It took longer than Jack would’ve liked, but he finally found a way past the wall of buildings and into the slums. There were more patrols out than ever, and he’d needed to wait for nearly an hour before there was a lull in foot traffic long enough for him to scale a foreclosed tavern’s drainpipe. Once on the landscape of roofs, he slinked his way toward the northeast portion of the slums.

  It was nearing afternoon when he finally slipped down into a grimy alley. He was on entirely unfamiliar ground, as this district was on the opposite side of the slums from his secret tunnel. Cheap tin slabs provided mediocre shelter to huddled forms, who shifted and scurried out of sight as Jack stalked through their midst. It was eerily quiet in this part of the slums. He couldn’t spot anyone even remotely similar to the gaunt dreamers in Rigs’ crew, or the maroon shawls of the Spider’s gang.

  All of these people were just that. People.

  And all of them looked ready to die.

  A few showed some signs of life. Thin women held infants and toddlers across their backs or on their bony hips. Old men with too many missing teeth quietly played a game with carved figurines on a board drawn in the mud and dust. Distantly, Jack could hear a child’s wail and silently prayed that one of their parents would attend to it quickly.

  But those were the exception. For the vast majority, Jack found, and he found an abhorrent amount huddled together in the shadows, they were husks of humans. Shells, whose old masters had long since fled inward. He continued to march silently through their ranks, a ghost of the living among the bodies of the dead.

  Jack knew these sorts of places. They existed on Earth, too, and he knew them well.

  Unlike the stereotypical scenes in shows and movies, most of these sorts of dens were eerily quiet. Sure, a few annoying sorts would try to drown out the hollowness they felt with raging music and forced parties. But, somehow, that cacophony only made the silence hidden beneath all the more deafening.

  He stepped over several pale and intertwined legs, grimacing.

  Where am I even supposed to start looking for this ring? He wondered.

  He considered asking the people he passed, but thought better of it. Why would they help him? Worse, why would they either part with a ring they found or disclose where to find one? No, if he wanted to find it, he’d have to start with someone who had yet to give up on this life.

  Jack picked up his pace, his path chosen. He ducked underneath old rags drying on an old spidery thread that must’ve belonged to Myrtle. When he emerged on the other side, he saw the entirety of a two-story building covered in the graffitied words:

  Ardent abandoned us.

  Reading the words, his pace slowed. They filled him with an unexpected depth of sadness. A few people studied him suspiciously from their cracked doorframes beneath the large red letters, and he resumed his pace. There was nothing but fear and judgment in those gazes.

  Moving on, then, he concluded.

  Jack slipped around a corner and heard movement. He glanced around. It sounded like a bunch of people moving and shuffling all at once.

  “Where–” he started to ask, but then heard a sharp cry of pain off to his right. It was immediately muffled.

  He was moving before he even fully registered what was going on. His mind flashed with the images of étain.

  I will never stand by idly again.

  Jack sprinted around the final corner to find a mess of limbs, rags, and blood. It was hard to tell at a glance, but there had to be at least a dozen boys, all covered in the grime of the street. All of them were kicking and punching a figure wrapped tightly around himself while a large boy watched on, his meaty arms folded over his plump chest. Something was off about him, though Jack couldn’t exactly place why.

  But right then, it didn’t matter.

  “What the hell?!” Jack shouted and raced to break up the fight.

  “Oy! Got one incomin’, Tuck!” a boy yelled from the cloud of dust and merciless kicks.

  The large boy turned, and a look of shock passed over his face, quickly replaced by indignant rage.

  “Hey, pal, get lost before I break your skull in on the rocks,” Tuck warned, his voice high and nasally. “You don’t want to interrupt our business, or you’re next!”

  Jack ignored him. He strode right on past the approaching thug of a boy, but Tuck’s hand shot out with impossible speed and grabbed his bicep, squeezing with incredible strength.

  What the– Jack thought, but he moved on instinct.

