Dawn’s light leaked through the windows and gently coaxed me back to consciousness. My mind ignited first and poked tentative signals down nerves to check on the limbs. All of them reported a comfort and looseness that was alien to me. My life had been ruled by the next heroic demand since I picked up my father’s sword. Taking a moment to let the world be someone else’s problem was freeing in a way. Maybe being surpassed won’t be so bad?

  I jolted upright and banished the traitorous thought. Removing my head from Riena’s shoulder triggered her rebooting process. Eyes roamed under lids, a nose twitched, hands flopped uselessly around her, and legs scoped the environs before her body was seized with a yawn. Her ruby eyes fluttered awake and took in my visage.

  Each motion was captured, analyzed, and stored for later. Should I choose, I could perfectly replicate that yawn. It was so simple, but I found it fascinating. My eyes couldn’t get enough of her messy bedhead and—Ah. I had developed a crush and through Riena’s bond, I knew it wasn’t reciprocated. Such passions would assault me from time to time. After a few months of ignoring it, the feelings and the person tended to go away. It was a minor problem, easily compartmentalized and discarded.

  As Riena came back to awareness, she felt my crush through the bond. Wonder filled her eyes, then panic, and finally a deep self loathing. “Here Mari, let me take that away. I must have done that to you while sleeping.”

  “I doubt I needed your power to find you enthralling.” I leaned back into the couch. “But yes, if you would. Unrequited love is such a burden.”

  Riena bit her lip and waved a hand. The compulsion to look at her all the time faded until only my friend remained. She looked haggard and worried like she had barely slept. “I have a confession.”

  I rolled my hand for her to continue. The lingering impression of safety would only last until I left this couch. Afterwards, I would be free of the mind control. Part of me wished to spend the day here.

  “I… I knew my ability was more than teamwork. I just didn’t want to manipulate empathetic connections generally. The bond should have been more than enough for the team, and if I had time, I could break down the trust of enemies. But then I compelled that word into you by accident, which isn’t my ability.”

  “That makes sense.” I nodded along. “You received your second ability before your first. After your shade grew to a sufficient level, it manifested. Most of us received our ability after our shade infested us. Since you had limited exposure to the metaphysical invaders, you received a well calibrated one during initiation, drastically lowering your chance of dying from shade corruption.”

  Riena hunched forward and wrapped her arms around herself. “What exactly are shades? Even in my class on how to grow them, they don’t explain what they are. Everyone assumes I know.”

  “You’re correct, but they are right. You do know as much about shades as everyone else because we know almost nothing about shades, but we do have theories. Of those theories, I believe the term ‘shade’ is a misnomer. We’re the ephemeral shadows, the pale reflections of what could be. Our shades are our true selves manifesting into reality.”

  Our commander watched me with a hungry expression. The attention made me want to keep talking, but those feelings were quickly smothered by Riena, leaving only the need to offer a proper contextualized explanation.

  “Others reject this notion because many people die from shade corruption. If it’s our true self, then why does it kill some of us? Well, in an old ruin, I found medical notes from one of the ancient armies. Back then, shade corruption killed most people and created few heroes. Nowadays, the death rate is only 20%. The Savior’s advances in ability imbuement might eliminate that completely. For the first time in recorded memory, humanity could experience population growth—but I’m going off topic. What’s important is that surviving the manifestation of our true selves in a less ideal world was a complete accident. We are all the children of mutants that won mother nature’s lottery.”

  Riena’s fingers dug into her sides. “I don’t like that theory because that means these awful powers reflect who I am as a person.”

  “You’re the heart of the team that can motivate the most reluctant soldiers. Those are noble qualities.”

  She snorted. “Sure, that’s a nice way to put it, or I’m a manipulative bitch that had to build most of her friends. Who says any of you even like me, or maybe I’m unconsciously making you all treat me better?”

