Their walk through the forest was relatively quiet.

The Olympians had nothing to say. Daniel led and they simply followed, while Zed and his group walked behind.

“Aren’t you the one who knows the way?” Shanine asked after a while.

“I found the exit,” Zed said.

“So why are they the ones leading?”

“Just because.”

Shanine frowned but said nothing.

Zed wasn’t exactly sure what she was getting at. They had an exit and they were making their way to it. Who was in the lead wasn’t very important.

Also, the Olympians weren’t moving as fast as he’d expected. They were slow, human slow. He wasn’t expecting them to be soaring through the forest at super human speed, but he remembered seeing Ronda clean a bead of sweat from her forehead.

How bad was the mana pulse?

They had taken a short detour led by Oliver to get Chris. He’d stashed her somewhere safe against a tree. She had recovered well enough to walk on her own but not very fast. So she leaned on Oliver as they moved, quiet as a hidden prey.

Ash kept stealing glances at her brother as they walked. Zed had taken one of the riot shields from a corpse seeing as it was practically his by conquest and quest reward.

He’d also gotten a few Aptitude points from the entire encounter, but he didn’t really care for them. A point increase here and there didn’t move him so much when equipping te axe in his hand gave him fifteen points in a single Aptitude.

“Do you think they like each other?” Shanine asked Ash, ducking under a really low hanging branch.

They could already see the exit from where they were. The trees opened up quietly to show a lit pat. It reminded Zed that the day was still bright, and that their darkness was nothing but the effects of the canopy of trees and the smoke from their crashed ship.

Ash was still watching Oliver.

“I can’t say,” she said. “They’ve been spending time together, and she’s been helping him learn how to handle his second specialization.”

“Your brother has two specializations?” Shanine asked, surprised. “I thought mages only had one.”

“They do. But every once in a while, there are mages who display more than one.”

“But why her? Is her specialization the same as his second specialization?”

“Before you answer that, Ash,” Zed interjected. “How do you know so much about mages, Shanine?”

Shanine stared at him. “Why does it always feel odd when you do the normal things?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you just pronounced my name properly and I’m suddenly worried.”

Ash chuckled lightly. “I know, right? It’s like things get very serious when he does something normal.”

Zed looked between the both of them. “You girls are acting strange.”

They left the confines of the forest and stepped into an open street. It was flanked by tall houses. They weren’t sky scrapers, and they didn’t look like the kind you would find in a business district.

They looked like residential buildings stacked on top of each other since there wasn’t enough space to build them side by side.

The word was on the tip of Zed’s tongue but he couldn’t seem to get it.

“The knowledge of mage specialization isn’t really a mage secret,” Ash said. “Anyone who decides to even accidentally listen to magical things would learn of it. And it’s not like there’s a secret to it.”

Zed nodded, only paying half-attention.

The road was tarred, though broken up so horribly that any other state could be considered better days for it. There were cars littering the streets, abandoned and forgotten. Some looked like they’d been abandoned for years and others looked more recently abandoned.

“What I would do for a decent meal right now,” Ronda groaned at the head of the group.

Zed wondered if it was simply because she missed the idea of eating or if it was because she was suddenly actually hungry.

Shanine and Ash were still chatting beside him. He got the basic content of their conversation but not much else. He wasn’t listening enough for anything in depth.

It seemed the mana pulse had left its victims quite human. Which, if he was being honest, he wasn’t too sure how he felt about.

Another thing that worried him was the Olympians ability to simply move on quite efficiently after losing so many people. They were intentional and precise. It was almost as if they didn’t need the time to acknowledge their grief.

Everything has its time. Even grief. And now is the time to survive not grieve.

The words came from a place that didn’t belong to a sixteen-year-old who had almost died just to wake up as a twenty-one-year-old.

Zed still wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about the other lives in his head.

Something exploded in the distance with enough force to shake the ground they were standing on. It was sudden and powerful.

Shanine started in shock and grabbed Zed’s arm while Ash immediately grew alert, looking ready to cast any spell she needed.

Oliver and Chris also grew alert while Festus simply turned his head in its direction.

The Olympians barely even flinched.

