Jax, Arx, and I exchanged uncertain glances before turning once more to the panicking young woman.

“Uh… still right here,” I replied.

Her head jerked at the sound, tilting upward as though blindly searching me out. “Where? All I can see is some kind of… fog.”

“Fog? What fog? Did that rumble shake yer wits loose?” Jax asked with a purposeful stride forward. “We’s right—”

Abruptly, Lynnria jumped. The instant Jax had gotten to within an arm’s length of her, you would have thought a firecracker had gone off at her feet.

“Mercy’s ass! You scared the… the poots out of me.”

“Oh, that’s cute,” Arx murmured. “Is that how she normally swears?”

“I think it depends on her audience,” I replied honestly.

Jax snapped in the young woman’s face a couple of times experimentally before turning to me. “Might need to heal this one. Cracked her nut on that table, I think. Gone funny in the eyes.”

“My eyes are fine, thank you. You all just appeared out of nowhere,” Lynnria explained defensively—and with a considering rub at her back. “I wouldn’t mind a heal, though.”

Arx sniffed. “Who wouldn’t?”

I grunted in agreement. My heal was pretty much a shot of pure dopamine to everyone besides myself. That aside, I had developed a certain feel for how much Life was required to patch up a person, and my gut was telling me Lynnria’s needs were practically nil. She was just a little bruised.

“What about the fog?” I asked.

Lynnria shrugged. “It vanished when you three showed up.”

Arx hummed thoughtfully. “Back up, Jax. I want to see if we can make it come back.”

The redhead, never exactly thrilled to be getting even sensible orders from anyone but me, dragged her arm guards up her hips to rest her hands at the narrow of her waist before casting a glare up at her sister. Maybe it was because that was quite literally the only scrap of clothing she was wearing, but there was such an unconscious sensuality to the move—as if she could not help but to stimulate her own flesh at every turn—that it sent a thrill up my spine.

Jax’s glare snapped to me, transforming in that instant into a keen interest. She had sensed my gaze immediately, and a noticeable and perhaps sympathetic thrill rolled down her own spine, beautifully displaying her forward assets to fullest effect. Without really even trying, she had managed to snag my attention. And for Jax, there could be no greater victory.

I could not help but smirk, and with a sigh, inclined my head in acknowledgment.

A thoughtful tip of her tongue moistened her lips before she finally acquiesced, and she took a few gloating steps backward.

The moment her body crossed the plane of the entryway rug, Lynnria let out a soft gasp. “How did you…?! The three of you just… just puffed into clouds!”

Reflexively, the three of us looked down at ourselves, then exchanged glances yet again. Nothing had changed from our point of view.

Jax slowly tore her attention from me to favor the youngest of us with a pitying look. “Yer napper’s what’s in the clouds, lass.”

Lynnria folded her arms in front of her chest. “I’m not crazy! You are clouds. Maybe that was why my grandfather didn’t see us. Did you think of that?”

“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, Lynnria. But I think things might be more complicated than that,” I mused. The old man had not heard us either, after all. “Still. One person stands alone on the rug, and poof? Everyone else is smoke? Why? What could be the point of that?”

I had been on that rug before. And with Lynnria. She had not been turning to vapor every time she walked away. Either we had unknowingly met some hidden condition, or something had changed since the last time we were here.

“You know what? I’m coming down. I want to see this.”

Turning, I began to walk toward the stairs, then hesitated on coming to the first set. I had yet to check its trap patterns, and I really did not want to find out what they were. With a firm nod, I bypassed it and headed for the other side.

“Whoa! A bunch of mist up above just started… stirring around or something,” Lynnria reported. “But it looks super weird.”

“It’s moving when I move?” I confirmed, slowing. “How so? Do you see any significant changes? Hidden symbols? Clouds highlighting areas of the room?”

She shook her head uncertainly. “Uh… I don’t think—wait! Stop!”

I froze mid-step, having just rounded to the right-hand side of the mezzanine. “What? Did you see something?”

“Well, I thought… It almost seemed like the fog was going to form into something, but then it fell apart.”

Slowly, I began retracing my steps backward. “This better?”

“Yes… yes, whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. Keep going… wait. Too far. Go back. There! Stop.”

I paused awkwardly on my back foot. “Okay? What do you see?”

She ran a claw uncertainly along the back of one of her pointed ears while she considered her answer. “Um… not really anything? The clouds drew together a whole lot, but I can’t see any shapes or patterns in it. And that’s the best it gets as far as I can tell. Anywhere else, and the fog starts to spread out again.”

