Really? That was clever.”

“Are you okay with that? They seem like they’re telling the whole world you’re a villain.”

“I don’t care,” I say. “I’m not doing this for recognition.”

If I were, I would have bought a camera, like William. I wonder how his videos are doing...ah, I can’t get a phone, can I? I’d be easily traceable.

“So how did you escape?”

“The first day we came back, that woman and the rest of the earth’s apostles left somewhere, and I was put in a cell, ‘until the brainwashing wore off,’ according to that bitchy Earthean apostle.” I know who she’s talking about at once.

“At first, I thought they left to look for you. Around noon today, the whole compound was ablaze with activity, as over half of the forces there left to go somewhere. With fewer eyes on me, I slipped out, and made my way here.”

“It took you until noon to come here?”

“Don’t be silly. I gathered supplies first.”

“How?”

“Thievery. So, here’s an important question. What do you do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“You had the support of the mightiest military in the world, and now that might will be turned against you.”

“I’ll manage. I have millions of hiding places, after all.”

“But what if they do find you? Not all of them are compromised by Roki.”

I suppose that’s true. There’ll be a limit to my threats before they realize that I’m bluffing.

“Hey Reynard,” I speak to the Shard on my wrist.

What?

“Is there a spell that can put others to sleep?”

There is.

“Can I take it?”

You can.

I wait for the information to flow into my mind, but nothing comes.

“Reynard?”

What?

“Spell?”

What do you want me to spell?

How many minutes of my day is wasted on things like this?

“Could you unlock the spell for me?”

Say please.

I sigh.

“Could you please unlock the spell for me?”

There we go.

Knowledge floods into my mind.

Now that’s finished. What are you going to do about the territory?

“Territory? Oh, right…”

I had forgotten that I had completely cleared a street.

“What can I do with it?”

Claim it in my name, and I’ll get more powerful. With the size of this area you claimed I can do one of two things; increase all of your stats by 5, or induce another into the conflict.

Induce another in the conflict...that might be something. I glance at Nyt. While more stats would be nice, I wasn’t hurting for them. In a one-on-one fight, I’m sure I could give Oak a run for his money.

“Nyt, are you an apostle?”

“No, of course not.”

If I die, Reynard dies, and the world will have one few layers of defense. Compartmentalizing Reynard’s existence wouldn’t be a bad idea.

“Would you like to be?”

“What do you mean?”

I turn my attention back to the Shard.

“Is it possible?”

I probably should have asked this first.

Why not? It’d be unique.

“Lawrence, I don’t want to be the apostle of an Earthean,” Nyt says. “If I do, I won’t be able to help revive the gods of Efra.”

I want to know how she plans on doing that, but I’m sure it’d come off as aggressive and dismissive, so I decided against it. Perhaps it was a fantasy she had — that distant glimmer of hope that I had somehow rekindled. It would be cruel to blow wind on such a fragile thing.

“I guess I’ll take the stat points.”

Wise choice.

I hiss as the feeling of boiling water is flushed through my veins. I endure this pain until it passes. Before I even open my eye, I notice the change. The smells of the world as so much more crisp than before, and the sounds so much more clear. My mind works a bit quicker, and my muscles feel a bit more strong.

“You alright there?” Nyt asks.

“Yeah. Yeah.” I say.

“Good, so anyways…”

We spend the night in quiet conversation until Nyt fell asleep on the grass, and I watch until the sun begins to show its face. It was only then that I found myself slipping into my first sleep in the nearly three days we’d been in here, waiting for our chance to go.

Master! Big cat! Big cat!

Clio’s voice woke me from my sleep. I look at the sky to get some semblance of time. It seemed to be a little afternoon, and for the first time in days, Clio had hopped off her spot on the hearth for something other than the calls of nature to put herself between me and the strange creature in front of her.

“What’s this?”

Master stay back!

“Clio. Nyt is a friend.”

Friend?

I bend down and pick the dog up.

“Can I touch it?”

“Can she?”

Is big cat friend?

“Yes.”

Nyt stretches out her clawed hand and pats Clio on the top of the head.

“Soft.”

“Isn’t she?”

I see Nyt’s shoulder depress as something invisible plops down onto it. A moment later Shadow cancels her invisibility.

“What’s this? It looks like what you can turn into.”

Nyt picks the cat up off of her shoulder.

“Also soft.”

“Right?”

Are we leaving today, Mister?

I glance down at Clio.

“Are you okay with leaving tonight?”

Yes.

I suppose she’s eager to forgo the diet of red berries for something with a bit more meat. Tonight it would be. I go into the farmhouse and get my things together. I had washed my clothes in the pot with boiled water the day before to rid them of the smell of sweat, the streaks of mud, and the little bit of blood from the wounds caused by my brother’s arrows. After I gather them, I notice something within the fire, still burning strong after almost three days; a figure pushing against its edges.

“Reynard, is this a Salamander?”

Ohh, looks like it.

This is unexpected. I hadn’t even thought about trying to finish the conditions of the summoning. I suppose I had done it quite by accident.

“What do I do to make a contract with it?”

First, you need something that it can attach itself to.

Something it can attach to? Do I own anything like that? My cloak? No.

“Can it be anything?”

It can.

My ring? No. I could lose it, and my contract would probably be forfeited.

“Could I offer, like, a finger?”

Sure, but the Salamander wouldn’t have much room to grow.

“What do you mean?”

Whenever you use a fire spell, the Salamander will take in a little of the fire mana you use and grow, in turn, it will refine it whenever you use it

.

“Would I be able to finally use, Salamander’s Breath?”

Yes. Eventually.

Cool. I’ll be able to breathe fire.

“What are you doing?”

Nyt walks in carrying Shadow on her shoulder, and Clio in her arms.

“Making a contract.”

“With?”

“That?” I point to the fire.

“With...the fire?”

“No, can’t you see it?”

The Ir shakes her head.

I suppose she isn't attuned to things like that. Clairvoyance wasn't too bad of a grab, after all.

I hold my staff out to the open flame.

“I, an initiate of Hecate and Bastet, and one with the knowledge of Hermes bestowed upon humanity by the tablet of emerald do beseech thee, oh being of Fire, merge together our souls.”

From the flames, a small figure emerges. No bigger than my fingernail. It darts around my head.

You’ve freed me once before, and now we meet again. I accept your offer.

A small voice echoes in my head. Was this the same being in chains that I had seen on that hellish island in the last dive? Or were all Salamanders connected?

Where, then, shall I reside?

“My left arm.”

I had thought about keeping it in the center of my body, so that it was in the natural path of the mana, but that would also mean that it was in the path of the water mana as it circles my heart. I can’t imagine that would end very well for me, or the Salamander. Likewise, I wouldn’t use my right arm; the arm that I held my staff in.

The flittering light darted into my arm, and I feel a slight burning on my elbow. After that, the burning moves to my core. The familiar feeling of my Magic increasing.

“Is it done?”

It is. Came the Salamander’s voice. My name is Igni.