A monk walked in, feet bare. She immediately looked at our feet. My stomach dropped. I looked down at my boots, then back up at her.
“Sorry, er, sumimasen.” I muttered, shuffling toward the door.
A fringe of hair framed her grim face, falling from her ponytail with effortless perfection. She remained expressionless as I sidled past her, pausing at the door to peek out. Zayan was nowhere in sight. Neither was the sinuous blue dragon.
“We just came to pray,” Jake pleaded.
I glanced at his feet. He didn’t wear shoes; what did he have to worry about? I stepped outside and stood under the overhang.
Jake and Akilah followed a few steps behind me. The monk slid the door shut, her stern gaze saying everything we needed to know. I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over my chest.
The bare-chest thing still felt a little awkward, but I was rapidly getting used to it. Like everything else about this body, it had started to feel normal. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“Now what?” I asked, fixing Akilah with a steady look.
She looked around at the moonlit grounds of the temple, took a satisfied breath of the sweet, pure air, and shrugged. “I’ll figure it out tomorrow. Let’s party up.”
“I looked for that feature,” Jake admitted, glancing at me.
I twitched a feeble grin at him. I’d done the same once I decided to stick with the tall, goofy demon kid. No party options were found, but, then again, we’d been looking superficially.
“There has to be a way to link us up,” Akilah said, straightening her robes.
I pushed against the wood, its old, rounded edges digging pleasantly into sore muscles. My aspect screen was still open as I’d left it. Strings of code wound around themselves like DNA within the endless dark depths.
“Our words—party, team—might not be the ones the System uses,” I suggested. Akilah said the System is a liar, but that wasn’t it. It didn’t think like us, didn’t come from our language base, so it wasn’t lying so much as we weren’t able to translate accurately.
Akilah snapped her fingers, eyes brightening. “Word, yeah. This will take some exploration, but I think I have an idea. Tomorrow, first light, let’s meet at the Colosseum.”
“Meanwhile, if you guys get a party invite, take it,” Jake grinned, clapping his hands together.
I didn’t want this to be a competition, who found the right words first, but I had a feeling it would be. Me included. I already had thoughts about how factions worked in the System. If we made our own faction, or a subset of a faction… I wasn’t entirely sure where the faction idea would lead me.
Akilah headed down the path with a brief wave at us.
The thought trailed away. It could wait. My thirst distracted my mind. I closed my aspect screen and let it go, instead walking toward the sound of water.
Kiyomizu's spring was said to be pure. The crunch of footsteps behind me made me glance. It was Jake, probably with the same thought. I followed the path to the aqueduct where three pure streams of water poured down into a stone pool.
The spring bubbled forth, spilling constantly out from the channels above our heads. Sweet air rose with the hint of a mineral tang. A fine mist hovered above the pool, giving it an almost ethereal aura.
Cups on long handles hung nearby, so I grabbed one and filled it up. The monk would probably kill me if I put it to my lips, so I just poured the water down over my open mouth. Water spilled from the corner of my lips, so sweet I didn’t care beyond easing my thirst. One more time getting soaked today hardly mattered, at this point.
Jake copied me, smacking his lips. “This water is supposed to grant wishes.”
He would know. I used to think I was a font of random information, but he’s beaten me on that front. Filling the cup again, I went for another drink.
“Luck in academics, long life, or true love,” he said, letting the water spill into his cup again.
I nearly choked. “If I had to pick—academics, I guess.”
“You probably think true love is for losers,” he accused, narrowing his eyes at me.
Wow. I knew I could be a little pragmatic, a touch cold, maybe, but love is for losers? My face screwed up with skepticism.
No, he was right. That’s what I thought.
I sighed, “Listen, after doing it a couple times and having it go sour, I’m over it. People suck.”
“That why you’re an orc?” He asked, hanging the cup up where he’d found it.
“Half-orc, and no. Why did you pick demon?”
“Cuz I look cool and I’m resistant to fire,” his tail swished, and he pointed back to it, “Plus, tail and wings.”
“Fair,” I said, putting my cup away.
I hoped the water made me smarter. Tipping my head toward one of the paths, I walked that way. Jake skipped along, catching up quickly.
I eyed him, shoving a thumb in my belt, “Where did you get all that energy? I took an HP hit because of that run.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Me too, but that water refreshed me.” His wings flared and settled, and he rubbed his hands together. “Think there is somewhere that has sushi pizza?”
We split up at the entrance, and I returned to Bauring Dath. Greasy potatoes with a few spare chunks of mutton never tasted so delicious. One of the Salt Spears told a gory joke that made me laugh, and when I went to the sanctuary of my bunk, I slept deeply—until the nightmares.
I woke slick with sweat as I lurched upright, already swiping at my arms. Rats, slimes, they’d cornered me, swarmed me and…
The palest hint of daylight colored the room an eerie white and stark shadows. No rats skittered on the bed, no slimes oozed along the floor, and I wasn’t perched on the chest in the corner. My chest barely caged my pounding heart.
I breathed in slowly, lying back down. Just processing the day before. It had been brutal, and my brain wouldn’t let me forget it. When I closed my eyes, the memories blended—the dream, the sewers, the reality, and the imaginary.
The way I knew how to deal with dreams like that was to run through it in my head, picking apart and piecing together better choices. The idea of doing that job again made me feel physically ill, but to get better at it, doing it again wasn’t the worst idea.
Now that I knew where to look, I could hack my options and do rat catching as a gray task. I’d already lost options to do jobs I’d had on my first day, leveling out of them. I saw the little kid with the kite in the baobab tree a few times in my wandering, but she hasn’t asked me to get it again.
