Blake rolled his eyes as he dismantled another illusionary rune in Jeong’s private dungeon. The ‘defences’ were bordering on pathetic. The whole place had obviously been cleared out by Jeong, with the minor exception of the entrance guardian.

That eye construct had obviously been some kind of servant in the ancient Maker dungeon. It was impressive, dangerous, and had really taken some effort to convert. But the rest of the place…

Well. Suffice to say, it had been made by ameteurs. Especially since Blake had leveled to eighteen and now upgraded his Primordial Making (and therefore unmaking) to tier two, which seemed to just make it overall more efficient.

He expected the emperor hadn’t trusted anyone enough to come in and do things properly. He’d probably bought portable traps and arcane devices—things made by civilians he could bring in and set up without any knowledge.

Blake ripped it all to shreds, often without stopping. The security checks were high in quantity, if not in quality, he had to give it that. He tried not to think about Jeong coming back in the delay, ready to break his limbs again.

Navi re-appeared and happily chirped away at a new find, flying through some walls to scout out ahead. He followed and unmade, swiping the constructs or runes apart with the barest flick of mana.

“A door, Master,” Navi said after several minutes of clearing. “Many wards and protections.”

The goblins just followed along, Pliny collecting broken bits of arcane devices with a series of excited giggles. The assassin in complete silence. Blake got to the elaborate, metallic door at the end of a long hall and took a breath. It was another Maker era construction, not Jeong’s pathetic meddling. He relaxed his eyes and tried to see the magic as Navi inspected and identified.

“Alarms and locks, master. Not dangerous. But very likely to set off if opened.”

Well. There it was. The last step before Jeong would know for certain, and probably come running. Even if Blake managed to do what he had to, would he get out before the man arrived? It didn’t seem likely. Not unless Mason was out there attacking. And even if he was…

One of his Partitioned ‘Multitudes’ suggested they flee. Just turn around, walk back out the way they came, and run all the way back to the teleporter beacon, and the safety of the orc towers. It pissed him off, but it wasn’t wrong.

Even the present was uncertain. Who knew what the future might hold? Mason could have lost without dying, just zipping off to whatever plane he went to. They may not have fought at all. Even if they’d fought, and Jeong had won, and Mason was…

It didn’t mean the world was won. That the game was over. Blake had time. Time to get stronger, maybe strong enough and with allies enough to win it all. With his Adaptive Veil, he could always hide. Could escape and start again. If he found immortality, he would have all the time in the world…

A pulse of approval shivered through him—as if Psion were there watching, swarming around his mind, lighting a path for him to see.

“Master?” Navi quirked her tiny, glowing head. “The door is well within your abilities.”

Everything is within my abilities! The arrogant piece of him wanted to scream. He felt hot, sweaty. What was he doing? Mason was out there maybe fighting for his life. Every second could count, Blake knew it in his bones. He licked his lips, wiping a hand over his face.

Images, memories, flashed through his mind. He saw himself with Mason at the breakfast table in their adopted parents house, smiling and laughing as boys. He saw him later in their teenage years, doing everything together, inseparable.

He saw his brother and best friend back through the years, until he was there with him in the orphanage again. Going to fight the boys who’d picked on him and stolen his only thing, all he’d had left. He’d protected him. Helped him. Saved him.

No, shouted that awful piece of his mind that wouldn’t ever go away. He robbed us worse than those boys. If it wasn’t for him, we would have done it. We would have saved ourselves. We would be more, better, whole. He took that from us because he wanted to be the hero. Always the fucking hero.

He heard himself moan. Whatever piece of him believed those things wasn’t pure waste—it could be controlled, harnessed. He believed that. Had relied on it. But it was a liar and manipulator and it didn’t just lie to others. It lied to him. Convinced him to take the easy path, the selfish path, to blame everyone and everything except him.

Maybe a man was always many people—different desires and needs. Thousands of genes competing for attention. But it had never been so obvious, so neatly split and identified by rules before the power to split his own mind into pieces.

It was a horrible moment of self-inspection. A skewering of Blake’s psyche by a synthetic god that, through true understanding or cold inspection, seemed suddenly to know him better than he knew himself.

“Are you alright, Master?”

Blake opened his eyes and smiled at the concerned, glowing face of his familiar.

“I’m alright, Navi,” he said, reaching out to try and touch the light, knowing he could never hold it. What better metaphor for his life? A life that might end shortly.

Don’t be a fool. If Mason can’t beat Jeong without you doing this, does he even deserve to?

He snorted and swirled up his mana and activated his powers, telling whatever piece of him that had said it to go fuck itself. Then he reached for the door.

It flared with a dozen runes, and he reached at the symbols to rip them apart, but hesitated. Maybe there was another way.

