“People think boys don’t know how to flirt properly. And we don’t. But I’m telling you right now: no one flirts worse than a skid groupie. Especially when you’re a sticker. They all think they’re the first person ever to make a phallic comment about a skidstick. I’ve heard lines so cringe the stick itself went flaccid.”

  “Let’s move!”

  Fushigi Tetsumi had bitched when she was asked to stay late, well past the scheduled end of her shift at G-Tech. She’d hoped to piss her paycheck away at a bar or two. But something was up, something the higher-ups didn’t want to explain, and most of Team Snowcrest were at headquarters and on high alert. Fu kept herself occupied, puttering around the workshop, tinkering with her mechsuit. In truth, though she hated to admit it, she was just as happy to spend her wild evenings here from time to time. Especially when the male sorcerers were tromping around in those tight uniforms. No, she didn’t mind that one bit.

  But now, finally, the call to action came.

  Chris Eisner, Team Snowcrest’s field commander, descended the stair and ran across the workshop. “Come on, Tetsumi! It’s happening!”

  “Freaking finally! Yes sir, Cornice, sir!” Fu saluted lazily and started powering her suit up.

  “I still hate that nickname, Fu.”

  She shrugged. “It matches your hair, boss!” Power cells were charged. Plenty of ammo for the arm-mounted gun. All systems nominal. Good. “Mind if I ask, though, just what the hell is happening?”

  Chris nodded and approached, a smirk on his handsome yet slightly too old face. “Fair enough. You deserve to know. It’s a new Guardian, Fu. We’re finally getting our second one.”

  Fu whistled, pressing a latch so the chestplate of the suit lifted up and away, revealing the cockpit. “Well shit, that’s something. Where? How’d we find out about this?”

  “It’s a long story, but we’ve been anticipating this. It’s… sort of a present that Fulgen left to us.”

  Fu frowned. Uh oh. The F-word. Nothing made hackles rise at G-Tech like the mention of that man, for reasons Fu only vaguely understood.

  “Cool,” was all she said.

  “It’s Jett Fulgen, Alex’s son.”

  “The skid punk? Damn, I saw him in the pros a couple years ago. Nice hunk o’ red meat. Where is he?”

  “He’s been arrested for street skidding, among other things. He’s being held at the L5-I12 precinct.”

  “Sounds like my kind of guy.”

  “I’m sure he does. You uh, might also be interested to know who caught him.”

  “It’s Jessie.” Chris’s eyes widened. “Tell me it isn’t. Only B-Ho would have the chops for something like that.”

  Fu climbed into her suit. It hummed as it powered up. She snapped on her runeband, then she slipped her arms into the mech’s sleeves and commanded the armor to close and fully activate. “So, what, he demonstrated Guardian powers at the jail?”

  “Not that we know of. But we have a device tuned to his amulet’s activation pulse. We received a weak signal earlier, and we’ve been waiting for a confirming pulse, long and strong enough that we could triangulate a location. We have that now.”

  “And do I wanna know why we’re treating this like a mission, and why we’re the ones being sent? Why can’t Team Bulwark pick him up? Why can’t we just send a van?”

  Chris held out a hand. Glowing blue ice crystals formed above his open palm. He closed his hands around them and began to mold and shape them like clay, a nervous habit of his. “Because I’m fairly certain we’re not the only ones who’ve been waiting for this.”

  “Awesome.” That probably meant enemy sorcerers. Maybe even a clowncar or two. The mechsuit closed around her. She regarded her captain through the glass of her helmet and spoke through the suit’s speaker. “Ready to roll, boss.”

  “Attagirl. Head for garage two. We move out in five. Oh, and Tetsumi?”

  “Yeah, boss?”

  Chris dismissed the half-formed ice sculpture in his hands. “I have an odd feeling about this. Be ready for anything.”

  Fu nodded solemnly. “You know it, boss.”

  At the lecti’s instruction, I navigated through the options in my vision until I found the skill I was supposed to use: Fireball.

  I held out my hand and mentally activated the skill.

  Foom!

  There it was. My blue aethervoir bar dropped by about 5%, and the sphere of flame appeared just above my open palm. I gawked at it. At its core it was nearly opaque, and I saw a bright yellow ball shape in the midst of a mass of flickering red and orange flames. Some of them licked the skin of my hand, but I felt almost no heat. It felt like it had volume, but it was nearly insubstantial.

  ?Oh Shones. I’m… I’m using aether. It isn’t burning me.?

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  [It wouldn’t be very useful if it did, would it? No, your own skills will not harm you or your clothes while you hold them in your hand. Or even once you release them in your case, because you are completely immune to fire. But I recommend snuffing the fireball now. It will ignite anything else if it gets too close.]

  My cellmate started to stir, and with a gasp I noticed the underside of his mattress was blackening. I panicked for a moment. Then, on a hunch, I willed the fireball to dissipate. Fortunately, it did. I studied my hand. Sure enough, not even the slightest sign of a burn. No soot or carbon. Not even a smell. My cellmate’s mattress had been scorched, but fortunately I hadn’t set it alight. It would be the least of the questions I’d have to answer in the morning.

  ?That’s wild.?

  [Good. Now that you’ve used it you should be able to use it without any menus. Let’s look at the rest of your status before we make the first of your build decisions.]

  We scanned my basic stats, and several numbers flashed across my vision. I recognized the three stats that runebands modified: might, alacrity, and resilience. Along with this were arcane, which for me meant the ability to use fire, vitalis, which affected physical enhancements, and essence, which I currently couldn’t use. Most everything looked solid, well above the baseline of 100 for an early tier 1 sorcerer. I was particularly proud that except for one thing: resilience, my ability to take punishment, was at a mere 76.

