Mirror Wars 1, Chapters 1-12 (First 20k words, all of act 1) (Patreon)

[Hey all, I've been slowly working on this on the side. I will most likely start putting chapters up on RR relatively soon, and wanted to get any feedback I could. Super appreciate it!)

Mirror Wars, a Spirit World LitRPG, Book 1

Prologue: The Last Mirror Templar

The sound of the gunfire, swords striking one another, and screams that filled the magitech lab around her faded into the background as Nightmare stared in horror at the diagrams on the computer screen.

Leviathan had already broken one of the three fundamental laws that bound the mortal and spirit worlds. According to this, he would soon be able to break a second one.

This is what he was trying to achieve when he experimented on me for all those years.

Almost no one would be able to understand the diagrams, but Nightmare—whose true name was Sarah—was one of the few with the knowledge to at least comprehend what the diagrams represented.

They represented disaster.

Leviathan would seize Earth for his god, Malryk, the God of Tyranny, and end Earth’s connection to the good forever. All of life on Earth would be the same never-ending misery that Nightmare had experienced growing up under Leviathan’s heel in this very lab complex, before she had been freed.

            She risked a quick glance around to assess the situation. The laboratory—a mix of old-fashioned alchemy tables, modern computers, and alien things unseen by mortal man’s eye—was nearly overrun. Nightmare and her fellow Templars were currently raiding the facility. The other four members of her team—Ruby, Savior, King Bee, and Dryad—were fighting a stream of anthropomorphic weasel and owl spirits, as well as enemy Inquisitors. Swords, guns, and magic flashed, and the laboratory was burning.

            “We have to go!” Ruby shouted, her eyes wide behind her unfortunate mask—a stylized flaming warthog face.

            She blocked a sword slash with her gem-encrusted right arm, then stepped inside the attack and grabbed the neck of the opposing weasel-headed spirit with her left hand. It stabbed twice at her belly with a steel knife, but the knife couldn’t pierce Ruby’s magically reinforced skin. She triggered her flames. The spirit died instantly with its head burned from its neck.

            “We’re going to die if we stay, and they’ll eat our spirits!” Ruby continued, glancing at Nightmare and taking another hit—this time from a sword—that barely cut her shoulder.

            “I need two minutes,” Nightmare said, calmly.

            She reached inside herself, grabbing at the mana seeping from her central essence and molding it into the magic of Mind.

1 mana spent. Perfect Memory ability used.

Nightmare began flipping through the diagrams, hitting ‘page down’ every half-second. She gathered the diagrams into herself without truly seeing them. But her magic would make each memory perfect, so she could peruse them later until she grasped every concept.

Savior, the man who had first rescued her from these very laboratories years ago, crashed to the stone floor next to her, his golden monkey mask cracked, his face leaking blood, and a huge rent across his chest. But he still had mana, and so long as he did, he couldn’t die—he stood, quickly, the wounds on his face and body closing quickly.  His golden guns were in his hands, and he fired at whatever was coming through the door behind them.

“I’m not sure we have two minutes,” he said.

Savior’s voice wasn’t as calm as Nightmare’s had been. It had an underlying quaver, but he did a good job of hiding it.

“If I don’t get this information, the Templars, and then Earth, will fall,” Nightmare responded.

Savior exhaled noisily even as he fired, his magic forming new bullets when he should be running low. “You’ll get your two minutes.”

Faster and faster Nightmare went, each page etched into her mind as the battle raged.

King Bee screamed and stumbled into Nightmare’s vision for a moment, and she knew the image of his guts spilling from his perforated stomach, his eyes bulging out from behind his steel bee mask, would be burned into her mind for all eternity as she took more images. But quitting never entered her mind.

Dryad was the second to go, her blood splashing across the keyboard even as King Bee’s spirit-self formed, ripping open his corpse like a snake molting and shaking the viscera free. King Bee’s spirit—which was just as physically real on this side as the mortal had been before he died—took the form of an actual steel bee the size of a horse. Like most Templars that died in the Near, his spirit form reflected his mask.

Nightmare hit ‘page down’ on the computer again, but this time, it changed nothing, and the final page sat on the computer. All of the information from the entire file was perfectly ingrained in Nightmare’s mind. She turned to face the battle. Ruby and Savior were covered in blood, and Nightmare saw that their mana was almost gone. Dryad’s unfortunate spirit form—a rooted tree that Nightmare would forever be glad she hadn’t seen rip from the once-beautiful body of her dead friend—had already been destroyed.  King Bee’s spirit was cracked and dented across his new body.

Nightmare reached for her power and screamed out her fears, her memories, her agony, and her loss—the stuff of her nightmares, which she forced into everyone else’s psyche.

4 mana spent. Psychic Scream unleashed. Average of seven damage inflicted to all enemies within sixty feet.

            Weasel spirits died by the multitude, and a few owl spirits dropped to the ground, although their high mental resistances meant none were actually slain. Even the traitor Inquisitors flinched from her power, and blood ran from the noses and eyes of her old tormentors.

            But nothing inanimate was disturbed in any way.

            Everyone shied away from her power and anguish. Maybe a few of us can still live, Nightmare thought to herself.

            Then the wall ripped away, and Nightmare saw the lights of Shadowind City through the darkness of the ever night, far below them.

            A deep specter was on the other side of the gaping hole. It took the form of a massive zombie bird, with a hundred-foot wingspan. Eight putrid octopus tentacles, each thin but longer than the entity’s wingspan, grew from its chest. Four of those tentacles held the wall it had ripped away as it slowly pumped its wings. It was somehow hovering in place and sending waves of foul stench across everyone below, waiting. The weasel spirits—those who remained alive—began jeering, and a few owl spirits bowed to it.

            Despair filled Nightmare. They couldn’t fight a deep specter. Nothing Nightmare knew of could touch it—it shouldn’t even exist in Shadowind City. Its spiritual weight would normally have caused it to sink to a far deeper realm.

Nightmare’s eyes flickered around, looking for Leviathan, the traitorous Mirror Templar whose rare power allowed the specters to access the Near.

            Savior gripped Nightmare’s shoulder. “Go,” he said, pointing to King Bee.

“You’ll die,” Nightmare whispered back, emotion finally creeping into her voice.

“That fate was sealed when Leviathan arrived—I’m just a corpse that can give you one more minute.”

“Thank you, Liam,” Nightmare said, now that his true name wouldn’t matter anymore.

Ruby gave Nightmare a single salute, tears streaming down her face, coming out beneath her mask. She had a new fiancée in the mortal world.

He would never know how or why she had disappeared from his life forever, perhaps foolishly believing she hadn’t cared for him.

Nightmare hobbled as quickly as her shattered body could move, heading over to the wounded spirit of King Bee, her own pain her constant friend. He dipped his body and she climbed on top of him, sitting just before his wings, his body strangely warm for steel.

That seemed to be some kind of signal, and the fighting started again.

But King Bee didn’t stay to fight. With a lurch, he took off, flying for freedom as fast as he could. Nightmare clenched her legs hard as her ally flew out into the night past the giant deep specter, dodging both an arrow trailing darkness shot from one of the inquisitors below and a giant tentacle. He curved sharply downward and headed toward Shadowind City, presumably for one of the Mirror Templar’s secret gates to the mortal world.

A flash of shadow in midair resolved into Leviathan himself, his six-foot-four frame and perfectly smooth obsidian mask unmistakable. King Bee veered, but the sword of pure shadow that formed in Leviathan’s hand cleaved through the spirit’s iron skin like it was butter.

Nightmare nearly screamed as the sword strike carved along her leg as well, but had the presence of mind to reach for her mana again, grasping the power that oozed around her core.

3 mana spent. Wound to leg healed

Unfortunately, King Bee’s spirit had no mana with which to repair itself, being newly born from his mana-devoid corpse. His blood spewed from the rent in his side and fell toward the city below.

Leviathan began to fall, but shifted back into shadow and landed on the edge of the destroyed lab as King Bee fell.

Neither Nightmare nor King Bee were healers. Like Savior before, King Bee was a corpse that didn’t know it was dead yet.

“Hold on just a bit, Bee,” Nightmare begged. Bee’s wings hummed, and he managed to keep himself half-functional as they headed down, but he fell toward a place that wasn’t under the control of the Templars.

A place where Nightmare didn’t know of a gate.

She saw the tight apartment complexes of the city, two to three stories tall, as they came in. Bee missed one roof, heading over the side and slamming into a fire escape in between two of the buildings. Nightmare was thrown from Bee’s back and fell two stories to the cobblestone alley, slimed with garbage. She slammed into the ground, a blow that would have killed most mortals but only stunned her—as well as causing her skin to rip around the scars all across her body. Her resolve finally broke, and she let out a shriek of pain.

She winced as Bee crashed next to her, blood pouring from him. “I’m… sorry… Sarah,” he managed to wheeze out. Then he died, the essence of his spirit dissolving into nothing in all directions.

Nightmare heard a screech, and looked up. The giant zombie-bird deep specter was headed vaguely in her direction. She painfully climbed to her knees, and then her feet. Then she hobbled into the shadows of the alley, away from her fallen comrade.

Nightmare took stock of the situation. She was badly wounded, her friends were dead, and she wasn’t near a gate, so far as she knew. Odds were, she would be caught, and most likely returned to the Leviathan’s laboratory, or one of the other bases his faction had throughout Shadowind City. And then all was lost.

But she had one trick left, an ability that Leviathan didn’t know about—her true power, which had manifested after she had been rescued from his clutches.

She glanced around the alley. Wooden crates were stacked throughout for no apparent reason at all, and piles of trash were heaped everywhere for even less explicable reasons. Every building had a fire escape, and a large manhole cover was in the middle of the street, near where Bee had died, leading who knew where. Lots of entrances and exits, and lots of places to hide. It seemed like the kind of place a fragment spirit of a type she needed might make itself a home.

She focused her magic through the pain, the effort near as autonomic as breathing. She pulled her mana to her, molding it into her most powerful magic, Mind magic, once again.

4 mana spent. Locate Person ability used. Fragment spirit sought within 100 feet of current location. 3 targets found—1 Spirit of Poverty, 1 Spirit of Malice, and 1 Spirit of Trickery.

            Nightmare saw an overlay of the area she was in, like a mini-map. Neither the spirit of poverty nor the spirit of malice would help with her purposes.

            But the spirit of trickery was right in front of her, and it was perfect.

            Nightmare called on her inborn power. She looked inward at the mass of her essence, from where she usually drew the mana. But this time she pushed her will deeper and ripped at the foundation of her power, the essence pile.

            Bonded Evolution in use. 10 essence will be removed. Permanent damage will be done. Proceed?

            Nightmare silently assented, and nearly blacked out as pain strong enough to overwhelm the damage to her body wracked her. But she held her hand out, a glow resting on her palm.

            She knelt, offering the glow to a pile of trash. A raccoon crawled from the garbage, nervously shuffled over to her, and stared at her hand. Nightmare’s magic danced across her eyes, showing her that this was the trickster spirit she had sensed earlier.

            Nightmare met the spirit’s eyes—eyes that possessed more understanding than a typical animal. She smiled tremulously through her pain and loss. “Do you want to be a true spirit, friend? One with a soul? I can give you one, and all it will cost you is one teeny, tiny thing.”

Chapter One: Dramatis Personae

            Maxwell “Max” Gray’s studying was interrupted by a knock on the frame of the open door. He dropped his feet down from the desk, pushing himself back from the desk in the narrow space between two bunkbeds. He glanced up from his used copy of The Art of the Renaissance, 13th edition.

            Stefan was lurking just at the threshold of the door to their tiny shared bedroom, his brown hair hanging over woebegone blue eyes. No one would ever know, if they were put side-by-side, that Stefan and Max were brothers. Stefan was eighteen, two years younger than Max, but he looked like one of those emo band stars—androgynous and smooth cheeked, with perfectly symmetrical but soft features. Max was a monster, six-foot-three and built like a fighter, with lean muscle all across his body and a near permanent six o’clock shadow. He even had a scar above one green eye, courtesy of a bizarre cut during one of his amateur MMA matches, and his sharply angled face was topped off by a black military crewcut.

            Although, in all fairness, they were only half-brothers. They shared the same mother, but they had different fathers.

Neither father was ‘in the picture’ anymore.

“What’s gone wrong now?” Max asked.

            “How do you know something’s wrong?” Stefan replied.

