As I lay there breathing in and out, my thoughts still circling Radovan and the shape of his life, I slowly became aware that time had passed. Not abruptly, not in a way that startled me, but gently, the way it does when you are no longer counting it. The quiet had deepened around me. What I had been doing was not quite meditation, but it was close. A kind of relaxed nothingness that came from finally emptying my mind of everything it kept reaching for.

  When I opened my eyes, I found myself staring directly into another pair.

  They were much closer than I expected.

  “Hello,” a gnome said, peering up at me with open curiosity. “Why aren’t you with the others? Aren’t you all supposed to be getting your cores right now? I know that’s why I’m here.”

  For a moment, I simply stared back at him.

  “What?” I asked. Then, a beat later, “Who are you? And what are you doing in the bunk room?”

  He tilted his head slightly, as if the question amused him. “You’re not part of the martial class,” he said, glancing around. “This is… weird.”

  That made two of us.

  I pushed myself up onto one elbow, trying to orient myself. A random person in the guild hall was strange enough. A gnome made it stranger. I had not met a full blooded gnome in this lifetime.

  They were short people, yes, but that hardly covered it. Gnomes were born fully bearded. Unlike dwarves, who grew into their beards over time, gnomes, both male and female, had facial hair that never truly changed. It did not grow longer, and it did not thin with age. If you burned it off entirely, it would be back the next day, the exact same length as before. No more. No less. I had always found that detail unsettling in a quiet way. There was something about not having to maintain a glorious beard that felt like cheating to me. Gnomes never really aged, which was another interesting fact. Not that they didn’t get older, they just never looked physically older as time passed.

  Which meant I had absolutely no idea how old the gnome in front of me was.

  He could have been a child.

  He could have been ancient.

  In his hands, he held what looked like a lockpick and a small sack that clinked softly when he shifted his grip. I followed the motion without thinking. Then I looked down at my chest. Then I looked around the room.

  Finally, I settled back on him.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “Oh,” he said easily, “because nobody’s supposed to be in here.”

  “That’s not a good answer,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t really planning on giving you a good one. I just noticed you were here, so I figured I’d ask.” He pointed vaguely around the guild hall. “Why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be getting your copper core right now?”

  I laughed despite myself. “Does anyone know you’re here?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Teach knows.”

  “That’s not reassuring,” I said.

  “Well,” he added after a moment, “not here here. Just here.” He gestured broadly, encompassing the entire guild hall.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Who is your teacher?”

  He grinned. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  I stared at him.

  “You’re… you,” he continued, nodding as if that explained everything.

  It did not.

  I had no idea what to say to that. The problem with gnomes was always the same. You could never tell where you stood with them, socially or temporally. Their expressions did not change much with age. Their voices did not deepen. Their posture did not stoop. They existed in a permanent middle state that made it impossible to judge whether you were speaking to someone who needed guidance or someone who had forgotten more than you would ever know.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Unless they were babies, of course. That stage only lasted about a year.

  After that, they looked exactly the same till the day they died.

  Gnomes were a very interesting sapient race.

  They were created. That much was agreed upon. Created by the god of chaos, no less. They were his chosen people. The stories said he had breathed life into a clay, shaping it with his own hands, and that clay had risen and lived, bearing his idea of perfection. That perfection never left them, no matter what anyone did to them afterward.

  They were, without question, a truly odd race. One that had confused me for many years in my previous life.

  Which was why I found myself deeply unsettled when one was standing in the guild bunk room holding a lockpick and a sack.

  “But what’s really confusing me,” I said slowly, “is that I already asked you who your teacher was.”

  “Oh,” he said, brow furrowing. “Right. That’s, uh…” He snapped his fingers as if trying to jog his memory, completely forgetting what he was holding. The lockpick flicked free from his hand and sailed off into the room, clattering somewhere out of sight.

  We both watched it go.

  “Well,” he said after a moment, “that’s not good.”

  “No,” I agreed. “It really isn’t.”

