As Rylan’s hands quested blindly over the rough, cold stone floor in search of the message canister, he internally cursed Loukas for just dropping it in. Thankfully, the cooler wasn’t that big, and it didn’t take long for his finger to stumble across the small bamboo tube.

  He returned to his previous position, sitting cross-legged against the wall, with his prize in hand and no idea what to do with it.

  There were rules to the cooler. One of them was no light.

  Holding the canister up against the minuscule amount filtering through gaps in the doorframe, he could barely make out the ridges along the short length of bamboo. He shook it, but whatever was in there was clamped too tightly to move.

  With a sigh, he put it down next to him, closed his eyes, and leaned back. Honestly, this is just... torture.

  Who could have possibly written him a letter anyway?

  Rylan’s eyes shot open as one possibility came to him. The Deeptides!

  In a flash, he reached out to grab the tube again and started prying it open. It took some turning, twisting, and finagling, but he eventually managed to pop the small cork, and shook out a small, rolled-up strip of crisp bamboo paper.

  He stared at its faint outline, but no amount of squinting made the words he presumed to be on it visible, let alone legible.

  Instead, he brought it up to his nose, and sniffed it, hoping to catch the familiar spicy odour he associated with the Deeptides. Unfortunately, the scents he detected were mostly mundane ones: ink, bamboo paper, and gull. There was a faintly familiar undertone of something else, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  Well, that wasn’t the worst idea, actually.

  Rylan started running his fingers over the bumps and creases of the paper, hoping to decipher its contents. He thought he could recognise a letter or two here and there from a conspicuous loop, a free-hanging dot or slash, but... it wasn’t enough.

  Then his finger brushed across something odd, a spot of rougher texture near the top of the paper. Or perhaps the bottom. In hindsight, he had no idea if he was even holding it the right side up. With a frown, he lightly scratched at the suspected stain with one nail, before bringing his finger to his nose.

  The moment he did, he realised it was the source of the undertone he’d noticed earlier. It smelled coppery, like the fogtubes. Or blood.

  Wh-what the fog?!

  With his heart beating in his throat, Rylan sprang to his feet, nearly kicking the blasted waste bucket in his haste towards the door.

  “Gordo!” he shouted, pounding on the thick bamboo for good measure. “Hey, Gordo! Are you there?”

  “What’s all this ruckus?” Gordo’s sleepy voice responded. “Is it time for my shift change?”

  “Gordo! Please, I need a light!”

  “What?” Gordo replied annoyedly. “Come on, Rylan, you know the rules as well as I do.”

  “Please, I need to read this letter, it’s important!”

  Gordo snorted. “How do you know it’s important if you can’t read it?”

  “Gordo, please!” Rylan repeated desperately. “It smells like blood!”

  “So?”

  “What do you mean so? It’s blood!”

  “It’s called a paper cut, kid. And I hate to break it to you, but if whoever wrote you was bleeding badly at the time and nobody’s done something about it in the meantime, then it’s probably too late.”

  “Can’t you just...”

  “No. Forget it, kid; I’m not getting in trouble over your impatience. Just go take a nap and it’ll be morning before you know it.”

  Rylan gritted his teeth, leaning his head against the door in defeat. For a moment, he considered asking the grumpy guard to read it to him, but... something inside of him balked at the idea. He had no idea what the contents of the letter were, but it was addressed to him, and he definitely wasn’t about to share it before he found out what it said.

  Come on, there has to be some way to get light in here; I’m a Quinthar now, damnit!

  Well, he could have Ethereon convert him a Cube and try to read by its glow, of course, but he wasn’t crazy. That was far too expensive. Plus, a single Cube might not even produce enough light to read by.

  He blinked. “Oh! Ethereon, could I see my Status Window again, please?”

  The window opened up in front of him in an instant, but he barely glanced at it, instead quickly holding up the paper to the light coming off the—

  To his utter surprise, the paper remained pitch-black, even as he held it right next to the glowing letters hanging in the air. In fact, now that he looked around, the light coming off the Status Window didn’t seem to touch anything. Not the walls, not the floor, not even him.

  Damn...

