“What? No, I didn’t kill your son,” he said.

Florin’s mom was holding Hugo up against the wall by his shirt. She lifted him up and slammed him against the wall again. “Don’t lie to me, you scum. You are the only one that came out alive from that ritual.”

“Lots of us survived,” Hugo said. He didn’t look her in the face, she was too terrifying right now.

She reached up and slapped him, “You are the only one that was soulmarked. Don’t think I can’t tell. Mana doesn’t lie.”

Hugo had thought that, actually. He hadn’t told anyone that he had been successfully soulmarked, so he assumed that no one knew. There must be something different about him now.

The riese father came up and said, “Calm down, it wasn’t his fault. It was that damn Alexandru.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down. I am going to get to the bottom of this,” she snapped back. The riese just raised his hands and stepped away.

He had attempted to wiggle out of her hold while she was distracted, but her grip was like iron. She must be very high ranked. Time to come completely clean. He said, “Alright, I will tell you the whole thing. When the ritual started, time stopped and we were all sent to a soul plane.” He could tell she wasn’t surprised and so he continued, “The first thing your son did was kill the nox. Then he killed the dark haired guy with the daggers. He must have gotten cocky then, because he didn’t take my friend Marion seriously. They killed each other in the end. I escaped through the yellow light.”

“What about my daughter?” the riese said.

“Lina?” Hugo said and looked the riese father in the eye, “She tried to kill me. Someone must have told her that is what she was supposed to do in order to be soulmarked. She immediately jumped and tried to murder me. She didn’t succeed.”

The father turned away. He wasn’t sure if he was ashamed that he was complicit in attempted murder or just grieving his daughter.

Gaining some confidence from the fact that the whole room was listening in, he turned back to Florin’s mother and said, “I didn’t kill your son, even though he murdered two other kids on the say so of that quack ritualist. Or was it you that passed on the instructions to kill everyone?”

She glanced around the room. "Don't spread lies like that, you bastard," she said, then dropped him and whispered, “Shut up and you won’t share my son’s fate.” She walked away without a second look.

Hugo stood there shaking for a while. He had let his mouth get ahead of himself. What had he been thinking, mouthing off to the parents that had just lost their children? He looked around the room.

He didn’t know if this was over or not. Was she still mad at him for surviving, or had she accepted the truth? Nothing she did would bring her son back. Despite the fact that a room full of more than forty people overheard the whole conversation, no one came to his rescue. No one said anything. He laid down and tried to sleep. They would have to run again soon, and he needed some rest.

He didn’t sleep well. He kept thinking about how Florin’s parents were sleeping in the same chamber as he was. The cave system had felt comforting on the trip up the mountain, but now it felt oppressive. He felt like the whole mountain above was pressing in on him. When he did get to sleep, he had nightmares. He had visions of Florin’s parents strapping him down and lecturing him while the corpses of the other hopefuls looked on.

As soon as the smells of lunch reached his section of caves, Hugo was up and in line. He just wanted to get out of here. There were plenty of lines and the lunch was quickly served and everyone got ready to go. They had skipped breakfast because of how late they got to the stronghold. The company ate quickly and they were on the road before too long.

The run down the mountain was much less terrifying in the light. They could see the monsters coming, making defense and attack much easier. The waves of insects came faster and more frequently, but were always dealt with quickly. Hugo was briefly worried when they passed a scree field full of velociraptors, but the chicken-like monsters lost their speed advantage because of the rocky terrain. Once the first of them started falling, it was all over.

Interestingly enough, they traveled much faster today than they had last night. Despite the fact that last night had terror induced running, today was faster. Most of the company was soulmarked now, and they could maintain a run for longer and recover faster during their short breaks. The unmarked ended up being carried on the second half of the journey.

Shortly before the sun set, they were at the base of the mountain. But so were the monsters. Driven by instinct and the need for mana, monsters had been flocking towards the mountain top since the heartbeat. Hundreds of dire wolves were attacking alongside insects, pythons, and perytons.

