It knew he was there. It had to know he was there. Snakes felt vibrations if he remembered right; it had probably felt him coming from the moment he stepped foot on the stone at the bottom of the ladder. It was definitely looking directly at him; Jay tried to take a step back and to the side and its head tracked with the movement perfectly. He tried to take another, the other direction this time to see if it was just a fluke, and accidentally hooked his own ankle, tripping himself.

  One of his hands brushed past one of the blue-green crystals on the wall as he fell and a new System window flared to life in his vision. It was the same color as the crystals themselves with plain black text filling it, and the contents were like nothing he’d seen out of any of the boxes so far.

  Another pair of System messages showed up right afterwards, these in the standard black-on-blue.

  He dismissed them the moment he was done reading and sighed heavily. Even with the snake still watching him, that was a can of worms he wasn’t ready to open but that didn’t seem like it would wait for him to be ready. He’d have to give it the quickest possible bit of thought and hope that didn’t come back to bite him.

  Motes of Wisdom…clearly the closest thing in Halea’s System to experience points, but something about the term seemed off. Maybe it was the fact that it had just been given to him like that. Dhaeos and Hollowharbor Jay had no clue about, at least beyond the likely scenario that the latter was a place and the former was some entity. Was it a ruler of some country? A god? Did Halea even have gods beyond whichever supreme god type of being that had given him the Divine Command and the odd black and gold windows?

  And this place – Rukai’s Redoubt, the second window had called it – was just another straw on the pile. There was no way it was a different Rukai than the one the swamp was named for; that name couldn’t be common. It must have been some kind of safe house for her, maybe even her home. Was there some information left he could try to dig into? If he wanted to even try, he’d have to get through the snake guardian. Jay knew it made sense that information for how to tame the thing hadn’t been included in the warning but he still wished there had been some hint towards controlling it.

  Jay willed his two attribute points toward Power and Resilience, a feat that felt surprisingly natural to him, and pulled up the windows for the Trait and Ability selections.

  Jay quickly paged through the descriptions of each of them, and several of them shocked him. If they were selected for compatibility with things he’d done or thought, why were there traits about “purging impurities in the body,” “protecting the mind from intrusion,” and “bringing forth the full power of the soul” in the mix? At least there was only one out of place spell; [Seal of Devastation] didn’t seem connected to anything he’d even thought could be connected to necromancy at all.

  He took [Esoteric Comprehension] and [Bolt of Decay].

  Selections done, Jay pulled up his full summary sheet just to make sure of the changes he’d made since the first version he’d seen.

  Everything looked right so he swiped both it and the spell descriptions away. The snake hadn’t moved, thankfully, but he had an idea for how to handle it now. Two ideas, really, a main one and a backup; one peaceful and one last resort of violence.

  The blue-green message box had called the guardian a spirit. Hopefully there weren’t a bunch of different kinds of spirits or anything, but Jay figured he might as well try using [Commune with Spirit] to talk with it. Maybe he could show it he was a [Necromancer] like Rukai had been and convince it to let him use the cave for shelter.

  He cast the spell with a soft whisper of the words, feeling that indescribable sensation of mana welling up and shaping itself into the form of the spell before twin strands of ephemeral green lightning dripped off his hands and onto the floor. They wove themselves there, oddly serpentine in their own right, and eventually curled themselves up the length of the snake spirit, circling its head.

  When the strands met, Jay’s mind met the snake’s. It was a weird feeling, like two clouds of fog meeting except he was one of the clouds and the snake was the other. Thoughts floated to the surface of the snake’s mind, thoughts that transmuted themselves from images and sensory feedback into words with an odd twisting motion.

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

  Intruder, the snake’s thoughts read. Leave.

  Jay protested. I’m not an intruder. I need shelter. He couldn’t see whether his own thoughts started out as the same jumble before becoming words, but he resolved to phrase things as directly as possible.

  Intruder. Leave, the snake’s thoughts repeated. There is no shelter here for you.

  Please. I’m a [Necromancer], like Rukai. He was verging on begging at this point. I’m not here to harm anything.

  You are not like her. You do not smell like her. You are an intruder. Leave.

  Annoyingly stubborn snake. At least let me stay here until the storm ends. I’ll sit right here.

  Leave. Intruder.