            “You’re knocking at the door of the room we share,” Max replied with a roll of his eyes. “You wouldn’t do that unless you were really worried about bringing me news of some sort.”

            Stefan half-smiled. “Well, I got the part-time job at Walmart, so I’ll be able to help you take care of the family, now. It’s only twenty hours a week, at minimum wage.”

            Twenty hours at fifteen an hour was three hundred a week, pre-tax. Which would help them immensely.

Max stood and held his arms open. “Come ’ere, give me a hug.”

            “I’m not hugging you,” Stefan said.

            Max laughed.

He loved his brother deeply—a lot of middle kids were dicks for one reason or another, but Stefan was the ‘good boy’ of the family. The only one, actually. Max was a fighter, and Kevin was a fuck-up. But Stefan was always kind, always hard working, and extremely smart. He had even gotten into the University of Chicago, which was ranked fourteenth in the nation.

            But he was still a younger brother, and occasionally fun to fuck with.

            “That sounds like a good thing,” Max continued, letting his arms drop. “Why are you skulking around like a beaten dog?”

            Stefan hung his head. “The enrollment fee didn’t clear.”

            “What?!” Max asked, briefly stunned. “How? We had it all figured out!”

            Max sat back in his chair and swung back to the desk, hitting the keys on the keyboard to start up his computer. He quickly pulled up his account, and stared at it. Stefan walked up next to him, glancing at the account with him.

            Three hundred dollars was missing, and it had been taken out of the account about four hours ago, from a nearby ATM.

            “Fuck!” Max cried out, bringing his fist down on the cheap desk table. Stefan jumped, backing away, even though Max hadn’t struck him in anger since they were in elementary school.

            “Kevin!” Max yelled.

            “What?” came back.

            Max stormed from the bedroom all three of them shared and into the front room of their trailer home, which tried to fit a small house worth of furniture and knickknacks into a tiny, claustrophobic space.

He glared at his youngest brother, who sat on their couch in a wife beater and jeans, playing the Nintendo Switch. Kevin was fifteen, and didn’t share a father with either of his brothers. If Max’s father had given him size and fighting skill, and Stefan’s had given him looks and brains, Kevin’s father had only given his son red hair and laziness, as near as Max could figure.

            “Where’s the money?” Max asked.

            “What the fuck are you talking about, ya dick?” Kevin asked.

            Max walked over and grabbed Kevin by his stupid wife beater, attempting to lift him to his feet, but the shirt just ripped.

            “Hey, stop it!” Kevin said, batting at Max’s hands ineffectually and losing his Switch to the couch cushions in the process.

            “That was money for your brother, to go to college! To make something of himself, unlike everyone else in this damn family!” Kevin was a near straight-F student, who missed half his school days. They’d had a truancy officer over to the trailer more than once.

            “I don’t care if it was for the Pope, I didn’t touch your damn money!” Kevin said.

            “I, um, actually, I don’t think he did,” Stefan said, walking in from the bedroom. “It said it was taken out at an ATM, and our brother hasn’t left all day.”

            There was a brief moment of silence, interrupted only by Kevin’s desultory, “See?” as the three brothers looked at each other.

            “Mom,” Kevin said, suddenly allied with his brothers by their shared frustration.

            “Drugs again?” Max asked. “Also, how did she get money from my account?”

He walked back into the room they all shared and opened the drawer of the desk—the third one, his drawer. He took his wallet out and opened it.

His ATM card was missing.

At that moment, the door to the trailer banged open. “I’m home, sweeties!”

Max returned to their front room. His mom wore a long pink sundress, but it was stained with liquid down the front, and her walk was wobbly. She carried a cheap and gaudy purse over one shoulder, bright pink faux leather that didn’t quite match the dress. She was thirty-six, but looked closer to forty-five, with dyed hair graying at the roots and wrinkles on her face.

“Mom… where is my card?” Max asked, his voice low and tight.

“I, um… I borrowed it,” his mom said, fishing his card from the purse. “I needed some money for groceries.”

Max was close to exploding. “You can’t just take my shit! We needed that money!”

“Where are the groceries?” Kevin asked, completely unhelpfully.

“I don’t know,” their mom said.

Max snatched his card from her, and she took her hand back, rubbing it.

Max turned and started to walk back to his room.

“What’s with you? Why are you so butt hurt? It was just a couple hundred bucks.”

Max tried to control his rising rage, he really did. But the tide of frustration and anger overwhelmed him. He turned and slammed his fist into the wall, punching a hole through the cheap siding.

“What the fuck!” his mom exclaimed. “You’re paying for that!”

“I’m paying for everything!” Max exploded, turning and walking up to his mom, yelling in her face. “Everything! I work a full-time job, despite taking night classes, and every fucking penny I make goes to take care of this family except the money I spend at the gym and on the entry fee to prize fights—whose prize money I also spend on this family! I put six thousand dollars away, somehow, to get Stefan into college and you stole the damn money! Now I have to go and try and fix this, see if they’ll extend the date and let him enroll anyway, all because you wanted to get high!”

His mom shrank back from his rage, and Max brought himself under control, bit by bit.

“It’s not my fault,” his mom said sullenly. “When your father left…”

“Mom, I’m not the one that hooked up with a goddamn war criminal when I was fifteen and was then surprised when he didn’t stick around to take care of you. Or Stefan’s dad, a travelling musician that left town the night after he left you Stefan.”

“Kevin’s dad’s still around,” Mom replied.

“Mom…” Max started, but trailed off.

It was pointless to remind her that Kevin’s dad was still around because he was doing his fourth prison stint. All of it was pointless. Max, with some help from Stefan, had been taking care of the family since he was fourteen, basically. His mom would never do better, and Max did it almost entirely for Stefan at this point. His half-brother was the best of them, a precious cinnamon roll that would be a great husband and dad someday.

Max liked to imagine that the two of them would someday raise not-fucked-up children in the same town, living a good life in close proximity, hopefully with wives that were good friends as well. Stefan would likely become talented enough at something that he might have a pool at his house someday, and their kids would swim together.

There was a brief pause. “Do you at least have any of the money left?”

His mom shook her head.

“I’m going out,” Max said, grabbing his own windbreaker and throwing it over his workout shorts and t-shirt. He grabbed the door, yanked it open, and headed into the windy night.

Stefan followed him out the door.

Max walked down past a few of the other mobile homes, heading for the exit from the trailer park, which was to the North of their particular trailer—a fact that Max knew because he was looking straight at the nearly finished Klinefelter tower, a forty-story monstrosity being built at the far Northern end of the Chicago suburbs. Max didn’t have a good sense of direction, but he did know that if the tower was right side, he was heading West, and if it was on his left side, he was heading East. The tower might be ugly, but it helped Max navigate.

He did wonder who the hell had approved the building of a skyscraper in the middle of the suburbs, though.

Stefan kept pace with Max as he headed from the park, although even that made Max’s brother a touch winded.

Max needed to go running, work his rage off. He wanted, so badly, to do the right thing—to not be his father. He hated when he lost his cool. Even when people deserved it.

“You okay?” Stefan asked, putting his hand on Max’s shoulder.

Max gave him a sidelong glance.

Stefan laughed. “Sorry, dumb question. I know the situation isn’t great. Look… thanks. But it’s okay. I got a partial scholarship to the University of Chicago, but I got a full scholarship to a few others. I can go to one of those. You can use the money for other things. You’ve done enough, bro.”

Max sighed, gently shook himself free of Stefan’s hand, and took his phone out. He brought up an app. “No. I’ll drop out of the Chiraq Rumble. The money from the fee will replace what Mom took.”

“You joined another one of those underground prize fights?” Stefan asked, the disapproval evident in his voice. “I’ve heard they’re rigged.”

“I know, I know, it’s dangerous. A lot of them are rigged, but I’ve never been involved in one of those. And we needed the money. We still need it, really.”

“Money you only get if you win.”

“I usually do.”

“But not always. And one of these days you’re going to get hurt.”

Max shrugged.

The two brothers sat in silence for a bit while Max removed himself from the tournament. It was a cool October night, and the wind blew around them. Max found it invigorating, but Stefan began to shiver.

Max finished typing on his phone. “The money should be back in the account by Monday, and we can see about fixing this then.”

            “Can’t say I’m sorry to see you’ll not be in one of those fights. Shit happens to people that go to them. Bad shit.”

            Max shrugged. It wasn’t worth arguing about. “I’m gonna go for a run—I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

            “I could go with you, if you need some company.”

            Max laughed out loud, a touch of his anger and frustration leaving him. He turned and put both his hands on Stefan’s shoulders, and then placed his forehead against his brother’s. “Stefan, you’re a great person, truly. Kind, caring—"

            “But?” Stefan interrupted with a slight laugh. “You only start listing a bunch of nice stuff right before you say something mean to me. Just get to it.” Max could hear the eyeroll implicit in his voice.

            “But you’re a bit of a pussy. We both know you would pass out from one of my warm-up runs. Go keep the other two from doing anything truly stupid, and I’ll be back, okay?”

            “You want me to keep Mom and Kevin from doing dumb shit? Now you’re just being cruel.”

            Max laughed again. Stefan always knew how to get him away from his anger and back to being happy again. Just one more thing he loved about his brother.

            Stefan pulled back. “Alright, well, enjoy your run.”

            Max nodded, then turned and ran out the entrance to the trailer park, past Ms. Daisy, who was driving her beat-up pickup truck in. He reached Center Road and ran that for a few minutes, reaching Niles and turning onto it.

            Chicago never really shut down, and certainly not when it was only early evening. The constant purr of the cars, and their lights, kept Max company as his feet pounded on the sidewalk. He picked his speed, keeping a pace that pushed him slightly, till he could feel his heart pounding. The trick to getting the kind of cardio he wanted was to keep his heart-rate notably elevated as long as possible.

            Eventually, after two complete runs on Niles Avenue, he turned from his usual path and ran down Main deeper into town. His feet ate up distance as Max pushed himself both to train, and to kill his frustration.

            Almost an hour in, when he could truly feel the burn, deep in the city, he was passing a small, unlit alley between closed businesses when he heard running feet—a lot of running feet.

            Max slowed and approached the alley, nervously. Chicago’s crime statistics weren’t quite as bad as everyone made them out to be.

            But they weren’t good by any stretch, either.

            “Hello?” Max called into the darkness.

            A girl ran from the darkness, about five-foot-four, with long dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. She was thin and perfectly formed, and she would have been beautiful if not for her most striking feature—the scars across her face and running up from under the sweat-shirt she wore.

            Before either could say anything, a pure black tentacle that seemed to be made of shadow shot from the darkness and wrapped around her waist. For a moment she smiled, glancing at him and down at the tentacle.

            But when nothing happened, her face turned to one of horror. “Run!”

            More tentacles shot from the darkness and wrapped around her, and, for a brief moment, a figure stepped up behind the girl. Max would have said it was male, but a perfectly smooth black stone mask covered the figure’s face, but for two brown eyes that stared at Max. Then the figure, and the girl, were sucked back into the alley without making any further sounds.

            Max started to run forward, but in an utterly incongruous moment, a police officer ran from the alley, carrying a nightstick in his right hand. Max didn’t see a gun on him.

            “Stop!” the officer said, pointing his nightstick at Max. The voice sounded oddly muffled, despite nothing covering the police officer’s face.

            In that moment, when Max would’ve bet both kidneys that things couldn’t possibly get any more surreal, a raccoon scurried out onto the sidewalk, dragging a busted leg behind it. It appeared to be a normal raccoon except for a patch of purple hair on its head.

            Not fur. Hair.

            A feminine voice entered his mind. There was no sound entering his ears, just a voice in his mind, almost as if he were talking to himself.

“She said run, you fool!”

Chapter Two: I Think I Have a Familiar

            The cops rushed at the raccoon with the purple hair and drew his foot back. The raccoon tried to limp away quickly at first, but turned and cowered with its paws over its body as the officer kicked.

            Max slammed into the police officer, pushing him back from the purple-haired raccoon. It felt like hitting a three-hundred-pound slab of rock, not a thin, medium-tall man. Max bounced away, rubbing at his sternum slightly.

The raccoon slipped into the shadows of the alley near a dumpster.

The police officer turned to face Max with his baton raised menacingly above his head, ready to strike. Max thought he saw a red glint in the officer’s eye for a moment, despite the alley being shrouded in the darkness of the evening.

