On the day after I received my new Quest, I didn’t know what I was doing. Literally. I had woken up unusually early and felt a strange urge to go to the World Seed. Shade shenanigans, most likely, but we were fine with it because we knew that this was necessary. Better just to get over with it than to fight it.

I walked along the main avenue of the upper ring, listening to the whirring sounds of my mechanical leg. I was limping a bit. Not much, but lifting my metallic leg properly was tiring and so my form was sloppy. I supposed I just needed more time to get used to my new leg.

In spite of the slight limp, I felt surprisingly fine. Physically, at least. I knew that amputees often suffered from phantom sensations in their missing limbs, but I hadn’t experienced anything like that. No itches, no pain. I suspected that the mysterious healing factor of Players had something to do with it.

It was a subtle thing that I hadn’t noticed before, but ever since I had become a Player I had never once gotten sick and my allergies weren’t bothering me either. I didn’t remember seeing any ill Players for that matter, though admittedly I didn’t bother to meet many of them. Devi was actively meeting up with Players though, so perhaps she would be able to confirm my suspicions. It seemed logical in hindsight; the Inspectors wouldn’t want their precious test subjects to sneeze and wheeze during all that dungeon delving and boss battling. They wouldn’t want us to miss a Quest just because we caught a cold.

“I wonder if I could exploit this,” I mumbled. Perhaps I wouldn’t need to buy a winter coat anymore? Then again, I wasn’t even sure what winters in Fortram looked like. Would it even snow here? Oh—and what if this sickness immunity meant that I could eat anything? Perhaps I wouldn’t even get a stomach ache if I ate too much. So far I had been too afraid to try those Avarii dishes, but my fears might have been unfounded.

While I fantasized about eating anything and everything, a skeletal mail-dog almost bumped into me as it ran past my legs. Bleach white bones held together by purple light at the joints, the creature moved very energetically for something so obviously dead. It entered a gate further up ahead, running across a lush green garden toward a mansion. The building was one of the weird ones; it lacked the embellishments that most mansions around here had, looking like a small fort instead. An attractive fort with arching towers built from pearly white stone—but a fort nevertheless.

I stopped by the fence of the fort’s garden, taking a look at the group of skeletal servants trimming a row of bushes into shape. A Sylven man was overseeing their work, standing behind them stoically. Like a sergeant overseeing his soldiers. I found the sight funny, though the Sylven man didn’t share my opinion.

“What you look?” he asked, turning to me. His accented voice sounded quite young, and I realized that he had to be at about the age of a teenager.

“Your soldiers,” I said against my better judgment. The wise thing would have been to move on, but this Sylven teenager didn’t seem to recognize me. I noticed that he wore no Player’s collar behind the high collar of his flowing robes, which meant that he was one of the rare native Sylven.

“Not soldiers,” he said. “Slaves.”

“Quite a lot of them, I see,” I said. “Must be nice to be rich.”

I felt bad as soon as the words left my lips; there was no reason to be mean just because he was a male Sylven. I spent too much time with Devi, I supposed. Fortunately the teenager didn’t catch my sarcasm and took no offense.

“It is nice,” he said. “You may watch and wonder.”

“Thanks,” I said. I watched him turn his attention back to the skeletons, wondering whether I should push my luck and ask more questions from him. I had seen lots of skeletons already, but I didn’t know how their masters issued commands. Native humans were able to invest themselves with Necromancy taken from native Avarii, but other species and Players like me could control the magic only with the use of runes.

The teenager had a chain with multiple ceramic plates attached to his belt; if my suspicion was correct, each plate held a rune with a single command for the skeletons. Commands for trimming bushes, funny as it sounded. Necromancy’s greatest strength over Golemancy was that the creations retained some measure of intelligence from their past selves, and so it was quite possible to have the skeletons perform such complex jobs with as little as a dozen or so control runes.

But gawking at skeletons wasn’t why we came here, so we moved on toward the center of the city. Our destination wasn’t far, and we were getting impatient.

The World Seed looked like a grumpy old turtle in the morning sun, its dull gray color unaffected by the morning’s vibrancy. My urge to stop and stare was squashed as we moved forward, passing through the barrier of the Word Seed. Amber light shone from behind the cloudy ceiling of the dome, casting vague shadows on the large pile of gold coins in the middle of the abyssal black floor. An ugly yellow couch stood on the top of the pile and we climbed up to it unsteadily, our mechanical leg kicking coins everywhere. Ugh. Once we settled on the couch comfortably, we opened up our collar’s interface and navigated to the Abilities panel. The screen notified us that we had two unspent Ability points and five Abilities to choose from.

