“They bailed on us?”

“They didn’t bail.” Frederick rolled his eyes. “They thought we were going on Thursday, and we got a tagalong invitation to Saj Illyin’s end of summer party—”

Jason scoffed, “I don't know who that is.”

“The little sister of Kosto Illyin!?”

“I don’t know who that is—”

“It’s a Hedgewall party, man! Of course, they bailed on you when you don’t know jack shit about anything. I don’t even know why I’m not bailing on you. I should be going to that party instead of wading through Kobold traps …”

He huffed with gritted teeth and turned away.

Lemon fed his [Lesser Luck]. Subverting its purpose to include Lemon itself had been one of the first things he’d done, months ago, and the Skill told him they were on to something here.

At the same time, he fed him thoughts of the girl he liked. What would she think of a party like that?

Lemon wasn’t so sure himself. She was supposed to be a [Gossip] of some kind—the reputable kind, if that was possible. Maybe she would attend for her work? The truth mattered very little in the face of the boy’s doubts.

Frederick wanted to be worthy. It was a shame he didn’t know what that girl thought was valuable.

It only took a moment to prompt Jason into picking the topic up. Thanks to his [Lesser Resonance], the boy was far more receptive to his direct influences.

“I thought you were feeling ‘lucky’ about this one?” he said.

There was a certain push and pull to it, Lemon knew, though he was no expert. Some of his kin had garnered followers, and that had had its own kind of merit—heralding their divine work, finding meritorious mortals to join them, for a time, sharing the accounts of their deeds to all other spirits.

He couldn’t fault those of his siblings for their vocation. Yet, he had preferred… action over words. There was no need for conversation when the work began. Mortals tended to do as they were told when the alternative was death. And when death came for them all the same; well, the dead were past caring about broken promises.

“I thought you said we couldn’t do this alone?” Frederick shot back.

“We can’t! Not unless you want to waste money on potions of haste or something, I don’t see how us two alone can break through a Kobold camp in a day.”

But that had been before the Long Sleep. Even now, Lemon was … diminished. So it was with some impatient frustration, and a new appreciation for his siblings’ deeds, that he pushed and pulled on these children.

He dulled their thoughts, granted them insight, eased their aches, heated their ears, delayed their hunger until it came crashing down and they agreed to buy food together, made that food taste better, empowered their relief, their trust in him, their disbelief of every guard they saw on the streets, of every classmate they passed in the halls, enriched their appreciation for the coin they earned—under his guidance—and planted or cultivated every angry thought they had about one another, but made them look to one another for support.

Curses and blessings in equal parts.

… Sometimes, Lemon did other things, like make them trip, over their feet or over their words, or keep them up at night with intrusive thoughts—he hated it when they slept.

His power was so vast, it may as well have been infinite to them, but he could only feed a trickle of it out through the face-shaped bars of his prison. It meant he had to work every second he could. That could be exciting. Amusing …

Tedious, sometimes.

It was necessary. He had to prepare for what was to come and keep the children in line. If either of them handed him over to their guards, they would ruin everything and Lemon would lose his bet.

Besides, there was a certain matter of pride involved: he would not need a decade to get them to accept his blessing.

Every second, he filled them with his essence, enriching their spirits, influencing their bodies, minds, emotions, weaving webs that would last. Every second they didn’t resist him, their spirits acclimated to his influence.

Another year, and he will have finished his own rose gold web.

“We can buy potions of haste,” Frederick said. “We have the money. We’ve made more than enough with Lemon’s help—”

Lemon pushed on that thought. Him. His guidance.

“—actually, why don’t we ask him what he thinks?”

“Not in public. We’ve talked about this,” Jason hissed.

Some of the people in the plaza eyed their argument in passing. The city was busy enough that they weren’t causing a commotion, but they did interrupt the peace of the vine-covered dividers and benches near the fountain.

“You talked about it. Why are you so paranoid? Who cares? Plenty of people keep familiars in their backpacks—”

Familiar. The comparison stung. Lemon would have to punish him for that somehow.

“—or, better yet, we do buy him a summoning crystal. Lemon thinks he might be able to use one. Then he could be seen in public and fight alongside us. Two birds, one stone.”

Or maybe not. Lemon hadn’t even pushed on that thought. Frederick was beginning to look out for his interests on his own. How thoughtful. That should be rewarded.

“You want to give him legs?”

Frederick already had to look up to speak with Jason. Now, he pursed his lips and pushed his head back in disappointment. “That’s cruel, man. Even just not letting him talk is cruel. He’s a spirit—a person. He deserves the chance to speak, at least. Hasn’t he earned our trust by now? He helped you pay your tuition! Your family—”

“Shut up about my family already. It is nothing like yours.”

