John feels obliged to do so.

The question stemmed more from fear of what would happen to his people than to him or his chances at obtaining that title… but even considering it—lying to his new benefactor, the one who may well have kept his only connection to Earth safe—put enough guilt in the Gamer to bar that path.

“What is wrong, child? Think we cannot keep the Peak unoccupied? When at last we’ve opened all of Vantage to its people, the truth shall surely-”

“I... I can’t get my people home right now,” John confessed, and every human present stopped on a dime to look his way. He met their gazes in turn and activated his aura to try and bolster their trust. “I think I have a way—the best way, maybe the only way—but it needs the Throne... it needs me to become King of this Kingdom, or city, or whatever you think your whole universe really is.”

A brief confusion faded into well-settled skepticism. Golgon understood what a “King” was, now; he understood what John wanted.

“I don’t want to keep you from doing any of the things you want; Hell, I don’t even know how to govern, let alone govern a pile of all kinds of species living over a sea of poison air, let alone...” John waved his arms all around him to emphasize. “I want to help you help the people here, Golgon... but I don’t think I can save my own people without taking this ‘Peak’ title, at least long enough to get to the next Kingdom.”

The chamber remained still. Hurk held fistfuls of roots; heads poked out from Miles’ curtain; and the kitchen gently crackled as Tara continued to nurture a flame underneath a plain pot of water.

“You can’t let him do this… right?” Cidi hissed.

“I want to get my people home.”

“Right?” The young Dorani stared with disbelief at Golgon as the elder continued to not respond.

“So soon introduced and already settled upon leaving… perhaps the Humans always leave,” Hurk said as he paused his harvest, “and in this you are no different...” His nearly permanent smile waned, and he quietly put down the fistfuls of zokosh he held.

Behind Hurk, on the other side of the portal John had opened, the bushes near the edge trembled without witness.

John returned his focus on Golgon and stood as he addressed his host. “I’m sorry that this is how it is... I can only give you my word that I will do my best to let you do your best for Vantage... even as the new King.”

The rustling grew, but only one Hospitaler thought to look away from the intense duel of words.

“That would be a daunting promise to trust from my most cherished friends,” Golgon growled as he flapped his arms in a nervous tick, letting the bok in his wings click as he did so, “a promise I may only believe from my family, were they still alive… so why then would a young usurper, who reveals his intent only after learning of our plans, convince me any better, young… usurper… John the Newman?”

“… Because we’re each other’s best hope... best shot at getting anything we want.”

The rustling broke as the bushes were pushed aside by a different sort of Lawman ducking into view. The plants John had opened the portal over had been no taller than three or four feet; the Lawman, conversely, stood over six feet tall even without her armor and nearly crossed seven with it. As opposed to the bulbous, heavy armor of the lowly Braves or Hammers, hers was a slimmer build supplemented, seemingly in excess, with clattering metal belts that covered her torso in soft loops and pouches. Each container on her seemed filled to the brim with small, bronze-colored plates of metal, each with one blue-glowing rune or another printed on its face and each within reach of her lithe, golden arms. Her visor was another striking change: rather than a closed helmet, she covered only her bald scalp, nose, and mouth; her giant, orange-glowing eyes were bare as they looked around in plain confusion.

She moved to get underneath the strange disk in the crop fields... and she rose up through the tunnel. She perhaps expected to find a solid surface or to observe how this phenomenon was both moving and uprooting small circles of crops prior to her arrival; either reason would have satisfied her curiosity, now that she was wading through crops to find a hungry thief. Instead, she rose to put a whole half of her armor’s weight into some underground den... and within, her guardsman eyes quickly picked out no less than three faces belonging to the ranks of the terrorist group the Bitter Nines. Her keen mind quickly put together where she was half-standing... but remained stuck on how.

But gravity didn’t let the Lawman appreciate the mystery. It took hold and pulled her upper-body down and dragged her legs forward on the other side of Vantage; her feet, dragged up as she tried to fly with her armor in response, kicked up as she launched herself out of the fall. Direction became confused to the armor, and it obeyed her order, driving her shoulder-first into the cold, stone floor of the underground cave. Her drawn weapons--two bladed, vicious-looking clubs--smashed into the floor near Hurk’s feet.

