I wasn’t in the mood to entertain people who didn’t mean well, and everything about the guy screamed that he definitely wasn’t coming at me with good intentions.

“Hoi there, fake-Gold,” he said, twirling a short stick that made me think of a wand. Considering I hadn’t seen anyone use wands or staves for casting their Aspects, I had a suspicion that was something else. “How are things?”

Despite my disinclination to interact with him, I plastered on a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. What was his name again? Casvat? “Fine enough. Just training. How are you? Any luck luring in other newbie mages into doing your little subsidiary jobs?”

Casvat whistled, eyes sharpening. I hadn’t even known Rakshasas could whistle, though I supposed they did have mostly humanlike lips. “Ho, you’re feisty for some reason. The taste of Silver making you feel good?”

“You know, that doesn’t answer my questions. But to answer yours, yeah, I’m enjoying being Silver. And before you know it, I’ll be Gold-ranked too.”

He scoffed. “Good luck with that. Since you didn’t know, here’s a bit of free information. It takes three to four times longer to get to Gold than it takes to get to Silver for most people.”

“Lucky for me I’m not most people then.”

That actually made him laugh. It sounded kind of like axeblades clashing. “Well then, smart guy, what are you going to do next?”

“What’s it to you?”

Casvat cleared his throat, stepping closer. Interestingly, he remained outside the bounds of the fenceposts. “I’ve got a little proposition. This isn’t a job offer where you do all the work and I get half the money.”

“Is that right?” I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow. “Why me, though?”

It was hard not to be naturally suspicious of people who came to me for things, offering propositions and deals. For all that I had spent longer than a month now, I still felt like I was new here. Like there were things that I still didn’t know and wouldn’t understand for a while.

And I wasn’t trying to hide that. I didn’t go around pretending like I was experienced, that I knew what I was doing. Sure, I made the best decisions that I could with the information I had, but it wasn’t like I only ever met Silhatsa in secret or asked questions in whispers.

So when people like this Rakshasa came to me despite the obvious vibe that I was still new and inexperienced about a lot of things here, I couldn’t help but squint my eyes.

“Because you’re still finding your feet here,” Casvat said. “You still haven’t settled on anything yet. I can tell.”

“Settled? How do you mean?”

“You do a couple jobs here, you run over to the Adventurer’s Guild, then you go over to the academy…” He spread his too-muscular-for-a-mage hands. “See what I mean? You’re still discovering things. Dipping your toes here, there, everywhere, all while still figuring yourself out. Not that it’s a bad thing. Everyone needs to do that.”

“Don’t tell me you’re here to offer me a new place to dip my toes.”

“Exactly, my fellow Silver-ranked mage. A new… Path to discover, if you will.”

“I’m listening.”

“Well, you haven’t learned an Augmentation for your Spirit yet, have you?”

I hadn’t even crossed into Silver with it yet. “No. Why?”

“Because when you do, get Permanence. Trust me, it’s going to open so many doors for what you can do with magic, other than lumbering after stupid adventurers and fighting against monsters.”

That did surprise me a bit. Not the information he mentioned, which I had already kind of figured out—Linak had taught me about the Natural Limit of Existence and the need for the right Augmentations to bypass it. What caught me off guard was the fact that his fellow, whom I had begun to peg as another adventurer-mage kind of like me, actually hated adventuring.

“You sound like you’ve got some experience in that,” I said.

The Rakshasa considered for a second. “I have experience in… facilitating it. The natural progression is you getting Permanence, or some equivalent that lets you bypass the Natural Laws of Existence. Once that’s done, you can start thinking of applying your Aspects a lot more economically. In a very literal sense. But you can’t just, for instance, start a business and expect to make profit from the get-go. You need someone like me.”

“A middle-man.”

“A facilitator.” Casvat smirked again. “Good luck finding clients on your own.”

I hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. Frankly, I had other things to occupy my mind, especially since the first Spirit Augmentation I would be aiming for was something that would help with managing my mana core. But he didn’t need to know all that.

“I appreciate the information,” I said. “Maybe I’ll hit you up when I get to that stage. Not that I’ll have to look for you with how often you hang around at the Mage Guild.”

