The girl with the giant black axe’s eyes widened when she saw Joshua. Saw that it wasn’t Joshua, but her own face looking back at her.

Sin turned its head around a hundred and eighty degrees, looked at Joshua-as-the-girl, then the-girl-as-Joshua, huffed as though unimpressed, and went back to pecking at the door.

“Hey,” Joshua said cheerfully, his voice sounding like the girl’s, “I’m even more handsome than I realized.”

He looked down at himself. He was… more shapely. “Wow. This is weird.” He tentatively touched his chest, but even though he should have felt armor, he only felt a blood-stiffened t-shirt and his own chest underneath.

“So it’s an audio-visual-only illusion. What a letdown.”

“What did you do!” she asked him in his own voice.

“Is that what I sound like? It’s kind of like Batman mixed with…” He tried to think of something flattering, but for some reason all he came up with was Kermit the Frog.

“Hey!” she snapped. This time the voice sounded more like Batman alone.

“Oh, sorry.” Joshua held up his wrist, the ring resting there above an illusory bracer. “I experimented.”

“Fix it!”

“Uh, I’m not sure how to—”

But even as he thought it, the effect reversed, and they both appeared as they should.

She glared at him. “What was that from? How did you get it to work on someone a rank higher than you?”

Joshua shrugged and pointed at the ring on his wrist, realizing she might not have noticed it the first time. “It’s from this. Ring of Deception. I was just testing it out.”

“Illusions.” She considered this. “Do you want to sell it?”

“Um, no?”

Based on the look she gave him at this, he thought she might attack him.

Eventually she just shook her head and went back to examining the door.

He tried to use the ring again, this time on Sin, but his guide told him it was depleted. It didn’t tell him how long it would take to recharge, nor whether he had to do something to recharge it or if it would recharge on its own.

He watched the girl examining the door. Now he was even more intimidated by her. Was she going to kill him for his ring? Maybe he should have sold it to her. Or maybe she would have killed him anyway.

He again wondered if she was evil.

He was pretty sure his Identify spell was responsible for telling him about the slave overseer in the loot message, so he cast it now on this girl.

[Unknown]

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“Well that’s not very—”

She spun on him so quickly that he let out a shout of surprise. “What did you just do?” she growled.

“Uh, you could feel that?” Even as he asked it, he remembered something similar happening with the Attractive Wolf.

“Yes!”

“I was just inspecting you.” He frowned. “Not like that. Not visually. Not that you’re not worthy of a visual inspection. That’s just not what I was doing.” He quickly changed the subject. “That was one mightily evil-looking axe. Are you evil too?”

She stared at him for so long that he thought she wouldn’t answer, but finally she spoke. “Too?”

“Like your friend,” he said, testing a theory. “Sorry about her by the way, even though I didn’t kill her.”

“What friend?” she snapped, the midnight bracer flowing off her forearm and once again forming into a giant axe.

“Whoa, calm down.” He held up his hands, then pointed at the covered body. “Her.”

She scoffed, axe becoming a bracer once more. “She’s not my friend. I would have killed her myself if you hadn’t beaten me to it.”

“Again, wasn’t me.” Joshua was relieved to find out she wasn’t a slaver. “But I’m guessing that means you’re not looking to exact revenge on me by plying me with alcohol, waiting till I pass out to take advantage of me in my sleep and then remove vital parts of my body?”

She stared at him for several long seconds, her mouth slightly open, eyebrows lifted. “That is a very specific scenario,” she finally said. “And it worries me that you thought of it at all.”

“I blame social media.”

“Social… media?”

“So what is it exactly you’re doing here?” he asked, ignoring her confusion.

“I could ask you the same.”

“Go ahead.”

“What?”

“Ask me what I’m doing here. You know what, I’ll save you the trouble. I’m trying not to get my intestines messed with.”

“The intestine thing again.”

“Yep. Your turn.”

It was her turn to ignore him, returning her attention to the door.

“Come on, spill. Are you some secret assassin come to claim the throne of the queen by bedding the prince and getting pregnant with his baby?”

She stopped what she was doing to stare at him. “That is…” She suddenly laughed, a short burst, then schooled her face, a scowl appearing on it. “What is wrong with you?” She couldn’t stop another laugh coming out at the end.

“You want to know my biggest problem? What is really messing me up?”

She nodded slowly.

“I don’t know why you’re here. Or your name, for that matter.”

She grunted. “Fine.” She turned back to the door. “My name is Kera Jyn Xylsie. I’m here to rescue my brother, Veld.”

“Wow, your brother’s name is easier. I’ll just call you Kera.”

She glanced at him. “You want to call me by my birthplace? You are stranger than I thought.”

“Kera’s where you were born? Oh, is it like a Chinese or Korean thing? You kind of do look like an anime girl.” He cocked his head in thought. “Though I guess that’s Japanese. You look more like a pale, blonde Middle Easterner with Asian eyes. Is that because of the two suns? Do they not give off UV rays?”

“Have you been hit on the head recently?” she asked him slowly.

“Actually, I think I have. But don’t worry, this charm is all me. So what should I call you? Xylsie, I’m guessing?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m— Oh, I already told you my name.” He frowned. “Maybe I did hit my head.”

“You… just said you did.”

He shrugged. “Meh, I feel fine. So, what are you rescuing your brother from?”

She stared at him for several long moments before answering. “I do not know. Not for certain. All I know is he was taken by a group of rogue Sages who appear to be using slaves to produce something. I would speculate joy shards. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“That’s kind of ironic. Slaves making joy shards.”

“Are you going to stand there talking nonsense all day or are you going to help me with this door and finding my brother?”

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”

“At worst you can at least provide a distraction. You seem very good at that.”

“I’d rather get out of here.” He sighed. “But I guess you’re not going to leave your brother, and I’d feel bad just leaving you by yourself.”

“Does that mean you’ll help?”

“I guess it does.”

New Quest: [Her Brother’s Keeper]

Aid Xylsie in finding and rescuing her brother from the clutches of the rogue Sage slavers.

Reward: Shards

“Oh yay,” he said without enthusiasm, “another quest.”