1

The Granfyres owned many properties. Condominiums situated within downtown Drent's financial district. Rustic mansions along the countryside. Oversea villas. Innumerable cabins and compounds and outposts in the Wilds for hunting. Father spent most of his time hunting, after Mother died.

Lain, a seven year old pup who drowned himself with milk for inches the way certain monks drowned themselves for enlightenment, and his accomplice Stowhart, who at five years old knew not to stand at his full height next to him, hastily dashed down the manor's corridor. They hauled enough books between them to build a fort or, taking the resale value of each book into account, to build someone's dream home.

Arched doorways with iron gratings spanned left of the corridor. Morning light grasped at them through the grates like prison bars, casting its criss-crossed shadow across the polished floor ahead.

Hedge animals in Three World came in two varieties. Some trimmed their bushes to resemble archaeological interpretations of Four Era animals, which was like a paleontologist decorating their garden with dinosaur-themed lawn gnomes. At least dinosaurs “looked right". Four Era animals, as depicted by archaeologists, were what you'd get if they drunkenly threw darts to build chimeras.

Most homeowners, Father included, allowed their horticulturalist to use their hedges the way the Greeks used marble. Having lots of them was a status symbol. You could gauge how “eccentric" someone was by checking their bush.

Father's shadowed topiary was visible through the grates, and although they weren't real, Lain's heartrate quickened as though he'd seen dozens of naked dudes glaring accusingly at him.

A servant might round the corner at any moment.

They'd tell Father, wherever he was, that they caught his pups sneaking around in his library.

Father returned home a handful of times throughout the year, updated on his children's upbringing through servant reports. Father never praised good behavior. He never reprimanded bad etiquette. He was always silent.

Everything hid within silence's cloak. Disappointment, regret, loathing, and judgment were hidden daggers Lain feared more than anything. They'd tell Father they caught his sons in his library and, months later when they meet, Lain would meticulously recount every bad thing he'd done all year like a manic accountant rushing to meet a midnight deadline.

Father wouldn't say a word, and he'd leave again.

Something always made him leave.

“H-hurry up, Stow!" Lain panted, lugging heavy tomes with arms as strong as wiffle bats. “W-we can't let anybody see us. We can't!"

“We won't get caught!" Stowhart giggled, full of glee and mischief on this rollercoaster of anxiety. To him, Father not acknowledging them simply meant they got away with more stuff. Besides, he had Lain and Emil. He carried the same number of books with ease, consciously lagging behind Lain so he wouldn't overtake him.

“Milly," Lain heaved, “will love these."

They turned right at the hall's corner. This led to a switchback staircase that went to their bedrooms. Lain climbed them, taking the lead.

“Go slowly, Brother," Stowhart said. “And weren't we reading The Last Wyvern to him last night?"

Lain forgot the raging inferno in his chest for a moment. “I've read them all. All twelve. The plot becomes a vapid collection of tired tropes, and bloated with misanthropic anti-capitalist cynicism."

“Oh," Stowhart said.

“Emil needs," he panted, “something whimsical. Something that'll give him good dreams."

Stowhart liked The Last Wyvern, particularly the parts with the fire-breathing dragons and the Duke of Cherry Pies. But, Lain was never wrong about anything. His repudiation turned it into something he'd find on the crustiest shelf in the seediest bookstore.

Emil Granfyre, three years old, loved reading. Between all the doctor visits and being confined to his room, there wasn't much else to do.

The brothers ascended upstairs. Lain took them two at a time.

“Do you think he'll like the new ones we picked out?" Stowhart asked.

Lain bit his tongue. The inferno in his chest was now a state-wide wildfire.

“He'll…love them…"

“Why don't we take him into the garden, Brother?" Stowhart asked, knowing Emil probably couldn't make it downstairs on his own. “They treat him like a prisoner. I'll carry him if I have to. Smelling flowers outside isn't the same as having them in vases."

Stowhart, standing on the first landing, noticed he'd overtaken Lain. He turned to find Lain, collapsed on the carpeted stairs, books scattered around him.