“I guess you got the timer right,” Kid commented.

“I figured since we were hit twice and were weak enough to lose so many men to them, we’d need more time than usual,” Daniel replied.

“Did you tell HQ?” Jennifer asked.

Daniel shook his head. “Comms were down. Nothing was working.”

“Oh.”

Ronda looked between the both of them with a touch of worry. “So HQ doesn’t know our current status?”

“If the suits successfully ping a feedback, they’ll know they’ve lost us,” Jennifer answered.

Kid walked up to one of the abandoned cars. It was an SUV and looked less abandoned than most of the cars. It had tinted widows and he had to put his head against the driver’s window just to see inside.

“I always say if you’re going to abandon your car, the least you can do is leave a way in,” he muttered, pushing away from the car.

“That’s a strange thing to say,” Zed told him.

Oliver was making his way over to the car. “Can’t be that bad?”

The car was dusty and covered in touches of green that Zed wasn’t sure was algae. With their new found interest in the car, everyone had practically come to a halt.

“Why are we stopping?” Shanine asked. “Shouldn’t we be worrying about the guys with enough firepower to knock a ship out of the sky?”

“I hate to say this, but the kid’s right,” Chris said.

“Not a kid,” Shanine muttered to herself.

Zed wanted to explain the fact that eighteen being a legal age in most places didn’t mean that at eighteen you suddenly stopped being a kid. In fact, he could argue that some twenty-year-old still fell under the category of kid.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

But he didn’t. He wasn’t much past the age of twenty. The second awakening had happened five years ago, and he had been sixteen when it happened. He was just a measly twenty-one.

He had no gain in pointing out age to kid ratios.

“I used to lift cars as a kid,” Kid was telling Oliver. “Trust me, there’s no getting into this one.”

Oliver gave him a look. “I didn’t picture you as someone who grew up in the slums, lifting cars to make some money. You don’t look the part.”

“And how does the part look?” Kid asked, curious.

“A bit more hardened,” Ash said, walking up to them.

Festus folded his arms over his chest. “I’m guessing the reason we’re all interested in the car is because we want to drive it. So can we work towards that and stop talking.”

A thought came to Zed’s mind and he excused himself from beside Shanine.

He hurried over to Festus.

“Do you still have your book of runes?” he asked, remembering that someone had told him that he hadn’t really lost it. Festus had simply taken it from him.

Festus looked up at him in a way that managed to look down on him. It wasn’t condescension, just simple superiority.

It felt as if now that he was weak, his body was forcing itself to remember that his rank stood above them all.

Could I take him in a fight right now?

The thought startled Zed as Festus reached into a back pocket and produced the book.

“Be gentle with it,” Festus warned. “Its gone through so much that I’m surprised its still alive.”

Zed took the book generously. He still wondered if he could take Festus. He thought about how the man had been tossing force spells so casually despite complaining about how he was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Zed’s core had also begun filling back up, but he still had a long way to go before it was full. Healing countless bullet wounds had taken far too much from him despite how much mana he had.

Taking on Festus even now would be impossible.

He flipped the book to a specific rune as Shanine came to stand beside him. At the car, Kid and Oliver continued to work.

“What do you mean hardened?” Kid asked Ash.

“Well its in the eyes. You’ve got the eyes of someone who’s killed a few people because you were told to, probably a side effect of being a soldier.”

“The eyes,” Kid snorted. “Next thing you’ll be telling me is that I have soft eyes.”

“Not soft.” Oliver tried the car door and it didn’t budge. “Just… innocent.”

Kid chuckled at that. “You know you’ve got innocent eyes, too. Right?”

“Mine’s the side-effect of having a baby face.” Oliver tried another door. It also didn’t open. “Trust me, you’ve got innocent eyes like Zed’s.”

Kid looked at Zed.

Zed ignored him as he studied the rune he was looking at then turned the page.

After his fight with the anti-mages, he’d gained a few things. Some were more factual, increased points to Aptitudes. Nothing too significant when you considered the fact that he had an axe that gave him plus fifteen from just being equipped.