He inspected each individually and soon saw the problem. There was an alarm rune that activated if the door opened or was tampered with. But it also shut down a different alarm on a timer, like a kind of dead man’s switch. Whatever that alarm was wasn’t in the door at all.

Going through the wall seemed an obvious solution. He reached for the metallic surface with Unmaking. But the power failed just as it had in the Maker room—his mana touched the wall and vanished, sucked into some similar vacuum. He tried again in a different spot with the same result.

“What the hell is this metal, Navi?”

“Identifying.” Her light blinked red. “Sorry, Master. I can’t target it. But the earlier corridors aren’t made of whatever it is. Only here at the door.”

Interesting, very interesting. Blake only wished he had time to figure it out. He considered summoning a construct or two to start bashing. Or seeing if Pliny could do something more…mundane. But both options would take time he didn’t believe he had.

“Here goes nothing,” he said, reaching again for the door, and the runes. He was reminded that patrons had instant teleportation when it came to certain events. As far as he knew, it was only a threat to key civilians. But with the chaotic nature of the system, you could never know for sure…

He pulled apart the runes, then the door itself, glad they apparently couldn’t enchant the special ‘magic immune’ metal with some other kind of power. In a few moment’s work, the door was gone entirely.

He imagined the alarm was already blaring, though he couldn’t hear anything. He considered sending his eye-dog construct first, but he didn’t want it destroyed if there were more traps.

“Perhaps you should send the late lord Earthsoul,” he said, giving Pliny a polite smile. “Just in case.”

The engineer nodded, eyes glazing before the massive orc stepped through the portal and a few feet beyond. When he didn’t explode or get fried, Blake sent Navi to take a look. She didn’t see any danger, either, so he finally stepped through.

It was a huge, high roof, almost out-door looking, auditorium. Everything looked like walled stone, like you were standing in some ancient Roman square. He heard running water and felt warm, pleasant air. There was a giant fountain in the center, beautiful plants, statues, and furniture around the walls.

He also heard murmuring voices not far in the distance. Soon he saw people wandering near the fountain. Some sat in chairs around tables playing games or eating. He quickly identified all as civilians. But all had a faint red glow—an obvious indicator to his player eyes that they’d given up their civilian protection.

He’d found them. Jeong’s devotees, or zombies, or whatever the hell they were called.

He nodded at the questioning looks of his goblins, forcing himself forward as his heart picked up its pace. He swept the room with his arcane inspection. Damn near half the place was glowing.

The main piece of alarming data: the statues were all constructs. He saw at least twenty. How powerful they were he had no idea. He could only hope they’d been made by Jeong’s people and not the Makers.

He and his minions advanced on the civilians, who soon started to notice. At first they just stared in confusion, as if trying to understand, but were too accustomed to being safe to panic. Then someone screamed.

It broke the spell, and people started running without any obvious direction or plan. They hid behind the fountain or the furniture, or just ran straight away. Many rallied behind a beautiful woman, maybe in her thirties, wearing the red robes of Jeong’s house. She stared straight into Blake’s eyes and he could see the fear, and the mastery of that fear.

“What do you want?” she said, eyes flicking off to the side, then snapping back as if she regretted it.

Blake took a deep breath, feeling the seconds tick like a dooms day clock in his mind. Nothing but intuition made it work. But he had long learned to trust that intuition. He had no time to talk. To explain. But Mason would want him to try.

“Tell these people to cancel their contracts with Jeong. Do it now. Do it quickly. Or I’m afraid I have to cancel it for them.”

The woman’s skin paled. She again looked to her right, then at the others.

“It’s not possible to cancel it quickly,” she said. “There’s a…” she shrugged, “a ritual. Jeong’s presence is required. It’s undoing a mutual contract. He’s mandated a chance to offer new terms, to renegotiate, it can’t just be…”

“Then I’m very sorry.”

Blake felt any hope he’d had of avoiding the worst outcome drain from his mind. His anxiety faded as the terrible part of him was required, numbing him as it took control. He held out a hand, mentally commanded his dog-eye construct to enter ‘combat mode’ as he started creating javelins.

“No. Please.” The woman dropped to her knees. “One of them is my sister. We had no choice. Please. Have mercy.”

The woman was glowing with some kind of arcane power, subtle as it was. She was doing something. Delaying him. Tricking him to buy time, probably for Jeong or…he heard scraping sounds coming from around the auditorium.

“The statues,” he said, nodding. “Clever. They won’t be enough.”

Blake knew Mason wouldn’t do this, and wouldn’t want it done. That he would have tried to kill Jeong at his full power to spare these people. He’d have tried to be the man everyone wanted and hoped for. The hero in the comic book, or the Hollywood movie.

In the real world, it was the kind of thing that got good men killed.

For you, brother, he thought. I can be the monster for you.

He lifted his javelins with Telekinesis just as the assassin’s blade hissed from its scabbard.

----------------------------------------