(Dylan)

  Dylan had taken the last hour to shower and scrub off the caked layers of ash and dirt. He was pinker than usual thanks to sunburn, scalding water, and his exfoliation technique of scrubbing-till-it-hurt. A fresh set of clean, dry, and folded clothes waited for him on the bench just outside the shower. The first mate insisted that a deckhand remain posted outside the washroom to be sure no one disturbed him.

  After toweling off and getting dressed, he wiped the fog off the mirror. Running his fingers along his jawline, he inspected his beard—it was fuller than the last time he’d tried to grow it out.

  ‘Has it really been a decade?’ he wondered. The face staring back at him looked healthier than it had back then, leaner and more defined. His cheeks had lost their plumpness, and his face had shifted to a more rectangular shape, a clear departure from its usual rounded-square look.

  He finished up in the washroom and headed toward the top deck, the deckhand dutifully shadowing him. Halfway up the stairs, he sighed, a sneaking suspicion tugging at him. Had he forgotten something before getting cleaned up?

  Dylan spun around and said, “I’m not going to try to jump off the ship again, if that’s what the first mate is worried about…”

  “Of course not, captain.” The deckhand didn’t sound convinced, and to be fair, Dylan wasn’t either. Over the past week, he’d done some things no one in their right mind would even try.

  He reached the top deck, noticing the clouds drifting at a glacial pace. That’s when it hit him—he’d forgotten to instruct the first mate to head back to Nightshade. Dylan frowned. The ship hadn’t moved this entire time.

  “And I thought I took long showers,” Eury said with a hint of a grin as he passed her on his way to speak with the first mate.

  “All you initiates take long showers,” Athrax grumbled from his spot on the railing. He seemed to really enjoy gazing out at the jungle from up high. That or feeling the breeze on his face as wind gusts passed them by.

  Dylan focused on First Mate Echo, who was speaking with Runemist as he approached from behind.

  “Ma’am, does any of your team have a looting ability?”

  Immediately, Athrax’s ears perked up, as if someone had just said his favorite word in the entire world. His clawed hand shot up as he bounced off the railing.

  “Oi! I’ve got a looting ability,” the old soldier said, jogging over to join the conversation.

  “What needs lootin’?” Athrax asked. Dylan had never seen his ears so… erect. Even his tail wiggled ever so slightly behind him in excitement.

  “Oh please, someone tell me we’re going down to loot the bloody kaiju,” Athrax said, looking back and forth between Runemist and the first mate. He was practically hopping from one foot to the other.

  “That’s exactly what I wanted to discuss with Runemist,” the first mate said. “I wanted to know if it was a possibility before presenting the option to the captain.”

  “The captain?” Athrax asked, confused.

  “Dylan,” Runemist clarified, gesturing toward a now fully dressed Dylan.

  The first mate spun around. “Ah captain! There you are.”

  Athrax quickly turned to Dylan and asked, “Can we go loot the arc beetle?” His brown eyes gleamed with puppy-like excitement and hope. Dylan didn’t have the heart to say no to them.

  Before Dylan could respond, the first mate raised a bony fist to his mouth.

  “Ahem,” he said, hinting at the need for more decorum in the old soldier’s request.

  Athrax was quick to pick up and try again. “Can we go loot the arc beetle… captain?”

  The first mate seemed appeased, but Dylan still looked to Runemist before answering, unsure if he was supposed to say yes or no.

  “Don’t look at me. It’s your ship.” She excused herself from the conversation before anyone could saddle her with more responsibility. Not that he blamed her. Keeping them all alive, him especially, proved to be more than a full-time job.

  He noticed the shift in her attitude from earlier that morning, when she regarded him as nothing more than a glorified figurehead. The fact a certain kaiju carcass lay smoldering in the distance and he’d somehow recovered the skill book might have had something to do with it. She was in a good mood and he saw no reason to spoil it.

  “Then, yes. Let’s go loot the arc beetle!”

  Athrax threw his head back and howled into the sky, forcing everyone with ears to wince and cover them.

  “Sorry,” he said, looking uncharacteristically bashful. “I really like the looting part.”

  Dylan’s stomach lurched on its own again, reminding him there was a long journey back to Nightshade with only a single loaf between then and now.

  “Wait, how long is this going to take?” he asked.

  “We’re not harvesting it,” Athrax said quickly. “That’d take weeks, but looting abilities only need a few minutes at most.”

  “Okay, then let’s go,” Dylan said, excited to see what the kaiju’s corpse might hold.

  “Yes!” Athrax said, doing a fist pump.

  “Very good, sir.” The first mate gave Dylan a nod and swiftly made his way toward the bridge. A couple of minutes later, they were on their way to the arc beetle crash site.

  It didn’t take long before they saw the arc beetle’s open grave—a massive black, iridescent shell catching glimmers of light in the early afternoon. It had crashed into a small clearing, its impact toppling several trees that now lay scattered and broken under its sagging frame. From the ship’s vantage, Dylan could easily make out the wide swath of flattened jungle foliage encircling the fallen kaiju.

