Jenna exited the Black Tower four weeks before the Chicago Tribulation attacked Babylon. Fifty miles to the east, a peaceful Belona lay, unaware of the doom that would come for her from the very same dungeon that Jenna had just exited. She had no time to waste admiring it—she had to reach Babylon, and that required the Shadow Incense Bob had created for her.

  “Always use it in deep shadow, and alone. The more people there are present when you use it, the faster the incense is consumed,” Bob had cautioned her. Jenna stepped into the shadow provided by the Tower, careful not to touch the stairs. For all she knew, a single step on it could trap her with the Keeper again.

  She summoned the Compendium inside her mind and focused until she felt the Icosahedron’s pull in Babylon. She knew Penny would still be wearing it, and she was a powerful Avatar. She would have to play it carefully if she did not want to be caught. If Penny met her in the past, the Observer Effect could make her dissonant again.

  “The trick is not to avoid being seen or not acting. The trick is being able to explain it away,” Bob had cautioned her.

  Her mind triangulated the position of the Compendium. Belona’s sun rose eight hours earlier than the Earth’s. It would be four in the morning in Babylon. Jenna carefully focused on the area around the Icosahedron, trying to anchor her thoughts there.

  Then she carefully waited until it was morning on Earth. She knew Penny was an early riser.

  Suddenly, the Icosahedron slipped out of focus. She was moving and taking the artifact with her, but Jenna kept her mind focused not on where the Icosahedron was, but on where it had been.

  She waited another hour. She had to risk it. She was returning to Earth when Brotonville was still in the grip of the Swarm. She had no idea about Penny’s routine during that period.

  She lit the incense stick and inhaled its sweet aroma. Suddenly, the shadows seemed much deeper than before.

  This is what Bob feels each time he uses his powers, she thought, as she willed the shadow bridge to reach the same position she had focused her mind on.

  The shadows grew impossibly dark, and Jenna jumped into them. There was a brief moment of disorientation, as if she were falling in all directions at once, and then she suddenly found herself in a clearing in a forest a couple of miles away from Brotonville. There were signs of a hastily cleared camp nearby.

  It made sense. The city was a hostile territory, ruled by a dangerous dungeon. Babylonians survived by not staying for long in the same place.

  Tonight, Joanna and her Avatars would make their first attack on the Swarm, freeing most of the captive population of Brotonville, who were being used as cattle stock by the Swarmers.

  She knew where and when she had to be, but she had to do something extremely distasteful first.

  She took a detour towards the zone where the first Swarm victims had been buried, days before the mass attacks. Many of the Piper’s reanimated troops had come from here.

  It was a zone filled with makeshift crosses and hastily written elegies.

  Reading them was a heart-rending experience. She tried to steel herself for what she had to do.

  She found one she could use: Rose Talleyrand. Aged 23. Beloved daughter and mother.

  I am so sorry about this, Rose, she thought. I hope you were an organ donor because your body will save three lives. Then she summoned one of her elven daggers and started digging.

  Seven hours later, Jenna watched Babylon’s first attack on the Swarm. They were hitting the holding pens tonight. Tomorrow, they would go for the Swarm Queen herself.

  Thirty-two powerful Avatars, led by Joanna herself, charged into the building. Steven stood at her side, his bow never stopping its grisly work.

  Jenna recognized Garan the Firemaster, not in undead form, and a woman in armor holding a greatsword, with two ghostly copies of her weapon floating behind her.

  Bolka of the Three Blades.

  She felt incredibly sad, knowing those two would sacrifice their lives tomorrow in the fight against the core. But she could not act. Their deaths had been too public. Any significant change would make her dissonant again, and all this would be for nothing.

  One hour later, the main gate of the holding pen blew open, and all of Brotonville’s surviving inhabitants fled the building, escorted by Babylon’s Avatars. Ten minutes later, the building began to burn.

  Joanna came out, dragging a crying Steven from it. Jenna felt horrible watching them both suffer.

  She waited.

  And waited.

  And still she waited.

  A lone figure staggered away from the burning wreckage of the building, reached the edge of the forest, and fell to the ground. She crawled inch by inch, trying to put as much distance as possible from that place of horror.

  Sarah. Steven’s wife, whose death had caused an unhealable rift between Joanna and him.

  Jenna’s enhanced hearing detected the weak beating of her heart until it finally stopped. She had died. History had been kept. The past as observed had not been contested.

  She ran towards Sarah’s body and turned her around. She hoped the Compendium was watching. “Observe this,” she said aloud, while giving the sky her middle finger.

  Then she started doing heart compressions on Sarah’s body.

  Two hours later, Sarah woke up screaming, her body healed, but her mind still reeling from the horrors she had lived through. Jenna tried to calm her down. They were at an abandoned house on the outskirts of town.