  I considered her concern. I didn’t think it likely, but if I said that, then she would suspect she had manipulated me into saying it. This situation might call for a true lie. “It would be incredibly useful if you could make us all like each other. Think of how much harder we would fight for our teammates’ survival!”

  “What if you’re only thinking my ability is okay because I’ve made you want it?”

  I tapped her shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you some real trauma, and then all these little ethical concerns will disappear.” She tried to jerk away, but I held her tight. “Do you think any of us care if you make us have a deep bond and think we enjoy it? I can’t count the number of teams I’ve survived or the friends I’ve buried. Hell, I don’t remember all of their names. Your power may seem like a horrible violation to you and the ivory towers you were raised in, but I know I’ll take an artificial friendship. It…” I stared blankly out the window. “...is difficult to muster the energy to try anymore. More of my friends are dead than alive.” The rest weren’t really friends at all. I had to believe my true friends, the ones who would have stood by me, were already dead, or reckon with why I was never close to anyone.

  When I released Riena, she didn’t bolt. She held her hands over her heart and forced down the tears. “That can’t be a healthy outlook, but… how do you handle feeling like this all the time? Just the secondhand exposure makes me want to curl up on the floor.”

  I stood and—immediately checked the corners of the room. My nose didn’t pick up any monster stenches, and I couldn’t hear anything moving except my team. Riena noticed my shift in demeanor. I hurriedly moved on with what I was going to say. “I can’t stress this enough, but I love slaying monsters. Really, it balances everything out.”

  Before Riena overstepped into the Healer’s role, I rushed to my room and put on my gear. The others didn’t understand. Overcoming despair was part of a hero’s unyielding spirit. It was simple too. All you had to do was set goals for yourself and then do them no matter your mood. Simple didn’t mean easy. My trick was to focus on a task to the exclusion of all else until completing it was the only thing you thought about.

  This time when I left for class, I brought my mimic-drone parts, void spider materials, and my captured elemental for crafting supplies. In addition, I stowed a two-weight bolas (or somai), shuriken, three chakrams, kunai, a shield, and a flail. Weight wasn’t really a concern for me, and I had mastered all the tricks for carrying and using more weapons. They were all just tier 1 crap that couldn’t scratch a mid tier monster without straining my aura.

  Since my dueling class was four times a week, I found myself squaring off against Gabriel again. He had bloodshot eyes and gritted his teeth like he had to shit. In our duel, Gabriel displayed new levels of prowess with his claws, but shifting was slower, and he didn’t employ a fraction of the tricks as in our last bout.

  I wrapped his legs in my bolas while he dug two kunai out of his eyes. As he recovered, I leaned down and whispered, “When I try to do something incorrectly, my power fights me. It can be an exhausting struggle. I’ve found the best way around it is to do other things correctly to compensate. For example, I could never succeed at being a boy because I wasn’t. I did masterfully pretend to be one.”

  Gabriel snarled and slashed at me. “SHUT UP!”

  I danced out of the way and laughed as I cut him to ribbons.

  My next class was Advanced Fabrication. Since this was a tier 2 course, I didn’t recognize any of my classmates. Few Crafters in the school would only be a year ahead of their peers. Crafters of Riena’s caliber would be taking tier 5 or 6 courses, and most Crafting abilities didn’t make someone more knowledgeable about fabrication techniques.

  The classroom itself was on the ground floor of the Crafting tower. Worktables replaced seats in a bronze amphitheater of shifting platforms. Professor Gyro was already directing large mechanical arms to place equipment on the stage for her demonstration. Most of the room was lost to stacks of complex machines layered by walkways, steaming pipes, and defenses that had long since gone haywire. The ceiling clicked and clacked with unseen manipulators whose aims couldn’t be certain.

  As I patrolled the perimeter, checking for clockwork elementals or haunted equipment, a dark-skinned man with box braids waved me to his table. A warrior’s physique lurked under a loose Crafter’s uniform belied only by scars on his face and hands. The genuine interest he put into the greeting drew my attention. Once we locked eyes, I knew it would be rude not to approach.

