Ortho made it to the Ravelin nearly two hours later. He was already dead tired. Wip had not only dug through every dumpster in that alley, he then skipped half way across the city and poured through every dumpster outside of a forger’s that he could find.

There was no way to describe the stink Ortho had built up, but it was something nastier than any of the monstrosities he’d fought in Huhl Hadem, and there was some nasty stuff in the dungeon country, as the Anypaxians liked to call it.

Trudging beside him with a backpack full of twisted aftos was Wip. Somehow, he looked completely clean, while Ortho’s yellow shirt was covered in stains.

“…and that’s how I killed the monster with nine eyeballs,” Wip said, finishing a long, prattling speech.

He’d been going on and on for the last hour about all the monsters he’d killed in the dungeon. This had been the only break Ortho had from the insanity of digging through dumpsters across the city. The need to show Wip up by describing his own kills had kept Ortho from trying to pick another fight. And oh, had Ortho tried. He’d lost every one of them so far.

“Well, in Huhl Hadem, our tribe had fought a monster with twelve eyes, and every eye shot beams at us.”

“Woah!” Wip commented.

Ortho had found that Wip’s willingness to listen was probably his only redeeming quality. But Ortho’s moment of empathy was ruined by Wip adjusting his backpack, causing the volatile goods inside to clatter. Ortho winced, edged another step away from Wip, then tried to put it out of mind.

“And I was the one that landed the killing blow,” Ortho went on, shouting now that he was at least five steps away. The whole Ravelin could hear him, and he didn’t mind one bit. “Our warband was pinned down behind rocks, trying not to get hit by its beams. But I had my trusty shield—which Stella better give back or there’s going to be trouble! Anyway, I was the only person who could face it head on. The others made a distraction. I rushed out, shield raised high.” He imitated the charge. “Then I slammed it with full force and destroyed its eyes!” He smacked a fist into his palm. “That was when the other warriors came in and finished it off.”

Wip scratched at his collar. “But I thought you landed the killing blow.”

“Er, well, I did. After.”

He had not landed the killing blow. In fact, this monster had seven eyes, and only the largest shot beams. He was in fact the distraction, upon his father’s orders, and it had been his father who stole all the glory. He was never thanked for putting his life on the line. That was just expected in the Nubar Kilebhi tribe.

Wip eyed him sideways. “Well, I still think it was cool how you killed the monster with the thirty eyes all on your own.”

“Thousand!” Ortho corrected him. “And every warrior of Nubah Kilebhi has done so, or died trying. That’s how we get our wadis.” He flashed the bangles on his wrists.

“Wow, the monsters where you’re from drop whole aftos? Amazing.”

“No, they…” Ortho slapped a hand to his face. “We get them after, alright?”

They strolled past stalls and carts, past dungeoneers prepping with their teams, past administrators—both freelance and guild-contracted—haggling over the price of aftos. Standing near the entrance of the General Counting Room were Stella and Luci. The shorter girl, wearing her rabbit-eared beanie, glanced around nervously with her hands wringing that strap of her dark, thin bag. The taller woman was smirking at Ortho, her tail swishing gently over her shoulders in satisfaction.

Wip shifted his overloaded backpack and darted towards Luci and Stella, while Ortho took his sweet time getting there. He even took a slight detour to browse the stalls that clogged up the centre of the Ravelin. He hadn’t eaten since the morning when he’d taken that koularia from the pastry store. It was now just after lunch, so the dried meats and hard biscuits stacked in boxes at one stall—intended to be taken into the dungeon as rations—looked really tasty right about then. The only thing staying his hand was the stink of charcoal and staleness that eked out of their packaging. Processed foods always tasted like crap to him.

When Ortho finally joined his new party, the smirk had been wiped of Stella’s face. She was too easy to screw with.

Before she could open her mouth, Ortho held out a hand. “Where’s my stuff?”

Stella’s tail snapped to the side. “You’ll get it when you stop getting on my nerves.”

“Oh, okay. I guess you don’t want us to go crawling anytime soon. I’ll just bind it all on your schedule.” He dropped onto the stone floor, put his hands behind his head, and lay down, right there in the Ravelin.

Stella’s mouth twisted as she bit back whatever words she wanted to stab Ortho with. Then she huffed and stomped into the counting room.

“Hey, that looks relaxing!” Wip said. He tossed off his backpack, causing its contents to clatter ominously. Then he dropped down right next to Ortho.

“Are you insane?” Ortho screamed. He shot into a seated position then thrust a finger at the sideways backpack. “I saw what you put in there. Some of those aftos can give curses just by looking at them!”

“Th-they can?” Luci quivered.

Ortho took a moment to decide how best to answer. He suppressed a smile. “Yeah, even being near them can do horrible things to you. One of them can make your back arch so much you’ll like a hill.”

“Nah, it’s not that bad,” Wip said. “It’ll just make you bend over all the time.”

Luci’s eyes darted between Wip and the backpack. “O-oh, I see.” She shuffled a few steps away.