Lemon could feel the white-hot reaction that stirred in Frederick, and he pushed all his efforts into soothing it as quickly as he could.

Fighting was good, but if this argument boiled over, they would avoid each other for a few days and he would lose his last chance to be alone with them before they rejoined their peers.

Frederick might go to that party. Jason might spend his last few days with his family.

He leveraged all of the influence he had established, unraveling some of the few thin threads he’d already woven inside him, to temper his reaction from hatred to frustration.

Frederick sighed. “I know what it’s like. My parents struggled with money, too, but we have been making a small fortune together. You, and me, and Lemon. If you would just trust me—”

He reached for his bag—

—and Jason pulled away.

Hm.

Lemon would have to work on that. Somehow, despite spending more time with him—because Jason did not trust him with Frederick—the boy still resisted him. His initial distrust had taken a step back but never left him.

That was on him. Lemon should have made a better first impression.

Both of the boys wanted to leave and Lemon wondered how to fix that when— Something. He wasn’t even sure what it was. Jason perked up and looked into the distance. Lemon felt something, someone, enter the edge of his awareness. A girl and a boy about the same age as them.

Recognition dawned in Frederick’s mind, hope blossomed in Jason’s, and Lemon despaired because it had already been such a pain to get their last group of friends to bail on them.

And these didn’t feel as simple as their last group. The female one, in particular, was a glimmering jewel in his perception and he thought at first, Sorcerer?

She was sure to be magic resistant. In fact, her body was stuffed full of magic …

Lemon appraised Jason. Do I have to slaughter you?

He wasn’t so sure about the girl’s age anymore. He had only seen this kind of magic in the bodies of people a decade older than her in Hadica. If she was somehow in disguise; if Jason had ratted him out after all …?

But no, he found no such thoughts of betrayal in the boy, no emotions other than the joy of meeting his friends, and so Lemon kept an eye on his surroundings as he appraised the girl, gently.

He caught it, the barest hint of her vocation, the first line of her Path: [Of the Daughter Path].

The classmates reached Jason and they spoke, Fredrick introducing himself; Jason began to ask for help but Lemon was beyond caring.

He delved deeper. There were barely any wards against appraisal within her body. Why would there be? To have them would be a blatant sign that she had something to hide, and her body—Lemon was beginning to see the beauty of its craft.

One might be forgiven for thinking she was a potent sorcerer or even a simulacrum. If he used the bare minimum of his essence, he could ask her flesh, What are you? And it would answer him, Meat. But it wasn’t.

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It would take a dedicated diviner to pierce through that disguise, and she would surely notice any such attempts, guessing by how developed her mind was.

Well, Lemon didn’t care for that. He didn’t need to rely on that obvious silver web around them, either. He shut himself off from layer after layer of existence until all that remained were the quintessential truths of the world.

There, he found darkness. A ghostly outline of a city and its people. Hadica a cloud of dyes tinged with gold. Beyond it lay a void speckled with stars.

Most of the children in the plaza vanished. Jason and Frederick fared well only by virtue of Lemon’s essence. He gave their frames structure as a pole did to a vine. Otherwise, they looked nearly vimmic. Arrowhead forms with trailing wisps and wide eyes locked on the distance. [Adventurers].

The male classmate did surprisingly well for himself, too. Scales and feathers on a humanoid frame.

[Exemplarism Path]. How meritorious. Was he a builder of Classes?

But the female classmate—

Lisa.

Lemon savored her name.

Lisa had disappeared. Her ‘body’ barely contained any conceptual essences so it could not exist on this layer of reality. All that remained was a bloody heart hovering where her chest should have been. A ball of fur inside of it.

Lemon found whiskers. With a tender smile, he dove deeper until he saw her: scales coiled up into a tiny space. Rivers of life. And rivers of destruction. All distilled into a tiny spark.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up. Lemon shouted with a giddiness in the early morning. He had been giddy all night and all of yesterday even as the waves of rain slapped against Frederick’s window and that magical storm raged on over the city. He couldn’t savor its destruction. He couldn’t even continue weaving his web. Lemon could only think of one thing. One person.

How he wished he could have hitchhiked on Vim into yesterday, or an hour from now, just so he could see her again.

He leveraged his influence only to push Frederick out of bed, filled him with celerity so he would get to the guild building sooner, and then— Her.

She. Was. Beautiful.

Lemon needed her to know that. He needed her to. He shoved that thought into Frederick’s mind. Again, and again, and again.

Tell her that! Tell her that! Tell her!Tellher!Tellhertellhertellhertellher. I SWEAR TO HES I WILL GUT YOU AND WEAR YOUR SKIN IF YOU DO NOT TELL HER YOU WORTHLESS SACK OF MEAT.