“Yer noggin’s spread out,” Jax grumbled. “Tell us sommat we can use.”

Lynnria spread her hands. “I don’t know what else you want me to say. I guess the clouds might look like… stuff. If you squint.”

Jax sighed and scrubbed her face tiredly with her hands. “Oh, aye. ‘Stuff.’ Lass, yer as helpful as a dried cum-sock in a nursery.”

I decided it was probably best not to think about that one too hard.

Shifting gears, I began with a few leading questions. “Okay, what else can you tell us about how the fog behaves? Does it move constantly, or only when we do?”

She squinted in concentration. “Right now, everything is pretty still along the edges, but the center part keeps swirling around. It’s weird though. Almost like it’s breathing.”

She held her clawed digits in front of her and began tracing a swirling path through the air. It was slow, but there was a definite back-and-forth periodicity to it. And notably in sync with a certain Dolilim’s impatient pacing.

“Jax, hold still.”

“Master,” she cooed, obeying happily and without argument. And purely by coincidence, just happening to freeze in a pose closely resembling the nearby statues.

Try hard.

“Huh. It stopped.” Lynnria edged closer to the lip of the rug and began blowing and waving her arms about. “Doesn’t move with the air at all.”

Jax’s arms flopped down in annoyance. “Why would it? There ain’t no fog save what’s in yer eyes.”

I rolled my eyes. “Being antagonistic isn’t going to help us solve this.”

“I ain’t said nothing but what ain’t so,” she shot back, defensive. “The fog be in her eyes. Moves with us. Be what she said her ownself.”

Uh huh. As if I don’t know a double entendre when I hear one. Or a triple negative. “Okay, then. What should we do about that?”

“Ye already found one good spot. Maybe they’s others, and we gots to move about to find ‘em.”

“That’s more like it,” I said with a bob of my head.

She favored me with a seductive smile, but I chose to ignore it. I had more important things on my mind than spending the day ogling her.

“Lynnria, did you see any signs of the fog condensing while Jax was pacing?”

She shook her head. “Not really.”

“Drat.”

I felt sure we were on the right track with this, but if Jax was right, this was shaping up to be a three-way game of hot-and-cold. In a multistory area the size of a barn. A hint would have been nice.

A hint…

“Do you guys think that painting might have anything to do with this?” I hazarded.

“Weren’t no fog in it,” Jax reminded me.

“No, but…” Arx scurried over to the artwork once more and leaned in close to examine it.

Without really meaning to—and in a complete betrayal to my earlier resolve—my eyes were naturally drawn to the swell of her presented backside. Dammit. I’m getting to be as bad as they are.

Her most recent Layer had not changed a great deal for her beyond the few spans of growth in her tail, though I knew her Charisma had to be sitting at something like a 12. It was hard to put into words exactly what the difference would be between that and Jax’s 10. It was something on the order of comparing ‘Damn… she’s hot as hell’ to ‘Whoa! Look at that!’

Honestly, it was a miracle I managed to get anything done at all. Though, given the fact that my own Charisma was sitting at a 15, it was no wonder the two and Lynnria tended to stare at me like I was a bowl of spreadable sex on a charcuterie board.

But now that I was looking, I could not help but notice the pair of empty scabbards crisscrossing her waist. It was regrettable her scimitars had only lasted as long as they had, but they had been… comparatively cheap. To the magically enhanced stuff, anyway.

Her only surviving weaponry was the Life-fueled, auto-sharpening knife tucked into an upside-down sheathe wrapped just above her left bicep. The thing had been secured by a loop attached to the crossguard, which was probably the only reason it had survived the flood.

I had never seen her use it, though. She seemed to prefer her own claws in combat, even against that barrel golem. The most sensible thing would have been to ask for it as a replacement to the one I had gifted Lynnria—which had been lost almost as quickly as the scimitars. Of the four of us, I was the only one without any means of defending myself.

Then again… technically, they were my means of defending myself. So maybe not.

Tapping the painting thoughtfully, Arx turned. “Master, you’re standing very close to where this flower pot should be.”

“Hmm… and it was called ‘Where am I?’” I smiled. The pieces were beginning to click together. “Arx, go over to where the bird cage is sitting in the picture.”

She bounced on her toes once—jostling her assorted femininity sufficiently to make me almost forget something rather important as she headed for the stairs.

