Will helped Bee get to her feet. She was cold and wet and weak, her clothes hanging heavy off her body, but at least she felt like she was all in one piece.

They stood on a long, sandy shore that eventually gave way to rough gravel and finally grassy turf further inland. A tall wooden tower loomed above her just beyond the shore, its back to a wall of tangled forestation. Further off to the left and right, she saw other similar towers, standing as silent sentries over the sea.

“Stay put,” Will said, letting go of her arm. “Don’t do anything until I say so.”

Coming out of her aimless examination of their surroundings, she saw that there were several people hurrying towards them. Four men in heavy gambesons and chainmail shirts, each carrying a long, hooked pole over his shoulder that was half again as tall as a man. They jogged stiffly, slowed by all their bulk.

Will approached them with his arms raised in a gesture of peace. The men spread into a half-circle around him and gripped their weapons tighter, but did not look immediately hostile. Words were exchanged, money changed hands, then there was a quick handshake between Will and one of the other men and they went on their way, continuing down the beach.

Throughout this, Bee got the chance to inspect Will from a distance. He wore a simple laced tunic tucked into a pair of loose belted pants, in turn tucked into a set of tall boots. His left sleeve was rolled up to the elbow, while the other hung down to his wrist. He wore a large satchel slung over one shoulder.

When he returned to Bee, signaling success with a thumbs up, she noticed that he walked with a slight limp.

“Who were those men?” Bee asked, watching them recede down the way.

“Slavers,” Will said cheerily. He pointed up to the tower. “Same as the ones in there. There are a lot of slavers on Nifala.”

“What would have happened if you didn’t pay them?”

“I would’ve had to fight them.”

“Would you have won?”

Will grinned. “You already know the answer to that.”

“You never lose, is that it?”

He’d said that a lot. Back then, she’d believed him. But then he died, so that had kind of deflated the power in those words.

Then again, there he was. Alive.

“If you weren’t here, they would have enslaved me?” Bee asked.

“Oh, definitely. They let some freshies through ‘cause they’re not worth the work of making them useful, but Laborers are valuable.”

“Why?”

“I’ll explain later. Let’s get off this beach. I bought off that patrol and the ones in the tower, but slavers aren’t known for their patience, good manners, or commitment to a deal.”

Will started walking and Bee went after him. She watched his back intently, as though he might disappear if she took her eyes off of him.

“Are you hurt at all?” he asked without looking back. “People get scraped up on the rocks sometimes when they wash ashore.”

“I think I’m all right.” Bee looked down at herself, arms out, but didn’t spot any wounds. “I feel kinda hungry, though.”

Really hungry, actually, now that it was on her mind.

Will laughed. “Yeah, I expected that. Don’t worry, we’ll get you fed once we’re home. For now, just try to bear with it.”

They entered the forest, weaving past fallen branches and around bramble thickets. Almost immediately, the light became dimmed by the dark green canopy, and they walked in a shaded half-murk.

“What happened to your leg?” Bee asked. She noticed that he favored his left.

“It’s an old thing,” Will replied dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.” He looked back briefly. “Hey, roll up your left sleeve, will you?”

“Why?”

“It’s a thing you do here. Wearing your left sleeve down makes you look untrustworthy.”

Bee didn’t quite understand what he was talking about, but she did as she was asked. Upon doing so, she found that there was something on the inside of her forearm. A symbol of two crossed pickaxes, surrounded by a circle, with leafy vines extending from it and running over her arm. Further up, nearer to her elbow, a strange little gem sat embedded in her skin. Its many facets shone dully with a very soft amber light that seemed to be reflected from within.

“What is all this?” Bee asked.

Will stopped and turned to her, holding up his own left forearm. It looked similar, except his symbol was a little bottle with a wisp of smoke rising from it, and there were more vines around it than on hers. Instead of a single gem, she counted twelve; one finished row of ten and another below it with two. Six of them glowed, and six of them were dark, nearly black.

