“Why were you trying to kill that poor rabbit? He wasn’t causing any trouble.”

  Isaac folded his arms in front of his chest and raised a questioning eyebrow at me. “Because the security system clearly thought he was a threat. And why do you care so much about that rabbit, anyway? It’s just a wild animal—who cares if it lives or dies?”

  I stood in front of Isaac, hands on my hips, glaring at him in the courtyard behind the Codexium. It had been a few minutes since our encounter with Nimbus, and Isaac hadn’t expressed even the slightest remorse at what he had done. “I mean, what if that rabbit had been a Codex Beast or something? You aren’t allowed to kill Codex Beasts unless they pose a direct threat to you or someone else.”

  Isaac blinked at me. “Where did you hear that?”

  I sighed and rubbed my forehead in exasperation. “It was on the written portion of the Codexer test before my trial. It’s one of the laws of the Codex Constitution. Don’t you know that?”

  Isaac scratched his chin. “You know, that does sound kind of familiar. But trust me, kid. If that rabbit had been a Codex Beast, I definitely would have been able to tell. And that rabbit was no Codex Beast. I can assure you of that.”

  Isaac’s confidence in his own wrong opinions was extremely frustrating, but I didn’t try to argue with him about it. I knew that Nimbus was a Codex Beast because we had been temporarily synced together during my Arcane Simulation back in the Codexium. Together, the two of us had worked to defeat a malformed Codex Entry that had taken the form of a wolf-headed man—its very existence posing a threat not just to the North Forest Node but to the entire Node Network.

  Perhaps I should have told Isaac that Nimbus was a Codex Beast, but that would require telling him about what I had seen in my trial, and I still didn’t trust him enough to tell him about that. Besides, he probably wouldn’t believe me even if I did. Isaac didn’t seem to have a very high opinion of me because I was a lot younger and less experienced as a Codexer than he was.

  But I was curious about what Nimbus had been doing here. During my Codex Trial, Nimbus had told me that he had been assigned a Codex Quest by the North Forest Node, and it had only been a coincidence that his quest required him to come to the North Forest Node at the same time that I was doing my trial. We had then gone our separate ways after completing my trial, under the assumption that we would probably never cross paths again.

  That had seemed like a reasonable assumption to hold at the time, yet I had just seen Nimbus right now. And it was definitely Nimbus. I would recognize that oversized white rabbit with golden eyes anywhere. He had even clearly recognized me when he saw me, though I found his silence and his unwillingness to speak to me strange. Then again, given how Isaac had been trying to kill him the entire time, perhaps Nimbus’s fearful reactions made more sense. I also realized I could no longer hear the security alarms in the Codexium; they’d probably shut off once Nimbus left.

  Isaac grunted and sheathed his blade back into the sheath under his robes. “Regardless, we were going to have to come out here at some point anyway, so it wasn’t a waste of time.”

  I looked at the Node Shrine curiously. “Yes, I was going to ask about this. I’ve never seen it before.”

  Isaac gestured at the Node Shrine. “This used to be the third Node of the North Forest Codexium. In the old days, new Codexers like yourself would come here after completing their trial and registering with the SNA to get their very own starter equipment. They would then touch their Portable to the Node, and it would scan their Discipline and their performance in the trial and give them a starter weapon or tool appropriate for their Discipline. I used it myself for that very purpose when I became a Codexer over sixty years ago.”

  I stared at the Node Shrine with an impressed look. “Amazing. So all I have to do is touch my Portable to the Node, and it will instantly tell me what kind of weapon or tool I need for my Discipline? Pretty convenient.”

  Isaac, however, shook his head. “That’s how it used to work. But then it broke down about twenty years ago, and nobody has been able to get it to work since then.”

  I whipped my head toward Isaac in surprise. “What do you mean, it broke down? I didn’t know that Stationary Nodes could break down.”

  Isaac shrugged. “It happens sometimes if they aren’t well-maintained. And believe me, the North Forest Codexium has not been particularly well maintained, despite my best efforts. Best I can figure, the ley line powering this Node ran out of energy, so there’s nothing left to power it anymore.”

  I ran a hand through my hair, feeling a little distressed by this news. “Haven’t you been able to reach out to the Node Makers Guild and ask them to send someone out to fix it? They have an outpost in Hebron. It’s not like they would have to travel all the way from Zeboiim.”

