“I’m thinking of calling you Nosy,” I told the cat as he hopped out of his open cage.

“Why Nosy?” Stanley asked. He was floating in the air, trying to cajole out the rainbow bird from its cage.

“My previous cat was called Nosy.”

“Makes sense,” Stanley said. “The cat has a nose, so the name is fitting!”

Nosy bounded across the room to stretch his legs and I took a look around, weighing my options. After my successful escape from the cage, I had regained my Abilities … but teleporting to Soul Eater didn’t seem to be a wise idea. Not only would I be leaving Nosy and Stanley behind, but I would also probably end up in a room full of thugs.

“Do you have any Ability that can incapacitate Yorg’s men?” I asked Stanley. I knew he had some sort of flight Ability as well as Bard’s Blessing, neither of which would be overly useful for us.

Stanley was about to reply when his bird broke free, flapping its rainbow feathers wildly and flying a panicked circle around the small room. It found no way out, so it settled on the top of the wooden cage—where a glob of flaming spit struck its back immediately. The cage shuddered again, the burning bird dropped to the ground, Nosy pounced on it, and I tacitly turned away as the cat tore into the bird’s neck.

“Fine,” Stanley grumbled. “I didn’t really want a pet bird anyway.”

He floated a bit higher, sitting with his legs crossed. It felt a bit weird to talk to someone who was defying gravity so effortlessly, but I supposed his casual display of flight could be compared to my casual use of Soul Eater. Shifting the black metal’s shape was just so fun, not to mention useful, that I didn’t even care that testing its powers was exactly what the Inspectors wanted me to do.

“I don’t have much that would help us leave unseen,” Stanley told me. “I don’t have any offensive Abilities either. Not even something that might incapacitate those bad guys quickly.”

“What do you have, then?” I asked.

“Why, talent and a honeyed voice, of course.”

“Dammit, Stanley … I think you’re my new role model.”

“Woah, that’s a high praise! Thank you!”

“Would you consider singing on my funeral?”

“Now, now, let’s save the sarcasm for later,” Stanley said. “I’m a support Player, so I might be able to help you out. What can you do, Mr. Mad Painter? Paint with their blood?”

“Nah,” I said, averting my eyes. “I’d like to avoid fighting them, if possible.”

It was only wishful thinking, I knew. The sinking feeling in my stomach told me that I might not have a choice in this, that this might end with someone’s blood getting spilled. And the funniest thing about it? It wasn’t even losing my life I was afraid of. I knew I wouldn’t die. No, what scared me the most was that I would feel nothing but cold certainty as I massacred Yorg’s men, that the slaughter at Gingerhome was an ill omen about what I was going to become.

I imagined that my Inspector was rubbing her hands together at the moment, gleefully assured that we wouldn’t escape without resorting to violence. Was there anything I could do about it? Not without more information. I didn’t know how deep within Yorg’s base I was, or how many members of the Black Moon we would need to sneak by.

“Hey,” Stanley said, his voice soft. “We’ll do our best, alright? If we do our best and it still comes down to kill or be killed, it’s not our fault, right?”

“Sure,” I said, not really meaning it. Perhaps my conscience would be cleaner if I blamed the Inspectors for everything, but if I did that I would be admitting that I was nothing more than a puppet. I shook my head and walked over to Nosy, who seemed to be done with his meal and was currently licking the blood off his fur. He looked up at me with his bright crimson eyes as I knelt next to him.

“Listen, buddy,” I told him, “we’re going to make a run for it any moment now. It will be dangerous, and you’ll need to stay close to us or else they might just capture you again. Got it? Just follow us until we’re out of here. Breathe if you understood me and clap your paws twice if you didn’t.”

Nosy stared at me for a moment longer, then moved closer and rubbed his back against my leg.

“I take this as an agreement,” I said. “Also, I’m going to scratch you between ears now. Don’t freak out.”

I sunk my hand into the soft, flame-red fur at the back of Nosy’s head. His hair was really warm—hot, almost. I petted Nosy gently and he seemed to be enjoying it, pressing himself further into my palm as he purred. Cats were cats, apparently, even if this one was able to spit fire.