“Hey, beautiful,” Frederick said.

haaah.

Lemon smiled. Today was going to be a good day.

She had to be of the Lady. He knew her Path said ‘Daughter,’ but this was the only explanation that made sense. Why else would she negotiate when she could tear the beasts limb from limb?

Lemon supposed there was something admirable about her attempt to bring allies to her side. These beasts even reminded him of some of the lesser spirits of the olden days. He remembered a Spiderwolf, though he didn’t know if it had survived the war. These things seemed like pale imitations of it.

Conventional wisdom also dictated you should not seek a partner who was alike to yourself in all things, but her behavior made it obvious, Lisa was not of the Harvest at all. And as these beasts saw merit in fear, so did he see merit in the Harvest above all else.

That was … fine. So she was a bit of a fixer-upper. Lemon watched her fumble her way through her negotiations from where he stood next to the horses. They’d been designed to act like real horses, and so they had feared him at first because they did not understand him. Lemon thought this was similar. It was simply … a barrier of communication. Yeah.

That was another mistake Lisa had made. She had claimed nothing here could be subverted from its design. Maybe if she tried. Lemon was made from the very same stuff as this space, and he could manipulate it with a far more delicate hand.

He had split off from the others on arrival, stolen a body he thought Lisa might find visually appealing, eavesdropped on their team while he found his footing and, as soon as he’d known where they were headed, been rid of that family of carriage drivers and taken their place to wait for her.

And then she had walked in. Lemon could have hugged her. She was beautiful, and still so young, which was not at all a bad thing. The issue was just that she didn’t know any better.

But she was of Per, adaptation incarnate, nature and culture distilled into one divine being. Per, above all, knew people could change to thrive. So what if Lisa was imperfect? She could learn to speak his language. Lemon would teach her.

He watched her yap on and on about cooperation—wouldn’t anyone think of the children? And he grew bored of eavesdropping on the other members of their group using the silver webs, his rose gold webs, and Ryan’s [Pack Aura] stretched between them.

Frederick and that bastard child were investigating some thief, and Lemon couldn’t help but feel disgusted. That was the family he wanted to get close to? Bastard children who thought themselves of Hes? How existence had waned while he had slept.

Jason flirted with a noblewoman, which was annoying but insignificant—she would cease to exist soon enough so it wasn’t like he would make a connection.

Navid led merchants down the road …? That one was faint and further from the others. Lemon had a harder time spying on him, but it did give him an idea.

He turned to face one of the children sniffing at the piss puddle near his horse. Lemon’s mask was embedded in his body’s skull, hidden by a layer of skin, but his eyes could look out into the world.

He thought to the spiderwolf, Hey, you.

It perked up. Who, me?

Yeah, you. You want to eat me. Lemon leaned on its artificial hunger. In fact, you are going to bite me right now.

The first spiderwolves met the caravan on the road. The merchants turned on Navid, full of fear and confusion. Some felt betrayed. Others were still inebriated. He commanded them to turn back as he dismounted and drew his blade.

Jason and his runaway noblewoman were stuck between the beasts and her guard as they chased after her, shouting, “Halt! Kidnapper!”

Lisa and Ryan raced on the backs of true Salamanders over the ground and walls of the tunnels after the enemy horde. With weapons forged of fire hammered straight, they ran down the children from their mounts without pause, hurrying back to the civilians.

The caravan guards tried to herd their employers back to safety, but when they turned, the first of the two adult spiderwolves burst out of a crack in the wall, showering the road with a cloud of rock dust and debris. It cut off their escape route.

They turned back again, leaving wagons, backpacks, and people behind. The other adult burst out of the wall on the other side of the road.

Lemon danced with glee.

His horse had been wounded and scared. It hadn’t wanted to gallop through the underground tunnels at first. Until he tinkered with it. Then, it had stopped being a horse and started being a horse-shaped conjuration, and it crawled gladly along the walls for him. After them.

He had to see it with his own eyes.

Lisa and Ryan reached the road, panting, and froze as they took in the scene. Smoke curled along the ceiling as a carriage burned in the distance, dead monsters littered the road and living ones attacked the civilians as the panicked crowds fled their way.

They immediately began to help before they realized Navid and Jason were each holding off one of the adults from decimating the crowd.

Lisa conjured a small swarm to help the caravan guards and they parted ways.

This. This was so close to what Lemon wanted, to what he loved. He was of Hes, whose existence could be summed up in one sentence: ‘If nothing has value, what will you decide is worth living for?’

He had chosen Her Divine Harvest, and he would do anything to see that scythe in motion again.

He dismounted when he caught up, kicked his legs, and pumped his arms to vent some of his excitement, and shimmied up to the caravan. Now, where was that pesky actor?