2

Lain Granfyre, now ten years old, took his asthma medicine when his cellphone's alarm buzzed. This was before the test, walking through Tryart Academy's candle-lit halls. A robed man escorted by an equine juggernaut in revealing furs, hauling a greatsword on his back, sneered coldly at him as he passed.

Technology paired with Tryart's occult, medieval aesthetic like bricks through windows. Even sitting in the middle of downtown, surrounded by skyscrapers and hotdog stands, Tryart's students and faculty sought to maintain a sort of fantastical mystique in their everyday lives. Commuting businessmen rubbed shoulders with sorcerers in the subways. Slave-drawn carriages competed for parking spaces. Students almost never visited the coffee shops around the corner, and those that did brought their own jars of raw honey.

Inside the stone castle that served as the main building, chandeliers hung in place of ceiling lights. Candle holders made from skulls and bones and severed claws collected dust on every shelf, which weren't dusted to complete the look.

The place stank, and not just because someone put too much wood varnish on everything. For all its corny stereotypes and tech aversion and jeering academics who'd've spent their education inside someone's locker in any other school, Tryart's magic program was the best in the kingdom. Lain had to learn from the best, for Emil's sake. So he, the youngest student in the school's history, whose father's innumerable donations turned his entrance exams into a polite formality, had to excel. He—

“Are you ready?"

Lain flinched. Sunlight streamed into the dimly lit, cramped room through grated windows above him and his robed instructor.

“Y-yes, Sir," Lain said.

The instructor, a withered animal with as many gemstones on his hands as sequins on his robes, frowned. “Then begin the test."

A heavy tome sat on a podium nearby. Students were allowed such reference guides for demonstrations. Lain hadn't opened it. He could've completed this test in his sleep, likely burning the house down in the process, but impressively so.

Lain took a moment to steady his breathing, then made various hand signs over the table with his test materials set atop it.

A sand mound. A bowl of water. A lit candle. A pinwheel.

Manipulating the elements was like, Lain'd explained to Stowhart, putting on a baseball glove. Babies spend months to years mastering the bones, muscles, and ligaments in their hands, then practice using them by playing with toys, until they're able to put on a baseball glove by themselves. A wizard's hand is their aura. Nature is their toy. Elemancy, he told a bewildered Stowhart, is the baseball glove, who asked what baseball had to do with anything before going away when Lain told him to quit being a pest.

Lain's gaze sharpened behind thick-rimmed glasses. He wove his aura, his fingers, around the test materials. He put on the glove.

Sand grains trickled upwards into a floating, upside down triangle.

The water in the bowl swirled violently, which shook without spilling.

The candle's flame erupted in a hot gleam, hissing like a high-powered blowtorch.

Last, Emil would've loved this, the colorful pinwheel tore off its stick and flew on the gust Lain summoned.

Lain maintained his control over the materials for a full minute before, after another deep breath, they returned to their original forms and places.

“Mastery of elemancy at such a young age is a rare talent, young Granfyre," the old man said in the refined, covetous tones of a chauffeur ferrying drunk trust fund beneficiaries. “Your Father will be pleased with your progress."

“Thank you," Lain said. He hadn't seen or heard from Father in months.

“I heard your natural affinity is Air. Normally, this would mean you'd have a lessened proficiency with Fire, but you've demonstrated adequate command over all four major elements equally."

“Yes, Sir," Lain said. He wasn't trying to be rude. It was a simple math equation. He was less likely to stutter the fewer words he said.

The old man's smile was a flytrap's gaping maw. “This is the demonstration before you can be considered for early graduation. If I were to pass you, and the board approved your application, you'd be the youngest graduate in the academy's history."

Lain bit the inside of his cheek to hold back the urge to swallow. “Yes, Sir."

“What are your ambitions, young man?" the old animal asked.

Lain blinked.

“My ambitions, Sir?"

“How do you plan to use your talents for Ashright's benefit?" his instructor reiterated.