> Pet acquired: Nosy

I waved my collar’s projection away with a flash of annoyance.

“The Inspectors try to ruin our relationship with system messages, but I won’t let them,” I told Nosy, rubbing his head some more.

“Pets can be really useful, though,” Stanley said, floating past my head while hanging upside down. “I met a tamer once who had like five or six animals. He could do some really cool stuff with them.”

“Nosy can already do cool stuff by himself,” I said.

“Yeah, sure,” Stanley said, flipping over in the air. “What I’m trying to say here is that you should check your collar. Perhaps you received something that would help us escape.”

I wanted to object and to tell Stanley that I didn’t need powers from the Inspectors … but I knew it would have been narrow-minded. Fighting down my distaste, I opened my collar’s screen and flicked through the tabs until I found Nosy’s entry under the Company menu.

> Nosy, elemental panther

> Description: As one of the last remaining members of his species, Nosy is a rare feline born at the ley lines of the Southern Desert. His magical affinities allow him to take on the properties of six elements: fire, water, earth, air, metal, and wood. Like most elemental beasts, he enjoys an extraordinarily long lifespan and never stops growing during his lifetime.

> Perk – Animal Conduit:

> You can cast your Abilities through Nosy as if he was yourself. This perk doesn’t have any levels.

“This thing says that you’ll become fat,” I told Nosy, who seemed to be enamored with the holographic display, batting a paw against it. I flicked to a different tab, and he jumped a bit in surprise before going back to poking at the screen.

“Nothing that could help us escape?” Stanley asked, floating above me to peek at my screen.

“Not unless Nosy can escape on his own,” I said, standing up with a sigh. “We’re left with plan B, then.”

“Plan B?”

“Walk out through that door and hope for the best,” I said. Either we had to sneak out unseen, or walk through Yorg’s base while acting like we belonged. Confidence was key, I knew, but even with confidence it would be difficult to pull this off. Stanley wore only a pair of shorts, and I didn’t look much better either.

I picked up Nosy – a bundle of warmth against my chest – then walked to the door and pressed down on its handle, finding it terribly pleasing that it opened effortlessly. I didn’t want to admit to Stanley that I kinda forgot about the possibility of the door being locked.

Nosy fidgeted in my arms as we stepped out to the hallway, my bare feet cold against the stone. Distant cheering and yelling belied the emptiness of this place. The long corridor had multiple closed doors on either side of it with sparsely placed flickering magic lamps. I couldn’t even call them magic lamps, truly; I could see that the runes which provided the light were carved directly into the wall itself.

“I’ll scout ahead,” Stanley whispered, then flew down the corridor. Seeing this, Nosy wiggled himself out of my grasp and stalked after him.

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“We’re so busted,” I mumbled, walking after the two of them; a flying half-naked man and the most brightly-colored cat I had ever seen. They stopped at the end of the corridor, peeking around the corner cutely—well, Nosy did it cutely, Stanley not so much.

When I reached the corner and saw what they were looking at, my mood soured even further. Brightly lit large room with high ceiling, many tables and chairs, and many people. Some kind of small warehouse that had been turned into a bar, it seemed like. I saw no windows however, which led me believe that we were beneath ground level. Whether that was true or not, our motley team certainly wouldn’t be able to sneak through the bar unseen.

“Follow me,” I told Stanley as I scooped Nosy up again. “On the ground, please.”

I walked out into the open with Stanley in my heels, and was pleased to see that the people in the room didn’t immediately pulled their knives on us. The room was indeed large with multiple doors all around, but I had no time to hesitate. I headed for the one farthest from the counter, where a bald barkeeper with prosthetic arms was mixing drinks for a customer. Some of the men sitting by the door eyed us as we walked by, but they didn’t say a word as I opened the door and entered.

The noise of the cheering people immediately doubled, which was a clear sign that I hadn’t chosen doors correctly. But the patrons were already giving us odd looks, so I walked in—and found myself in an underground fighting pit.

Nosy anxiously twisted his head around as we found dozens of people with their backs to us watching the large, circular cage down below. A two-headed gorilla was trading punches with a Noruk man, the bare chest of the rhino-man riddled with bruises. The men and women who watched the fight had yet to notice us, but it was obvious that we wouldn’t be leaving Yorg’s base this way.

