“Nick Howell,” Tammy said, motioning to the birdman. “May I introduce Cristik Grennels. He represents the Soaring Clouds Above Clan.”

  I nodded to the man, who inclined his head, thankful that Tammy had clarified the gender and pronouns.

  “Greetings,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You as well..,” he paused, tilting his head to the side. He had an odd accent. Where Zire’s Felitrans had a growl to the voice, there was no squawk or anything like that to Cristik’s voice. It was more on the high end, but not annoyingly so. “How would you prefer to be called?”

  “Nick is fine.”

  “Nick it is then. As your lovely companion said, I am Cristik.” He bowed his head again. “It is not everyday that one gets to meet the head of a new and fast rising Faction.”

  “I don’t know about fast rising,” I said.

  He laughed. It had a kind of birdsong quality to it. Tammy smiled, apparently liking the sound.

  “Modest,” Cristik said. “In the short time your world has been opened, you have made quite a name for your faction. Your solo accomplishments in the Tower alone would have drawn much interest but then your duel…” he chuckled, shaking his head. “I have watched the vids and it was quite a statement.”

  I winced. I couldn’t tell if he smiled or not. Hard to tell with the beak, the tip pointing down like an eagle. Or hawk. I could never tell the two apart.

  “It was a good statement,” he continued. “There are many that were quite pleased to see the Anura put in their place.”

  “I’m getting that idea. Not well liked are they?”

  “Not at all. They are bullies. Not even one of the strongest factions or races out there, but long ago their Patriarch made a deal with one of the higher factions. In return for access to Resources, the higher factions get an army. It significantly changed the balance of power in the Multiversal Nexus and sadly, too many other smaller factions have had to sign the same deals.” He shook his head sadly, the feathers making up his hair drooping. “New factions get taken advantage of. You have done well in setting your faction up for the future.”

  “Thanks,” I said, not sure if I agreed with him or not. “It feels like I’ve painted a target on our backs.”

  “Oh you have,” Cristik said, chuckling. “And it will get bigger. There will be more like that Anura brat, some even stronger.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a good thing.”

  “It remains to be seen,” Cristik said, stepping away from the counter. “But you have caught the attention of many others, not just the Anura and their masters. Many others that are happy to see the Anura put in their place and their masters noses tweaked.”

  “Anyway you can tell me who controls the Anura?”

  “Sadly, I cannot,” Cristik replied, his large eyes darting around, a feather-like finger raising to his lips. “Alliances are kept private, especially when it concerns the higher factions.”

  “Noted.”

  He bowed his head to me and then to Tammy.

  “It was a joy meeting you Nick and you as well Mistress Tammy. I will bring the items I purchased back to my faction and I am sure we will set up a contract. And please, let me know when you have those lovely Mountain Edge Climber leathers in vest form.”

  “I will,” Tammy said. “It should only be a couple of days, a week at the most.”

  “Excellent,” Cristik said, giving us both one more bow, a little deeper. “Good day to you both.”

  He turned and walked out the store, nodding to Fields, who was walking towards us, his customer already having left. I hadn’t noticed who, or what, Fields had been talking to.

  “What did he buy?” I asked Tammy.

  “A couple different pieces of leather armor. Not a complete set, but one of each Arcanebeast hide.”

  She opened the notebook in front of her, making a couple of quick notes. Tammy could memorize pretty much everything, but the notebooks were arcanum-infused to copy the notes to one Kat had.

  “Should you and Mike get a paired set too,” I asked, pointing at the notebook. It had been really hard to not call him Fields. But he was going to be running the shop and would be our public mercantile face in the Nexus, so I had to get rid of my dislike. Not fully, just a little.

  “Already ahead of you,” Fields said, pulling a small notebook out of the pocket of his jacket. “These are linked to one that Kat has and one that my assistant has as well.”

  “Do the notes cross from the Nexus to Solace?”

  “They do,” Tammy said happily. “We tested that first thing.”

  “Awesome.”

  “Did the representative from the Collat Collective buy anything?” Tammy asked, looking at Fields.

  “No, but there are some things he thinks his people would be interested in. He’s coming back tomorrow with some samples of their wares to try to work out a deal.”

  “Collat Collective?”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “They come from a world that is heavy in water arcanum,” Fields said, leaning against the counter. “It’s short on other arcanum so they were interested in our air infused stuff. We don’t get much water related Resources in Solace so….,” he spread his hands.

  I looked at the shop and then motioned to the rooms in back.

  “We kind of need a private showing room or something.”

  Fields and Tammy looked at each other. Fields laughed, Tammy rolled her eyes. He held out her hand and she dropped a couple credits into it. They disappeared from Fields’ palm. I glared at them both.

