James felt weakened and slightly hollow after he had given the blessing, but it was no worse than that experience had always felt.

  [Sufficient experience accrued. Blessing of the Fisher King leveled up!]

  That’s nice, he thought dimly. His gaze flitted down to his mother’s face, but her eyelids remained stubbornly closed. Well, so much for that…

  There might have been a slight improvement in her pulse and her breathing following his blessing. Then again, it might just as well have been his imagination.

  “Do you think it worked?” Mina asked quietly.

  James clenched his eyes shut. He could feel a headache coming on. With an annoyingly fatiguing effort, he gave his head the slightest shake.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Mina placed her hand on James’s brow, and his oncoming headache instantly felt marginally more distant. He managed a smile.

  “It’s okay.”

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Frustrated,” James said. “On the bright side, I did feel a headache coming on, but I think your touch drove it away.”

  He sensed her smiling, without opening his eyes. His sensory abilities were at the level where he could recognize the movement of her facial muscles even as transmitted by vibrations down her neck, through her shoulder and arm, and into his head via her hand.

  She leaned in and kissed his forehead just to the side of where her palm touched, and he opened his eyes so that he could try to memorize her new face.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked. “Before I go back to check on our son?” She pursed her lips—an expression she had always been prone to when upset or worried, but one which now inflamed his desire to protect her more than it had before. It was as if the System had reshaped her face to better provoke sympathy, admiration, and affection by its very structure, in a way that James did not understand.

  “Yes, actually,” James said after a moment. “Could you open the window? And this evening, it would be great if you could help prop me up, and maybe I can tell stories to the kids after dinner. You guys can get some use of me that way, at least.” He grimaced.

  I really am very annoyingly useless right now. But at least I’m probably healing faster thanks to Mina’s Zone of Enchantment.

  “I would be happy to open the window, skapi,” Mina said. “Are you hot? I could get you something cold to drink, too.”

  “Oh, no, I just have the Solar Recovery Skill, so direct sunlight might help me get stronger faster,” James explained.

  “Got it,” Mina said.

  She opened the window, asked James again if there was anything else she could do to make him more comfortable, and then left the room.

  Then the all-powerful Fisher King was there on his own, waiting for the sun to come out from behind a cloud, hoping that its rays would help boost his slow recovery.

  Aggravating, but there it was.

  If that didn’t work, James had other ideas for how he might continue to have agency without physically leaving this bed. After all, his Skills all seemed to work, other than the fact that some required him to move, like Lightning Strike.

  I can still fight and rule in other ways besides using my fists, he thought. I will not be defeated by a faceless System. Even now, every day, I grow a little bit closer to being a literal force of nature. That thought reminded him of something that was meant to be a daily chore, which he had not yet completed that day.

  James knew the Skill would take a lot out of him, especially after having already granted a costly blessing. Still, he had nothing much to lose by being weakened for a little while, and he wanted his aura to reach the land of the Keystone Gopher Tortoise as soon as possible. So, he used Dominion.

  As the power surged through him and then out of his body, the Fisher King allowed himself to lose consciousness.

  When he awakened, it was to the sensation of being shaken.

  James’s eyes fluttered open, and the sight that greeted him was slightly surreal. His mother, looking like death warmed over, was standing above him, holding his wrists and jerking his arms up and down like he was a slot machine.

  “I’m awake,” James said quietly. “I guess it worked.”

  “You guess what worked?” his mother asked. “No, wait, never mind that right now. We’re in danger. I was in the forest—don’t actually know how I got here, but it wasn’t a dream. I know that. I—”

  “Mom, slow down,” James said. “Whatever you’re worried about, we have time. If there was a disaster about to strike, it would have hit by now. You’ve been unconscious for a couple of days.”

  Zora stood still for a moment and processed that.

  “All right,” she said quietly. “Okay. So, the attack wasn’t imminent, at least. That’s not surprising. Still, the information I have to give you is certainly time-sensitive. Maybe you can tell me how we wound up in this condition, first—yes, I can tell you’re in bad shape, too, James.” She added that last in response to a slight twitch of surprise in James’s eyebrows. “The way your arms moved when I was shaking you wasn’t natural. I guess you suffered broken bones?”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “That’s right, Mom,” James said.

  “It was—wait, you were protecting me, weren’t you?” Her eyes had suddenly gone wide and glanced up and to the side in the expression James recognized as her remembering something.

  “That’s right,” James repeated, more gently this time. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. Mina and I did everything we could think of for you. But please try to slow down and not move too much. The System attacked us directly.”

  “It was because of that god, then,” his mother said, frowning. “How inconsiderate of him.”

  James sighed. “Of course you knew. When were you going to tell me?”

  “My patron, Thoth, told me what was happening in a multilayered vision conveyed through a magic mirror,” Zora replied. “He did that, both because he considered it essential for me to know, and because direct communication about this was liable to lead to—well, exactly what you experienced. What we experienced. Bringing down the wrath of the System. Because it doesn’t like when gods break the rules they all set out together. Were there other casualties? Or damage to the Kingdom?” Her voice was calm, businesslike. As if she had not just awakened from a coma-like state.

