" He was talking fast and his eyes were swerving back and forth.

"Bother someone else, it’s too early for this shit." Foley went back to lie on the straw mattress and the man began jumping around.

"No, you’re not listening. What they do here, what they do here, it’s all fake, and they tell you that you did bad but they don’t tell you what you did. We shouldn’t be here. You and me, we gotta escape. We’ll get out of here, we’ll get a boat, and we’ll live off the sea!"

"Whatever you say, dear, you crazy fucker."

The man continued droning on and on, making it difficult for Foley to piece together the events of last night. He didn’t know how long he lay on that dirty mattress, feeling his heart beating in his eyes. In time, a heavy door opened, Foley heard the sudden hushing of half the prisoners and the screaming and cursing of the rest. A group of knights had entered the dungeon. Ill-informed agitators yelled insults and demands, only to be rendered silent by a howl of agony.

"Sir Gradius, that man had not been sentenced for execution!"

"These are my prisoners, dwarf, I decide their punishment. If they wish to scream within my dungeon, then I shall make them scream."

"Monster, you stand on the wrong side of the bars," a woman hissed.

Foley could hear approaching footsteps, and the deranged prisoner across from him was going wild. "Oh, there he is! There’s the man who took my face! Give it back! Give it back! God can’t see me without my face! He told me so! He told me to cut that guy up! Come here! Come here and I’ll tell you a story! It’s about dragons and eels and so many amazing things!"

The three knights stopped at his cell. Gradius, venting crimson flames from the slits in his helmet. Beside him, an old dwarf, beardless like Foley but with white hair and a nose like a potato. Joining them was a woman, hair wound in tight braids with several crossed scars on her cheek. Two were gold-rank, while the woman was silver, all displayed on their armor. The prisoner continued to ramble on, until Gradius extended his hand into the cell.

"Don’t!" the dwarf yelled.

There was a blinding flash and a scream of pain as the cell became a roaring forge, flames searing everything without ever passing the bars. The woman grabbed Gradius’s arm and pulled it away from the cell. Snarling, the enraged goliath threw her to the side and aimed his palm at her. Loud as thunder, a crash rang out as the dwarf struck Gradius in the back with his palm, tossing him through the air with a large dent in his armor. Hands made of moving stone burst from the floor where Gradius landed and pinned him down.

He pulled at his earthen binds and howled like a beast with flames streaming from within his armor, producing a sound like a boat horn. More hands continued to grab him and conceal the flames. Throughout the dungeon, prisoners who had been silenced by Gradius’s rage were hollering like agitated chimps.

"Well done, Lady Opal," the dwarf knight said with a grimace. The female knight was crouched where Gradius had thrown her, her hands pressed to the ground and surrounded by two magic circles.

"It’s bad enough dealing with these vandals without him making it worse!" She noticed his hand, the way his palm had been burned. "Sir Berholm, are you well?"

He looked at his hand and sighed. "Hmmm, my palms have gotten soft. I suppose I’ve fallen out of shape. He is burning far hotter than usual. That armor was made by the dwarves and enchanted to contain his power, but it appears to be reaching its limit. What little sanity he has always fades during Red Revelries. As the violence grows worse each year, it seems he does as well."

"He’s gone too far this time! If he has lost all distinction between friend and foe, then he doesn’t deserve to keep his title, or even his life."

"This is not the place to discuss such things, too many ears and eyes. Go find Sir Tarnas, tell him his rabid dog is in trouble. I’ll lock him up in one of these cells and proceed on my own."

Opal maneuvered the stone hands to expose Gradius’s hip, where a ring of heavy keys hung from his belt. She passed the ring to Berholm and then warped the stone further into a cocoon, with Gradius’s enraged screams echoing through the air holes.

Foley got up and approached the bars of his cell. "Oi, while you got that key handy, you think you could let me out?"

"Be silent," Opal hissed. "While we are not as harsh as the executioner, for you to so rudely ask a favor through prison bars is worthy of punishment."

"Is this how you treat newcomers to the city? I got drunk, was thrown out of a bar, woke up in an alley, and some lunatic tried to rob me. And who should come to my aid? A lass that kicks like an ass! Planted her hoof right in my chest! Go to the Sledgepaw, near the docks, you’ll find my faceprint in the mud next to a two-day old pile of horseshit."

Berholm stepped forward and looked him up and down. "He might be telling the truth."

"Are you not saying that simply because he’s a dwarf?"

"I’m saying it because he smells like everything that he just described."

"So does every reveler that gets drunk before fighting."

"True. Hmmm, if this place starts overflowing and they decide to let some go, I’ll mention you. What’s your name, boy?"

