"Hey, so, do you have the odds?"

  The Prefereti stood over him. Ludere stared. He felt at his chest. He had just been impaled by a demon and he had seen the claws. They had gone through his chest.

  "Odds?" Ludere said. Had it been a dream? It had been so real.

  He looked down, and there wasn't a portal to another realm. It had to have been a dream.

  It had been so real. But he had a customer in front of him and he had to deal with that. There was no pushing the Prefereti away. Even if he was surprised he didn't have any blood on him. He would talk to Erebus about this afterwards. Erebus would help him get centered.

  He made the same deal he could have sworn that he just did again, but even though it was familiar, to do his due diligence and make sure that he gave the man the correct rate. He was pretty sure that the fight would go as he had imagined in his dream.

  That was how things went, right?

  You had a daydream about demons and then you had to tell the oracles. He didn't even know if they would believe him. It all sounded rather fantastical. And how long had it been? Had he taken two breaks? Talked to Gia and swapped the skills over, leveled up a skill…

  Ludere checked his skills.

  Something wasn't adding up.

  Athletics wasn't greyed out. He started breathing heavily.

  "Oh, there! Are you okay?" It was Erebus's voice. But he had seen Erebus die. Even if the man… Happened right next to him. One didn't come back from death.

  "Erebus. What are your skills?"

  "I'm sorry. What?"

  "Erebus, I just had the most incredible dream, and it gave me a skill. So I ask you again. What are your skills?"

  Erebus looked at him like he was missing half of his face. Lu checked it to make sure that it was still there.

  He ran his hands along his face, quickly checking. His eyes obviously worked but he had lost his way before. His eyebrows could have run off as well. He wouldn't have noticed.

  If he only lost his eyebrows out of this, he would take it as a win.

  "I've got what I've always had. Numeracy, Accountancy, and Scan."

  "I swear to you that this is true but… I just got a skill where I can swap skills with willing people and… Well, shit, I can't use any of those right now with the demon invasion."

  Erebus's eyes went wide. "Invasion?"

  "I had a vision of the two of us dying after a portal opens in the middle of the arena and…" Lu realized that he was speaking quickly. How long did they have if this was going on? How would they even…

  He quickly explained what he saw to the shocked man. The more he spoke, the more Erebus looked like quitting.

  "So you're telling me that… You did something with a skill gem that a Prefereti had in a vision, and then you and I died fighting demons side by side? If you didn't look so pale, I wouldn't believe you. That's an insane story."

  "It is insane. But then like this Prefereti came by and he… he dropped a skill gem and…" Ludere looked down into the coliseum. Could he predict the future, or was that just a dream? He needed to figure this out.

  "The Oracles are going to want to speak with you. That's an incredible story."

  Gia showed up. Ludere smiled. "What's going on here?"

  "Nothing. Hey, what does Glam do?"

  Gia turned a pale white. She narrowed her eyes, lowering her voice to a whisper. "Who told you? Was it Jay? He wasn't… he's not supposed to tell."

  Ludere considered this for a moment. Jay was… he couldn't remember who Jay was. "Is Jay one of the medics?"

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Gia nodded. "He helps when people come back from the damn fights, but…"

  Erebus held up a hand. "You should probably get checked out."

  Gia put a hand over her mouth. "What happened? Did one of the gamblers—err, patrons hurt you?"

  Ludere sighed. The urge to tell her because she needed to know… it was going to be one of those things, wasn't it.

  He didn't even know if he could pay to get treated. "I feel fine."

  "Dude, you just had a vision. Go see the medic."

  Ludere could try and find a whole slew of excuses, but before he could, Gia had her arm looped around his. She was physically moving him and they were already out of the pit. They went down a service stair on their side and into a doorway that he had passed by many times. The red star mark was bright on the sandstone.

  Gia took him into the medic office. It smelled faintly of alcohol and salt. Rows of cots in one line along a wall left just enough space for them to walk. There was only one person on any of the cots, and they looked wrecked. Ludere would have to sit and examine them to figure out exactly what was wrong. There should be more people there. But he only saw the medic on the far side looking through a large peephole at the ongoing match…

  Jay looked like he had never eaten lunch before in his life. Like he had been skipping all that time. Ever since he could remember, Ludere would never skip a meal. Gia continued to drag him like it was part of her skill. For all he knew, Unarmed Combat would let him put someone in an arm lock and drag them around. He didn't check if it did, but he could have and that… Bothered him. He would try to activate the skill later, but wouldn't he need a willing opponent?

  "Gia! How are you?"

  That was when he saw the medic's face. And Jay looked like a carbon copy of the Statue of the Emperatus. He looked Regal. He looked like… Gia was staring directly at him.

