Will

Sam slowly picked through the field, rolling the bigger boulders and tossing the smaller ones. Will supervised. I guess this is what Mongrel must feel like, watching other people do his work all day.

Sam was too absorbed in her task to say much of anything for a while, but eventually she stopped rolling a large rock halfway to the now stone-littered treeline and took a seat on top of her mossy charge. “How come you’re not helping out?” she asked. She wiped sweat from her forehead, only managing to smear it with dirt and plant matter instead.

“This is for your benefit, not mine,” Will said. “Besides, I don’t have a bunch of points in Strength like you do.”

“You know, I was kind of getting that feeling when we were tussling, but why? I thought you were some kind of high-level so-and-so.”

“Actually, I couldn’t put points in Strength even if I wanted to. There are eight different basic attributes in total, but each Profession only gets access to a combination of four. I started out as a Cook, which means I have Senses, Awareness, Empathy, and Dexterity. When you reach Level 10, you get access to one of four so-called ‘derived attributes’, mine being Haste. I also got to choose one of the Explorer’s attributes for branching into that, so I picked Processing. I’ve got my points pretty evenly spread among all of those except Empathy.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty lacking in the empathy department, not gonna lie.”

“You’re very clever,” Will said flatly.

“No offense dude, but your attributes sound kind of dorky. There’s a thing called Awareness, and you put points in that?”

“Yes.”

Her brows shot up, incredulous. “All right, man. To each their own, I guess.”

“It’s not like I just picked them at random, you know.”

“Oh, I’m sure you had some kind of master plan behind it all. But all I’m hearing is…” She hopped up off her rock, crossing her dirt-smeared arms over her chest, “...that I’m finally stronger than you.”

Will rolled his eyes so hard he almost saw his own gray matter. “Sure, Sam. You’re stronger than me. Does that make you feel good about yourself?”

She grinned wide. “Actually, yes!”

“Glad to hear it. Now, about those rocks…”

“Hold on there, mister! I wanna settle this right now.” Her smile began to take on an evil edge as she approached him. “How about we have a good ol’ fashioned wrestling match, like we used to?”

“That’s not a good idea, Sam.”

“Afraid you can’t beat a lowly little Level 1?” With a mock pout, she tapped the single AP crystal on her left arm.

“No, not really. Let’s get back on track.” He nodded toward the rock she’d left behind.

“You’re scareddd,” Sam cooed. She stepped uncomfortably close to him, periodically flexing and unflexing her crossed forearms.

“I’m not so much scared of you as for you,” Will corrected. “Us fighting wouldn’t be a good idea—you could get hurt.”

“I’m quaking with fear.”

“Seriously, Sam. Give it up.”

She let out a mischievous snicker. “Or you’ll do what, Master One-Eye?”

And just like that, she had worn out the last of his patience. Fine. If she wants to know where she stands on the ladder, I’ll show her.

Launching into a Dash, Will slammed his curled shoulder into Sam’s midsection. The force knocked her clean off her feet and sent her tumbling ass-over-head, coming to a stop with her back against the rock she had abandoned.

“Guh…?” Sam wheezed, gagging breathlessly as she curled up around her stomach.

“Enough to paint a picture?” Will asked. As he straightened out, he made sure not to indicate how much his shoulder throbbed from throwing himself against her body. Enhanced by both points in Toughness and the Stoneskin passive, she was nearly as hard as the latter implied.

He knew even before Sam staggered to her feet that she wasn’t done. She had that annoyingly stubborn streak to her that no amount of broken bones or skinned knees had ever been able to beat out of her as a kid.

Recovering more quickly than he’d expected, Sam came pounding right back up the same way she’d just tumbled down. She jumped high, and he crouched low, holding up one hand and bracing his wrist with the other.

“Amp (Four): Repel,” he hissed.

There was a sharp whooshing of displaced air, and Sam’s eyes went wide as she was launched ten feet straight up; waving her arms and screaming, tumbling end-over-end. Will hit another Dash the moment it came off skill lag, shooting up as she came down, and his knee collided with her face, reversing her spin. She belly-flopped to the ground with a heavy thud, while he landed next to her in a crouch.

Sam whimpered softly, but otherwise lay completely still, her face pressed against the grass.

“Understand now?” Will asked, patting her on the back. “Strength isn't the only thing that will decide the outcome of a fight.”

“Fuck you…” Sam groaned.

“Why don’t we take a break for now?” He stood, putting hands on hips while he waited for Sam to get up. “With how hard-headed you are, I doubt that was enough to give you a concussion. Stop being dramatic.”

Now both his shoulder and his knee were hurting.

* * *

Sam

Sam had never known that it was possible to be both angry and horny at the same time.

Sitting on the rock that she had become intimately familiar with at this point, holding a rag to her still-bleeding nose, there was no way for her to deny that Will had completely destroyed her. The difference between them was even bigger than the one between her and the men she’d spent her time losing to on Earth.

