Dustin left Seras to her own thoughts, not bothering to explain what was so disturbing about a Celestial book awakening stone. Seras didn’t care. As things stood she had no intention of diving any deeper into this magic crap than she already had.

She stayed up watching the stars above until the sun rose and a new day began.

The camp woke up at the crack of dawn and Seras jumped off her rock to go help with things. Like she feared some shied away from her presence, and Seras pretended not to notice.

Petra on the other hand peppered her with questions.

“When did you get your first?”

“I was lucky and had a good air filter on my apartment, so I didn’t need to replace my lungs until I was 14.”

“That’s still pretty young, were you afraid?”

Seras snorted “Fuck no, your first bit of chrome is like a rite of passage. I was pestering Jonah about my transplant day for years. We had a big party; I even got my first taste of liquor.” As well as her first kiss, but that was private.

“You call your dad Jonah?”

“Jonah wasn’t my dad. Jonah was the boss of our gang, my parents died when I was younger.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Seras snorted “Don’t be, they were low level thugs who got mowed down by some wage slave in a failed mini-mart robbery.” She finished rolling up the tent tarp and stood up to see the sad look on Petra’s face. “Hey, no pitty. Life sucks and people die, that’s the rub.”

“Right.” The Leonid women said. She was quiet for about a minute before she perked up with a new question “How did you do that thing with your hair?”

“What thing?”

“You know, the part of the night when it turned pink and then changed style.”

“Oh that, right. Well, it’s not technically hair.”

“Is it a wig?”

“What do I look like, a poor vagrant sticking a dirty wig on her head?”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s technically nano-machines. Like really tiny metal bugs. They can change color and move around a little. Its how my hair looks so good at five in the morning.”

“Your head is full of bugs?” Even Petra looked creeped out now.

“Weren’t you less judgy yesterday, why can’t we go back to that.” Seras complained.

“That was when we thought you were a victim of disgusting perverts. Now that I know you’re not I don’t feel like holding back. Now do you have to feed your bugs, or do they eat your dead skin.”

