“Guys, I wouldn’t mind a little help over here! It’s heavy.”

My arms and my back ached as I tugged on the end of my newly finished trunk, trying to drag it further into the forest. Portability certainly wasn’t what I had created it for, but after having spent so much time among Fortram’s grayscale buildings, I sorely needed a change of scenery. In my mind, the lush green forest around the city was the perfect place for a picnic.

“Picnic?”

“Or something like that. Don’t just stare, Wolf, help me carry this thing!”

The three shades scowled at me from beneath a particularly tall tree.

“You could carry it yourself if you wanted to,” Wolf said. “Don’t act like you can’t manipulate the dreamscape.”

I let go of my trunk, frowning.

“I thought you wanted to save brainpower. You know, so that we can sleep better or something.”

“Look,” Tamie said while gesturing at the forest around us, “do you think this forest, will all of its delicate scents and sounds and scenery, is something that saves brainpower?”

I pursed my lips, looking at the dirt stuck at the sides of the trunk. A tiny ant was crawling up on it.

“You’re right,” I said. “A little more meddling wouldn’t hurt, then.”

The trunk needed to be moved, but it was too heavy. So, how to transport it deeper into the forest…? The answer was obvious. If I couldn’t move the trunk, I had to move the world around it.

“Wait—”

At a snap of my fingers, the trees crawled away on their roots to clear a straight line forward that went as far as my eyes could see. I hopped onto my trunk, standing tall on it and imagining myself as a sailor on a small ship, cruising through a sea of brown dirt and green waves. My ship lurched forward, gliding slowly at first and then picking up speed. It was all about perspectives; even though it looked as if the trunk was moving on its own, in truth it was only the planet that rotated around. The shades cried out as they were about to be left behind, so I tossed a fisher’s net over my shoulder to snatch them up and drag them with me. I didn’t look back to see how they were faring, though. A good captain had his eyes only on the horizon.

“Roland!”

“Dammit!”

“Hey!”

“Stop this!”

The trunk began to slow down all too soon. I imagined that even a planet could get tired while turning day after day, so now it deserved a break. The sun had almost dipped below the horizon, though. Too dark. I licked my fingers and reached out, pinching the sun’s hot edges to drag it higher up in the sky. There, we had proper light now. I beckoned at the trees and they shuffled timidly closer. Satisfied with the forest around me, I hopped off my trunk.

Wolf gripped my shoulder from behind. “Roland—”

“Nice trunk, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“It’s a nice trunk,” I said, giving my creation a fond look. “It has a solid structure and a sturdy frame. Looks like it can withstand a lot, doesn’t it?”

“That’s not the problem here,” Wolf said.

“Yeah,” Tamie said in a low voice. “Roland, we need to talk.”

The dreamscape was changing. Gone was the soothing forest as molten lava burst from the ground on either side of us, heating up the air. I sighed, sad and tired. Good things never lasted, did they? I sat down on my wooden trunk, which remained intact even though its other side was dipping into the lava. I then looked up at Tamie and Wolf, who were standing entirely too close in my personal space.

“We’ve been lenient with you so far,” they said as they loomed over me, “but now we see that you need to learn a lesson. Pulling stunts like this is not acceptable. You need to be humbled.”

“Scary,” I said, then looked past their legs. “Lee? You’ve been silent so far. Do you agree with these two?”

There was a patch of black land where the lava had cooled down and turned solid, with Lee in its middle. He stood with his back straight in spite of his old age, hands in his pockets, his creased face showing disinterest.

“Tamie and Wolf are overreacting.”

“What?” Wolf blurted.

“You can’t be serious,” Tamie said, whirling to Lee.

“I am,” he said. “As someone who’s been with Roland the longest, I know him best. He didn’t mean to offend you. He has his quirks, sure, but he’s still the most accommodating host you could have found—and you know this. You should punish him only a little.”

“Aww,” I said. “Thanks, Lee, I appreciate the sentiment.”

“You’re serious,” Tamie said, staring at Lee in disbelief. “You’re all insane. What have I gotten myself into?”

“Oh, please,” Lee said. “Tamie, you’re hardly better than any of us.”

“Debatable. Objectively, it’s certain that I’m more capable than Wolf—”

“Hey!”

And just like that, the three shades started to bicker again.