Will pointed to the symbol. “This is your Profession symbol. Anyone who sees it will know what Profession you have.” He moved his finger to the vines. “These show how many attribute points you have, with each leaf representing one point. If you inspect them closely and know what you’re looking for, you can even tell which specific attribute a leaf represents.” Then, finally, he poked at one of the gems. “These are your AP crystals. Think of them as… mana in a game, essentially. They let you use skills to perform certain feats. When they’re lit up, that means they’re ready to be used. When they’re dark, that means they’re tapped out, and won’t be available until they recharge over time, about half your total AP per day. The amount of crystals also shows you what level someone is.”

“Okay. But I don’t have any skills. I only have passives, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I take it you sent that letter, telling me what to pick?”

He nodded. “I did. Did you follow my instructions?”

“I nearly didn’t, but yeah. You could’ve signed your name or something.”

“I didn’t want to distress you. Plus, I figured you wouldn’t believe it until you saw me in person.”

He’s probably right about that, she had to admit to herself.

Will kept on walking, stepping heavily over a mossy rock. “What did you think of Unger?”

“Smelly,” Bee muttered.

Will chuckled. “You didn’t take a bite, I assume?”

“Huh?”

“Unger, he… propositions almost everyone who goes through the Tower. Most people don’t take him up on the offer, but some do. We call that ‘taking a bite’.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah, I didn’t.”

“Good, good. Those that do get relentlessly made fun of, as you might imagine.”

“It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d admit to.”

“That’s true. But there are ways of finding out, questions you can ask a freshie to catch him out. Things you’d only know if Unger tipped you off to it.”

They walked a while longer in silence. Bee was fully aware that she wasn’t processing any of what was happening. So she just followed him.

It felt good to walk behind him. To let him lead the way. He’d always known what to do, where to go. Even in this witches’ den of a forest, where each decrepit tree looked the same as the next, he showed no hesitation in picking their direction.

Her stomach rumbled unhappily. It felt all hollow in there, like an echoing cavern that only held a distant, wistful memory of sustenance.

“Just a bit further,” Will said, hearing the distress of her digestive tract.

Despite her growling hunger, there was another thing that felt even more pressing, and it was becoming harder to ignore. She caught Will by his sleeve and pulled him to a stop. “Wait. Could we just stop and talk for a while? I have so many questions. And I want to see your face.”

He turned and gave her a gentle smile. “I understand, Bee. But we need to keep going. These woods aren’t safe. It’s only a bit further to the house.”

She reluctantly complied, letting him go.

They kept going. Despite what he’d said about it not being safe, Bee didn’t see anything of that sort. Just trees, more trees, and the occasional squirrel.

Then they entered into a large clearing, ringed by maybe three dozen tree stumps with obvious axe marks. At the center of the clearing stood a large single-story house with walls of brown clapboard and a roof of slate tiles. A plume of smoke rose from a thin chimney. There were two fenced-in enclosures for animals, and she could already hear the clucking of chickens.

On the porch sat five chimpanzees in matching, numbered vests, smoking cigarettes.

Bee blinked repeatedly, stopping in her tracks.

Nah, I’ve got to be tripping on something. What the fuck is that?

“Don’t worry about them,” Will said, beckoning her while walking backwards towards the house. “They’re all friendly. I’m sure they want to say hello.”

Bee took a few reluctant steps forward. “Are they… your monkeys?”

“God, no. You’ll meet their wrangler soon enough.”

One of the chimps finished off his cigarette, flicked away the butt, and leapt off the porch. He went past Will and approached Bee with a confident waddle. The number ‘1’ was embroidered on the breast of his garment. He looked old and grizzled, his black fur trimmed with gray.

Bee wasn’t quite sure what to do, but the chimp came right up to her and stuck out his left hand for a handshake, hitting her with a surprisingly human smile.

“That’s Number One,” Will explained, watching the two of them with a hand on his hip. “He’s the oldest. The rest of them follow the same creative naming scheme.”