  Isaac raised two fingers. “Two problems with that. One, you assume that the SNA cares enough about a rural Node like ours to devote any kind of budget toward Node maintenance for situations like this. They don’t. And two, those Node Maker bastards believe in charging an arm and a leg and a spleen just to look at broken Nodes. Asking them to fix it would probably cost more than the entire budget for the North Forest Codexium for a year. And let me tell you—the Shinar Node Authority didn’t banish me out here to take care of this place or graduate new Codexers into the world.”

  I raised an eyebrow at Isaac. “Banished? I thought they assigned you out here because we needed a Codex Keeper.”

  Isaac cringed and covered his mouth like he had just said something that he wasn’t supposed to. “Uh, never mind that, kid. The point is that those jerks in Hebron don’t care enough about us to want to waste money and resources on Nodes that no one even uses that often anyway. Just the way the world works.”

  I frowned. “But isn’t it in the best interests of the Authority to make sure all of the Nodes in Shinar are still working? What if this Node explodes or something? Wouldn’t that risk destroying the town and even harm the Node Network?”

  Isaac laughed bitterly. “Yes, but the jerks in Hebron don’t live out here, so why would they care if a little town like ours got wiped off the map because of a lack of proper funding? Honestly, they would probably be happy if that happened. Then they wouldn’t have to pretend to care about us anymore and could pour more resources into the places and Nodes that they do care about.”

  That sounded extremely cynical to me, but at the same time, I couldn’t dispute it after seeing the poor shape that the North Forest Codexium was in overall. I wished there was something I could do about it, but if the SNA ignored requests from Isaac—who was the actual Codex Keeper of the North Forest Codexium—then I doubted they would listen to a Chapter One Codexer like myself, who didn’t even belong to a Guild yet.

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  I folded my arms across my chest and glanced at the broken Node Shrine again. “So if the Node doesn’t do what it’s supposed to anymore, why are we out here at all? It sounds like it doesn’t give out special equipment to people anymore, so why bother?”

  Isaac raised a finger. “Just because the Node doesn’t work anymore doesn’t mean that you can’t still pick out some starter equipment. What do you think this equipment pile is for?”

  Isaac gestured at the pile of broken, rusted tools and weapons that I had mistakenly assumed was a junk pile—the same pile that Nimbus had been hiding under when we first came out here. It looked even worse after Isaac’s initial attack on Nimbus, which had damaged and destroyed various weapons that had been sitting in that pile in the first place.

  I looked at Isaac incredulously. “Are you seriously telling me that I’m supposed to dig through that pile of junk and pick out a starting weapon or tool appropriate to my Discipline? Manually?”

  Isaac frowned at me. “First off, it is the equipment pile, not a junk pile. And secondly, yes, that’s what I expect you to do. We know what your Discipline is now, so all you have to do is dig around until you find something that resonates with you. Just one thing, however—don’t get greedy now.”

  I had no earthly idea how any human being could get greedy about a pile of weapons and tools that looked even older than my deceased grandfather. “Are you sure there isn’t a better way to do this? I mean, even if the equipment Node is broken, you could have at least stored all of these somewhere inside the Codexium or something, rather than leaving them exposed to the elements.”

  Isaac was picking his nose now, like he didn’t care about anything I had just said. “What part of ‘no budget’ and ‘underfunded’ do you not understand? Now stop your yammering and pick something. It’s getting hot out here, and I still have a lot of stuff to teach you before I can get you out of my hair.”

  I frowned more but didn’t argue the point with Isaac further, knowing that it was more useless than arguing with a stone wall. I was also starting to suspect that “no budget” and “underfunded” were euphemisms for I don’t care and That sounds like your problem, because you don’t need much money to toss starter tools into a box and store them inside the Codexium. I also understood now why Miriam’s mentor had given her a starting tool before her trial. Too bad the closest thing I had to a mentor was Isaac right now.

  Sighing deeply, I crouched over the equipment pile—as Isaac had euphemistically referred to it—and started digging.

  As you might have guessed, I found nothing useful. There were a few knives with inscriptions that had clearly been ruined from exposure to the elements, along with a wooden mallet that probably would have been useful if I had a Combat Discipline. But it was all mostly bits and pieces of wood and metal and leather, along with at least one empty beer bottle that Isaac denied knowing anything about when I pointed it out to him. It made me wonder if there had ever been anything useful in this pile at all or if the lack of care for the items had caused them to degrade. Either option made sense to me.

