Outworld Liberators

Oswin suddenly came upon a reckless idea.

The long stretch leading up the gold hill was almost certainly trapped. That much was obvious.

But traps mattered most to those who had to climb the distance step by careful step.

Oswin's gaze drifted toward Jenkii. He took in the healthy line of her arms, the solid muscle built into her shoulders, and admired it a touch too long before coughing into his hand and forcing his thoughts back to the problem.

"I do have a proposition," Oswin said. "It will require a great deal of trust, and I am willing to test it first."

The others nodded for him to continue. So Oswin explained.

And the more he spoke, the stranger Fay, Jackson, and Jenkii began to look at him.

In the end, Oswin pointed toward the top of the hill.

"That is why Jenkii will throw us from here to the destination up there."

"Wait. You want me to tap you fifty times, then throw you as hard as I can?" Jenkii asked.

She was not wrong to sound doubtful. Blooming Lotus Consecutive Arts could, in theory, be used that way. Jenkii had simply never tried anything so absurd with it before.

"I will go first," Oswin said. "Tap me lightly, then throw me straight toward the spot I point out."

Jenkii slowly nodded.

She began with light strikes, each tap landing against Oswin's body in measured rhythm.

One after another, the force built inside her art. By the time she reached the fiftieth hit, even that so called light tap landed with the force of a full punch from a Breath Tempering cultivator.

Oswin endured it only because his body was forged of steel beneath the false flesh.

When the fiftieth mark settled, Oswin sent out a thread of qi and pointed the landing point.

"There," he said.

Jenkii drew in a breath. Steam slipped from her mouth. Then she seized Oswin by the abdomen, planted her feet, and hurled him like a javelin.

Oswin flew fast. In the first fifty meters, he caught sight of narrow gaps hidden along the slope of the gold hill. Then came small holes worked into the surface, the sort he guessed would release either poison gas or spring loaded spikes.

After that he saw threads, so fine they were nearly invisible, stretched in waiting like a spider's work.

Halfway through the flight, over the span of barely three breaths, something changed.

His qi went dead. Not gone, but smothered. Pressed down.

Even his perception dulled with it, as though the hill itself had swallowed the reach of his senses.

Then he landed on the platform above. At once, the energies in his body returned.

Oswin did not move immediately. He stood still, letting the calm settle, then began to probe the area around him with care. Bit by bit, he checked for hidden runes, pressure points, any stir of malice. He found nothing.

"I think it's safe," Oswin shouted, feeding qi into his voice so it carried below.

Fay, Jenkii, and Jackson looked at one another.

"It might still be a trap. Let me test it," Fay said.

Over time, Radeon's disciples had built small signals for moments just like this.

One of them involved their surnames. There was a strange order woven into those names, something that could not be falsely answered. Whether that was part of Radeon's arrangement or some deeper force in the name itself, they had discovered it by chance and later verified it with Radeon in person.

Fay raised her voice.

"What is my surname?"

"Neumann," Oswin shouted back.

The moment he said it, Fay felt the truth of it resonate in her chest. That was enough.

Soon she was airborne.

Jenkii threw her cleanly, but Fay came in too fast all the same, and Oswin had to raise both arms to catch her.

Jackson came next. Jenkii put too much force into that throw, and he shot toward them like a stone from a siege engine. This time, both Oswin and Fay had to brace themselves to catch him.

Then only Jenkii remained below.

She ran to the far end of the chamber, dug in her heels, and launched herself upward with all the power in her legs. For a moment it looked almost enough.

It was not. She came up fifteen meters short.

Fay had expected as much. Qi rushed into her whip at once, the weapon stretching out to its full length. She snapped it toward Jenkii and caught her before she could touch the golden slope and whatever traps lay waiting there.

"Why didn't we just plow through?" Jenkii asked. "Are you all scared of a little challenge?"

"It's not that," Fay said gently. She had already noticed that the marks on Jenkii's forehead had not fully faded. "We only wanted to save time."

Jackson and Oswin nodded at once and gave the same answer in their own way. They admitted they would only slow her down if things turned ugly, a frankness that showed they understood the danger well enough.

Jenkii raised a brow at that, but with nothing sharp left to say. Little by little, the lotus marks on her forehead began to recede, and the heat in her expression cooled.