  She had brought Sarah to this place to recover, after dressing the corpse of Rose Talleyrand in the rest of her clothes. In a few weeks, the body would be found by her grieving husband, after the Compendium tattled on Joanna. Sarah’s body had been lying outdoors for weeks when Steven found it. It was no longer recognizable.

  Jenna had to use her powerful Spirit to calm Sarah as she tried to explain what was happening.

  She succeeded on her third try, but it did not make things easier.

  “I am going to Steven, now,” Sarah announced, standing up from bed, swaying a little before she got her bearings back. She was a cute redhead, her face filled with piercings. Bob mentioned that she and Steven had met in art school.

  “You will not do such a thing. If you do, everything we are doing will become dissonant again, meaning sooner or later someone will be sent to correct it. You will meet Steven again, you have my word on this, but you are going to have to wait.”

  “And leave Steve to suffer, thinking I am dead? Who the hell do you think you are, kid?” Sarah raged at her.

  “I am the kid who has put her whole existence and that of two worlds in peril to give you a second chance at life. You will not break History. I will make sure of that. If you try to escape while I am not looking, I will break both your legs, so help me God,” Jenna answered.

  It was the sad, haunted look in Jenna’s eyes that made Sarah realize she was not bluffing.

  “You need to eat if you want to keep your strength,” Jenna went on as if nothing significant had been said. “We are lucky, I found this in the cellar,” she said, holding a jar of pickled olives.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “That will feed us for a couple of days at most,” Sarah said.

  “It will feed us both for six weeks,” Jenna said, holding out a single olive and giving it to Sarah, who was looking at Jenna as if suddenly realizing she was in the hands of a loony.

  “Eat,” Jenna ordered. Sarah did as she was told, and Jenna used transference to enhance her metabolism as she chewed on the olive, making her body process the energy stored within it with the efficiency of an antimatter reactor. She would feel sated for days.

  Jenna ate too, sighed, and tried to make amends with Sarah.

  “Look, I am sorry I shouted at you. The truth is that I am as scared as you are, even though I do not want to admit it to myself. A wonderful person sacrificed himself so that I could fix this timeline, and I am afraid I am selfishly throwing it away by trying to help my friends.”

  “I promise you that you will meet Steven again. This is what this is all about. If all goes as it should, you will meet him in nine weeks. I will tell you where and when you are to travel,” she continued.

  “Travel, in the middle of the apocalypse?” Sarah exclaimed. “I would not last one hour.”

  Jenna focused her Compendium on Sarah to study her. It was not something she could do at a whim, as the construct always tried to fight back.

  “I see that Steven already enhanced you. You are a rank one Avatar with the Teaching Competency,” she stated.

  “Yes, he was going to help me level, but then the Swarm came,” Sarah explained.

  “I can work with that,” Jenna said as she brought the full force of the Compendium on Sarah’s mind. She screamed. Jenna was sorry, but there was no easy way to do this.

  Jenna saw Sarah’s stat sheet change under her power.

  Sarah Morgan. Rank 1 Avatar

  Dominant Intelligence and Charisma. Inferior Might and Dexterity.

  Competencies: Teaching 1

  Choices: Do as I say (Teaching 1): You can teach one of your rank-one powers to anyone who considers you his teacher. He can use them for one minute. One hour cooldown.

  Champion of the Primordial

  “What are you going to do to me?” Sarah asked, clearly afraid of this strange young girl with such weird powers.

  “I am going to train you, of course,” Jenna answered.

  The next day, they got up early and walked towards a nearby third-rank dungeon Jenna had located using Spirit Expansion. Sarah was clearly terrified. “You are not going to make me fight, are you? I am the least aggressive person you are ever going to meet.”

  “Of course not, Sarah,” Jenna told her, trying to placate her. “I am not going to make you fight.”

  “Today,” she added. Then she swore as Sarah tried to break away and ran after her.

  “I can’t fight, I just can’t,” Sarah said as she wept. “Please, don't break my legs,” she added. Jenna felt horrible. She should never have told her that.

  “Sarah, please calm down,” she soothingly told her. “I am not going to hurt you. Look, you need to level up. It is the only way you are going to survive out there. I promise I will try to find a class that will work for you. And we are not going to get into any fights today. You have my word on that.”

  They finally reached the dungeon, which looked like an ornate gate carved into a cliff, adorned with spider motifs. Jenna was sure this was the place those elves Mark had fought came from. Fighting them had triggered Mark’s full transformation into Stomparella.

  “Ok, I am going to enter and clear the first floor. I will call for you when it is safe to go in,” she told Sarah.

  “What if they kill you and mimic your voice?” Sarah answered.

  Jenna sighed. Sarah was a very sweet girl, but prime hero material, she was not.

  “I will come in person for you,” she answered. “Stop, just stop that,” she added, just before Sarah could ask how she could tell her apart from a shapeshifted elf.

  “Steven made you play too much Dnd,” she glared at her as she entered the dungeon.

  “I was more of a RuneQuest gal,” Jenna heard her answer as she left her behind.