Bee shook the ape’s hand. When she went to pull away, however, he held stubbornly onto her. He pulled her along, and after a moment of resisting she realized that he wanted to lead her by the hand. She let him take her across the clearing up to the house, where the other chimps nodded their greetings and whooped loudly at her in an overlapping cacophony of asyllabic screaming.

“Settle down, boys,” Will said as he came up next to Bee, but his words met with little success. When he offered them a small paper packet, however, they quickly quieted down. Number One rejoined the others and ripped the packet open, distributing the cigarettes inside equally.

At this point, Bee decided to just accept the absurdity of the situation, and she followed Will in through the door.

As soon as they stepped into the narrow hall, she was immediately hit by the smell of cookery, causing her stomach to rage against her even harder. It was fairly dark inside, lit only by the light falling through the unshuttered windows. The hall opened up into several doors leading to other rooms on the left, a back door leading outside, and on the right an open portal that led through into a large living area with a crackling fireplace. Will led her into the living area. The room held a table with many chairs around it, a couch near one wall, and a countertop with various hand-forged iron cooking implements stacked on top of it and hung over it.

A scruffy-looking man crouched by the fire—his eyes all obscured by a mop of hair—stirring a pot of bubbling brown stew with chunks of meat, potato, and carrot in it.

“Heyo,” he said at the sight of them, slowly standing up as though it cost him a great effort. “You’re Bee, then, I take it? I’m Mongrel.”

They shook hands, and it took Bee a failed attempt to remember that she was supposed to use her left. Getting a good look at his arm, she saw that his symbol had two crossed hammers on it, and he had ten AP crystals. Level 10, then Lower than Will’s.

Mongrel looked her up and down. “Lord almighty. This woman you’ve bagged is gonna eat you alive, boy.” He clapped her on the arm.

Will gave the man a playful smack on the forehead in reply. “Sorry about him. Mongrel’s not very good with the whole ‘manners’ thing, but he’s a good egg.”

“The chimps outside…” Bee said, pointing towards the hall.

“Yeah, they’re mine,” Mongrel replied with a crooked grin that split the dense tangle of a beard taking up the bottom half of his face. “They’re good eggs too, if I do say so myself.”

“Familiars,” Will elaborated. “I’ll explain all the details later, but basically he can order the chimps around so he doesn’t have to do anything himself.”

“Yeah, just like that,” Mongrel agreed, nodding.

Bee wasn’t sure why someone would freely admit to such brazen sloth, but nodded along anyway.

“Let’s get you out of those clothes and get the sea washed off you while Mongrel sets up the food,” Will suggested, leading her along.

“Eaten alive!” Mongrel called after them. “Like a shark, boy! She’ll fold you in half and swallow you like a sandwich!”

Bee could not help but blush at that, even though she wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a compliment or an insult.

They went out back behind the house, and there stood a tall metal pipe that came out of the ground, wrapping back around at the top in a downward-facing nozzle. It was connected to some sort of boxy mechanism with a manual pump arm attached to it.

“So, uh, there’s the shower,” Will said, somewhat sheepishly. “It’s not exactly luxurious. There’s no warm water, and you’ve got to work the pump to keep it coming, but it’ll get you clean. We can draw you a hot bath later if you’d like.”

“I’ll take this for now,” Bee said with a nod. “Did you make it yourself?”

“Oh, nah. Mongrel’s a Builder, so he made most of this, but we brought an Artificer in from town to help with the plumbing.”

“A Builder. Right. And what are you?”

“I’m an Alchemist.”

“So you make potions and stuff?”

“Yeah, and stuff.”

“What do I do with the clothes?” She picked at her damp shirt.

“Just toss them on the ground. You won’t be wearing them again.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re freshie clothes. You don’t want anyone to see you in those.”

“Oh.”

Will left her to her own devices, going back inside the house, and Bee hesitated for several long moments before she started stripping down. It felt bizarre, taking off her clothes out in plain view like this, but at least a long look around confirmed that there was no one else in eyeshot. She powered through the sensation and got fully naked before stepping in under the ‘shower’.

After a few pumps of the creaky arm, water started coming down.

It was cold.