Crouched behind a bush in a mud puddle that never seemed to touch my shoes, I stared incredulously at the fortress made of stone that was sitting right at the location Aisling said the supply convoy would be. All it was missing was a gate and a drawbridge; instead, there was a set of double doors, like it was some kind of manor.

  This was supposed to be a bunch of trucks, not a literal castle bristling with machine gun emplacements and an anti-aircraft gun on the roof. It also definitely wasn't here a few hours ago when I scouted out the route for the best place to wait. I didn’t have line of sight of a single person from where I was, and getting spotted so that I could follow a spotlight to a person didn’t seem like the best idea.

  There was something fucky afoot. And I was going to find out what that was.

  “You mind walking in through the front doors and checking it out for me?” I asked Aurin, who was currently standing out in the open, leaning against a tree. Just one of the perks of being offstage and not having to worry about the audience catching sight of you… wait what?

  “Sure, be back in a minute,” she said, interrupting my confusion as she sauntered off.

  I watched her walk up to the front doors and head inside, then sat down and prepared to wait. While sitting there, I decided to follow Aisling's suggestion and put on music through my System and decided to check The Stream, to see if I could find something to help out with… bringing down a fortress?

  Maybe I should have taken Design. That Manifest felt like the one to pick if I wanted to make ideas into things with a bit of heft. Or maybe it was the tinkering and modification Manifest and would have been completely useless.

  Whatever the case, I searched on The Stream.

  A way for me to get inside this fortress unaccosted.

  The first option was a letter that, when carried to the front door, would prevent anyone from thinking I was out of place. When I knocked, someone would be summoned to the door, and when shown the letter, would invite me in as a guest. The first assumption anyone besides the person who let me in would have when they saw me was that I was a guest, but on reflection, they’d be able to tell there was something wrong with my presence if they really thought about it. Luckily, most people didn't bother to reflect on their first impressions. It was also one thousand Dust.

  Scrolling down didn’t net much better results. They were either too pricey, didn’t really do what I wanted, or both.

  Hrm.

  I could always just buy that lantern I saw yesterday… but there was something weird happening here, so what if it didn’t work because the guns were manned remotely or something, and I was just mowed down by gunfire? The light required direct sight, so when filtered through a camera, it didn’t work.

  I also kind of wanted a budget solution.

  A way to make getting into the fortress easier that costs less than 100 Dust.

  The first result was a 50 Dust empty shipping box that, when left at the front door, would compel the nearest person to come get it and bring it inside.

  Good enough!

  I waited until Aurin came out of the building and watched as she closed the door behind her so nobody would notice she passed through. Then strolled over to the bush I was waiting at.

  “So?” I asked when she finally returned.

  “They’re spooked by something. I have no idea what, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t you because they’re worried if the fortress will hold. There’s a living statue sitting alone in a room that I’m pretty sure is the reason the building exists,” she replied and sat down next to me. “The gun emplacements are all controlled by statues. I heard someone mention they were activated by movement. The supplies are still in trucks that are stored in a back room.”

  Well, it was a good thing I didn't try the lantern trick.

  I glanced around the area surrounding the fort. We were in the middle of a karst forest, on a low-lying plain with a road running straight through it. The fort was built right off the side of the road and had a large stone tiled space around it, with at least fifty metres of open terrain.

  Why they thought they might need to retreat, I had no idea. I certainly hadn't seen anything. Opening up the group chat, I sent the team a message.

  Ren: It looks like they've activated some kind of anomalous living artifact and are sequestered away in a fortress. Something spooked them. Maybe a wandering anomaly? I'm going to try to handle it on my own anyway, but if it proves too much, I'll let you know.

  Vivi: You better not. If you die, I'll beat you to death the next time I see you.

  Ren: But I only have two Lives… if you beat me to death on my second one, I'll be all out.

  Makesi: Really, they only gave you two? The sign-on package was lowered again?

  Makesi:

  Ren: Why did nobody tell me that this chat had emojis built in?! How did you do that?

  Makesi: Just imagine the expression you want to send, and it tries to recreate a personalized image of you.

  Ren: Also, why is our stoic leader the first one to use this feature? Vivi, I'm ashamed of you.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Vivi: They always fuck up my hair!

  Ren: That sounds like a skill issue. Anyway, I’m off to do my job.

  Ren:

  Ren: Hey, it got the gun wrong!

  Closing the window, I purchased the empty shipping box and handed it to Aurin, who immediately set out towards the fort.

  -50 Dust

  Dust: 697

  When she was halfway to the door, I realized I hadn't actually told her how it was supposed to work. She had just understood what I wanted her to do intuitively.

  Was this related to how she was so good at reading me? Normally, it was really hard for the average person to determine how I felt. My facial expression remains completely neutral unless I remember to change it, and I only started doing that because not putting all that effort in creeped people out for some reason.

  It was nice that Aurin was able to cut past the—oh, she was on her way back.

  Staring at the door unblinking, I waited for someone to come get the package. Whispering aloud, I prepared something for the next person to emerge from the building. I hadn't really done something like this before, but I'd theorized it would be possible.

  “...glanced out into the trees and spotted a nymph resting in a bush, her eyes fixed on him as if she had been waiting…”

  When a woman in a military uniform peeked out the door, I pulled the story I had told out of the air and slammed it into her mind. I wasn’t expecting a woman, but it was still a decent fit for her model. Soldiers were trained to think alike for discipline’s sake, which was basically the equivalent of training them to resist mental compulsion poorly as a joke.

