The list rose in his mind like a catalog card. Familiars, neat columns, most of them grayed beyond touch—shadow-names and shapes he couldn't select. At the bottom sat a link: Advanced Familiars. He focused, and another pane opened.
Everything there was dark too, except one entry pulsing a soft orange: Brownie.
A warning spooled across the top: Familiar selection is permanent. Choose once; carry it forever.
He hovered on the orange name. Requirements appeared in small, unembellished type, the sort of honesty you only get from machines: Magic — Advanced. Mycology — Intermediate.
Close enough to taste.
He glanced at his skills and the three unspent points waiting in the corner of his mind. If this was a path you only stepped on once, you stepped clean.
One point into Magic; the floor of his thoughts shifted a fraction, the threads of his spells tightening until they sang truer. Two points into Mycology; field notes turned into a working map—spore prints, safe gills, bruising colors. From machete knowledge to scalpel knowledge.
The orange badge on Brownie turned steady white. Selectable.
He pressed it.
The air thinned and then filled, like a room that had been empty remembering it wasn't. A prickle ran over his arms, not cold, not hot—just a change in pressure. Then a figure the size of a toddler stepped out of the corner of nothing and tipped his ridiculous hat with great ceremony.
The creature was dressed in a tuxedo that had known better days and refused to admit it: brown cloth, patched until the patches were patching patches, lapels polished smooth by time. Skin the warm, dark brown of well-used walnut oil. A hat like a monstrous wine-red mushroom cap sat angled over one ear. He wore a pleasant smile as if it had been his since birth.
"Good day to ye, master," the brownie said, voice rich and thick as peat smoke, vowels rolling like hills. "Names and niceties, if ye don't mind."
William blinked, then barked a quiet laugh that felt too loud in the corridor. "I'm William. Will, if you like."
"Aye, Will'll do." The brownie's eyes twinkled, then narrowed at the double doors down the hall. "We'll get on grand."
A permanent decision felt less heavy when it shook your hand and gave you a nod.
He took a breath, then remembered the spare stat point he'd been hoarding for exactly the moment when decisions wanted to be muscle. He added it to Strength and felt something settle deeper into his frame—the kind of change you notice only when you lean on it. From the very pinnacle of human into the low end of more-than; not a leap, but a bend in the forensics of what sinew can pull.
He flexed his fingers and looked down at his sling. It was still a strip of braided cord and a pocket, knots tight but not immortal. It would hold for now. If he kept getting stronger, it wouldn't. He pushed the thought into the box in his head labeled "Repair experiments—soon" and turned to the last piece of housekeeping.
Gold—fifty bright reminders of future markets—sat on the status pane under its own heading. Not in the Item Box. Not in the pack. The System kept score when commerce would matter. He filed that away with a quiet satisfaction. Trade meant civilization, and civilization meant rules you could learn and bend.
"Right," he said to the brownie. "Shall we?"
The double doors were iron-banded and dented by history. He set a hand to one and pushed. Hinges complained, stone carried it, and the gap widened into a mouth of light.
They stepped into brightness.
The room beyond was a cathedral to shelves. A vast central atrium rose into a skylight three floors up, ringed by balconies and walkways, each level a web of stacks and ladders, glass-fronted cases and reading bays laid out like a map of a city that wanted you to get lost. Lamps threw a soft, even brightness over everything. Marble underfoot. Brass railings touched by a thousand hands.
A hub, no question. You could run campaigns from here.
William's light faded to a polite ghost and settled behind his head, red-tinted and aimed forward. The brownie shaded his eyes with a small hand and whistled low.
"Fine big room for a row," he said. "Or a book."
"Let's try for the second."
They moved forward. His eyes tracked the balcony lines, the staircases that doubled back on themselves, sightlines across open air. Old instincts said one thing: this was designed to let you see and be seen. You could be flanked from half a dozen angles and not know it until the noise reached you.
His scouting tickled, a soft pop-up of names in the distance without the courtesy of faces—Lesser Goblin behind a glass case two levels up; Lesser Goblin at a far stair; then nothing close. He relaxed by one notch, not two.
The skylight above darkened.