People ran by. He stopped some to check their faces. By their reactions, they must have thought he was looking for a loved one, but they were too frightened to aid him. Lemon tore open carriage doors then and peeked into the backs of wagons.

Ugh. He hated having to do this when he would much rather be watching Lisa—when he would much rather be participating! But, he had promised.

Finally, he wrenched up a carriage door and found him: a young frogman with delicate features and a thin layer of make-up on his skin. He cowered at the opposite end of the carriage with one hand on the door handle, ready to flee. When he saw Lemon, some of his fear ebbed but not all. “Stay out! Close that door! You’ll let the monsters—”

“Don’t worry about monsters,” Lemon said. On cue, a spiderwolf tried to attack him. Lemon wrenched with an indelicate hand as he had seen Lisa do, trying to transmute it into something it was not.

The spiderwolf popped like a soap bubble and vanished.

The frog’s eyes went wide and he scrambled forward. “Are you with the guards? What is happening? I thought the roads had been cleared!”

“You’re—” Lemon interrupted, snapping his fingers as he tried to remember his name. It had been hours since Frederick had left the Theatre. None of these people would exist for much longer. How was he supposed to remember them?

“—Techil! Right? The actor who plays the, uh— the kid. The one who grows a spine in the play?”

“I am! Why? Are you a fan? I can get you a ticket— I can get you an autograph and a meeting with the cast if you—!”

Lemon scooped the frog boy up onto his shoulder. He tried to protest, but that wasn’t an issue for him. He checked left and right, making sure nobody was looking, walked a few steps, and tossed him to the wolves.

Frederick did deserve a reward. If he wanted to play a part in that play, well, who was Lemon to stand in the way of his dreams?

Jason helped Ryan lob off one of the adult’s limbs as Ryan tried to plead with it, then backed up to kill one of the children when it tried to attack his lady. That enraged the adult, ruining his friend’s attempt, but Ryan hadn't looked so hopeful anyway.

Frederick chased a thief down a busy street in the city. They had stolen his crystal pouch, which was now twice as big as it had been before—Anne had added to it. He chased the thief right into her arms and they cornered them.

The thief brandished a knife. Frederick rushed them.

His puppets.

Lemon watched with a self-satisfied grin. He wondered if the Allmother felt this way about her creations. About Lisa.

His grin wavered as the actor screamed for help at his feet, and other screams picked up all around him. That was odd. Normally, those would only make him smile wider.

Lemon pondered why and realized, Is it the most meritorious idea to let them die …?

He had promised Jason and Frederick success—money, fame, levels. He had to keep at least a few of those promises for now. Because he had to keep their trust. For now.

The Theatre was apparently designed to challenge the people who stepped inside of it in ways that could nurture both their spirits and their connections to Hes. There was no active ‘arbiter of success’—at least, not that Lemon could tell—but there was a certain design behind things.

In general, the tailor-made scenario, the fact that they were surrounded by merit essence, and the Theatre’s location meant anything they did here would count for more. Like a room designed to make song sound better.

Specifically, the ‘quests’ that could be found all over the city were designed to teach them lessons.

It looked to him more and more like they were bound to fail their current lessons, with or without his hand in things. So their ‘specific’ avenue of leveling up was out of the window.

But in general? They could still level as they normally would … except that Lemon had tinkered with their scenario so much, they’d likely lost whatever nurturing benefits it may have been designed to offer.

Yep. That was on him. But did it matter …?

‘Lemon’ hadn’t been allowed inside the Theatre—that was the lie he had prepared. He wasn’t responsible for anything that happened in here, in their minds, so none of this could earn him any credit other than through the goodwill of a good mood.

He didn’t want to rely on that. He wanted Frederick and Jason to feel indebted to him.

… But then there was Lisa. Lemon didn’t want her taste of the Harvest to be a bitter memory. He wanted to see her smile.

With a groan, he tapped one of the spiderwolves in the shoulder with his boot, shooing it off the wounded boy. Scram. Go … I don’t know, eat the horses over there?

He directed them toward the two horse-shaped constructs that waited at the side of the road, bleeding from where the spiderwolves had scratched and bitten them. Then Lemon continued down the road and did the same to any monsters he encountered. He stopped to ‘resurrect’ any fallen civilians he came across—he simply told the essence they were made from they weren’t ‘dead’ or ‘wounded,’ and they stood up and their wounds knit themselves shut.

Actors in a Theatre.

He had to be careful because Lisa used her summons, and Ryan glanced back now and then, to keep an eye on one another, but that was fine. Lemon wasn’t willing to put all that much effort into saving lives.

It soured his mood … for a bit. Until he saw Jason fell the adult with a shining sword and he thought again, as he had, again and again, It will be worth it, in the end, to see the end.