  He stopped resisting the sudden pull, moving with Tuck’s momentum. It set the large boy stumbling, as he obviously expected Jack to resist harder. Jack used the boy’s moment of surprise to grab his outstretched wrist and a few of the fingers still clutching his arm. He twisted and yanked, pulling on his Strength pool to overpower the boy’s iron grip.

  It worked. With a cry, Tuck’s pinky and ring finger snapped. Tuck stumbled back, withdrawing his injured hand and holding it close to his chest. Something glinted on his hand, but Jack was already moving. He left Tuck to his injuries and rushed to help whoever was getting beaten up by the dozen remaining boys.

  Three of the boys—all around the ages of twelve to sixteen—turned at Tuck’s outcry. They saw Jack sprinting toward them and moved to intercept. One attempted a jump tackle, but Jack dipped his body down and shoulder-checked the airborne assailant. There was a WHOOMPH as Jack’s impact sent all the breath out of the boy’s lungs, and he fell to the ground.

  Jack wasn’t trying to hurt any of them. He just wanted to stop the fight long enough to get whoever was currently getting lynched by this gang of boys out of there. Unfortunately, he was left with very few options a second later when their leader had the gall to open his mouth.

  “Kill this guy!” Tuck screamed from behind him.

  “Dammit, kid,” Jack breathed, but pressed forward nonetheless.

  I will never sit idly by again, he reminded himself.

  Now that he was closer, he could see that the person in the fetal position on the ground was clutching something tight to his chest. He couldn’t have been older than ten, and was at least a head shorter than the rest of these boys.

  Anger, old and familiar, burned in Jack’s chest. He raised his fists. The next two boys dashed toward him. He slowed his pace and let them approach. The first boy, easily over six feet tall, threw a wild haymaker at his face. He easily ducked underneath it and countered with three rapid punches to the man’s liver, doubling him over and taking him out of the fight.

  The third of the first wave growled incoherently and picked up a thin metal rod from the ground. He was shorter than the previous two, and a dangerous glint consumed his eyes.

  “Ya hurt the boss, which means we gotta make you hurt,” he shouted. “Nobody messes with the Bone Rats!”

  The Bone Rats? Jack wondered in disbelief. Seriously?

  The kid swung the rod at Jack, and he was just a fraction too slow. He took the metal on his forearms and winced in pain as he felt his bones creak under the pressure. Fortunately, his Resilience stat helped mitigate the worst of the injury, and he wasted no time retaliating. He dashed forward, hooked his left arm around the boy’s double grip on the impromptu mace, and used his right hand to punch him in the jaw.

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

  Two people jumped onto his back, and the rod clanked to the cobblestones. Jack stumbled backward under the new weight, and he felt more boys kick out his knees. Once again, he was forced to pull on his Strength stat. With a defiant roar, he grabbed the two boys off his back and threw them into the two other boys who’d knocked out his knees.

  With seven of the boys taken care of, Jack rolled across the ground and got up to his feet. He immediately took in the remaining five. They prowled around him, clearly accustomed to using their numbers to pincer their prey.

  He really didn’t want to fight these guys. Sure, they started it, but they were just kids, likely driven to this point because of hunger, neglect, and desperation. He wanted to stop them, but beyond that, they weren’t his enemies. His real enemies were in the shroud looming above and around them.

  But if he wanted this to end quickly, maybe some well-deserved intimidation could do the trick.

  “Fellas, take one more step, and I will burn a hole in your chest. Go on. Inspect me. You’ll see I’m level 10. Just got my class, and I’ve been dying to use it.”

  Jack waited, and like clockwork, a few of the remaining five paused in their tracks as they realized he was telling the truth.

  “Uh, Tuck? He ain’t lyin’,” the boy on the far left yelled.

  “Who cares? He’s probably some farmboy who got lucky killing off his daddy’s cows! You guys have the numbers. Make him pay! Nobody messes with us Bone Rats!” Tuck shouted.

  Fine. Let’s try this.

  Jack focused his mind and whispered, “Skill Activate: Smoldering Fists!”