The reason he wanted Festus’ book was because he thought he’d seen something he’d seen before when he’d been fighting through his pain a few moments ago.

While he flipped through the pages, slowly, Oliver got tired of trying car doors.

“So, did you grow up in the slums?” he asked Kid.

“Nah.” Kid shook his head. “Nothing that deep. I was just the spoiled rich kid who did stupid things because he thought it was fun. I didn’t really lift cars. I just broke into them and left them there.”

“Steal anything?”

Kid chuckled, then pointed at himself. “Rich kid, remember? If the second awakening didn’t happen I’d have ended up as a trust fund baby. Didn’t need to steal anything. You? Did you grow up in the streets?”

Oliver’s face took an uncharacteristic depth.

“Grew up in the projects. Ash and I had to scramble for food. The first few years as kids were tough.” He started doing something on the window. Working. “We begged around for what we could get, sometimes we stole. Nothing too big, though. A sausage here, biscuit there, some juice.’

He tried the door again and failed. Zed didn’t think he even noticed he was drawing attention now.

Chris looked at him with a pained and confused expression. Ash had a hand over her face. There was scarcely an Olympian, armed with their guns, that wasn’t paying attention.

“When I was old enough, I joined one of the gangs.” He peered inside the car again, trying to look through the tinted window. “It was one of the local ones. An easy gang, nothing too important. They were low level enough to not have gang wars, by high level enough to sell drugs. None of the good stuff, though.”

“You dealt drugs.” Chris looked in disbelief.

Oliver offered her a soft smile. “I did what I had to to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. Besides, it wasn’t anything deep. Just weed, that’s all.”

He tugged on the back door and driver’s door at the same time. None opened.

“Anyway, I started lifting cars later on and made more than enough money to start saving. Paid for my sister’s school and everything. Put her through college…”

Zed lifted his head from Festus’ book to look around. No one was watching their surroundings. So he flared his aura as far and wide as he could.

Oliver’s story came to an immediate halt, and everyone turned to look at him.

“What?” he asked. “I was just making sure no one’s close to us. Those guys could still be on our tail.”

“That was you?” Jennifer asked.

Zed opened his mouth to answer when he noticed something that made him stop. All the Olympians had their fingers in the trigger guards of their guns when they’d had it outside most of the time.

They were stiff as nails, tied up in overactive knots.

“How do you still have that much mana after what just happened?” Daniel asked.

Zed didn’t think he had much mana, though. His core wasn’t even a third full yet. In fact, it was also growing too slowly for his liking.

He shrugged in response.

“And why is your aura so…” Jennifer shivered physically. “Angry.”

“Angry’s not the word I’ll use,” Eitri said. “It just feels so violent.”

Ronda nodded. “I thought someone was about to tackle me to the ground and bash my head in with their bare hands.”

Zed winced. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It made him wonder how they would react if he had used [Bloodlust].

Hopefully, I won’t have to ever use it around them… Like my luck is ever that good.

“Anyway,” Oliver said, finally stepping away from the car. “That’s our story. Ash had to spend a minute or two working at a brothel, but it wasn’t long enough to matter.”

“Alright, that’s enough.” Ash let out an exasperated sigh. “I did not work at a brothel.”

Kid was confused. “You didn’t?”

“I didn’t,” she told him. “And we didn’t grow up in the projects or some slum. We grew up in a normal suburban area. We had two amazing parents who—we have two amazing parents who love us and sent us to school, all the way to college before this shit storm happened. Ollie over here has never had to beg a day in his life.”

Zed saw the moment Kid realized Oliver had been playing him for a fool. He looked betrayed, snitched on by a blood brother.

Oliver was laughing quietly. “How did I do, Zed?”

Zed didn’t look up from Festus’ book.

“Good,” he answered. “You could’ve gone a bit heavier on the gang side of things. It would’ve played to your advantage. I know it’s a story but you’ve got to put in more emotions, draw in your audience. Makes it hard for them to think of much else when they’re emotionally invested.”

What the hell am I talking about? Emotionally invested. Which of my memories was a con-artist?

