“Wait what?! You’re not infusing me into anything!” Ozzy said, jumping up only to get caught mid leap by Trinidad who held him outstretched like someone might an angry cat.

  Trinidad raised an eyebrow at him, clearly unimpressed.

  “You have like two tiers on me alright? Don’t look at me like that.” Ozzy said, kicking his feet ineffectually.

  “Ozzy, if I wanted to infuse you into a core or do anything like that, I’d have brought you here in a cage. Can you cut the dramatics already?” She said, clearly perturbed.

  “Sorry. Could you put me back down?” He asked, looking longingly down at the chair beneath him.

  “Don’t make me call for a cage.” She said with mock sternness, the joke landed between them like a corpse. “Not funny then?”

  “Ehhhh… I’m still getting over people being willing to sell me to the college of science.” Ozzy admitted.

  “Fair.” She said simply with an apologetic shrug, still not setting him down.

  “Would you rather talk like this then?” Ozzy asked awkwardly, gesturing at his position up in the air.

  “Sorry!” She said and hurriedly sat him back down into the chair. “Your core reducing your weight is one of the strangest power side-effects I’ve ever heard of. Do you mind sharing what kind power does that?”

  “It’s one of my rat core abilities, it’s a healing and damage mitigating ability, it also makes it so that I can’t get hurt by falling from very high up.” Ozzy said, a little embarrassed to share he had a rat core.

  “A rat core? Well, it’s definitely unusual. From what I’ve heard most of the cores of that type get swept up by the crafters and other colleges since they’re cheap. I assume you found it out in the swamp, but why would you use it? You didn’t want to wait for something better?” She asked.

  “Rats are severely misunderstood animals, and the core has been very helpful with the abilities it’s given me.” Ozzy said defensively, feeling more than a little offended on Frank’s behalf.

  Trinidad smiled apologetically, “I didn’t mean it that way. Any core in the right hands can be fantastical and terrifying. Though that does not prevent some from being more powerful and complex than others. Which is why I want to help you make this core.” She said.

  “Now that you say it that reminds me, why do you want to help me? I get I helped you out but Emil told me something before we got off the boat here.” Ozzy said, trying his best to quote the hunter. “Anyone who hasn’t bled with you, slept with you, or tried to, is using you.” He quoted and immediately went red after realizing what he’d told her. “I did not mean it like-”

  “That’s all it’ll take to get you to trust me?” She leaned forward, staring him down like a lion would a rabbit, getting closer and closer until she was whispering in his hear. “You realize how inane that is right? It’s a good thing no one’s trying to infiltrate the firelight district, apparently all they have to do is sleep with you or anyone else who believes in this creed of loyalty Emil taught you.” She leaned back in her seat, crossing a leg as she grinned at the idea.

  “I want to help you because it helps me. Outside of working with the watchers I’m a crafter, I make specialty cores for a living and your uniqueness gives me the opportunity to learn something new. That’s infinitely more valuable to me than a core.” She said.

  As she spoke, she began to fiddle with the machine, checking components, pushing tiny bits of mana into the bowls to see the runes light up. It was fascinating to watch, and she moved with the speed and nonchalance of someone who’d spent maybe a lifetime with the machine. Breaking down a complex system of tests and checks into a process that barely took over a minute.

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  “The only question is if this is the only core you’d like to use, after all I’m sure you took several from Cerinakus’ personal stock.” She said, grinning at the guilty look that crossed Ozzy’s face.

  “Well I have these.” Ozzy placed three cores onto the ground between them to scan, the core that was an orb of roiling flames, the core of weird creepy darkness, and the sword one.

  *BEEP BEEP*

  Items identified:

  Core of the inferno

  Core of the night caller

  Core of the sword

  “Fascinating,” Trinidad said, reading the screen as Ozzy held it up for her. “Not a bad batch either, the inferno core would fetch a pretty price, same with the sword core, it’s not nearly as rare but just about always in demand.” She commented.

