Il-Su watched Vex, those bck eyes staring at her in a predatory way. The corners of his mouth quirked in a small smile that didn’t quite touch the rest of his face.

  “Now, that’s a shame,” he said. “Oh well.”

  His hands were fast. Faster than they had any right to be. Vex staggered back a step, and too te realized she had two knives sticking out of her, each embedded between ribs and puncturing a different lung.

  She gave a ragged breath, and the edges of her vision went dark. He almost looked regretful, his eyes heavy under a burden. But then shifted to surprise as Vex smiled a bloody smile at him and pulled both bdes out.

  Her Pact didn’t work like most did. There were no skills, no cooldowns, no fancy gimmicks. She didn’t need them. All she had was the knowledge that as long as she had Will to spare, she could mould her body however she wished.

  And, tightening her fingers around her new pair of knives, a dark thought hit her. The bodies of whomever she touched.

  She almost cast aside the weapons then and there and dove for him. But she’d promised. Promised Mama she wouldn’t use her abilities. Wouldn’t become the monster Fleshcrafters always inevitably became. Wouldn’t become the monster she already had been in a previous life.

  Reyna twitched on the floor, not quite dead, but quickly working on it. Leilynn made a noise, having fallen out of her chair in shock, and was now scrambling to hide behind it.

  No. Vex wouldn’t use her Pact for herself. But she’d use it for them.

  The wounds in her chest sealed over, her blood drawing itself back into her body before they did. It was an odd sensation, and not in the way one would think. Her mind had to command it, visualize her body fixing itself, fighting against a current of what should be, and what she wanted to be.

  Her healing wasn’t a natural consequence. It was a command, a decree that her mind made as a ruler, and her own body, the subject.

  And as she did, she could feel other things around her that she could simirly command, should she desire. Subjects waiting only for an order, and a touch.

  The blue bar in the corner of her eye representing her Will power went down the tiniest of smidgeons. Only noticeable because she’d been watching for it.

  “Neat trick,” Il-Su said.

  His eyes darted from her, to Leilynn. He was calcuting, trying to decide whether to continue fighting Vex, or try to bypass her. Vex might not know him, but Otter did. Il-Su was always calcuting risk, always trying to minimize harm to himself while maximizing it on his foes.

  In a way, he and Otter were opposites. She was always trying to have fun. He was always trying to win. He always thought of himself. She always cared about those around her.

  “You have to be running low on knives,” Vex said.

  She tried not to sound nervous as she did. Tried not to sound like prey. If she showed vulnerability, he’d strike. That was the kind of man he was.

  That small smile of his turned into a full on smirk. And then he proved how wrong she was.

  She could have sworn he only moved his right arm twice, his left once, but suddenly she was a pincushion of small bdes. Four stuck from one arm, two in her chest, one in her belly, and three in one leg. She fell to one knee as the sheer amount of damage she took brought her down. That, and the pain.

  She was just awash with it, lost in a sea of it. She had to immediately command her mind to shut it off, deactivate all the nerve signals and stop telling her what was injured. It didn’t matter.

  She started tearing knives out of herself, dropping them onto the floor as she did, sending commands for the wounds to close up, but Il-Su didn’t just stand there and wait this time. Another bde took her in an eye, sending her head jolting backwards.

  Some part of her screamed out loud, even though she didn’t feel it. It was only natural. Her body recoiled, knowing it couldn’t keep this up.

  Her Will and her Pact had other ideas. Even as she tore knives out, closed wounds, regrew an eye in seconds and fixed and even moved internal organs around so they’d stop getting pincushioned, that blue bar of hers barely went down at all.

  Min-maxing, some part of Vex’s mind realized. The act of focusing entirely on one status attribute over all others to properly form a character build. Whoever Vex had been, once upon a time, that mercenary-like woman still trapped in a piece of metal, had apparently dumped everything she could into one stat, to the detriment of all others. Because it was the only one she needed.

  “I can do this all day,” Il-Su said, tossing another knife into her. A kitchen knife, she realized. He must’ve been running out of his personal supply, and had picked up some extras on his way through the house fleeing from Jua.

  “Funny,” Vex said. “Because I actually can.”

  She clumsily got back to her feet, and Il-Su’s smirk waivered. He probably thought she had to be low on Will. Had to be running on fumes, given how quickly her regeneration was burning. He had no idea how long someone who’d lived for hundreds of years could invest into their own power.

  “You haven’t broken my shield,” Il-Su taunted. “You can’t even get to me.”

  Vex smiled at him, wide and bloody, before the blood itself drew back into her own mouth. “Who said I can’t reach you?”

  Maybe the old her would have problems, but she sincerely doubted a Fleshcrafter, as scary as they were supposed to be, would be tripped up by a simple assassin, no matter how good he was. Her own inexperience hampered her here. She didn’t know what she could do to her own body to get it to get her to him. But she didn’t need to alter her own body.

  After all, the floor was made of wood, and she was a Lifecrafter.

  She made a mental command, spped one palm down on the hardwood flooring, and suddenly it twisted and came alive, the pnks tearing themselves free from their housings and bending in ways they probably shouldn’t be able to.