The entire mob of criminals and humans went from stunned silence into a mild panic; the Lawman, finally subjected to only one gravity, was dragged away by her wings until she flew just out of Hurk's lunging grip. Her wide eyes grew only wider as she saw more—more human imposters, more criminals wanted for **** of her brothers-in-arms!—and her voice was a shrill scream as she tried to figure a way out. Her eyes went to the portal that brought her here, but John snapped the portal shut once he realized what had come through it. The Lawman found her new heading then, spotting the widest tunnel mouth that John had been led down to get here, and shot towards it on fluttering, golden wings. John only barely glanced at the unarmed Lawman’s information card before striking out.

Lawman Keeper
<The Lawmen of Vantage>
Level 19 Detective
HP: 820/820
MP: 401/401
Stats: Str 19 (39) Agi 16 (36) End 23 Int 36 Wis 24 Cha 19 Lib 59
Status Effects: Lawman Network (Access Level: Keeper), Pierce Illusions
Qualities: None
R/S: +0
A Dorani named Zalla the Insatiable who is 46 years old. An Eighth Disk resident, she was stationed on the Plate due to political fallout involving her extended family on the Sixth Disk, though Talla only barely grasps anything except that her superiors seem eager for her to work the lowliest, crappiest beats on Vantage. She is considered Dorani, but only barely, and gave birth to a daughter back when she lived with her lover. She has since grown distant from both.

The baffled Lawman flew for her escape, her mind still bewildered by how and where she had arrived, before she felt the blows rain.

Your serpent’s lunge deals 603 subdual damage to Lawman Keeper.
Your quickcasted serpent’s lunge deals 603 subdual damage to Lawman Keeper.

Lawman Keeper has been knocked ****!

Lawman Keeper defeated!
+1,913XP
+1 suit of Dorani Lawman Keeper armor
+14 rune plates (Rune of Binding)
+22 rune plates (Rune of Harm)
+9 rune plates (Rune of Healing Touch)

DING! You’re now level 30!
+100HP
+100MP
+10 stat points
+2 paragon points

QUEST COMPLETE! "Breathe"! You raised your maximum HP to 2,500 or greater!
+40,000XP
+Gamer's Body limit raised to 2,500HP

“A KEEP... er?” came the amazed declaration of Hurk as the familiar armor, and its host of rune plates, suddenly vanished. In their stead was a gray body wrapped in utilitarian underwear… and without its artificial wings, said body arced downward to crash onto and break an azure table where a flirtatious Hospitaler and Confessor had been “enjoying” their meal.

“A Lawman, here?!” cried Cidi, and at last came the only statement that could **** Miles to pop out of her most recent lover.

As if on cue, the bizarre warrior’s curtains flapped open, revealing a glistening, nude Miles with her soaked cock still bobbing and a grand mixture of cum—hers and others’—lubricating her thighs. Miles swallowed something voluminous before shouting, “Where?!”

The shocking look of Miles wasn’t enough to put away Cidi’s fright; she quickly pointed to the **** infiltrator, and Miles was halfway there in the next beat.

“Wait!” John blinked into Miles’ path with his arms outstretched. Miles slowed, but her determination was worn on her brow. “There’s no need to kill her! I already knocked her out.”

Miles raised her head slightly as if to look past John. She looked between her leader and the human, unsure of how to proceed. “Do you think she got to make contact with her superiors?”

Hurk shook his head. “I… I didn’t even notice her. I thought it the wind billowing past, or… I’m… if I had been more careful….”

“She would do so at the speed of thought,” Golgon sighed as he approached the **** enemy, “but to tell them what? That she found us at the edge of the Plate? Let us pray she so misdirected them, child.”

“If we don’t kill her, we’ll need to keep her prisoner here until we’re done and… I mean, what if they can locate her?” Cidi urged. “The Lawman use the armor to communicate, but there’s plenty of secrets they don’t even tell the high families about how the Peak keeps them in line…”

“But we don’t need to kill her,” John insisted. “I looted the armor, it’s- look, it’s complicated, but it can’t transmit anything from where it is now, even if it wanted to.”