Tryart's faculty embodied the high fantasy trope of old wizards jealously hoarding magic to a tee, although most of them were a lot rounder than the ones on book jackets. The only way the board might've considered using their talents for Ashright's benefit was by conquering it last.

Lain blinked again. He never anticipated being asked such a question.

The dark wizards in the stories he'd read to Emil always said something cool in situations like these. It didn't matter what they said. Most of the time it didn't even make sense. What mattered was how, with their chests out, their heads held high, they vowed to rule the world and nobody laughed. Emil didn't like broody villains, especially the ones who conquered the world and sulked all the time. Why go through so much effort to stay unhappy?

He didn't read with Emil anymore. He died years ago.

“I want everything," Lain said, wrangling courage by its tail so he wouldn't stutter when he met his instructor's perplexed stare. “The kingdom should use me however it can afford, because I'll be keeping a receipt."

3

The ink on Lain's graduation certificate barely dried before he enrolled in a wizarding university. He, now eleven, searched his bedroom for any mistakes, any errors that might ruin tonight's ritual.

Moonlight watched through the windows, a pallid spectator to his nighty curriculum. Symbols drawn in different colored chalks defaced a large black tarp rolled out where his rug should've been, the largest ones circling a pentagram drawn in sand with the same punctiliousness of a Buddhist's mandala. Candles stood at designated points around the pentagram, in golden holders shaped like gnarled claws.

The candleholders and pentagram and rainbow of chalks were new developments, for attaining ambiance. Hokey shit like candles and pentagrams made his years at Tryart drag like anchored snails, but now he knew better now than to exclude them.

Ambiance was a glue that held magic together in ways aura alone couldn't. You could have all the components of a spell, recite it perfectly, do all the hand signs with the flawless ease of picking your nose without looking, but doing it without the placebo of ambiance, that extra oomph of belief, was like bungee jumping while asleep.

The chalk rainbow was an extra net of inclusion. He'd take any flaming elemental at this point.

Bare-chested, symbols drawn on his black pelt with white paint marker, Lain stood and recited a spell in a language so dead the Grim Reaper would've reached for a dictionary. It roughly translated into this:

"O Those of the Three Worlds,

That that Walk among the Elements

And are One with Them,

Give me Strength.

Give me Wisdom.

Give me Valor.

Bestow upon Me all that I Need to Fulfill My Destiny.

I Pay for These with My Soul.

My Body.

My Blood.

Come! Stand by My Side. I Beckon Thee!"

Nothing happened.

Lain cleared his throat. He stood higher on his toes, threw his hands up to the very limit of his aching shoulders, and repeated, “I Beckon Thee!"

Still nothing.

Lain slumped.

"Motherfucker," he snarled in Common.

Every candle went out at once.

Electricity sparked violently around him, firing yellow bolts like harpoons throughout the moonlit room. There was a boom, a blast of energy so loud that Lain felt it throwing him back before hearing it.

"WHAT'D YOU SAY BOUT MY MAMMAAAAAA?!" a disembodied voice like a thousand blown fuses crackled.

Lain jumped onto his feet and clasped his hands together. Lightning scorched his room. Curtains billowed to the wailing of a contained storm.

"I Beckon Thee!" he shouted over this thundering squall.

"Stand by My Side!

Join me,

In Blood,

Body,

Soul!"

"FUCK OFF, CUNT!"

Lain struggled to breathe. His inhaler whorled on the back of winds snatching everything unbolted. White flashes turned his bedroom into a thundering film noir set.

"Granting me Strength!

Granting me Wisdom!

Granting me Valor!

Become One with Me!"

"GET BENT IN FRONT OF A MILE LONG TRAIN!"

"Become One with MEEEE!"

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

The electricity in his bedroom slowly became contained within the pentagram's invisible barrier. Lain's world spun as something tangible, vital, left him to join it. It was like the floor dropped out beneath him, and it was all he could do to keep from being swallowed by a gluttonous darkness. This nausea overshadowed all the booming, lights, and winds brutalizing his senses until the electric ball that'd grown within the pentagram sprang free, striking him.

