“If we angle down the hill to the right, we should find the Way,” Nips said, peering at the Wayfinder from his perch on her bag. He pointed to show which way the needle indicated.
Lanie nodded. She was just about dead on her feet. “We haven’t run into anything in this realm that wanted to eat us, sell us, or torture us, so far. Do you think we’d be safe sleeping here? There’s no telling where that Way lets out, and I’m too wiped to think straight.”
“Sometimes there are traveler’s shelters or campsites near the Ways. It’s custom to treat them as neutral areas, but that isn’t binding the way hospitality is. This realm is ancient. Whoever lives here probably honors those customs, but there’s no guarantee.”
“So it’s risky, but not as risky as finding a log to crawl under?” Lanie asked. Her brain felt like it was mired in marshmallow fluff. It kept sticking to random details, and she was having trouble forcing it to calculate the odds or come up with a better plan.
“I think it’s less risky than continuing as you are. Let’s see if there’s even a refuge at the Way, and then you can decide.”
She started down the hill in the direction Nips had pointed. She wanted to talk to him about the fox, but she couldn’t get her thoughts in order, and she had a suspicion that it would be better to have that conversation when they were back in the real world.
Her feet were dragging by the time they came in sight of the Way. A carved sandstone arch marked the thin spot where the realm touched the mortal world. About fifty feet from the arch was a stone shelter, walled on three sides and open on the south-east side. A fire pit with a smoke hole above it took up the center of the shelter, with room around it for bedrolls.
The stone was old. Both the arch and the shelter had been carved once, but whatever designs had graced them had long since weathered away to mere suggestions of scrolls and figures. A face with a fearsome snarl was carved above the shelter entrance, its grotesque features rounded and softened by time and weather.
Lanie was too tired to go on, and she didn’t think she could find another place to rest if she wanted to. She went to a back corner of the shelter and sat against the wall. The water skin that she’d been given by Tolus was full, despite her having sipped on it numerous times over the course of the day. She drank long and deep from it, nearly emptying it. The magic in the Cedar Forest was so thick that the skin refilled almost as soon as it was emptied.
There was still fruit and bread in her bag from Tolus’ picnic, and she and Nips shared some of it. They ate in silence for a while, Lanie enjoying the sweetness of the dried dates and the rich earthiness of the bread. Eventually, though, she broke the silence with a question that she’d been asking herself for days now. “Can I even go back to my old life?”
“That scarf will keep your pursuers from finding you, so unless they know who you are, you’ll probably be fine going back.” Nips paused and tackled the question from another angle, “Though, if you mean in a more metaphorical sense, that’s harder to answer. You’ve been through a lot, and you’ve learned a lot about the world and about yourself. You might find that your old life is too small to hold you any longer.” He nibbled a bit of bread, his expression thoughtful. “Why don’t you get some sleep. I napped a bit in the bag earlier, so I’ll keep watch.”
Lanie didn’t reply; she just thought about her old life and her old way of looking at the world, and tried to decide if she would still fit. She didn’t think she would. How could she go back to pulling petty burglaries?
Her last job before the museum heist had been a pretty simple one. One gang lieutenant had slept with another one’s girl, and somebody had gotten video of him in a compromising position with the girlfriend. He’d hired Lanie to break in and steal the phone with the video and attached accounts so he could delete them all. That had been simple. She’d just had to pop a window lock on a second-floor apartment without waking the guy. The phone had been set up with facial recognition, so she hadn’t even had to do anything fancy to unlock it. Just show it his face, then change the PIN. It had been worth two grand to the client to keep the peace in his gang.
She’d used that two grand to buy some leather pants, some beer, and a new game for her console. The rest had been used to bankroll the museum heist. She had enough left for a ticket home, an Uber, and maybe a week's worth of groceries. She’d been crashing in the bare room above Jorge’s garage. She had a mattress on the floor, a decent-sized TV, and her PlayStation. A trunk with clothes and mementos, and her antique floor safe.
She smiled at the memory of Jorge and two of his guys hauling that safe up the stairs. The safe and the PlayStation were the only things she’d miss if she never saw that room again. And Jorge. She’d miss him. He was the big brother she needed. He got her up and moving when depression threatened to creep in, was there when the night terrors got too bad, and she needed a beer at two AM.
She’d been living in the spare room in his house until he got engaged. She moved out without being asked to give him and his new bride their space, and now his little girl was living in her old room. She didn’t mind, though she missed it sometimes. He had his life and family, he’d done good, gotten his shit together, and even had a mostly legit business fixing up and reselling used cars.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He still dabbled in moving the occasional hot ride or parts that fell off a truck, and he kept a short leash on his guys, made sure they weren’t peddling poison on his patch, but since becoming a dad, he tried to keep the illegal stuff at arm's distance. His guys loved him enough to respect that. He’d helped every one of them at some point, just like he’d helped her.
She’d miss that feeling of belonging, but she wasn’t part of the gang. She was more like the little sister they liked to tease, but she wasn’t part of their lives or their business. Thinking back on it all, now that she had some distance, it suddenly felt so small. Her life had revolved around a couple of neighborhoods in a single city. She had some roots there, but they were shallow, and her branches had found the sun, now.