I smiled. Funny, how these things went. Lava was burning down the forest, Tamie and Wolf had just threatened me, and yet … I didn’t feel unsafe. I sat on my trunk, watching the shades. All talk. They never really got physical with me, or with each other for that matter. Sure, they tossed around some emotional bullets – like calling me Roland until I got used to it – but they were quite alright otherwise, I supposed. They were like squabbling siblings. Tamie’s threat to teach me a lesson felt like something an older sister would say when she caught her little brother stealing from the cookie jar—and that little brother didn’t share any of those cookies with her.

But maybe I was seeing too much into this. Maybe viewing the shades as a family was delusional. Maybe I had some kind of scientific-sounding syndrome. But! In spite of this, there was no denying that the shades had their redeeming qualities. Shades, or at least my shades, weren’t so different from an average person. They weren’t too inhuman. They weren’t wise and all-knowing. They weren’t omniscient and infallible. They weren’t omnipotent and unbeatable. They weren’t even cruel and cold and evil like just about everyone in this world believed them to be.

Naturally, they were somewhat jaded. They tended to be uncaring, especially when it came to us mortals. They had lived for so long that their morals had changed—a difficult thing to wrap my head around. What would it be like to live forever? Shades had imperfect memories, which was a blessing that allowed them to experience things anew. It kept them in motion. It kept them grounded.

Nevertheless, they held lots of memories. Multiple lifetimes of it, which resulted in certain traits that my shades seemed to share; superiority complex, overconfidence, pride. However, they all had a unique cocktail of personalities on top of these. The lives they had lived shaped them in different ways—and not always for the worse. Lee wasn’t just cruel and cold-blooded; he was also perceptive and stoic, with admirable self-restraint. Tamie wasn’t just manipulative and conniving; she was also practical-minded and cautious, thinking things through from different angles. And Wolf wasn’t just aggressive and bloodthirsty; he was also … uh, friendly too?

“Hey! That’s all? Think some nice thoughts about me too, buddy!”

Well, I supposed Wolf carried the honesty that I so sorely lacked. He talked freely, without hiding his true feelings and being afraid of getting hurt. That was a good thing. Probably.

“Dude…”

“Why are you reading my thoughts, anyway?” I snapped at him. “I asked you not to, or else my grand plan isn’t going to work!”

“You weren’t thinking about your plan, though.”

“How can you tell that without reading my thoughts?”

Instead of replying, Wolf just watched me with a silly smile behind his beard. Ugh. I looked at the others instead. They were sitting on a colorful blanket, in a dry spot that the lava didn’t quite reach. Actually, the lava around us was cooling down and tiny blue flowers began to sprout from the ashes.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“You’ve mentioned a picnic,” Lee said.

“I’d like to apologize,” Tamie said with a wooden face. “I take back what I said.”

I blinked. “Huh. Alright, I guess.”

Weirdos.

“Hey!” Wolf said. “What was that thought just now?”

“Nothing! And Wolf, what did I tell you about reading my mind?”

“Nothing good ever comes out of it?”

“That’s not—well, that’s actually kinda true.”

“It’s understandable. You want to have those steamy thoughts about Devi all to yourself.”

“Wolf, don’t make this weird.”

“Too late, I already saw what flashed through your mind.”

“Hey! What did I tell you—”

“Ahem,” Tamie cut in. “Maybe we can talk about why you want to keep your thoughts hidden? Aside from your privacy issues, and the unfair nature of our bond that doesn’t allow you to do the same to us. You haven’t really explained yet why we should honor your request. If you were planning to betray us, asking us not to read your mind would be the first step.”

“You know that I’m not thinking about any kind of betrayal,” I said, sighing. “You’re not my opponents. You’re trapped in this world, same as I am.”

“Why this secrecy, then?”

“The more I tell you, the higher the risk of failure.”

“So you’re asking for our blind trust.”

“Well, if you put it like that it does sound like I’m asking for a lot. But—alright. How about this? You know that our thoughts are being scanned. Our Abilities can be triggered mentally and the collar’s interface can be navigated without touching the screen. When the Inspector gave us a tour of the moon, that Assistant of hers was watching our reactions on his monitor.”

“Yes,” Lee agreed. “His body language seemed obvious. He was scared of us, especially whenever our surface thoughts turned violent.”

“He could have been acting like that just to mislead us,” Tamie said. “Perhaps they knew that we were faking our outrage, so he pretended to be scared of us in return.”

“Maybe,” I said, “and maybe they are able to scan our deeper thoughts too. But what if they can’t? What if the Assistant has genuinely missed the thoughts that we hid behind other thoughts? I say it’s worth a try. We should assume that they cannot scan all of our minds at once.”