"Jim Foley."

"Foley, huh? Very well." He turned to Opal. "Tarnas might still be speaking with the king, but it’s best that they both know about Gradius."

Lady Opal departed and Berholm opened the door to the charred cell. Gradius, bound in stone, was pushed inside like he was a block of Styrofoam and left next to the charred corpse of its original noisy inhabitant.

"Thank God," Foley muttered, "that shit got old really fast."

Berholm reached the door at the end of the dungeon, his hand approaching the iron knob. Then, in the blink of an eye, he spun around and that hand flattened into a blade, aimed for the assailant behind him. His hand was stopped by a cloaked figure, but not the one he expected.

"Lady Zodiac?"

The hood was pulled back to reveal long hair, like threads of silver, and cinnamon-shaded skin. Her eyes were gentle but vibrant, displaying the strength with which she had blocked an attack that would have sent most others flying. Valia Zodiac, she was famous for both her beauty and her power and had been for decades, for as her ears pointed out, she was a dark elf.

"Easy, Marcus. Don’t go lashing out like Gradius. We can’t have you going crazy on top of everything else."

"Lady Zodiac, what are you doing here? You’ve been removed from service."

"I may be stuck on the sidelines, but I can still impart my knowledge, and I still keep my ear to the ground. That you would ask Joyce for advice on the Harajin instead of me is rather insulting."

"You’re just hoping this is a lead to Valon, isn’t it?"

"And if I do, does that not prove my innocence? Is your trust in me really so shaken?"

"Shaken, not broken. Your wisdom is much appreciated."

Knights Berholm and Zodiac continued on to the next dungeon, deeper underground, but while the last chamber was for holding the living, this one was for holding the dead. All the corpses from each Red Revelry were stored upon shelves and tables, with countless herb branches hanging from the ceiling that both warded off insects and the stench of death. Here, underground with only lamp light, Gradius’s servants would examine the dead for signs of identity so that they could be returned to their families. but not for humanitarian reasons. For a noble son, especially one about to enter the academy, dying during a Red Revelry would be a black mark for the family. Depending on the family’s level of loyalty to the king, the bodies could be quietly returned and the secret covered up, or the bodies could be disposed of with the rest of the revelers, and the scandal could be made public. At the moment, they were absent, off researching crests found on bodies.

"There he is."

Valia pointed to a table, where a body garbed in a black robe lay facedown. But they were not alone. By the table was Sir Elyot, cleaning his glasses.

"I knew you’d be here. You can never resist a good puzzle," said Berholm.

"I didn’t know it for sure, but I did have an inkling about you being here as well. You aren’t after the Harajin, you’re after the knight who handed over his sword."

"Gradius was sure it was a knight’s sword. Now for all we know, it could have been taken off a dead knight or bought on the street, but it’s possible that the knighthood has been infiltrated. If that’s so, we need to know and act quickly."

"What have you found so far?" Valia asked.

"Well, he had been looted, so there isn’t much to go on. Beneath the cloak, he’s got wool clothes and a layer of bandages that covers almost his entire body. The cloak is filled with pouches and pockets to conceal various weapons, all empty. The fabric itself is interesting, so I think I’ll hold onto it."

Valia stepped forward and examined the wound in the back of the Harajin’s neck. She was spared the sight of the face, molted and disfigured. "You two were right to come here. The blade slipped right between the vertebrae, didn’t even chip or scrape the bone, and it severed the nerves and nothing else with minimal blood. This was no accident and not done by a ranged weapon. This is the work of a real contender."

"Sneaking up on a Harajin is supposed to be impossible. I’ve seen them dodge arrows aimed at their blind spots," said Berholm.

Valia began looking the body over for other injuries and even flipped it over. "It most likely was done by another Harajin, though the wound doesn’t quite fit their style, unless they were covering it up. The question is: What were they fighting over?"

"Probably the decision for a peace accord. What’s important is the sword, and whether or not it was actually bestowed by a knight," said Elyot.

"I’ll start turning over stones, see what crawls out."

"Unfortunately, this is where you and I must part," said Valia. "Without the king’s order, I can’t interfere any more than this, though I wish you two the best of luck in finding your culprit."

A question from Berholm stopped her as she turned to leave.

"Did Valon ever possess an official sword? Even just a ceremonial one?"

"No." She said it automatically, but once she left the room, that question became the spade with which she dug through her memories.