Maybe I shouldn’t have riled him up so much, she thought glumly, working her battered jaw.

But as much as Sam hated losing, she had to admit that there was something unreasonably sexy about a man who could fold her up like laundry if he had a mind to.

“Feeling any better?” Will asked. He stood over her, his expression a mix of concern and annoyance.

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“Yeah,” Sam said sheepishly.

Kneeling, a little black void opened up by Will’s left elbow, and he pulled a small bag out of it. After extracting a small clay flask from the bag, he stuffed it back inside the void and allowed it to disappear. He held the flask out to her. “Here. This’ll help your headache.”

Sam took the bottle, studying it. “What is it?”

“A healing potion.”

“What’s in it?”

“Herbs and things.”

“‘And things’?”

“Just drink the potion, Sam. I do this for a living, you know.”

With a shrug, Sam uncorked the flask and emptied its contents into her mouth. Whatever she was drinking had an earthy, mildly bitter taste, but didn’t go down any worse than regular cough syrup. Smacking her lips once it was all done, she handed the empty container back to Will to dispose of.

Only minutes later, she did notice that her head was throbbing a bit less. Once she was good to go, she set to work again, working to clear the second half of the rock-strewn field.

“Some of these are all broken,” Sam said, inspecting a large boulder that looked as though it had been shattered into pieces by something very heavy. There were others that looked similar, and something told her it wasn’t a natural phenomenon.

“One of the chimps went and hit those rocks with Demolish a few days ago to make them easier to move, but we never got around to actually getting rid of the things.”

“Huh, that’s neat. They really are good boys, aren’t they?”

“Don’t let them hear you say that. It’ll go straight to those big heads of theirs.”

After she finished with the rocks, Will took her back to the farmhouse and cooked her up a stir fry as a late lunch. Apparently it was time for a theoretical lesson. He talked while she ate.

“Let me tell you a bit about divine vows,” he said after an exhausting run-down on recognizing all the Profession symbols. “You might have inferred as much already, but it’s an oath a person can make with the Concord, forgoing something in order to get a special benefit. It can give a very useful advantage, especially since not too many people know about them, but each person can only make one vow, which means you have to make it count.”

Sam nodded dutifully, though she was mostly focused on stabbing some fried peppers onto her fork. She’d always been a big eater, but she’d never not been hungry since arriving at the Frontier.

“You make a vow by pitching it to the Concord. You set the terms of a vow and a benefit, and the system lets you know if it accepts or not. Finding a vow with the optimal terms can involve some trial and error. I spent a fair bit of time working on yours.”

“Fhanks,” Sam mumbled around her food, already putting another forkful in.

“You’re very welcome. Vows can be made verbally, in writing, by sign, or even mentally, but I thought giving you yours in writing was the easiest way to ensure you actually got it right. Unfortunately for you, that meant you had to eat the paper with the vow written on it to formally activate it.”

Sam swallowed hard. “It tasted like ass.”

“I’ll imagine. I tried to specify the terms so you’d get the double attribute points applied retroactively, but the Concord wouldn’t go for that, so I had you make the vow before you picked your Profession instead, meaning you could still get your ten starting points doubled. You might honestly be the first person in Frontier history to start with twenty points. You can't appreciate how good that is yet, but you will.”

Sam shrugged.

“For reference, at Level 14, I only have 24 points total.”

“You still beat my ass, though.”

Will gave her a slightly apologetic smile. “Yeah. You did start it, to be fair.”

“You beat on women, William.”

“When they act like little shits, I do.”

Sam flicked a pepper off her fork at his face; he caught it and ate it.

“Either way, our builds are quite different,” he continued. “You can’t take any skills because of your divine vow, meaning you’re limited to only passives. That’s not too much of a drawback, though, as Laborers have some of the best passives. It means your build will be heavily slanted toward being a powerful bruiser with a lot of sustain.”

“And you?” Sam asked. She scraped up the last bit of stir fry, chewed, and stared mournfully at the empty crockery.

Sighing, Will swapped their plates around so she got what was left of his portion. She grinned winsomely at him, then dug in.

“My build is a bit more… sprawling, you could say,” Will continued. “I can make potions, medicines, and nourishing meals with my Cook skills, while also gaining a lot of speed and burst movement from Explorer, which allows me to be useful in a fight. Lastly, I've got pretty good intel-gathering skills, so overall you could consider me a well-rounded support type.”

“Have you made one of those vow thingies yourself?”

“Of course,” Will replied, grinning. “I’m pretty proud of it, actually.”

Sam rolled her eyes. “Because?”

He ran a finger over the line of thick stitches holding shut his droopy eye. “I vowed to never open my left eye. In exchange, the range of all my skills is doubled. The Concord likes it when you make vows that are symbolically symmetrical. The extra range helps a bunch of my observational skills out, so it works out well that way.”