  "I'm wonderful, Jay. I brought in bookie Ludere because he was having visions and his partner was worried."

  Perhaps 'visions' was the wrong word. "Ludere was having issues with... What did he say?"

  "I think I saw the future. I saw one of those demonic gates open up, and a horde of demons went through and began to ravage the entire coliseum, and I couldn't do much except form a spear wall. I was up in the higher tiers when this happened, too. I swear, it felt so real. It made me wish that I had an actual Spear skill."

  Jay ushered him over to a cot. "Let me just check you out really quickly."

  Ludere sat as the medic felt about his head for what felt like a minute. Then, he examined Ludere's eyes one at a time, then his ears. It didn't make much sense to have his ears examined, but he would go by whatever the medic said.

  He never had the skill that would let him heal things, so whatever this man could do for him, he would accept it. He was just hoping that he could resolve this quickly, and end his day and go back home, and have time to think about it. It would be a shame if he had to relive this, and demons actually came through a portal, and this wasn't a terrible dream.

  That didn't feel right, either.

  If only there was a way to scan others and check their skills? His scan wasn't elevated enough for him to get a sense of what others had in their entirety, but he knew how to ask questions.

  "You look fine. A bit flushed, maybe, but that's nothing that the sun won't fix. Has he been outdoors ever?"

  Jay held up both of Ludere's arms in between them.

  "There's something… Did you just take soul damage?"

  Ludere's eyes snapped up. "Soul damage?"

  "It's like you just went through something intense, but… You're missing all of the physical signs."

  "What skill is that?" He whispered.

  Ludere tried reaching into his soul. It proved to be frustratingly impossible.

  "It's a side effect of my Medic skill. It lets me see soul damage, but only when it's… Significant. You're popping up like a wild, uhhh… It looks like there's black smoke all around you."

  There had to be something besides that. He'd never experienced soul damage before, so far as he could tell, so either the man was saying something true, or was blowing smoke up his ass.

  Ludere had difficulty thinking about his own soul before. There was just something about what the Skill Swap did with him and the focus it gave. What did Spears have to do with libraries? It was so curious what the skill urged him to do.

  It wanted something. It demanded something, but right now?

  "Tell me what happened." Jay sat down like he'd just lost a bet. The light from the few windows and doors decided that was the moment to light him up. The chair had evidently been put there on purpose.

  "Look, you're not going to believe this, but…" Ludere went over his dream in enough detail to cause Gia to raise an eyebrow.

  "You learned Unarmed Combat… from me? That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard, and if you hadn't mentioned my Glam skill, I wouldn't have believed it. None of this is believable."

  "I'd almost ask you to fight her, but that… you can show us your skills, of course, and the new ones are there. This sounds like an Oracle-cursed vision."

  It was one thing for it to be a vision, but if it was a cursed vision? Ludere shuddered.

  Gia put her hands on her hips. "If you died in your dreams and immediately woke up roughly an hour prior to when the dream started, is this part of the dream? I feel real. Can I fight him, Jay?"

  Jay pursed his lips. "I would prefer that you didn't, also you'll note that he's brought his spear in with him, so that might be disadvantageous for you."

  "Let me fight him, Jay! I'll stop when he taps out!"

  Ludere was utterly horrified to learn that he now knew what 'tapping out' meant, and he was not in the mind-space to welcome that, no matter how good-looking the choker in question was.

  "I'm sorry. Can I take a rain check on that? I'm questioning my sanity right now, and the last thing I need is a gorgeous woman choking the life out of me."

  Jay's jaw dropped. "You did not."

  Gia beamed. "Thank you!"

  "Gia, now that we're being honest, why is your Unarmed Combat level so high?"

  She punched him in the arm. Ludere felt that in his soul. "Women are supposed to be deadly and beautiful. It says so in the teachings of Euphridia."

  "Does it say to punch a man when he compliments you?"

  "It doesn't have to."

  There was some commotion in the arena, and all three of them turned to watch. Seeing everything from the ground floor was not new to Ludere. Seeing it from the Medica while sitting on their chair was.

  The fight from his visions played out there. There were several fighters that had been rudely interrupted by the gate from the other side.

  "By Emrys's beard," Jay whispered.

  Purple light rose up in the center of the arena, as a clear and distinct portal formed. With his new position, Ludere could see both sides of the gate and apparently the demons were far more organized than he'd initially feared.

  Once the first set of hulking demons were through, they stood to the side. Then the rest, all half human sized, walked out of both sides of the gate as if they were about to move into a Legion formation.

  "This was planned," he said, grabbing his spear.