  His jab was already moving, aimed at the boy in the middle who seemed the most confident in taking Jack. The swirling flames had the intended effect. All five boys jumped back as if he’d actually struck them.

  “Get any closer, and you’ll find out what happens when you mess with a Cinder Sovereign,” Jack said, surprised by how easily the words came.

  “What the hell?!” Tuck screamed and joined the semicircle. “Just what in the void’s hairy underside is a class-user doing on our turf? Can’t you go pick on someone your own level?”

  It was right then that Jack noticed what was so different about Tuck. He had magic. It wasn’t much, but there was the unmistakable tug of magic about him. It was the same strange pull he felt whenever he was near Olric, when he’d been near that orc sorcerer, and most acutely when he cast his Smoldering Fists skill. It was subtle, but Jack was certain of it now that he was paying better attention. Tuck had magic.

  Then Jack noticed it. There, on Tuck’s right index finger, was a glowing silver ring inlaid with a ruby.

  That has to be what gave Tuck so much speed and strength.

  Just to be sure, Jack cast Inspect.

  [Tuck - Level 5]

  [Description: Menace of the streets and leader of the merciless gang, the Bone Rats, Tuck has fought and stolen everything he’s achieved in his short, miserable life. Only 15 years old, he has the bitterness of a dozen men twice his age. People whisper that his malice comes from living inside the shroud for so long, but those people aren’t around anymore to spread their rumors.]

  While troublesome, his skill confirmed that Tuck didn’t qualify for a class. Which meant that no matter how many points he’d invested into Strength, the only other explanation for his preternatural grip was that ring. And given Jack’s luck lately, it was likely the very ring he was after.

  “Where did you get that ring, Tuck?” Jack asked, his voice carefully level.

  Tuck immediately clenched his fist and hid the ringed finger away behind his back. His eyes narrowed.

  “Is that it? Someone snitched? I’ll kill ya for it, you know!” Tuck roared, but Jack could hear the fear behind his bravado.

  When he studied the overweight boy, the final vestiges of his anger dissipated. He lowered his fists. This was just a kid. A kid whose life had been filled with violence. He was not going to add to it today, not if he could help it.

  “Look, I’m not going to fight you over it, okay? How about we trade? Name your price, and if it’s reasonable, I’ll make the deal,” Jack said calmly.

  Behind him, the boy who’d been the focus of the gang’s ire started to stir, moaning in pain. Jack, still presenting as much calm control as possible, casually stepped around so that he was between the gang and the bruised child. He might not want to fight them, but neither was he going to let them resume after he was done negotiating.

  Tuck looked him up and down, and one side of his mouth curled up in contempt. But when he spoke, he seemed to regain a portion of his confidence.

  “A deal, huh? I name my price? You must be new to this, huh?” Tuck and his gang laughed. “Well, clean boy, I got a deal for you. You want my ring—which I found fair and square, by the way—but doing so will seriously hurt me and mine. It’s the backbone of the Bone Rats. Take it, and any number of other gangs will take our turf in a night. You want this, you gotta give me something that’ll take its place.”

  “Okay,” Jack said cautiously. “What did you have in mind?”

  He really felt like he was walking blindly into a death trap, but couldn’t see any other way through this without more violence.

  Tuck grinned wickedly. “I have a special set of marbles. Made of bones. They’re in a black pouch.”

  “Where would I find these marbles? Did you lose them somewhere? This city is pretty big. It’d be hard to find something that small if I had to search every shop and pocket,” Jack noted with a raised eyebrow.

  “Oh, I know exactly where they are. A kid named Jeremy has them. He took them off me when he came visiting through these parts with a few of his goons,” Tuck said with a dismissive wave.

  Jeremy? Where have I heard that name before?

  “Fine. I’ll get your magic bone marbles, you give me that ring, and we’ll each go our merry way. Deal?” Jack said before he could regret it.

  It was Tuck’s turn to raise his eyebrow. “Damn, clean boy. You really are new to this. Fine. You have a deal. Come by this street if you manage it.”

