Mordecai gently took the unscious ratling boy from a fused-looking Kazue. “I did mention that he is a perpetually adolest boy. And to be clear, yes, this is Li Zarb, the shattered one. But we shouldn’t specify that to most of uests.” He smiled at the sleeping form in his arms, who was currently mumbling something about ‘paradise’ and ‘fluffy’. “A lot of people enter a shard at least once during their lives, but few ever realize it. We’ll cover some rules in a moment.”

  He looked up and sed the room. The primary mess of battle had been absorbed by the dungeon already, but ing up the broken furniture and such as going to take a little longer. “As soon as the hall is presentable, we let the guests from the puzzle path ba. But we o have a feren the war room.”

  It took a little while to gather everyone, with Akahana taking the lo as she o make sure the worst injured of their prisoners were stable. He’d called in Takehiko, Shizoku, Brongrim, and Nainvil, to join them in addition to Akahana and Ricardo.

  Kazue had set up a new cou the er to let Li nap on while Mordecai had some of the bunki more food ready for the ratling and made sure to let the head chef know that Li thought his food was delicious. Moriko settled in to meditate for a little while, gathering her chi once more.

  He took care of oher small task as well. He used normal dungeon mana, not the pool of mana reserved for treasure, to create a copy of the special opal that had e with the mushroom elixir. It was still too precious for them to make as a normal treasure yet, but this ecial circumstance. He then reached into one of Li’s pouches to repce the inal that had beeing within. Which had st been residing in the dungeon’s ste. He felt it when that mana ulled out of his trol and verted into reality by Li’s own nature, for Li believed the stone in his possession to be a real object. So now it was.

  For now, Mordecai pced the inal in one of his pockets. He knew how to make an area secure against Li’s wanderings, but that would have to wait. Mordecai quickly double-checked that there was nothing of particur value to the dungeon iling boy’s possession. The remaining items were not precious enough to bother with, so he left those alone. Half of Li’s possessions would be ged out within a day or so anyway.

  Once everyone resent, Mordecai cast a sound barrier around Li and quickly went over the rules of iing with Li. “First, it doesn’t matter that you know he’s a god, Li does not know. Do not treat him like one, nor try to vince him that he is, or any such thing. You will only fuse hten him, and frightening him is a bad idea. All stories, fables, sermoc. you have read or heard about people just being o a random ratling kid and good fortune befalling them are roughly correct. Li does not choose for anything to happen regarding luck or ce, they just do. Just be kind to the boy a nature take its course, and things should turn out well enough. Try to take advantage of him by being falsely nice, and the luck tends to twist. It’s worse for people who are mean, whether they are mean to him, to other kids, or to people he likes.”

  “There are times he o be maniputed a bit in order to go about one’s day. The most important thing here is to never lie and always be patient and kind. It’s not particurly hard, but it might be best to let me ha until you get the gist. Just don’t overdo it. He’s childlike, but he’s also a god with an instinctive uanding of things aically perfetuition.” Mordecai went through the list hurriedly, knowing that putting up the sound barrier had created an uable timer. “Any urgent questiarding—never mind.”

  Mordecai made a ‘silence’ gesture, then dispelled the sound barrier between them and Li, then carried on with a different topic while pretending not to notice the ratling beginning to stir. “I think I’ve found out how the sg sensor ushed down here. And I suspect the guardsmericked, but I am going to let them stew for a bit before I question them.”

  “Stew are we having stew? I don’t think you should stew people Mordecai I don’t think they’d taste very good, especially if you don’t wash them first then again you should always wash your food before you cook it oh this all looks so tasty,” Li was already digging into the food oable near him, his inhation of the dishes having no effe the speed of his talking. “Oh, cookies, I got to have a lot of cookies at a traveling circus I was visitily they had all sorts of yummy food and the cookies were made by this one angry girl …”

  And that was the end of all versation for a little while as the ratling rambled on, telling ever more of his ‘ret’ advehe experience left a few of the guests a little stunned.

  Elsewhere:

  “How you not know how he was that strong?!” The angry snarl came from a robed man whose hands were ched in rage. “And how does he have so many bosses avaible?”

  “I am what your predecessors have made of me master; I have only the vaguest guesses for most of your questions.” Came the reply from a woman kneeling on the ground, her head bowed.

  “Then give me yuesses, prove that it was worth keeping you inta preparation for the demon’s return.” He growled at her, swatting a burned-out crystal orb off of its stand. “The tokens verified that they were on the sixth floor and that the core was nearby.”

  “Yes, Master. The numbers he had avaible seems the easiest to expin, for there are iwo cores in that dungeon. The four-tail was another dungeon avatar.” The man frowhen looked at the walls where various images were being projected from other crystals in the array, captured from the sg. The woman tinued on. “I have no idea how that ossible, for I ot figure out a way te two dungeons that does not obliterate both cores in an explosion. But the reality seems to be before us.”

  “As for the rest,” She gave a small shrug. “He was much older than I am before he was sealed, and could experiment as he wished. I only specute that he learricks or teiques during his previous existehat he has somehht with him, despite being limited to this much smaller dungeon. His avatar moved with speed and power even while gathering and wielding magid keeping situational awareness. While I could create an avatar that could match or surpass anything he has demonstrated so far, I do not uand how he has been able to bine so many disparate abilities at once.”

  He frow her, his frustration making him want to snap out questions he already khe ao. The wretched thing would eventually break its bonds if he let it grow in power, and it would attack them if allowed, but that growth was undoubtedly tied to how the demon dungeon had mao do all the things it had done so far. Perhaps he should have gone himself to ehe job got done, but if he had fallen, and the ring he wore had fallen into the possession of that dungeon instead of passing on to a worthy heir, then there was no telling what havoc it could have wrecked with trol over a sed dungeon.