> Always Armed

> Teleport your equipped weapons anywhere onto your body. Your equipped weapons stick to any part of your body at will. Teleport cooldown decreases by level. Adhesive strength increases by level.

> Cloak of Darkness

> Blend into the shadows. Efficiency increases by level. Upkeep cost decreases by level.

> Dark Wire

> Summon a floating spool and materialize a sharp wire between the last two spools you created. Pull all spools toward you at will. Spool duration increases by level. Wire strength increases by level.

> Shadeform

> Become incorporeal when harm would befall on you. Triggers automatically. Number of uses increases by level.

> Seize

> Take another Player’s Ability by saying its name out loud. Number of seizable Abilities increases by level. Casting cost of seized Abilities decreases by level.

We gave the descriptions a once-over, then selected the entry of Shadeform and confirmed our choice.

“What the—” I said, jolting upright. “No, no, no! I can’t do that!”

“We can and we did,” we said, opening the details of our new Ability. A terrible sinking feeling gripped me at this apparent loss of control, but I wasn’t able to stop myself from reading the description.

> Shadeform, level 1

> Description: Become incorporeal when harm would befall on you. Triggers automatically. Number of charges increases by level.

> Cost: 1 charge

> Cooldown: Restore all charges at night, when the Moon is the highest up on the sky.

> Number of charges: 1/1

“Guys,” I tried again, teleporting Soul Eater to my hand to look down on it. “What— What are you doing? How are you doing this? You can’t just make me pick an Ability! I’ve been saving my Ability points for a reason!”

“You’re an idiot,” we said to ourselves. “You insist on using a knife in a gunfight only because you hate the inventor of guns.”

My jaw fell open. This—what was I doing? Had I just insulted myself?

“One would think that getting stuck in a dagger is bad enough,” we said as we tossed Soul Eater behind our back, “but giving that dagger to someone who is so bent on dying? That joke is just way too cruel, even by our standards.”

“It’s strategical,” I protested, twisting around to look at Soul Eater at the bottom of the hill. At least it wasn’t moving on its own. “You’re playing into the Inspector’s hand when you do this!”

“Yeah, whatever, smartass.”

That sounded way too much like something I would have said, and it was me saying it, so it left me confused for a moment. Was I going crazy? The description on Soul Eater did say that a possible side-effect is schizophrenia. But then … there were shades inside Soul Eater. People-possessing wraiths. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that they were the cause of my recent madness.

I started to panic. We tried to calm ourselves, but I noticed the unnatural change in my attitude and that just unnerved me even more. It was happening, wasn’t it? Was this what Tamara had felt? I was losing control, and I was barely even aware that I was losing it. We gritted our teeth, doubling over as we felt a sudden wave of sickness, almost falling off the couch. Enough! Enough negative feelings. With some effort we slumped back down to the couch, forcing ourselves to relax.

“A-Alright,” I said, my voice shaking. “Alright. Give me a moment.”

I had already known that the shades took control more often than I realized. Devi had warned me more than once. I hadn’t taken her seriously though—and why would I have? I felt like myself. I always felt like my lousy self. No, no. We weren’t lousy. We had our peculiarities, but we were capable of achieving great heights. Yeah, I could do this.

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“First off,” I said, raising a finger. “We won’t speak about this to anyone. Alright? The last thing I need right now is rumors about the Mad Painter’s split personality.”

“There are already rumors about that,” we said.

“Secondly,” I moved on, ignoring my comment. “Do you—”

“You don’t have to speak out loud,” we interrupted ourselves. “We can read your thoughts anyway.”

“Wonderful,” I said with a gulp. “So you can read my mind, but I can’t read yours. Shades, Inspectors, Devi … everyone is just having a nice time in my head. Makes me feel like my thoughts are public property.”

I sat silently for a while, waiting for myself to answer. It was awkward.

“Aren’t you going to reply?” I asked.

“Merging with you takes energy,” we said. “Remember that feeding Soul Eater part on your weapon’s description? The more we talk to you, the more often we’ll need to kill someone. Would you like us to kill someone?”

“No,” I said, groaning. “I just—okay. Okay. Maybe we could feed you chickens? Or those six-legged rabbits that are the chickens of this world. I’m not vegetarian, so I’d be fine with that.”