“Whoa! I’m really sorry, I’m not trying to pick a fight with a cop,” Max said, backing up and holding his hands high, despite the officer not having a gun. “I think that raccoon was talking to me, I swear.”

Great, now I sound like a crazy person.

The cop didn’t say anything, and swung the baton down without the slightest pause. Thoughts of a peaceful resolution were ripped from Max’s mind by the attack. He shifted to the side and put his left arm up to block at an angle, ready to knock the asshole out with a right hook.

The stick hit him with incredible force, slamming his arm to the side and pushing him away.

“Run!” the voice in his head said again. “He’s not police! He’s not even people, for humanity’s sake!”

Max didn’t listen, rage rising uncontrollably as he went into fight mode. He hopped from foot to foot, counting on his mobility—because he really couldn’t afford to get hit again. His left arm was already numb and bruising. Not to mention that he didn’t have gloves to protect his hands.

He needed a different approach.

He swayed in, ducked a swing, and popped the guy in the side with his undamaged right hand to almost no effect.

When the police officer swung back, he overcommitted, throwing himself off balance. Max used the opportunity to throw a normally risky high kick to the officer’s face. His shin landed perfectly along the side of his enemy’s jawline.

The man’s jawbone snapped, and blood and teeth splattered from his mouth like a bad horror show. To Max’s shocked dismay, the man wasn’t knocked out. He just stumbled to the side and then fell to his knees, briefly stunned.

The raccoon hobbled back out from the shadows closer to Max. “For the love of all that is holy to you, run. This isn’t a person, it’s a spirit! It’s almost impossible to beat one if you haven’t been magically enhanced!”

“I don’t run,” Max growled out, his vision red. The officer had staggered back to his feet, and Max grabbed the officer and head-butted him. The man’s head snapped back, but Max almost knocked himself silly—it felt like he had head-butted a brick wall.

The spirit swung the stick at Max’s leg, and even though they were practically chest to chest and there was almost no space to build momentum, the strike felt like being leg-kicked in one of his amateur prize fights. His left arm and leg both hurt abominably from two strikes that shouldn’t have been hard to handle.

These guys might be insanely strong, but they only weigh about what a normal guy does. With enough leverage, strength doesn’t matter.

Max grabbed the guy’s jacket, planted his foot in his enemy’s stomach, and then fell back. He kicked the man over his shoulder and rolled to his feet with a grimace—that had been pavement, not a sparring mat, and Max was already bruising across nearly half his extremities.

While the ‘spirits’ were brutally strong, they didn’t seem to know much about fighting. His enemy landed terribly, right on his back, flat on the concrete, immediately squirming to get back to his feet.

Max was a fighter in his soul. He waited for the right moment, when the man—spirit?—was back to his hands and knees. He soccer kicked the man in the side and something cracked, and his opponent fell flat to the ground again.

But he was still moving, struggling to get to his hands and knees again.

What does it take to get these guys to stay down?! With his partial victory, the red was fading from Max’s sight, leaving him astounded at the impossible ability of his enemy to shrug off a beating. It wasn’t normal by any stretch of the imagination.

“If you’re going to be an idiot and fight the spirit, at least finish it off!” came the voice in his mind. The raccoon with the purple hair was limping back and forth near the fight, growling slightly.

“Stay down!” Max said to the creature struggling to its feet in front of him, but whatever it was, man or spirit, it kept trying to rise.

Max pulled back and kicked as hard as he could, right to the head for a second time. Another crack, and finally, the spirit fell to the ground and lay still.

Words appeared in the air in front of Max.

Glimmerling slain. Magic and initial abilities not chosen. Gathered essence is being used to enhance initial perks.

What the heck?

The words disappeared. Before Max could ponder what was happening, four more of the fake police officers ran from the darkness, checking the area with batons held above their heads.

Max glanced at them, then back at the one that lay on the ground. His leg, arm, and back already hurt. No way he could fight four more of whatever those had been. Their sad, misdirected blows hit heavier than any Max had ever taken from professional fighters. If they had known what they were doing, Max would have been dead in seconds. But Max was positive they were plenty skilled enough to mob him four to one.

They rushed at the raccoon, who started to limp ineffectually away.

Max charged, launching into a sprint like he was switching directions in a fight, springing from his position. He aimed right in front of the new glimmerlings, and each stuttered awkwardly to a stop and raised their weapons to fight him.

He easily dodged, jinking back and forth from attacks with the ease of long practice. As the batons came down, one hit hard enough the asphalt in the alley cracked slightly. Max felt the hair on his arms rising.

He jump-rolled over the raccoon, grabbing it and receiving a bite as she spasmed in surprise. He didn’t let go, springing to his feet.

“I’m sorry!” the raccoon said in his mind, letting go of the bite. “Thank you for saving me.”

“I haven’t saved you yet,” Max muttered. He turned and starting to run down the alley in the direction the tentacles had taken the girl.

“No!” came the panicked feminine voice in his mind, and the raccoon started squirming and waving its paws wildly. “The other way! This way is death for us both!”

Max skidded to a halt and dodged around a surprised officer, and then sprinted back out of the alley onto the street. He turned away from his home as he pelted down the sidewalk, wincing slightly as he tried to work through the pain in his left leg. That’s gonna suck tomorrow morning.

“What is a glimmerling?” Max asked as he ran down Main, easily leaving his pursuers further and further behind despite his sore leg.

            The raccoon snuggled into his arms, as if to use his body as protection. “The absolutely weakest of the lesser spirits—ones of illusion. The Mirror Inquisitors found out how to imbue their illusions with enough magic to make them work on the mortal world. But they’re easy to beat, relatively speaking. Spirits of illusion aren’t fighters—although I’m still shocked beyond belief that you beat one. I didn’t think someone without magic or guns could beat one.”

            The answer opened so many cans of worms that Max had no idea how to process it.

            He tried one piece at a time. “Spirits? They’re real?”

            The raccoon poked him in his nose with one foreclaw, and the mental voice sounded amused. “You’re talking to a raccoon in your mind, right? Are spirits really so much of a jump to believe?”

            “What’s your name?”

            “I’m Paws,” the raccoon said, holding the named body parts up and waggling them. Then she winced.

            “Are you okay? Your leg looks… bad.”

            “I’ll be fine. I need more mana. I can get more either by eating something or getting back to the spirit world. Then, when I have mana, I’ll be able to heal. Everyone with magic can do basic self-healing.”

            Max, half-amazed, half-frustrated, and completely shocked by the answer, just went with it. “I’ll stop by a Taco Bell.”

            “No idea what that is,” Paws said.

            Max didn’t pursue an explanation any further, turning instead to another topic. “How do we rescue—whomever that was?”

            “We escape, for now. It’s obvious you have potential spirit power—your presence didn’t blast Leviathan from this world when he used his shadow tentacles, and you’re not blasting me from it now despite the fact I’m a telepathic raccoon.”

            Again, Max was frustrated. He didn’t have the context to understand the answers. He ran for a few moments, trying to gather his thoughts.

All he could figure was, he needed the basics. “Start over, please. Start from the very, very beginning. I have no freaking clue what’s going on.”

            Paws sighed in his mind. “Look, the person we need to save goes by the name Nightmare—despite that, she’s a good guy, trust me. I’ll tell you how to save her, and all the rules, in just a bit. But we need to get to safety, first.”

“I think I’ve accomplished that,” Max said, glancing around. They were probably a thousand feet and a couple of turns from their pursuers. “You can explain a bit more.”

“Think you’re safe, huh? Just shows how little you know. We need to get away from here. Far away. For now, till we’re safe, you just need to know a few things.”

Max ground his teeth together. “Then tell me!”

“I’m getting to it! First, there’s a spirit world—a lot of spirit worlds, actually, and even other mortal worlds. Second, that the spirit reflects the mortal—as above, so below. I’ll explain that more later, but for now, just know that the minds of mortals, and their works, are reflected in the spirit world.”

“Okay…”

Paws hurried through the rest of her explanation. “But the mortal world rejects the paradox of the spirit world becoming consciously known and thereby shaping itself. Violently rejects it.”

Max nodded as he ran, semi-consciously slowing his pace as Paws talked.

“Which brings me nicely to my third point. When a mortal with no ability to form essence sees the magic of the spirit world, the person that triggered the situation is blasted back to the spirit world—to the portion the mortals which can see and visit call the ‘Near.’ And I do mean blasted—you take a ton of damage from being violently forced there, more for each person that triggered the effect. Most spirits and templars die from it.”

            Max ran down the street, his pace now slow enough that he wasn’t burning through his stamina. His breathing was easy, and someone glancing at him might think him at peace—although the raccoon would probably make them question his sanity, or their own.

            Beneath the surface, however, his mind was awhirl. Still, he thought he understood. “So… when I didn’t ‘blast’ the shadow tentacle guy back to the spirit world, you knew I was able to go there?”

            “Exactly,” Paws said. “And by being special, you probably screwed Nightmare. If she had made it out to a normie, she would probably have been safe.”

            The raccoon squirmed once and rubbed her snout with a paw. “Although, maybe not. Leviathan has always had a lot of, well, broken abilities, I guess. Maybe he wouldn’t have been blasted. I’m not sure. Even if he was, he would have survived and come back with illusions, so don’t beat yourself up over it.”

            Paws turned her head up to stare at Max. “Either way, Nightmare needs help. Can I count on you?”

“Yeah,” Max said without hesitation—for a moment. But a doubt crept in. “At least for now. I do have a family that needs me, especially my brother.”

            “Alright, well, we need to get to an entrance to the Near as our first step… so you can get your magic.”

            “I get magic?” Max asked, feeling his eyes widening.

            The raccoon grinned up at him, an expression not normally possible on a raccoon. “Oh, did I not mention that? Silly me. Everyone entering the spirit world for the first time unlocks their magic—a small kernel of magic. One that can grow theoretically forever.”

Chapter Three: Under the Bridge

            “Maybe it’s the raccoon in me, but I really liked that burrito thing,” Paws said, daintily licking her tiny, furry little hands where she was being carried by Max, who was rapidly approaching another underpass on the freeway they were running along.

            “You are a trash panda,” Max said with a chuckle.

            “What?” came the high-pitched query.

            “Nothing,” Max said, chuckling.

            He glanced down at Paws. Even in the dim light provided by the lights of the freeway, Max could see that her leg was obviously fine. He wasn’t sure when it had healed, but it had.

            Max’s own leg still ached. With a grimace, he resolved to just work through it.

            “This is it!” Paws suddenly exclaimed as Max ran into the underpass.

            “Here?” Max asked with a blink, glancing around at the trash-strewn street and sidewalks under the overpass. “This is where we’ll find an entrance to the spirit world? Really?”

            It had taken almost an hour of running to reach this place. Paws had known about it, but hadn’t known where it was exactly. She had just told Max to keep heading West and try to find a bum-inhabited overpass.

            Like there weren’t three thousand of those in Chicago.

            Regardless, Max had done his best, keeping the Klinefelter tower to his right as he ran. Paws had somehow managed to figure out which freeway was the one most likely to contain the specific overpass they needed. Once she had decided they found the right freeway, they turned North, running the frontage road, which had taken them to the Taco Bell. After that, Max had run and Paws had eaten until she had reached this point: the specific bum-inhabited overpass that she had been looking for.

            Nothing here felt like a ‘spirit world.’ Nothing was impressive, and all it served to do was remind Max that as bad as his life was, he could always fall further. A series of tents crowded the sidewalk, against the sloped support of the bridge. Each tent was surrounded by even further piles of trash—most of it the signs of a life being wasted, like alcohol bottles and even a few syringes.

            And the whole place stank of human refuse—a faint ammonia tang with an occasional waft of a gross, earthy smell to counterpoint it.

            “No, we won’t find the spirit world entrance here,” Paws said. “But we’ll find someone that can point us on our way.”

            Paws leapt from his arms, far more gracefully than the raccoons from videos Max had seen, and alighted on the asphalt surface of the road.

            “Also, if you don’t want to sound like such a rube, call it the ‘Near.’ The spirit world is a lot of things and places, most of which you’ll never be able to go to. But the ‘Near’ refers to the part we’ll likely spend most, if not all, of our time in.”

Paws pointed to a symbol spray-painted on the sloped concrete hill supporting the overpass. It appeared to be an intricate circle with a sun in it—maybe vaguely Amerind, in Max’s opinion.

