The moment I saw that whip flying out of Anabeth’s palm, Ceralis decided to assault me with a wall of text.

  [Comprehension Progress: 100%]

  New Feature Unlocked: Affinity Dashboard

  Note: Affinity Dashboard is automatically unlocked after registering a new aetheric affinity.

  [New Sub-Affinity Registered: Ionized Air (Lightning + Air)]

  [Total Registered Affinities (Sub-Affinities included): 6 – Expand to see more]

  I very nearly died of surprise.

  My grip slipped as instinct tried to throw me backward out of the saddle. First, Anabeth invented lightning (ionized air, apparently, whatever it was) from behind my back, now this.

  [RIDE check: 66 > 59 → Success!]Luckily, with an experienced lock of my thighs, I crushed the pommel with my hand, the other loosened the reins just enough to promise her freedom instead of restraint. We raged on.

  What was that? A new feature unlocked? I could just... unlock features like the Bounty Board without having to wait for it to randomly show up?

  [System Response: Correct. Use Mental Command to visit the Feature Center for a full list of eligible features.]How could I have known that if you hadn’t told me, you oath-dodging cherub of inconvenient revetions?

  Focus.

  Later, Henry. You may interrogate the treachery of deyed instruction ter.

  I forced my attention back onto the street ahead, and realized Anabeth’s whip had uncoiled far beyond what any sane geometry would allow. It arced ahead of us in a pale line, curving through the air like it had found something solid to brace against. Each snap nded just ahead of the creature’s path, striking stone, mpposts, even open air, causing the creature to jump and recoil.

  While I was distracted, Anabeth had ceased being a passenger.

  Her arm was locked around my waist now, and she leaned forward over my shoulder, close enough that I could feel the hitch and control of her breathing.

  “Please lean left, Sir!” She shouted. “Give me the open span.”

  I followed her lead. Silvermane veered, and the whip cracked down again.

  It hit the leymire squarely in the rear.

  The creature shrieked and surged forward even faster, legs reconfiguring in offended confusion rather than injury.

  “Oh,” Anabeth said, far too calmly. “That wasn’t where I meant that.”

  Another snap followed. Another jolt of uneven ground. Another very undignified impact.

  Stop whipping its ass! I thought.

  “Cease whipping the rear immediately before your rear enters the historical record,” I commanded.

  “I am attempting to herd it,” she tightened her grip on me, “but it keeps presenting that exact section of anatomy.”

  The whip crackled brighter, lightning crawling along its length, and whether it was doing damage or merely encouraging the creature through escating humiliation, I couldn’t tell. Anabeth rolled her hips and shoulders countertime to Silvermane’s gallop, using my bance as her fulcrum, one hand braced against my armor while the other thrust and withdrew like a duelist’s bde. You’d have sworn she’d fought on horseback before, if not for the fact she kept spanking a ferret’s butt.

  Saints preserve us. She’s fencing with the atmosphere.

  The buildings thinned without ceremony. Stone gave way to timber, timber to fence posts warped by damp and neglect. Then the marsh opened before us.

  Behind me, I heard shouts, whistles, bells being rung with far too much enthusiasm for the hour, and the general metallic ctter of authority being hastily assembled. The city inspectors should arrive soon, and where inspectors gathered, magi were never far behind. They’d travel with containment circles already half-drawn in their heads.

  We didn’t have to stop the creature.

  We just had to keep it here.

  The leymire skidded to a halt at the marsh’s edge, confused by the sudden ck of mplight, its body rippling as it searched for density that wasn’t there. It must’ve hated this pce already.

  Anabeth slipped free of my grip and vaulted from the saddle even before Silvermane could stop. “I shall not disappoint, Sir Knight!” she decred with incandescent enthusiasm. “In Creatures Suitable for Sacrificial Binding and Emergency Summoning Applications, Volume Three, it is clearly stated that leymires fear aether they cannot metabolize.”

  She nded at the very lip of the marsh. Her whip split, then split, then split again, until it unraveled into branching lines that hung in the air like flying tentacles. What had been a single weapon became a fan wide enough to deny the street ahead without ever quite touching the ground.