Huh, Lain thought, getting hit by lightning felt a lot like laying in a bass speaker full of angry ants. He didn't have time to process the absurdity of this before passing out.

"What's that smell?" Stowhart's distant voice asked an eternity later, panic and curiosity fighting over his tone.

"Ozone," Mr. Goodwin, the head butler, said next, his voice swimming through the gravy of his unconsciousness. "It smells as though a storm ripped through your brother's room…Gods does it look the part. And what are those letters on his chest?"

"I heard him groan, is he waking up? Brother! Brother!"

His glasses were shoved onto his face as he was being sat up.

"Look at his eyes!" a maid cried.

Lain squinted. Everything in front of him was so blurred that he didn't know his inhaler was being shoved into his mouth before the medicine sprayed down his throat. He coughed it up, took off his glasses to rub his eyes, and stopped when the blurry shapes in front of him became Stowhart and Father's servants. That wasn't all. The pressure in his chest, hitherto as ubiquitous as breathing, was gone. An electric “presence" took its place.

Later, after after Mr. Goodwin escorted him to a guest room while the servants cleaned up, after kicking Stowhart out so he'd be alone, Lain looked at himself in the guest room's dresser's mirror from the bed. The smirking wolf staring back at him had bright, emerald green eyes, and a knot on his forehead where a candle holder hit him, but that wasn't as cool.

He listened to make sure no one was outside before, in a firm voice, he said, "Come out, I summon you!"

Lain's eyes sparked. Yellow jolts ripped from his pelt to form a humanoid shape seated in front of him. Lain's smirk twitched, then thinned, then became a scowl as his new minion revealed himself.

"Y-you're a kid!" Lain gasped indignantly.

"You're a kid too, asshole!" his minion snapped back. “It ain't my fault you're too weak t'summon up th'big guns! I can't believe I let myself get caught by some geek! Release me now, bitch."

Lain recoiled. His ears splayed. No one ever spoke to him like this—unless you counted the nasty things everyone at Tryart said behind his back. Great, he groaned inwardly, he asked for Strength, Wisdom, and Valor and he got a snappy shrimp instead.

"Who're you callin' shrimp, you stutterin' half pint," The elemental said. "Release me NOW or I'll kick your ass!"

Lain wanted to release him. He wanted to cower. He wanted to look or lean or run away from this wild brat.

He growled instead. It sounded like a rubber duckie being fed to a garbage disposal.

"W-who are YOU calling half pint, s-static breath?" he said, cringing with effort. "I'm your MASTER! You will obey and fear me if you know what's good for—"

Lain's minion punched him in the face, leaving a sizzling bruise on his left cheek. No one'd ever hit him before either. He might've cried if not for the elemental's smug, satisfied grin. Lain's fist wiped it off his face in an instant. It must've been a good punch, because the elemental held back tears while rubbing his cheek.

"Y-you...! Yoooou....Little runt!!!"

Lightning struck again, and this time Lain struck back. If anyone wondered where all his bruises came from the next morning, they didn't ask.

4

Stowhart marched upstairs to Lain's bedroom.

At fourteen years old, Stowhart'd graduated high school and began training as a squire in the Order. Lain was a college graduate by fourteen, but that was alright. Stowhart's desire to compete with him was as strong as a noble's desire to lobby for tax increases. He belonged behind him, supporting him, looking good but not as good, the way a lovely brass pedestal holds up a gold trophy. This was his rightful place.

They hardly spoke. They didn't hang out. They only crossed paths during late night trips to the bathroom but, Stowhart believed, they were close.

While everyone noticed how strange Lain'd acted these past few years, Stowhart was the only one who cared.

Spying on Lain hadn't been easy.

He almost never left home. He took every meal in his room, with instructions to leave it out in the hall, knock, then leave the hallway. He didn't have friends; no one visited him.