Berholm and Elyot left soon afterward, and all was quiet. Then, in the corner, a figure appeared, as if born from the darkness, though his white mask stood out against the shadows. He was certain he was alone, but he did not allow himself to display any signs of fatigue, or even exhale in relief upon ending his spell. He approached the body with his eyes averted. It was a sin for a Harajin to see the face of another, same as it was a sin to reveal it.

"Oritz, you fool. You brought shame not only to yourself, but to the clan."

What should have been a small blessing, his reckless subordinate lying dead and looted on this table instead of Grond, had become a big problem, for the man now felt himself plagued with the same questions as the knights. Despite his behavior, Oritz didn’t have a liar’s instinct and would rather fight than try to escape through deception. He was an honest scumbag, if such a thing could ever exist. But which was more unlikely; that Oritz had simply lied to try and save himself from a knight’s wrath? Or that he had been assigned a secret mission that even he, the group leader, was not aware of?

The fact that he had been taken out in this style was a red flag, leaving the rest of the Harajin as suspects. If this really was an inner conflict and none of his subordinates had stepped forward, then either one of them was covering it up, or it was Grond. Add in the detail about the sword, and it brought the leader to one conclusion: there were traitors on both sides and something was happening under his nose.

After performing an examination of his own, the leader removed a jar from within his cloak and poured several small scarabs onto the body. They wasted no time burrowing into the dead flesh, and soon a rancid smell began to rise up. By nightfall, those scarabs would number in the hundreds and they would leave no evidence of the body behind.

---

Noah trekked through the city towards the docks, his mind abuzz as he re-evaluated all of his options every time he took a step. Should he bail on this task and hope that Cyrilo wouldn’t follow through on her threat? Should he collect this potion and use it to threaten her? Collect it and then kill her? Kill the seller and keep it secret from her? Fulfill the task and give her what she wants? At the moment, all options seemed equally bad. He needed some new variable to help him decide.

But there was more on his mind than just Cyrilo. He was also thinking about the new detail of his magic. He could take on the appearance of someone dead, at least fresh, but the spell couldn’t be ended so simply as usual. A large part of him wanted to experiment with this development, to replicate the process and see what he could learn. It wanted an excuse, a scenario in which he could play with his new toy. That part was scanning his surroundings, sizing people up to determine who would be a good candidate to mimic. Who wouldn’t be noticed or missed? Who could be disposed of? The homeless? Other adventurers? Participants in the Red Revelries?

It was not his conscience which reeled in those thoughts, but a nagging worry, like a festering bug bite in the back of his mind. Reckless. Lifetimes of experience fueled his survival instinct, but to Noah, death was little more than an inconvenience or even a relief. He lived each life in pursuit of new experiences, feelings, and knowledge, living on drops of meaning while mortals basked in fountains, and that required taking a lot of risks.

This life was different, his first experience in a magic world, and there was no telling how long it might be until he got another. He needed to be careful with his life, but the excitement was changing him from risk-taking to reckless. His overreliance on potions in training, nearly dying in the dungeon crab because of a lack of preparation, the wounds he suffered while fighting beside Alexis, and now this whole situation because he wanted a closer look at the Red Revelries; all were because he let himself get carried away.

If he played it safe, he knew he would miss out on too much. Should he savor this world one tiny bite at a time, or eat it whole and enjoy the full taste? It was a question he failed to answer, even after grabbing some breakfast and reaching the docks. Here, great groaning vessels filled with food, monster pieces, and wood were departing and passing by others coming to deliver treasures from lands across the sea. It was late in the morning and expectedly busy, with sailors and fisherman crawling about like ants.

Noah found the warehouse with the seagull, but he didn’t approach, not while visible, and not without giving it a look around. He scanned the area, searching for signs of traps or an ambush. If any traps were set inside, they’d most likely be set around the doors and activate when he opened or stepped through them. There was an open window thirty feet up, the second most likely place and his only way in. It required him to climb up onto the roof of an adjacent building, where he summoned his clone and had it jump into the open window and climb amongst the rafters. It was dark inside, and he couldn’t see, hear, or feel anything through the clone, but from his perch outside, nothing appeared to pass through it. He jumped into the window and went no farther than the frame. No traps activated. Sunlight streamed through him at full brightness, and he scanned the warehouse for signs of another presence. It was full of barrels and chests just coming in from across the sea or soon to be loaded.

"Hello? Is anyone here?" he asked through his clone, standing several feet away. No response. "I’m here to pick up a package for Madam Cyrilo. Speak up." Nothing. It appeared he had arrived before the seller, excellent. He moved into the darkest shadow amongst the rafters, where he had a view of everything. There was no telling when this person would arrive, so he deactivated his spells to conserve his mana, while trusting the darkness to conceal him.

