Rain jiggled his foot impatiently, watching from his position on a crate as Mig and Del worked. The pair were hunched on hands and knees as they sanded their way across Temerity’s freshly planked wooden deck. The wood wasn’t structural, simply frozen half-embedded in the pykrete to create a surface with better traction. Keeping them clear of icy buildup was a tedious, labor-intensive, and low-skill task. In other words, it was one of the few things these two chuckleheads were qualified for. Rain had debated forcing them to do it with toothbrushes rather than the traditional sandstone bricks—known as ‘holystones’ in English. He’d also debated straight-up expelling the pair from Ascension. Selling secrets to the Bank hadn’t been their first offense, after all.

Ultimately, he’d decided to stay his hand. With Sana verifying the truth of their words, he’d been astonished to learn Mig and Del had thought they were helping. After selling the dagger and flashlight, they’d hurried straight back to the ship, offering Smelt the money for the items they’d borrowed from stock and informing him of the ‘sucker’ they’d swindled. Calling them pigeon-headed was an insult to pigeons, no mistake, but if he threw them off the ship, he wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on them. There were also their families to consider.

“Bwaak!”

Rain glanced to the side, spotting Dumpling, Ujesh’s ‘tame’ Fatbird, bearing down on the hapless pair.

Uh oh.

Rain glanced at the timer on his HUD, then swore and peeked into his cupped hands, inspecting the slowly crystallizing Purify anchor. Getting off the crate would be a bad idea at this sensitive stage, as would be enabling his macros, but a manual cast wasn’t out of the question.

Force Ward

“Run for it, Del!” Mig shouted, scrambling, only to be bowled over by the blubbery monster.

At twice the size of a turkey, it was no small impact, and if not for Force Ward, it could have ended quite badly. Both were still sent tumbling, the Fatbird rolling quite a bit further but quickly righting itself and rushing at Del this time. Rain also felt the impact as a draw on his mana. The matrix of magic between his palms wobbled, but didn’t destabilize.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA!” Del shouted as Rain let out a sigh of relief. Tossing aside his holystone, he sprinted for cover.

“Sorry!” Ujesh yelled, the Tamer rapidly sprinting toward them from the bow. “She won’t hurt you! She’s just trying to knock you over! It’s how they show dominance!”

“Bwaak!” Dumpling cried in confirmation.

“Bad chicken!” Ujesh shouted, diving for her. “Down, damn it! You two, don’t run in a straight line! Zig zag! Zig zag!”

Rain found himself chuckling, watching as the Fatbird eluded Ujesh, then tore off after Del in hot pursuit. “Hey!” he called. “Are you two working, or playing?”

“Seriously?” Mig shouted accusingly, getting between Del and Dumpling in an attempt to head her off. Happy to change her target, Dumpling cannonballed into his stomach, making him let out a huge oomph as he was sent flying.

“Don’t just sit there!” Del yelled, hauling Mig back to his feet as Dumpling rolled back to her feet after the rebound. “Help us!”

“I am helping,” Rain said, adjusting Force Ward just a tad higher.

Ujesh made a heroic dive, intercepting Dumpling’s next charge and managing to brush a hand against her feathers. “DOWN!”

Like a glowing golden wire, a link formed between the Tamer and his bonded monster, making Rain sit up sharply. It was the first time he’d seen any connection between souls other than the one linking him to Dozer.

In response to the empowered command, Dumpling pulled her feet into her body, plopping to the deck like an enormous water balloon and rolling a few times before coming to a stop, upside down. Not for the first time, it crossed Rain’s mind that Fatbirds might be related to slimes in some way, and the idle thought was apparently enough for him to lose focus. The link between Ujesh and Dumpling vanished as swiftly as it had appeared, the Tamer already busy scolding his feathered partner.

Show’s over, I guess. At least I saw the link, though. I’m making progress. Slowly.

Leaving Ujesh to restore order, he checked on his anchor, then sighed as he looked longingly at the horizon.

Five days.

Five full days, they’d been stuck in Eastspar, counting the half-day of their arrival and the half-day that had slipped by since morning. Five full, frustrating days, filled with work, distractions, annoyances, and a sense of impending doom.