  He’d assumed the letters to be made of mana, and therefore to give off light in all directions, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Then again, he supposed he’d never seen anyone else’s Status either, so perhaps it made sense that it wasn’t actual light...

  Another idea hit him, and he swiftly spun back towards the door. “Gordo!”

  “Now what?” the guard complained. “Can’t you leave me to na—I mean, guard in peace?”

  “I need a letter opener.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “What could you possibly need that for?”

  “To open my letter!”

  “Yeah, nice try. Loukas showed it to me just now; it was in a canister, not an envelope.”

  “The cork is stuck. I need something to help whip it out so I can get to my letter.”

  Gordo seemed to consider this for a moment. “I thought it smelled like blood.”

  “The canister smells like blood.”

  “Uh-huh. I thought you couldn’t read the letter because it was too dark?”

  “Yeah, it’s very dark inside the canister. So can I have one?”

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  “No!”

  “Why not?” Rylan asked, putting on his best pleading tone. “There aren’t any rules against it, are there?”

  “Because it’s pointless! You won’t eb able to—”

  “Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplea—”

  “AAGH, FINE!” Gordo finally yelled. “If it’ll shut you up! But you’re not getting a light source, and that’s fogging final, you hear me?!”

  “Yes sir,” Rylan replied, trying and failing to hold back his grin, lest Gordo heard it in his voice.

  He listened intently to the sound of Gordo’s muttering and footsteps fading in the distance, then to the silence that followed. It seemed to take an eternity, but at long last, Gordo returned, walking all the way to his door this time.

  “Hey kid,” Gordo said after a moment, sounding uncharacteristically serious. “I’m not a gullbrain, you know? If what I heard earlier is true... this letter opener is a lot more dangerous in your hands than probably anyone else’s on this estate right now.”

  Rylan stilled, listening intently.

  “Just... don’t make me regret giving it to ya, all right? Can you promise me that, Thar Rylan?”

  Rylan swallowed, his stomach flipping excitedly at the title. “I won’t. Promise.”

  “Fine then.”

  The hatch opened with a clang before a small, shiny blade was offered through it, and not just dropped this time. Rylan gratefully took it, fighting the urge to snatch it out of Gordo’s hands.

  “There you go, have fun with it,” Gordo grumbled. “And don’t disturb me again, you hear me?”

  “Thanks Gordo!”

  “Yeah yeah...”

  And with that, Gordo yawned loudly, and started shuffling back to his post.

  In the dark, Rylan lifted the innocuous blade in front of his face, and tried, for the first time ever, to activate his Skill.

  And nothing happened.

  One upside to being in the cooler, Rylan found, was the lack of distractions. With his full attention focused on the problem at hand, it didn’t take him too long to realise what he was doing wrong.

  His Skill wouldn’t activate, because he wasn’t throwing his knife.

  So, for lack of a better idea, he started carefully lobbing the blade at the door, making sure it couldn’t accidentally land in the bucket. It was probably empty at the moment, but there was a difference between empty and clean.

  If Gordo heard or was annoyed by the repeated clattering of the small metal implement on the stone floor, he didn’t mention it. Frankly, Rylan suspected that the old guard had already fallen back asleep.

  Rylan quickly fell into a rhythm, becoming familiar with the shape and weight of the letter opener. Soon enough, he started feeling something whenever he drew it back.

  A tingling that ran up his arm, prickling his fingers.

  He started making the motion as slow as he could while actually still ‘throwing’ the knife, focusing fully on the strange sensation.

  And then, all of a sudden, as he drew it back once more, something clicked.

  He pushed against something, and the gentle tingling sensation became a surge of warmth that flowed through his arm, up to his fingers, and out into the small blade.

  It promptly started to shine with a faint white glow which charged up over the course of a second before levelling out. The end result was still barely enough light to read by, but it was something.

  Before Rylan could even grab his letter, however, the glow flickered and went out.

  Undeterred, he kept trying. Now that he’d succeeded in activating his Skill once, he was confident he could do it again.

  The second time he activated it, he decided to follow through and actually threw the knife. It hit the door with a solid thunk, and the usual clatter... stayed out.

  Even though he’d hardly put any strength into his throw, Rylan found it embedded deeply into the thick bamboo, and had to really pull hard to get it loose.

