Soft, soothing warmth rolls off the horizonguard like morning fog. It gently presses against my shield with calm insistence, but there’s no real weight to it. Even still, I can feel my magic slowly but surely giving way to his.

  “Please lower your shield. It is unbecoming to put up barriers, physical or otherwise, before the conversation begins in earnest.” The horizonguard says smoothly, but his words are tinged with sarcasm. And the knowledge that I won’t be doing what he asks. Moments pass. He shakes his head with a soft sigh. “As to be expected of someone from ‘the resort’. Can you believe that I was not aware of this organization before I came in contact with the client who ordered your death? A third contender for humanity’s sword. One that is seemingly weak and small, yet which is made up of three of the most frightening people I have ever laid eyes on–human or not.”

  He leans forward. “Those three–and you.”

  A chill runs down my spine as the warmth seeps right through my shield without damaging it. The stuff caresses my legs, relaxing my muscles almost instantly. Pure will keeps me on my feet, but the drowsy sensation not unlike lying in a warm sunbeam insistently presses on the back of my mind.

  Though his words contain a falsity; I’m member number five of the resort’s Worth classes. Ursula, Noland, March, and Gil. Which one doesn’t he know? That could be extremely important in the minutes after we get out of this place.

  “Everyone has to start somewhere.” I say through clenched teeth as I dig my nails into my palm. Why the hell does everyone have to have psychic-like abilities? “I’ve only been at this for a few months, after all.”

  The horizonguard nods slowly. “I am aware. Your clearance rate lags behind other humans who have appeared after you have, yet your strength outmatches them by exponential levels. Combine that with the interest my colleague has shown in you and I ask myself what I am not receiving in the reports that come across my desk.”

  Warmth spikes to the coldest chill. Clutter yelps and tries to jump back, but he’s stopped by me and the shield. My ankles twitch as the muscles inside clench as hard as physically possible, twisting everything into one extremely painful knot. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep the pain from showing on my face.

  “I’m just that mysterious.” I say flatly. “We’d already be dead if that’s what you wanted, but here we are–and you’re blatantly showing off a little bit of your powers. What the hell do you want from me?”

  “From you?” The horizonguard chuckles and slinks forward, his entire body shifting like a liquid even though he has a humanoid shape. He plants an open palm on my shield and brings his masked face in close. “There is nothing you can give me that I want. Which also means the inverse is true; there is nothing I can take from you that would lead me to hate, despise, or one of the many other synonyms for those words directed at you. Our relationship is as complex as one attempting to render services upon another. And my client did not pay anywhere near enough to mobilize me.”

  The other hand reaches up and splats against my shield. It pushes further than the bounds of the wrapped flesh should allow, almost like a latex glove filled with water. The cold around my ankles freezes in place, and suddenly, I can’t move anything at all beneath the center of my thigh. Such a simple shift almost makes me lose my balance.

  I lean forward and put one of my hands against his to keep upright. “Then why are you here? Just get the hell out and have your lackeys come for my life.”

  “Oh, that was the plan. In fact, it still is, unless things have changed since I last reconvened with the rest.” The horizonguard removes his hand that isn’t next to mine. “We are all here. This quest is far more important than any assassination could ever hope to be. As long as you are progressing, I can guarantee your safety. If you can prove your usefulness beyond the bounds of this sealed space, I may even cancel the contract on your head.”

  Saccharine, sarcastic sweetness coats every single one of the horizonguard’s words. Something tells me his promises are worth about as much as a candle with the wick taken out; somewhat viable at first glance, but completely worthless at any scrutiny. My distrust must show on my face, because the horizonguard snickers to himself and pulls his hand away. Leaving mine stuck to my shield with a numbing chill.

  “You are right not to believe me, Shelby of the resort. My words are poison, my actions filled with deceit, and my true intentions are a riddle wrapped in so many questions that it is impossible to find a single grain of reality.” He takes two steps back and bows. “I offer you no guarantees. I offer you no safety. All I can do is reassure you that I could have taken your life at this moment and that I chose not to. Think on that, and when we next meet, have a reason for me to intervene and save your life before someone with a much lower pay grade attempts to take it.”

  Magic flickers, and both warmth and cold disappear to make way for the placid sensation of room temperature. I grimace at the rapid change and the pain it brings. There’s something insidious to the horizonguard’s magic. And the simple fact that I actually felt this one means he wanted me to feel it. I don’t even want to theorize why.

  Once he’s sure I felt it, he turns and starts to… wring himself out like a wet towel, shrinking down to the shadow-y form he first appeared as. Part of me just wants to let him go and hope that none of the other stonestep solutions people ever catch wind of me. But… I want some answers. Even at the risk of this guy deciding I’m worth his time.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Wait.”

  He stops instantly and snaps to look at me. That’s… unsettling. “Yes?”

  I push back the horrible sensations and motion at the construct. “Did you do this?”

  “...No, I did not. And neither did any of my people.” His head slowly lolls to the side atop his wrung-out husk of a body. “I had assumed that you did, or that it was always that way. Yet your question puts both of those assumptions into question. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

  Shit. Giving him new info is the last thing I wanted to do. But now that the cat’s out of the bag… maybe I can point him in the wrong direction.