Only then did the four of them turn their attention to what waited ahead.

A white stone obelisk stood before them, its surface marked with the number four. On each of its four sides was carved a four leaf clover, and below that ran golden reliefs of fairies swimming through heaps of coins.

Jenkii and Jackson were not the sort to pry meaning out of old symbols and hidden texts, so both of them looked to Oswin at once, their hands tucked behind their backs so they would not touch anything by mistake.

Fay, however, had read enough of Radeon's stranger books to feel the shape of the answer already. In some worlds, a four leaf clover was taken as a sign of luck.

Fairies, though, were another matter. If fairies were shown laughing amid wealth, then the sign could promise fortune just as easily as disaster. To fairies, a windfall and a cruel joke often held the same worth.

Oswin had just begun to reach for one of his trump cards when Fay caught him by the sleeve and pulled him aside. In a low voice, she explained the deeper meaning of the carvings to him.

Oswin listened, then lowered his head.

"I did not know Master had a book like that. I am ashamed I never read it."

"Don't be. Don't be," Fay said quickly. "I only asked Master for it as a reward. I always wanted to hear true stories about the things that are out there."

She pointed upward as she said it, as though somewhere above it all, the greater world was still waiting.

Oswin did not quite understand what Fay meant and assumed she was speaking of some higher principle tied to cultivation, so he only nodded and waited for her to explain.

"This should give us prizes four times over," Fay said.

The three of them traded looks. Jenkii alone seemed to wilt. Fortune had never treated her kindly, and she was already imagining the obelisk rewarding her with some ancient dried fart from a forgotten age, or something else just as useless.

Fay's heart softened at once. She reached out, took Jenkii's broad calloused hand, and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"It doesn't mean you have to draw for yourself," Fay said. "How about I draw for you instead?"

Jenkii's eyes lit up at once. Before Fay could say another word, the larger girl scooped her up and began stepping about in an awkward little dance. Fay let herself be carried along, laughing softly, because Jenkii's joy was too plain and too innocent to resist.

Oswin, meanwhile, tested his own luck against Fay's. He took up the turtle shell and tried to divine whether he stood above her or below, but the shell would not even bother answering him this time, as though the result was too obvious to waste effort on.

That left Oswin with a wry smile. In the end, he simply gave Fay a small nod, silently asking her to draw for him as well.

Jackson caught the exchange at once. Neither of them had bothered to hide it.

"Diviner Oswin, do you think me lucky?" Jackson asked.

As he spoke, he drew out a high grade spirit stone and held it between two fingers.

"Please check my luck. I do not want a casual reading, so I would like to pay."

Jackson had been hammered into shape by the Supreme Elder of the cult beneath a single creed.

A man of honor lives ten years.

A man of righteousness lives a hundred.

A man who wears one face for good and another for evil lives a thousand.

But a man without shame, a man who casts honor aside completely, lives forever.

Raised beneath that teaching, Jackson had grown into the sort of disciple who moved with shameless freedom.

He would beg for spirit stones when it suited him, borrow authority from his master's name when needed, and still ask the elders for sparring as though he had every right in the world.

In Jackson's eyes, dignity was only useful when it paid.

Even so, Jackson remained cordial with the others. They were strong in their own right, and he had long since judged Fay and Oswin to be shameless in ways not so different from himself, which meant there was no point showing off before either of them.

Oswin accepted the spirit stone with admirable speed, though he tried not to look too eager about it. Then he drew out several sticks of incense from somewhere within his robes and began his divination in earnest.

Ten minutes later, he opened his eyes and looked at Jackson.

"Your luck is fairly decent," Oswin said. "But this place seems likely to offer you a choice. If you draw for yourself, you may receive something you need. If Fay draws for you, then you may receive something you want."

A sharp light entered Jackson's eyes, and his decision came at once.

"Let her draw," Jackson affirmed.

The reason was simple enough in his own mind. What he wanted was usually what he needed.

He never ate poorly, because good food was both a desire and a necessity.

He kept only five sets of clothes, because those few were all he wanted and all he needed.

But suppose the obelisk gave him a shield. That would indeed be useful. It might even qualify as a need.