  “Not really,” James said after a moment. “A few deaths, but no one we know. Some minor injuries that are no doubt healed already. Mostly, the damage was contained to the area just around Vidarr and myself.”

  “I ask, because we might be able to ask the god whose fault this is for some form of indemnity. Whatever deal he proposed to you, him bringing down the System’s hammer wasn’t part of it, was it?”

  That was just what it was like, James thought. He had experienced the pressure from above as if a giant hammer slammed down on him. It was not an explosion so much as a massive physical blow.

  “What do you know about the way the System’s attack worked, anyway?” James asked slowly.

  “Probably less than you do, after a couple of days of you consulting Anansi about it,” his mother replied, shrugging wearily.

  “But assuming I hadn’t been able to do that?” James said. “Because maybe my connection has been busy laying eggs at this critical time.”

  “Then I would say that as far as I know, it’s literally a kind of metaphysical hammer. It alters reality. Destroys the target completely.”

  “I wasn’t destroyed, though,” James said, feeling slightly foolish.

  “You weren’t the target,” Zora replied.

  Well, duh…

  “No, but I figured I was part of the target area…”

  “The target was the single individual who was violating the System’s rules,” Zora said firmly. “Everything else was just collateral damage. The System was actively trying to ensure that Vidarr did not escape, so the attack was over a larger area than just his body, but almost all of the force was aimed at his body specifically.”

  “You’re not exactly filling me with confidence, Mom.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, shaking her head. “What does matter is what I needed to tell you already. Now that I know what happened, there’s no reason to wait any longer.”

  James gave the smallest nod of his head—really, a tremendous victory of mind over matter, since his muscles were barely more powerful than jelly at this point.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “I caught a spy—an enemy scout—on the outskirts of the Kingdom. I captured him, and I interrogated him.”

  “How did he manage to stay hidden from my powers?” James asked, immediately curious how that was possible—and whether there was some advanced Stealth Skill he could try to steal.

  “He stood just outside the border. He could feel where your aura began.”

  “That’s probably a common ability for scouts,” James said, thinking aloud.

  “For lots of people,” Zora replied immediately. “Some people won’t notice it, but that also depends on the quality of the Ruler’s aura. Yours is extremely aggressive. If you step into it and you’re unwelcome, you’ll feel an intense pressure. Something like that can also be felt, to a lesser degree, from outside the actual radius of your power.”

  James nodded.

  “Well, that has its pros and cons, son, that’s all,” his mother replied lightly.

  “Right. Well, what did the scout tell you?”

  “It’s more what he showed me—and what he has attempted to resist showing me. I captured his soul and interrogated him mainly by forcing him to show me memories.” She reached into the pocket of the robe she was wearing and pulled out a gemstone.

  But James ignored the shiny rock and just stared at his mother for a moment.

  I think I like this woman, came Roscuro’s voice in James’s ear. You had to get this darkness inside of you from somewhere, after all.

  Well, I guess pulling someone’s soul from their body and interrogating them when they don’t have access to their usual defenses does kind of sound like me, James acknowledged grudgingly. It was still a little creepy to hear about from her, though.

  “What did you see?” he finally asked aloud.

  “Better if I show you,” Zora replied. “You can judge for yourself what you think the scout—or more likely his mistress, the Panther Queen—is covering up.”

  “Okay,” James said.

  His mother placed the gemstone into James’s right hand, she took his left hand in her right, and then she clasped both his right hand and the gemstone in her left.

  “I’m going to pull you into the gem with me and him,” she said quietly. “Don’t resist, or I won’t be able to do it. I imagine the sensation will be much like moving through your Dreamspace.”

  James had questions, but this seemed like a good moment to learn by doing. Plus, he finally had the chance to accomplish something, albeit a passive activity, despite being confined to this bed.

  He gave the small nod that was all his body could produce at that moment, and then he felt a sudden sense of cold all around him, a feeling of something that was him, being pulled from his body and moved elsewhere. His instinct was to fight it, but of course, he didn’t.

  The world faded away and became a gray, swirling blur. It really was a bit like Dreamspace.

  James only felt the connection to his body very faintly, so much so that he almost could have forgotten it was there and believed himself to be a creature of pure spirit and Will.

  Then he heard his mother’s voice overlaid over the strange environment.

  “Bear in mind, as you observe the memories, that the scout’s last act when he thought he was about to die, was to send a final message warning the Queen about you…”

  As Zora spoke, the gray background began to dissolve, and another setting began to appear. James was not in the bedroom any longer.

  The environment that unfolded appeared to be a kind of dense tropical forest, which James knew was fairly common in Florida.

  In the distance, James heard drums pounding, a rhythmic beat that grew louder with each passing second.