  He was too angry to think, he o clear his mind. He looked up to the images on the wall aled it upon one of the forms there as he licked his lips and smiled cruelly. “Take on her appearance. I want you tle only enough to make it fun. I won’t need your avatar again before dawn, anyway.”

  “As it pleases you, Master.”

  Oreets of a northern Imperial city.

  The sun was setting, and for those who had h or es, the streets in this part of the city would soon be a dangerous pce to be. A nky figure in a hooded ade its way uainly along the shadowed areas, looking for something they could not find.

  Fuyuko forced herself to breathe faster, calling up the sense of panic she’d had so many years ago. Memories from when she was smaller, the fear of cruel figures, the lingering pain of loss, the fusion of a lost child. That was what she was, a child who was lost, alone, afraid, and in terrible need of sanctuary, stumbling blindly into a dark er, begging, praying for any sort of safety.

  The teenage girl gasped in brief surprise as she suddenly found herself in a corridor leading down into a dim, warm room, and heard the ughter of children at py. Then she slowly let out a breath in relief. She’d do; she’d mao find sanctuary again. It was getting harder to find her way here.

  Fuyuko had barely made her way into the first room, filled with lumps of bedding and random crates and pieces of furniture, when a voice startled her. “Wow, that seems hard. But you won’t be able to keep fooling yourself like that for much longer.”

  The voice beloo a nephilim girl with bck feathered wings, and Fuyuko frow her. “Who are you?”

  The girl waved her hand carelessly from where she was sitting on a crate, a leather backpack resting on the ground near her feet. “Just someone who knows some things for now. And I don’t really have long. For you, I am the person pointing out options. And you have only so many. You won’t be able to find Sanctuary for much longer; you’re too old for its prote and not ready to be a Caretaker. So what will you do? No apprenticeship or job, homeless, you’ll be prey for the gangs before long. If you’re lucky, you’ll just suffer ‘initiation’ and be made to work for them. If they are scared of you, well, it’ll be worse.” The weird smile on the nephilim girl’s face made Fuyuko tug her hood down lower.

  “You could try and find a ‘patron’, a rich man with a taste for the exotic. But if he likes you as you are now, he won’t like you mu five years. Maybe you leave the city, but then what? Bee a lone hunter? What do you know of surviving in the wilderness? And a bandit gang would be er than a city gang. Maybe you find one of the tribes that will accept you, and to be fair; if you do find one of them, you will likely find warmth and acceptance. But they are ie pces for a reason, you reach them before the attempt kills you?”

  Panic gripped Fuyuko, and it paralyzed her, rooting her ihese were many of the same thoughts that had been filling her mind for over a year, and she’d e to no solution. The dark-winged girl tinued on. “Of course, you could go south. There are a lot of stories about how hey are there. But there are also rumors of them being wicked abominations of corrupted bloodlihen again, that seems like the right sort of pce for people like you aoo, doesn’t it?” Fuyuko wao disappear, this strange girl knew far too much.

  “And if you do go south, what then? Go to the capital, beg for mercy from a church? Dormire doesn’t hold much sway there, and the empyreal pilrs tend to be much menerous, so it could work. Or maybe find some nice farmer willing to take you on as a hand, find a nice farm boy to settle down with. Not a bad life, if you want it. Then there are bands of adventurers, those odd-ball groups of meraries hired to handle dangerous things that normal guards aren’t well trained for, or to go explore remote areas and find rare pnts and stuff.” The girl pursed her lips and put a finger against them thoughtfully. “Though you don’t really have experience fighting monsters and stuff. I guess you’d o find someoo teach you, and that could be hard. But maybe you find a way to train at that new duhat was borhe river and mountains. Unless you think the stories about dungeons just being a type of demon moo be true.”

  She shrugged and hopped off the crate. “That’s all I had in my head.” The girl looked smaller, maybe youhat had to be a trick of the light. “Don’t bother ing to fier, I won’t remember this versation much longer.” She giggled. “Choices, options, free will, it’s all kind of funny now that I get it. I mean, it’s important to be able to choose. But that doesn’t mean you ’t do what other people waher. So long as it’s your choice.” She frowned slightly. “I chose something, it was important but now I ’t remember. Oh well, I am sure I will remember eventually.” She smiled at Fuyuko. “I’m going to find the other children and go py now. I think this is going to be lots of fun.”

  “Wait!” Fuyuko called out, and the smaller girl paused with a curious look on her face. “Why are you telling me all this? What do you want? And why are you leaving your pack?” That st was added with a frown as she noticed the girl had pletely ighe bag on the ground.

  “Oh, that’s not my bag, silly. I don’t think it belongs to anyht now.” The nephilim girl giggled again, sounding even younger. “I think it belongs to whoever takes it. And I just want to go py, that’s why I am here. What I chose to do, I think. Though I had to accept doing something else first, but I ’t remember what. Oh well.” The nephilim’s smile was much sweeter, more ihis time. “I’m going to go now. Bye-bye!”

  Fuyuko couldn’t find anything else to say as she gaped, the girl was visibly getting younger, shrinking as she skipped away until she looked like she was about 5. Once she shook off her shock, her gaze fell on the pack, and she bit her lip with a mixture of curiosity and nervousness. She k down to examihe pack, only to find her shock redoubled when she saw the symbol etched into the leather.

  Zagaroth