  “Behold! The elevated affinity of Fulgar!” She decred, puffing her chest. “An aetheric state rendered so viscous, so over-saturated with intent, that no leymire could ever metabolize it! Worry not, Sir Henry, for I have cornered this foul creature. Nothing will ever stand in my way—”

  “—CITY SECURITY! BY AUTHORITY OF THE CIVIC CONCLAVE!” Shouts came after us.

  “Ah! Authorities!” Anabeth yelped. She immediately canceled all spells, doubled over, one hand flying to her stomach with theatrical urgency. “Ah—oh no. This is dreadful! I fear that I have been struck by a most aggressive stomachache. It must certainly be the dried nuts earlier. Please do not eat the nuts, Sir Henry. And—ah—if you would be so kind as to hold the creature exactly where it is while I attend to this extremely urgent biological emergency—”

  “Lady Anabeth—” I began.

  Too te.

  She scurried sideways along the marsh’s edge, muttering apologies to no one in particur as she vanished behind a stand of reeds with remarkable speed for someone allegedly on the brink of digestive catastrophe.

  [New Task Received: Containment Until Compliance]

  Objective: Prevent the leymire’s escape until authorities arrive.

  Boon: +80 EXP

  The leymire turned its attention to me. It slid sideways, eyes never quite left me. Seemed like this creature was smart enough to sense fear.

  I knew, with a cold and absolute certainty, that if it struck either of us, it would hurt badly. The best way to go forward is to make it think the biggest mistake of its life would be to y a paw on me.

  But if I lunged? If I roared? It would bolt.

  So instead, I straightened in the saddle and stared at it.

  [Silent Authority Activated]The leymire shivered.

  [Effect Radius: Localized]

  [Status Effect Applied: Predator’s Regard]

  [Creature DEX: ?20%]

  The creature must have felt it, the sudden, uncomfortable awareness of being observed by something that hadn’t yet decided whether to chase.

  It tried to slip right. Silvermane was already there.

  I nudged with my knee, barely a suggestion. Silvermane moved like a siege engine discovering ballet. The leymire skidded back, cws scraping sparks from the stones.

  [Silvermane’s DEX check: Success!]It tried left.

  We mirrored it again.

  [Success!]Back and forth we went, a slow dance at the marsh’s edge. The creature darted. I blocked. It feinted. I waited. Silvermane’s ears pinned ft, her muscles coiled, faster than it by a margin that made all the difference.

  [Success!]How much longer would I have to do this?

  “Stand down,” a voice said calmly behind me.

  I turned in the saddle.

  The man who stood there wore the long indigo coat of the Civic Concve’s Investigative Arm, followed by a dozen others also in coats of the same color. One of his eyes was covered by a simple bck patch, worn thin at the edge, the mark of someone who had paid for knowledge up front and never compined about the price. One gnce and I immediately knew: he must be the real deal.

  Around him spread an aura of containment so refined I barely noticed it until Silvermane moved restlessly under the saddle. The marsh reeds stopped rustling. Even the fog stopped rolling.

  “Chief Investigator Vaalor,” someone whispered behind us, reverently and a little uneasily.

  Vaalor raised one hand.

  The spell arrived the way paperwork does when it’s already been approved. Pnes of crystals formed in front of his hand, passed me without interest, brushed Silvermane without consequence, and then closed on the leymire with clinical certainty. In a breath too short to measure, the creature was no longer loose—it was dispyed, motionless like a fly trapped in amber, as though this had always been the intended arrangement.

  [Task Completed: Containment Until Compliance]

  Boon: +80 EXP

  [Task Completed: Civic Hazard — Aethercache Breach]

  Rewards:

  +1666 EXP

  +2 RES

  Aura Farming (Lv1)

  Aura Market

  EXP: 3997/4500

  By the rectum of the Saints. That man was intimidating.

  Like me... but good.

  Vaalor lowered his hand. The crystal did not dissolve; it simply remained, patiently holding the leymire. His uncovered eye found me.

  “Stranger,” he said. “State your name and your business. And you will expin why you pursued a cssified civic hazard through three wards, two trade streets, and a marsh boundary.”