“Mind the traps!” I shouted quickly.

She froze. “Traps on the stairs? What kind?”

“Dart launchers,” I replied, relaxing.

“Yes, but were any poisoned?” she persisted.

I shook my head. “Not that I noticed.”

“‘Snails…”

Crestfallen, Arx nevertheless hopped over the railing and began to descend via the outside balusters along the staircase with the confident ease of a gibbon. Watching her, I could not help but recall my earlier battle up the handrail. It was hard not to be jealous, but I could at least console myself with my literal ability to fly.

“What is it with you guys and poison, anyway?” Lynnria asked, distracting me from my musings. “You never got around to explaining what that was all about back in the labyrinth.”

“Donum can convert any negative Status Effect into the Lust Ailment,” Arx explained with a final bound to the floor. “Which we can convert into Life Energy. And when we’ve had our fill, the rest goes back to him.”

“Were a combo the Master dreamed up when he were trapped in a web-beetle cocoon,” Jax added.

“Web-beetle…? No, never mind that. How is it possible to convert an Ailment into Life Energy? I’ve never heard of a skill like that.”

“As I was explaining before—cock breath—it’s a type of form-specific ability. However, before you ask, no. You may not purchase it yet. It requires an Empathic Absorption Matrix, and as you have yet to grow one, you may neither feed upon the emotions of those around you nor manipulate Emotional Ailments,” Mia broadcast to the group.

Beyond the occasional whisper in my ear, she had been keeping rather quiet up to then—to the point where it had been easy to forget she was there. She seemed to prefer maintaining radio silence while we fumbled our way through ‘mundane’ problems like these but, given her difficulties, that was understandable.

Lynnria frowned pensively. “Is that why you keep calling me a Lesser Dolilim?”

“That be some of it, aye,” Jax answered in Mia’s stead, striding forward and blithely ignoring Lynnria’s jump of surprise once she stepped upon the rug. “But ye will be Dolilim-entire one day, lassie. Mark me. Now enough with yer worries. Tastes foul.”

Lynnria nodded uncertainly, not yet knowing quite what to make of Jax’s emotional palette. “Well… if I can’t contribute that way, maybe I can take some sort of poison skill. If you really can turn it into Life, then I could at least help feed you all.”

“I’m certain you qualify for a wide array of Ailment-inducing skills,” Mia replied. “However, you cannot create an effect with the potential to harm our lord.”

Jax turned to look up at me—as the host of the otherwise disembodied voice. “What are ye on about? No one said nothing about harming nobody. It were a grand idea!”

“Certainly, it was—ass chewer! Colon gargling, shit-tongued—blahlahlah!” She took a sharp breath. “To be clear, I can give her a skill involving poison, but it would be harmless to any of you, negating your potential to benefit from it. As an example, recall our lord’s skill, Detonating Sap Varnish?”

“Okay… I can see how that might apply to Jax and Arx,” I said slowly, “but Lynnria isn’t bound.”

Mia favored me with an indulgent little chuckle. “She isn’t? How odd. I wonder then, how it is that she can hear my voice even now.”

“You know why,” I returned, frowning.

“Yes… the ritual. One amongst many. Each tying her ever closer. Granted, the process is far from complete, but for the purposes of her proposed spell, there is hardly a difference.”

An incremental binding? I had to suppose that made a degree of sense, and it would certainly explain a few things. However, despite each of these rituals having been Mia’s idea, I doubted she had been aware of what their eventual outcome might be. Not unless she was a far better actor than I thought she was.

It was something to think about.

“Well, if she can’t poison us directly, what about the other way around? Didn’t you—sorry. I think Bline once offered me a skill whose purpose was to store Life Energy but, as a side-effect, it was poisonous to other people. Uh… Life Berries or something.”

“Hmm~?” she replied thoughtfully—with a hint of a moan. “That would have been a workaround for your Class’s inability to target hostiles. However… yes. There is a potential to this. The construct would have to be quite different, though.”

Her voice began to drift in and out of audibility for a few moments. Like she was talking to herself while pacing in front of a microphone. However, soon enough, she returned.

“If you will excuse me, Lord, I still need to perform some maintenance within the young lady’s realm. I’ll put together some options for you while I’m there.”

“Of course,” I said with a wave.

We waited, but it seemed Mia had gone.

“What do you suppose she meant by ‘maintenance?’” Lynnria asked nervously.