I figured the premise was the same. There had to be a way to force it.
After a while of lying there, lost in thought, I got up and got on with things.
Akilah and Jake were already at the meeting spot, seated on a stone bench and sharing cotton candy. My daily potato-peeling job left a few cuts on my hand, and I carried the egg on my walk. I tucked it away before Akilah could see. I didn’t trust her enough to let her see my dubious treasure.
I didn’t need one more person laughing at me when it hatched a pet toad or something.
As I approached, she looked up at me with a taskmaster’s scowl. “I said first light. We been waiting an hour for your ass.”
“Had to peel potatoes for Alga. If you have somewhere I can sleep for free, let me know,” I shrugged, keeping my expression unreadable. Until I could figure out how to make food and sleep optional, survival came before promises.
She snorted, then waved a hand at Jake, her mood changing like spring weather.
“Jake came up with a good idea. Tell him, Jake,” she said, excitement threading her words.
“Factions and sub-units of factions,” Jake said proudly, plucking at the blue cloud perched on a stick in Akilah’s hand. “We’ve got to find a faction that’s neutral with all of us, grind rep, and create our own sub-unit. Then we will have all their perks—and maybe more.”
I gestured for him to go on, having had a vague notion of it last night.
Judging the bench had enough space, I perched on the edge, sandwiching Akilah in between us. She frowned and shuffled closer to Jake. Good, more space for me.
I called up my aspect screen and flicked a glance at the menu, scrolling and selecting through it until I found the pivot table of factions. Most of them hated me. My faction was either somewhat hostile or outright hostile to everyone except orcs.
“My people are racist,” I said bluntly. “We’re not grinding rep with the Salt Spears. They barely tolerate me, being a half-breed.”
“Bet you didn’t think of that when you chose half-orc, huh?” Jake asked with a smug tone.
I leaned around Akilah to give him a dirty look. He was right, but that didn’t make the smarmy grin okay. I’d been thinking in RPG terms, not living-the-life terms.
“Says the punk that chose demons. Your faction is nearly as bad,” I responded.
Akilah’s gaze was flicking around, reading. “Too bad you boys pissed off Sheriff Zayan. Kemet is neutral with everyone, but it only has three players.”
I curled my lip. “Stupid cops.”
“What about Symbiot?” Jake suggested. It would benefit him, for sure.
Dealing with psychic parasites? Not more than I had to. The rat-catching job was more than enough for me. The way Akilah’s nose wrinkled up told me what I needed to know about her feelings.
I frowned at a faction name on the list. “Where’s Oshegard?” I asked, brows knitting with confusion. It had to be in one of the few gray areas I had left in my map.
Akilah pointed up at the floating rocks in the distance. I sighed. They had no preconceptions, but also no elevator.
Jake bounced and flailed, “Heartland! Let’s do Heartland Park. Fairy quests and stuff should be fun.”
I slid a glance at Akilah, and she met my gaze. I shrugged.
Secretly, I loved that idea. I almost picked an elven princess type before my avatar caught my eye. I’ve always been paradoxical.
Heartland Park was a little like New York City’s Central Park—if Central Park were bigger, weirder, and straight out of fairy tales. Towering trees of every variety brushed the sky, their canopies casting motes of whimsical light. Small glades, meadows, and ponds dotted the woods, linked by cared-for footpaths teeming with animals and people alike. Sentient dandelions danced, holding leaves and waving bright yellow heads to a song only they could hear.
One of the many entrances boasted a woven bower of vines, the archway a welcoming invitation. Jake and I had seen it before, but we hadn’t gone in. The skeevy Patchwork Priest had given us our fateful task that day, and we didn’t get a chance to explore it.
The little town in the center, called Verdance, rested in a small clearing, whimsical and charming in the most granola way possible. The structures were made of vines guided to grow in the shapes of buildings and filled in with mud or stone. Somewhere, wind chimes tinkled merrily. A spring burbled from a pile of rocks into a smooth stone basin near the path we walked.
A freaking fawn frolicked with a rabbit at the edge of the village.
I wanted to melt into a puddle—it was so damn cute.
Jake nudged Akilah and pointed at me with a fangish grin. I caught it and asked sharply, “What?”
“Ha, you do have a soft spot in your heart somewhere,” Jake teased, making Akilah smile along with him.
I furrowed my brows and crossed my arms. What kind of smushy face had I been making? Still, the air was sweet with flowers and tree pollen, and the village glade was so enchanting that I couldn’t help letting my feelings get the better of me. A bit.
It was probably too much to hope for to find a unicorn around here. How amazing would that be, to see an actual unicorn? The charms were palpable with every glance and breath. Vine houses surrounded the central stone circle of the little village, straight out of a storybook.
A blue-skinned sprite slightly larger than my handspan drifted above the large stone circle on the ground in the heart of the village. Her name—Petal Dew—bobbed along with her as she flew a lazy circle on dragonfly wings. Akilah wiggled her fingers at the sprite and asked, “Excuse me, do you have any tasks for us?”
“Oh, hello, friends! If you’re seeking work, I have things to do!”
“To see all the quests available, you have to toggle ALL AV, then see?” Akilah was back in instruction mode, explaining as she went. “Her menu turns into a pivot table, and you can see everything she offers along with the quests that branch off from hers.”
“The Kindness Trials, Feast for Friends, Missing Lamb, and Willow’s Riddle,” Jake read off his aspect screen. “These should be fun!”
They sounded innocuous, even relaxing. After the last hellish day, that’s exactly what I’d been hoping for. What could go wrong?
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