Several minutes later, he reactivated his invisibility as someone finally appeared in the window, and their appearance set off alarms for Noah. Dark cloak, porcelain mask; they were an associate of the man Noah had killed the previous night. Was this a set-up by Cyrilo? Had one of them tracked him down to avenge his comrade? The royal executioner called these folks the Harajin, and considering the response it brought, Noah knew it would be bad to be seen with this man. Should he bail and risk Cyrilo fulfilling her threat? Or make contact and risk a fight? After mulling it over, Noah decided to see how this masked man would act.

The stranger looked around from the rafters as Noah had done and could detect no one else in the warehouse. He then dropped down to the ground and stood in the corner near the door. Was he planning to ambush whoever came through the door? He didn’t appear to have a weapon in hand. They both waited in the darkness, Noah testing the man’s patience. After a while, he deemed it safe enough to make contact. He summoned his clone and left it in his spot while he climbed away through the rafters. His mana flowed through the wooden beams, keeping them making any sounds. Once a safe distance away, he spoke through his clone with a deepened voice, one rehearsed enough to sound natural.

"Are you here to make a trade?"

The man became tense, his head darting back and forth in search of the voice and settling on the clone. "Who are you?" he asked.

"I was sent here to pick up a potion in exchange for a scroll. Are you here to deliver it?"

"I don’t know what you are talking about. Identify yourself!"

"My name doesn’t matter, I just need to take the potion and give it to Cyrilo. Do you have it or not?"

"I will only give it to her, no one else."

Noah conjured his bow and shot the man with an invisible arrow. It was planted in his thigh, prompting him to curse in pain and drop to his knees. He stared at the wound, feeling the arrow but not seeing it, then gasping as it seemingly materialized out of thin air. "Hand it over or I’ll loot it from your corpse. I’m just going to take it to Cyrilo."

The man paused, trying to steady the mental scale he was using to weigh his options. He gripped the wound to slow the bleeding and try to ease some of his pain. "Do I have your word?"

"Yes," Noah replied. The man slowly reached into his robe and pulled out a ceramic bottle, then set it on the floor. His gloves, now bloody, left several red smears on the bottle. Noah tossed Cyrilo’s scroll onto the floor by the man’s feet. Wrapped in his mana, it didn’t appear until it hit the ground. "There is your payment. Now exit through the door and close it behind you."

"I can’t walk."

"You can limp."

With a suppressed growl of pain, he snapped the shaft of the arrow but did not remove it, out of fear of bleeding out. He pushed himself up onto his feet and limped to the door. He managed to get outside and closed the door behind him. After a few minutes, Noah climbed down from his perch and collected the bottle. Hopefully, this was what Cyrilo wanted. Should he give it to her so easily? Try to extort her? Either way, if there was one thing he had learned since coming to this world, it was to get potions appraised as soon as possible.

He left the warehouse and headed in the direction of the Knight’s Sheath. However, rather than walking through the streets, he was moving through the dark alleys, many of which were occupied by the homeless. He got a tail within minutes, some mangey thief, and once Noah reached a quiet area, he made his move. He cast both his spells and stepped out of reach of the man’s dagger. The blade passed through his clone without any resistance. The man didn’t understand what was going on, but his adrenaline wouldn’t let him stop to ponder, and he began swinging wildly at the clone. Nothing he did, no matter how he tried, inflicted any damage, as the real Noah was standing several feet away, waiting for this thief to tire. The foolish fish had taken the bait, but not until its fins went slack would he reel it in. With every attempt, the thief became more agitated, unable to understand what was happening and why his blade wasn’t harming Noah. It was when he finally stopped to catch his breath that Noah stepped forward and lopped off his head.

Noah deactivated both spells and then reactivated his invisibility. He crouched down, placed his hand on the now cooling body, and summoned his clone. He felt it once again, foreign mana from the man latching onto him and shrouding his body like a nasty odor. Or perhaps that was just the smell of the corpse. This guy and his ratty clothes stank to high heaven. Noah’s clone appeared, giving him the appearance of the slain man.

"Now we’re talking."

It was confirmed: he could now take on the appearance of other people. The mana use was heavy, taking three times as much as his usual clone, and killing people each time could get him in trouble, but it was worth it to know that his magic still had room to grow. Whether he had more tricks waiting to be discovered or his magic would evolve on its own, that potential was priceless. Now to experiment.

