There was a shadow in the air just before they appeared. A flash of silhouettes, foggy and indistinct, but big. And they were already in motion, charging even before they were fully fleshed out. The shadows bulked out, with heft and mass and scales, trampling feet and tossing horns, and a spiny spikey shield that protected the neck. There are many kinds of thunderbeast, but the individual types are mostly moot. The principle is always the same: stay out of their way and don't agitate them. Never be in front when they're charging. This variety of thunderbeast is a type that I used to know as "styracosaurus", I believe. This is the dinosaur whose bones I found in the forest yesterday, and have been attuning myself to for twenty-four hours. I don't have a full affinity to them yet. But it doesn't take much.

  The mana warriors to the left and right were all staring in mute horror right up until the charging behemoths were trampling them, goring them on the massive horns. The barbarian mages tried to cast against me, but Tiviti was bearing that magic-nullifying shield and they were helpless before its glow. Stealing that from the slain enemies was going to be a game-changer.

  And the real bosses, the priest and priestess? They dropped where they stood, wracked with the sudden disappearance of geese.

  A massive stone blade from a barbarian warrior chopped deeply into one of the beasts' throat, and I immediately dispelled the dying creature and launched another, charging. The priest yelled something, and the nailmonkeys began surging forward, shrieking at the top of their lungs, while the centaurs knelt to pick up the longbows they never left behind. Kimothy threw a fog across them, thick and blinding, while Larianne, Nux and Thumper ran to stop the monkeys.

  The head priest was shouting a new order when his mouth was, for a split second instant, filled with a crossbow bolt. For just a moment daylight shone through his mouth from from front to back, and then he collapsed with the back of his head missing. I recocked Quarl's crossbow and he was already reloading. The priestess threw herself to the ground behind the altar, taking cover, so instead the next bolt went through five primates before it lost momentum. And reload.

  There was a wrrrrnch! click. clack! chunnnng! The sounds of crossbow cocking, loading, and firing.

  Nailmonkeys are a deadly threat when they're ambushing from above. Running across a stone plaza towards armed opponents did not work as well. Larianne was taking them out as fast as she could reach them, her talons a flickering trail of five-fingered death. Thumper was kebabing the little bastards on her sword and then flinging them to the side. And Nux? He was having the time of his life. "Whips and whacks and wailing sax, of radishes and rings! I brought violence, and you're on the guest list! Hey you! Are you allergic to not having any blood? Carcass maximus!" It was coherent, but it was still weird. Still, he was effective. That axe was hewing monkeys down like a lawnmower. Licard was standing beside Quarl, handing over new bolts and watching for one of us to need help.

  And Sir Maspers was there with a crowbar, wrenching open the shackles on the unblinking sacrificial victim. The steel squealed, and the bronze gave way, bending back bit by bit. He had said, the hostage would be his highest priority. This was what it took to enlist him: the chance to save a life. An innocent. The hostage was a man, ordinary, anonymous. He was unmoving and unflinching, lost to the delusions of the jungle's toxins. Helpless, defenseless, and without Sir Maspers he'd have no chance at all.

  Meanwhile I'm throwing dinosaurs at these bad guys like this is arcade skeeball. One after another, I fling them out, they impact, they rampage, and when they're injured I cancel them for the next. I can keep two of them present at a time, without losing myself to the essence.

  I'm not eager to find out what happens if I overextend an essence while I'm untethered, with no body or mind to soak up the dissonance. Especially not an essence as volatile as frickin' dinosaurs.

  The barbarian mages are all dead, mostly as collateral damage from the thunderbeasts, and Tiviti puts the shield away and draws her sword, charging in to help the others against those monkeys. The fight is separating, nailmonkeys to the right with Nux, Thumper, Tiviti and Larianne, and to the left the remaining barbarian warriors and a surging rush of styracosaurs, and a flurry of bolts from Quarl's crossbow. Sometimes I was able to recover his ammunition, and I would unkink the bent tips and fly them back over to him and Licard. After all, this young man only brought so much ammo.

  Kimothy is crouching low, down on the steps to present no target. "Centaurs are under control," he called out to me. "Don't worry about those."

  Grunts of effort finally gave way to triumph. "Fuckin'... got him!" Sir Maspers cried, as the last manacle split open. He tossed the prybar away to clang on stone, and grabbed the hostage around the waist. A heave, and he had the man over his shoulder, rushing back towards me, towards safety.

  The priestess shrieked. "No!" she screeched, her voice ragged. "Bring it back! No! Back!"