I expelled a flummoxed raspberry through my lips. “Search me. Probably some ‘forbidden’ nonsense having to do with your Core.”

“Bunch of keech, ye ask me,” Jax said. Then, taking a few deliberate strides backward, she grumbled, “Lets be on with it. We got our own mess to sort.”

“Right.” Arx kicked aside the remains of the table Lynnria had broken. “The bird was about here, I think.”

“Aye, and that bint in the dress were over by yer statue, Arxy-love,” Jax agreed as she sidestepped that direction. “Here abouts, I’d say. Now what do ye see, lass?”

Lynnria shook her head, bewildered. “Well, the fog pulled together a lot over by you, Arx. But it’s still pretty spread out in the middle.”

“That don’t make a lick of sense.” Frustrated, Jax again put hands to hips then turned to look up at me. “I be standing in the right place, ain’t I?”

“Let me check.”

Quickly, I trotted over to the painting for a second look. The woman was indeed by the right-hand statue. So then why isn’t Jax’s fog coming together?

Pondering, I scratched at where my beard should have been, reminding me of my unfortunate set of mutton-chops. Neither of the Dolilim had said a word about it, one way or the other. So they were either indifferent—likely—or they had not wanted to hurt my feelings—far less so. ‘Guarded’ was not a quality I would ascribe either of them.

Also, I was the axiomatic definition of ‘hot’ in their eyes, just as a matter of my Class. Which was all the more reason for me to shave. I could not be responsible for fostering a poor sense of taste onto my girls.

But that was neither here nor there.

The woman in the painting had not been depicted with any sort of features, which could have been a reference to the haze of a puzzle we were facing. However, from her posture, she seemed… unsettled? Perhaps uncomfortable to be there? Like she did not know anyone at the party. Alone and lost in the crowd.

And it’s called ‘Where am I?’

“Jax, I don’t think this woman is even where she’s supposed to be,” I called over my shoulder.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, the painting doesn’t tell us where you need to stand,” I explained, back-stepping toward my spot by the landing. “We’re going to have to figure that out on our own.”

She sighed. “And what be the point of making us do that? I ask ye?”

I had to agree. While this puzzle’s eventual goal was more than abstruse, solving it was not so much difficult as it was tedious. There was a reason hardly anyone over the age of twelve engaged in rollicking games of Marco Polo, after all.

*****

“Yeah… I think you’re getting closer,” Lynnria reported some dozens of minutes later.

“Way back here?” Jax asked, out of sight. From the sound, she was somewhere to my right and beneath the lip of the mezzanine.

“I think so.” Lynnria frowned and starting gesturing with her hands. “Can you go back even more?”

“Not without… aye, hold on.” There followed a series of thumping noises, followed by a metallic clang, and what sounded like an entire porcelain tea set smashing into oblivion. “That better?”

From her face, you would have thought Lynnria was in physical pain. “Yes, but… couldn’t you have just moved it to one side?”

“Nay, the whole of it were stuck fast. Had to chop it through,” Jax replied reasonably. “Alright, lass. Me back’s to the wall. No going further lessen ye want me to go through that, too.”

“Okay… try moving a little to the right? No, that’s worse. The other way? Okay… okay…” Abruptly, she gasped. “Oh! I can almost see something!”

“Yeah?” I prompted.

“It… kind of looks like that woman with the yellow dress. Only made of clouds,” she reported. “It’s still a bit lumpy, though.”

“Huh.”

For a few moments, those of us that could see one another traded uncertain glances. Nothing had physically changed that I had seen. There had been no sudden chimes to let us know we had solved anything, and if a treasure chest had dropped from the ceiling, I had missed it.

But then I heard a murmur from below, “Hel-lo. What have we here?”

“Got something, Jax?”

“Aye, Master. Be a Keyhole in the floorboards, sure as I’m standing. Blighter were hidden under the table.”

I thumped the handrail. “Finally! I swear, how hard would it have been to just tell us to look under the furniture? Hold on, I’m coming down.”

I turned and headed for the stair but, before I had taken more than a single step, I heard, “Whoa, there! The knapdarloch be running to ground!”

My weight settled onto my left foot while the right of my face scrunched up in confusion. I could normally translate a solid ninety to ninety-five percent of Jax’s brogue with nothing more than context clues, but whatever the hell that had been had completely jumped the rails. I might have even thought she had slipped into some unfamiliar language had I not known that to be impossible.

“I’m sorry, what is trying to run?”