  This wasn’t getting him anywhere. There had to be something he could use to convince the thing. Maybe he needed to learn more about it to make it trust him? What even are you, besides a giant snake?

  Agen-Seps. The label was accompanied by a rush of information that hadn’t made it into the word itself from the spell’s translation. Something about melting things and something else about claiming territory. Jay couldn’t put it into words any more than the spell had; it didn’t seem like something that could be put into words without an extensive amount of context behind it.

  But the little bits that made it through did make it make sense why the Agen-Seps had been the one put to guard Rukai’s safe haven. It also made it more understandable why the thing wouldn’t budge on letting him stay there.

  What do I have to do to stay? Jay asked.

  You cannot stay.

  Tell me what I have to do to earn the right to stay, then.

  You are not a citizen of Hollowharbor. You are not Rukai. You are not among Rukai’s familiars. You cannot stay. The snake was beginning to sound like a broken record to Jay; maybe “you cannot stay” was its favorite phrase.

  What is Hollowharbor? Jay asked.

  The town above the entrance. The place whose citizens you snuck past to intrude here.

  There is no town. There’s just a swamp. Jay tried to push the memories of the Blight over to the Agen-Seps but couldn’t tell if it worked or not.

  Anger flashed across the snake’s mind. You did this. It was an accusation, not a question. Why? How? What had they done to you?

  Woah, woah, woah. Chill out. That had not been the intended response. I didn’t do that. I found it like that. I just showed up here.

  The white coverings over the serpent’s eyes twitched. Who, then? Who could have done this without finding this place? Without venturing down here?

  I don’t know. Like I said, I am very new here. Memories slammed into Jay’s mind, clearly not his own: a bustling village of thatched roofs sloping down toward a beach of gleaming sand and waves; the feeling of children climbing up his – no, the snake’s, there was no difference in the memory – back spines and riding around on his head; a full week of celebration when one of their own was given the class of [Necromancer] during her adulthood rites, putting the village on the same level as the regional capital.

  Over it all was a layer of something that started off as wistfulness then shifted into overwhelming sadness. The cloud of the Agen-Seps’ mind filled with it; Jay was surprised that it didn’t turn visibly blue from just how much of the emotion there was.

  They did not deserve that, the snake whispered. They were happy. Peaceful. Kind. When?

  When? Jay repeated.

  When did this happen?

  I don’t know. I think I mentioned that I was new here.

  The spirit’s white eye coverings trembled and a shudder wracked its body. Where its body moved away from the crystal it was wrapped around, Jay could see a hint of something within the crystal, but he couldn’t tell what it was beyond it being darker than the crystal itself. There just wasn’t enough of the thing exposed.

  The Agen-Seps laid its head down and was still for a short while. Jay took the time to look around the room a little bit more, which didn’t reveal any new information. Even the storm outside was still raging, judging by the splatter on the invisible wall.

  Wait…there was a person floating in the storm. They were wreathed in lightning, gesturing furiously as if throwing things at a target that he couldn’t see. How had he missed that before? The easy answer was that they were traveling with the storm and had gotten closer, but Jay still felt like he should have been able to catch a glimpse when he was still outside.

  The serpent raised its head again and Jay could have sworn that the color of its mind was darker, angrier even, than it had been before. Their connection hadn’t broken yet and the change was mirrored in its mindscape. The anger was so overwhelming it was as if the earlier sorrow had directly transmuted into it.

  You say you are a [Necromancer]? it asked. Show me.

  Jay pulled his summary sheet up again and, guided by the flash of meaning that had risen to the top of the Agen-Seps’ mind, showed it to the snake.

  I do not recognize this prefix, it said.

  I don’t know what it means either, Jay confessed. I never got an owner’s manual.

  The snake’s confusion was evident but it apparently decided to ignore the comment and move on. Most classes can specialize. They add a subclass that can alter the main. This is not that. Was it always there?

  Jay told the serpent the whole story, from the green storm to the Origin change that he still didn’t fully understand. He even showed it the gold tracing up the veins in his hands that he’d been doing his best not to think about. The permanent alteration still weirded him out.

  The Agen-Seps’ thoughts hummed. I do not know this. But you are a necromancer of some sort, yes?

  Yes, Jay replied. Alister uncurled from around his arm just enough to wiggle his tail at the snake spirit.

  Do you know what a familiar is? it asked.