  “It was completely normal the last time I talked to it.” I lie through my teeth, omitting everything with it glitching out. “Either the quest did all this damage, or someone else in this district decided to take their frustrations out on it.”

  “I am perfectly capable of forming my own conclusions. You need not voice any unnecessary thoughts.” He says without a hint of condescension. “Yet… I do not enjoy having information thrust upon me like this. And so I will return the favor; there are currently seventeen people in this district with plastic anchors. They alone count for the quest’s numbers. Until we inevitably meet again; I would prefer if you remained interesting. For your sake.”

  The veiled threat hangs in the air as the horizonguard twists himself further and further until he blinks out of existence with the smallest whisper of magic. I grit my teeth as my lips pull back into a snarl of frustration; the guy is just as powerful as I was afraid of. The only silver lining is that he didn’t mention Pearl. But I really doubt that he doesn’t know about her.

  He just doesn’t seem to care. Which could be far scarier in its own right.

  “Sorry.” Clutter whispers.

  I blink in surprise, then turn to him. He’s kneeling on the floor as he massages his feet, which are coated in a thin layer of rapidly melting frost. From the looks of it, he took the horizonguard’s attack way worse than I did.

  “Don’t apologize. Neither of us could’ve done anything.”

  A grimace splits his face. “No. I should’ve been able to do more. I’m… I’m our scout. If I’m not better than your awareness, then I need to be. There’s no excuse for me not noticing something was wrong here. So I’ll just say that next time… or, um, after I actually have time to train… I’ll be better than your awareness. Much better.”

  Pearl giggles with amusement. “I’ll love watching him try. Maybe he’ll even succeed with Illumisia’s help. She’d be both really proud and annoyed if that happened.”

  Reminds me of how she was like with me. With the threat of the horizonguard literally on our doorstep, we need to get Illumisia here as soon as possible. I summon her relocation coin and flip it through my fingers a few times to get a good feel for it. The second she appears is the moment we switch into overdrive. Honestly, I should just do it now. Briony and Vesa can stomach a little walk.

  Images of their corpses cooling on a sunny sidewalk stay my hand. I blink at the vivid scene; a pale sky, two short blades dripping blood, and a horrified crowd looking on as collective panic seeps in. My fingers freeze around the coin. Where the hell did that come from?

  “Pearl, did you do that?”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Did I do what?”

  I bite my lip as the images coat themselves in frost. The horizonguard’s magic gently leaves my mind, pulling the scene away like a magical tow truck. Absolutely unsubtle, but it gets the threat across nonetheless. If I call Illumisia over, Briony and Vesa are dead. So I have to wait and make sure Miss S. has them safely. Somehow.

  “I need to get a message to Illumisia.” I mutter under my breath and send her coin away. “There’s got to be a way to do that.”

  Clutter’s eyes light up. “We can un-grey the messenger part of your system! Then you can contact her.”

  “Yeah… if it was that easy, we would’ve done it already. The only way we’ve found to de-grey things is to clear one of those side quest challenges, and we haven’t found another since day one.” I glance over at the construct. “Maybe it still has info for us, but whoever dealt with it did a damn good job at making it completely useless. Actually, I’ve got an idea.”

  I pull out a six-Worth hexagon and flip it through my fingers. The construct shakily looks up at it, but doesn’t react any more. I tilt my chin upwards and replace it with a twelve-Worth hexagon. One eye locks on the coin with more clarity than I expected this destroyed thing was capable of. Clutter grimaces at the sight and turns away, walking over to the wall to get as far away from the construct as possible.

  Can’t blame him. This thing is hard to look at right now. I swap out the twelve for an eighteen. The construct’s arms snap out and its palms press together at the sides to make a little bowl, as if it’s asking me to put the thing inside. Hm. If it acts like this for an eighteen, I wonder how far it’ll go. I take out a twenty-four to see.

  The construct’s hands shake. Its face twitches, and vowel sounds repeat in a low tone out of sync with its mouth. A thirty sets its chest heaving. Finally, the thirty six causes it to drop to its knees and lower its gaze to the floor like it isn’t good enough to look at the coin. I take a moment to consider if I’m actually going to spend one of my only thirty-six Worth hexes on the construct. There’s a good chance it’ll just go back to normal. But with how spells have diminishing returns on higher Worth casts, the thirty-six isn’t really that much more valuable than the thirty.

  Resolve drives me to place the coin in the construct’s shaking hands. It twitches twice, then the plastic unravels into wire-like strands exactly like the rest of the plastic the construct is made up of. Slowly but surely, it absorbs the new strands into its body to make up for whatever it lost. I watch the display with grim curiosity; it really does look like muscle fibers knitting themselves onto a body. But… plastic.

  A startled yelp snaps my attention to Clutter. He looks over his shoulder at me, eyes wide, and a wisp of magic connecting him to a seemingly random spot on the wall. The exact same spot that gave me the buff.

  “It just called me ‘complete’!” He says with utter confusion. “What the heck does that mean?”