“Golgon, you can’t trust him now, can you?! Not after what he said- what if he is working for the Peak?!”

“Then I’ll cave in his skull,” Miles declared with her fists pounding into one another.

“Not likely,” scoffed several women in John’s retinue, earning a smirk from the rainbow-haired woman.

A tense five seconds passed without protest or answer… but none dared move, either, until Golgon finally took his place. “Alright, John the Newman… what would you have us do with her?” The old goblin-like gave John a cautious look…

… He’s testing me…? John contemplated the body… and nodded. “Well… she’s…” John unconsciously looked over at Tara… who was very consciously staring daggers at him.

<You’re going to brand her, aren’t you?> The Hellbat’s thoughts were projected hot into John’s brain; even if she doused her natural heat in the physical world, her words remained a cutting fire. <I’ve seen your little fuck palace, John, go ahead: add another one. She’s pretty in a weird, alien way, right?>

That’s… John couldn’t help but look at the Lawman: though taller than any woman John had bedded and lined with a human musculature throughout, she was indeed exotic and beautiful. Her breasts were human-enough, though he had not yet peeked under the chest-wrap that kept them pressed to her; she had five fingers on wide hands, a pinched rib cage that almost seemed cartoonish, and her face, large as it was, held the eyes too far apart, the nose too small, and was possessed of her light-gray skin. Blue lips remained parted as she gently breathed; a small, blue tongue eased through previously clenched teeth, completing her distinction from human. Like most of her people, she had no hair to speak of, and the cleft in her panties spoke of a reproductive system closer to Cidi than human: oddly small for her frame and probably irresistibly tight-

Focus, John.

<You’re not even denying it.>

“I have options,” John finally declared. “I just… need to confer with my fellow… mages.”

Some of the humans looked obviously confused; Golgon merely nodded, his eyes never leaving the would-be King.

Cidi seemed on the verge of tears. “What if… what if they’re already… on their way?”

“Fear not, little one,” Hurk urged, his sad smile remaining, “they would have come by now if that were true, yes? Trust our leader.” The giant looked to the old man with an intense question that was not returned, but he continued to reassure and pat Cidi until she complained and retired once more to her room.

Ten minutes later…

You added 10 to Endurance.

Achievement unlocked! “You didn’t hurt me. Nothing can stop me now.”!
You have gained 100 Endurance and maxed out the paragon talent “Inviolability”! But you know better than to test those limits, don’t you?
+10,000XP
+5 Endurance

BULGING BICEPS 1/2
You have inhumanly particular control of your muscles, though you can still eventually feel the effects of fatigue in terms of strength or duration of muscle use.
ABYSSAL DEPTH 3/3
+300MP. You now gain +8MP per point of intelligence and +4MP per point of Wisdom.

New paragon talents unlocked!
**** CASTING 0/5
You can overcast spells past the limits of your mana pool, albeit at a crippling cost. You can cast a spell for mana exceeding your current mana by 50% per point in this perk; however, doing so puts you in the negative twice as deep as it should, and you cannot cast any skills or spells, even free ones, until you reach at least a current mana of 0.
MAGE CIRCLE 0/3
You can borrow the mana pools of cooperative entities. You can so borrow for a single task or spell up to [your maximum mana pool] mana from each entity and from up to [perk level] entities.

“… Memory editing?” Tricia repeated.

After allocating his points, John had called a sort of “council” of his people that John trusted would be able to help him consider his options… or so he thought. The circle of discussion had been a small one, starting from John’s right and ringing the table: Tricia, Juniluny, Tara, and Rosa were brought in to opine. Durr the Wise had very bluntly confessed no familiarity with the topic of mind magic; Penelope had no interest in helping, despite her predicament; Yui only offered her disgust, accusing John of being a fascist and retiring to sulk in a corner the moment memory editing was mentioned (and so he didn’t dare bring up the Gamer’s Brand). The five now sat around a longer table upon which, bound with rope, their Lawman guest slept off John’s disabling effect.