“Also,” he added, turning another page. “You kind of slipped up when you dragged Ash into it. She’s your sister, so she’s supposed to take your side on matters like this. But she’s also a spoilsport sometimes, so you should have seen her betrayal coming.”

“So he was lying,” Ronda said. “And you guys knew.”

Daniel simply shook his head and turned his attention to their environment.

“Yea,” Chris said. “I don’t know where he learnt it, but you’ve got to admit that was pretty good. I almost started suspecting he has some deep meaning tattoo on his body somewhere even when I knew he was lying.”

Shanine leaned closer to Zed and he tilted the book a little to the side. He wasn’t keeping it a secret from her or anything.

He just knew what looking at a rune could do to a Beta mage. He didn’t want to find out what kind of effect it would have on a simple Awakened.

“You taught him how to lie?” she asked in a whisper while the others continued to talk and Festus waited for Zed.

“I told him an easy way to lie,” Zed corrected. “But I didn’t teach him. He picked it up quite well, don’t you think?”

Shanine nodded. “Do you think you can teach me? I already know how to lie, but I don’t think I’m believable when I start telling a story. I’m more of a body language liar.”

Her words were enough to make Zed stop looking through the book.

He took his time to look at her. “I don’t know what you went through when you were with madam Shaggy, but you know you’re among friends now, right? You don’t have to learn how to lie. You don’t have to lie.”

A few expressions went through her face, each one flickered like a phantom refusing to be born. After a while, it settled into something placid.

“Oh,” she said.

It was all she said.

Zed doubted the expression on her face was real but he couldn’t really tell. She looked as if she had just found out that she’d disappointed someone she didn’t want to disappoint.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. It could be a problem if he couldn’t trust even her own facial expressions.

But she had a point. She’d need to know how to lie. He had told her she was among friends but that had also been a lie. Because he didn’t think there’d be much in the way of friends if the Olympians found out she was going to likely end up being a blood mage.

“A poop mage would’ve been so much better,” he grumbled.

“What was that?”

He looked at Shanine and shook his head. “Nothing. Just allergies.”

He turned back to Festus and showed him a page on the book. There were three different runes on the page, and he tapped the one he was referring to with a finger.

At the car, Oliver was chuckling.

“I’m so sorry,” he was telling Kid. “It just happened and I really wanted to see if I could do what Zed told me. I was going to tell you the truth, I swear.”

“Maybe,” Daniel said, stepping up to them, eyes on everywhere else. “But you wasted our precious time, and we still don’t know if it was useful. Can you get the car running?”

“The keys are in the ignition,” Kid said. “We just have to figure out how to get the doors open.”

“Yea.” Oliver made a dramatic gesture. “That’s the easy part.”

“So how do we get in, Mr. story teller?” Eitri asked.

“It’s so simple I was shocked you didn’t think about it.”

Oliver stepped up to the car and shattered the window with his elbow. He reached inside and unlocked the door.

He held it open for them. “Tada!”

Ronda looked at Kid and shook his head. “I guess you can’t trust a rich kid to do bad things.”

“Hey!” Kid protested. “I was trying not to break too many things. I was going to do that… eventually.”

Festus looked away from them and down at the rune Zed was showing him. “What about it?”

“I just remembered seeing it in your book and wanted to know what it was,” Zed answered.

“Why?”

“Because I kept seeing flashes of it while I was fighting.”

Festus rubbed his jaw sagely. “That’s both surprising and unsurprising.”

Zed was confused. “Why?”

“It’s not surprising because you were in a proper situation to see it. It’s surprising because you can already see them.”

“Them?” Shanine asked.

Festus looked up at Zed but answered her. “Runes.”

“So what rune is it?”

Festus sighed and took his book from Zed.

“An annoying rune.” He slipped the book back into his pocket. “Can’t believe I still have that rune. It’s a cruel thing.”

“Monologuing but not telling me the answer. It’s like a bad fantasy novel.”

Festus glared at him and he raised his hands in defeat.

“I’m just saying,” he said, hands still raised. “Those guys are practically done with the car. We’ll be going soon. Just trying to know what the rune is.”

Fesuts sighed. “It’s a type of mind rune.”

“What’s it called?”

“A pain rune.”