Spread out in a defensive formation were all of the mountain guides. They held the monsters off while their charges ran for the trains. The trains were protected by high walls, but they didn’t need to be manned yet because of the tempting people running around unprotected.

Hugo was almost to the train when a suuruss attacked. The high-ranked monster looked like an enormous worm, crawling across the ground on thousands of tentacles. It didn’t attack so much as flail wildly and absorb whatever got impaled by its many black tentacles. All of the highest ranked guides broke off to attack this new threat. Hugo couldn’t see well in the crush of people, but he craned his head to see the fight.

Dozens of bottles flew through the air, eating away at the monster’s flesh as they landed. Scores of blue barriers sliced off hundreds of tentacles. When the monster drew close, the formation experts quickly created metal domes to hide under. They were slowly whittling down the monster’s health, but they were battling it’s regeneration too. Where legs were chopped off, new ones quickly regrew. The acid potions fought against regrowing skin.

Eventually, the high ranked guides lured the suuruss to a hastily erected ritual circle. Once the monster touched the center of the circle, a bright light shot up, piercing the worm straight through. It burst into dark blue light, the sparkles so dense that they washed over the crowd of people like a wave. Hugo saw something fall from the middle of the beast, he guessed that it was a mana core.

Hugo heard a soft ding and looked around to see what had made that unusual sound. Nothing but people and monsters as far as he could tell. Then he realized that it must be the rank up sound. He must have gotten enough points to rank up. He couldn’t wait to open his stat sheet and use the rank up to get stronger. He just had to figure out how to do that.

Even with the death of the enormous beast, the monster horde didn’t let up. Everyone jogged to the front of the line so they could get on their trains home. No one was shoving, but there was plenty of accidental bumping as they could see their salvation so close.

At the head of the line there was a red vested guide yelling directions. There were two trains, one going north and one going south. It was easy to tell which was which, but panic made people stupid. The guide had to continually yell north or south as he pointed to each train.

Hugo got stuffed into the southbound train with the rest of the newly marked. Most of them took their seats and stared out the window nervously at the ever encroaching monster tide. They were probably nervous because most of the mountain guides wouldn’t be accompanying them on their return trip. Most mountain guides stayed behind once their charges were aboard. They would stay and kill monsters for the mana, many of them would rank up from the constant fighting. It meant that their return trip would be sparsely protected.

Hugo didn’t worry though. He felt safe now, he was on the train. Smart people had invented this and they had surely made it able to withstand a few monster attacks. Before long, they were on their way south.

Trains always felt like the quintessentially modern invention to Hugo. The hovering contraptions sped along commerce and helped spread modern life. He wouldn’t have glow lights in his crappy apartment if they didn’t have access to the cheap lights from Tallinn. The food grown on the wheel was sent to other countries in exchange for their enchanted gear. And on and on.

It all came back to trains. Shimmer trains, mostly. He had never been far enough from the mountain that he saw trains that didn’t run on the veins of the mountain, but he had heard they still existed out there.

The train he was on now was a shimmer train, of course. Sixteen train cars were linked together and hovering over the mountain’s vein. It was one of the biggest trains around, capable of holding more than a thousand people. Powered entirely by mana cores, the train would speed them back to civilization, hovering a few feet above the ground. The combination of the mana core and the shimmer in the mountain’s veins meant that the whole contraption could travel at a good pace. As they rode away from shimmer mountain, the concentration of monsters went down and everyone started to breathe easier.

Hugo was traveling south to Tallinn, then he would take a train west to his hometown of Reval. Most of the cities surrounding shimmer mountain consider themselves part of a wheel. Eight cities, each equidistant around the shimmering mountain, like a wheel on a map.

That was a bad comparison, according to Hugo. Perhaps because he grew up in the coastal city of Reval, he always thought of the eight like a blue octopus. The mountain was the head, and the lines of power leading to each city were clearly arms, not spokes. Who ever heard of a wheel with curvy spokes?