Shaking her head, she admitted to herself that she wouldn’t fit back into that. She’d seen too much to forget that there were other realms, that there was magic, and that monsters might pretend to be alley cats.
Besides, if she was going to be mixed up with that sort of danger, she couldn’t bring it to Jorge’s house. It wouldn’t be right. He was walking enough of a line just keeping his finger on the pulse of the street without bringing that taint back to his family. Pulling magic trouble down on him would be poor repayment for all the help he had given her over the years.
As though making the decision had lifted a weight from her, her shoulders relaxed, and she let loose with a jaw-popping yawn. Using her bag as a pillow, she curled up in the corner to get some sleep, counting on Nips to keep watch and the deep shadows of the shelter to keep her hidden.
Hours later, she woke from dreams that slipped away like smoke, leaving only the vague impression of doorways and fog, and the sense that she had been chasing something profound. By the time she opened her eyes, the details had vanished. She lay there a while, reaching for them, but they were gone.
The scroll icon at the corner of her vision was blinking, though. Confused over how she could have achieved anything while sleeping, she opened it.
Due to spending an extended time in a higher realm,
you have absorbed 1 sakti.
So just existing in this realm, where the air was thick with power, would make her stronger. She wondered if she could build a cabin here. It would be a great place for vacations. But if it were that easy, everyone from a lower realm would just move here, so there had to be a catch. Probably a grumpy landlord with phenomenal cosmic power.
Speaking of power, she’d earned quite a bit of sakti and hadn’t looked at her options in a while. With a thought, she pulled up her status screen.
Lanie Manovich
Rank: Seeker
Body: Mortal(F) 29%
Mind: Mortal(F) 21%
Soul: Mortal(F) 20%
Past Incarnations: 157
Viewed: 1
Health: 330/330
Stamina: 270/270
Prana: 384/384
Dharma: Way of the Thief
Sakti: 10
Attributes:
Strength 26
Dexterity 37
Endurance 28
Vitality 33
Perception 24
Willpower 19
Intelligence 24
Wisdom 20
Charisma 17
Awakened Chakras:
Muladhara: Path of Shadow
Svadhisthana
Gifts:
Improved Recall
Intuition
Realmwalker
Shadow Sight
Mental Defenses
She didn’t bother reading over her list of skills. The 10 sakti she had available was much more interesting. With a thought, the chakra screen opened. She selected Muladhara and looked over her options.
Path of Shadow
Shadow Sight 2 — 4 sakti
Blend with Shadows — 6 sakti
Shadow Cloak — 8 sakti
Create Light — 6 sakti
Shadow Step — 12 sakti
There was one choice that she’d been considering for a while, and she was pretty sure she was going to take it, but she opened Svadhisthana as well, just to look over her options.
Know the World
Enhanced senses — 4
Empathy — 8
Danger Sense — 4
Create
Shape Shadows — 8
Illusion — 6
Prana Dart — 6
Know Yourself
Inner sight — 3
Mental Defenses 2 — 12
Prana Manipulation — 8
Flow
Graceful Burst — 4
Silent Feet — 6
Synchronicity — 12
Allure
Presence — 6
Inspire — 8
Charm — 12
She considered each option. She wondered about Synchronicity. What would that let her do? For twelve sakti, it had to be something powerful, but it was out of her reach for now, and her curiosity wasn’t enough to overcome her first choice.
Some of the options might be smarter; Prana Dart and Danger Sense both sounded very practical, and she could afford both. She hovered over them for a minute, debating the pros and cons, but it was a moot exercise. She already knew what her choice would be.
Switching back to the Muladhara screen, she paid the 8 sakti for Shadow Cloak.
Icy prickles of power washed through her, not painful, but disconcerting. When they were gone, she found new knowledge waiting for her. Pulling prana into her hand, she reached out and pinched the edge of a nearby shadow. It lifted from the ground as if it were made of fine silk, and she draped it around herself. The shadow had no real weight, and it felt cool against her skin. It moved with her, like fabric, and she knew that it would make her harder to see in low light and nearly invisible at night.
There was a slow, constant drain on her prana to keep the cloak manifested, and she knew that the drain would increase if she walked out into the sunlight with it still active. She watched her prana pool tick downward just a bit slower than it did with Steps of Akayma. As long as she stayed out of direct sunlight, the cloak would last nearly four minutes.
She let the shadow go, and it evaporated like mist. She pinched up another bit of shadow, this one much smaller, and draped it over her face like a veil. She wasn’t sure if it would obscure her from cameras, but the prana cost of this smaller version was much lower than the full cloak. She estimated she could keep feeding it for fifteen or twenty minutes before her prana ran dry. With a deep hood, she was pretty sure she could use it to hide her face even in sunlight.
It wasn’t the most practical choice, but the ability to wear an actual shadow, to be nearly invisible, made butterflies flutter in her stomach. It was a childish thing to spend her hard-earned sakti on a bit of magic just because she’d spent most of her teenage years daydreaming about having a cloak of invisibility, but it wasn’t a useless choice. She was a thief, after all.
Nips had been sitting by the cold firepit, looking out through the open wall. He watched as she played with her new toy, giving her a little time to enjoy it before he spoke up and brought her back to reality.
“We should get moving,” he said quietly. “We’ve been fortunate so far; best not to push our luck.”