  But we were not bringing anything back, and her minions were being slaughtered. Those mana warriors are tough, but I am not gonna run out of thunderbeasts. And it was frankly disgusting how many monkey-corpses were stacked up on that side of the battlefield.

  Nux was not disgusted. "Mangle is a noun, not a verb! And I am one! I've got a deal for you, if you tell me your favorite organ, I'll let you be buried with that one!" He was going out of his way to kill those monkeys in the goriest way possible, splashing blood as far as he could. He was grinning like a maniac, while he was killing like a maniac. I had already pinged his affection quest three times for 5XP each, the guy really liked killing. Thumper and Kimothy had also both progressed, but I just could not stop to count up right now because the goddamned high priestess is up to something again!

  I tried to call someone's attention to her but speech is still my Achille's heel. "Guh! Hunh!" I blurted, and the sound did not carry.

  She took the bottle from the dead high priest, and uncorked it. Distilled blood from the dead, poisoned and altered with whatever weird alchemy they've got. She pulled the high priest up, cradled against her body. With a heave, she threw his arm over her shoulder, a parody of passionate embrace. And then she pressed her mouth to his, a filthy posthumous kiss, and she poured the bottle from the distillation into the wound on the back of his head.

  Through his gory gaping wound, mixing with his blood, she drank it through the cannibal kiss, her lips pressed tight to his, her throat working as she swallowed the converted poisons.

  Right. Time for the finale.

  I stumbled my body forward, bringing myself around. I don't have enough mana for the armature and framework, so I'll have to use my own hands. A massive noise fills the village, something titanic and terrifying. And getting closer.

  The fight...slows. The nailmonkeys freeze, and so does my team. The warriors of the barbarian village stare in shock up at the sky, and the thunderbeasts seem unwilling to continue, like they have discovered something more important than this fight.

  "The fuck?" Kimothy said, rolling over to look around.

  I didn't tell them everything about this part.

  I lay my body on top of the altar, and rest myself face-up. Arms reaching upwards with hands open, as if beseeching. And the the sun goes out. Eclipsed by a body, a shrieking, angry, hungry body of incredible size. Lost in the glare of noon, the skywhale bears down on us all, drawn by the overload of the the forest's toxins. The ritual designed to call the messengers was not meant to be overclocked like this, and now that messenger was divebombing us, helpless to ignore the call.

  A lens appeared in my hand. Conjuring glass. The third of my four mana. And with that lens, a parabolic reflector, arching back, fixed in place, collecting light. The winter sun collected and focused, a tracing beam that I aimed up at the skywhale's oncoming bulk. This was not nearly enough.

  I curved void.

  A circle of broken space forced its way open behind the glass lens, and the parabolic reflector lowered into it. The furious light of a million suns spiled into that curved glass dish and mirrored out, multiplied over and over, through the lens I held in my hands. The glass heated to a searing white, and the flesh of my palms cooked through in a second. I held. I did not waver.

  The laser this lens formed speared up like the lance of God and drilled a hole from the front of the skywhale and out the other side, coring it and flash-frying its brain. We pierced the heavens with a beam of void-light.

  And the skywhale

  Stopped.

  It hovered, nerveless, heedless, in the air. Held aloft by magic that survived it, the creature, vast beyond recognition, hung head-down above us, mouth gaping open, beak drooling, eyes glazed. The bulky body behind it shivered, spasmed, and quelled.

  Licard had my shoulder the instant I closed the portal, and he was fixing my hands with sweat on his brow. I shuddered to think what it would feel like if I climbed back into my body right now. Oh. Probably nothing. Only living nerves transmit pain, and those nerves are just as dead as can be.

  I owed that man a huge apology and a ton of gratitude. He told me to stop getting myself deliberately injured. I released the glass, the steel, everything. I dispelled the thunderbeasts, I lay quietly while the healer fixed my mistakes again. I stared up at the sky, the lofty leviathan staring back down at me. And finally, the hole in its forehead began to bleed. From a distance, a trickle. Ten seconds later, I could hear the blood falling like rain onto the packed mud of the village.

  With help, I sat up, and we got me off the slab. Thumper put her sword through the priestess's heart, but it was unlikely she noticed after the massive dose of toxins she'd taken in. It was possible she was tripping so hard she never realized she had been stabbed to death.

  Sir Maspers stood, with his rescued man held over his shoulder. He was staring at me, heated. The stone top of the temple was a wasteland of bodies and blood, savagery and agony spread all about. "Promise me this is worth it," the knight said to me.

