Dinner with Felix and Nora’s family was a glorious affair.

  It was filled with laughter, stories, and a million beautiful interruptions from this messily perfect family. When Jack finally said his goodbyes, it was to promises and pleas for a swift return and more fish fillets.

  When the door creaked shut behind him, it rang with a note of finality that unsettled Jack, like the shot of a racing gun for a run he wasn't ready for.

  He stepped out into the dark and rain-soaked street, and his pace was slow while his thoughts ran wild. Jack began to overanalyze everything, and so appreciated the need to be quiet and quick through the city.

  Did I speak too much? Did I laugh too hard when Nora’s kid snorted water? Did I ruin everything by not offering to help clean up? Was their invitation to come back just out of politeness? Do they just pity me?

  The entire time Jack walked back to the slums, narrowly avoiding patrols, he couldn’t get the image of Felix and Nora’s home out of his mind. It stuck with him through the tense silence on the rooftops of the slums, when he crossed the no-man’s land under dark, and when he slipped into the freshly opened and uprooted tunnel.

  He barely noticed the cold, the rain, or the gnawing loneliness the family had unwittingly fed inside Jack’s soul. It was a void inside him, but had lacked the fodder necessary to grow.

  Until now.

  By the time he reached the outer limits of Olric’s fields, all the fledgling joy he'd experienced had soured into a tense hollowness, as if he were some caged beast manic with claustrophobia. With the shroud looming beside him, it wasn't hard to imagine his new world as the prison his soul deserved.

  Jack strode through neatly packed vegetables and into the maze of some corn-like stocks, following roughly the same path he'd taken when fever-mad and mostly dead. He pushed the thick green leaves out of his way, moving toward the silhouette of the farmhouse beyond. With each row he slipped past, their hundred hands reminded him of the collage of cuts and bruises he'd accumulated that day, and how many of his older wounds had been aggravated by his recent escapade into Thistlebrush.

  By the time he reached the inner limit of the farm’s fields, the last thing he needed was the sight of Olric's enchanted fence looming above him.

  “I'm going to burn this world,” Jack promised his pain.

  But as he was fresh out of apocalyptic fire, he resorted to sighing, cursing, and walking the edge of the fence’s perimeter until he reached the gate.

  It was closed.

  Even from this distance, he could hear the thrum of energy coursing through the runic patterns that coated the fence, gate included. Remembering his unlucky encounter with it last time, he decided it would be best not to scale the structure. Exhausted, frenetic, and drenched, Jack paced in front of the gate, hoping to catch sight of some sort of button on the enchanted barrier. He scanned the entirety of the gate, but nothing stood out to him. Sure, his experience with enchantments was still relatively new, but he knew enough to know there had to be some sort of manual override to this thing.

  “Where are you?” Jack asked the elusive ‘off’ button.

  He leaned in and squinted through the rain at the gate. Nothing.

  “Come on! Open! Open sesame, dammit! What do you want from me?!” Jack demanded of the gate, which continued to glow smugly in the stormy night. “What? Do you want me to dance for you? Want me to pay? Well, joke’s on you. I’m more broke here than I was back on Earth, and that’s saying something!”

  “Are you talking to a fence, Jack?” Olric's voice inquired, jolting Jack with so much surprise and adrenaline that he leapt nearly five feet into the air.

  His new strength helped.

  “Dammit, Olric! You scared the living hell out of me!” Jack protested, masking his embarrassment with anger.

  The old farmer didn’t grace that with an answer. Instead, illuminated by the dull blue-white glow of his own fence, Olric took Jack in. His features appeared gaunt and haggard in the scant light, but the intensity in his eyes told Jack a whole other story.

  Olric was pissed.

  “Ya look like shit, boy.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I’m not a boy,” Jack argued.

  Though on reflection, he could admit that he struck a rather boyish figure. He had shown up to be let back into a house late at night, covered in bruises and cuts and errant leaves. Still, some of his old anger from this morning stirred in his gut before he could tamp it down.

  Jack pinched the bridge of his nose and clenched his eyes shut.

  “Olric, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean to take that tone with you. I’m just so freaking tired and I just… I really just need a break.” Jack met Olric’s stony gaze. “Please. Can I come in, and we can talk?”

  Olric didn’t answer. Jack started to consider that his folly this morning might’ve truly cost him the only friend he had in this world. Sure, Felix and his family had been nice enough, but they didn’t know who he was. What he was. Olric did. And if Olric rejected him, that didn’t just mean a loss of home and hearth. It meant a risk to his life. A risk that Jack had no way of countering or outmaneuvering. Olric was level 42.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  He was still just a classless level 10.

  Who am I kidding? I burned this bridge. I’ll just stay with Felix for the night, and then figure something out in the morning.

  “I’m sorry I bothered you,” Jack said, turning away from the closed gate.

  “I was about to ember. Ya look like ya need a warm drink.” That was it. That was all the old man said.

  Yet, as the farmer turned and started back toward the front door to his house, there was an escaping hiss of pressure and magic, and the gate swung open. Hesitantly, Jack stepped inside, closing the gate behind him. The moment it clicked shut, there was an instantaneous shift in the air. It wasn’t like the rain suddenly stopped pouring down over him, but the bite of the wind and storm diminished.

  There was a stillness here that hadn’t existed out there. Not in Felix’s house, not in the river with the renewed crystal, and certainly not in any part of the town’s streets. In here, there was something close to peace, if peace was a wild, uncaged sort of creature.

  Jack strode up the flagstones, his calf muscles straining at the effort. It had taken all of that tiny exchange by the gate for Jack’s stillness to devolve into a body-wide stiffness. He ascended the few short steps up the porch, but Olric called after him just before he opened the door into the warmly lit cabin.