  Five minutes later, she went back for her, “Ok, we are lucky. We got an empty dungeon.”

  The gate led to a mess hall, filled with splinters of broken furniture. It looked like a huge fight had taken place in it.

  “Are you sure it is empty?” Sarah asked.

  “I told you, I checked the place, there is no one here,” Jenna lied.

  “Aren’t those blood stains on the wall?” Sarah examined the plaster, trying to touch it.

  “Probably from a long time ago,” Jenna said, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her away before she could touch it and discover it was still fresh.

  “Ok, here goes your first quest.”

  Quest: Knowledge is a Weapon

  Type: Epic

  Competency: Teaching

  Goal: Teach Jenna everything you know about the Swarm

  Reward: +10.000 Xp

  “Isn’t that a bit generous for a quest?” Sarah asked, amazed.

  “I can use the Compendium to grant quests. It is easier inside a dungeon, but I have done it before. The Compendium does not like it when Immortals make questing too easy for their champions. They usually don’t do it because they are afraid of becoming Exiled. I can’t be exiled. I am an Abomination; the Compendium has no hold over me.

  I am going to give you the most ridiculously overpowered rewards I can think of,” Jenna explained.

  Sarah and Jenna sat down on the floor, and Sarah began to share her story. It was a brutal, painful tale of survival against an inhuman enemy. As she recounted the events, Sarah had to pause several times to catch her breath. When she finished, Jenna felt that the reward for the quest was more than deserved.

  You have gained 10.000 XP. You are now level six.

  “Ok, now we are going to choose a new Competency. I have been perusing the Compendium for possible classes. I can do that now. I think I have found one that fits you like a glove,” Jenna explained.

  She made Sarah choose Summoning as her second Competency, with Constructs as her first choice within it. Constructs let her summon a giant hand made of energy, which she could control with her mind.

  She also earned a second rank in her Do As I Say Teaching Competency, which allowed her to teach rank-two powers or reduce the Cooldown to five minutes when a rank-one power was taught.

  Sarah summoned the hand, the size of a basketball, and made it float through the air. She looked relaxed for the first time since Jenna had met her.

  “Look, I can even manipulate objects with it,” she was ecstatic as she made the hand fly.

  “The hand is too big, though,” she said critically. “It’s quite clumsy — let’s see if I can open that door,” Sarah concentrated as she made the hand fly towards a huge wardrobe at the end of the hall, the only piece of furniture which had survived Jenna’s fight with the six elven warriors formerly inhabiting the first dungeon floor.

  “Don’t…” Jenna shouted, but it was too late. The hand opened the door, and the six elven corpses that Jenna had crammed inside it flew out of it like a Jack-in-the-Box.

  Sarah screamed in horror. Jenna sighed. It was going to be a long week.

  “I am a bit of a let-down, am I not?” Sarah shyly asked as they prepared to sleep for the night.

  “Of course you are not. I am doing this the wrong way. You do not need to be a front-line warrior to fight,” Jenna answered.

  “I will panic, I always do in stressful situations,” Sarah warned her.

  “We will work out something,” Jenna assured her. She stood watch, as she hardly needed to sleep. Much as she had expected, a patrol of eleven elves poured out of the dungeon at midnight, hellbent on revenge.

  She quietly shook Sarah awake.

  “I am going to charge them, just conjure your magical hand and try to hit some of them. Even a single hit will count as helping me,” she told her, inserting one epic quest in each of her quest slots.

  Quest: Teach Them a Lesson

  Type: Epic

  Competency: Teaching

  Goal: Help Jenna Fight the Elves

  Reward: +10.000 XP

  Quest: Slap!

  Type: Epic

  Competency: Summoning

  Goal: Hit at least an Elf with your magical construct Hand

  Reward: +10.000 XP

  Jenna charged the elves like a wrecking ball, making them fly like bowling pins. Her spear darted in and out, running them through at such speed they could hardly see it, let alone parry it.

  “Try to hit at least one with your hand construct, Sarah,” she hollered, “that will do it.”

  The magical green hand made broad swipes, but Sarah’s aim was totally off. There was no chance she would hit any elf with such clumsy swipes.

  “Oh, for god’s sake,” Jenna said, grabbing the last elf and throwing it against the hand on its incoming swipe.

  You have completed Teach Them a Lesson.

  You gain +10000 XP

  You have completed Slap!

  You gain +10000 XP

  You are now level 12.

  “Congratulations, Sarah, you made it! It was not as hard as you…” Jenna could not finish because Sarah’s hand hit her squarely in the face, sending her five meters away. It would have broken every bone in her body if not for her enhanced Stats.

  Jenna stood up groggily and quickly understood the situation. Sarah had covered her head with a blanket and was trying to control her construct while completely blind. When Sarah realized that the sounds of battle had faded away, she timidly pulled the blanket away from her head.

  “Oh, we have won!” she said, proudly smiling.

  “How did I do?”