Making sure to turn his language back to “just” English, John had laid out the untested option, of using those mind-altering powers that had seemed too morally dubious to use before… and just how untested they were. “Wouldn’t it work?” he urged. “We could make her think she found nothing instead of… you know… us. Maybe we make her think she found a hatch out there instead, and then they tear up their little garden looking for… us…?”

The Gorbachev tapped her chin as she met John’s searching gaze. She clearly hesitated to speak her mind, and John thought to urge her to-

“Of course that would work… if done by someone competent,” Juniluny loudly chastised, “and not by some miraculous moron meddling and messing mysterious minds!”

“Yeah, well, portals like mine are supposed to be hard for normal mages too, right?”

“Nothing you do should be as easy as it is,” Tara urged. “I guess I’m just surprised you didn’t fuck with some girl’s mind until now.” The Hellbat glanced at Tricia. “Or maybe…”

“I have not been…” Tricia trailed off her denial; the futility of doing so was obvious.

“So maybe he’s really good at this,” Tara smugly concluded.

“No one spoke to you, ****,” Juniluny shot back.

“Get stuffed, you fat little cunt,” Tara happily answered. “Only one of us is going to be stuck in that prison once we’re back on Earth… and it ain’t gonna be me.” Tara looked to John as if to get his affirmation on that much.

Yeah, but you don’t have to phrase it like… “Juniluny, you’re to treat Tara with respect,” he simply ordered.

The mortification on Snickerbottom’s face was more reward than Tara had anticipated.

“It’s true that your aptitude for high magic is impressive so far,” Tricia finally said, “but mentalists, psychomancers, and the various other branches and traditions of magic that have experimented in changing minds… the discipline is a difficult one, at least. It is an art of some finesse and one that is not practiced lightly. We don’t have the technology or models necessary to simulate a mind that you could practice-”

“It’ll be harder the longer we talk about it,” Rosa tersely interrupted. “Changing perceptions is easy, niño, but editing memories and thoughts? Editing who they are like you say you can do? That’s getting harder every minute you think about it.” The Spanish mage scoffed with a glance to the nearby Confessors, “If the Order could do that without problems, I wouldn’t have been stuck in that cell… I’d probably be polishing some statue of the Lady for the English.”

Tricia nodded. “The Order has to hire out experts for their memory edits, and even those constructs need to be carefully pulled together and organized… and the task becomes harder the more trained or resistant the mind proves. I mean, you saw it done once already.” The memory of the school, of what John did to it, stung the Gamer, but he nodded. “That collective hallucination was reduced to dreams no one would want to share, planting coincidences or half-remembered details that had to be left behind, all while a single, unified day was constructed between the mages to ensure uniformity in the delivery sys-”

“Do it anyways,” Juniluny finally interrupted.

“Don’t interrupt others,” John shot back, quieting the hobbit.

“I mean it! If you’re going to experiment, do it on a person who’ll be executed if you fail; that way, it’s a win-win. You get to learn the ropes, and that inbred flying squirrel gets his answer to a problem you made… for crops.”

“The little **** has a point,” Tara added with no lack of amusement. “I mean… it’s better than branding yet another free, thinking being, right?”

“Well, if this is actually a Kingdom, or permanent barrier rooted with an infinity gem, its denizens are most likely persistent illusory beings as well.”

“This again,” groaned Tara and Juniluny together, earning daggered stares from each other.

“The science is relatively clear on this,” Tricia bluntly replied.

Tara smiled bitterly at the Gorbachev. “How? Am I half-illusion to you?”

“You’ve augmented your soul by absorbing and assimilating an Abyssal entity’s soul, destroying it in the process of transforming yourself.” Tara blinked as Tricia continued, “In the event some manner of division were to be implemented, all that would occur is that a hellfire elemental would be created using the abstract concepts still imprinted on your soul, while the remains of your own soul would regrow the tainted portions then removed. I would need to check, but I believe it was a 1998 thesis on the so-called ‘Hellbat’ and other elemental-human hybrids that-”

Juniluny tried to interrupt, but her express orders from John prevented it. Instead, a pink-haired interruption took her place. “Are we still not going to give this Splice-looking lady something to wear besides her sweaty underwear?”