Watching Lain was a waste of time. Like actually doing his duties as valedictorian and adventure club president. Like keeping up with sword practice. Like maintaining his spot on the E.O.S (Empire Online Stratosphereum) leader boards. It'd all been a waste of time. At least watching Lain filled the void.

Lain didn't have friends.

No one ever visited him.

And yet…

Sometimes…

He heard a stranger's laugh in his room at night.

The same laughter he heard now, as he crept upstairs.

Floorboards never creaked mutinously beneath his bunny slippered feet as he tiptoed down the hall.

"T.K., please, this is important!" Lain said in as exasperated a voice as he could manage while laughing too. He never laughed around Stowhart.

"Exactly," the stranger said. "So say my name like one of your cheesy anime villains. I won't do it if you don't say my name with some bass!"

"T.K.—"

"Do it, bitch!"

"Thunderkiss."

"No. 'Thun-da-kess-uu'."

"Thundakessuu."

"Louder, how I pronounced it."

"Thun-da-kess-uu."

"LOUDER!"

"THUUUUN-DAAAA-KESS-UUUU!!!"

Lain's bedroom door was locked. Stowhart shouldered through it the way a boulder shoulders a young spruce, and lightning sprang around him. His eyes adjusted to the room's high-voltage gleam, as a rancid stench slugged his nose.

Stowhart'd been inside a morgue. He'd visited a butcher's storeroom. He'd seen mad science laboratories with grotesque abominations floating in jars and alien creatures vivisected on slabs on late night B-movies and none of it prepared him for the macabre haberdashery displayed before him. Body parts were everywhere. Sinister occult-looking runes defaced every wall, chalkboard, whiteboard, notebook, and sticky note pad in sight. Lain stood in the middle of this madness, clad in a messy apron, gloves, and boxer shorts with little anime logos on them. He'd thrown his hands up when Stowhart barged in. He was smiling. It wouldn't've been odd for him to shout something like “It's alive!" or “Eureka!" at this very moment, but he noticed Stowhart instead, and frowned.

A stitched chimera of different animal parts lay on an autopsy table between them, connected via cables to a machine that looked stolen off a space opera set. It was the size of a bookshelf and had reel motors. Lightning rods stuck out on top. A floating person made out of electricity gripped them like handlebars while doing his best deer-in-headlights impression at Stowhart.

Several thoughts used Stowhart's mind like a stress ball at once. 

He was laughing around this.

And, He frowned when he saw me.

And, Phew, my brother's just a serial killer. And here I thought he was depressed!

And, Why's that guy naked? 

And finally, Holy shit, that naked guy with the big dick's an elemental!

The word shook under his feet. His knees quivered. So, despite having a pretty good assessment of the situation, he didn't feel at all silly when he asked, "W-what...is...this?"

"I can explain," Lain said.

Stowhart waited patiently.

"Okay, I can't explain," Lain said.

"You killed these people!"

"What? No! Gods, no. What kind of animal do you think I am?"

Stowhart gave the room another once over with Lain following his gaze.

"Okay, point made. They were dead when I found them, Brother."

"Yeah, when you dug 'em up," the floating lightning person concurred wryly.

"Not helping. Look, Brother. Stowhart. These body parts are from Vermin and criminals. Corpses that went bad before a butcher bought them off an Exterminator. No one will miss them. No one will even notice they're gone. They're the perfect materials for my work."

"What work?" Stowhart screamed. "What are you doing? What is all of this?"

“This is my work for resurrecting Emil."

Stowhart's mouth opened and closed. His eyes ping-ponged around the horror show that was his brother's room once more.

"Resurrecting him," he repeated.

"Yes!" Lain said, an unfamiliar grin stretched across his face. “Have you ever read Lichenstein? The horror novel based on an ancient Four Era legend about a scientist who created a man with corpses and lightning..."

"So we figured, hey, that's neat, let's try it out!" the lightning person said, then proudly jabbed his chest with his thumb. "And I'm helping!"

"This is T.K. by the way, Thunderkiss. He's, um, my minion. Don't tell anyone you've seen him."