  When I neared, his eyes flicked up and down my person. “Damn girl, that’s a lot of weapons, but I bet those guns are the most dangerous.” He pointed to my arms.

  Oh, I was being hit on by a guy. This hadn’t happened to me before, despite my obviously flawless appearance. Okay Mari, what is the optimal route through this social interaction? Did I want to foster his attraction? Was he attracted to me or merely complimenting my well sculpted arms? Decision time was nearing as the awkward pause continued. I decided to respond how I wanted to, “Currently, my glaive is more capable of harming foes than my hands.”

  “Cool! I’m Jeremiah Clark. Short and grumpy is Bianca Kohl. The lovable lug is X2. It’s a really nice person.”

  “I am not a person.” Its singular eye was all it had for a face, and it glowed with blue fire as teal plates shifted under its white uniform with its movements. A dull white glow shone from any gap in the plates. It sat next to Bianca and examined her work.

  “Right,” Jeremiah grasped for a word. “It's a nice entity.” X2 silently nodded at the word choice.

  In the pause, I realized I was meant to go. “I’m Mari.” Since class was filling up, I asked, “Do you mind if I sit here?”

  “Not at all!” Jeremiah patted the bench next to him.

  When I took my place at the table, Bianca’s didn’t look up from the cube she was working on. The petite woman was two heads shorter than me. She wore her ghost-white hair in a braid that trailed down the white lab coat she wore over her Crafter’s uniform, a bold color choice for this school.

  Before Jeremiah could hand me the rose he pulled from his pocket, a chorus of whistles blew around Gyro’s platform. She was surrounded by a small smelter, a small forge, several steel ingots, and a pile of miscellaneous monster parts.

  The class stilled as Gyro began to lecture, keeping the trench coat on this time. “Hello class! Welcome to Advanced Fabrication. In this course we will cover topics such as resonance smithing, survival crafting, and base building. If you were looking to polish your G-code and run 5-axis mills, then that is the Industrial Fabrication track. As heroes, we normally do not have the luxury of massive workshops or lone wilderness towers devoted to our arts. You will be in the field. When you're ninety days into a portal scenario, your team will go to you to repair their gear or to forge a new tool. On the other side of reality, you are the economy.

  “At the same time, higher tier monster parts and items require more esoteric techniques to work with. To address both concerns, we’ll start on resonance smithing. Yes, there are machines that do this for you, but you can get better results by hand.”

  Gyro placed an ingot and a horn into her smelter.

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  “Steel alloys with monster parts to create unique materials with their own inherent properties. Does anyone know why steel is so versatile?”

  Bianca rolled her eyes before Gyro called on another student. He said, “Because steel is rich in story and prominently included in many myths.”

  “Ah, we have a subscriber to The Story in our midst. While that is a valid line of thought over in the philosophy department, we tend to be more empirical here. Steel is an alloy, which makes True Steel a metaphysically impure metal. Since the raw concept behind the material accepts mixing and variety, it is significantly easier to bind with MP infused materials, but even the most basic mythic steels require a couple thousand degrees C of heat to smelt properly. How do we achieve those temperatures in the field with basic tools?”

  I raised my hand this time.

  “Yes, Mari.”

  I said, “You can use your aura.”

  Gyro smiled. “Correct, but can you elaborate?”

  “I would make the fuel burn faster while inhibiting heat transfer to the smelter itself, leaving the materials the only route for the heat to travel.”

  “Better! All of you should be familiar with your aura’s ability to manipulate the subtle forces of reality. We touched on this in Introduction to Fabrication, but we’ll cover in this course how to alter concept interaction to simplify processes and make them cheaper. While unpowered Crafters have machines and methods around their lack of an aura, you won’t have any of that on the other side of a portal—most of the time.”

  Our professor’s face briefly gained a wistful look before she jumped back into the lecture.