“The Keyhole, mate. Jumped near a full span, but it’s stopped now.”

“Well, that’s…” I blinked a few times. “There’s a slang term for a Keyhole?”

“What are ye on about?” she called upward. “Ain’t ye never heared of a knapdarloch?”

“…Should I have?”

She snorted in disgust. “Be the tangle what happens when a critter gets a mess of shite stuck to the fur in back of its arse.”

My mouth slowly worked as my brain ground its way through her explanation. “You called the Keyhole a dingle-berry?”

“Well, it weren’t supposed to move, now were it?”

Lynnria looked approximately in Arx’s direction. “Is this what passes for normal conversation around here?”

“When we aren’t trying to get into one another’s pants,” Arx agreed affably before turning. “Go back to where you were, Dearest.”

Wordlessly, I retraced my steps.

“Knock me… that be a strange thing to see,” Jax reported. “Blighter be pulling through solid wood like a bug on water.”

“What about when I move?” Arx asked, putting actions to words.

Jax sucked in a sharp breath. “Aye, love. Shot straight up the wall when ye did that.”

“So… if the Keyhole moves when we move, doesn’t that mean there’s the possibility we might open the thing in the wrong place?” I said.

“What happens if we do that?” Lynnria asked.

“Consequences,” Jax pronounced with an air of stolid wisdom.

Ah, yes. The ever present possibility of failure. The weight of which was unknown, but I could imagine a host of scenarios ranging from wasting the Key to getting the lot of us sucked into a black hole. It was the kind of situation that just begged for some sort of randomized, behind-the-scenes table.

“Lynnria,” I said slowly. “You said that Jax was the only one whose clouds looked like anything recognizable, right?”

“They did, yes. But she must have moved again.”

“You’re thinking we have to get this perfect,” Arx surmised. “But how? Both of our positions are as clear as we’ve been able to find.”

I tapped on the handrail for a moment. How indeed? One person above… and two below. Hmm… maybe double-check the painting? Couldn’t hurt.

Nodding, I trotted back over. Jax, of course, was no where near where the woman had been standing. That just left the flower—and its precarious perch on the railing—and the birdcage…

Which was sitting on a table. The real-life equivalent of which Lynnria had accidentally reduced to kindling.

“Arx?” I called down, hoping this was not what I was thinking. “Could you try lying down? I want to see if that affects anything.”

“Like this?” she called, out of sight.

“That made it worse,” Lynnria reported.

I closed my eyes and ran my fingers down the center in my forehead.

“Chebs…”

*****

“Master, this has got to be the weirdest flight spell I have ever heard of,” Arx said as she clutched nervously at one of the posts holding up the landing. “Why does my gut feel like its turning over every time I move my head? And how do I stop?”

“Look, it was Mia’s first spell, okay?” I grunted. “It works by shifting ‘down’ to wherever it is you’re looking. So if you want it to stop, you need to close your eyes.”

“Fantastic. Why couldn’t you have just gotten something like a Bird’s Flight pill? Those work great and don’t make your stomach flop all over the place.”

“It’s only a levitation spell,” I muttered defensively. In a way, it had been my first spell too. Besides, I had never heard of a pill like that, and if Mia had, she had not been forthcoming.

“He just told ye it wouldn’t if ye’d quit gawking,” Jax said, impatient as ever.

“You try finding an exact spot to hover in with nothing to steer with but your eyes!”

Jax sighed. “Quit yer yapping. The way ye carry on, ye’d think ye did nay like the Master’s spell. Maybe the next time the Faen needs to get her rocks off, I’ll make the Lesser take yer place!”

Arx gasped in shock. “You wouldn’t!”

“Just ye watch!”

“Oh, please don’t,” Lynnria groaned. “I feel sick just thinking about the last time he cast that on me.”

“All the more reason,” Jax shot back. “What kind of Dolilim be ye? Bunch of poofs, says I!”

“Why don’t you do it then, if you’re so tough?”

“I be First!” Jax returned haughtily. “Ye think I’d let some boot of a Faen pretend it’s her gash what’s plowed?”

“Ladies, please,” I groaned. “Can we argue about this when I don’t have a giant spell-weight on my chest?”

“See? Now yer making the Master upset,” Jax agreed—as if she had nothing to do with it. With a mournful sigh, she turned to me. “There be times I miss that command business ye gave up, Master. T’would settle this in a wink.”