            “Don’t go telling people, but the Mirror Templars have ways to identify ourselves and our organization. That mark is a mark we teach spirits that don’t belong to the organization, but are sympathetic to us and will work with us.”

            “How does a raccoon end up working with some super-secret spirit organization?” Max asked, suddenly struck by the incongruity. And by Paws’ extensive knowledge.

            Paws was sniffing around, moving back and forth, headed vaguely in the direction of the tents. Her voice still entered his mind, however. “I’m not a raccoon, in case the patch of purple hair didn’t let you in on the secret.”

“Then what are you?”

“I’m a trickster spirit who had the form of a raccoon when I lived in the Near, before. Honestly, I hoped to be a normal-looking human girl when I came to this side, but hey—we all get shafted sometime. To my everlasting joy, I kept my raccoon form on this side. At least it made it easy to hide from Leviathan. Lucky me,” Paws said sardonically, briefly standing and doing ‘jazz hands’ with her paws.

Then she dropped back and kept sniffing and scurrying, vaguely in the direction of the hobo encampment.

            Max followed her, but slowly, his mind running. “Wait, this is your first time on Earth?” The words sounded idiotic to Max, and he tried to use her lingo. “I mean, in the mortal world?”

“Yup,” Paws said, continuing her sniffing, more like a dog than how Max imagined a raccoon would move. By now they were clearly headed toward a specific dwelling. Faint techno music was coming from the tent they moved toward.

“You have all this knowledge of how the group you call the Mirror Templars work, including specific stuff from, um, the mortal world. Yet you say you’ve never been here before? How does that work?”

            Paws stopped sniffing, stood on her back feet and tapped her front paws together. She wasn’t looking at Max, but off to the side. “Look, don’t worry about all that. I just know. It’s not important.”

            “But what if you’re tricking me to join the evil side?” Max asked.

            Paws dropped back to the asphalt and scurried over to Max on four feet. Then she stood again and poked him in the shin. “What’re you, dumb? Some guy with shadow tentacles just grabbed some scarred girl who told you to run, then a bunch of spirits attacked you, and now we’re searching through a homeless encampment for a spirit of the occult. An evil mastermind plan, this isn’t.”

            Max frowned, feeling more frustrated by his lack of knowledge than anything. A spirit of the occult? Wouldn’t all spirits be occult? “Maybe it’s a long con.”

            Paws smacked her furry face with one paw and dragged it down. “Seriously? You better have some damn nice powers to make up for this shit, once we get to the Near. Now shut up and come on, I’ve got a bead on him.”

            “Who? The spirit?”

            Paws ignored him. She rushed across the rest of the street and sidewalk to a tent, weaving through the garbage smoothly as she did. Not sure what else to do, Max followed. Paws ran up to a tent and then gracefully leapt up, grabbed the zipper in her paws, and slid down, opening the tent smoothly.

            Max was honestly impressed—it was hard to get a tent door open, sometimes, unless you braced.

            Paws poked her head into the tent, which was the source of the techno-music. Max heard her voice in his mind. “Hello? Mistel?”

            Paws backed up rapidly, her paw over her nose, as a man stepped from the tent. A wave of stink, incredibly powerful, followed the man out—unwashed human with some kind of sickly-sweet chemical smell underneath it.

            Max almost gagged, but he kept his composure and backed up beside Paws.

            The man rose to his full height, which was an impressive six-foot-six, a good three inches taller than Max. But the man was also hyper thin, almost emaciated, and appeared old—his muscles were more knotted than corded, and his hair and cheek stubble were white.

            Plus, his eyes were milky—Max would have said he was blind, but the old man stared right at Max as if looking into his soul.

            A pair of headphones hung around his neck, and the techno music Max had heard blared from them. If he put the headphones over his ears at that volume, he’d go deaf.

            The spirit—presumably—stepped closer, and Max stood his ground, ready to throw fists, even though the smell was nearly overpowering. His last experience with random spirits hadn’t gone well.

            The gangly old man leaned over, his face inches from Max, and took a deep sniff. His eyes never left Max’s as he did.

            He leaned back. “I sense power on you, though I can’t identify it—but there’s a lot of potential, at least. Who are you, and why, by the thousand depths, are you bothering me?”

            Paws moved up next to Mistel again, slicked her purple hair back, and made a motion as if snapping her fingers, although no sound came. “Down here, big guy.”

            When Mistel didn’t move, she ‘shouted,’ her voice somehow more insistent in Max’s mind. “Hey! Mistel! Down here. I’m the one doing the talking.”

            Mistel faced downward. “You’re a mere least spirit, and a weak one at that. Although I sense a taint of additional magic from you. Still… why should I pay attention to you?”

            Paws frowned. “Yeah, love you too, pal. And I can sense you’re a lesser, a mere step above me, so don’t give me your haughty crap.”

The man sneered.

Paws waved one foreleg at him. “Look, it’s not what I am, it’s who I come from. Nightmare sends her regards, and needs a favor.”

            Mistel’s milky eyes widened at Nightmare’s name, and he stared at Paws a bit longer. “It is her magic you’re marked with—not just her magic, her very essence infects you. I must be getting out of touch, to not have sensed that. Very well, I will hear you as I would listen to her—she, at least, has weight. What is it she needs?”

            “An entrance to the Near… and your headphones.”

Chapter Four: A Dark Alley

            “Nightmare wants my headphones?” Mistel asked, clearly shocked.

            “Paws—” Max began.

            “Shut. Up,” Paws said, and her voice reverberated through his mind. “Don’t fuck this up for me.”

            Mistel didn’t respond to the last comment, so Max assumed that she could limit her telepathy to one person.

            Paws sauntered up awkwardly on her back feet, moving almost like a toddler, and poked Mistel in the knee. “Yeah, she does.”

            Mistel nodded, then took his headphones off and handed them to Paws, who cradled them in her tiny arms. “Fine. They are a small thing. Take them, for free, out of respect for your mistress. But you also wanted an entrance to the Near?”

            Paws nodded. “That’s right. A safe and hidden one, please.”

            Mistel laughed raucously, his breath smelling of decay and incense as it washed over Max, who coughed.

            “Nothing is safe, and very little hidden, about the crossings between Chicago and the Near these days,” Mistel said. “I can give you an entrance—a close one. But it is also used by the Inquisitors, at least occasionally. Sometimes more than occasionally.”

            Paws frowned, another expression that ought to be impossible on a raccoon, and tapped the grimy sidewalk with her foot while holding the headphones. It was an impressive feat of dexterity for a creature mostly quadruped.

            After a moment, she muttered, “‘Sometimes’ being times like when they’re hunting a renegade trickster spirit, I’m betting. Curses. Do you know of any other entrances?”

            Mistel shook his head. “No. I only knew of three, and two are gone. The Seraphin church weakened too far and its entrance disappeared. The Inquisitors found the one behind Hastings Square and locked it down fully—something that I’m sure will happen to this last one, probably soon.”

            Max hadn’t heard of either of those places, and wondered if it was just something he didn’t know about the huge city he lived in, or if those were the spirit terms for places he did know.

            “Uh, fine,” Paws said. “Just tell me where the last one is, please.”

            “You owe me, spirit. One essence.”

            Paws threw the headphones to the ground and audibly squeaked before her mental voice came to everyone. “An essence? Are you shittin’ me, you arrogant bastard? You want an entire essence for some information on a gate?”

            Mistel crossed his spindly arms over his concave chest and stared down his nose at the top of Paws’ head. “Seems I’ve got you over a barrel, spirit.”

            “You know who I represent,” Paws said.

            Mistel smiled. “You might represent her, but you aren’t her. And your side is losing rather badly. I risk myself just helping. You’re paying me for the risk, not for the information.”

            “Well, I can’t pay you in essence, Mistel. I’ve got no essence I can remove without destroying myself, and Max here is maskless.”

            “Maskless?” Max asked.

            Paws licked her paw and slicked back her purple hair, then stared at the claws on the ends of her pseudo-fingers. “Means you haven’t crossed yet. It’ll make sense in time. Don’t sweat it.”

            “Don’t lie to me, jokester. I can sense the free essence on your companion.”

            “I’m not lying, eyes. You can’t sense his magic type because he doesn’t have one yet. He managed to take a glimmerling out while maskless, which is quite impressive—but doesn’t change his situation. He can’t access his mana or his essence.”

            Mistel stared. “Then we are at an impasse.”

            The three of them stood under the overpass, the darkness of early night all around them. For a few moments. Paws and Mistel simply stared at one another. Not the cars above, nor the sounds of the hobos, caused them to so much as blink.

            Max was frustrated. He missed his brother Stefan, even though it had only been a couple of hours. He also thought that his family might be getting worried by now. But he wanted to rescue the girl—Nightmare—and prove to himself that he had what it took.

In the quiet part of his mind, he also admitted he was fascinated by the idea of magic—and finally having an edge to save his family with, without any more compromises.

The two spirits were just staring at one another. Max wondered if they were arguing in mind speech and leaving him out. But whatever they were doing, they weren’t doing it quickly.

Impasse indeed. “I’ll have essence at some point?” Max asked into the semi-silence of the night.

            “Your friend,” Mistel said, holding his fingers up in air quotes, “is claiming that you already have essence, but that you can’t access it yet.”

            “But I’ll be able to?” Max asked.

            “Don’t you dare pay him what he asked,” Paws’ voice came into Max’s mind, but he ignored her.

            Mistel nodded thoughtfully to Max’s words, then finally looked away from Paws and at Max.

            Max met the spirit’s eyes. “I’ll give you one essence, or whatever, when I have it. For the information on the gate. But if it’s not legit, deal’s off.”

            “My information is always ‘legit,’ as you put it,” Mistel said with a sneer.

            “Do we have a deal, then?” Max asked.

            Mistel’s forehead crawled, as if there were living creatures beneath the skin. Mistel shuddered, and the skin peeled away, revealing a third eye. The smell of chemicals increased, but also changed, becoming a haze of acrid incense.

            Max blinked as the eye studied him.

            “You are honorable,” Mistel said, not a question.

            Max nodded anyway.

            “Also, a good man… but violent and impulsive. Typical faults of young men, but stronger in you than normal.”

            “What’s he doing?” Max asked, feeling his anger rising as the spirit called him out.

            Paws sighed again, her mental voice ridiculously feminine, and annoyed, for a raccoon. “Soul reading you—it’s an ability most versions of knowledge spirits get.”

            “I thought he was an occult spirit?”

            “They’re a type of knowledge spirit,” Paws responded with a dismissive wave of her paw.

            Mistel’s forehead crawled again, and skin covered his third eye. The scent of incense muted again, and went back to the more chemical smell. “I have no idea whether you’ll be able to return to me. But your soul tells me you’ll try and make good. I accept your offer, mortal.”

            He held his spindly hand out, and Max took it and shook.

            Paws smacked her face and dragged her tiny paw down it. “You so overpaid,” she muttered into his mind.

            “It’s already getting late,” Max said, waving his hand around. “I want to save Nightmare and get back to my family—Stefan needs me as well, to get into college. I led a fine life without essence two hours ago, I assume losing one won’t destroy me, since you guys said I have ‘free’ essence, whatever that means.”

            “Nightmare needs saving?” Mistel said, his eyes narrowing in anger. “You didn’t tell me that, spirit. What of her team? Savior, King Bee, Dryad? And don’t think to lie to me, spirit, or I will seek vengeance.”

            Paws reached out and smacked Max’s calf. “You had to open your dumb mouth.”

            “I didn’t know that was supposed to be secret!” Max protested.

            Paws ignored him and faced Mistel. “They’re dead. But Nightmare isn’t. We haven’t lost yet.”

            Mistel just choked out a single mirthless laugh. “You lied to me when you came here!”

            “I didn’t lie to you—everything I said was totally true,” Paws said, once again examining the ends of her nails.

            Max glanced at the headphones on the sidewalk, but didn’t say anything.

            “If I had known Nightmare was—”

            “But you didn’t, and I don’t have to tell you,” Paws interrupted. “Information isn’t free, as you have made so abundantly, and expensively, clear. You going back on the deal you just shook on?”

            Mistel’s brow was so furrowed it threatened to split his face in two. “No. But you, and the Templars, are not welcome here after this. Go to the dirt alley behind the Shady Oaks Assisted Living Facility. The entrance is there—a puddle that never dries up.”

            “Thanks, Mistel—even if you are being unreasonable. We’ll go fight for the good, now.”

            Mistel sneered. “If I thought you had a chance, I might join.”