“You didn't call me your 'minion' last night. I could've sworn you called me your—"

"ANYWAY," Lain, red-faced, interjected, “the man in the legend only had electricity. He wasn't an Elemancer with a familiar and necromantic texts. If I can find a way to bind a soul to a corpse, any corpse, it won't matter if I don't find a way to regenerate decayed matter. I can—"

Hold your horses, Strod," Thunderkiss said. “Your slippery slope villain monologue got your brother lookin' green."

Lain glanced at Stowhart, who struggled to stay upright by leaning against his door frame. “It's the fumes getting to him, most likely. This room reeks of formaldehyde. Wait until he smells one of your farts, then he'll have something to turn green about."

"At least I don't smell like a moldy old mop anytime I get wet," Thunderkiss countered.

"I can't help that!" Lain snapped. “The, admittedly malodorous, scent of 'wet dog' is a natural chemical reaction I have no control over. YOU can choose not to eat all the burritos you see."

“And YOU," Thunderkiss shot back, “can choose not to get in a shower."

“That doesn't make sense! I'd smell even worse."

“You smell worse when you get wet."

“Yes, but—"

Stowhart dizzily watched their heated back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match until he fainted outright. Lain nor Thunderkiss, still arguing, noticed.

5

Stowhart never entered Lain's room without knocking again. Eight years flew by.

Stowhart whistled merrily, walking out of the GameBlock at one AM. The holiday rush seemed so hectic before joining the Order. Long lines and scalpers lost all menace after spending weeks in the Wild's, hiding from the dragon you were supposed to hunt, who'd turned half your party into dinner and wanted you for dessert.

"Another RPG," Deborah, the pigtailed corgi who'd accompanied him on this snowy expedition, said. There were bags under her eyes. Dragons and natives and evil wizards steeled his nerves for this midnight release the way only three coffees, an energy bar, and her thoroughly tested love for him could.

"Yeah!" Stowhart said, completely deaf to her tone. His swishing tail sweeped snow behind them in ways plows dreamt of. “Battle Falkner: Ultra Centurian V's the prequel to BFIII, which takes place after IV. We never got to see the Colmire Wars referenced in the first three games, and not only are they happening in this one but we'll finally see what's going on with—"

"Who's we?" Deborah cut in. Stowhart's tail stopped moving. "You only ever get single player games. No party games, nothing two-player…"

"You're the only two player party game I need," Stowhart said, grinning.

Deborah glared at him.

"You can't threaten me whenever I don't dance like a good puppet, Madam."

Deborah began unsheathing the small sword at her hip. She never left home without it.

"There's no one to play them with," Stowhart said quickly.

Deborah sheathed her sword.

"Plus, they're the kind of games you play with friends."

"You never had any?"

"Perhaps a few," Stowhart hummed. “I don't remember any of them, honestly." 

"What about that brother of yours," she said, pronouncing "brother" like she said "sack of lupine garbage".

Stowhart laughed.

"Lain doesn't play video games."

"Even when you were kids?"

Corgis were small. So were bombs, bullets, and big red buttons that turned cities into parking lots. He wanted to tell her that kids were baby goats, but too many wisecracks while they held hands was about as safe as sliding his dick into a food processor which, to be fair, wasn't so bad whenever she was in a good mood.

“Even when we were kids," he said.

“I'd play with you," she said with meaning. She looked up at him with her big, round eyes and he resisted the urge to tell her she could play with his joystick whenever she liked.

They walked in a moody silence ruined by car horns, sirens, and shouting pedestrians.

"I love you," she said.

"I know," he said.

The line didn't work as well as it had in the movies. The rebel princess didn't elbow the smuggler in the side when he said it, for one thing.

"I want to make you happy. I want to be the one who takes the world off your shoulders. I...I..."

"Deb, what is this?"

"I heard your phone call with Lain."

"How much of it?" Stowhart asked calmly, despite icicles forming in his veins.

"He's going to leave, and you said you're going with him," Deborah said, darkly.

"And you didn't hear why?"