John glanced up at Rave with some sense of relief… and then felt like slapping himself. “Right! I was trying to remember what movie this lady reminded me of!” Somehow, Rave was still smirking through all this—unlike the leader of Collide, who continued to angrily sulk through whatever he did—and she seemed somehow too optimistic to be phased by even all this. John looked down at the inviting body laid out before him. “I’m going to put her back in her armor once we’ve… figured out what to do with her.”

“I could probably make better use of her equipment,” Tricia added.

“As could I,” Juniluny offered. John’s incredulous look begged her explanation, “I am ever more the scientist than your barbarous blonde bimbo buddy here! I’m proof of the ignorance of her ‘new’ Abyssal sciences!”

“Your very nature proves the contemporary theories!”

“We’ve got no time for this bougie bullshit argument.”

“So what are we doing with her finally?” Rave urged.

“One thing at a time!” John finally yelled with arms upraised, his eyes wide as the bickering threatened to continue. “Alright, first: mind magic. It’s what’s important right now. I’ve got no way to practice it, and none of you have before, right?”

For this alone, they unified to shake their heads. “That said,” Rave added, “I’ve heard some horror stories about amateurs working on living targets. You could spark all kinds of diseases and tumors in the brain if you fiddle with it too much.”

“If the alternative is to make her a ****, then just kill her; it’s the merciful thing to do.”

“As if wasting a **** like this would help us! Master, nevermind the theories: a **** is a ****, and what’s one more? Especially one who knows the enemy?” Juniluny shrugged. “That, or you sacrifice her for the practice you need to handle these situations better in the future.”

Tricia hesitated to give her final answer on the topic. John reached for her hand and squeezed it, his eyes hoping for her input to help guide him through what seemed a tie. Her bright blue eyes couldn’t help but trail off from his… and stare at the alien’s breasts. “What… do you want, John?”

John’s lips thinned as he contemplated it. “I want… to get through this... and to have everyone be alright when I do.”

Tricia sighed at her former husband. “We already know that won’t happen… at least in terms of opinion. You have already begun branding Abyssal creatures and humans; you understand my position on the distinction, but you have always been a summoner since I’ve known you. That will not stop solely because you cease adding to your collection; those bound to you as true summons—an art thought lost or too rare to document—remain so. If owning and using them makes you a slavemaster, then you cannot renounce the title solely by refusing to take more.” John sat petrified at Tricia’s blunt summation. Hastily she added while holding his hand with both of hers, “I-I mean, you shouldn’t look at it that way! A pyromancer is not immoral for taking control of fire elementals, and you can’t be considered immoral for molding the Abyss to your needs anymore than any of us do. The forms may be more convincing of life… but they remain Abyssal energy.”

“… Right in front of my gods-forsaken eyes and ears, this tall tank of trollop talk-!”

“This doesn’t sound like something to vote on, Gamer,” Rave sighed with a pat on John’s shoulder. “Tell you what though: Fairy seems happy being your summon.”

Fairy, who took over the psychosphere in Juniluny’s absence, accidentally opined. <No…>

“She was downright worried sick about you.”

<Shut up! Tell her to shut up!>

John snorted some of his suppressed laugh.

“It’s true! She really gave it her all to make sure we could save you.”

<TO PRESERVE MYSELF, YOU BLABBERING CLIT-HEADED TWAT-!>

“For her self-preservation,” Tricia coughed.

“Nah, I think she’s hot for her owner.”

<KILL HER.>

“That’s…”

“You two done the dirty yet?” Too many women at the table shifted their eyes in response, but both John and Fairy knew who she meant.

<Don’t you dare tell her-!>

Rosa sighed her words, “Just brand her. Frankly, she’ll probably thank you for it: as much as I hated the thought, it’s also pretty handy to not have to eat, drink, or sleep ever again… you know, presuming you make good on your promise.” She shrugged. “Either way, I’m stuck, so let this one be, too.”

A pause at the table… and Tara looked slightly up as she searched her memories. Her eyes slowly grew wide. “Wait… that’s… holy shit...”

“... You haven’t noticed? Haven’t you been branded for like a week? Haven’t you not eaten anything for a week?”