            Paws studied her nails again. “Nothing like cowardice to get a lady’s motor going.”

            A few of the other hobos were now walking toward them, probably because they were starting to notice the raccoon behaving weirdly. Mistel saw them and clamped his mouth shut, ending the conversation. Then, abruptly, he climbed back into his tent.

            “Let’s get out of here,” Paws muttered.

            “One second,” Max said.

            Max pushed his way inside the tent before Mistel could shut it. The inside had a bedroll, a huge wooden trunk, a laptop, and a small generator, of all things. Far more than Max would have expected.

            Mistel frowned at the violation of his realm, but Max hurried to speak. “Mistel, sir, um, I’m sorry to bother you, but since the entrance you gave has… bad spirits, I guess… can you at least give me a weapon, please?”

            Mistel frowned and glanced past Max, toward Paws. He crossed his arms over his chest.

            Before he could get his refusal out, Max added, “It’ll increase the chances I come back to give you your essence.”

            Mistel stared at him a moment, then uncrossed his arms, turned, and opened the trunk. He pulled a crowbar out, and passed it to Max.

            “Best I can do for you,” Mistel said.

            Max hefted it. It felt solid as he took it, something real and dangerous in the shifting sands of the new world Max had found himself in.

Chapter Five: A Third Alley

            Mistel glanced over as Max hefted the crowbar. “I suppose, from a certain point of view, they are indeed ‘bad spirits,’” Mistel said. “But they are not mindless monsters. Do not let Nightmare and her ilk trick you into throwing your life away on a pointless crusade. I have a personal interest in your survival.”

            Max nodded thoughtfully, but Mistel’s words had the opposite effect from what the occult spirit had probably intended. It confirmed to Max that he was on the side of good, and lent weight to his decision to support of Paws and Nightmare.

            “I’ll take your words under advisement,” Max said. “Thank you for the crowbar.”

            Mistel nodded.

            Max left the tent and found Paws—headphones in her arms again—staring at him.

            She walked over. “Alright, look up where the Shady Oaks Assisted Living place is and let’s go.”

            “Don’t you know? You knew where this place was.”

            Paws shook her head, her purple hair swaying even with her raccoon-normal, grayish fur catching parts of it. “No. I, um, just got some of the memories and knowledge of Nightmare. A small part of her. But I don’t know anything about this city, really.”

            “You got part of her memories?” Max asked, his eyes wide. “How?”

            Paws looked away from Max, toward the hobos that had reached them. Her mental voice was softer as she spoke into his mind. “I wasn’t a true spirit a few hours ago… just what we in the Near call a fragment. Fragments are… well, spirit-side animals, kinda. Like a particularly smart parrot, in human terms. But Nightmare gave me a part of herself, elevating me.

            “Anyways, enough of that conversation,” Paws said, glancing about them. “We have our entrance. The important thing is that we save Nightmare.”

Max pulled his phone out and quickly got the address to the Shady Oaks Assisted Living Facility.

            “Why do you care?” Max asked, suddenly. “If you were a spirit animal until a few hours ago, why are Nightmare, and the Templars, so important to you? Did you even know those friends of Nightmare that died?”

            Paws shook her head. “Look, didn’t I just say ‘enough of that conversation’?”

            Max frowned and crossed his arms.

Paws held her hand up. “It’s private, and I’m not ready to talk about it. Please let this go. I’m not saying I won’t tell you ever, but let’s just work on rescuing Nightmare, okay? Finding the gate is our priority right now. How far is it, anyways?”

            Max let out a sigh. “Not far.” He uncrossed his arms and picked Paws up. “Maybe twenty minutes at a jog.”

            Max put action to words and started jogging again. The movement helped to calm his agitation. He left the underpass, Mistel, and the hobos behind.

Max smiled as a cool, nighttime breeze blew past him. I’ll probably need a car at some point if I keep this up, but for the moment, running from place to place will work.

When he ran, his thoughts flowed freely, but they weren’t a jumble, and he didn’t tend to get angry—he tended to focus on one thing while part of his mind was focused on running.

            He had been suppressing the ‘holy shit!’ aspect of the whole situation while dealing with it, but for a few moments, he just existed in the fact that an entire new world—or many of them, apparently—existed.

            “Paws? If the mortal world kicks the spirits out, and the spirit world reflects the mortal, does what happens in the spirit world even affect people here?”

            Paws squirmed in Max’s arms to face him. “‘As above, so below’ actually applies in both directions. If the spirit world in a local area is controlled by evil spirits, like spirits of malice or deprivation, the world above will suffer more from depression, violence, apathy… all the things you don’t want. If the spirits are good, people tend to have hope, drive, and kindness.”

            “So… the spirits control our minds?” Max asked, frowning. “Do we have free will?”

            “This discussion is pointless, trust me,” Paws said. “Everything affects everything, and you respond to your stimulus based on who you are, but in the end, everyone finally responds the same.”

            Max furrowed his brow. “What? I don’t understand.”

 Paws sighed. “Look, people respond differently based on who they are inside, so I would argue you have free will, but… well, two people might be great workers, living a good life, raising children, blah blah blah, right?”

            “Did you literally just say ‘blah blah blah?” Max asked, laughing.

            Paws rolled her eyes. “Shut your pie hole. The point I’m getting to is, cut the legs off both, and—”

“That’s your point?” Max asked, eyes wide. “That escalated quickly.”

Paws smacked his chest with her forelegs. “Just listen! The point is, one newly legless person might manage to maintain that life with a bunch of extra effort, while another might succumb to despair and drink and eventually take his own life. Two people responded to the same stuff differently, so you can say free will. But if you heap enough bad stuff on, well, sooner or later everyone breaks. The Templars try and keep as much of the darkness away as possible. You’ll get to where you can see when an area is reflecting the dark side of the spirit world, rather than the other way around, soon enough. Trust me.”

Paws frowned, staring up at him. “If Mistel is right about your power, you’ll probably even learn to use one side to influence the other—that’s something most Templars and spirits like me don’t have the power for.”

Her voice grew distant as she spoke.

“What exactly captured Nightmare?” Max asked. “What am I up against?”

“Not what—who. Leviathan. The right-hand Inquisitor of Malryk, the God of Tyranny. Leviathan was once one of the Templars, but he betrayed us. He murdered his entire team and took a trove of our magical items and research. This was nearly two decades ago. He disappeared after that, and everyone thought he was gone for good. When he returned five years ago, he had far more power than anyone that can rise to the Near ought to have. But more importantly, he possessed knowledge of how to manipulate the fundamental laws of the spirit world and its relationship to the mortal world. Which is where things like the glimmerlings came from.”

“Have you tried to stop him?” Max asked.

Paws shook her head. “Our side has no one that can fight him—everyone that has tried has died, usually without so much as scratching him. He is a deadly combatant, but that’s not what makes him truly dangerous.”

Max shifted his arms so he was carrying Paws in one arm as he ran. “Then why?”

“What makes Leviathan so deadly is his ability to deep dive—and bring monsters back.”

Chapter Six: A Step Up in Competition

The Shady Oaks Assisted Living Facility was old, like the people it supposedly served. It was three stories tall and made of brick the whole way up. But even in the dim light provided by the midnight moon, Max could make out cracks running all through it, especially surrounding the few small windows and the rusted old fire escape bolted to the back wall—or half bolted, with the bolts sitting in nearly open holes in a couple cases.

 As if a bunch of people that needed permanent care were going to go out on a narrow metal fire escape.

The back area was just a muddy dirt road, with a broken and slime-covered cobblestone pathway meandering close around the building itself. The opposite side of the alley, a mere thirty or so feet from Shady Oaks, was another brick building of indeterminate purpose.

“Wow, good to see the money the government takes away from me every paycheck is going to good places,” Max muttered.

Paws stared at him blankly and then raised an eyebrow, but Max shook his head.

Max glanced around at the muddy road. “So, what do we do?”

Paws spoke into his mind. “One of these puddles, probably a large one, has become a gate to the other side. Just put me down, gently and not in a muddy spot, and then follow me until we find it.”

Max complied, lowering Paws. She touched the ground, but held her headphones up.

She closed her eyes and focused.

Max felt something pass from her to the headphones. “What did you do?”

She opened her eyes and held the headphones up to Max. “I imbued them. Every being that can travel back and forth can imbue at least one item, making it able to travel with them and also function… metaphorically or allegorically or…” Paws scrunched her face, as if trying to remember an important detail, then shook her head. “…or something like that, on the other side. Certainly, the magic will fuel it where there isn’t any electricity. But I want these, my first victory as a true spirit.”

Max shook his head, bemused. “Why?”

“I’m a trickster spirit, and I won them off Mistel. Plus, only true spirits, even if only least ones, can imbue. It makes everything that has happened…” Paws wiggled her forelimbs in the air. “…I don’t know, real. Instead of mist and phantoms that will disappear at a moment’s notice.”

  Max didn’t fully understand the specifics, but he understood the sentiment in his soul—when you were weak and pathetic and at the whims of fate, like she had been as a fragment and Max himself had been as a child, even the tiniest bit of control was precious.

She pushed them toward Max again. “Just take them and keep them safe, okay?”

As soon as his fingers touched them, Max sensed something. They felt… alive, in his hand. It was extremely hard to articulate, but they pulsed with potential. Paws had clearly done something extraordinary to them.

Paws began to slowly make her way around the dirt road, keeping her feet from the muddiest spots. She quickly came to a huge puddle at one corner of the dirt alley, and glanced into it.

Max walked over and glanced down at the puddle. Through it, he could see a monster—a van-sized black panther with four tentacles rising from its back. It sat on a street in a dark city, filled with buildings that were black and gray almost entirely, with newspapers fluttering down the street.

The whole picture was inverted, as if Max were looking at it upside down and sideways both.

“Alright, this should be the entrance,” Paws said, reaching down and lightly tapping the water. It rippled, but oddly. The surface distorted but didn’t rise up.

The creature on the other side crouched, quivering in anticipation.

“I should think so,” Max said, shuddering. “Are we seriously going to have to fight the panther beast on the other side? I don’t think we stand a chance against it.”

Paws turned toward him, her eyes widening and her body tensing. “What?”

 One of the tentacles shot from the creature’s back. Max kicked Paws away from the portal, and she flew to the side with a squeak. It wasn’t a moment too soon as the tentacle burst from the puddle and passed through the space she had occupied. Max bent backwards, trying to dodge, but he wasn’t quite fast enough. The tentacle clipped Max and knocked him tumbling through the muddy street with a hit that had barely touched him.

All these spirit creatures are insanely unfair.

Max rolled through the mud while maintaining his grip on both the headphones and the crowbar before springing to his feet. He tossed the headphones to the side of the puddle and charged back at the monster, crowbar held horizontal over his head in two hands.

The creature lunged at the gate and Max lunged with his crowbar right at where its eye would come through the gate. The head had passed a bare two feet through when Max struck the beast in its eye, but even with the perfect setup he didn’t stab through the eye with his crowbar.

The beast gave a brief shriek, a sound more like a woman being eviscerated in a slasher flick than any animal had the right to sound. It tossed its head, slapping Max with its snout hard enough to toss him into the air. He grunted in pain from the hit, but still managed to land in a crouch and recover.

The beast pulled itself through the puddle fully, raising its head and pawing at the eye Max had hit.

“Run!” came Paws’ voice in his head. “Run, run, run! We can’t fight this, only way more so than the last time!”

Multiple tentacles lashed at her where she was now sitting on the dirt track. Paws suddenly accelerated wildly, moving far faster than a raccoon should ever be able to, her whole body a blur.

The creature turned, slamming two tentacles down on either side of her before bringing the other two in for the kill.

Paws ran up the wall.

            She didn’t jump or anything—shadows extended from her claws and she just ran up the wall like it was ground, her feet gaining purchase in the space between bricks and random cracks. She barely avoided the two downward blows.

            The beast’s gaze tracked her as she ran, and the four tentacles reoriented.

            Max ran at the beast again and slammed his weapon point down on one claw, trying desperately to save Paws.

            The beast lashed out, its foot catching Max and flinging him into the air. It was more a scoop and toss than a kick. But the tentacle that followed, which Max couldn’t dodge, slapped him from the air like he’d been hit by a sledgehammer.