Rumors were flying every which way, making it almost impossible to get a clear picture of what was going on in the south, but they’d pieced together enough to know the Empire’s army was either retreating or holding position. The soldiers hadn’t been reduced to a thin layer of meat paste buttering the countryside, as one might expect. Whatever Vatreece had done with the Citizens—and she had done something, Rain was sure—it hadn’t been dealing with Fecht’s armies. No, he expected she’d gone for the head, hurling the Citizens against the source of the problem deep in the heart of the Empire.

The worrying part was that she hadn’t returned to mop up the mess.

Feeling more than hearing a tiny crack, Rain cursed, then clamped down on the magic between his hands and gently guided the dissonant threads back into place. If he lost the craft with only two minutes left, he’d scream.

I need to solve the problems I can solve. A spy satellite would be nice, though.

Working his jaw, he looked up to find Mig and Del still struggling to catch their breath while Ujesh rolled Dumpling away like an overstuffed footstool. Shaking his head at that, he returned his focus to the timer on his HUD, waiting patiently. When it finally hit zero, a small chime sounded, and there was a clink as the completed anchor dropped into his palm. The slightly cracked crystal was white and smoky, like a piece of dirty quartz, and about the size of a kidney bean.

Bind Unnamed Anchor?

Purify – Tier 2

Yes No

Tapping ‘Yes’, Rain took a moment to name the anchor, then smiled as he saw its listed quality on the display that appeared a moment later.

ID

CON

Q

D

H

LKL

det_t01_0000

OK

4%

8

1

Self

det_t01_0001

FAIL

12%

24

3

Barstone Harbor

det_t02_0000

OK

2%

202

2

Temerity Mess

rad_t01_0000

OK

8%

15

2

Temerity Bridge

imm_t02_0000

OK

5%

505

4

Temerity Boiler

pur_t02_0000

OK

12%

1,212

10

Self

Twelve percent. Nice. Even with the crack, that’s the best one yet. Every level makes it a little easier. I might be able to do a tier three now without it coming apart on me. I’ll try tomorrow. For now, I’ll just get this where it’s going.

“Mig!” Rain shouted, summoning a keyboard and typing with one hand to update the anchor’s location.

Mig jumped, spinning and tucking his sandstone brick behind his back like he’d been caught with a stolen cookie. Almost immediately, having realized the silliness of what he’d just done, he brought the holystone back around and made a scrubbing motion with it in the air. “We was just about to get back to it, Captain, honest. We wasn’t slack—”

Rain raised a hand as he banished his keyboard, cutting him off. “You were about to get back to it, and you weren’t slacking, but never mind your lazy grammar.” He held out his other hand, displaying the anchor on his palm. “Take this down to the mess hall. Put it with the purple one in the wooden box in the cabinet behind the counter. Do NOT let it touch anything metal. Do NOT drop it. And for the love of everything clean and bright in the world, do NOT sell it to anyone.”

Mig winced. “Yes, sir,” he said, dropping his brick with a clatter. “Deserved that, sir.” He rushed over, gingerly taking the anchor with a look of extreme concentration on his face.

“Del, go with him,” Rain said, closing his fist and letting it fall.

Del saluted. “Yes, sir! I’ll see it gets there, sir! C’mon, Mig, let’s—”

“Forgetting something?” Rain asked, bringing the two of them up short. He pointed at their discarded holystones. “That’s not where those go. Put them away before someone trips.”

“Does that mean we’re done?” Mig asked hopefully.

Rain silently looked down at the small area they’d sanded, then craned his neck to scan the vast expanse of frozen deck behind him. He fixed them with a blank look, one that they wouldn’t properly be able to appreciate through his visor. “Does it look like you’re done?”

“Well, with us leaving tomorrow, I figured you’d have the Mages clean up like the first...time...” Mig trailed off, then sighed. “Yes, sir. You say jump, we ask how high, sir.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Rain said. “Deliver the anchor, get some water and a snack, and then get back to it. I’m going ashore soon, but don’t think I can’t keep tabs on you from anywhere. If you make enough progress by the time I get back, I might send Cessa and Clubbs to help you. Loaf around, and you’ll be scrubbing all night. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Del said, slapping Mig on the shoulder, then stooping to scoop up the holystones, dumping them into the bucket of sand they’d been using as an abrasive.