  Il-Su was quick to react. His face lit up in surprise and he dodged backwards, twisted this way and that to avoid taking an absolute clobbering, but still he was hammered and sent sprawling away. The pnks of wood waved threateningly at him, but were out of reach, unable to move closer.

  Vex’s Will bar dramatically depleted. Fully a quarter disappeared in a moment, and she felt a wave of exhaustion hit her. This was just like when she’d gotten sap from the trees by Rua’s house, or when she made a chair from one. Instinctual, easy, but it felt like work. Affecting things not herself was more resource intensive.

  She tried not to let it show, and she didn’t need to worry. Il-Su’s gaze was locked on the boards of wood, still struggling to get at him.

  “I was wrong,” he said.

  “About being able to win?”

  “No.” He waved a hand dismissively at that, also using that gesture to ready another bde which flicked out from his sleeve. “No, earlier, I made an assumption. Careless of me. I thought that Otter had taken both her allies with her when she left for Holt’s gathering. Of course she left someone behind to mind the house, keep it safe in her absence. She’s smarter than I gave her credit for. So, you must be ‘Sunny.’”

  “You should probably check your online list. It’s out of date. I go by ‘Vex’ now.”

  He nodded his head in respect. “Vex, then. I’m–”

  “Il-Su Kwan. Or Kwan Il-Su, once you started to pretend to care that you were Korean. American born streamer, popur in the E-Sports scene. Started off in shooters before making the switch to virtual reality RPGs. You were big before, got huge because of Galnt Stand II, and then had the biggest crash out in the history of streaming drama when you got dumped by SamiRai.”

  “I dumped her,” he spat, anger twisting his face before he visibly calmed himself. “So, you’re not a local. You’re from outside. From the real world.”

  She cocked her head at him. “This is the real world. Or rather, this is also the real world.”

  “So Holt told me, but he’s not all there. What are you, some kind of industry pnt? Someone he put in the game to spy on the rest of us? I bet Rua, too, and GrandTheftOtter. No wonder I’d never heard of her.”

  The door smmed in its frame. Something had hit it hard. Another hit followed, sending the whole thing shaking in its frame.

  Il-Su gnced at it, and swore. “You’ve been stalling this whole time.”

  She hadn’t, but better for him to think that. She stood a little straighter, and put herself in a fighting stance, something more from Rua’s background than Otter’s.

  She stalked towards him, trying to circle around so there’d be the firepce behind him, the writhing floor that still thirsted for his blood to his side, and Vex in front of him. The only other direction he had to go was the window he’d come in from at his side.

  With someone – probably Jua – trying to break down the door to get in, she fully expected Il-Su to turn tail and run. Instead, he darted into her reach and snapped a kick to her jaw. She heard something break, but didn’t feel it. Her vision blurred again, her head got fuzzy, but she sent the command for things to mend themselves and tried to counterattack.

  Even with Rua’s and Otter’s knowledge of hand-to-hand, Vex was ughably bad in comparison to Il-Su. They both had their own talents, and both would’ve made a better showing if they’d been in her spot.

  A punch she threw at him ended with her wrist being caught and twisted away from her, and Il-Su hammering a fist into her face. A kick she unched in retaliation was dismissed, Il-Su stepping out of the way and pushing at her back and sending her head to smack against the firepce’s hearth.

  Every attack she threw was countered, and not just countered, but answered perfectly. Il-Su always made to damage her head and face, no longer going for disabling blows. He was trying to knock her unconscious, some part of her realized, bypass her Pact abilities just by virtue of rendering her unable to form the thought to use them.

  When she tried to defend her head, that was when the knife came into py. His stabs weren’t the cool and efficient ones he’d normally make. He didn’t go for arteries or major muscles, but went for flesh, gouging out small chunks of her, and purposely flicking her blood away as he did.

  Vex had no idea how she was losing so badly. She had the knowledge. She had the memories and the training. So why couldn’t she put them to as good use as Rua or Otter?

  And the realization hit her hard.

  She was trying to do Olympic-level sports, when she only had the knowledge of how to py the game. Trying to outpace a professional NFL defensive tackle, when she’d only watched the game from the comfort of a couch. The memories were like her seeing things, but she hadn’t lived them. And that didn’t make a small difference, it determined the outcome of every exchange.

  The door tore free from its hinges, and there was a uluting warcry, and suddenly Jua all but flew across the room in a single bound, her spear fring with an ethereal blue light. Lightning arced across the steel bde, and suddenly there was a deafening roar.

  Il-Su disengaged from Vex, but it was too te. The energy from the spear took him full in the side, smashing against his Tenacity and shattering it in one hit.

  Vex, feeling a little woozy, reached one hand at him, trying to get a grasp, trying to touch some bit of his flesh, but missed. Il-Su looked between Jua and Vex, and then sighed. He held his hands up in surrender.

  “You think I’m going to let you surrender, you little shit?” Jua growled, stalking towards him.

  She lunged. And as she did, Il-Su smiled. And then vanished. The spear hit the wall behind him.

  “Did he just Wayfare out?” Jua said.

  And then her shield flickered, and she jolted to the side. As if struck.

  “He’s invisible,” Vex said with a feeling of dread.

  DorenWinslowe