  Whoops. Better be careful with this thing...

  After some more experimentation, he found that the Skill didn’t appreciate being interrupted. As soon as he halted his throwing motion, the mana would start fizzling out, leaking away into the air or something. When he checked his Mana Pool after a total of six attempts, he found he’d used up exactly 0.6 points of mana.

  So one activation uses about 0.1 points of mana then? That would mean I could use it a hundred times in a row!

  As he watched, his Mana Pool ticked back up to 9.5 out of 10.

  Right, my Mana Core regenerates a full point of mana per hour, so that’s about 0.1 point every six minutes, so it would actually even be a little more than a hundred times in practice.

  Still, it seemed like 0.1 points of mana wasn’t all that much, as the light his letter opener gave off was pretty weak.

  I guess my Skill will grow stronger as it ranks up...

  Since he still had plenty of mana left, and nothing better to do, Rylan kept trying. He ended up spending about two-thirds of his Mana Pool over the better part of an hour, before he finally reached an unstable truce with his Skill, where it wouldn’t deactivate as long as he slowly waved his blade in front of him in throw-like motions.

  The white glow coming off the blade was still weak and flickery, but at least it stuck around

  With his other hand, he carefully retrieved the rolled-up letter from where he could now actually see it lying on the floor, and started to unfurl it.

  Rylan’s brows furrowed more and more as he tried to make sense of the smudged, barely legible scrawl in the dim light.

  ‘Dear Rylan,’ he was pretty sure it started. ‘I ... ... much time, ... ... hand won’t ... shaking, but I ... I owe ... ... much, ... least. I ... ... regrets. I wish I’d ... ... ... sooner. I wish I ... ... ... ... up. But ... ... matters, ... matters, ... your safety. Unfortunately, ... ... ... efforts, I ... they suspect. Your ... asked ... ... to contact ... ...—I ... know ... ... ... told you ... I ... say much ... either, ... ... letter falls ... ... wrong ...—but I ... ... warn you: ... coming. ... ... treasure your jewels, stay ... ... ... Anonymity ... your ... defence. If ... ... fails and ... ... ... ... assistance, ... to ... Knackered Hag, ... ask ... “... Nosed Art” Sincerely, ...’

  Rylan stared at the last word for a long time. It was scratched out, but he could still tell that it was short. It could be a name... but some part of him suspected it wasn’t.

  The light coming off his letter opener sputtered out then, as he failed to keep the motion going properly. His arm had been getting tired anyway.

  With a sigh, he sank back against the wall.

  After all his effort, he’d still barely produced enough light to read some of the letter. Still, from what little he’d deciphered, he was pretty sure it hadn’t been sent by the Deeptides.

  Overall, it seemed rather... ominous. His safety was mentioned, the word ‘warn’ was used, plus there was something about someone suspecting something and about using anonymity as his defence?

  Well, that plan was probably shot. He was a Quinthar now. He couldn’t have drawn much more attention to himself if he’d tried.

  The oddest part was perhaps the bit about treasuring his ‘jewels.’ As far as he was aware, Rylan had never owned anything as precious as that. Was he supposed to? Had someone robbed him as a baby or something?

  Also, what was the Knackered Hag? The capitalisation seemed to suggest it was the name of some place or establishment, but he’d certainly never heard of it.

  Right as he was about to try and reactivate his Skill to see if he could decipher some more of the sloppy handwriting, he heard quiet footsteps approach down the hall.

  Perking up his ears, he could vaguely hear Gordo snoring in the background, so whoever it was had managed to sneak past the guard.

  Why though?

  With his heart beating in his throat, and the ominous words of the letter still fresh in his mind, Rylan considered what to do. Should he call out, ask who was there? Should he try to wake Gordo?

  The footsteps stopped in front of his door. Then, with a creak that seemed ear-piercing in the silence, the hatch opened a sliver, revealing a pair of silvery-grey eyes.

  “Zahra!”

  Book 1: Unnatural Laws

  : Unusual Enemies

  : Unimagined Adventures

  : Unchained Potential

  : Untamed Spirit

  : Undivided Worlds

  //