  The most promising thing I found was a wooden wand that was in surprisingly good shape compared to everything else, at least until I turned it around and found that its bottom half was covered in rot and maggots. Out of disgust, I dropped the rotten wooden wand onto the ground, prompting Isaac to say something about how I needed to be careful with Codexium equipment that didn’t belong to me.

  But I paid him no attention because I caught the glint of something black out of the corner of my eye and looked to my left.

  The black metal rod that Nimbus had dropped earlier was still where Nimbus had left it. A stray ray of sunlight poked through the treetops overhead and reflected off its sleek black metallic surface. Curious, I reached over and picked up the metal rod, examining it closely.

  It was light, yet very solid, giving me the impression that it would take a lot of effort or power to break. Compared to literally everything else in the equipment pile, this rod was practically perfect—no rust, no broken pieces, nothing else I could see to indicate it had been damaged. That was impressive, given how it had obviously been out here in the pile with the rest of the broken starter tools for who knows how long. Maybe it was made of a higher-quality material than most.

  But the most fascinating thing about it was that when I picked it up, the glyphs inscribed on its surface—which I had never seen before—subtly shifted and moved like script written in smoke. I almost dropped it in surprise, but quickly regained my grip on it.

  The tool felt right in my hands, as if it were made just for me. Its slightly curved handle, the way that it fit so comfortably in my fingers like a well-designed writing quill… I didn’t want to put it down.

  More importantly, a notification appeared in my vision that read thusly:

  Inscribed Artifact: Inkwyrm, the Codex Stylus

  Item Type: Arcane Writing Implement / Weapon

  Classification: Bound Artifact (Portable Node-Linked)

  Owner: None (available to link with Portable Node)

  Chapter Requirement: 1 (minimum)

  Materials: Eldarian alloy + shattered fragment of a failed Stationary Node

  Description:

  A slender, tapering instrument forged from blacksteel-vellum composite, etched with living Codex glyphs that subtly crawl along its surface. Though it resembles a ceremonial wand or rod at first glance, it contains layered inscription circuits bound to the Inscriptionist Console.

  At the tip is a modular crystal nib that shifts color based on inscription type:

  Blue: Utility

  Red: Offensive

  Green: Defensive

  Gold: Systemic or forbidden glyphs

  When the user inscribes a glyph in the air, the Stylus leaves a glowing trail of Codex-light—temporarily visible to others before resolving into spell form.

  That was all that it said, and when I tried to read more, it gave me a warning notice that I needed to link my Portable with the Stylus before I could learn more about it.

  Isaac poked his head over mine with a curious expression on his face. “What did you find there, kid?”

  Broken out of my trance, I looked up at Isaac and gestured at the Stylus. “This Stylus… where did it come from, exactly?”

  Isaac picked his nose again and shrugged. “I have no idea. Pretty sure it’s been in the equipment pile ever since the equipment Node broke down. Though it looks like something that would fit your unique Discipline quite well—if it’s a Stylus and does what I think it does.” He then pointed at the broken hammer. “But what you should actually go for is a proper weapon you can use to defend yourself. If you’re going to be hunting bandits, then that means you’re going to get into fights, which means you need a weapon.”

  Isaac’s logic wasn’t exactly wrong, but at the same time, I felt like it would be even more wrong for me to throw this important item away just because it wasn’t obviously as useful for combat as a hammer or some other weapon.

  As if I’d be insulting the Codex itself if I got rid of it.

  So I rose to my feet with the Stylus in my hand and shook my head as I turned to face Isaac. “Thanks for your suggestion, but you said it yourself. I get to choose anything I want from the equipment pile—anything that resonates with my Discipline—and I’ve decided I want this one. End of story.”

  Isaac shrugged and turned away from me, back toward the Codexium. “Fair enough. But don’t come crying to me when you get stabbed by a bandit carrying an actual weapon in the field. Now let’s go back into the Codexium. It’s time I taught you about the most important aspect of being a Codexer.”

  I perked up when Isaac said that. “The Chapter System?”

  Isaac shot a grin at me over his shoulder. “Nope! We’re going to learn how to do the minimum necessary to keep our Codexer licenses current with the SNA. But yes, we are also going to learn about the Chapter System. Come along.”

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