I waited patiently, but I said nothing.

“Are you vegetarian?”

Still nothing.

“Crap,” I said. “Does this mean—wait! So every time I train with Devi, I’m draining your energy?”

“Training our physical body is important for our survival,” we said. “Answering your questions isn’t. The same goes for your jokes.”

Figures. The shades were jerks and they lacked my sense of humor too. I let out a laugh, though I quickly stopped as I realized how odd it sounded. Unhinged, even to my own ears. I would have to kill with Soul Eater again, wouldn’t I? It put my training sessions in quite a different perspective. I scrunched my eyes shut, taking a deep breath. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think.

“Okay, now what?”

I felt conflicted. On one hand, I was terrified that the shades would take over my facilities. But on the other hand, I wanted them to talk to me. Why hadn’t they said something much sooner? It was the second shade that made this possible, I suspected. Now that they outnumbered me two to one, it was easier for them to take control. Except … if the shades needed energy to manipulate me, could I just starve them by not killing anything with Soul Eater? And now they knew that I knew. Unless … maybe they had lied about being able to read my thoughts?

“We don’t lie,” we said.

Bummer. Alright, I wasn’t going to starve them anyway. Too risky. The last thing I needed was hurting someone I knew just because the shades felt hungry. Figuring out how to feed Soul Eater could wait, however. I really didn’t want to think about the implications right now.

“So … what am I doing here?”

Sure, the World Seed was probably the best place to hide from all the other shadebound Players who would come to kill me, but I didn’t want to spend my entire life in this room. It wouldn’t work anyway, because of my collar’s inactivity counter.

I gave Seedy’s barrier a longing look; if I left this place now, I would arrive home by the time Devi finished her morning run. I needed her. I could spend the rest of the morning with her—but no, we didn’t want to leave just yet. Okay, okay. So I had come here for a reason. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what that reason was.

“You want me to buy some armor, don’t you?”

I felt another wave of discomfort as I said those words. I was selling my soul piece by piece. The shades could force me to do anything, and there was nothing I could do about it. I would be buying armor for myself on one day, then slaughter people on the next to level up. It dawned on me that my life wasn’t my own; I was at the shades’ mercy just as much as the Inspector’s. I shivered. We sighed in annoyance, then waved our hand to open the World Seed’s Shop window.

“Stop panicking and just focus on what you’re good at,” we said, opening the armor section.

“I’m … good at something?” I asked, staring dumbly at the screen.

“Creativity.”

I froze, taking a few moments to consider their words.

“That’s such a cliché though,” I said. “Humans are the weakest species, but that’s fine because they’re the most creative? Or wait—are you calling me creative only because I’m an artist?”

“No,” we said. “Shades have no creativity at all. Why do you think we’re called shades?”

“Oh,” I said, pausing for a moment. “Okay, sorry. At least you’re honest.”

It surprised me how willingly they admitted that they didn’t have creativity. Could I use this information against them? That was only a rhetorical question of course. There was no way I would want to use anything against my dear mind-reading shades. Besides, it made sense for us to share this information with ourselves. This way we could bring out the most of this body and mind, and we could easily stop ourselves from divulging this secret anyway.

“Alright,” I said. “So you want me to think out of the box and choose an armor for myself. Can I assume that you’ll veto my choice if I select something too stupid?”

We felt proud. We weren’t a complete idiot, after all! It made me feel weirdly conflicted. Was I turning into a narcissist?

“This is crazy,” I said. “Even by Mad Painter standards.”

I looked at the screen of the Shop that hovered within arm’s reach, holographic models of armor sets taunting me with their wide variety. For a moment I had the urge to go and ask Imaya for advice, but then I realized that wasn’t what I actually wanted. It wasn’t even what the shades wanted. If I had to play this stupid game, I would play it the way I wanted.

“First off, I want something that lets me keep my signature paint-stained shirts and shorts,” I said, speaking out loud. We knew that we didn’t have to actually utter those words, but I didn’t care. “I like to be underestimated, you see. I find it an excellent way to surprise all the bad guys out there—but, I guess you already knew that, huh? Because you’re in my nice and cozy head-space. I’m not mad about that, by the way. Don’t let my feelings deceive you!”

I struggled a bit with the Shop’s interface as I tried to search for armor that fit my criteria, but eventually I gave in and bought a smart filter for a few thousand credits. With the help of the filter, I found some promising items right away.