Casvat was smart enough to recognize the end of a conversation. Had to be, considering social cues were a part of the schtick for facilitators. “I’ll see you around then, Mage Moreland.”

I breathed out slowly as he disappeared. Yet another person keeping track of me through their own means. Just great.

Captain Revayne had a job to do. She had patrols to run, glares to shoot at junior squadmates whenever they figured they could step out of line, a superior she had to report to, a family’s pestering botheration to contend with, and of course, one or more Aspects she really ought to be ranking up more often.

Alright, that was probably more than one job. They were all kind of related, though, so in her head, they just all mashed together into this one, gigantic, monstrous blob constantly battering at the shields of her sanity, trying to tear down the walls of her equanimity.

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Good thing she had her book to leaf through.

“Watch out, Captain,” one of her patrol squadmates warned.

Captain Revayne didn’t need the warning. The letters on her book, characters that only she could decipher, had already changed to give her a picture-perfect representation of the layout she was supposed to traverse on tonight’s patrol.

As such, without looking up from the pages, she ducked smoothly under the partially fallen lamppost—the Guards had sent in a report of the carriage crash over a week ago and no one had still come in for the repairs—and continued onwards.

Her squadmates were used to it by now, so nobody brought it up. Well, most of them were.

“Captain can probably see better than you, Glissa,” Sergeant Shatri said. “Even if it doesn’t look like it.”

Glissa, the short Scalekin and their newest recruit, ducked her blue-scaled head in embarrassment. Revayne didn’t see the younger woman doing so. She didn’t need to. Her book spelled it out quite clearly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” barked the sergeant. “Just keep your eyes peeled when on patrol.”

Captain Revayne could almost feel Glissa’s need to point out that the highest-ranking member of the Guards on patrol was decidedly not keeping her eyes peeled, but the Scalekin remained admirably silent. Good, good. Revayne would need to put that down as a positive when recommending the young woman.

The patrol went fine, as it always did. It was just a part of her duties. Something she had to do as a captain of the guard.

Funny how her thoughts grew stormier the closer they got to their final destination of the Guardhouse. That was supposed to be their base. The stronghold within which all was right and everything made sense.

Not so anymore.

“Commander wants to see you, Captain,” Helman said, saluting her with a fist to his chest and fingers to his lips. He was tense. So was nearly everyone else inside the Guardhouse, she supposed.

Captain Revayne nodded, then went inside. Most of the rooms were bereft of guards who would typically be perusing the immensely old filing cabinets, or lounging in the mess hall, or just chitter-chattering over their little cubbies. There wasn’t even the sound of any training or drilling going on.

“Revayne!” the guard commander shouted from the rear. “I can hear you. Come on in!”

Since Captain Revayne was disinclined to put down her book even now, a lot of people in her way probably wouldn’t have seen her. Her feet had a silence about them, her build wasn’t exactly standout, and the book hid the fact that she was essentially the only other human in the guards.

Well, there were Gelique and Garchelin, but they were more or less peons. Revayne was the only one who went out and fought as a member of the Guards of Zairgon. Who bled for Zairgon.

Nevertheless, people parted. The commander’s shout had no doubt helped. Names of those around her popped up in her book. Daskash, Elorth, Nadmirma, Irka. People she had known for years now. The experienced guards. Veterans. People who could be trusted to do a job right.

“I am here, Commander,” Captain Revayne said, mimicking the salute the guard at the door had performed for her.

Commander Trikurag looked down at her with the same expression she used on everybody else—severe, uncompromising, and unwilling to take any bullshit no matter the source. It was nice that Revayne’s book created a vivid description that her plain eyes would hardly be able to match. “You will be remaining here, then?”

“I will, Commander,” Revayne said, “I still believe—”

“I do not care what you believe, Revayne. We will be crushing the Thralls tonight, regardless of your presence. I’m not allowing you to remain here to indulge you on your wild goose chase, Captain. You will remain behind to as Deputy-Commander of the Guards of Zairgon.”

Revayne nodded. “I understand, Commander. I will see that it is done.”

“See to it.”