  Enough to make a guess. Some sort of magical companion animal? It would be a little weird if it was as simple as that; really any overlap with Earth myths would be weird. Maybe that was something to investigate if he could ever get the Class Curse off of his back.

  As if summoned by thinking about it, his health ticked down again. Gaining a level seemed to have refilled it, but it was annoying regardless of how manageable it was at the moment. If he ever ended up getting into fights that would cost him health, the drain might get to be too much. Jay reminded himself to not forget about checking that more frequently.

  That is not entirely incorrect. Most familiars involve a spirit that has bonded to – or possessed – a beast tying both of their fates to a mortal. There are benefits that go each way, but drawbacks accompany the bond as well.

  If you agree, I would bond myself to you directly, Jay Carter. With only a single condition: I ask that we seek out information around the fate of Hollowharbor. And, if necessary, avenge it.

  What do you mean specifically when you say avenge it? I already have one mission. That one will literally kill me if I don’t succeed.

  I mean what all beings mean when they wish for vengeance. If someone was responsible for destroying it without good reason or with excess cruelty, I want us to kill them. Ideally I’d hope we could re-establish the town, but from what I have seen in your memories, that does not seem viable any longer. I will settle for the death of those who are responsible.

  But would it be urgent? Jay pressed.

  No. So long as you remain alive and collect information where possible, that will suffice. Do you accept? The System box pulsed as the snake spirit reiterated its words.

  There being benefits on both sides sounded like incentive to accept. The Agen-Seps hadn’t been the most specific on what that meant, but Jay hadn’t gotten any hints that it might be lying from the mindscape’s impression. Fine. He selected the option on the window.

  The loop of green magic from the [Commune with Spirit] flared, duplicating and then intertwining again and again, braiding together into a thick rope of a mental link between Jay and the snake spirit. If the spell had been a thin line of twine, the bond was an iron chain without a spot of rust.

  The snake shuddered bodily again. Yes. This feels right. As the shudder subsided, scales emerged along its length in a form more real-looking than the painted-on facsimile that had been there. Its whole body grew more real in the same way; its weight settled into the floor as if the snake had been infused with helium before and was now settling back to its true heaviness.

  That was not something Jay had expected. His shock echoed along the mental connection, along with some representation of the System window itself, though he only knew that last part when the Agen-Seps spoke in response.

  Do it.

  What? Do you know what it’ll do?

  No. But your skeleton is fine with it included. What harm would adding a larger quantity of it to me be?

  What do you mean ‘what harm,’ the whole issue is that neither of us knows what harm it could do, Jay protested. For all I know, it could turn you into a mutated monstrosity.

  By many standards, I am already a mutated monstrosity. Do it anyway, the Agen-Seps said.

  What, really? But you’re just a dead snake, right?

  You have no idea what a spirit actually is, do you?

  No. Wait. Stop distracting me, Jay said. We don’t know what Divinity would do to you. You want to avenge your town, right? How are you going to do that if it drives you mad or turns you into something else that stops caring about it? He almost left the other part unsaid but knew that the spirit would be getting a sense for it anyway. You are the only other talking being I’ve encountered in this world that doesn’t want to kill me. You know how things work with magic, with the System, with the world. I need someone to teach me these things.

  What do I do if you… Jay let the thought trail off.

  I do not think that will happen, the Agen-Seps said. Trust me.

  Jay took a deep breath. Fine. If you insist. He selected [Yes] then, when prompted, threw the whole 10 Divinity into the investment. They manifested this time as scales, not spheres, but retained the gemstone-like structure. Jay tossed them at the spirit and the changes continued.

  The now hyper-real scales shifted from a pure green to an iridescent green-and-gold coloring, with the gold being a little bit more evident closer to the edges of each scale. The crest along its back that had been innocuous ruffled outwards, with the same iridescence in the webbing between the spines. Its eye coverings adopted the coloration as well instead of their previous cataract-looking all-white appearance.

  And the biggest change from the Divinity was the addition of four limbs that squelched and bulged their way out from the spirit’s flesh, each talon on the end of the front limbs limned in gold.

  I told you everything would be fine, the Agen-Seps bragged. Even the sense of its – his – mind had changed. There was a more concrete identity, more direct words instead of imagery that translated loosely, and his mental voice had gotten deeper.

  Beyond the clear wall, the storm still raged.