“I knew they had larger beasts too,” Stanley said, following me as I turned back. I couldn’t get very far, because two of the men who had been sitting near the door were now standing in the doorway, blocking our exit. Both of them looked as if they could bend me in two with a single hand.

“Out of the way!” Yorg’s deep voice boomed from behind, but when I turned back in fright, I saw only Stanley. Nevertheless, the two goons recognized the voice too and I used their hesitation to push through, re-entering the bar.

I headed for another door, but this time the tension in the room was palpable. Fifteen or so patrons and the barkeeper, all looking at us with animosity and distrust. A women with a shaved head and a pair of swords at her hips stood up when we got to the middle of the room, barring my way.

“Looking for something, gents?”

“Yeah, we’re looking for the way out,” I said. “We should tell Yorg that Roach failed to retrieve Soul Eater.”

“The—what?” the woman asked, caught off-guard by my second sentence. It didn’t matter much, because I had no time to talk my way out of this; from the corner of our eyes, we saw that the bartender pulled out a rifle from under the counter.

“Catch,” we said, tossing Nosy into the woman’s face.

She yelled as the feline clawed at her, we teleported Soul Eater into our hand, the barkeeper fired, but we managed to duck under the ray of decay that he shot at us. We whipped Soul Eater at him, flinging the black dagger across the room and hitting the bartender’s neck. As the bartender dropped to the ground, Stanley flew up to the ceiling and all the other patrons jumped to their feet. The bald woman tore Nosy off her face and reached for her swords, but we bore down on her, striking at her jugular with the edge of our palm. As she staggered back from the strike we grabbed her head with both hands and snapped her neck.

Part of us felt dismayed, but we had no time to be sentimental; killing the woman didn’t take more than two seconds, but the closest patrons were already on us. A tattooed man swung a knife at our face but we leaned out of the way, grabbing his arm with one hand and punching his face with the other. We left a Mark of Replacement on his face as we broke his nose, then spun around him, kicking the man behind him in the chest to create some space. One of the patrons sprang toward us with an impossibly long jump – his movements enhanced by his mechanical limbs – and we avoided him by rolling across a table and landing on our feet on the other side. Ten seconds. That was how much time we needed to teleport Soul Eater again. The man with the mechanical limbs grinned savagely as he easily tossed the table aside and lunged, throwing a punch at our chest. We swapped places with the man we had marked, finding ourselves at the edge of the crowd with a hand at our nose, watching the man fly across the room from the impact of the punch.

While the members of the Black Moon gaped confusedly, we teleported Soul Eater to our hand and shaped it into a sharp sword. The first man didn’t even know what hit him; we stood in just the right angle to behead him with a single, clean strike. The next man barely had time to turn around before we split his throat open, and we advanced on the third who hastily raised a sword that he clearly didn’t know how to use. We cut his hand off but didn’t have time to kill him, because someone else lunged at us from behind. We whirled around and grabbed his wrist mid-swing, then ducked under his arm and disemboweled him as we stepped past him to move on to our next opponent. Maintaining our momentum was more important than properly finishing off everyone.

> Congratulations, your level has increased!

> Level 10 reached.

No essence left the bodies when they died, but we had our fill nevertheless. More men burst through the door that led to the fighting pit, but Stanley was distracting many of them and Nosy was doing his best too, darting under tables and setting clothes on fire. The rest of them we were able to handle, though only barely. We had to rely on our teleportation multiple times to avoid getting overwhelmed. Knives, daggers, skeletal and mechanical fists—all wielded with subpar skill. What concerned us more was getting exhausted … and also the rifle.

A woman picked up the bartender’s rifle and fired a ray of decay at us. We evaded it narrowly by grabbing one of the men who tried to stab us and used him as cover. The man screamed as his hair fell out and his skin began to rot, but we kept him in place, flinging Soul Eater over him, toward the woman with the rifle. We timed our teleportation to the moment when Soul Eater flew past our opponent, and so we appeared on top of her and finished her off as we tumbled to the ground.