Arx nodded eagerly. “Right? But don’t you have some kind of persuasion ability now? Can’t you… convince me to like this?”

“Oh, for the…” I groaned.

Setting aside whether I even could, why it should even be necessary was beyond me. All of my spells were supposed to provide my Dolilim with a degree of comfort, happiness, or pleasure—if not anywhere near so intensely as did the Hammer. Arx should not have been having trouble with this.

Did Mia screw up the spell somehow? I was going to need to ask her about that when she got back. Why can’t anything ever be easy?

“Arx, I thought you liked being used now,” I said, straining.

“No, I like it when you feel possessive,” she clarified. “Using me for sex is just a… related kink.”

“I think it might be a little more than that. You literally just told me your ass was mine for the taking. You could barely restrain yourself when I had my hand on it.”

There was a beat of silence. “Yeah? What does that have to do with this spell?”

“Aren’t I holding you now?” I prodded. “But over your whole body?”

Arx began to squirm and fidget mid-air. “Mmm~ I hadn’t thought of that…”

“Aye,” Jax agreed—whom I noticed was also beginning to fidget a little. “Ye know, come to think on it… I ain’t never tried this spell of yer’n afore, Master.”

Huh. I guess it was easy. Of course, it helped that I had linked it back to sex. Their minds were pretty much the definition of the gutter.

“Are you seriously not nauseated anymore?” Lynnria asked, flabbergasted. “Just from that?”

“The feeling is still there,” Arx replied absently. “But now I can’t stop thinking of his hands all over me… and it’s all turned to wings fluttering down below.”

She let out a dreamy sort of sigh and began tracing her claws over her soft, gray skin, as though carried off by a fantasy of her own devising. I might have been carried off myself—especially once she began teasing her notably weightless breasts—were it not for the huge weight still on my shoulders.

“That’s great, Arx. And I would absolutely love to explore that idea with you… later. Now can we please get on with it?”

“Of course, Master…” she purred, though she still seemed reluctant to let go of the post.

Fortunately, with Lynnria’s continued guidance—and Jax holding her feet to keep her from drifting too far out of alignment—she managed to get into position in fairly short order. We had already known approximately where she was supposed to be on the x and y axes. Finding the z was just a matter of trial and error.

And before long, Lynnria reported a cloudy representation of the bird and its cage coming into focus.

The next part I was seriously dreading, because it required my climbing up and balancing on the railing… while maintaining the spell. But I had at least decided to remove my boots first. They might help in muffling my footsteps, but their stiff bottoms would be of no use on a narrow strip of wood.

Watcher’s eye… why did all the furniture have to be bolted to the floor? This would be so much easier…

Slowly, getting a knee under me, I began lifting my bulk off the floor with a white-knuckled grip on the rail.

“How’s this?” I called hopefully.

“Um? Not yet. It’s better than it was, though,” Lynnria reported.

“Oh, Master…” Jax called from right below me. If anything, she looked more terrified than I was. “Be careful!”

“It’s only one story, Jax,” I reasoned, very much in a big-boy-trying-to-put-on-a-brave-face sort of tone. “You’ve got the Key already. Don’t you need to get in position?”

“But I nay can catch ye from there!” she protested. Being completely irrational… and wholly endearing.

“And you can’t open the lock from here,” I countered. “Now get your bahooty over there and ready so I can come down off this thing!”

She scowled at me with arms held stiffly to her sides. “If yer referring to me backside, the word be bahoochie, ye howling melt!” she growled before taking a few cautious steps to the side. “Now don’t ye dare fall! I love you…”

A howling melt? I had not been called that for quite some time. Not that I knew what it meant beyond some sort of nebulous insult. She must have been genuinely afraid for me, especially considering that last bit. She did not say those words very often.

There was no need.

“I know,” I returned, trying to smile. “Go on, now. I can only hold this spell another minute or so.”

She nodded, then took a few cautious steps backward before finally turning and scurrying out of view. I waited for a few moments while Lynnria guided her back into position then, closing my eyes, I took a long, steadying breath. Here goes…

“Five-eighths says he falls,” I heard from somewhere off to my left, freezing me in my tracks. But when I looked, there was no one there. Because of course there would not be.

“Six,” another voice countered.

“You’re on!”

You have got to be kidding me. Not that I was overly surprised to discover the ever-watchful Faen of this realm taking bets as to my successes or failures. Still, that begged the question:

“Five-eighths of what?”

My curiosity was only met by a flurry of giggling whispers.