I looked at the shades one by one. Lee nodded grimly. Tamie was frowning as usual, but it was a pensive frown this time and I could tell that she agreed. Wolf was pacing around in excitement. He gave me a wild grin.

“This is great,” he said. “Roland, you can sound almost smart sometimes! I like this plan. One of us should always stay in the back, forming plans to surprise those bastards.”

“And that someone should be Roland?” Tamie asked, sounding skeptical. “I want to make plans too. I want to trick, cheat, and mislead the gods of this world!”

“You’ll have your turn,” I said. “For the time being, I’d say you three are doing great in the driver’s seat. I’m pleasantly surprised. For as much as you bicker in here, you mostly act as one while piloting our body.”

“That part comes naturally,” Lee said. “Merged together, there’s no room for arguments.”

Wolf snorted. “If only someone wouldn’t butt his mind into our business from time to time…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I innocently said. “Are you referring to someone who keeps reading my mind even though I asked him not to?”

“Hah! You can ask all you want, but in here, it’s the will that triumphs.”

“Ah. So, will you respect my privacy now that you know that I’m up to something?”

“We will see, Roland, we will see.”

“Alright,” Tamie said, sighing. “I feel like I’m losing brain cells just by listening to you two. And my brain cells are your brain cells too, which doesn’t bode well for us. Time to rest.”

“Aww,” I said, “but we’ve only just begun to bond with each other! And what about this picnic?”

But the colorful blanket and the blue flowers were already falling apart, which I allowed to happen with a good measure of resignation. The dreamscape got washed away in a haze and a moment later – which was likely a lot more time in the Waking World – Randel woke up with a dull headache. Brilliant. He felt as if he hadn’t slept at all.

He got up and looked around in the World Seed. The cloudy dome overhead wasn’t much help in determining what time it was outside, but according to his alarm clock, it was well past noon. His sleeping schedule was once again turning into a mess. He washed up, dressed up, and put his necklace on. Time to take the invitation letter from Gowon and secure an airship to Skyward. His plans for the day were simple and straightforward, which was why things had to get complicated as soon as he stepped out of the World Seed.

“Good afternoon, Mad Painter. Took you long enough.”

Randel’s neat and orderly storeroom, the one that only a select few of his Painters had access to, had become a mess. The shelves along the walls had been wrecked, their contents scattered on the ground with the prone bodies of two guards lying in the middle of it. The Scarlet Hand stood off to the side, leaning against an inert portal disk with his thick arms crossed. He wasn’t wearing his detective jacket anymore; he had come fully armed and armored in a sleeveless metal vest that left his scarlet skin on display.

“This isn’t the place of contact I gave to you.”

“No, it isn’t,” the Scarlet Hand said. He sounded annoyed. “The Emperor’s Hands don’t meet petty criminals on their terms.”

Randel glanced at the guards on the ground. They seemed to be breathing. Good.

“So, I assume you’re here to accept my offer,” Randel said, walking toward the portal disks. “Unfortunately, I’m in a hurry right now.”

“As it happens, so am I,” the Hand said. “The shade you seek is leaving the city.”

Randel stopped mid-step. “What?”

“The shade,” the Hand said as if speaking to a simpleton, “is slipping away. It is taking an airship to Skyward.”

“When?”

“Well, you took your time in the World Seed,” the Hand said. He glanced at the small screen that his collar projected in front of him. “The airship is taking off right about now.”

“Move, then,” Randel said, grabbing a piece of chalk and stepping to the portal disk behind the Hand, drawing symbols on the disk’s surface. Quick, quick. He stepped through the portal as soon as it opened, the Hand following him close behind. They didn’t travel far, just a short distance upward, arriving at Fortram’s old city center. Randel looked up at the small gap in the earth above. A large airship was just about to leave through it, taking careful maneuvers to avoid brushing the edges.

“Is that it?”

“More than likely.”

Randel turned to the Scarlet Hand. Standing this close to him, their height and weight differences were obvious. Randel could not be considered short for a human, but the heavily armed Hand towered over him. Feebler minds would have found him intimidating, but Randel hadn’t felt that particular emotion for a long while now.

“Take us up there,” he told the Hand.

“Hmm?”

“I saw you standing on a flying platform during the sweller invasion. Conjure one right now and take us to that ship.”

“What makes you think that I’m here to help you?”

“For what else did you bother to meet me, then? Hurry up, before the shade gets away.”

