Himmel was quick. He flung the book into the carcass of a dead horse and slid perfectly inside the animal's hollowed flank.
"You, guards—check him and his group," Kalpisos barked.
Two level‑4 guards closed on Himmel and his companions. They fanned out and began a thorough search, stripping them down to their undergarments: weapons, armor, clothing—everything taken and piled on the mud. Only their loincloths remained.
"Tsk. You don't have it," one guard sneered.
"No, I don't," Himmel said, voice flat. "Now my group and I would like to leave. After you pay us, of course."
"You failed your duty," the guard shot back. "An item worth a hundred gold pieces has gone missing."
"Fair," Himmel replied. "I won't argue that. Goodbye."
They redressed themselves, one garment at a time. While the guards' backs were turned, Himmel slid the book back into his grip and mounted their horses.
"No!" Kalpisos shouted, and the column halted.
"I'm not done," she called.
Kalpisos drew bones from a satchel—thin, charred bones used for divination. Himmel knew the ritual before it began. She would sacrifice the bones to divine the thief. If she found them, he would die.
Himmel had one last trick. He had saved the final shards of the level‑3 bones taken from the second dungeon. He clutched them, forcing every scrap of will into the talismans. Hide me, hide me, please hide me, he breathed. Dark magic seeped into the bones and then into him. The world did not change so much as his relation to it: to lookers‑on he was still visible, but he slipped past recognition. People met his outline and did not truly see him.
Kalpisos began her incantation; fury rolled in her voice as the magic spooled up. At the climax she commanded, "Rewind."
Time peeled back like a painted curtain. The battle replayed from the start—every soldier, every shout—an unspooling of events. Himmel watched it all happen again, but found himself absent from the recording. His concealment had been too clean, too absolute: obvious in its perfection. He had hoped invisibility would shield him; instead it made him a glaring anomaly. If the ritual could see every motion, it should see him too. He realized, with a cold jolt, that his hiding was now a conspicuous flaw. He would be found.
"Boys—get on my horse. We'll sacrifice your mounts and run," Himmel ordered as a contingency.
"Ah ha, so that's it, running with our tails between our legs," Texan muttered, half‑laughing at the shame of it. He knew if they didn't run, they'd be cut down.
"So where are we running? The capital? The woods?" Recon peppered them with questions, always a hundred what‑ifs, but today his list had value.
Himmel's voice was clipped and precise. "I'll put the book in the key space. It will make a bright light; then we run. Drop the two spare horses and throw them at the pursuers when they get close. There's no easier way."
He unlocked the hidden key space—an obscure locking mechanism he'd noted earlier. A sudden, terrible light flared as he thrust the book into the void. He closed the seam. Horses were loosed. They bolted.
The guards were fast. Himmel hurled his last seven fireballs to create a wall of chaos and misdirection. It bought them only a second. The level‑3 guards hesitated; the two level‑4s dove through the flames like they were a light breeze. The first horse was thrown as a crude barrier. Men cut through it like wet bark; blood sprayed and they gained barely another heartbeat.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck—this is it. We're dead," Recon panicked. "I should've stayed a slave."
Texan swallowed his fear. "Anything else we can try?" Himmel locked eyes with his oldest friend, silently asking for some impossible plan.
Texan reached into a pouch. "Here—these are bones from the treasury," he said, voice small. "Maybe you can do something?"
Himmel stared. "From my village?"
"Yeah. The big skeleton I told you about." Texan forced a laugh, trying to hide that he'd stolen something in his foolishness and kept it for the worst—now.
Himmel's hands trembled as he recognized what Texan had given him. "These are level‑6 bones. Bones of beasts that could raze cities." His eyes went bright with a dangerous light.
"Madam Kimpa showed me one last trick," Himmel said, almost bragging. "Before she let the battlefield burn, she teleported me to her village. I learned—well,Im guess but, we need to be in capitol, I'll teleport us exactly 358 miles, 15 yards, 2 feet, 5 inches."
Texan nearly toppled from his saddle at the precision. Almost jealous at the Talent Himmel had. But, Himmel's breath hitched. He was already bleeding from his eyes; the magic was not meant for a level‑2 to wield.
"Have you ever used a level‑6 spell as a level‑2?" Himmel coughed blood. White energy began to sear up from his skin; his small wings trembled and began to grow too quickly, a living fever.
"Himmel—no!" Texan grabbed him, trying to hold the rending skin together as white energy wrapped them. "Don't die on me. I betrayed you—I didn't listen, I—" His voice broke into desperate apology. "Please. Don't leave me. You're only eight. Don't—I HAVEN'T REDEEMED MYSELF!"
Himmel slapped his friend, attempting to raise the mood; the strike tore Himmel's hand from his wrist, the motion scattering motes of magic. Himmel's eyes softened. "It's okay. I forgive you. Teleport."
A white sphere blossomed around them. Kalpisos screamed, "No—capture!" and reached out; a hand of dark magic lashed into the light ball. For a beat it clutched them, then—blip—the light winked out and they were gone, and the reaching hand disappeared with them.
"NOOOOOOOO!!!" She screamed into the sky, pure anger.
They landed in the entrance of the capital. Bystanders stared, startled, as the three and their trembling mount rematerialized in the city air. Texan looked at Himmel and saw the orc changed—white outlines on his body flaked away into dark writhing aura, and a phantom hand clasped at him.
"Yo—there's a hand on you guys," Recon blurted.
It was true: a spectral hand continued to hold the teleport bubble for a moment longer, and where it had touched Himmel the dark aura held pieces of him together.
Texan's voice caved into a single demand: "Give me all your potions—now!"
Texan, quick and clumsy, shoved Himmel's hand back into his wrist and began forcing bottles to his lips. He poured, he plastered, he forced potion after potion into Himmel and onto his skin. Fifteen potions were swallowed, fifteen splashed over the torn flesh. The work took hours—Himmel's body slowly knitting under the reluctant alchemy and frantic ministrations.
When the sun passed the meridian and began its slide, Himmel's lashes finally fluttered. He opened his eyes.
"You fuckers brought me back to life. Couldn't even let me rest," he croaked. Texan and Recon exploded into relief.
Himmel sat up, still reeling. Across the square rose a great stone tower—black, towering, its summit lost in haze. At its pinnacle, a ring of glass windows watched the capital. Himmel saw a figure through that glass, small as a fly but radiating cold power even from miles away.
"I see him," Himmel whispered.
"Who? Where?" Texan and Recon scanned the tower, baffled, unable to see what Himmel does.
"The king," Himmel said. His voice was quiet but steady. He met the thought and the sight head‑on. The king's gaze had already fixed on Himmel; from inside the tower the monarch had noticed the child who dared to steal and to flee.
The king scoffed—an amused, dismissive sound—turning away to his luxuries. "Huh, a little bird. Don't fly too high, Icarus." He vanished from the window.
Himmel stood. Blood still flecked his lips, but his eyes held a sharpened hunger. "I want to kill him," he said.
Texan and Recon looked at one another, then at Himmel. He rose, every bit the survivor and the schemer: ragged, fierce, remade. "Let's go. I have a new goal."
They walked into the capital, and a new chapter began.