“The point is,” Ortho growled, turning to Wip, “you need to be more careful. The last thing I need is my good looks getting ruined because you decided to do a backflip over the Zekskia Mountain Range.”

“But I thought you said that curses didn’t bother you?” Wip pried.

“I said that I can resist curses,” Ortho said. “There’s a difference. I can still get them, but my tolerance is a lot higher than anyone of my level. About twenty levels worth, by Anypaxian measure.”

Wip sat up quickly and stared at Ortho with a twinkle in his eyes. “Woah! So you’re like me, then.”

Ortho clenched his fists. “I am nothing like you. For starters, I’m not insane.”

“I’m not either,” Wip said. “But the other guy in my head—wow, you should see him!”

Dumbfounded, Ortho turned to Luci for confirmation. The haunted look she gave him suggested that Wip was not joking. He buried his head in his hands. “I should just run,” he muttered. “Why am I even bothering with this?” His face stung a little from the bruises he’d taken from Morder last night.

Wip reached into his backpack and grabbed one of his warped aftos. “I mean, we have lots of things in common. Like, you can figure out how aftos work by touching them, just like me.”

The afto that Wip held had once been shaped like a crossbow. Now it looked like a knot of tree roots with an odd handle. While Ortho’s smell allowed him to get a vague sense of what aftos did, it never told the full story. So, he had to touch the afto and reach out with his enma. By doing so, Ortho had pieced together that it was supposed to have fired a volley of energy bolts, before the forger obviously bungled it.

Reading, as it was called, was a delicate process, especially when doing it for a warped afto. The risk of getting a curse was very high. That process had almost exploded in his face when Wip had snatched the afto off him. They’d argued for fifteen minutes over that.

“It was part of my training,” Ortho growled. He got to his knees and poked Wip’s shoulder. “We of the Nubah Kilebhi had a special training technique that converts our enma into a well of sorts. It lets us bind more and stronger aftos, as well as wield them freely. Reading aftos comes afterwards.”

“Oh, so your tribe had their own path?” Luci asked.

“Basically, yeah,” Ortho said. “But we didn’t call it a path. To us, it was just survival.”

Wip pointed at his collar. “I can control aftos freely as well. Our paths are the same.”

“They’re not!” Ortho howled. Heads turned in the Ravelin, wondering what the commotion was about. He didn’t care. “You didn’t go through the Ritual of the Limping Hound. You never slayed a kalbeyu with the tribe-father’s knife. You have no right to mock my people, you crazy, grupp-herding—”

A heavy bag landed right on Ortho’s chest. His body wasn’t enhanced by his wadis as he wasn’t prepared for it, so the bag knocked the wind right out of him.

“You’re insane too!” Ortho shouted at Stella.

She crossed her arms and glared down at him. “Bind it. Now.”

Grumbling to himself, Ortho started putting his armour on, though not yet binding. He found binding easier when he was wearing them, treating each piece as though it was his own skin.

Stella clapped her hands as loud as she could to get everyone’s attention.

Luci perked up. Wip licked one of his aftos that he’d just pulled out of his backpack. Ortho made an extra racket with his cuirass. Stella gritted her teeth and her eyes darted between Ortho and Wip. Clearly, she was trying to figure out who she wanted to strangle more, and that little bit of frustration that Ortho had caused her made him very happy. However, he didn’t want to be shown up by Wip, so he grabbed his shin guard and sniffed it. The familiar scent of honey and gold hit home, a scent just like his mother’s.

“Hm. Wonderful,” he commented. Then he slapped his shin guard onto his forearm.

Stella took a deep breath to calm herself. Her tail betrayed her by poking out dead straight behind her.

“So,” she began, with her teeth clenched. “Today, you’ll be going down to floor seven. It’s the first floor where you can get piras from monster corpses. If you come back with anything less than two thousand, five hundred of them, or at least thirty thousand kin’s worth, plus some nice aftocores, I will personally stitch all your clothes up half a size smaller so that you’ll all be spending the next month thinking you’ve gained weight!”

Luci gasped and clutched her bag to her white dress. “I—I know you bought me this dress, but that’s a bit…”

Stella ignored her then fixed Wip with a cold stare. Her tail went stiff, her eyes narrowed to a vicious degree. Wip took a bent gun out of his mouth and slowly, carefully, placed it in his backpack.

“And Wip,” she said. Chills ran down Ortho’s spine from the violence in her voice. “From now on, you’re not allowed to kill a single monster before floor seven. If I ever have to process two thousand, seven hundred, and forty-four individual kin again…” she walked up to Wip and leaned down, pressing her face close to his. “I will have Mr. Dagan put liquorice in your beer.”

Wip’s face paled and he let out a gasp. Satisfied, Stella turned to Ortho. She walked towards him with her face looking like a thundercloud.

Ortho wasn’t going to be spoken down to. He spun on his rear, putting his back to Stella, and mumbled, “Binding. Stay quiet or it’ll take too long.” Then he closed his eyes and made a face like he was concentrated on something.

Stella said nothing and he tried not to grin at that. He was going to take his sweet time binding his armour.