A window broke. Glass shattered scattering across the pavement. A pair of feet wearing old and worn combat boots landed on the glass shards.

The feet belonged to a boy, a young man, and as soon as he’d landed he began to run. Not daring to look back till the building behind him was out of sight, and more than a few blocks away.

The young man was middling in height. His build was rangy but muscular. His matted, green-brown, hair looked like it had been in need of clipping ages ago.

Besides his boots, he also had a bag. A courier bag made of enchanted beast’s hide and covered in rough-stitches in the areas where he’d had to make repairs.

He wore canvas trousers with lots of pockets and a button-down shirt that was covered in faded stains that wouldn’t wash out. Atop it all, he wore a military jacket that he’d bought from a trader in town. The jacket’s dark blue officiousness was ruined by the large number of untidy patches that the trader had used to cover-up the bullet holes and tears.

Just as the young man was about to begin breathing easy, he felt something. Something bad. It was the third-worst feeling one could feel in these parts. Coming right behind fear and hunger in the rankings of the boy’s least favorite sensations.

He felt it as an itch. He felt it as a sense of irritation. A certainty that something had gotten under his skin and was crawling in his blood. It was the theurge. The accursed energy that normally hung in the sky, mingling with the last bits of radiation that clung to the clouds.

There was a concentration of theurge up ahead. That meant that the fell-ones wouldn’t be far. The hairs on the back of the boy’s neck rose and he made a quick decision.

An instant later, a hound with green-brown fur, ran out from the shadows of building the boy had been hiding behind. Closer inspection would reveal that the dog was, in fact, wearing what seemed to be a jacket and a courier bag.

The boy was the dog. The dog was the boy. That was what it meant to be a shapeshifter. That was what it meant to be a “trickster”.

The average human running speed generally sat around fourteen to fifteen miles per hour, if you were reasonably fit. The average dog’s running speed was fifteen to twenty miles per hour. It didn’t take a genius to know which was the better form for running away from things.

The boy ran and for a moment it seemed like he’d gotten away cleanly. Perhaps he should have known better. After that all too unfortunate day, it looked like all of his life’s luck had been drained away. Thus instead of merely avoiding a single fell-one, he instead found himself caught up in a chase between two fell-ones.

An ash-rabbit was being chased by a coal-hound. The carnivorous lagomorph spotted the dog-boy almost immediately. Its simple mind carried enough cunning to know that if it could catch the quarry in front of it, the power it could gain from consuming the boy’s soul would be enough to help it escape.

The coal-hound’s body ignited into flame as it saw that it now had not one, but two, prey fleeing before it.

If this were the old world, the boy would have died. Even dogs can’t run forever, so shapeshifter or not, either the hound or the rabbit would have eventually caught him.

Fortunately, this was the age of the panels...and the system. An age where the world itself fought back against the irrationality of the cosmos by granting its people the power of numbers. The power of stats and skills and levels.

At level nineteen, the boy wasn’t particularly high leveled, but the points he’d put into his agility and constitution were enough to ensure that he was faster and more enduring than your average dog-boy.

The boy ran with all he had. Running till it felt like his legs might flee without him, leaving his exhausted body and burning lungs behind. Eventually, he caught a very rare lucky break. He leaped onto a dumpster stacked high with garbage and onto the roof of a small building.

The ash-rabbit tried to do the same and being a rabbit it naturally made the jump, However, being a fell-one, it’s much larger size meant that instead of serving as a jumping board the dumpster just sort of crumpled. This gave the coal-hound a chance to catch the stunned rabbit. Which gave the boy a chance to escape.

Fifteen more minutes of running later, the boy was home free. Safe behind the concrete and scrap metal walls of Rothley. A small town built on the outskirts of the fallen city of Ancaster.

The boy shifted back into human form, the enchantments on his jacket and bag altering the jacket and bag to accommodate the change in his form. The rest of the boy’s clothes emerged from wherever a trickster’s clothes went they transformed. He walked into the town on his own two feet.

The young man tugged the strap of his courier bag, to reassure himself of its weight. The young man’s next stop was old Barrett’s place. The old trader was a scoundrel and cheat, but he was the only vendor who did business with the small number of scavengers that dwelled within the sleepy little settlement.

Just as he was about to reach the store, the young man stopped. He’d just had another bad feeling. This time it wasn’t the awful itch of theurge, it was a more general unpleasantness, mixed with a sense of foreboding.

The boy’s pace slowed. Decelerating till he was all but crawling, tip-toeing up the street. He knew his gut had saved him again when saw the burly, heavy-jacketed, bodies of the Sharkfang Gang. Surrounding their ironically named leader, Dolfin Whitley. A rare example of the hardly ever seen obese-vampires.

“Fuck...” said the boy. Swearing beneath his breath. He had found him, and apparently sent the Sharkfangs to pick him up.

The boy turned heel and immediately tried to walk away as if he’d seen nothing. Praying to whatever gods were listening that no one noticed him. Just as he’d been about to round the corner. Barrett spotted him and being the principled, good-hearted, loyal fellow that he was...he immediately ratted the boy out.

“Oi! Wait, you little bastard! Philip Mazon wants to have a word with you!” said Dolfin. Shouting at the boy’s back.

The boy went from walking away to running as heard the name of his former “owner”. The demented and sadistic Ring-Master of the wasteland renown Mazon Circus of Magical Curiosities.

“Fuck...He’s running. Boys, get that little shit for me, will you.” said Dolfin. Wiping his brow with a grease-stained handkerchief.

The boy fled for his life, his heart and mind racing as he realized that the life that he and his sister had built for themselves in Rothley was over. Another chase ensued, this time the boy remained a boy. Fearing that changing would incite the thugs behind him to change as well.

The boy looked around the cramped streets looking for a way out, for a friendly face, for anything that would save him from his dire situation. What he saw instead was a corner store, a shop that had opened a few weeks ago, but he’d never gotten the chance to step inside. A quiet little shop that was out of the way and little visited. The perfect place to hide and try to lose his pursuers.