  “But we’ll cover that later.” She pulled her materials from the smelter and drew a large hammer. “The trick to resonance smithing is to hammer the steel and material until they are vibrating at destructive frequencies.”

  With tongs, she held the horn on the steel and began humming.

  “Unless you carry a spectrum analyzer with you, you’ll need to match the vibrations by ear. I personally hum and try to match the tunes, but other Crafters sing to their steel.”

  I watched her work with rabid attention. The book talked about many of these techniques, but that was too cerebral. With the knowledge, I could muddle my way through. That’s how I learned a few dead martial arts techniques and a couple nonexistent ones. Stupid realistic looking comic books. Seeing a master perform the technique gave my ability far more to work with.

  Once she finished her demonstration, I shoved my drone parts and void spider legs into our table’s smelter and wrapped it with my aura. Jeremiah watched in fascination as the device glowed like a small star. I had a very narrow range of temperatures where the metal and chitin would be hot enough without denaturing the venom from each monster. At least, the temperatures overlapped if I forced my aura.

  I didn’t understand how to manipulate ‘concept interaction’ or magic with my aura. When it came to bending reality with my aura, I was one of—if not the—best. That was mainly out of necessity. Absolute could fly, protect herself, and do a variety of damage types with her ice powers. If the Savior wanted to bend reality in a specific way, he’d give himself the ability to do so or invent a new power on the fly. Most of the heroes stronger than me didn’t need to leverage their aura beyond the basics. Whatever Gyro was talking about had to only be practiced by Crafters like her, those with unrelated abilities.

  When I withdrew my material using tongs, Jeremiah clapped and asked me questions, but I couldn’t focus on him. I was preventing the superheated parts from igniting our table. Unlike Gyro, I didn’t hum. I sang an old lament for fallen heroes. The English flowed in familiar ways with the occasional similar word. Some thought the language was a precursor to our current tongue, but no one knew for sure. So much had been lost.

  My hammer swung in steady rhythmic beats until both materials sang. The void spider legs wanted to remain quiet, but my aura let the molten chitin buzz like it was metal. Slowly, the bits fused together; their songs becoming silence. Careful folding, reheating, and more hammering eventually made an ingot I was satisfied with. Forging this envenomed metal into a proper weapon would take more time than I had in class.

  As I put my tools down, the rest of the world seeped back into my awareness. Focusing too much could get me killed. I shoved the worry down. Crafting was a skill I needed to master, and that required taking risks and trusting others to watch my back. I can’t trust anyone.

  Jeremiah hummed a tune while trying to infuse steel with a fire elemental. He was terribly off-key, and the elemental kept singing the wrong notes. Bianca ignored the class project and continued working on her cube. X2 was working bloodspawn talons into steel to make blood-steel, a reddish metal used in living weapons.

  Since they were busy and I had time left in class, I etched a necrotic rune on my flail that would shake the bones of whatever it struck. It wasn’t the most generally useful rune, but my elemental only provided heavily necrotic aligned MP and couldn’t power more general runes.

  When I withdrew my sphere, Bianca startled in alarm. “Oh my god, give me that!” I let her swipe it. “Is this glass!?” She started muttering about irresponsible meat heads as she drew an icosahedron opal crystal reinforced with steel along the edges. My elemental flowed to the other crystal after she brought them together. “You can’t keep elementals that dangerous in containers that fragile!”

  I caught the tossed back crystal. “Thank you.” The precious gem was far more than I could casually afford.

  Bianca glared at me while holding my sphere. She then sat it on the table and struck it once with a tiny hammer. The entire thing disintegrated. “Why are you carrying a calamity in your pocket?”

  “It’s what I had.” I placed the new crystal in my imbuer and empowered the rune. “And you have to strike the glass at the exact right angle to trivially shatter it. That outcome was unlikely.”

  “Any Crafter with an ounce of competence could have done it.”

  X2 turned to her. “Not every Crafter is the scion to the best golem workshop humanity has to offer. You are overestimating the expertise of others.”