Rain rolled his eyes, putting the pair out of his mind as he settled back on his crate and triggered a status update.

Progress Report

marker_1: dozer_forgive_me [3061 Seedlings 32 13:58]

marker_2: eastspar_predate [3061 Light 05 13:50]

Span: 5.0 days

Skills

Anchor Aura: +15,150 exp, 1 -> 5 (+4)

Heat Ward: +1,460 exp, 14 -> 15 (+1)

Prismatic Intent: +2 exp

Synchronization

Recovery: 10.6 -> 10.8 (+0.2)

Endurance: 30.3 -> 30.9 (+0.6)

Vigor: 10.0 -> 10.3 (+0.3)

Perception: 38.9 -> 47.1 (+8.2)

Speed: 9.4 -> 9.5 (+0.1)

For all that it covered five days, the dialog didn’t list much worth talking about. He’d finished off Heat Ward at last, and Anchor Aura was making progress, but Prismatic Intent was still languishing. At first glance, the Perception sync uptick seemed impressive, but it had mostly come in the first few days. Recovery and Vigor had bumped up slightly, just from him remembering to periodically drain his health and stamina. He had no idea where the Speed had come from, especially with how slow everything felt.

I should add jogging back into my schedule once we get to Yelfenn. He glanced at the clock. Why does time slow down when you’re looking forward to something?

Shaking his head, Rain concentrated on his rings, spreading the points he’d shifted to Focus back across his other stats before reactivating his macros.

After the Warden had punched through Mental Ward like it wasn’t even there, he’d made some upgrades. One possible vector of attack that had occurred to him was that someone with high-rank Channel Mastery or a similar tick-shortening skill could time things perfectly to slip through the gaps. To fix that hole, he’d invested no small amount of soul time into coding up a passable pseudorandom number generator. That had been on his to-do list for a while, ever since he’d tired of rolling a die to select the next song on his mental jukebox, but he’d kept putting it off because of the gaps in his knowledge. There was a big difference between having heard the term ‘linear feedback shift register’ and knowing what it meant, let alone building something with one.

Eventually, though, he’d cobbled something together that seemed to work through educated guesses, trial, and error. Combined with some optimization of his low-level code, his defensive macro could now switch at just under one kilohertz—one thousand changes per second—selecting a random aura each time. Each spell was assigned a weight from zero to one, determining how likely it was to be selected. The algorithm was far from cryptographic perfection, he was sure, but he couldn’t imagine anyone cracking the pattern, presuming they could even keep up.

After setting the weightings how he wanted them, Rain glanced at his clock, seeing he had ten more minutes to burn.

I need a distraction. Might as well get a skill unlock out of the way. That should keep me busy for a hot second.

Smiling, Rain opened his skills window, considering his two options.

Utility Auras has a better chance of giving me something utterly busted, but Offensive Auras is more likely to have something I can actually unlock. Hmm, well, ‘more likely’ isn’t ‘likely,’ so Utility Auras it is.

He braced himself, then pushed the button. There was a brief sense of strain, easily endured—as it damn-well better have been at this point—then a new skill appeared at the bottom of the window.

Unity (0/15)

Entities may use the active skills of other entities within range and in their party

Unity user must match any health, mana, and stamina costs

Maximum Skill Tier: 1 (fcs)

Maximum Skill Rank: 1

Range: 5.8 meters

Requires 10 ranks in Empire of Will

Requires 10 ranks in Empire of Grit

Requires 10 ranks in Empire of Brawn

Requires 10 ranks in [HIDDEN]

Rain’s eyes narrowed as he read, the world fading to the background. There was a lot to unpack here.

First off, this skill sounds totally awesome. One person has Flight? Everyone has Flight! One person can Teleport? Everyone can Teleport! It does say ‘party,’ though, so that limits the insanity somewhat. Groups of eight, but no limit on number of groups. That’s bizarre, now that I think about it. Not many skills mention parties. Is the effect complex enough that it needs the added oomph of a party link to function, or is it just a nerf from the system architects?