  I raised my hand, that part was easy. Curl fingers, straighten one. Point at the man over the knight's shoulder. "Re. ZZzzzzz. Teh. Nn. Ebbb."

  Sir Maspers blinked. "W- no. What? Reztin Ebb? This can't- is this Reztin Ebb?!"

  "Clue us in, Mister Knight Sir," Thumper said, chuckling.

  "Instead of regaling you his entire criminal history," Sir Maspers said, his voice skipping a little as involuntary chuckles forced their way in, "I'll just tell you what the total offered bounty is for his live capture."

  The knight named a figure, and everyone reacted except Nux. Licard sucked his teeth, Tiviti whistled in astonishment. Thumper actually winced at hearing that much money being mentioned.

  "As much silver as I can carry," Maspers said, staring at the insensible man he was hauling.

  The hands of my body seemed to be fixed now, from what I could tell. Licard was working miracles there, I would not have thought that even a healer of his ability could fix something like that. I started folding myself back into my body.

  "Huh," Thumper said, watching me. "That's a soul, is it?"

  "That's what her soul looks like, in any case," Quarl said, finally unstringing his crossbow with the greatest care.

  "I don't think anyone is ever supposed to see one with their own eyes," Larianne said, looking more uncomfortable than I've ever seen her.

  Thumper shrugged. "Just looks like smoke. Really thick, dark smoke."

  That can't be right. I've seen souls. They're luminous. Not smokey at all. Not dark. It has to be an effect of the high priest's spell, some quirk of his magic that showed me like that instead of in my true appearance.

  "Ah," I said. "Aaaaagggghhhlll right. All right." I was worn. I felt tired all the way to my soul. I think that I've just been beaten and healed too many times, the reserves are empty. Burning my mana down to zero, twice, is not good for me either. "Hey, I'm back," I said, blinking and reassessing my condition. Most of me tingled, pins and needles. "Could someone take the translation sigil and check those tablets? I've never been able to get what they say, and I've always thought it must be important."

  While everyone settled to their post-battle tasks, I walked over to Fortu's corpse and took my cloak off, spreading it over him. Up close, to see the shape of his body and hands, it was clear what kind of agony he had died in. If the only mercy I can give is to give him a semblance of privacy and peace, then so be it.

  "It's a list of rules," Kimothy said, holding the sigil between him and the floor tiles. "Never offer mercy. Never kill cleanly. Do not work, do not suffer. The gods will take you if you show an ounce of love. The demons will take you if you hold an ounce of happiness. Always act on anger. Always eat more than you should. And... uh, other stuff. Worse stuff. It's all about walking the woods, and being a total bastard. Like, I think these are meant to be guidelines for how to survive in the jungle, somehow?"

  "Furiousity filled the fat," Nux added.

  "Right, and-" Kimothy paused, and glanced over at the Madman. "Hey, Nux? Do you know something else about these toxic trees?"

  Nux thought about his answer. He ruminated, contemplated. He took his time. He took our time. Then he spoke. "It's only disembowelment if you remove the large intestines. Otherwise it's just sparkling evisceration."

  "Charming," Larianne said. "Someone make it make sense."

  Maspers had set his captive down again, and cracked his knuckles. "Fortu was ranting about love and joy. He was full of the poison but he could stay ahead of it if he kept yelling about trapping his target. Nux is straight-up immune, but he's incapable of expressing an emotion that isn't awful. Kimothy and Thumper are our most soft-hearted members and the smallest dose of the poison knocks them for a loop immediately. And Lady Natalie..."

  "I was lost in my hallucination until I dreamed I was getting married to someone I don't love," I said. "I think that's what knocked me out of the delusions."

  "Why the monsters are immune, but animals aren't," Maspers said, and smacked his fist into his other palm. "The forest tries to drive you to evil. Monsters have no love, no positivity, no charity or self-sacrifice. The poison targets teamwork and comraderie."

  Thumper nudged the high priestess. "She dosed herself while she was kissing her guy. I think that's why it was super-activated."

  Larianne looked on, forehead pinching. "What?"

  "Remember they were talking about flying messengers?" I explained. "The skywhales. They had some potion that was supposed to call and control the skywhales so they could fly away from here. It's made from blood and tree-poison and other stuff. She overdosed it and instead of bringing the skywhale to obey her, it was charging straight down to smash us all flat," I said, and gestured up at the hovering corpse. I slowly, carefully started stretching. "Now we can take plenty of time to sort this out. We've picked up a dozen rare magic weapons, a scandalous amount of bounty money, solved a mystery, picked up potions and poisons and -" I froze. "Oh, damn, one second, I gotta go get doused in whale blood."