  “Is that cube related to a golem?” I asked. “My team’s Commander also uses drones.”

  Bianca bristled. “Golems and drones are not remotely the same thing! The former is a purely magical craft while the other is riddled with technology. Drones are more expensive and less capable, but since they are uniquely human and can be made at scale, investments are shifting in that direction. It’s shortsighted! We see golems among the highest tiers of monsters. The capabilities are pre-proven. There is no guarantee drones will ever surpass the middle tiers.”

  “But our golems haven’t either.”

  She scoffed. “X2 will eventually, thus proving the concept. It has a shade, something no drone will ever have.”

  Both golems and drones were outside the scope of anything I wanted to Craft, so the distinction didn’t really matter to me. I addressed X2 to change topics, “Who are your parents?” It was sapient, so whoever made it was essentially its parent.

  It chuckled, eye pulsing with the mirth. “My father is her father.”

  “So you’re siblings!”

  “Yes,” X2 replied.

  Bianca rolled her eyes. “Sort of. It's been around most of my life and was taught Crafting with me. We’re close, but—” She pointed at one of her fleshly hands. “—there are obvious differences.”

  X2 nodded. “She’s a more sophisticated model.”

  “Ha ha,” she said dryly before sighing at her cube. “I really need a giant-bone torque converter for this module, but those parts are on back order.”

  Jeremiah put down his failing project. “I think the class has that in storage.”

  “Which part of the storage?”

  “The fun part.”

  Bianca sighed again. “We just got a new lab partner. Are you eager to lose another one?”

  “It won’t be that bad!”

  “The last time we went there, you died like eight times!”

  Jeremiah spread his arms. “I got better.”

  I rose. “I could also use additional materials if they’re available.” And it had been too many hours without peril. That fuzz was building in my mind, and my eyes were darting to more shadows.

  X2 helped Bianca to her feet and put an armor-golem gauntlet over her left hand. It was made of jade and had a flowing blade out the elbow and down the outside of the arm. Purple lines radiated along the construct and pooled into a circle at the center of her palm. The fingers were thick and lacking dexterity, but they could grasp objects and make a fist. Jeremiah readied a potion and a metal sphere covered in explosive runes while X2 made no special preparations.

  Bianca gave me the rundown. “This classroom is an informal dungeon. Constructs hunt spawning demons in the edges of the workshop, and many of them have started hunting students. The part we’re going to is two floors up and to the back. It’s highly variable. Tier 1 through 6 monsters prowl its depths. You might think you’re tough, but Jeremiah will take the lead. Monsters aren’t the only danger back there.”

  I told her I understood, and we were off. Jeremiah continued explaining, “Too many machines, means too many shadows. The university put sentries in there, but the students also store failed projects. Between the demons and cursed objects, most of the sentries went berserk. They don’t attack the lecturing portion, so the professor felt no need to deal with them.”

  We ascended a bronze spiral staircase until we were among whirring machines taller than the house I grew up in.

  Bianca sneered at them. “Ugh, computer controlled garbage. Magical tools would have been better and required less space, but too many Crafters want to skip the part where you make your tools.”

  “More charitably,” X2 interjected. “Many of the 3rd and 4th year Crafters are entirely drone focused and run these facilities constantly for their growing armadas. Their presence clears out most of the worst monsters, but they also leave very few materials behind.”

  We walked deeper into the stacks. The machines fell away to be replaced by shelves of material. Insects crawled and things slithered through accumulated junk.

  “The design follows the same logic as a wizard’s tower. A rich ecosystem of monsters gives you a replenishing supply of resources. Leftovers, waste, and fail experiments can regain value if ingested by a monster”

  “Wizard?” I commented. “That’s a very archaic term for Crafter. I’m surprised you would use it.”

  “It’s appropriate,” X2 continued. “A modern Crafter’s tower tightly controls demonic spawning into kill boxes. The laissez-faire attitude of ancient wizards is what made their abodes so unique. The university replicates those methods in a lot of fascinating ways.”

