She smiled again. I felt like a part of me was counting them like some intangible pedometer. The curve of her lips and her dimple were evil. I knew that deep down, but the rush I experienced beat the monotony of a computer screen tinted blue by far.

She downed what remained of her oat milk latte and stood up. I let her take my wrist and pull me down the sharp corners and bends of this bakery that I was beginning to think was more than it seemed. A door opened, and we walked down rickety steps into what I can only call a makeshift ballroom. A ballroom under a bakery sounds like a nostalgic indie song, but it was the reality.

The hardwood floors looked well maintained. Light filtered in from gaps in the ceiling at the far end of the hall while fluorescent bulbs furnished the rest.

Eight people sat on black dining room chairs set up in a semicircle in the centre of the room. A ninth chair remained empty. The chattering among them paused as we entered. The mood was expectant. I followed AxE to the seats, and she gestured for me to sit down.

"About time you arrived AxE."

The speaker was a goth woman who looked like she was made of porcelain. I don't know why, but some instinct in the recess of my mind told me she could fold me as easily as a beach chair. Not one to get in a fight with, for sure.

"Can't rush perfection, Barbara. I've got high hopes for Psy." AxE said, rolling her eyes. I tried to extinguish the warm feeling in the pit of my stomach that arose because of her words. What was wrong with me? I barely knew the woman?

"Strong praise. You must be confident," said the dark-skinned man sitting opposite me. Snapping myself out of my distracting thoughts, I gave the man a sidelong look. There was a drawl to his words, like he was speaking past a sour lolly in his mouth. He was a thin man and although it was hard to tell whilst he was sitting, it felt like he would tower over me like a skyscraper.

AxE responded with an assured "Of course I am," as she walked with purpose to the middle of the semicircle of chairs as if to address us, taking a deep breath to steady herself before she spoke.

"You are here because you have been noticed. You are too skilled, too intelligent, or too loud-" her eyes skittered towards me for a moment "-to be left alone."

I could feel a nervous energy next to me and spied a wisp of a girl to my right. A tanned brunette and a face as freckled as a speckled egg, her mouth scrunched up in an almost painful look of concentration.

“The sum of us is greater than our component parts and so we have grouped together with other like-minded individuals to seek endings.” AxE let the words drop as if from a tap and we clung to it with a tepid humidity.

“So…” she said, tightening the metaphorical handle, "Too many stories remain unfinished. Their words were stolen and their authors whisked away. We have an inkling where some have been hidden. But we can't do it alone. We need your words because they can imbue you with power."

The goth lady, Barbara, lobbed something at AxE. She caught what seemed to be a black-and-white striped eight-ball from a pool billiards table.

“Depending on your words, you can moderate the world,” AxE said. Her arm glowed and text scrambled across her forearm, flashing as it traveled atop veins and muscle and sinew. AxE squeezed the eight-ball lightly and an airy *pop* echoed around the room as the eight-ball shed dust. AxE dropped it to the ground, where it rolled before coming to a stop in front of me. The eight-ball now looked a bit like an apple eaten to its core, the resin in the middle a thin column from where AxE pinched it.

I guess I wasn't imagining AxE having superpowers then.

“Holy shit!” the speckled egg girl next to me said.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Fucking hell,” I agreed.

Surprisingly, the mood around the rest of the room was less enthused.

“Come on now, it wasn’t that impressive. I don't see what the big deal is.” said a woman a few seats over to my left. The accent was European, possibly German? She wore blue overalls with a dark yellow undershirt. She stood up and drew out what seemed to be a biscuit tin from one of their deep pockets. The ground about five metres in front of us broke open and thick wooden boards, each about the size of a regular dining room table, spaced themselves out in a measured pattern, maybe each one a metre or so apart. From my angle, I could see that ten relatively thick planks of wood had burst out from the ground like something out of a spy movie.

“My name is Gretta, by the way,” she smouldered, as she drew what looked to be cookies in the shape of ninja stars out of her biscuit tin. Fitting them between her fingers, she drew her arm back and threw them at the wooden barricades. The sound of paper tearing greeted us as all but the last wooden board fell back as if kissed by wind, a diagonal slice cleaning creating nine sets of isosceles triangles. The ninja stars were embedded in the final wooden board and what looked like steam was flowing off them. It smelt nice in a health food kind of way.

Gretta sat back down in her seat under the bloody glare of AxE.

I wasn’t really thinking at this point: I’ve gone full blown tabula rasa by now. Before this moment I didn’t think I would ever have to fear for my life from the superpowered fists of a flirty short latina or the ninja biscuits of a possibly German girl in overalls.

“Now that Gretta has finished showing off, we’ll get the newbies to introduce themselves. You first Chloe.” Said AxE.

The girl with the speckled face jumped excitedly to her feet. “Hi everyone, my name is Chloe. I uh… I enjoy reading xianxia novels most of all. I like the pace and endless progression and the face-slapping, and that there’s always a higher level than the one you’re on, you know?”

I nodded in agreement and her eyes met mine in solidarity, sparking as if a flame had been lit. “You too!?” she squealed, surprising me by pulling me to my feet.

“Calm down there, Chloe. But now that you’ve brought him up, you go next, Simon.” AxE said, saving me from the plight of the embattled wuxia fangirl. Returning to her seat with exuberance, Chloe watched me keenly with a beastly hunger, as if she were a cultivator and I was some near-mythical materials for pill-making or something.

“I’m Simon, but you can call me Psy,” I began, trying to figure out my next words. “AxE and I have been chatting on Blisschord for years, but I only just arrived, I guess. I didn’t know what was going on until a few hours ago. I, um… I have enjoyed many stories, but The Last of Them was one of my favourites. It stopped quite a few months ago now. The world now is just… unfinished. There are so many things I wanted to know, so many plot lines unbidden and characters only just introduced. Effort from the main character was only just-now bearing fruit. And then- gone. It just stopped.” I looked up at AxE, meeting her eyes directly. She actually took a step back.

“I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

*clap*

*clap*

“Well said,” came a deep baritone voice, joining the chorus of echoes that his claps had made. A short man in a bright navy blue suit stood up, scarcely gaining any height, as he strode to the middle of the half-circle of chairs. I took my cue and returned to my seat as he continued rambling.

“My name is Colin, but my friends call me Kal. I like reading fiction about military strategy and war. Light novels with any kingdom or army-building focus really fit the bill, if you know what I mean. My favourite story disappeared about a year ago, the Self-Sufficient Villagers’ Raiment. I want to write my own story about a world-conquering army. I’m a paralegal at a commercial law-firm in the CBD, so reading fiction is a pleasant distraction from continuous defamation proceedings.”

Writing an army-building novel is a pretty cool goal, I thought.

As he sat back down, AxE once again captured our attention. “The life ahead of you will be will be two-faced. Not only will you see the ordinary world, but you will begin to notice the subliminal. The messaging and lining between this world and the next is paper-thin, and writing draws power from it. Walker, could you please summon the book?”

A murmur rose among the seated who had not yet spoken, but it was foreign and strange. Like I would need subtitles to understand it.

The dark-skinned man rose, and he was taller than I thought, easily over 180 cm. A table rose from the floor again as he traced a figure eight across the wood. A crimson leather-bound book appeared. Names were clearly written on it in green pen, but they weren’t legible to my eyes. Some were more faded than others, and other names glowed with a sinister red.

“I’m Walker, mate.” The man said, his accent reminiscent of country Queensland. “Sign your name in the book. This is the first and only test to join us.”

I peered at the book and sensed a similar hunger to what I felt from Chloe earlier. I had the feeling that I was about to make an irrevocable choice.