            For a brief moment things went dark, and Max found himself entangled in the top of the fire escape, which was hanging ajar. One of the sockets holding it in place had been knocked loose. His thoughts were desperate and muddied both. His entire side was in red-hot agony, he could barely breathe, and when he coughed, blood hit the hand he held in front of his mouth.

            He could climb the fire escape the last few feet onto the roof and retreat.

Instead, Max glanced down to the battle below. Paws was running along the side of the building even as tentacles slapped it. At one point, she leapt through the air, and when a tentacle tried to slap her, the very shadows around her shifted, carrying her back to the side of the building.

But she finally made an error, and the absolute tip of the tentacle caught her. Blood spewed from her mouth as she was pinned to the bricks.

No, no, no! I can’t fail her, and I can’t watch her die!

Chapter Seven: The Price of Entry

            Max turned and slammed his crowbar into one of the windows on the third story, shattering it. Come on, you old biddies, wake up!

            From inside he heard a snort, and then a “Wha? Who’s there?”

            Max rammed his crowbar into the chink between the brick and the pole on the highest point of the fire escape and wrenched with all his might, breaking it loose with a crack of breaking stone.

            He turned and wrapped his arms around the poles on either side, staring as a second tentacle wrapped around Paws and carried her—struggling, squirming, biting, and lashing out with shadows, all to no effect—toward the giant panther-beast’s mouth.

            Max launched himself outward as hard as he could, and the fire escape ripped from the wall with a scream of tortured metal. He rocketed outward, the fire escape bending out into the air where it paused. For a moment it seemed the fire escape would hold, and Max prepared to leap down onto the panther-beast’s head, but then there was another quick series of cracks and the last of the bolts ripped free. The creature turned and stared with wide eyes.

            The panther-beast dropped Paws and tried to run, but didn’t make it out as the entire contraption fell onto the spirit-creature. Max fell with it, twisting so his unwounded side would take the majority of the blow.

            Metal squealed and shattered around Max, whose body flashed with agony. The panther-beast went down with a howl, and Max rolled off its side and hit the mud, each movement further agony. He couldn’t breathe, and could barely move.

            The crowbar fell next to him, and even though he knew it was futile, Max struggled, every breath white-hot pain, to his knees. He slowly grabbed the crowbar where it lay in the mud.

Hot breath washed over him, and his gaze slid sideways, to the face of the beast.

            The panther-beast was glaring at him with red eyes. Metal stuck from its body in places, and blood ran down its flank in multiple rivulets. Its left back leg was twisted at an unnatural angle, and blood ran from a huge slash over its right eye.

            But it was alive, and in far better condition than Max—who was mere inches from its mouth, which dripped saliva and blood.

            Max raised the crowbar in one shaking and bloody arm, prepared to go down fighting. He could only see a red haze out of his left eye, and didn’t know if it was from damage or blood running into it.

            “What’s going on?!” came a crotchety male voice from the Shady Oaks Assisted Living Facility. Lights turned on in the windows, increasing the illumination in the alley around Max slightly.

            “I heard a crash!” The next voice was a gravelly woman’s voice.

            There were a few more exclamations, and more light came from the windows. Then someone said, “Is that a monster? I see tentacles coming from it!”

            Max’s mouth twisted into a quavering smile. “TKO, fuck-face.”

            The beast snarled, but then its mouth opened in a silent howl. It disappeared, seeming to somehow fly away from Max in all directions at once—he couldn’t rationalize what he had seen except to say that it disappeared into a distance that didn’t exist, writhing as it went.

A message appeared in front of his face. Horror-Hunter slain after dying from total damage sustained. 13 essence gained. Magic and initial abilities not chosen. Gathered Essence is being used to enhance gained perks.

            At least the beast won’t get Paws—not now, not ever, Max thought through a haze of pain.

            He dropped the crowbar and then collapsed into the mud. He tried to catalogue what was wrong with him, but everything hurt. Blood was coming from his mouth and the arm that had fallen in front of his face when he collapsed, and his insides alternated between white-hot agony in some places and numbness in others. He felt like he should scream, or cry, or call for help. But he was too tired.

            Paws walked up to him, her tiny raccoon eyes wide, her mouth open in a very human grin. “TKO, fuck-face? That’s what you went with?”

            Max tried to answer, but only managed a slight whistling flutter of his lips. So it wasn’t the best last words ever, sue me.

            Paws’ grin faded. “Hey, are you alright?”

            No. Max was fading fast, but a half chuckle escaped him. I must be going into shock.

            Paws scurried closer and absurdly tried to pull on Max’s arm. “Okay, um, I think you’re really hurt. Like really, really hurt. Get to the gate, okay? Cross over.”

            Max tried to struggle, but couldn’t muster the energy. He heard exclamations from the old people far above him as he lay in the mud between the two buildings.

            Paws let go of his arm and ran to his face. “C’mon, Max. Please! I can’t do this without you, and I don’t want to lose you! Just get to the gate, okay? Please? Just get to the other side!”

            Max struggled.

            “Nightmare needs you, Max. Your brother needs you,” Paws said, pressing her face into his. Then, with a mental whisper. “I need you, Max. I’m just a stupid jumped-up spirit animal whose soul isn’t even her own. I can’t do this without you. Please get up. Please.”

            A tear slid onto his face.

            I don’t like that Paws is crying.

Max managed to grip the ground. He pushed off, dragging himself to the edge of the puddle. His one arm touched his crowbar, and he gripped it instinctually, pulling it with him. He’d probably have to fight something on the other side as well.

            Paws backed up and ineffectually tried to help him along again. “C’mon, quickly, before someone gets down here and sees you disappearing into the puddle. If that happens, you’ll die from a forced crossing.”

            Max’s hand hit water, and he lifted his head. He had made it.

            “Alright, just focus. Think about the puddle like it was a tunnel you’re crawling through, then push. C’mon, you can do it.”

            Paws’ tone had lost its desperation and became sardonic. “It should be easy—you’re halfway to the spirit realm already.”

            Max tried to focus, and suddenly, bizarrely, his arm wasn’t wet, and it was being pulled back toward him by gravity. The wonder briefly over-rode his agony, and he pushed forward on a flat surface that somehow pulled him in two directions. He dragged himself through, pulling his crowbar with him, utterly unwilling to leave his one weapon even as he was dying.

            A moment later he found himself on a cold sidewalk, white-grey stone underneath. Around him were brick buildings, and the world seemed leeched of color, somehow. Almost like an old black-and-white film, but not quite. A red neon sign that said “The Dark Bar” flickered on and off on the main road that the alley connected to, and a thin woman with a cat’s tail, cat ears, and two almost-glowing cat eyes walking out from it in a slinky black dress and stylish black hat held a long cigarette in two fingers. When she drew in, the tip glowed cherry red. But almost everything else appeared to have been painted with a black, white, and gray palette.

            He thought that should be interesting, but everything still felt distant.

            A rivulet of blood ran from Max, down the depression between two of the sidewalk plates, into the gutter of the street. It was crimson.

            A huge number of semi-translucent messages appeared over his vision, but he couldn’t understand them.

            His head dropped to the pavement.

Chapter Eight: As Above, So Below

            A faint, feminine voice was speaking to him. It sounded like Paws, but it was in his ear, not his mind. “C’mon, Max, focus! Just a few more seconds and everything will be better!”

            Max tried to raise his head, but failed. He managed to twitch his fingers.

            “Look inside yourself, Max, toward your center! You’ll find energy. Push it out to your wounds, imagining yourself better, like you used to be.”

            Max tried, focusing inward, imagining a place inside him. Almost without him willing it, a vision formed—a mound of translucent crystals, with a purple gem pyramid slightly off center and a small iron ball wedged in between some of the crystals. The crystals and pyramid were rough on the edges, barely as large as the end of his finger in his mind’s eye. A faint haze hung around the whole thing, and water collected in the tiny spaces between the rocks.

            Paws’ voice came in his ear again, and a thin hand shook his shoulder. “Okay, I think you got it, champ. I hope you’ve got it. Now, imagine yourself scooping any water you see and pushing it along your body and limbs, to everywhere that hurts. Quickly.”

            Max complied, as best he could. He imagined his hands reaching down and gently scooping a tiny amount of the water off the sides and pushing it into everyplace that hurt.

            1 Mana spent. Internal bleeding reduced. Blood replenished.

            A tiny, tiny bit of the coldness left Max. As it did, he was able to focus on all the other charts in his sight, but he pushed them aside for the moment.

            “Oh, thank all the gods of the good,” Paws’ voice came from outside his mind again. “Alright, you’re doing great. Ignore the charts for just a minute. Scoop more mana to where it hurts.”

            Max closed his eyes again, and focused. He starting moving the mana to the parts that hurt for a few moments.

            4 mana spent. Lung repaired. Broken ribs mended. Eye repaired. Other internal injuries lessened. Mana depleted.

            Max breathed a sigh half of relief as he came to himself. But it wasn’t all happy—he still hurt everywhere. His leg was twisted, he had lacerations on one arm, his forehead was slashed open, and he felt like he was still one massive bruise.

            But the terrible tiredness and numbness was gone.

            He mentally reached inside and tried to scoop more mana out, but his little pile of crystals was nearly bone dry—even the mist around it seemed to have cleared off.

            That must be what ‘Mana depleted’ meant. I have to face the world as I am. Max opened his eyes.

            Squatting next to him was a raccoon girl. She was thin, with a humanoid body covered by jeans and a dark gray hoodie. Where her arms showed, she was covered in fine raccoon fur with black and gray markings.

            Her face was mostly human, with expressive green eyes, but the mouth and nose jutted out in a slightly triangular fashion, and her whole body and face were covered in a short, soft, gray-and-black fur. She had a pair of large ears coming out of the top of her head, very much like raccoon ears but larger.

            She had headphones around her neck, faintly playing techno music, and her head was covered in purple hair that spilled down her back.

            Max blinked in realization. “Paws?”

            Paws smiled at him. “The very same. Welcome to the Near, Max. You made it.”

            “You’re… an Anthro?” Max asked.

            It was Paws’ turn to blink. “What’s an Anthro?”

            Max shook his head. “Never mind. What I mean to say is, you’re almost a human girl now? Like you wanted?”

            Paws grimaced and shook her head. “No. Ever since I became a least spirit, I’ve been like this. But my mortal form—granted by Nightmare when she recruited me—turned out to be a raccoon. I’ll be a raccoon every time we cross back over.”

            Still squatting, Paws flicked her wrist, and a coin rolled out onto her knuckles. She preceded to fiddle with it, her movements a blur.

            Despite his pain, Max was fascinated. She was fast and ridiculously dexterous.

            “I love doing that,” Paws said whimsically, then flicked the coin up and caught it in her lightly furred but otherwise humanoid hand. Then she glanced up at the town. People were gathering around.

            Max stood, his crowbar still clenched in one hand. He dusted himself off and then followed Paws’ gaze, his own eyes wide in wonder.

            For half a second, he thought he was back in the alley. The ground was dirt, and the building next to him was a brick three-story building, although the bricks appeared gray rather than red.

But at the end of the alley, where it had let out onto Heather Street, things looked notably different. That street appeared to be mostly high-end establishments from a historical movie about the Prohibition Era, with occasional elements that didn’t fit, like neon signs. Bars, nightclubs, barbershops, a phone booth, all mostly black, white, or gray. A few lumpy cars with a more nineteen-fifties look. But the people looking at him…

            Max stared. They were all humanoid, but with animal features. A couple werewolves dressed in cheap zoot suits were watching him. So too was a short fat man with owl feathers and a mostly owl head that wore an English powdered court wig and carried a weighing scale. A weasel brandishing a switch-blade stood behind them all, eyeing the pockets of the creatures in front of him.

            Max also saw a small, pathetic cat that appeared to be nothing but skin and bones with glowing yellow eyes, rolling at the feet of a near seven-foot-tall, probably eight-hundred pound, obese orange tabby-cat in a banker’s suit with a monocle on. The cat-man snorted at Max and turned back into the building he was in front of, which was openly labeled as ‘The Backroom Bank.’

            “Paws… what’s going on?”

            Paws smiled. “Like I said, Max—Welcome to the Near.”

Chapter Nine: Magic Makes it all Worthwhile

            Paws stood from her crouch, laced her fingers together, and then stretched out.

            “Why are the people here half animals?” Max asked.

            “Because humans assign animal names, roles, and unconscious associations to everything. Ever heard the term ‘fat cats?’ How about ‘wolf whistling?’”

            “That seems like old-person language. Who says fat cats anymore?”