  "What?" Thumper said, horrified.

  "If we take a quick shower in the monster blood you'll have a permanent increase of stamina and overall health," I said. I summoned a thunderbeast to knock over the giant altar stone and reveal the entrance to the temple's treasure vault. "You all explore that, unless you feel like joining me. I'll be right back."

  Tiviti was the only one that went with me, the rest were too squeamish. The skywhale's blood was like a thin oil, and it splattered down in a stream. The creature was huge, and the hole in its body was comparatively small. It would be bleeding dry for days. We walked down the steps of the ziggurat, and she stayed close by me. "This went poorly," she said. "You had good information, but you had a bad plan."

  "Fair," I said. "I knew the conditions, but the execution went awry. Having advance information does not guarantee success."

  "This will keep happening," she said, her voice stern. "You kept everything to yourself. You did not let anyone help you with the plan. You think it's a mistake to let people in and let them know what is happening. It is not. You are making mistakes because you do not let people in. No, rather- your first mistake is when you choose not to let them in."

  "Probably," I said. "But I've not got a lot of choice." I paused at the foot of the temple steps, catching my breath. "If I say the wrong thing, everything is a disaster. And the easiest way to not say the wrong thing, is to say as little as possible."

  "You could say more than you do," she pointed out calmly, waiting for me to start moving again. "You do clearly enjoy keeping secrets and having surprises."

  "Maybe somewhat," I conceded.

  "Somewhat?" she repeated, smiling serenely. "Very well. Somewhat. But, for someone who despises not knowing things, you do not ask many questions. You probably ought to try to foster yourself some more inquisitive behaviors."

  The base of the temple butted right up against the encroach of the village, we were walking between huts. We could glimpse small bursts of movement in the shadows as someone would scoot to get out of sight just a second too late. Small sounds of furtive movement, we were watched from all sides but this place stank of a fear that would not leave.

  The houses themselves were all basically identical- sun-fired bricks of mud and clay stacked in circles with an opening for a door. Squares would be more efficient for space, but the poor-quality bricks were crumbling at the edges and needed the corner-less shape to distribute the weight evenly and support themselves. There was no sign of wood construction anywhere, not a rafter or thatch, no reeds worked into the brick-mud. Surrounded by a thriving jungle, they could not afford to use any plant materials in their construction, and did not have the tools to work stone.

  Tiviti stooped to look inside one empty-seeming hovel. "How did this happen?"

  "Isolation, desperation," I said. "Nothing to build with but dirt, nothing to build tools out of except bones. Passing down ancient rituals and trying to find a way out. Nothing to do but stare at the terrifying jungle. Nothing to eat but each other."

  "Wait, nothing?" she said, turning to blink at me in surprise. "How..."

  She was having a hard time articulating her question. I helped her out. "They've got a lot of healers in this village."

  "Healers? But- oh. Oh. Oh gods." And that's the sound of her figuring out the ramifications of how this village stays alive.

  "Yyyyyyyep," I said. "It's just horrible. Let's get what we came for and get out of here."

  We had been following the spattering patter of falling fluids, watching the sky to see where the stream came down. None of the streets here were straight, most of them barely footpaths between clusters of shaped-clay shacks. But we found it, the spot where a thin rivulet of monster blood was streaming down in an constant course.

  "That looks vile," Tiviti said, staring at the streaming oily ichor.

  I shrugged, took a deep breath, and walked in.

  [ Something has changed. Stamina increased. Your Stamina is now 8. +5 XP. You now have 43 XP. ]

  I stepped back out, and shuddered from top to toe. "Gods that's so gross. Nasty. Agh. But... it worked."

  Also, I'm already more than halfway to my next level! This has been a profitable day... if I don't lose several allies.

  "Worked?"

  I nodded. "Enhanced fortitude and endurance."

  She wrinkled her nose. "I'd regret it for a long time if I did not," she said, and took a deep breath, puffing out her cheeks and squinting her eyes before she took the step to douse herself. She came out shuddering. "Oh. Vile. And you still cannot use your powers to clean us up?"

  "Not until tomorrow morning," I said. "I had to dig very, very deep to save everyone from that fire-mage."

  She paused. "And I don't want to sound ungrateful. You did do that, did save us. And I know I should not throw it in your face that we are all only here at your insistence-"

  "But, yes, there it is," I said, and we started the soggy and unpleasant trudge back the way we came. "If I drag you all out into a gross jungle full of danger, the least I should do is make sure nobody dies."