Rain waved a hand, dispelling his pointless speculation.

Regardless, it’s still OP. More so if you consider the requirements. Having the Imperial Auras—including the hidden one, which this all but confirms exists—means having all the Wells, which means having all the Seasons. If I could unlock it, I’d basically be a god already, but granted, I cheat. A normal person would need to level Prismatic Intent to get the most out of all those skills. If only it wasn’t such a pain in the— He shook his head sharply. Nope. I’m done whining about that.

His interface moved with him as he let himself fall backward, blocking his view of the sky. He barely even noticed the puffy clouds floating idly behind the blue windows.

Looking at this, if the usable skill tier scales with Focus, then the usable skill rank probably scales with Unity’s rank instead. Is it capped by the donor’s rank in the borrowed skill? It has to be; otherwise, someone in my party could use Prismatic Intent at rank fifteen while I’m still stuck at—

With one hand, Rain reached up and flicked himself in the forehead.

ANYWAY. It says active skills, which rules out passives like Intrinsic Focus, but what about metamagic? That counts as ‘active,’ right? And what about something like Aura Synergy? If Tarny was in range, would his aura ranks count toward my total, assuming no overlap? I’m gonna go with...probably not? What about Stacked Shot, though? Could Ameliah use it with Shots she doesn’t have?

He sighed.

Questions, questions. The tier scaling is testable, at least.

Fiddling with his rings, he found that the max tier of a borrowed skill dropped to zero below one hundred Focus. He had to sacrifice a little health to push the stat high enough in the other direction, but at one thousand points, the tier limit jumped to two.

Well, shit. By that pattern, it’s 10,000 Focus for tier three. He clicked his tongue. So much for Flight. I suppose I’d have Empire of Will, though, so maybe it’s not that unreasonable. Let me run the numbers.

Empire of Will (0/15) (+)

Boost Focus by 58 for all entities

Range: 5.8 meters

Cost: 20 mp/s

Requires 50 ranks in Utility Auras

Requires 10 ranks in Essence Well

Assuming the Focus boost scales with level, that’s 870 Focus at max rank, times two for Channel Mastery, times two and a half for Amplify Aura, times who-the-hell-knows for Aura Compression and Aura Synergy...

No, the real limit is going to be tolerance. It’s one hundred times your level for silver, and unless it changes again at gold...

He sat up sharply.

I can bloody well ask! Even if Halgrave won’t tell me because of whatever bullshit reason, Velika basically promised to give me that kind of info! I just need to catch her when she’s conscious for more than thirty seconds.

Rain muttered a curse. As his ability to see souls had grown, so had his awareness of just how bad Velika’s condition was. Compared to her, he was the model of spiritual health.

Sana says she’s improving, but I haven’t noticed a difference. It’s like somebody punched their fist into a cake and clawed out a huge handful to nosh on. Still, if she’s pulling herself back together, does that mean she knows soul-fu? She must, having been raised by a Citizen. Hells, she can break the damage limit and muscle her way through lair boundaries for crying out loud. Next time she wakes up, I’ll ask her if—

A chime from Rain’s interface brought him up short, and he blinked, then looked at the time. A rush of excitement ran through him, one that had nothing to do with skills, souls, or anything else of that nature.

Finally!

Swiping away all his open skill windows, he opened his macro configuration instead and switched it from a passive posture to full combat mode. He then further slanted his Wards toward Force before reaching up and raising his visor. The sudden tickle of wind against his cheeks almost made him slam it back closed, but he grit his teeth and pulled his trembling hands away.

The Wards are enough. The Wards are enough. The Wards are enough.

“Hey,” Ameliah said, the golden glow of her soul washing over him as she approached right on time.

“Hey,” he said, scrambling up off the crate and over to meet her. “Ready?”

“I’ve been ready,” Ameliah said, brushing a strand of hair out of her face, then stepping up to kiss him. As she pulled away, she slipped her arm through his. “So, where are we going first?”

Rain grinned, guiding her toward the gangway. “Have you ever had ice cream?”