“Double range? Doesn’t sound that special.”

“It’s better than it sounds.”

“Sure. it is”

“I beat you, didn’t I?”

Snorting, Sam took an angry bite of food. “Whatever.” She paused, chewing thoughtfully. “I thought you already gave your eye to the demon bitch, though?”

Will’s grin widened. “That was after I’d already made the vow.”

“So you gave up an eye you’d already… given up?”

“Pretty much.”

“I don’t know if that’s anything to look that smug about. You still only have one eye. And half a dick.”

“I didn’t give up half my dick.”

Sam shrugged. It was useless to argue with him when he was in one of his pedantic moods.

“Anyway, my build is good, shut up.” He was pouting now. “I spent a lot of time coming up with it.”

“Aw, dude, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Sam said sympathetically, reaching across the table to pat the back of his hand. “I’m sure your build is great. It’s not that edgy.”

“What?”

“What, what?”

“My build isn’t ‘edgy’, what are you talking about?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said—not that edgy! I’m agreeing with you!”

Will looked like he wanted to throw something at her. Sam snickered into her food.

“Anyway,” he said, sighing heavily into his hands, “skills can be a hassle to untangle, and I figured you’d rather not bother with all that, so I thought this type of passive-only build would suit you.”

“Yeah,” Sam admitted. “I’m not that into all the magic words people keep using. They give me a headache.”

“I made the right choice, then?”

“I reckon so.” Sam threw him a crooked half-grin, the other cheek stuffed with food. “Thanks, man. I mean it.” It really did make her feel a bit tingly inside, to hear that he had spent a lot of time thinking about how to help her along. He’d always been sweet like that.

“Well, that might be enough of a system theory lesson for now,” Will said, scooting his chair back to stand up. “If I know you right, your brain should be hurting by now.”

“Moderately,” Sam admitted, and went to lick her second plate clean.

“All right. I’ve got some reagents in my workshop that’ll spoil soon if I don’t make something out of them, so why don’t you take an hour or two to rest up? The way I rung your dome, it might be for the best.”

Sam snorted. “You think that hurt? Ha!” She had been worried that her jaw might be dislocated, but it was probably fine. It did do this weird clicking thing when she chewed, though…

Will tried to look stern, but he was unable to hide a little smile through the stony mask of his face. “Well? Think you could amuse yourself until I get back?”

“Yes, sir!”

“You might find one of the boys to play with if you look. Just keep in mind, they learned everything they know from their father, so they’re pretty lethal behind a clutch of cards.”

“Got it. Shoo, now.” She waved vaguely in Will’s direction as she threw her feet up on the kitchen couch, flopping prone. “I haven’t got time for you right now.”

Sam settled in for a nap, but cracked an eye when she heard Will retreating so she could watch his ass on the way out. Not bad.

Not baaad at aaall.

* * *

Sam

Sam was pulled from a lovely dream—involving a bakery filled with warm fluffy buns—by the voice of her archnemesis.

“Hello, Samantha.”

Groaning, Sam shook herself awake and worked herself into a sitting position. She blinked blearily at the demoness, who was sitting cross-legged on the tabletop—thankfully, most of her unmentionables were covered up by a baggy red tunic.

“What do you want?”

“Oh, just to chat,” Nyx purred, yellow eyes flashing. “I want us to be friends, you know.”

Sam laughed derisively.

“I even wore a shirt for you, see?” Nyx tugged at the linen fabric with the sharp nails of her thumb and forefinger.

Rubbing her eyes until she could see somewhat clearly, Sam grumbled: “Is that one of Will’s?”

The demoness clutched her neck in mock offense. “Absolutely not! Just what do you think of me, Samantha!”

“Only terrible things, I assure you.”

“Oh, good.” Nyx breathed a relieved sigh. “I was beginning to worry.”

With no wind-up or warning, Sam threw a right jab at the demon’s face. Her fist met no resistance, sinking through a cloud of dark smoke that collapsed back into a grinning, aggravatingly beautiful face the moment she drew it away.

“Sorry,” Sam grumbled. “I had to make sure.”

“Oh, no offense taken, dear. I find that mortals are simply unable to keep their hands off me. It’s flattering, really.”

“Do you get off on annoying every single person around you?”

Nyx gave a lazy half-shrug, leaning back on her hands. “It passes the time, doesn’t it?”

“Have you ever tried being nice? It might just agree with you.”

“Don’t make me gag, Samantha. I prefer to have other people doing that.”

“I hate you.”

“And I find you absolutely fascinating, dear. Can I touch your hair?” She was already reaching her grubby little demon hand out.

Sam abruptly leapt up off the couch, weaving away from Nyx’s grasp, and stalked toward the front door. “I’m going out!” she barked over her shoulder.

The demon’s mocking laugh followed her until she slammed the door shut.

Vile, vile woman! And Will thinks she’s one of the reasonable ones? I don’t believe that.