Clarice was the first to reach the chest.

  It was an ornate thing, carved in intricate patterns that suggested importance without actually being magical. The lines were careful and symmetrical, meant to draw the eye and make it feel valuable. As far as I could tell, it was completely mundane, which somehow made it more suspicious rather than less.

  Clarice reached for the lid, then hesitated. She drew her hand back at the last moment and frowned at it. “You know,” she said carefully, “these things can be trapped. My brother said dungeon chests sometimes are trapped.”

  I looked from her to the chest, then back again. “How do we tell? I can’t see anything.” I cycled through my vision anyway, habit more than hope, shifting through all three layers I had access to. Nothing changed. I didn’t see any hidden circuits. To my senses it was just plain wood and metal. That told me absolutely nothing about whether it had any mundane traps, only magical ones. But at least that was something.

  “Is it even locked?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Meka said as she stepped closer, crouching slightly to study it from the side. “It has a handle. I don’t see any kind of lock, hidden or otherwise.”

  “The longer you wait, the worse the loot gets,” Winnie said. “I heard it decays or something if you don’t open it right away.”

  Clarice snorted and shook her head. “That’s a lie people tell so someone else opens it first.”

  “I have an idea,” I said. “What if we just take the chest with us? We finish collecting the quest items, head back, and open it somewhere safe. Somewhere with healers. I don’t really want to get disintegrated because we were impatient.”

  I paused and looked around at all of them. “Does anyone disagree with that?”

  There was a moment of shuffling boots and shifting weight, and then, one by one, every hand went up. Nobody wanted to wait.

  I rubbed my face with both hands. “Of course not. Fine. How do we open it, then?”

  Winnie rubbed her chin, eyes narrowing as she stared at the chest. “Meka,” she said slowly, “you’ve got those bushy things. Why don’t you have one of them open it?”

  We all looked at the Bramble fiends, then at the chest, and then back at Winnie. After a brief pause, everyone nodded.

  “That makes a lot more sense than one of us doing it,” I said. “Disposable meat shields. Plant shields, in this case.”

  We backed away as Meka sent two Bramble fiends forward. They shuffled up to the chest, paused, then turned toward each other and made a series of scraggly, irritated noises that sounded like branches being rubbed together on purpose.

  “What are they saying?” I asked.

  “They really don’t want to,” Meka said flatly.

  “Tell them to do it,” I said. “They can get another body. This isn’t even their real form.”

  “They say it’s inconvenient,” she replied. “And they like being around.”

  “They’re going to decay in a few minutes anyway,” I said. “Just tell them.”

  She sighed, clearly torn, then nodded. “Fine. I’ll tell them.” She did, and the Bramble fiends slumped in exaggerated resignation before reaching out and lifting the lid.

  We all held our breath. A moment passed, then another. Nothing exploded, nothing screamed, and nobody dissolved into ash.

  We exhaled as one and stepped forward.

  “That was a good idea,” I said. “Even if it wasn’t trapped, now we know how to open these without getting anyone killed.”

  “They want to leave now,” Meka said, pointing at the Bramble fiends, which were already starting to look less solid around the edges.

  “Let them,” I said. “We don’t need them anymore.”

  “It does take mana to keep them here,” she added. “Third-circle spells drain more the longer they stay, unless you make them permanent.”

  “And that would be a terrible idea,” I said.

  “They get annoying,” she agreed.

  “Spirits always are,” I said. “We call them spirits, but they’re basically imps.”

  “I already prefer the fae,” Meka said, as she held Bunny close.

  “You should see celestials,” I added. “They’re the worst.”

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  “Holier-than-thou?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Exactly that. Honestly, I prefer pit fiends and devils by a long shot. At least with them, you know what you’re getting. If you’re going to summon a giant asshole, at least they don’t pretend not to be. Celestials act like they’re better than you, even when you’re the one who summoned them, and even when they want to do what you’re asking them to do anyway."

  I thought about it for a moment as the Bramble fiends finally unraveled back into loose mana and leaves. The celestials I had seen in the Heaven of Iron had been different. They felt like the kind of beings who would help you lift something heavy just because you needed it. The ones I had summoned from the Heaven of Magic had always assumed you were lazy.

  Maybe that said more about the gods than the beings themselves.

  But that did not matter right now, because I could see that Clarice and Winnie were about to get into a fight over who would get to the chest first.

  The interesting thing about the chest was that there was technically nothing inside it. Until you put your hand in and pulled something out, it always produced an item that was either valuable in monetary terms or valuable to you personally. Not always something you knew you needed, and not always something you thought you wanted. And if someone in your party believed they needed it more, there had been plenty of so-called friendly fire in the past. At best, arguments. At worst, murder.

  So yes, this was going to be an interesting challenge all on its own.

  I stepped away from the chest and raised my voice. “We do this the democratic way. Or, so help me, I will tip the chest over and nobody gets anything. Do you hear me?”