He sighed, maybe he was just distracting himself. There was no danger here, and he felt the grief creeping in. He had lost his friend, Marion. He had only known him for a few days, but the loss still hurt. He stared out the window. Time passed. He wanted to cry out, to rage at the injustice of it all. His friend didn’t deserve to die, and he wanted to do something to fix it.

There was nothing to be done. Shortly after he had gotten on the train, he had told the mountain guides what had happened in the ritual. They wrote down his sworn statement. The man in the blue vest had suspected it, and thanked him for his report. Now that he had proof, he could act. They promised to arrest the ritualist as soon as he was found. No one had seen the man since shortly after the ritual. But dead or gone, one thing was clear, there would be no second ritual next year.

Perhaps what bothered Hugo the most was that this had been going on for five years. Four other teenagers had killed to get soulmarked, and then just walked away, scot free. Their parents had paid the ritualist to help them kill for power, and nothing was going to happen to them.

He shook his head. There was no point in raging against the way the world worked. No point in wishing it was otherwise. The nails that stick up get hammered down. Revolution happened in his two copper novels, but not in real life.

Hugo wanted to distract himself, so he got out his bag. His seatmate grumbled, but Hugo ignored him. He looked through the things he had taken from Marion’s bag. Maybe there would be a clue about where he had lived, a letter from his parents or something. He pulled out a pamphlet on the shimmer mountain trek. He crumpled that and stuffed it back in the bag. The next few things were notes sent to Marion. They were both from the same girl. They seemed innocuous, one was a request for class notes, and the other was an invitation to a birthday party. Perhaps some unrequited love there. The last piece of paper was a pulsenote form. On the formal grid paper was a letter to Marion’s parents. It had a copper slipped into the pouch at the bottom, so it obviously hadn’t been sent yet.

Dear Mom,

If you are reading this, I am dead. I must have died out on the hunt father arranged with Ana-Maria. Know that I loved you all, and I am sorry I couldn't return. Please have Mihaela clean out my room and dispose of everything as she sees fit.

Love, Marion.

Hugo winced. Pulsenotes had to be short to stay under a copper, but seeing it put so bluntly and abrupt like that... Marion’s mother was going to be heartbroken. Reading between the lines, he was blaming his father for his death. No love lost there, apparently. Mihaela was going to have a rough time, cleaning out her brother’s things for the last time. Hugo wondered why he didn’t want his mother to do it.

Regardless, this is what he was looking for. The form was complete, addressed and prepaid, all he had to do was drop this off when the train arrived in town. He almost wanted to hand deliver it, to break the news to his family gently. But that would just lead to questions that he knew that Marion didn’t want answered.

He tucked the letter back away.

Staring out the window, he saw the countryside drift by. This close to the mountain, it was still barren. The yearly monster surges stripped any vegetation that attempted to grow. He could see the monsters out there now, dagger-spiders striding alongside trolls and dire wolves. He also saw several monsters he didn’t have a name for. He thought about it, and he didn’t want to learn their names. He was a city boy through and through, this trip had shown him that.

Not that he was likely to get his wish. He was soulmarked now. He was going to have to go out into the wilds on a regular basis to get stronger and train his skills. Speaking of which, he was pretty sure that he had been around enough monster killings over the last few days. He should be able to get stronger right now. He just needed to check his stats screen.

He knew that there wasn’t a command word that would pull up the screen. It was more of a mental thing. He always saw soulmarked people’s eyes go unfocused when they accessed their screens, so he tried that.

Twenty minutes later his eyes hurt and he still couldn’t access his screen. He wished he could ask someone about it, but he had no one. Maybe they would teach him if he got accepted into the academy, but he wanted to do it now. Someone in his train section would know, there were plenty of soulmarked escorts and parents about. He looked around, trying to find someone friendly looking.