  The first mate appeared outside the open bridge door and called down to Dylan.

  “We’re right above it now, sir. Should we—”

  He stopped mid-sentence, watching as Athrax, another of his passengers, leaped overboard. With a weary sigh, he shook his head, his shoulders sagging in resignation.

  Dylan, the twins, and Eury rushed to the railing to watch the old soldier fall into the forest below. A warm elven hand slipped into his, and he turned to see who it was.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Quinten appeared next to him with a mischievous smile and asked, “Wana beat him down?” There was a twinkle in his eye, but before Dylan could answer, he summoned a door in front of them.

  Dylan let the easygoing elf pull him through the portal, and from personal experience, he knew it’d take the old soldier nine seconds before he’d reach the ground.

  Quinten released him after they both stepped through the portal near the kaiju’s head. Its shiny carapace had survived the crash intact, though the surrounding clearing told a different story.

  Trees near the impact zone lay flattened outward in chaotic arcs, broken trunks jutting like splinters. Its bulbous abdomen stretched into the dense jungle behind it, where crushed foliage and uprooted trees painted a picture of its devastating descent. Mostly transparent wings lay splayed out from under the elytra—it really had died midair. The only gore on the ground came from the shattered portions of its head, now resting in the small opening of the devastated wood-meadow.

  He looked up at the approaching howl just in time to witness an honest-to-god three-point superhero landing. The ground cratered from the impact, sending a shockwave that stirred the fallen leaves and cracked branches beneath his feet. Dylan’s wavy hair rustled in the sudden gust as tingles trickled down his spine.

  “Wow…”

  Athrax walked up and out of the crater, glancing back up at the ship, confused. “How’d you beat me down?” His suspicion turned into a frown as he noticed Quinten and said, “Cheater…”

  The easygoing elf gave him a wink, hopping up onto the trunk of a fallen tree. Debris from the crash sprawled everywhere under and around the kaiju’s rear half, in what was once dense jungle. “So, how’s your looting ability work? It’s not like P’reslen’s, is it? Not sure we could toss this bloke, let alone pick him up.”

  “It’s frost and…” Athrax’s voice trailed off.

  “Sorry, mate. Didn’t catch that last one.”

  “It’s frost and chaos,” Athrax muttered, lifting a clawed finger at Quinten. “And don’t start on the bloody influence. First ability and all that, got no choice in the matter.”

  Quinten held up both hands. “Wouldn’t dream of it, mate.”

  Dylan climbed onto one of the larger fallen trees, rising shakily as he found his balance. “Which one’s the influence, and what’s wrong with it?” he asked.

  “You don’t know about chaos magic?” Athrax asked.

  “Bloke doesn’t know about anything, mate,” Quinten said. He gestured toward Dylan as he effortlessly balanced on the uneven surface of the tree. “He’s fresh off the proverbial astralship, remember?”

  Athrax grunted. “I know that… But figured everyone knew about the basics.”

  “Nah, apparently Dirt doesn’t have magic,” Quinten said with a shrug.

  “Bollocks—magic’s everywhere. Not like you can turn it off and on like a faucet,” Athrax said, stepping over broken branches as he moved back to take in the whole beetle.

  “Guys, I’m right here,” Dylan said, gesturing at his feet.

  Athrax didn’t look away from his prize and said, “Chaos orbs and glyphs are the cheapest for a reason—they’re unreliable. Nothing worse than not being able to count on abilities.” He idly kicked another fallen branch aside as he spoke.

  Quinten waved a dismissive hand at Athrax. “Don’t listen to him, mate. Chaos’ not all bad—just a bit spicy, yeah?” he said, gingerly hopping over three freshly fallen trunks to stand beside Dylan.

  “Oh, yeah?” Athrax asked. “How many chaos glyphs did you use for your abilities, pretty boy?”

  Quinten leaned in to tap Dylan’s arm with the back of his hand, smiled, and said, “He thinks I’m pretty.”

  “Well?” Athrax asked, still sizing the beetle up as he strode through a tangle of crushed vines, hacking at them with his machete.

  “None,” Quinten sighed and admitted. “But that’s not because chaos magic is terrible—”

  “Come on, even the League knows it’s trash,” Athrax said. “You’ve no idea the mountains of paperwork they make adventurers with chaos magic slog through.” The old soldier crouched before leaping to an open spot near the head, landing with a squelch in a puddle of gore. He growled in disgust, scraping the mess off his mismatched boots against a nearby branch.

  “Why do they have to do more paperwork?” Dylan asked.

  “Because the League doesn’t trust their own scans.”

  ‘Scans?’ Dylan’s heart went from chilled to panicked in one word.

  “Soon as they find out you’ve got a Chaos orb, they drop the scans,” Athrax said, walking back toward the thorax. “Chaos passives muck up their System too much. Instead, they stick you with piles of paperwork. Bloody waste of time, if you ask me.” He stopped near the beetle’s unfurled wings, where the splintered remains of a tree jutted out from underneath, like a broken rib.