It wasn't cloud. The color drained from the glass and returned as a nervous, arterial red, a thin wash at first and then thicker, saturating the panes with a stain the room's lamps couldn't beat. The air didn't change temperature, but it tasted metallic at the back of his tongue.
The brownie looked up and tutted. "Och now. Somebody's in quite the mood."
"Yeah," William said, voice flat. "I burned their heart."
"Good lad," the brownie said, equally flat. "Keep doin' that."
The red deepened. Somewhere above, a slow bell began to toll, muffled by floors of paper. It wasn't metal beating metal. It was a pulse routed through architecture. Affiliations didn't often get public.
He stood a little taller without deciding to and took stock the way he always did when the weather tried to turn. Numbers kept storm and superstition from getting hands on your throat.
Status: William Page
Age: 18
System: Unbound Bookeater
Class: Wizard (4)
Level: 4
EXP: 25 / 400
Strength: 12
Speed: 13
Durability: 15
Mental: 18
Social: 5
Luck: 8
Traits:
– Hunger for Knowledge
– Synesthetic Cognition
– Rational Mind
Perks:
– Silent Spells (Wizard)
Skills:
– Survival (Intermediate)
– Mycology (Intermediate)
– Cooking (Basic)
– Knife Use (Basic)
– Herb Lore (Basic)
– Knife Combat (Basic)
– Medicine (Basic)
– Magic (Advanced)
– Anatomy (Basic)
– Unarmed Combat (Intermediate)
– Wrestling (Basic)
– Situational Awareness (Basic)
– Rituals (Basic+)
– Scouting (Basic)
– Footwork (Basic)
– Tactics (Basic)
– Sling (Basic+)
– Alchemy (Basic)
Abilities:
– Sense Magic (Basic+) [Touch]
– Resorb Blood (Basic) [Self]
– Item Box (Basic)
– Summon Familiar
Familiar:
– Brownie (Fairy) — bound
Resistances:
– Blood (Minor)
Combat Values:
– Critical Hit Chance: +10%
– Initiative Bonus: +5%
– Accuracy Bonus: +5%
– Defense Bonus: +5%
Affiliations:
– God of Spilt Blood — Angered
Memorized Spells (22 / 22):
– Detect Magic ×1
– Light ×1
– Identify ×1
– Repair ×1
– Sleep ×3
– Jump ×3
– Grease ×3
– Protection from Evil ×1
– Dispel Magic ×4
– Gigantify ×1 (2 slots)
– Miniaturize ×1 (2 slots)
Unallocated Points:
– Stat Points: 0
– Skill Points: 0
Gold: 50
Inventory:
– Knife (Common, Durability 81%)
– Improvised Sling (Common, Durability 85%)
– Trail Mix (Mundane, 340g)
– Water Bottle (Common, Full, Durability 100%)
– Poncho (Common, Durability 80%)
– Goblin Key (Uncommon)
Item Box (Basic):
– Smooth Stones (x3, Enchanted)
– Potion of Lesser Healing (Common)
– Potion of Lesser Poison (Common)
– Paracord (Common, 16 ft, Durability 98%)
– Firestarter (Common, Durability 87%)
The brownie tipped his mushroom hat back and sniffed the air like a hunter. "Ye've a quiet way o' makin' enemies, Will."
"That's the goal," William said. "Quiet part's new."
"Aye, well—ye've a perk for that." He winked. "Silent spells. Good manners in a library."
Across the atrium, a line of lanterns guttered and then steadied, though no wind moved. The red deepened another shade and began to pulse with the same out-of-step cadence he'd heard and burned in the chamber. The building wore its anger like a fever.
He rolled his wrists, felt the enchanted stones waiting in the Box, the sling at his hip, the new class sitting like a promise under his skin. He could see half a dozen routes to the second level that wouldn't get him killed immediately. He could also see the ways a clever dungeon would make those routes cost him later.
"Ready?" he asked.
The brownie smiled, all neat, white teeth and good intentions. "Born ready, master. Or at least patched ready."
"Let's meet the locals," he said.
And as the skylight flashed a warning red that felt like someone shouting through glass…