"I don't care why!" she barked, surprising pedestrians around the block who wondered if a car crashed somewhere.

"I don't care why that zombie you shackle yourself to wants to leave. I wouldn't care if he tied cinder blocks to his feet and went for a swim in Jones River. You're planning on deserting the fucking Order of Ashright, deserting me! You're throwing your life away, and for what? To be an errand boy on his occult expedition? Let him go. Cut the tumor while it's handing you the scalpel!"

Stowhart squeezed her hand.

"Don't talk about my brother that way."

They continued their walk into Center Park in real silence. Snow and ice tucked everything under a white blanket that glittered under the golden glow of various street lamps. Colorful lights shone on the distant silhouettes of buildings overlooking frozen treetops. Animals bustled up and down shoveled paths, all on their way to some nightly festivity, or a warm abode.

 Stowhart and Deborah continued walking.

"Tell me why," she said.

"I can't."

"You can, and you will if you want me to keep your secret. I could torture the information out of you, but I've long since suspected you like that."

"So that's why you've left the whips and shackles in the closet all this time."

"You're stalling, Granfyre," she said in a voice as sweet as her twelve-sugar coffees.

They found a bench overlooking the lake and sat.

He told her everything.

It took him an hour.

It took Deborah several minutes after he finished to finally scoff with disgust. "Lain's a necromancer huh? Can't say I'm surprised."

"Not so loud! He's...dabbling in it. To resurrect Emil."

"And that's how it always starts out, isn't it? A loved one dies so they dip their toes in the occult, scouring forbidden magics to resurrect them. A little necromancy here, a few burned villages there, then, whoops, an undead army's pillaging the countryside."

"That's movies, Deb. Real necromancy is more...complicated. You can't exactly study it in schools, and liches aren't known for taking on apprentices. He's expunged all civilized avenues available to him."

"And you want to go with him into the Wilds, to protect him while he searches for new ones."

"No," he said. "To stop him from turning out like the movies."

"Or become his loyal knight if he does go dark lord," Deborah said, chuckling bitterly. "I can see it now. Lain, skeletal, black robes, green flames for eyes. You, wearing armor blacker than midnight, with a look on your face like you're holding in the world's biggest shit."

Stowhart snorted, then shrugged.

"Yeah, probably," he said. "He's the only brother I've got left."

"I'm going with you," she said after another pause.

"No," he said.

“So, you can throw your life away but I can't? Hardly seems fair."

“It isn't," Stowhart said. “I love you."

Deborah lowered her head. After a while, she gave a deep sigh and glared sidelong at him. "You're coming back," she said.

“In chains, probably. Dishonorable discharge. Prison time. I hear these things build character."

"Stay poorly written and fleshed out like a shriveled worm," Deborah said, sweeping bangs behind her ear. "You'll never step foot in a cell, Daddy will see to it. He's made things like this go away before. Then, we'll get married."

"Say what now?"

"I said you're going to propose to me right now before I rip your tongue out and use it to wipe your ass."

"Debbie, my darling, light of my life, will you marry me?"

"Of course I will," Deborah said, batting lashes at him. "I'll even wait for the ring. Aren't you so lucky?"

"Like an amputated rabbit."

"It'll have diamonds on it. And sapphires. And a ruby. Yes! A big ruby on a gold ring with diamonds and sapphires on it," she said in a tone that punctuated her sentence with "or else".

"Your taste in jewelry mirrors your benevolence," Stowhart replied.

"Well, well, well, looky what we got here, boys?"

Stowhart and Deborah looked around, thinking an outdoor viewing was going on across the lake. It'd been such a cliche line that they never imagined a real, live pack of rag-cloaked rats stalked behind them until they smelled them. They all carried improvised weapons with past lives in a janitor's closet. All of their sneers were mouthfuls of candy corn. Their combined fumes melted falling snow a foot above their shoulders, and their footprints stamped black craters into the ground that led to the steaming manhole they crawled out of.

Deborah's brow perked. Stowhart covered his nose.