  I was eager to dig into those specifics, but Jeremiah exploded. His head soared through the air and landed in my arms. The man winked at me before all the bits of him created ripples in space and flowed back together the exact same way he exploded.

  The man cracked his neck and let out a tired groan. “Stationary blade-trap. We should expect a bladedancer or a hunter-killer drone.” He glanced back at me and deflated at my lack of surprise. “Oh, come on. Were you not worried at all?”

  Scenes like that used to keep me up at night. Once I stopped sleeping, the nightmares had no outlet and leaked away. I like to think they were eaten by my shade. No matter what happened, it stopped bothering me. I didn’t need to use his death to motivate me, so it received no reaction as I searched for threats. The dead couldn’t be saved. Since people didn’t like that explanation, I lied with the truth. “I’ve seen time-based abilities before. They are very rare. Impressive.” My voice was too flat. I failed to muster the inflections needed to maintain the act that I was a kind person that quickly attached to strangers.

  He shrugged. “It’s alright, but my second ability isn’t very useful, so I’m stuck with Crafting if I want to get better.”

  We continued walking. X2 took the rear as we all searched for threats. I asked, “What did you get?”

  “Prestidigitation.” He offered me a bouquet of flowers. When I refused them, he flicked his wrist and they were gone. “I’m struggling to figure out what to do with it.”

  I nearly stumbled. That was the 2nd ability I most wanted. “You can more effortlessly bend all aspects of reality, and you can’t find a use for that? Make your foe’s footing slipperier. Use illusions to make your weapon seem a different length than it is. Climb sheer surfaces or turn a flimsy pool noodle into a skyscraper shearing blade of death. The possibilities are literally endless. Your aura’s efficiency for such actions will be…” He stared at me, and I coughed. “Very high. It’s a good ability.”

  “Eh, all of that requires years of aura training. I’ve got a class on that, but it won’t help me now or anytime soon.”

  Part of me hated Jeremiah for not trying harder to surpass me. Another darker part was relieved that this one thing could still be mine. That latter part prevented me from weeping tears of joy at the idea of more heroes better than me and finally turning the tide of the war. It also prompted me to push myself to greater heights. As long as I didn’t let it drag other heroes down, then that part was a good motivator.

  As we walked, I grabbed three bottles of crushed imp, a jar of newt eyes, and general herbal flux. Imps were a good source of general MP. The newt eyes would decorate my room, since they weren’t useful outside of very large batch brewing. The herbs acted as a good base for potions. It and imp paste could make a variety of effects depending on the technique.

  Jeremiah was incinerated, frozen, melted by acid, and electrocuted before another blade-trap eviscerated him so thoroughly that I saw the steel etched runes protecting his skull. The man maintained a good poker face, but I could tell those attacks hurt. Did he enjoy this or was it something that needed doing?

  Eventually, we found our prize: the corpse of a Hiveborn infested giant. The Hiveborn, or the Greater Arthropoda Collective as they like to be called, were a mutual alliance of sapient bug demons. This variety were parasites that infested and modified a host species. Sometimes, this was beneficial to the host. Other times, they hollowed out their target and ran them into the ground like a war machine.

  This example was the latter. The flesh had been replaced with keratin, giving the monstrosity an almost mannequin-like appearance. Its chest was basted open and the hive that had lived there had long since left. The inside revealed a heavily modified biology. Every inch had been reworked into complex machinery made from the giant’s own bones. Bianca should find her part here.

  Instinct caused me to reflexively push Bianca out of the way before I consciously perceived the threat. Later I would recall seeing a shift in the reflections ahead of me as the only warning.

  Bianca sprawled to the ground with my left arm. It had been sheared above the elbow. The monster responsible perched on top of the giant’s body and made threatening sounds I was too dismembered to properly appreciate.

  Ow.

  The bladedancer had arrived.