  “When I manage it,” Jack amended with a jerk of his chin. “Now, get out of here. Because if I find out you hurt that kid over there while I’m gone, or at any point in the future, I don’t care if you’re a bunch of boys. I will burn you.”

  They must’ve seen something in Jack’s unflinching gaze, as Tuck audibly swallowed.

  “Yeah, whatever,” the Bone Rat’s leader said with failed nonchalance. “We don’t care about that pile of trash, anyway. He and his whore mother know not to mess with our business again. Come on, boys!”

  Together, the five helped the seven Jack had bested, and they fled the debris-riddled square. Jack waited until he was sure they were gone, then rushed to the kid’s side. He knelt down and reached a tentative hand out. He was painfully thin—a fact exacerbated by the fact that he wore clothes three sizes too small for him. Jack put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  “No! No!” the kid moaned, holding something even tighter to his chest.

  “It’s okay! It’s okay. They’re gone. No one’s going to hurt you. It’s okay,” Jack cooed, and took his hand over the boy’s shoulder.

  It came back bloody.

  Anger returned in a hot wave, but Jack forced it down. The last thing this poor kid needed was another angry man standing over him.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Jack said again, this time even softer.

  He waited, not rushing the boy from his protective curl over whatever he was holding onto. Then, barely louder than a whisper, he heard the tiniest meow. At first, he thought it came from the kid, but sure enough, the boy unfurled his tight grip, and a thin kitten with spotted white and brown fur tumbled out from his grasp. It shuffled awkwardly on its paws, and a portion of its ribs was painted red with the kid’s blood.

  “Wait, Turnip! It’s not safe!” the boy yelled, wincing as he tried to catch the wily animal.

  Jack easily caught the kitten. The boy stiffened instantly, a look of horror replacing the pain written so plainly across his face.

  “Hey, Turnip is okay, and so are you. I made sure Tuck wouldn’t come back,” Jack said as he offered the boy his kitten back.

  The moment he took Turnip, she instantly began to purr. The horror and pain evaporated from his face.

  “Hey, I’m Jack. What’s your name?” he asked gently.

  “People call me Pip,” he said in a small voice, giggling softly as Turnip traced her tail across his chin.

  “Hi, Pip. Do you have a place to go?” Jack inquired.

  After a moment, Pip nodded.

  “Do you need help getting there?”

  A single shake of his head.

  “Okay, can you head there now?” Jack insisted.

  Another nod.

  “Good. Now, let’s get you up.” Jack stood to his full height and held out his hand.

  Pip looked up at it and then at Jack. His eyes focused and it was like he was seeing Jack for the first time.

  “Did… Did you mean what you said? Is Tuck and his Bone Rats not coming back?” Pip asked earnestly.

  “They aren’t, but neither should you stick around if they do. I don’t know how far my warnings will go,” he admitted.

  Pip nodded sadly, but took Jack’s outstretched arm. He was even taller and lankier than Jack expected. He held Turnip to his chest and smiled.

  “They… they wanted to eat Turnip here. Said any animal on their streets belonged to them. But she wasn’t supposed to escape. I… I just got so busy looking for food that I forgot to lock up before I left. I’m sorry for the trouble, sir.”

  “It’s Jack,” he amended with a smile of his own, even as his heart broke for the poor kid. “And I’ll tell ya what. Come back here later today, but hide until you see me. I’ll have a special treat for Turnip there, okay?”

  Pip lit up instantly, and it was like the first rays of dawn. “Really? You mean it! Turnip, did you hear that? You’re getting a present from our savior!”

  “Well, I’m not your–” Jack tried to get it in, but Pip was already covering the small distance between them.

  He gave Jack a quick side hug and then rushed off. “We’ll be ready! Thank you, mister! You’re my hero! I can’t wait to tell Ma all about you!”

  Pip was out of sight before Jack could so much as process what had just happened.

  “Well, that was not what I expected at all,” Jack said with a slight chuckle. He shrugged his shoulders. “Now, let’s go see about that Jeremy guy. I wonder who he is.”