"Drop all th'valuables 'n maybe we won't slit your throats after we fuck ya like cheap whores!" the biggest, scroungiest, steroid-junky-lookingiest rat in the bunch snickered. He summed up why most Exterminators were retired adventurers. He looked like something dragons feared might crawl out of their toilet.

The pack laughed wickedly until Stowhart stood up. They were big for rats. He was huge for a mutt.

"I'll handle this, Deb," he said, drawing two large knives out of his coat. There were more where those came from. People'd thought a Santa was ringing their bell nearby whenever Stowhart passed.

"I'd've said that's the dumbest thing you've ever said if I hadn't listened to your plan, Stowhart Granfyre," Deborah, standing to her full, comparatively less intimidating, height. Drawing her sword made up for it, whose sibilant hiss sent the night scurrying into its burrow. "Weren't we just talking about two player games?"

6

Lain Granfyre, age twenty-six, disappeared. Stowhart Granfyre, twenty four, deserted his post around the same time. They were never heard from again.

7

Two years later, Lain met Masamua Kage.

Stowhart waited in the airship, parked outside of a village surrounded by mountains.

"He's a villain. A murderous, unhinged psychopath and a blight upon my family name," Masamura Kage said, seated behind an oak desk. He watched Lain over steepled hands. His robes and pottery and paintings coalesced in an aura of elegance thick enough to choke on. The office looked like a museum curator's private display, bestowing their meeting, where they planned to lure another man to his death, an air of sophistication.

"He'll be killed after you take him to the compound," he continued.

"Wouldn't it be easier to hire me to kill him instead?" Lain asked.

"I'd've long since paid an overconfident young sorcerer to bring me his head, instead of paying his family to stay quiet about his untimely demise, if it were so simple."

Lain hummed. He'd've been nervous years ago. He'd've looked away from the old samurai's predatory glare. He felt no pressure in his chest. He feared no one. Thunderkiss was with him.

"I don't want money," Lain said curtly. "I want 'the tomes' we discussed."

Masamura Kage's smile was the twin of the face Lain'd seen on hundreds of bounty boards in his few years as an adventurer, cleaner shaven and whiter teeth aside.

"The necromantic tomes," Masamura Kage clarified. "You western sorcerers smell dark magic and come running with wagging tongues."

Lain held his breath. Every kingdom in Three Worlds paid adventurers to hunt necromancers. Those who survived such missions usually retired. Succeeding earned them wealth enough to last several generations. Lain could, technically, be considered a necromancer. Enough that, although he'd never pass up an opportunity like this, he kept his eyes peeled for goons and traps.

"Understand that, although I work in the Wilds, I am a law-abiding citizen of Ashright. I do not, nor have I ever, kept highly illegal occult paraphernalia. However, there is no law stating such materials cannot be viewed, or that knowledge of their location is, in and of itself, a crime. Complete this task and I'll point you in the right direction. I may even acquaint you with someone whose, shall we say, “profession" relates to your curiosities. With the utmost confidence, of course."

"Of course," Lain said.

He looked at the compound's photograph again. Rich easterners tended to live in luxurious wooden mansions, mazes of tatami mats and sliding doors. This mansion's veranda overlooked a pond where Masamura Kage allowed his koi slaves to swim or roam the gardens or do whatever koi slaves who didn't fear being eaten by their Master did. Those slaves were like the antiques in this office, ornaments. The slaves kept in the compound were merchandise.

"Is showing him this really enough?" he asked.

"Show him the photo and he'll come running," Masamura Kage said. "My men will give you Masamune's last known whereabouts on your way out."

Lain put the photo behind his cloak. "I'll deliver your brother, just keep your end of the bargain."

Masamura Kage's face shifted. It was now the difference between a tarantula regarding its prey and sinking its fangs into it. "You're a new hireling. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Never refer to that man as my brother ever again. It makes me very angry."

"How magnanimous," Lain said. "Will that be all, Sir?"

"Get out."

Lain called out Masamune Kage in Shanty Town one week later.