  Her head whipped towards me, and our eyes met. From there, I instilled a few ideas. First, I was the most important person in her life, to the point that even considering otherwise wouldn't come to mind. That she had been waiting for me and needed to find a way to get me across the field and into the fort, to protect me from whatever had scared them, without being gunned down. Then, finally, how she shouldn't act suspiciously because her superiors knew I was out here and were aiming to have me killed.

  I raised a single finger to my lips and forced a cheeky smile on my face. She nodded my way and turned to go inside, only to remember the package as its compulsion reasserted itself. Picking it up, she brought the empty box in.

  While I waited, I realized that maybe I should have put something inside the box. That seems like what it was designed for. Not this kind of convoluted, ‘mind control the person who goes to get it’ set up.

  Ah, well, it's already done. I can use it properly next time.

  Thirty minutes later, just as I was starting to suspect she had gotten herself caught, the ground next to me started to shift, and a hole opened up. Tiled stones grew out of the earth around the breach.

  “Come! Hurry! Before they realize I'm missing,” a woman called from inside the hole. Presumably, the one I had charmed.

  I turned to Aurin, who just shrugged at me, then climbed inside.

  The woman threw her arms around me, kissed my head, then let out a sigh of relief, “I'm so glad you're okay.”

  I found myself trying to shrink in her grasp as the bad touch surrounded me. I wasn't sure why people, when my importance was ramped up in their minds, assumed I was a romantic partner so often. Even though I made sure I never added any ideas that could even suggest a romantic relationship between us.

  It didn't even depend on gender; that was just the first assumption people in general tended to make. Though women did seem to fail to respect boundaries more often, like this girl was doing. Probably something relating to how we were socially conditioned, gender permission structures and all that.

  To be fair, I wasn't respecting their right to mental autonomy, so I acquiesced a little bit to wherever their minds went to places like this. It just felt like the respectful thing to do.

  When she was done receiving her pity hug, she led us past a stone statue of an ancient Chinese soldier wielding a spear. With a barked command from the woman, the stone soldier followed us back down the hallway, and tiles grew out of the earth to close the tunnel behind us.

  She started to try and talk to me, but I suppressed the idea in her head just as it was blossoming, so she would shut up, but gave her a dose of giddiness as encouragement. It was always a good idea to reward people who helped you out.

  Aurin came up behind me and held her arm out, and I wrapped myself around it and shot her a smirk.

  “Getting jealous over a random girl?” I asked.

  “No,” Aurin blatantly lied.

  The fun part about my Cast members being offstage was that no matter how I interacted with them, to everyone else it would look like I hadn't done anything. It wasn't like she was invisible. It was more like she wasn't real, and anything that suggested her existence in turn also wasn't real. I couldn't be heard talking to her, and any way I moved because of her wasn't visible, because that would imply there was a person there when there clearly wasn't.

  We confirmed that Aurin could be hurt when she was onstage by pricking her finger. I didn't dare let the team test any further than that. Interestingly, neither her blood nor the wound looked real. Instead, it looked like she bled prop blood from a tiny squib.

  Accessing the soldier's mind, I started rummaging around. After figuring out her name was Yuxin, I tried to see exactly why they had decided to activate the stone soldier anomaly. It wasn't all that hard to find, because she was incredibly scared of it, and it was taking up most of her thoughts that weren’t related to me.

  There was some kind of causality-shattering anomaly that was detected nearby. She called it a Hundun. Or I guess I should say ‘the Hundun’ since it was supposed to be a kind of Chinese mythological beast relating to chaos.

  It was supposedly randomly moving about the region, so travelling anywhere was dangerous at the moment. I’d need to get the fuck out of there before that thing showed up.

  In the worst-case scenario, I just had to call Makesi, because he was well-suited to dealing with entities that distorted reality with their mere existence.

  Arriving at the end of the tunnel, there was a ladder built into the wall leading up into a dark room.

  “Are you able to give orders to the living statue that built the castle?” I asked the woman who had guided us here.

  “No, I'm not high enough in the hierarchy for it to listen to me. It's Xiaowei, after all,” Yuxin replied. I wasn't sure what a Xiaowei was, as whoever I borrowed Mandarin from didn't know the word.

  I could take her language as well, but then I'd have two copies of the same language and that made speaking it really weird. I had completely fucked up my ability to speak French because I had four copies of it in my head. This meant four different sets of associations with every single word, and now I could barely speak it because I had four divergent ways my mind wanted to form sentences.

  “Okay, well, we'll be safe from the Hundun in here, right?” I asked.

  “No, if it appears we're all dead.”

  Well, isn't that a charming thought?

  Anyway, I had a job to do. With a gesture and a mental nudge, our Earth Office companion took the lead up the ladder, and Aurin followed directly behind her. I followed behind them since I was the only one who would have a problem if shot.

  We emerged into what appeared to be some kind of supply closet. It made sense. I had her keep this a secret, so hiding the entrance in the closet was a good move. They wouldn’t think to check in here in the time it took for her to come get me.

  I cracked my fingers, “Time to bring down a castle.”

  “What?!” Yuxin exclaimed right before I shot her.

  Discord Server if you'd like to chat with other fans of my work!