The remaining patrons caught on quicker this time, trying to catch us as we rolled back to our feet. The room was getting messier, making it more and more difficult to keep the layout of our battlefield in mind. As we ducked around a set of broken tables, one of the patrons cast light magic from his palm at us—and though the light wasn’t blinding, it distracted us so that we stepped onto a shard of glass with our bare foot. We stumbled, and this moment of hesitation was enough for the man with the mechanical limbs to attack, bowling over two other men as he shot toward us with a burst of speed. Evading him was hopeless, so the best we could do was to duck under his punch and thrust Soul Eater straight through his chest. It did nothing to stop his momentum however, and the air was knocked out of our lungs as the man slammed into us, taking us both down to the ground.

Soul Eater had gone through our opponent’s body completely, at the very least. Ignoring the dying screams of the man on top of us, we twisted the black blade and formed a handle at its tip. We then teleported out from under the impaled man, landing in a crouch on his back. The handle was so slick with blood that we had to make the handle grab into our hand for a more secure grip. We shaped Soul Eater’s original handle into a blade at the same time, pulling the weapon out of the body.

> Congratulations, your level has increased!

> Level 11 reached.

Unsurprisingly, Yorg’s men grew hesitant to attack. They saw the blood dripping off our black blade and heard the pained groans of the wounded. We stood up straight and tall on the corpse, dismissing our fighting stance to assume a more confident posture. Our body was plagued by fatigue and we had a cut on the sole of our foot, though we were able to stop the bleeding with minor mental effort. The glowing veins beneath our skin were clearly visible now. We lifted our blood-coated sword and rested it on our shoulder, then looked at the remaining men. One by one, slowly and measuredly, daring them to challenge us.

None of them did.

“What is it you’re fighting for?” we asked, our voice as cold and sharp as it could get. “Is it something worth dying for? Is it something worth getting butchered for, like pigs in a slaughterhouse?”

We waited for them to retort. None of them did.

“You’re nothing to us, mortals,” we said. “Nothing. Your lives are specks of dust on the grand canvas of the cosmos. Insignificant. Meaningless. So run, little insects, run if you value your pathetic lives—because we surely don’t.”

There was a beat of silence before they all burst into motion. Not everyone looked as afraid of us as we hoped they would be, but none of them thought it wise to stay either; they fled through whatever door they could find, carrying the injured with them. We waited patiently for them to be gone, standing still until our eyes began to water. Annoying. Acrid smell filled the room as the chairs continued to burn, smoke mixing with the smell of blood.

“Holy hell, mate,” Stanley said, peeking over the upturned table that he had used as a cover. “That was one of the best evil-guy speeches I’ve ever heard.”

I looked at the wrecked room, at the corpses and at the horrid amount of blood, blood that I was drenched in—and I threw up at my feet. My stomach was almost completely empty, but I couldn’t stop heaving, because even if I closed my eyes the smell of blood remained.

“No,” I groaned, dropping to my knees. “I should have stayed in the cell.”

I didn’t want this. This wasn’t my doing. I didn’t really—it wasn’t me who killed those people. Not me. Why did I feel so … satiated? I hadn’t wanted to do this. I hadn’t done any of this. I wished I could make it stop somehow. I wished I could forget.

“Hey,” Stanley tried to pat our shoulder, but we slapped his hand away.

“We can deal with the annoying emotions later,” we said, getting to our feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Oh—right,” Stanley said, casting a worried glance at us. We transformed Soul Eater back into a dagger, then wiped our hands on a dead man’s shirt and teleported our dagger to clean it as well. Nosy ambled forward, skirting around pools of blood and hopping over the corpses nimbly. We turned around, trying to decide which way to go.

“We should have asked one of them—” Stanley began, but his sentence was cut short as one of the doors burst open and Roach strode into the room. He stopped short, his face darkening as he took in the scene in front of him.

“What a pity,” he said around the cigar in his mouth. “Seems like you’re going to lose more than just a few fingers.”

The cigar’s smoke swirled and grew as it coalesced into a solid spear in Roach’s hand, and we got ready for our second round of combat.