  Tiviti used one hand to sluice her opposite arm clean, pinching to squeegee the goo away. "I wonder if that is not an unreasonably high standard to set for yourself. You should run that past Licard and see if most expedition leaders would agree with you, or if they take it in stride that some people they recruit will die in the attempt."

  She had a good idea, and I emulated it, wiping away as much monster blood as I could, now that its effects have soaked in. "I understand your reasoning there," I said. "But I don't agree with it. This isn't about me recruiting adventurers for a treasure hunt. I approached my friends and classmates to sign up their Guild licenses and follow me on an expedition out of trust and faith in me. That's a different scenario, and a different standard."

  "So you say. I still say let the expert rule on that."

  I harrumphed. Oily ichor plopped on the ground as we walked, I ran my hands down my front to try to strain off as much of the mess as I could. "And what, prove that most adventurer leaders don't pay enough mind to the duty of care? Either I'm not meeting the standard, or they aren't."

  "Duty of care?" she said, and shot me a sideways smirk. It was a warmer expression than most I saw from her. "Interesting phrase, that."

  Am I being suggestive? I didn't think I was. I thought I was just using a very normal and innocuous turn of phrase. Is she reading too much into this? Am I subconsciously being flirtatious? Could it be both? Does it matter if it's either one because I kinda get the feeling that we're flirting while we're both covered in monster blood.

  Nope. Can't deal with it.

  At the base of the temple steps, near the blood-drenched bones of the warriors we had fought, was piled all the weapons they had used against us, and the accessories and armor pieces that went with them. Many of those were scribed with mana sigils, and Tiviti took off her shield to pile them all on top, and carry it all up the stairs with us.

  "Hells," Licard said, looking it all over when we added it to the stack of treasures being hauled up out of the temple. "That's a whole damn arsenal. If you don't need those, the Guild will pay damn good money for those. There's always more mana-capable warriors than there are magic weapons to pair with them."

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Nux was sketching, something else that involved a lot of lenses. Larianne was methodically cutting the claws off the nailmonkeys and shoving them into a big bag, sitting on a stack of silver ingots. She kept a handful of small brass tubular cases in her line of sight, as if afraid they'd be stolen. Kimothy took a break from mist-levitating treasure out of the vault and spent a minute staring up at the dead, unmoving skywhale. Thumper was bouncing on her toes, keeping limber. "Gross," she laughed when she saw me and Tiviti. "I can't believe you two really went through with it!"

  Kimothy shook out his arms. "C'mon, let's get back to civilization. I gotta be done with this place. We're almost done pulling treasure from this place."

  Thumper paused and bit her lip, and looked out over the edge of the temple-top. "Are we really going to leave all these people like this? There's hundreds of them. Families. They're stuck in the middle of a monster-infested jungle."

  Quarl set aside his canteen and pulled his mask back on before he turned back towards us. "They're only a day's hike from the outside world. If they wanted out, they would get out. All they have to do is avoid thinking about love or selfless charity during their walk."

  "In a Wanfarrun winter, through the snow, with those monkeys and centaurs and thunderbeasts?" Thumper retorted. "These people can't fight. We just killed all their soldiers and guards!"

  Sir Maspers butted in. "I don't think the warriors and mages we killed today were protecting any of these people from the jungle. I think they were the captors. A village of noncombatants in an exclusively-cannibal society? These are the livestock." He swept his gaze over the village below us. "We should leave."

  Licard looked unhappy. "We can't do anything for them. What kind of life could we offer outside here? Teach them our language? Find them jobs? Settle them in a town? Destroy their culture? Or send them to the borders and hope that the other barbarian tribes will take them in?"

  Tiviti shrugged. "There are no merciful answers here. We wash our hands of this."

  "She's right," I said. "Thumper, I mean. She's right. We should do something." I'm doing it again. I'm off-book. I'm making up the rules as I go along again. "These people, and they are people, are either going to be wiped out by a few monsters, or they're going to suffer a slow and agonizing death by starvation until they are forced to kill one another. We're here. We've seen. We do not walk away and think ourselves blameless. We are not innocent because we refused to get involved." I shook my head. "We'll leave. Today, on our own. But I'm sending people back here. Soldiers. Mercenaries. Adventurers. We know the secret now, how to beat the forest-poisons."