  “What about the dark one?” Ozzy asked, a small part of him, probably what remained of his edgy teenage self was drawn to the name.

  “It definitely sounds interesting, it might even work well the tentacle core. Do you want to use it?” She asked.

  “I mean I think it’d be cool, do you think it’d end up alright?” Ozzy asked, picking the core up and examining it.

  “There are very few cores that would actually cause you harm or force you to do things you didn’t want to. From this one’s name I’d just expect it to be a summoning or dark affinity core, nothing all that common but not rare by any stretch either.” She explained.

  “Let’s do it!” Ozzy said and handed the dark core to Trinidad who placed it into the other bowl.

  “This next bit is going to be less than pleasant, “she said, looking apologetically at Ozzy. “You see if we want to infuse some of your essence into the cores then part of you has to go into bowl with them.”

  “Like my mana? Or am I going to have to bleed into the bowls?” Ozzy asked, leaning forward to touch the cores.

  “Well blood might work, but if you want to be certain I’ll need a little bit more. Normally we do hands.” She punctuated her sentence by pulling out a long dagger and resting it on her lap.

  “I mean I can regrow them with a healer, right?” Ozzy asked.

  “Of course, you won’t be running around handless for the rest of your life if that’s what you’re worried about.” She chuckled.

  “Oh, then that’s fine.” Ozzy said, shaking off the illogical fear that had momentarily gripped him that he’d be running around handless.

  “Perfect!” She said, and Ozzy only caught the after image left by her arm as her wicker sharp blade cut through his wrists.

  A number of different emotions ran through Ozzy’s mind, these watchers seriously loved to surprise him. He was mostly overcome by a feeling of sickness however. Trinidad balanced his still bleeding hands on the cores like she did it every day, not even so much as cringing as one of his fingers twitched as she readjusted it. Worse yet were his stumps, some magic in Trinidad’s blade was keeping them from bleeding, but he could see everything in the stump, veins, bone, fat, tendon, connective tissue, even the pink marrow within his bone.

  Ozzy passed out.

  ***

  He awoke to the sound of snapping and the scent of something earthy and fresh.

  Trinidad was leaning over him snapping her fingers loudly in his ears and holding a small teabag like bag of herbs that she kneaded in her fingers over and over as it released more and more scent. She only stopped when she saw he was up and coherent.

  “Most people prefer when you surprise them, give them less time to be freaked out you know?” She said, and Ozzy noted a distinct lack of apology.

  “Who is most people?” Ozzy asked incredulously, glancing back down at his arms only to breathe out a massive sigh of relief as he noticed his hands once more attached to his arms and working fine. Though it was more than a little strange to see his hands both attached to his wrists as well as sitting on top of the cores, slowly losing their color.

  “I suppose the tier 1s and 2s aren’t a great sample group when I’m comparing them to a newbie.” She admitted. “Give me your hands.” She said, and when Ozzy hesitated and she reached over to grab them herself, pulling him forward. “You’re very pain averse for a hunter. Put them here, and push mana into the circuit when I tell you to.”

  Trinidad sat her hands on top of Ozzy’s and closed her eyes, her brow furrowing as she focused intently on the task at hand. “Push your mana into it now.”

  Ozzy did as he was told, and right as his mana began to flow into the circuits he felt a wave of overpowering mana that could only have belonged to Trinidad sweeping his up and taking it along the runes throughout the machine. The whole thing lit up like a Christmas tree, lights casting themselves about the room as the machine began to hum and whir and then with a pop, everything went black.

  It wasn’t the darkness of the room he’d just been in however, it was true darkness. The kind you can only find deep under the earth. The dark so perfectly all-consuming he couldn’t even see the bridge of his nose, and as he tried to make sense of the situation, he heard a noise that defied all of his senses and yet it made its way into his mind.

  “A visitor in my domain?” A voice that stretched itself out between the stars and etched itself in Ozzy’s very soul reached out to him, its presence sending him to his knees.