  “What? Why… how—when do they scan you?” Dylan asked, unable to decide which question to ask first. His mind raced back to when they stabbed his hand to collect his “signal”.

  ‘Dammit, do they already know? Have they sent assassins? Is dark side murder-batman on his way to kill me?’ Dylan’s mind raced as he scanned the jungle. But all he saw was a dead kaiju, two members of Tome & Key, and a bunch of fallen trees.

  “Easy now, mate,” Quinten said. “They only take those kinds of scans when you register for your adventuring license.”

  “What about when you register as a refugee and get a League card?” Dylan asked. “They took my signal.”

  “Nah, all they have is a bit of genetic code that lets ‘em find you if you go missing,” Quinten said. “Besides, you’ve got nothing to worry about, mate. Unless you’ve gone and gobbled up a restricted orb.” He chuckled at his own joke.

  ‘Fuck.’

  Dylan had gleaned two key pieces of information from that conversation. If he wanted to be an adventurer, which he did, he’d need to register with the League to get his adventuring license. That would pose a problem now that he knew there was a magic scan. He’d need to figure out more about the scan and a way around it. That or get a Chaos orb, which didn’t sound too difficult, since no one wanted them.

  “Alright, enough yapping. Let’s get to looting.” Athrax cracked his cybernetic knuckles. “Stand back, I’m going to flash freeze the whole thing, and then it’s going to shatter into pieces.

  “It’s probably a good thing you’re here, Quinten. Each frozen shard can turn into a piece of loot, and this bug is going to have loads of shards.” Athrax flashed them a wicked grin. Dylan recognized that look—it was the same one he’d seen back in the engineer’s workshop with all the bombs.

  The old soldier approached the kaiju corpse and pressed his hand against its black shell. From his touch, a sheet of ice spread outward, crackling softly as it encased the remains. Dylan watched in awe as the frost consumed everything in under a minute.

  “Now, for my favorite part,” Athrax said, rubbing his palms together. They sparked with anticipation.

  Leaning back on one foot, the old soldier karate kicked the damn thing. His foot smashed through the once-durable black plating, and the frozen shell began to collapse inward. Shards of ice cascaded down in a chain reaction, picking up speed until only a pile of glimmering fragments remained.

  “Give it a couple minutes to sublimate and we’ll get in there to see what she dropped,” Athrax said.

  Dylan watched as the shards slowly shrank, vapor rising into the air. He made sure to stand upwind, trying to avoid breathing in looted arc beetle if he could help it.

  His mind raced, fascinated by the process. Normally, things went from solid to liquid to gas, but these shards weren’t actually ice—they were frozen arc beetle. He was still grappling with how magic had upended his understanding of basic physics.

  Athrax grunted. It sounded like a disappointed grunt, but it was hard to tell—all of Athrax’s grunts seemed to be disappointed.

  “What’s wrong?” Dylan asked him. ‘Was the corpse too big?’ he wondered.

  “I thought there’d be… more.”

  “I haven’t seen anything yet,” Quinten said. “Just evaporating kaiju. You sure you did it right?”

  “Yeah, it worked,” Athrax said. “That’s just the chaos bit. There can be loads of items of low to mid value, a few items of high value, or one item worth a fortune. I usually get loads of items.”

  The three of them waited for the beetle to finish evaporating before climbing over the maze of fallen trees and debris in search of loot. After half an hour, Athrax was the first to find something.

  “Divine Mother above,” Athrax gasped.

  Both Quinten and Dylan looked up from their search to see the clear glass ball cradled in Athrax’s hands. To Dylan, it looked like an ordinary crystal ball, but Quinten’s sudden interest hinted it was much more.

  “Is that…?” Quinten asked.

  Athrax nodded, cradling the orb delicately. “Let’s see whose face is on it,” he said, tilting it to peer inside.

  He let out a very disappointed grunt. “Aw, come on!”

  “Who’s on it?” Quinten asked, nimbly hopping from one fallen tree to the next, as effortlessly as if it were a child’s game of hopscotch.

  Quinten darted over to Athrax, who shoved the ball unceremoniously into his hands. He glanced at it and burst into laughter, his shoulders shaking with the effort.

  “It’s not funny,” Athrax said with a sour face. “We should charge him for it.”

  Quinten kept laughing, his amusement growing with every glance at Athrax’s inconsolable disappointment. Once he managed to compose himself, he made his way over to Dylan, still grinning.

  “What did you find?” Dylan asked.

  “An orb,” Athrax said, letting out a soft growl.

  “What kind of orb?” Dylan asked.

  Athrax ignored him, clambering over a tangled pile of fallen logs as he scoured the site for more loot. To Dylan, it was clear the old soldier couldn’t accept that the orb might be the only prize—he seemed more determined than ever to find something, anything, else to claim as loot.

  Still chuckling, Quinten walked up to Dylan with the clear orb. Inside, he could make out an etched, three-dimensional rendering of someone’s face.

  “It’s a Dylan orb,” Quinten said as he held out the mostly see-through orb.