Seras grumbled to herself. She had a long day ahead of her.

~~~*~~~

Once camp was all packed up Seras hopped back on Jesse with Dustin. The Heidel didn’t look pleased to have Seras on her back again, but was placated with an apple Dustin had passed Seras.

They hitched up the other Heidels to the wagons and got back to their dusty trail. They were bound for a place called Karstess, a solitary butte in the desert that had been transformed into a stone city renowned for its alchemy. Dustin said that the Astral space beneath Karstess had unique properties beneficial for growing magic plants to use in potions, explaining why anyone in their right mind had ever settled in the middle of the desert.

During today’s leg of the journey they would be passing through a pass that had been supposedly carved by the battle of a powerful diamond ranked essence user and a similarly ranked monster.

“How does the ranking system work anyway. I’ve seen monsters ranked and iron, bronze, and silver, is diamond after those.”

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Dustin chuckled “Gold comes after silver and before diamond.”

“Okay, and the rest of my question?”

“That’s harder to answer. Like all things in life its complicated with a lot of nuances.”

“Then give me the entry level pitch, there’s plenty of time for nuance later.”

He snorted “Alright. Well just about everything falls into one of six ranks. Normal, for ordinary people with less than four essences. Then it goes iron, bronze, silver, gold, and finally diamond. Monsters, essence users, tools, weapons, rituals, all of it falls into that system.”

“Why those metals anyway. Assuming that each level is stronger than the last then shouldn’t you at least choose stronger metals with each rank, like iron, pig iron, steel, titanium, and tungsten carbide.”

He gave her a look, “Three of are just iron alloys.” He pointed out.

“You know what I meant, why those metals.”

“It has to do with the color of the spirit coins associated with them.” A small flame burned in his hand, and when he was done there were four coins in his hand. “The gem like one is a lesser spirit coin, lowest level and most commonly used for transactions. The blueish grey is an iron coin, the bronze is bronze, and the silver is silver.”

Seras smirked “No gold or diamond?” she teased.

Dustin scoffed “In all my time trading I’ve earned maybe a few hundred gold in total, that’s after being a trader for nearly fifty years. I’ve not even seen a diamond ranked coin.”

“Fifty years! You don’t look like a geezer.”

He laughed, his mirth deep and pleasant to the ear. “Essences extend youth and slow ageing. With my bronze rank I look only forty instead of sixty-six.” His smile faltered. “How old are you? I assume your skin age doesn’t match your actual one.”

“Twenty-five.”

“Never mind, I guess it does. Does you’re, uh…skin…” he flattered for the right words.

“No, my body doesn’t ‘age’. Though parts do wear out over time. I like to keep my looks close to my real age, but that’s a matter of taste. I knew a thirty-year-old mother who kept herself looking the same age she got her first augs.”

He frowned “And the husband-”

Seras waved a hand. “Best not to think about it too hard. You were discussing the difference between rank-?”

“Right” Dustin said, a little too quickly. “For people like you and me going up in rank is a manner of training and perfecting ourselves, so as we go up in rank our bodies become more and more perfect. Starting at iron you’ll be at peak physical strength for a normal person, by bronze you’ll step past the upper limits of normal ranked strength. You’ll be equal in strength to a normal rank man who has spent his whole life training and working out, building their bodies with little care for health. And that’s excluding essences that boost your attributes above normal rank averages. A might essence user will always be stronger than their peers, while a swift essence user will be faster.”

“Those are the power and speed attributes?”

“Yes. But there’s nuance to that. A swift essence user will never beat the speed of instantaneous teleportation. Though if they don’t have an astral affinity then the swift essence user might still get a critical hit in while their disoriented.”

“Astral affinity, that’s one of my racial traits.”

Dustin nodded “Outworlders always get that one. But you would have already had that as a Celestine.”

Seras frowned “There’s that word again, I was human before I got blown into another universe.”

“Human. Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m pretty danm sure I was human.”

“I just assumed from your hair and eyes… nope never mind. You can change that sort of thing whenever you want. My apologies.”

“Its fine, so what are Celestines anyway?”

“They’re another race you’ll find around the world. Not so much here, but there’s a whole kingdom of them to the south east of here. The Storm Kingdom is world famous for its adventures.”

“What do they look like?”

“They fall across a wide spectrum of colors and skin tone. But you can usually tell them by their metallic or gem-like hair.”

“Gem-like?”

Dustin nodded. “The royal family of the Storm Kingdom are rumored to have glittering sapphire blue hair.”

Seras held a bit of her own hair. “Should I change it to something more human-like then.”

“I wouldn’t bother, you’re an outworlder now.”

“Right.” She wasn’t human anymore, she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “So astral affinity helps somehow with teleporting.”

Dustin grimaced “Yes, most races have trouble with portal powers or astral spaces. Its like a momentary sickness that never quite goes away. You won’t have that if you get a portal power.”

“Nice.” Seras said to herself. “What about the other attributes?”

“Speed and power relate to your physical power while spirit and recovery are linked to your magic power. Spirit is your mana pool, while recovery is self-explaining.”

“Okay, my Tech essence is bonded to my spirit attribute. What does that mean?”

“It means you have the mana pool of an early iron ranker.”

Seras pondered that “Say I wanted to boost that up so I can use more, what would I do?”

“You would need to awaken your four other abilities for that essence, which require awakening stones. But once you have all five you can slowly start to ‘exercise’ your abilities to push them further. Or use monster cores to force your advancement, but that locks out normal progression and makes you weaker overall.”

“About that, you stomped off after I told you about my second awakening stone, is there something I should know about it?”

He frowned and rubbed his chin. “I don’t know much, but I’ve heard rumors of things more powerful than the Gods in the Astral. More powerful and alien to our sensibilities. I’ve only heard of a few, and one of those is the Celestial book. Some sort of eldritch magic obsessed creature. Like a twisted amalgamation of the Goddess Knowledge, Magic, and Learning. That’s all I know. If I were you, I would sell it for more normal awakening stones.”

“I have no concept of what’s normal and what’s not. Is there some sort of string attached to it?”

“No. the Gods can make essences and awakening stone for their followers, and they can revoke that power as well. But the Astral beings don’t do that, or can’t. The difference was never explained to me.”

“So what’s the issue?”

“I don’t know, just a feeling. It feels like trouble to me.”

“But Outworlders are inherently drawn to trouble like some sort of karmic magnet. Would it be stronger?”

“Maybe, abilities tend to find their own balance. Supposedly there is no such thing as a weak or bad ability.”

“And do you buy that?” Seras asked, the hitch in his voice said otherwise.

“I don’t know, I’ve learned to make my abilities work for me. But I do know that nobles and wealthy adventures go nuts for rare stones and essences. If that thing went up for auction you could probably purchase your other two essences and half of your awakening stones.”

Seras turned around, “I already told you last night that I wasn’t sure about this magic business. And yet this whole time you’ve been acting like I’ve already decided.” She accused with a finger to the chest.

“Can’t blame an old man for trying” He said with a wry grin.

“Just watch me.” Seras muttered turning back to face forwards.

It was fortunate that she did, because otherwise Seras would have died to the razor-sharp bone needle flying for her face.

“Monsters!” someone roared, and the wagon train flew into action.

With a single hand Dustin gripped Seras by the shirt collar and pulled her off his Heidel. “Get to the wagon circle. Grab a cross bow and try and hit a few.” He ordered before the flames within his skin flared to the warm glow of a furnace, and gold red armor formed around his body. Similar armor appeared around Jesse as the Heidel Seras had been riding burst into flames.

Dustin, Flint, and Petra then charged off, kicking up a heavy dust and leaving Seras behind to join the defensive wagon circle.

“Fuck that!” she roared as she charged after them into battle against unknown foes.