  “Boots off,” came the gruff command from somewhere near the hearth.

  Jack glanced down and noticed Olric’s boots already propped to one side of the door’s oak frame. To his surprise, they bore the signs of long and recent hours in the mud. He knew exactly what those splash marks came from due to his brief time working construction. His mind did the math, and a lump started to form in his throat.

  That mad hadn’t come from the minor moisture that had clung to the soil of the fields after daybreak. That was deep, fresh mud. But the rain hadn’t started until this evening, which meant Olric had stayed out long after the storm had time to get a firm grip on the ground and loosen it up quite a bit. When combined with the fact that Olric had looked just as soaked as Jack, that only left one conclusion.

  The old bastard had been outside. Waiting for him.

  “I’m gonna drink this whole damn thing while you’re out there oglin’ my boots, boy,” Olric called to him from inside.

  “Yeah. Be right there.” He was so dazed at this deduction that he didn’t even try to snipe back at the farmer.

  Jack took off his boots, wincing at the pain of his overstressed body. His 17 points in Constitution had brought him from the brink of death, but that was still a far cry from being okay. Wearily, he stepped inside and was once again flooded by the warmth and complex aroma of the home. Spices wafted across him and sent shivers down his spine. Something hot and greasy sizzled in a pan beside the fire.

  “‘Bout time, kid. I was gonna keel over after how long you were takin’ out there,” Olric commented as he poured hot water into the emberdraw.

  He twisted the cup so that the metal straw faced Jack. “Drink. I’ll get ya some food.”

  “I already–” Jack started, but when he got another wave of the sizzling meat, he cut off his polite protestations. “Thanks, Olric.”

  Groaning in pain, Jack slid onto one of the couches and leaned back. He brought the straw to his lips and took a deep pull. The intricate herbs slammed into the back of his throat and immediately warmed his body down to his stomach. This blend tasted marginally different. It was spicier, yet had a sweeter aftertaste, as if he’d added cayenne and honey.

  It was gone in less than three heartbeats. Jack’s disappointed slurping brought Olric away from where he tended to the meat and poured a fresh cup for the fatigued mechanic.

  “Congratulations, Jack,” Olric said simply.

  “What?” Jack asked numbly, taken from his wandering thoughts.

  “Level 10 on your first real day on Aethros has got to be some sort of record for a Banisher. Especially one without the help of an army of servants. It’s damn impressive. How’d ya manage it?” There was no bitterness in his tone like Jack had thought there would be. He was still terse, but Jack couldn’t sense an ounce of condemnation or reproach.

  “Thanks, Olric. But about this morning, I—” Jack started.

  Olric raised a hand. “It was wrong of me to belittle your old profession. I can only imagine the pressure you’re under. I made my wife a promise that I’d help end this war, and right now, you’re my best way of fulfilling that oath. But I pushed too hard. I… I’m still not great with all this…” His words tapered off, and he gestured between himself and Jack. “...Stuff.”

  Jack laughed, feeling the icy tension crack and break away. “You’re in good company, friend. I’m the king of screwing up what should be totally normal conversations. I tend to get too fixated on… well… fixing stuff.”

  “Mending the world ain’t a sin, kid,” Olric replied with a furrowed brow.

  “Tell that to all my exes,” Jack answered with a depracatory laugh. “Or my sister, for that matter.”

  A silence stretched between them, but Olric deftly cut this one’s legs from under it by removing the sizzling meat from the pan and placing it before Jack.

  It was bacon. Better yet, the farmer put a thick slice of bread in the pan, which had been toasted in the bacon grease.

  “I’m in heaven,” Jack said, “Thank you, Olric. Seriously. Thank you. But I still want to apologize for storming out on you like that. It was childish and dumb, and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  Olric seemed genuinely surprised at his apology. “Shit, kid. You think that’s why I was upset? You can walk out anytime ya need to! Shroud soil and swallow me, but Ardent above knows that my temper can get away from me, and a good walk and clean air does a wonder to settle that flame.” The farmer took a chair opposite Jack. “No, kid. I was upset because I failed ya. I was supposed to help ya find a safe way to get EXP while you were still so low-leveled, and all I managed to do was make you feel like ya couldn’t float your ideas without me shooting them down.”

  “That’s not it at all!” Jack responded. “I was just so overwhelmed. I felt so…”

  “Useless?” Olric supplied, his voice growing quiet and contemplative.

  “Yeah,” Jack said after a breath. “Useless.”

  “What was that phrase ya used? 'You’re in good company?' Well, ain’t that the truth.” Olric sniffed. “We are the choices we make, Jack. And I chose to stay here instead of goin’ after the one hope we got. I’m sorry, kid.”

  “Well, it wasn’t all bad. I did help start a gang war in the slums, helped a Ciellian after he nearly got lynched, and then killed a kraken for a fisherman. So, I guess it was an okay day.” Jack watched with no small amount of joy as each new item he listed dropped the farmer’s jaw just a little further toward the floor.

  He took a bite of the toast. It was perfection.

  “Oh, and I reached level 10 and can choose a class. And I got a crap ton of random ‘extrinsic’ rewards that I’d love to open, if you’re interested,” Jack added in what he hoped was a tantalizing afterthought, but he couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice.

  Olric slumped back in his chair. It was a slow, creaking affair, mirroring the layered weight of Jack’s revelations.

  “Tell me everything.” Again, it wasn’t a question from Olric, but a command.

  Fortunately, Jack had been hoping just for this occasion. He slid the emberdraw over to Olric, careful to twist the cup so that the straw faced the right way. Jack leaned forward and took a slice of bacon. Then, raising it like a composer’s baton, or an adventurer’s overflowing tankard, Jack began to tell his story.

  “I guess it all started when I made a large circle in the grass and started to punch really fast…”