Captain Revayne hadn’t attended the pre-excursion meeting in part because her book was obviously far more engrossing, but also in part because she wasn’t attending the excursion itself. The commander just wanted to emphasize that fact to the rest of the guards.

To most, the treatment would obviously seem harsh from an outside perspective. In fact, the way the commander was still muttering certainly wasn’t going to endear her to anyone.

“Stupid foreign human,” she cursed. “Why did he have to go and find them there and threaten to tell the…”

Her mutters faded too incomprehensibility. No need to look at the new words scribbling themselves on the book to determine that the commander was referring to Cultist Ross.

Captain Revayne took it all placidly. People might not have been able to see much of her expression behind her book, but they wouldn’t have found much to take away anyway. The words on the pages shifted, noting down her reactions and emotions, leaving her with a clear head to navigate whatever scenario she faced with ideal reactions.

She could peruse through the emotions she wanted when she had a bit more privacy.

The meeting ended soon, and the commander led everyone out of the Guardhouse with a belligerent but rousing growl. A few of the guards who were remaining behind alongside Revayne wished them well and cheered them on.

“Keep watch over the Guardhouse,” Revayne told her deputy, Sergeant Shatri. “But contact me if something comes up.”

Shatri saluted. “Of course. Where will you be going, Captain?”

“Just providing a little backup where necessary.”

That naturally nonplussed the poor sergeant, but she was used to Revayne’s eccentricities by now, so said nothing further, only holding her salute aloft.

Captain Revayne let her book guide her path forward. She did few things without a proper course of action set in her mind—or in her pages, at least. At the moment, her course carried her through the streets of Ring Three, now mostly abandoned this late at night.

She wasn’t patrolling. Rather, she was doing what her job description stated. Guarding.

On and on, for hours on end, her ceaseless legs carried her through the neighbourhoods of Ring Three.

Until she finally saw suspicious movement. Her senses tingled.

Captain Revayne was on the hunt.

Even as she ran, her gaze was locked to her book. She didn’t need to see. The map of her chase was inscribing itself on her pages even faster than her surroundings changed, and her years-honed reading picked it up faster than her Gold-ranked Power and Agility could drive her legs.

Other words flickered as the pages flipped along, Revayne chasing after the shadow she had spotted. New words weren’t what she was looking for. Now, she needed old friends. Old comforts. Old powers.

As she continued running through the streets, she channelled her Aspect and paused at a single page where the ink immediately ran off a leaf of paper, turning into a flock of hand-sized birds of liquid black.

“Go,” she commanded.

They rushed off.

With the birds gone, she turned pages again, rounding a corner at the same time. For the first time in a while, she glanced up briefly.

A distant dark silhouette towered over the nearby neighbourhoods. Her breaths came a mite faster than before, her heartrate rising in tandem.

Captain Revayne actually did stop for just a moment. Things were starting to fall into place. The Thralls’ intention was starting to be clearer. That she had arrived at the realization warranted a moment of self-congratulations, surely.

The pages of her book turned in a storm. New words etched into being, draining her feelings into the book.

Right. Chasing the shadows.

Captain Revayne continued her determined pursuit. She wasn’t someone any prey could run from. That shadow she had first started after was going to learn that the hard—

Another shadow called to her, and this one didn’t run away. Although, it did freeze in place as Revayne arrived before it in seconds. A name popped up in her book, and reading it made her look up again.

“Ross?” she said. Even her book failed to leech away her surprise in time before it was evident in her voice, and probably her expression too. “What in the Pits are you doing here? And why do you look like you’ve been running from something?”

The cultist—mage, adventurer, fellow human?—stared at Revayne like she was the surprising development here.

“What are you doing here?” Ross asked. “And I’m not running from anything, I’ve just been sweating because I’ve been working out at the Mage Guild all this time. Almost got myself another Affix…”

His words trailed off when he noticed Revayne’s expression. Ah, she had forgotten to lower her face back behind her book. Not one to be caught up in her mistakes, Captain Revayne righted herself and was once again buried in her brilliant pages.

“No time to waste,” she said. “The Thrall Hunt. It’s tonight.”