  ?Am I a glass cannon??

  A rustle of papers, probably as the lecti looked up “glass cannon.” [Not exactly. You have a penalty to resilience due to one of your unique skills. However, it pays for itself. I’ll explain when we get to it.]

  As the lecti explained all of this, something occurred to me. ?Wait. You can even see my menus??

  [Oh yes. We can both see your status and progress, and I can nudge your passive skills in realtime.]

  ?I’ve heard that lecti generally don’t have much of a personality, but you sound a lot like a human. Is that a Guardian thing??

  [It is a Legacy “thing.” Yes, normally we lecti are blank slates that develop a personality over time. But this amulet is a legacy artifact. It is imprinted with the knowledge and experiences of your predecessor, Issa, and of my predecessor, Ember. I received a great deal of that knowledge when I onboarded. In fact, I remember many of Issa’s experiences almost as if I were him. Especially Ember. She was a vision.]

  I cringed. ?Aren’t you guys like, bodiless? How can a Lecti be a ‘vision?’?

  He scoffed. [When you reach tier 2 I can form a small short range avatar. It isn’t physical, but it can be seen by you. This allows for more natural interaction. It also allows us to perceive the world with our own senses. The avatar’s appearance is influenced by our sorcerer’s own imagination.]

  Ah. It was starting to click. ?So, Issa imagined a pretty woman for his lecti? Tell me something. Was he a womanizer??

  [Of course not!] Then, after a pause, [Eh, yes, I suppose. Notoriously so.]

  So, I thought—only to myself—it seemed Issa had imprinted my lecti with part of his own personality, including his desires and flaws. And since Issa’s desire was for me not to have his flaws, I was dealing with a creature literally programmed to be a hypocrite.

  Kill me.

  My skill list went on and on. Physical enhancement, which was like a runeband but stronger. Passive boosts, immunities, other strange abilities that made me feel something more than human—or something less. The lecti cheerfully told me these were the main perks of being a Guardian. I could enhance my strength and speed far beyond what a runeband could provide, which I’d already experienced at Squid’s when I crumpled Troy Maddux like a soda can. I also had a regeneration skill that would heal any injury over time, even old scars.

  ?Wait. Scars??

  [That’s what I said. Why?]

  I checked my left lower arm—where I used to have a burn scar from a summer camp gone bad when I was a kid—and found that it had, in fact, already vanished. I stared at the smooth, unblemished skin for a moment. I was actually kind of pissed. That scar, along with a few more across my back, was important. It was a badge of honor, a mark of a rare good thing I’d done. Now it was just… gone.

  [Is something wrong?]

  ?You took my scar. You took my Shones damned scar.?

  Then another thought occurred to me, and I pulled the neck of my hoodie out and looked down at my chest in a panic. Fortunately, my prized chili pepper tattoo was still in place.

  I still wasn’t happy about losing that scar against my will, but I confirmed there wasn’t much I could do about it. You couldn’t un-regenerate. I silently bid farewell to those old marks, and then we moved on to fire skills.

  I reviewed and momentarily tested Immolate, then Torch, shooting out an intentionally tiny cone of flame for a split second. It made a mark on the cinderblock wall of the cell, still hopefully out of sight of the security cameras.

  [Currently most of your attack skills must originate from your hands or your chosen weapon. At tier 2, they may originate from any body part.]

  I thought about that for a moment, then grinned. ?Ok, you know I've gotta ask.?

  [Yes, Mr. Fulgen?]

  ?Can I use Torch on my butt once I level it up? Can I fart flames??

  There was a long pause. I started to think he wasn’t going to answer. [Yes.]

  ?Did Issa do it??

  [To be fair, most of the Guardians with an equivalent skill did the same thing at least once during their early days. Talaron, the Earth Guardian, made a particularly crude display using rocks and soil.]

  ?Don't worry. I'll fart fire better.?

  The lecti did not respond to that one.

  There were a couple of notable fire passives. I could automatically protect clothing and held objects from fire, especially my own, which was definitely a plus. Then there was a skill called Rekindled Flame.

  This was the one that reduced my resilience. However, it also increased the speed of regeneration and the recovery of my aethervoir.

  [This is a double-edged sword, Mr. Fulgen, but it’s one of the true signature powers of the Fire Guardian. Hit and fade. Overwhelm your opponent, disengage, then recover faster than them.]

  So, I was a raw damage dealer who could dish it out but couldn’t take it, unless I strategically took it in small doses that I could process. Was that my sorcerer build or a metaphor for my life?

  There was one final skill category, called Meta.

  My Legacy skill sat there at tier 4, level 38. Which, I realized, was an epitaph. Issa’s level at death, now just a mark for me to try to clear. Which, as it happened, was part of its bonus: Until I reached that point, all of my levelling and experience would be accelerated.

  I also had a skill called Bind Weapon. Whatever item I chose for this would become part of me, able to be summoned to my hand or dismissed at will.

  ?Oh yeah, my skidstick is getting this treatment.?

  [Your what?]

  Papers started shuffling in my head again, but I preempted him with a brief overview of skidding. He was unimpressed.

  [A game? A sport? You, the Guardian of Fire, a paragon of power and stability during trying times, wish to whack your foes with a piece of sporting equipment?]

  ?Is that a problem??

  [No more than anything else, I imagine. We’ll revisit this. For now, Mr. Fulgen, it is time to shape your destiny.]

  ?Forever??

  [For a week or so. Open the Class menu.]