  “Better that you don’t have that in your hands anyway,” I added cheerfully.

  He blinked. “Then how exactly am I going to get your stuff?”

  “Why would you need to get my stuff?” I asked, a fraction too late.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “Anyway, I’ll be off now.”

  He turned as if that settled the matter.

  I stood up.

  The motion was smooth and automatic, my staff already in my hand as my feet hit the floor. “You will be going nowhere,” I said evenly, “until you explain why you were in the bunk room with a lockpick and a bag to an instructor.”

  He stopped and glanced back at me.

  “Listen, kid,” he said, voice dropping just enough to suggest he thought he was being serious. “You really don’t want to get into this.”

  “I think I very much do,” I said.

  His gaze shifted then, sharpening as it focused on my face. On my eyes. He leaned in slightly, squinting.

  “What are you?” he asked. “Why are your eyes so weird?”

  “That,” I said, stepping down from the bunk, “is none of your concern.”

  The moment my feet hit the floor, his expression changed.

  “Cya,” he shouted, already turning.

  And then he bolted.

  I ran after him.

  I ran as fast as my three-year-old body could manage, legs pumping, breath coming quick and shallow. Even as a tin core, the gnome was faster. Faster than he had any right to be. He darted ahead of me with practiced ease, weaving through the hallways like he knew them by heart. I could feel the gap widening, my frustration rising with every step. I was going to lose him.

  We rounded the corner toward the mess hall, and then everything stopped at once.

  A woman stepped into the gnome’s path and caught him neatly by the back of the collar, lifting him off the ground as if he weighed nothing at all.

  “There you are,” she said calmly. “I was wondering where you’d gone off to. What have you been up to?”

  The gnome immediately began to struggle, legs kicking uselessly in the air. “Let me go, let me go!” he shouted. “I didn’t do nothing! You can’t prove anything!”

  He twisted sharply and tried to bite her.

  She pulled him back without effort before his teeth could reach her arm. “Devon,” she said, voice firm now, “don’t make me put you back on the streets where I found you. You’re lucky you’ve got talent, or you’d never be in here at all. Your parole says you do this, or you go to prison.”

  I slowed to a stop a few steps away, chest heaving, and only then noticed the robes she was wearing. Healer’s robes.

  She finally looked at me, really looked, and her expression softened immediately. “Oh,” she said. “Little one. This big old meanie didn’t hurt you, did he? If he did, you tell me and I’ll have him tossed out on his ears. He’ll be in a cell by tonight.”

  Devon sagged in her grip at that, all the fight draining out of him at once. He turned his head just enough to look at me, eyes wide and pleading.

  For a moment, I considered telling her everything. That he had been in the bunk room with a lock-pick and a sack. That he had clearly intended to steal from the guild while everyone was away getting their cores. That the only reason he had failed was because I already had a core and had not been where he expected me to be.

  I thought about it longer than I think he wanted me to.

  The healer watched me with open curiosity, head tilted slightly. “Can you talk?” she asked. “You look a little young to be here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said finally. “He didn’t do anything. He was just talking to me, and then he realized he was late.”

  Devon let out a relieved sigh. “See?” he said quickly. “Didn’t do nothing. Now put me down, lady.”

  She studied me for a long moment, then looked down at Devon in her hands. “I don’t know exactly what’s happening here,” she said slowly, “or how you convinced him to lie for you, but you clearly owe this kid.”

  She adjusted her grip and turned slightly toward the mess hall. “Anyway, we need to help with the core implantations, make sure everyone’s doing all right.” She glanced back at me. “Aren’t you supposed to be getting yours too? Or are you one of the magic trainees? Are you sick? I can help if you are.”

  I swallowed and shook my head. “I’m just… a little tired.”

  She smiled kindly. “Yeah. That’ll do it. You should get some rest.”

  Then, without another word, she started walking away with Devon still firmly in hand. “Come on,” she said to him. “Let’s go help the others.”