I narrowed my eyes. Fine then.

I was just going to have to set aside the question of whatever passed for Faen currency and make certain my supporter received their payout. I turned my attention back… then swallowed as I glanced to the floor below.

Hopefully…

Flexing my leg muscles, I slowly rose higher on the narrow balance beam until I could just slip a second knee underneath my weight.

“Here?” I called, wobbling.

“Not yet, sexy-butt…” the first voice lilted tauntingly.

“No,” Lynnria confirmed at almost the same moment. “Can you go higher?”

“Damn it…” I muttered, gradually working my shin forward.

It was a struggle—my palms were beginning to sweat profusely both from nerves and the constant drain of my spell—but I did just manage to get my foot under me. Slowly, I pushed myself upward to the point where I could begin to stand, though my shaking hands were hovering millimeters above the railing.

“Here?!” I called again, hopefully.

“Oh, come on. You know it’s not,” the second voice jeered. “What are you so afraid of? That bar is a half-span wide, easy. Straighten up, man!”

“It’s rounded! And slippery!” I shot back in a hoarse whisper.

“I’m starting to see something,” Lynnria confirmed again. “Can you stretch any more?”

A nervous chuckle rumbled its way out of my lips. “Yeah…”

Breathless and trembling for all I was worth, I slowly began to straighten. Just a knuckle’s length at a time.

In that instant, my fear-addled mind had a sudden moment of clarity. This was insane! I was being a complete idiot! Why in the unholy nutsack of the Watcher was I the one up here trying to balance on this motherfucker? Arx had an Agility in the upper teens, for crying out loud! She could have done backflips on this railing.

Mine was 5. 5! And I had to hold a 27-Word spell?

“Come on, fall. Fall!” my detractor chanted. “Fall, or I’ll come over there and slap your behind!”

“Don’t you dare! That’s cheating!”

“But it’s right there…” the first pouted. “Don’t you want to just give it a squeeze?”

“You should have thought of that beforehand,” the second replied haughtily.

“Will you shut up?!” I growled.

Bunching the muscles in my back, I surged upward—by a finger’s length, if that—then froze again, trembling. My instincts were screaming at me not to leave the easy grasp of the handrail behind, but I did not seem to need it quite yet. And so another finger’s length followed. Then a third.

Slowly, bit by bit, I began to straighten from my crouch. Even the bottoms of my feet were beginning to sweat now, ruining my traction and making me regret my decision to remove my boots. I was having to clamp together with my thighs just to keep them from sliding out into a split. And with the spell still going, I might as well have had a squat bar on my back.

Maybe adding a touch of Strength to the build wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. It was a ludicrous notion, of course. There was no way that Strength would be of any use in holding up a too-large spell but, in the moment, it certainly felt like a good idea.

“Almost there,” Lynnria called.

“Fall! Fall!”

“Come on, you prick! Stand up!”

My head rose another span.

“Oh… I’m starting to see something!”

“Just fall backwards! It won’t hurt that much. I’ll even give you a blow job!”

“No bribery, you slag!”

“You never said that was a rule!”

“Fine! Then, I’ll suck him off if he doesn’t fall. And I’m better at it, too!”

“Ha! You wish.”

“Will you two fucking—“ My foot slipped ever so slightly, sending a dangerous wobble through my body.

“Oh! Oh, there he goes!”

“No way! He can still recover…”

Abruptly, my weight seemed to stabilize, but my hips were now dangerously out of alignment. I had to hold both arms over my head and at an angle just to keep from toppling over, but I instinctively knew I had to reposition—and soon—or I was finished. So I jerked myself upright.

“There! It’s there! I can see it! The whole painting in fog,” Lynnria cried breathlessly. “I’ve never seen something so amazing…”

“Jax! Now!” I shouted. My balance was going fast.

“Got it!” Jax yelled back.

There was a soft, yet audible click. And then the floor gave a dangerous rumble.

“Oh, fuck!”

“There he goes!”

Like a Hollywood stuntman, I went over head first. Perhaps it was some instinct borne out of repeated falls down stairs and hills, through projectiles and trees, but I kicked my feet out and over me, sending them overhead in a nice and graceful front flip. At least until my back slammed into the armrest of a chaise lounge, folding me nearly in half.

As I laid there, once more wheezing with pain, I overheard my unseen audience arguing from somewhere overhead.

“Told you he would fall. Pay up.”

“That doesn’t count! Outside interference!”