Just like the previous night, he could not separate from his clone, nor could he dispel it simply by covering his eye. He tried to remove the illusionary shirt he was wearing, but the spell refused to be altered. Normally, removing clothes or drawing weapons was within his clone’s capabilities, so either that would change in time as he’d train and experiment, or this wasn’t a clone at all, but a third type of illusion he could create, one with its own rules. He looked at his hands, now hands that he did not recognize, and brought them to his face, covering both eyes at once. Whenever he tried it before, all it did was activate or terminate both of his spells simultaneously. Maybe… no. He lowered his hands to find that the illusion was still active, even though his spells had ended.

‘Damn. Will I really have to wait for my mana to hit zero for this spell to release? After last night, that’s not really something I want to be stuck with. Maybe if I just repeat the process, that’ll undo it.’

He covered his left eye with his hand, and to his surprise, he returned to his original appearance. So casting his invisibility spell undid the illusion? A welcome mystery. While still invisible, he put his foot on the dead body and conjured the illusion once more, no issues. He released his invisibility and recast it, and the illusion was dispelled.

"That’s one issue out of the way." Like the spell, his bitter mood from dealing with Cyrilo came to an end. There it was, that spark of excitement, pushing the shadows from his mind. He savored it as much as he could, like the meager sunlight in winter.

Now that he had a sense of how to use the illusion, it was time to put it to good use. But first, this body had to be dealt with. Noah pulled out his bottle of high-proof liquor and poured it on the severed head, then lit it with his flint and steel. The flames wouldn’t remove the evidence, just disfigure the face so that it wouldn’t be recognized.

Disguised, he left the alleys and made his way through town, soon arriving at an apothecary shop he had passed on his way to the docks. Cyrilo told him that the potion would immediately draw the attention of the authorities, but this time, Noah could make a proper escape. He had been in these shops several times since arriving in this world, and they were all the same. The walls were lined with shelves of merchandise, mostly jars of ground up herbs and potions, while various plants hung from the ceiling to dry. Behind the counter, an old man was working a mortar and pestle the size of a punch bowl, with biceps that shamed most of the blacksmiths Noah had encountered so far.

"Can I help you?" he asked. He looked uncertain as he sized Noah up, but his disheveled appearance would naturally bring such mistrust.

Noah laid out all of his ceramic bottles on the counter, including the one he had received in the warehouse, six in total. Each had a different label written in an unknown language, except for the warehouse potion. "I pulled these off a body earlier this morning and want to know what they are."

The man got up from his seat with a grunt and came over to examine the bottles. "Well, judging by the ceramics, I’d say western Ezeria." Noah vaguely recalled the name. It was a nation to the southeast, across the sea.

The apothecary uncorked one of them and gave it a whiff. "I’m detecting filo berries, fermented lizard blood, some keel mushrooms, and a hint of… rose cactus. This is a slow-acting health potion." He studied a second. "Hmm, smoky, with hints of melted fat. I’d say honey root, dried over a cooking fire, with malin sage and water. A second healing potion, faster acting." The third: "Scorpion venom, mixed with velmon fruit juice, a bit of… harken, and some… camel urine. This is a paralyzing agent." The fourth, he described as musty with the scent of desert flowers, cactus juice, wildebeest eyes, and ash, all ingredients for a deadly potion, and the fifth bottle was the antidote, but when he came to Cyrilo’s potion, the old man grimaced. "I’ve never smelled something like this before. It would take time and money to research."

Noah smelled the mysterious potion and he too was thrown for a loop. It was a smell that came out at first as subtle, then, once it filled his nose, there was a sharpness that made him twitch. Organic, metallic, chemical, it seemed like a combination of all three and yet different from all of them.

"I’ll pass. Anything else you can tell me?"

"Well all these potions here are used almost exclusively by the Harajin. The bottle shape is their handiwork and they’re labeled with some code they use in the field."

"What are the Harajin?"

The man began examining the bottles once more. "Long ago, a plague swept through Ezeria, one that rotted the body inside and out. People began wearing masks to protect themselves from the disease, hide their deformed faces, or even commit crimes. Eventually, the citizens banished the infected, casting them out into the desert to die. Those that did not succumb to the disease or the desert heat learned to survive amongst the dunes. They formed clans of cutthroats and thieves, living off those who entered their domain. Legends were born of masked marauders, appearing like a sandstorm and then vanishing before their victims even knew what happened, leaving bodies utterly drained of blood. Their skills and reputation have only grown with the passage of time."

"Would you be interested in buying these five?"

The man spat on the floor. "Nothing good comes from being associated with the Harajin. Throw them in the gutter, preferably far away from me."

Noah bought some herbs and potions and left the shop, then ducked into a nearby alley. Not all of his questions were answered, but the scales had been tipped.

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