30 | Everything At Once (2)

The Mythic was gone and the pill was in storage, and Soren sat in the dark of the loft with what was left, which was not much and was still more than he had owned an hour ago.

<<Loraine: 1 Legendary. 3 Epic. 3 Rare. 2 Uncommon.>>

We'll hold on the Legendary this time. I'm not pulling it tonight.

<<Loraine: You have just Overcharged 10 Epic tickets on a 15% roll, and you are telling me you want to be careful with a Legendary?>>

I'm not being careful. I'm being greedy. Soren leaned back against a grain sack. He let out a low exhale.

It would be a lie to say he wasn't slightly disappointed by the mythic pull, still it was a useful item despite it's grade.

A Legendary tops out at Exalted. That's the highest ceiling I'll have for months. And right now I don't know what I need. In four days I'll know exactly what I need, because I'll be standing in front of it.

There was a pause.

<<Loraine: That is the first genuinely disciplined thing you have said since you arrived on this planet.>>

Don't get used to it.

<<Loraine: I will not.>>

Two Epics. Pull them.

<<PROFOUND GRADE ROLL.>>

The purple wheel turned, and Soren watched it the way he had watched every wheel since the first one, with the particular stillness of a man who knows exactly what it costs to hope.

<<PHYSIQUE: ANVIL BODY.>>

<<GRADE: REFINED.>>

<<CURSE TAG: NONE.>>

<<A body refinement of the Ordwyn line schools. The frame learns to receive force rather than oppose it, distributing impact through bone and connective tissue instead of stopping it at the point of contact. Blunt trauma resistance substantially increased. Edged and piercing damage unaffected.>>

<<Note: this is the defensive expression of the same principle as Piercing Palm Arts. One drives force through a body. The other refuses to hold it.>>

Soren stopped.

<<Loraine: ...>>

<<Loraine: A physique.>>

You've been on at me about a physique since the stairwell.

<<Loraine: I have been on at you about a physique for six weeks, because you are a mage who fights with his hands, and every single thing that has gone wrong for you went wrong at the moment somebody touched you.>>

Her voice had gone flat in the way he had learned meant she was managing something.

<<Loraine: Corrin Bly put a shoulder into your chest and you left the ground and lost consciousness for two hours. Ost's backhand cost a Refined talisman I had expected would be used for something else. Dell and Ounce split your skin and you sewed it yourself in the dark behind a feed store because there was no other option available to you.>>

Loraine.

<<Loraine: It is Refined. It is one grade below the ceiling. And it is the most useful thing you have pulled since Mana Siphon, and I would like that stated clearly and on the record.>>

<<Lilith: She's happy.>>

<<Loraine: I am relieved, which is a different and considerably less pleasant sensation.>>

It went in the way everything went in, except that it did not.

This time, as a physique, he could feel it being added to his body, it was a strange feeling that felt surreal yet present.

This arrived in his shoulders. Then his ribs. Then down through his hips and into his shins, and it was not painful so much as deeply and profoundly strange, like being told a fact about himself that he should have known his entire life.

He punched the grain sack beside him, hard, without deciding to.

His knuckles did not hurt.

<<Loraine: Do not test it on things that cannot hit back. You will build confidence you have not earned and then you will stand still when you should move.>>

Second Epic.

<<PROFOUND GRADE ROLL.>>

<<ITEM: STAGE ASCENT PILL.>>

<<GRADE: PROFOUND.>>

<<CURSE TAG: NONE.>>

<<Ozhan alchemy, lower shelf. Supplies refined mana sufficient to complete one full Stage advance within a tier. Does not function on tier walls. Single use.>>

<<Loraine: ...>>

<<Loraine: I want to sit down.>>

You don't have a body.

<<Loraine: I am aware of that and I want to sit down anyway.>>

Say the number.

<<Loraine: You are 6th Stage. You need 10th. That is 4 Stages in 13 days, and I told you three hours ago that it was not possible.>> A pause. <<With the draught I have not shown you yet, and this pill, and Deepwell running underneath both of them, it is possible.>>

It's tight.

<<Loraine: It is extraordinarily tight, and it requires nothing whatsoever to go wrong, and something always goes wrong. I would like you to keep that somewhere you can reach it.>>

Last one. The Uncommon.

<<Lilith: Ooh. Do it. I have a feeling.>>

<<Loraine: You do not have feelings. You have a random number generator and an attitude.>>

<<MORTAL GRADE ROLL.>>

<<ITEM: A COMB.>>

<<GRADE: MORTAL.>>

<<Bone. Fourteen teeth. Two of them are broken.>>

The loft was silent.

<<Lilith: ...Two of them are broken?>>

<<Loraine: Two of them are broken.>>

<<Lilith: It came out of the system pre-broken?>>

<<Loraine: The system does not manufacture. The system retrieves. Somewhere in a repository spanning more worlds than I can index, do not ask, I won't answer about that now, there was a comb with two broken teeth. It has now been retrieved. It is his.>>

Soren looked at it sitting in his palm in the dark.

He was going to keep it. He knew that immediately and without any decision being involved.

He had a hat, and a jar had died a hero on a towpath, and now he had a comb with two broken teeth, and somewhere in the last six weeks the jokes had started being a collection.

Right, he said. Three days.

<<Loraine: For what?>>

I need to disappear.

<<Loraine: Explain.>>

The draught leaves me on the floor for up to five hours. The pill will be worse, they always are. Peak's a wall and you said I'd do that one with my teeth. He turned the comb over.

That's three separate nights where I can't move and can't be found. And I've got Marda calling my name across the yard every four hours and a woman on the second floor who reads my mark before she sleeps.

<<Loraine: You want to be somewhere else.>>

I want to be somewhere with a door.

<<Loraine: She will feel you go.>>

She'll feel me alive and calm and a long way off and she'll possibly try to punish or kill me if I return without a reason for her not to.

<<Loraine: Which is worse than anything she has felt so far, because slaves are not a long way off.>>

<<Loraine: Soren. If you do this you hand her the piece of evidence she has been missing. Everything else she's skeptical about but trusts the mark on you too much to would be out the window.>>

Soren sat in the dark with a broken comb in one hand.

Yeah, he said. I know.

But I can be suspicious and Adept, or I can be trusted and 7th Stage on Friday morning with a woman taking my trousers off.

<<Lilith: ...When you put it like that.>>

<<Loraine: When he puts it like that, it is still a terrible idea. It is simply the least terrible one available, which is, I have noticed, the only category he has ever operated in.>>