“I’m not taking orders from you.”

“Then you have ten seconds to decide what to do. I’m going to chase that ship, with or without you.”

The Hand glared at Randel from behind his helmet, apparently galled by his attitude and perhaps wondering what Randel could possibly do to catch that ship. In the end, though, he relented; a round glass platform appeared beneath their feet, just barely wide enough for the two of them. The Hand lifted the platform into the air, slowly at first but gradually speeding up. Smooth acceleration, precise control. The Hand certainly knew what he was doing.

The central square shrunk quickly as the platform sped toward the airship. Randel watched Fortram’s intricate maze of steam and magic unfold beneath him in all directions, and he couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe at its size and complexity. Humans, as a collective, were certainly not without their uses. Looking downward on a small and rapidly rising platform was perhaps not the wisest idea, but the sense of vertigo didn’t bother Randel. Some of his dreams had been crazier than this—and he also had more important things to concern himself with, such as the Hand pressed to his side or the shade on the ship above.

“Who’s our target?” Randel asked at about halfway up, shouting over the wind to be heard.

“I don’t precisely know who,” the Hand replied in a perfectly audible voice that defied reason, “but I’m certain that the shade is up there. It’s a private ship that belongs to the Factory’s owners.”

“Those three siblings?”

“Yes, the Engine brothers. I have good reason to believe that the shade possessed one or more of them. Perhaps all three.”

Randel nodded. The Hand was testing him, waiting for his reaction to these false assumptions. Shades weren’t able to possess multiple people at once, but why would Randel know that? If he corrected the Hand, he would need to explain himself. Better to remain silent.

“Your weapon,” the Scarlet Hand prodded him further. “Can it capture the shade without killing its host? Or hosts.”

“Probably not,” Randel yelled into the sharp wind that buffeted his face. “If the shade possessed them, it’s too late. But if it hasn’t touched their minds yet, I think there might be a chance. I’ve no idea whether my weapon can do it, though.”

“I see. So you’re saying that shades can hide inside bodies without taking over the mind.”

“Seems possible to me,” Randel said, shrugging. “But how would I know?”

Either the Scarlet Hand was satisfied with Randel’s answer, or he had no time for further questions. The airship had finally gotten past the opening and was turning around to set its course. The Hand upped the platform’s speed to catch the ship before it could get away, forcing Randel to brace himself against the wind. He had two options if he didn’t want to fall off; grab the Hand for support, or reshape his left foot to root himself into the platform.

He threw his arms around the Scarlet Hand, clinging to him like a child to their mother’s skirt. His efforts were rewarded with an annoyed grunt. Part of Randel was appalled by what he was doing, but as undignified as this move was, it had its uses. This close to the Hand’s metal vest, he could see how the plates over his abdomen were joined together. He ran his fingers over their edges, prying at them gently.

“Keep your hands to yourself, or I’ll toss you down.”

“Sorry,” Randel said. “I swear it’s only what it looks like.”

He put his hands a bit higher and continued clinging to the Scarlet Hand as they caught up to the flying vessel. As far as airships went, this one had a rigid design; the balloon looked like two thick cigars pressed together with a long gondola nesting in the middle. The ship was obviously built for travel purposes instead of carrying cargo. Custom-designed and expensive. Boarding it mid-flight would have been difficult, if not for the small open deck around the gondola. The Hand brought his flying platform closer to it and Randel wasted no time jumping over, landing on the wooden deck and crouching low to stay hidden below the ship’s round windows.

“What are you doing?” the Hand asked, standing straight and out in the open.

“I have a reputation,” Randel explained. “Shadeslayer, you know? If there’s a shade on board, it’s better if it doesn’t know I’m here. You go in and introduce yourself. Make up an excuse. Routine inspection, or something in that vein. I’ll follow you unseen.”

“Scarlet Hands have a reputation too. What do you think the shade will think if I showed up for a routine inspection?”

Randel hesitated. Yeah, he should have thought of that.

“You’re right,” he admitted. “So either both of us sneak in, or neither of us sneaks in.”

“I’m not good at sneaking.”

Randel gave the Hand, looming in his heavy armor, a flat look.

“Well, whatever,” he said, rising to his feet. “You’re lucky I’m so adaptive.”

He stood up, dusted off his pants, adjusted his paint-smeared shirt, and rolled his sleeves up. He was about to run a hand through his hair, only to remember he had shaved it all off. He was ready for action.

“Let’s talk with this shade, then.