Tara rubbed her temple as she contemplated the days on the run, moving from place to place, drinking coffee even when she had no appetite so she would stay up, even though she never really felt tired; drinking protein drinks to stave off what she expected would eventually become hunger. She had constantly prepared to stave off the hunger, thirst, and sleep she feared would weigh her down while the Order, the Cabal, or whoever chased her; she just thought she had just done an incredible job of it…

“Mierda, chica, that must have been one Hell of a week.”

“… Wait,” John interjected, “so that happens to you guys, too? You’re not just eating the fruits in my garden or…?”

“Increíble …”

“That is… actually strange,” Tricia suddenly perked up, “but then, I don’t know that any summoner of people has ever been recorded... that said, aside from the loss of freedom, the brand appears to be quite resourceful for humans surviving harsh conditions.”

Juniluny angrily sighed; she was done pressing her point.

“Here’s a pro-tip, Gamer,” Rave finally said with a ruffle of John’s hair, “if you scramble her brains, you ruin her life and she’s got nothing to live for anyways, plus she might still manage to blab. Best case scenario, you’re miraculously good at that too and she gets to be free and sane. You brand her, you make her a **** that gets to live forever… or at least as long as you do. Sucks, but not the worst. You kill her, then she goes and faces whatever comes afterwards, which is probably a whole lot of nothing. Given those options, me? I’d probably pick ****, but that’s because I don’t take shit from-”

“Whatever comes after?” John suddenly asked.

“Hmm?”

“You said whatever, but… I mean, if angels and demons are real…?”

“Is… is that really what you picked out of what I said?”

“Let’s not even go there right now,” Tara suddenly declared. Some grumbling followed that suggestion.

“Why? How is that not a question?”

“They’re not the afterlife,” Rave quickly explained, “they’re just other barriers or Kingdoms or whatever you decide to call them. There’s dozens of them… and some of them think angels are demons and demons are angels, and it’s a huge mess thanks to human religions and interpretations. They’re also really good at producing things the Auction wants, but that’s another story. Makes sense?”

“That’s… alright, you’re right, let’s not go there.”

“Good. So pick: you wanna scramble, hard boil, or toss her in the garbage?”

“Rave!” Tricia chastised.

“What? Keep it simple: at the end of the day, if I understand this whole ‘Bitter Nines’ plot right, there’s going to be a few of these ‘Lawmen’ dead by the time we manage to get out of here. We managed some self-control back at the Order… but this is different.” Rave looked around the table with something approaching worry. “This sounds like war.”

John nodded along as everyone spoke… until his eyes fell on Miles. The intense hermaphrodite was cleaning her nude body with the oils from the jacuzzi-like pool that John had noted earlier; despite its coloration, rubbing the fluid into her skin seemed to leave it dry, even clean-looking, once it finished glittering with its substance; the excess that sluiced from her skin dripped back into the pool. But it wasn’t her oiled body that grabbed his attention… at least not by itself. No, it was her curious gaze and leaning head, as if she were listening in… as if she were comprehending their English-only conversation.

“Seems absurd that you’d care so much, given you deny her very being,” Juniluny grumbled at the Gorbachev.

Tricia had no answer for that; in the end, even an “illusion” looked and felt very real this close. “Illusions are adept at stirring empathy,” she firmly concluded.

“Monsters, these humans be.”

John heard footsteps and turned in his chair to see Golgon slowly approach, flanked now by Cidi and Kitok. Behind them, the humans had finished settling in: tents, bedrolls, and jugs of rations made a small refuge camp for them inside the Bitter Nines headquarters, the entire thing framing a somewhat irritated Tita massaging her sore breasts. It seemed the humans were set to stay… which made the pressure all the more real to give Golgon a satisfactory answer.

“Your council may put us at risk, John the Newman,” the old Ootuk warned. “Every moment the Lawman remains may well be another moment her fellows have to find her. Perhaps without her armor, they will not find her… and perhaps they will with some unseen rune, on her or in their possession. Have you determined a solution?” Golgon did not raise the other topic at hand; it was clear he wanted to gauge John’s reaction to this problem, first.