            “‘As above, so below’ always holds,” Paws said. “But it doesn’t change over-night. That spirit has an existence now, and he won’t just go away because your perceptions change. But newer ones that begin to rise might look different. And not every spirit appears as an animal person. Just most of us.”

            “What type of spirit are you?” Max asked, still staring in wonder at the world around him. “Why are you a raccoon?”

            One alley across the way was filled with piles of garbage, right next to the immaculate main street. The starving cat with yellow eyes slunk back into one of the garbage piles, which rustled briefly.

            Paws frowned at the cat. “A lot of people associate raccoons with thievery, getting into trouble… and trickery. I’m a spirit of trickery. Newly elevated from fragment to least, like I told you earlier, and given a mortal form. But still just a trickery spirit.”

            “If you were a fragment you’d be a raccoon still, even on this side?” Max asked.

            “Just like that starving cat is a spirit of poverty, fragment level,” Paws said, pointing to the thin yellow cat still in the gutter. Then she turned her headphone up slightly, adding an ‘oose oose’ thump to the sounds of the wind down the street. “Look, I don’t want to be an ass, but discussing what type of spirit I am is bugging me. Same for my level, or anything like that. I’m me, Paws. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?”

            “Sorry. I’ll try not to bring it up again. Everything is just so…” Max circled his hand for a second as he tried to find the word. “Crazy, here.”

            Paws swept her hand out at the urban landscape. “It’s all Id in Shadowind City.”

            “Shadowind City?” Max asked.

            “The part of the Near that overlaps Chicago on the mortal world.”

            Then she faced him on the nighttime street. “It’s great that you want to talk about it and all, but we really, really need to get you up to speed with your magic. I know I told you to dismiss the charts, but try and think about yourself, who you are, and pull up your status chart.”

            “I have a status chart? Like a video game?” Max asked, eyes wide.

            “‘As above, so below,’” Paws said, grinning at him. “The world has charts for everything now, since half of Chicago plays video games. The magic used to manifest differently, but now the vast majority of people see it as a status chart.”

            That makes a certain amount of sense, Max thought. He focused on himself, trying to envision a chart that would encompass him.

            It popped into his vision, and his eyes flickered over it. It was pretty simple.

            Maxwell Adrian Gray [0 essence, core pending]

            Magics: Body, Soul, Metal, Entropy

            Rank: E,E,E,E

            Mana: 5/1

            Health: 65 (Fortitude x10 +30%)

            Strength: 3[4]

            Agility: 3[4]

            Fortitude: 4[5]

            Intelligence: 3

            Perception: 2

            Charisma: 2

            Will: 3[5]

Inborn Perks:

            Tough as Nails: +20% Health, +2 Willpower

            Natural Scrapper: +25% damage with brawl and melee weapon attacks

            Magic Perks:

Deep Diver[enhanced 2]: May move to realms up to 3 steps deeper than base spiritual weight and may exist in realms up to 3 steps lighter than base spiritual weight. May take up to 3 total people when you go, and confer to them the same benefits. If forced to another realm, take 30% less damage from the transition. May see through portals. Due to the second enhancement, gain the Deep Magic perk.

            Additional Magic[enhanced 2]: Gain 3 additional magic types

            Deep Magic: May possibly acquire one unknowable magic.

Soulbound Weapon: Crowbar: You nearly died in the mortal with free essence, and when you crossed to the Near your desire was to keep a weapon in case you needed to fight some more. This weapon gains power as you level and can travel with you without being imbued. If lost in the spirit world it will return to you in time no matter where you are. It will not return if lost in a mortal world.

            Acquired Perks:

Athletic, Rank 3: +1 to Strength, Agility, and Fortitude. +10% to Health.

            Pugilist, Rank 3: +60% damage with brawl attacks.

            Paws asked, “So, what magics did you get?”

            Max glanced up at the line. “Body, Soul, Metal, and Entropy.”

            Paws crossed her arm over her chest. “You got four magics? Did that use up all your perks?”

            Max shook his head. “No. I also got, um…” He leaned in close. “Deep Diver. Like Oblivion.”

            Paws’ eyes went wide, and she glanced around. The brick building next to them had a flimsy wooden door in it which opened to admit an old, gray-furred werewolf wearing a floral nightgown, her mouth empty of teeth. The cat-girl that was smoking the long cigarette on the street outside the alley was still looking at them.

            “Tell me about it later, you lucky fucker,” Paws said with a shake of her head. “For now, pick your core ability.”

            “My core ability?” Max asked.

            Paws nodded. “You should have something that says ‘Core pending,’ or similar, right?”

            Max focused on his status chart again, noting the words next to his name. “Yeah.”

            As he paid attention to the words, a new chart appeared.

            Core Magic options:

            Regenerating Form[Body]: Restore one health every minute. This drops to one per hour in the mortal world. All regeneration powers cost a single essence.

            Brutal Fighter[Body]: +2 strength, +1 agility, +1 fortitude. In the mortal world, this drops to +1 strength. Gains +20% damage. All stat purchases from Body cost 1 essence.

            Perfect Form[Body/Metal]: Double the benefit of all stat gains. +20% health. All stat increases in Body and Metal cost 1 essence.

Font of Magic[Soul]: +25% mana and +1 spend rate. All powers to increase mana cost 1 essence.

            Likeable[Soul]: +2 Charisma. All powers to influence emotions or increase Charisma cost 1 essence.

            We Are Legion[Soul/Metal]: Gain 2 bonded. Bonded gain 1/1 mana and double benefit from all powers giving them abilities, stats, or mana. All powers granting bonded double the benefit. All powers improving bonded cost 1 essence.

            Anti-Magic Knight [Soul/Metal/Entropy]: All damage from a magical source is reduced 40% before fortitude, armor, or shielding come into play. This stacks with any other source of magic reduction. +2 Armor. This reduces to +1 on the mortal world. All anti-magic and magic-draining powers cost 1 essence.

            Cataphract[Metal]: +4 armor. This reduces to +1 in the mortal world. All Metal transformation powers cost 1 essence.

            Spirit of the Future[Metal]: +1 to Strength, +1 to Agility, +1 to Fortitude, +1 Perception. All Cyborg line powers cost 1 essence.

            Sergeant[Metal]: All allies gain +10% accuracy and +10% damage, to a max of one ally per rank in any magic.

            Wrecker[Entropy]: All wreck powers do +50% damage. Any Wreck power costs 1 essence.

            Max stared at it for a few moments. “Paws… I only understand half of this, at best.”

            Paws was staring around. “Look, we’re both at no essence—you used it to heal your wounds, and me because it takes most of my essence to use my shadow powers on the mortal world. Plus, you’re still kinda beat to hell. You should pick fast and we should get out of here—we need to rest and recuperate before we try and find Nightmare, as much as I want to get this done. But a frontal assault at this moment won’t accomplish a damn thing, trust me. We need an angle.”

            Max grimaced. She had already told him this would be the kernel of his power, and since every single power made something cost less except the generic “you have more magic” power, it made sense why.

            “What is a transformation power, and what is wrecker?”

            Paws shuddered. “You got offered a wreck-focused core, huh? Oof. That probably says something therapy-worthy about your psyche. Wreck is the ability to touch something and have the magic of entropy just… hurt it. A lot. The power ignores almost all defenses.”

            “And transformations?”

            “Just what it says—you become a different creature or gain temporary equipment, something like that—like a knight if you take the knight transformation power in Metal. I’d avoid those, though—while most magic is far weaker in the mortal world, it can usually help a bit. But that power is always a near-automatic blasting back to the spirit world.”

            Max had one more question—everything else was reasonably self-explanatory. “What are bonded?”

            “You can give magic to mortals that aren’t normally able to perceive or interact with the spirit, and they can act as minor mirror beings. Then they won’t harm you if you show magic to them.”

            Paws touched her fingers together. “Also, we’ve been hanging out for less than six hours and you’ve already made a liar out of me—if normal mortals become bonded and come to the spirit realm, they don’t get magic. Sorry.”

            Max was very tempted to take the We Are Legion power, to give Stefan access to the spirit realm—but if Stefan wasn’t able to access the magic, what was the point, really? Showing him what he couldn’t have would be mean, especially when he was likely to be happy staying in the mortal world regardless.

            Only two powers really seemed to scale well—Font of Magic, and Antimagic Knight. It seemed very clear that Antimagic Knight was the stronger one, and it would almost certainly be rarer, since it relied on three magics.

            He selected it.

            A feeling of unlimited potential crawled across his skin, along with a feeling like being bitten by hundreds of ants. Max rose one arm and stared at it, eyes wide. His skin tone, once Slavic—or mayonnaise, as one of his friends said—white, shifted, gaining a hint of metallic gray-blue throughout it.

            Eyes wide, Max touched his skin. His arm registered it as a normal touch, but his finger reported that the skin of his arm was a touch stiffer.

            The skin around his face began to twist, and (*** add mask here)

Max lifted his gaze and met Paws’ eyes, staring at her for a moment before asking, “Am I still human?”

Chapter Ten: Derivations

            Paws laughed out loud, her voice feminine to the point of almost being girlish while still somehow sounding jaded and slightly mocking, an impressive feat. “Of course, Max. Your changes won’t even be noticeable on the mortal side except to a medical examination, unless you become insanely powerful.”

            Then she paused. “But seriously, don’t submit to a medical examination.”

            “Thanks Egon, important safety tip.”

            “Huh?”

            Max rolled his eyes. “Never mind.” His eyes roved around the area, and the couple animal-people watching them. “What now?”

            “We got hurt way worse than I expected, making it here. I think we need to retreat for the night and recover our mana by eating. We can come back tomorrow and save Nightmare.”

            Max tapped the crowbar against his leg then winced. “Won’t Nightmare be killed if we wait?”

            Paws whiskers twitched, and she shook her head. “I doubt it, although I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure?”

Paws flicked her wrist, and the same coin popped out of the sleeve and rolled across her knuckles again. She kept her eyes on the coin, doing tricks as she talked. “Look, when Leviathan had Nightmare, he did a ton of experiments on her in his lab. The real problem is she’s got a ton of information on Leviathan that the templars need, and a ton of information on contacts and allies that the inquisitors shouldn’t get. The longer she’s with him, the more chance he tortures or magics the information out of her. But trust me, I know for sure that I genuinely think this is the best path for us and her, overall.”

Max paused at wording of the last sentence, but let it go. “Alright, let’s head back. My house is tiny, and I might need to have you sleep out back, but we’ve got food and such.”

Paws flipped the coin back into her sleeve and pressed her hands to her face. “Ooo, out back. Be still my heart—this was everything I dreamed of when I thought about being a true spirit.”

Max flushed. “I live in one room with my two brothers, I have no idea where I would store a raccoon.”

“I’m really living the life,” Paws said, doing tiny little jazz hands motions.

“Let’s just go,” Max said, limping to the gate, which stood tall, like a door in the middle of the road, on this side.

Max suddenly understood why he had felt gravity shifting, before—the direction of pull between the doors he passed through didn’t match. “Does that always happen?” Max asked, gesturing to the gate.

“Nah, gates on this side are always vertical like that—as if they’re doors. But they can be almost anything and face almost any direction on the Mortal side, so a lot of the transitions are weird. Going back through can be way worse, potentially. Imagine running through a gate full tilt only to find out it was in a ceiling fifteen feet above the ground and you’re already in a sprint.”

Paws giggled and smacked her hands together. “Splat.”

“So how do I get out of this one?” Max asked, walking back to the silvery ring of the gate. He could see through, and it peered upward into the night sky, stars that were above the puddle in the Mortal world appearing as if they were sideways through the gate.

“Sprint at it and jump through at an angle, be prepared for down to shift ninety degrees, and don’t fall back.”

Max nodded and sprinted back at the gate and briefly crouch-stepped, legs coiled beneath him.

“Wait!” Paws suddenly called.

But Max was already committed and leapt through the gate, upward at about forty-five degrees. Down shifted as he went through, and his leap upward turned into a leap outward. He tucked and slammed into the ground, rolling to his feet with a grimace as his body, still quite wounded, reminded him he wasn’t at his best.

He saw a man gently nudging the shattered fire escape with his boot, his back to Max.

A moment later, a raccoon, legs splayed out hysterically, came sailing through before twisting and landing gracefully. It crouched, tense.

“You okay?” Max asked.