  Clarice’s arms were locked around Winnie’s shoulders, trying to lever her backward. Winnie was shoving an elbow up into Clarice’s armpit, twisting and pushing, trying to break free of her grip. Clarice’s legs were wrapped around Winnie’s back, and the whole thing had turned into an absurd, vicious knot of limbs.

  Clarice was taller, longer, clearly human. Winnie was shorter and denser, though she seemed to make a point of keeping her height just barely under Clarice’s. Clarice’s hair was cut short, leaving Winnie nothing to grab onto when she tried. The fight was getting ugly fast.

  “Meka,” I said, raising my voice again, “can you separate those two idiots? And I think that means you go first, because neither of them can calm down about the stupid loot. Loot lemmings get themselves killed.”

  That did it.

  Both of them froze. Clarice’s face flushed, freckles standing out sharply against her pale skin. Meka stepped forward.

  She was a wizard, but she was also much larger than either of them. She put her hands directly between Clarice and Winnie and pushed. It was not easy, but it was clear that Meka was strong enough to force them apart. She had kept up her martial training despite being a caster, and while she was not as strong as Winnie, Winnie had no intention of hurting her.

  The two separated, grumbling, and let Meka go first.

  Meka plunged her arm into the chest, far deeper than there should have been space for, then pulled it back out. In her hand was a book.

  I read the title aloud. “Uncommon Plants of the World and Where to Find Them.”

  Meka looked at me. I looked at Meka. We both smiled.

  Winnie frowned. “That’s a lame item.”

  “Oh, no,” Meka said a moment later, her eyes lighting up as she thought it through. “You don’t get it. This is incredible. This will help me so much. If I can gather extremely rare seeds, plants like mandragora…” She trailed off, already lost in the possibilities. “I could conjure a plant wyvern. Can you imagine that?”

  “That does sound cool,” Clarice admitted. “You’re going to get your own dragon?”

  “Wyvern,” I said, shaking my head. “Two legs, not a true dragon. Dragons are sapient. Wyverns are more like very large lizards that can fly, with bad attitudes and maybe the intelligence of a dog. If you see one in a dungeon, it is generally going to try to eat you unless it already belongs to someone. If you conjure one, or contract with one, they are friendly to the person they are bound to, and that is about it.

  “The one Meka would conjure would start very small,” I added. “It would have to grow with her. But starting that process early is a big advantage.”

  Meka laughed.

  Companions were different from summons. Summons were temporary. Companions were conjured, and they grew alongside their conjurer.

  I had bound a few companions in my previous life. When a conjurer dies, the contract between them ends. It sounds sad, but it is not, not really. They were never alive in the way mortals understand life. They were sprites, in some cases demons, in some cases celestials, in some cases fae, and in a few truly unpleasant cases, other things entirely.

  The creatures from the Void Lands came to mind, and the thought sent a shiver down my spine.

  When a contract ended, the companion was released back to whatever plane it originated from, returned to whatever existence it had before. The form it wore here became its own. Any strength it gained while bound carried with it. That was one of the primary reasons they accepted contracts in the first place. Power earned in this world followed them home.

  If a companion grew truly powerful here, then when its conjurer passed, it would be truly powerful in the realm it returned to as well.

  We spent a little more time reading before Winnie finally lost patience.

  She shoved her hand into the chest.

  “Hey,” Clarice shouted, “it was my turn.”

  “You snooze, you lose,” Winnie said. “And we never decided that.”

  I just shook my head and went back to reading with Meka. She sat down and set me on her lap so we could both see the page. I was small enough that I did not get in her way.

  “Meka,” I said after a moment, “can you lower the book for a second? I want to see what Winnie gets.”

  Winnie was halfway inside the chest, headfirst, legs kicking. “There’s nothing,” she said. “Wait. Oh. There it is.”

  She froze.

  “I think I’m stuck.”

  Her legs were straight up in the air.

  “Clarice,” I said calmly, “can you help her?”

  “I’m on it.”

  Clarice hauled Winnie back out. Winnie emerged clutching a helmet shaped like a skull. It was not bone, but it was carved to look like it, intimidating and heavy.

  “This is awesome,” Winnie said. “I don’t even care what it does. I’m wearing this everywhere. I’m wearing it to sleep.”

  “Please don’t,” I said.

  She grinned. “You’re right. I didn’t actually mean that. But look at it.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “It’s pretty cool.”

  “I guess it’s my turn,” Clarice said.

  She plunged her hand into the chest and pulled it back out almost immediately. “That was close to the top. That was weird. Why is it a different depth for everyone?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “These didn’t exist in my time.”

  She nodded and held up her item. A quiver. No arrows. Just the quiver. It was ratty, clearly worn.

  “Well,” I said, “we’ll see what it does. It might be something you needed. And if it isn’t, it’s probably something valuable.”

  “I guess it’s my turn then,” I said, as Meka let me down.