  “What was the bet?” I grumbled.

  “I said that you would suggest it. Tammy thought you wouldn’t think about it until you got back to Earth and Kat told you to make the change, or one of us ended up telling you.”

  I sighed and pulled up the interface.

  It gave me a top down view of the shop and the grid that made up our allocated space. There wasn’t much area for us to expand the shop into, not yet. But within the footprint there were two offices, the hallway, the storage room and the shop itself. I didn’t want to take room from the shop itself, it was already small and kind of crowded. The storage room was the storage room. That left the offices. With some quick mental math and a little bit of Multiversal Credits, I changed the layout of the office. I shrunk the one, what did they need an office for anyways, to make the showing room more rectangular. I put in a long but somewhat thin table against a wall. Wide enough to display stuff, but this room wasn’t for meetings so didn’t need people sitting around it. I did throw in a couple of chairs. Some shelves along the other wall, and then threw in a couple of armor stands. I moved the door so it wasn’t in the hallway but directly into the shop.

  I exited the interface and felt a little tremor as the changes took hold.

  Fields walked over to the new door, opened it and smiled.

  “Not bad,” he said, closing it and coming back to join us, this time on Tammy’s side of the counter. Were they standing a little too close? Naw. “I’ll miss the office.”

  “You weren’t going to ever use it,” Tammy said.

  “True.”

  “How are things going here?” I asked.

  “Very good,” Fields replied. “We’ve made some sales but have a lot of meetings set up in the next week or so. I’m hopeful something can be worked out on those.”

  “There’s been a good amount of traffic,” Tammy added. “Some that just popped in to see who the new folks are and some that came looking for you.”

  “For me?” I said, trying to act all innocent. It didn’t work. She rolled her eyes at me.

  “I’m not sure I like that target,” Tammy said.

  “I know, I’m not sure either,” I admitted.

  “Didn’t you say that the Sunrise Formation were supporting you during the duel?” Fields asked.

  “Yeah, Sunie was my second.”

  “Cristik said his Soaring Clouds Above Clan,” Tammy started but paused, glaring at me. “You know, hearing all these names for Clans, Sects, and so on…”

  I held up my hands, stopping her.

  “I know. It’s on the agenda.”

  Fields looked between the two of us, lost a bit. He hadn’t worked with Kat and Tammy as much as I had. The three of us had formed a kind of connection, sisterly to brother, but it was that one where each could finish thoughts or know what the other was thinking. The kind that annoyed everyone that wasn’t part of it.

  “Our Clan name sounds bad compared to the others,” I said, with a sigh.

  “Didn’t you come up with it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I muttered.

  “It is kind of….,” Fields started but paused, glancing at me.

  “Out with it.”

  “Kind of lackluster.”

  “Yep, which is why I’m now thinking of changing it.” I glanced up at the sky. “Stylo, is that even possible? How does it affect contracts?”

  “It is entirely possible Nick,” Stylo said, appearing between some of the shelves, floating over to us. Tammy still jumped. I thought I saw a small grin on Stylo’s face. “It is done fairly often, typically for the reasons you are considering it, and also if a new faction name is too similar to an established one such that it could cause confusion.”

  “That’s understandable,” Fields said. “Brand confusion was a thing back in Old-Earth, Pre-System.”

  “If you are going to do it, I would recommend sooner rather than later,” Stylo said. “Before you get too established but I believe I must give a warning.”

  “Oh?” I asked, figuring there had to be some cons involved. It couldn’t all be pros.

  “Some might think you are changing the name to hide from that… target..on your back.”

  I shrugged, not really caring one way or the other about that aspect.

  “I’ll just have to go and make a bigger statement then,” I chuckled.

  “Anyways,” Tammy said, wanting to get us back on track. “Cristik said that his Clan supports you and Clan Howell. I can’t wait to change that name.”

  “I met up with Zire and his party when I left the Tower earlier,” I said. “He basically said the same thing as Cristik. The elders of the Plains Wind Sect liked that I tweaked the noses of the Anura.”

  “So there are factions supporting us,” she said.

  I held up a finger at the same time as Fields was about to talk. I motioned for him to go.

  “There are multiple kinds of support,” he said. “One is true support. Watching our backs. That kind of thing, which I think it’s safe to say the Sunrise Formation is.” I nodded. It was a very public show of support having Sunie in my corner during the duel. “Another kind is verbal only, where there is no public show or Resources. And another is where they say they are supporting you, hoping you can do something, but they’ll hang in the back and wait to see what happens. If you win, they can say they were supporting you all along.”

  “And if we fail,” I said grimly. “They’ll just disappear into the background, never to be seen again.”