  This was not in the script. I've got a future to look towards. I need to stay on task, stay on target. I have quests to complete and I don't need to get wrapped up in some other project. But here I am. I've put my hands on the trolley lever, and I need to take ownership of the consequences. And if I am going to be off-script, I'm going to make sure I'm doing something good and real.

  I stood under the noon sun, and watched the huts below. The tiny skulking movements here and there from the people who stared at us from hiding. "There's really no choice," I said. "I'll be back for them tomorrow. For right now, let's just go home."

  Maspers took the limp and unresisting Reztin with him to the prisons of Hearstcliff, where presumably they would remove the poison from his system and prepare him to face trial for his many crimes. He is supposed to be one of the links that lets Nathan know how Kralcit was involved in the plot against our family, but we're way past that, I don't need him for that, just the reward.

  The knight never told the others, but I know. Piracy, mass murder, smuggling, torture, inciting riot, organized crime, counterfeiting, mayhem, impersonating clergy, slavery, and pretty much all of the lesser crimes. Former captain of the Glorious Curmudgeon. Former lieutenant to Gala Kralcit, and an important step in the investigation to dismantle her organized crime network.

  Licard got dropped off at a carriage-stop near the school, rather than tell me where he lives. I deposited Nux back at his room in the administration building, with the guards who would pretend they never noticed him missing, thanks to their deal with Corder and Corder's deal with me. Everyone else I just set down in the quad, and we headed out to transition from a weekend of questing and adventuring, back to their own lives. For me, step one is a shower. I hosed down everything I was wearing, scrubbed myself with soap all over four times, shampoo three times, conditioner twice. I threw my clothes in to the laundry cupboard for the spells to start cleaning them, and then broke down the rest of my pack and put everything away. Then, I got dressed, and went to late services at Skydown Crossing.

  I was quiet, and reserved. A lot on my mind. Not really any moral quandaries- I was relatively sure I had done the best that I could at all times. And if I was feeling morally conflicted about my weekend, I'd just talk it over with the priest. No, I was conflicted over the pragmatic part of it all, the execution. Every damn time I get involved in some kind of violence, everything breaks down. I know they say "the first casualty of any engagement is the plan", but I really feel like just once this should go my way.

  Every time I go in over-prepared. Instead of confronting Braux, I laid a dozen traps. Instead of stumbling into Uchislowi with just me and one sidekick, I went in with a large party, well-prepared with supplies, mages and a healer. Over-prepared. It should have been a cakewalk. But we almost died. And then when we didn't die we almost had to give up and abandon the mission anyway. With every advantage, we still almost failed.

  And frankly, moral failures pale in comparison to failure. I frequently get merciful and magnanimous in victory, but I know myself- and I'm willing to fight pretty dirty. I'll suspend most of my ethical rules if it means the difference between winning and losing.

  I was not fretting over my honor and my karmic balance, I was fretting over the fact that I'm cutting these wins way too close. If I come at the problem with this much firepower, it should be easy to win. But instead... well, luck plays too big a role in all this. It makes me nervous. You're only lucky until you're not. I need to stop letting luck figure into this. I need more control.

  While it's true that I did add a level, and half of the next, I'm already second-guessing assigning that point to Charisma. I know that at the time I needed that, I needed to influence people to stay with me and stay on mission. I could have made all of my sorcery effects stronger. Channel steel better, fly faster, teleport more mass, create bigger explosions, manifest more thunderbeasts.

  Just a few months ago I had thought that Charisma was not going to matter. I don't need a good ending, I just need results. Power.

  But power is allies. Power is people. And frankly if Nathan's going to do fuck-all, then I need to step up. I'd better be ready to seize a good ending if he's not going to.

  And maybe I want to be happy too. Maybe I want people to like me and agree with me. Maybe I don't want to worry that a number only I can see is going to make people leave me. Maybe I don't want the goddess and her control over this world to thwart my plans just for assigning points.

  I'm stronger, faster, tougher, smarter, more capable, more aware, more informed, more connected. I am not going to let Nathan take anything else away from me without a fight, ever again. The class rankings was the end of it. No more.

  As for the mission? I almost failed. I did not fail. This was nearly impossible and we pulled it off. That jungle has been undefeated for centuries, and now we've done it. Two years ahead of schedule. Next time we won't need luck. Next time, overwhelming force, crush all opposition. No chances. It won't be exciting, it won't be thrilling or glamorous. But I'm going to win.

  By the end of the sermon I was smiling again. I would be ready. This was going to be fine. And starting Monday I needed to be getting ready: next weekend is the start of Fashion Week. One of the two biggest social and political gatherings of the year.

  No prisoners.