> Transparent knight armor set

> A set of heavy armor that comes with sophisticated enchantments to make its weight feel like nothing. For all intents and purposes, it will appear as if the Player isn’t wearing armor at all.

The holographic image beneath this bundle displayed only the outline of the five parts of the armor; protection for the head, chest, legs, hands, and feet. I highly doubted though that it would feel as if I wore nothing; judging by the size of that chest piece I would have to give up on ever being able to scratch my back. This invisible armor concept didn’t look terribly exciting to me anyway, so I scrolled past the Transparent thief and Transparent mage armor sets to take a look at the next bundle.

> Druid’s organic armor set

> A set of hardwood armor that can be redesigned by the Player anytime. It can be grown to suit any armor type.

The armor set didn’t come with a helmet – many of the armor sets didn’t, actually – but it had a pair of plant-like shoulder pads that fit into the head slot on the collar’s Equipment tab. Even I could tell it was a strange game design. A short looping animation showed me that all the other pieces of the armor could be retracted to those shoulder pads, leaving me in my ordinary clothes except for the weird plants growing on my shoulders. Hard pass from me—there was no way I’d wear that all the time. Although … I had to admit that the entire armor set looked really interesting. Imposing, even. Twisting vines and rich wooden colors blended together through intricate, mesmerizing patterns. I looked over to the Storage window to retrieve my sketch pad—

But then we turned back to the shop and scrolled further down on the list of armor sets. One of the shadebound Players was already near our location, and we knew that we had no time to waste. Now, if we could only just find the right bundle—wait, why was I thinking in terms of complete armor sets? Sure, the matching pieces probably gave some nice bonuses when they were worn together, but cherry-picking the pieces could work too.

I spent some time refining my search filters until I found a piece of armor that looked promising.

> Vambraces of armor swapping

> Weak leather armor that allows the Player to switch between two sets of clothing instantly.

Pressing the purchase button cost me an unreasonable amount of credits, but I did it anyway. Tendrils of smoke broke off from the ceiling to gather in front of me. They turned into a pair of vambraces made of dark – almost black – leather with orange highlights painted along the seams. I snatched the items out of the air and fastened them onto my forearms one after the other, then pulled the long sleeves of my shirt over them. They fit me perfectly, of course. According to the Equipment tab of my collar, the vambraces occupied the hands slot of my Player clothing.

> Vambraces of armor swapping

> Description: Weak leather armor that allows the Player to switch between two sets of clothing instantly.

> Armor rating: 2

> Resistance: 0

> Durability: 100

> Perks: Armor-swapping, Extra-dimensional storage

I got up from the couch, then focused on my vambraces and thought about swapping armor sets—and my clothes disappeared instantly. All of them. I stood completely naked except for the pair of vambraces on my arms and my prosthetic leg.

“Nice,” I said, looking down at myself. I felt a bit chilly. “What do you guys think? Would Devi like this?”

My chest and arms had a little more muscle definition than usual from all the training and sparring, though I was still quite thin. But if I flexed my stomach I could actually see the beginnings of a six-pack! Yeah, maybe I was turning into a narcissist. I directed a thought at the vambraces to go back to my original clothing, and suddenly I was wearing them again. Next, I switched to nude-mode again. Then clothed, then nude again.

“Nice,” I said, switching between clothing modes constantly while turning my collar’s projection on and off rapidly at the same time. It was a good mental exercise, so I kept it up for a while. We felt impatient however, and this sudden surge of emotion brought me back to reality. I had passengers in my head, and they had no sense of humor.

“Okay, okay, I’m done,” I told the shades. “We can move on to the next piece of armor now. I’m thinking of something edgy; I have a feeling that it would give us an edge in our upcoming fights.”

My unwanted companions didn’t say anything, which I took as their tacit approval. I turned back to the Shop’s window, feeling—excited? No, that couldn’t be right. Shade influence again, perhaps. Deep down I could still feel the creeping dread, a dark and crawling sensation that gripped my heart and threatened to squeeze it. I pushed it back down. I had always been good at that. But what about this excitement? I had broken my own principles and plunged deeper into the intricacies of being a Player … and I enjoyed it. I almost felt glad to break my own rules, even though I was sure that I would regret it in the end.

“Yeah, I’m definitely going mad,” I mumbled, then got back to search for my ideal armor.