Yet it would not be his want, and because it was not his want, it could not truly be the thing he valued most.

So in the end, the choice was obvious. He would let Fay draw for him.

Seeing that all of them now wished for her to make the draw, Fay grew excited.

Radeon had never allowed them to indulge in the Gaming District. He always said their minds were still immature, and that they would only lose their money and come crawling back to ask him for more, a charge none of them had ever been able to argue against.

Even so, this was close enough to stir her spirits. She stepped forward, smiling, just as the inscriptions on the obelisk began to glow and come alive.

The carved fairies turned their faces toward Fay and burst into motion, laughing as they tossed coins about like spoiled young masters scattering wealth for sport. Then a slit opened in the obelisk.

The first prize rose from within. It was a hairpin shaped from red spider lilies.

For a moment, Fay simply looked at it. It was the sort of thing she would have liked under any other sky, but she had no desire to change the pins already in her hair.

Those had been given to her by Radeon back in the Necropolis Ossuary, and in this lifetime she could not imagine replacing them, not for this pin, not even for the finest crown in the world.

They were both of an age to wed, and it had never once crossed her mind that Radeon might truly be so foolish as not to know what such a gift meant. Hairpins like those were a confession in all but words. What was more, he had never pushed her away when she spoke of family.

Even so, Fay took the spider lily pin and kept it on her person.

The second prize came with a wet sloshing sound.

Jackson was on his feet at once and already moving before the thing had fully emerged. What spilled from the opening was a thick scentless black fluid.

"This. This is Neutral Blood," Jackson said, his voice rising with real excitement. "I never thought I'd get something like this here."

Neutral Blood was a rare thing, fit to be taken into the body and refined for the shaping of blood weapons. Once each drop had been properly refined, it could be recalled again and again, which meant a conjured weapon would never truly be lost.

Jackson absorbed it all without wasting a breath and straightened with open satisfaction on his face.

The third reward came as a cool gray dust that drifted down in a slow cloud. Fay, Jackson, and Jenkii only stared at it, unsure what they were seeing, but Oswin knew at once.

Iceberg Titanium Dust. A fine and precious material, best suited for making delicate artifacts of terrifying hardness. In the right hands, it could become a trump card that would stay useful for a very long time.

A suction force burst from Oswin's palm, drawing all of the Iceberg Titanium Dust into his grasp.

The fourth prize came out looking like a folded sheet of leather.

Jenkii, who had yet to receive anything, reached out at once and touched it just to inspect what sort of treasure it was. The moment her fingers brushed the surface, the leather snapped up and bit her.

She yelped. In the next breath, it bound itself to her body and flung away her bralette top and leather shorts as though it could not tolerate such low grade equipment touching its wearer.

When the change settled, Jenkii stood clad in dark brown from neck to heel.

A sleeveless turtleneck hugged her frame. Fitted leather trousers shaped her long legs. Crossed utility belts wrapped her waist and hips.

Long gloves covered her arms, and strapped boots rose firm along her calves.

The whole set looked practical, sturdy, and far finer than anything she had worn before.

Then the inheritance came.

Knowledge poured straight into her mind, clear and sudden, teaching her how to use the equipment and the different forms it could take.

Jenkii blinked, then hurried to test the second shape available to her. The leather flowed and changed at once.

A fitted brown plaid midi dress settled over her body, layered beneath a deep neck brown cardigan. Lace up heeled boots completed it, giving her a softer look, vintage and bookish, almost gently feminine in a way that felt strange against her usual size and strength.

"Wow. That's really pretty," Fay said.

She even took out her artifact mirror and held it up for Jenkii to see.

The mirror was small, yet it was enough.

For the first time, Jenkii looked at herself and truly felt beautiful. Still, her eyes drifted from her own reflection to Fay.

Then she compared them without meaning to. Fay was the very image of the beauty Jenkii had always chased in her own clumsy way.

So why was it that men never seemed to act strange around her. Why did the world not go stupid in front of someone like that.

Jenkii was still lost in those foolish thoughts when the whole ruin suddenly shook.

The ground lurched beneath them. Stone groaned. Dust fell in a rush. All four of them grabbed at one another on instinct, clutching tight without even thinking of it, because each one knew the others were reliable.