The man turned at the sound of his voice. “Oh. Yeah, I’m fine. I didn’t see you there, sorry. I wasn’t around when this crashed.”

Paws voice entered his mind again. “I know you’re talking to me, but be careful about stuff like that. Answer the Mortal, then let’s get out of here.”

“Uh, well, I’m glad you’re okay,” Max said, looking at the wreckage he had caused and wincing.

The fire escape was a total loss.

“Well, since you’re okay, I’ll be going,” Max said. “My brother needs me.”

The man frowned but nodded. “You do you, kid.”

Max tucked the crowbar awkwardly into his pocket and picked up Paws, then walked, slightly limping, from the muddy alley between the two brick buildings back onto the road.

Paws talked to him as he went. “Also, I forgot people might have been watching the gate. Glad that worked out okay—you need to be very careful not to get ejected from the Mortal. I don’t know if death by ‘blasted to the Spirit world’ or Mirror Inquisitors are the main reason for Templar deaths, but it’s close either way. Try not to be a statistic, ‘kay?”

Max nodded. “I’ll try. Ought to be easier with magic.”

Paws guffawed into Max’s mind. “Yeah. I’m sure that the last six hours have done a ton to convince you that the survival rate for those with magic is way higher than the survival rate for those without.”

“Is it really that bad?” Max asked.

“From what I got from Nightmare, it would seem that ‘death by old age’ is a near zero percent probability for a Templar,” Paws said, her voice somewhat melancholic and wistful. “And if you count the day you got magic as your new birthday, medieval babies had a far higher chance of making it to age five. Just sayin’.”

Max winced at the bleak picture that presented, tempted to opt out. But his soul rebelled at leaving the bad guys to win, and a girl in danger. He would see this part through, at least.

Max slowly walked home. It was now deep into the night, verging on morning. The air had grown actively cold, and clouds blew in on a brisk wind off the lakes. Max made sure to keep the giant Klinefelter tower to his left as he headed back, doing his best to navigate toward streets he knew.

 As the tiniest hint of dawn began to color the clouds in the night sky, Max reached the street that led to the trailer park he lived in.

Max started to see a glow coming from over the roofs of the trailer park home, one that flickered in the cold air of the early morning.

What the…?

Max was about to turn into the trailer park, but he stopped. Coming up the road was a firetruck, its lights flashing, its sirens blaring. Max’s gaze panned to the glow, then back to the fire truck as it headed their way.

Dread and Horror rose in Max, different than anything he had experience before as Max watched the truck approach him.

“Don’t turn, don’t turn,” he whispered. “Just keep going.”

But it did turn, right into the trailer park.

Max broke into a run, his rising terror overwhelming the pain that his leg barked at him with every step. Terror that he was too late to do anything, that it was all useless.

Please be okay, Stephan…

Chapter Eleven: The Point of No Return

Max turned the final corner onto the tiny street that had his family’s trailer home, his heart and mind filled with dread, already knowing what he would find but praying that he was wrong.

Or just that Stefan was okay. That was all he wanted. In this moment, he would have given up anything and everything for that to be true.

As he had known in his heart would be the case, multiple fire trucks were outside his trailer park, which was on fire—an inferno reaching to the sky.

He didn’t see his family anywhere.

“No!” burst from Max’s lips, and he dropped Paws, rushing toward his home, everything else forgotten in his desperate need to save them.

“Max, wait, it could be dangerous!” Paws cried into his mind. “Don’t be a fool!”

Max didn’t listen, racing forward.

A fireman in full outfit tried to intercept him. “It’s too hot in there, kid, nothing is alive in there!”

 Max dodged around him, not caring about the danger, not even really fully hearing what the fireman was saying.

More fireman shouted, but their words were gibberish, a foreign language without meaning in Max’s ears.

He rushed to the house, hit the single step that led to the front room, and leapt up, slamming into the front door with his shoulder. It blew apart inward, but air and fire rushed out, knocking Max back and down, and he hit the ground on his back, briefly winded, his crowbar jabbing him from his pocket. A notification box appeared in his mind.

2 Points bruising damage sustained from environmental hazard [6, -4 net Fortitude and Armor defense]

Max tried to rise, but a fireman landed on his knees right next to Max’s head and placed his hands on Max’s chest, he bent over Max, yelling through a plastic face shield.

“Stay down, kid! You’ll die!”

Max convulsively kneed the fireman in the face. The fireman’s face shield protected him, but he still reeled back, holding his face.

2 points of bruising damage inflicted with knee against Mortal fireman. [4, -2 net Fortitude and Armor defense] Stun effect for 3 seconds.

 Max scrambled to his feet and rushed into the house. He screamed as he did, the fire burning him.

7 points of fire damage sustained from environmental hazard. [10, -3 net Fortitude defense]. This damage will repeat every 6 seconds.

Max frantically glanced around.

He immediately saw three bodies. All were charred almost beyond recognition, but one was a small female, one a larger male, and one a thin, medium-tall male.

Stefan.

His hair was all gone, and Max briefly thought how angry Stefan would be.

But he wasn’t moving, and there was a hole in the forehead.

Max grabbed his brother and tossed his thin, light body into a fireman’s carry, still screaming as he burned.

He yanked the body out the front door, stumbling into the street.

He dropped the body and rolled himself, every part of him screaming in agony. Then he crawled over and crouched above Stefan.

This can’t be my brother.

“C’mon, brother. Get up. Please get up. You were supposed to go to college, our kids were going to grow up together.”

Paws came up beside Max, but she didn’t touch him, just whispered into his mind, “I’m so, so sorry.”

Fireman came up as well, saying things that didn’t penetrate.

Thunder rumbled through the trailer park.

He reached out, touching Stefan’s burned flesh gently. “You were going to have a great wife, a great life. I had it all figured out. You haven’t even had a girlfriend. You have to get up. We can fix this, somehow.”

Water ran down Max’s face, and he thought it might be raining, but when he looked up, everything was dry.

“You were going to have a pool, Stefan. A pool where our kids were going to swim together. I was going to make sure.”

A strong masculine hand fell on his shoulder, and someone spoke words to him in a comforting voice, but nothing would penetrate. What they were saying wasn’t real.

Max tried to say something else to Stefan, to make him understand, but nothing came out. He choked, and couldn’t speak anymore. His eyes were filled with water, and he couldn’t see.

“P-please,” Max managed to choke out, one more time.

But Stefan didn’t listen. He had always listened.

Max slumped, half-collapsing. He couldn’t feel, couldn’t think, couldn’t even see.

I can’t fix this. Nothing I do will ever, ever change things, now. The world is darker forever, and I can’t fix it.

I can’t fix it.

The sky finally broke, and the night wept along with Max.

Paws voice came into his mind directly. “Max, the firemen say you’re going into shock, from physical and mental stress. They’re going to take you to a hospital, and they’ll do an examination on the way. If they do, they’ll learn about your skin, and you’ll be blasted to the Near. If that happens, you’ll die for sure. I’m so, so sorry, but you have to move.”

Chapter Twelve: Inevitable

Max managed to raise his head enough to stare in the direction of the raccoon. “I want to die, Paws. I failed. Everything I wanted is gone.”

“You didn’t fail, Max. I did,” Paws voice came. “This is my fault.”

“What?” Max asked, rage rising, driving out a tiny bit of pain and sadness. He shakily rose to his feet, pushing the fireman from him and staring at purple-haired raccoon that was standing on its back feet and tapping its paws together outside the circle of fireman. Paws eyes glistened in the light cast from his burning house, and her fur was already flattening from the rain. “What did you say? You caused this? You killed Stefan?”

“Kid, we didn’t cause anything,” one of the men said. “You’re in shock.”

Max ignored him, his gaze—and growing rage—focused entirely on Paws.

Paws replied in his mind. “I knew Leviathan would target us at some point, but I believed he couldn’t possibly know who you were from one look at your face. But I was obviously wrong.”

“Leviathan did this?”

“Kid, your talking crazy. We need to get you on a stretcher and get you checked out.”

Max pushed the hand that grabbed him away, barely even registering the pain in his burned fingers.

“Stefan has a bullet hole in his forehead, Max. Fire doesn’t kill with bullets, you know?”

Max just stared at Paws through the rain.

“Who else would have done this? I fucked up. I never believed, not for a second, that he would figure out who you are, but he did. I’m so, so, so sorry.”

“Leviathan did this…”

“Kid, you’re sounding crazy and repetitive. We need to—”

Max whirled, bringing out his crowbar. “Back! Get back. Stay away from me.”

The fireman, a chisel-jawed man in his thirties, took a step back on the ash-and-rain covered pavement. “Kid, c’mon, we need to get you fixed—”

“No one can fix this,” Max said, hissing out the last word. “No one. But now… now…”

“Kid?”

Max turned and rushed into the early morning darkness, toward Paws, waving his crowbar to keep the fireman back long enough to break from their circle. He easily dodged the hesitant attempts to grab him, and ignored their entreaties that they were only trying to help.

He reached Paws. A tiny piece of him wanted to smash her, to take vengeance for his pain, since she was claiming responsibility for it. But that was his father’s blood talking.

And her claim was a lie. She wasn’t responsible for his pain. She wasn’t who had inflicted the pain.

He gently, almost tenderly scooped her up in his arms, overcompensating for his brief dark thought. He still carried his crowbar, but took care not to touch her with it.

Paws was tense as he first grabbed her, but relaxed as he gently took her against his chest, half-protecting her from the rain. He ran from his house, deeper into the darkness, ignoring the calls of good men trying their best.

A best that would do nothing for him now.

“What’re you going to do?” Paws asked.

“Rest,” Max said. “Heal.”

“That’s… good. And very reasonable. What then?” Paws asked.

“Then I’m going to take everything from Leviathan. I’m going to burn everything he cares about, take everything that belongs to him, and finally, when he is a broken man who has realized the cost of everything he’s done… then I will kill him.”

“Leviathan is no easy foe, Max,” Paws said cautiously. “He’s taken as much and more from people beside you, and none of their attempts to hurt him have worked. They’ve just died as well.”

Max had to stop himself from lashing out at Paws in his pain and burgeoning rage, but he kept his voice calm. “I don’t care how long it takes. I won’t be foolish, I won’t be unprepared. But some day he will look up from the ground near my feet, a ruined man, and know that he sealed his fate when he took Stefan from me.”

Paws didn’t answer, just nodding.

“I’m a Templar now, Paws. One of you, whether you want me or not.”

“I do want you, and they will to, but why do you say it like that?” Paws asked. “Because you’re opposed to Leviathan and want him dead.”

Max smiled, a grim, almost maniacal thing more barring of teeth than attempt at happiness. “Not because I want vengeance on Leviathan, no. If that was my only goal, I wouldn’t declare myself a templar. It’s because I won’t stop with Leviathan. I will start with Leviathan. But you said that he had a god he served.”

“Malryk, the God of Tyranny, yeah,” Paws said.

“I swear to you, Paws, by everything I hold holy, that I will find a way to make Malryk pay. I will kill his other servants, I will destroy every plan he made, and someday, if my magic potential really is limitless, I will hunt him down and slay him as well. Even if it takes me a thousand years.”

            Max’s pronouncement rang out, and Paws didn’t say anything.

            “You don’t believe me?” Max asked.

            “I give you, like, a three percent chance,” Paws said, her mental voice hushed.

            Max’s grip involuntarily tightened, but he released. “I don’t care if you doubt me—everyone does. I’ll prove you wrong.”

            “That was a compliment, Max. Truly. Every memory of every person Nightmare met that I got… well, I give them a zero percent chance. But, well… killing a god isn’t easy.”

            Max stared ahead as he ran. “What’s the first step?”

            “We still have to rescue Nightmare. Trust me, that’ll go a long way toward fucking up Leviathan’s plans. But in order to do that, I’m beginning to think we might want allies—and some people to help train you. I have ideas. But before that, we need to rest, desperately. You’re gonna hit the end of your rope and fall over any second. You need food.”

            Max pulled out his phone. He had a friend, Darren Brown, a fellow MMA fighter and contestant in the Chiraq Rumble. He would call him and ask for a place to crash for the morning.

            As he dialed, Paws kept talking. “I’ll be by your side the whole way, Max, helping as best I can.”

            Some clouds separated ahead of Max, and a beam of morning sunlight broke through the rain.

            Paws stared at it. “No, that’s wrong.”

            “What’s wrong?” Max asked.

            “I’ll be by your side the whole way… Justicar.”