There were a few rows of nox, certainly not them. They didn’t like to talk to strangers. A few stern looking fathers, riese and human, were both rejected. It would be too stressful to talk to them. A few rows up he saw a grandma talking to her granddaughter. If this was back home, Hugo wouldn’t have the courage to walk up to strangers like this. Luckily, there was no way he was going to see any of these people again. He took a deep breath and walked over to the kind looking lady.

Crouching down, he said, “Excuse me, so sorry to bother you. I just have one quick question I hope you can help me out with.”

The grandma gave him a suspicious look and said, “Yes? What is it?”

“I was just soulmarked, obviously,” Hugo waved his arm vaguely, “And I was wondering, how do I access my stat screen?”

She laughed politely and said, “Is that all?” She turned to her granddaughter to make sure she was paying attention too, “All you have to do is think about it. You don’t have to say anything, just think about your name and your stats. For example, my name is Hideguard, so I think ‘Hildegard Stats’ and a little blue screen pops up that only I can see.”

“Thank you so much. I knew it was something easy, but I don’t have anyone with me on this trip,” Hugo said.

She patted his arm and said, “Of course, dear. We are all in this together.”

Hugo nodded and sat back down on his seat. He wondered what kind of weird culture that old woman grew up in that she would say a thing like that. It was every man for himself, ever since he was born. He had more important things to worry about, like finally seeing his stat screen. Her advice didn’t work. He thought Hugo Stats, but nothing happened. He wondered if she was playing a trick on him, but he didn’t have anything better to do, so he kept trying.

When Hugo finally got the screen to appear, he was surprised and lost it before he could read anything. Thankfully it was easy to pull up again. The trick was having the right mindset. The blue screen looked slightly different from what he had seen in the two copper novels he liked to read. The eight stats were there, but where was the spot for accolades and god’s blessings? This wasn’t nearly long enough. He expected some sort of snark from the system, and this seemed so ... utilitarian.

Hugo Rebane [Domainless]

Strength 11

Dexterity 10

Resilience 9

Regeneration 11

Intelligence 10

Wisdom 9

Charisma 11

Perception 8

Rank 0

210/100 Points

Health 11/11

Mana 1/1

Skills: None

Once he got over his disillusionment, he actually read the information on the small screen. Not bad. Not good either, but not bad. Ten was the average for a newly marked, and he didn’t have any stats that strayed too far from that number. They say if your number is five or lower you are particularly untalented in that area. Mom’s friend Marius said that he had a fifteen in dexterity when he was soulmarked. That is how he knew that he would eventually awaken the barrier domain.

With eleven on three different stats and a few tens, Hugo had plenty of choices on which domain he would end up awakening. One thing was sure, his perception number wasn’t doing him any favors. He wouldn’t get soulburnt into that domain. He couldn’t remember which one perception went with. It was either the light domain or the alchemist one. Which was too bad. He didn’t want the light domain, he didn’t want to be a fink for a living. But he would like to be an alchemist. Most of the alchemists he knew had their own shops. That could be fun, to be your own boss. He could make a lot of money and close the shop whenever he wanted.

Or not, now that he knew his perception was too low to consider the alchemy domain.

He shook his head, no use worrying about the one profession that he couldn’t get. He should focus on what he could do. He should be able to rank up, actually. He had absorbed enough mana on the run down the mountain for it to be possible. Just being present as monsters were deconstructed into their base mana meant that he absorbed a small amount. The passive absorption was a nice bonus to being zero ranked. His body was like an empty vessel, absorbing ambient mana from monster deaths until the pressure equalized. Now all he had to do was use those mana points and rank up.

That was another thing he didn’t know how to do.

Focusing, he tried to use his points to rank up. Predictably, it didn’t work. Just as he was considering bugging that grandma again, something distracted him. It distracted the whole train car in fact.

Everyone was talking excitedly and pointing out the right window. Hugo was stuck on the left side of the train, but he ducked down to see what they were pointing at. It was an airship, headed directly towards their train.