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• Jason Salazar.

I wonder where they get the big beams for the stilts, Will thought as he wandered along, enjoying the omnipresent smell of smoke that drove off the biting insects.

Or at least…discouraged them slightly.

I’m starting to see what Roger sees on this floor. There was a rustic simplicity in the way everyone approached life and each other. There wasn’t enough time, money, or safety, for people to play politics with each other. Everyone minded their own business…

And when your level was high enough, the ambience of the floor shifted from ominous swamp filled with horrors to liberating natural wonder.

Oh, gods, I hope I didn’t get some Mycelium in the brain, Will thought, their feet thumping along the wet boardwalk.

Their first stop was to the local blacksmith to see if he could get a chakram (whatever that was) and/or a cannonball a little smaller than his fist. Given how fast he was shooting the sling bullets, something even slightly heavier would be absolutely devastating.

The blacksmith knew what a chakram was, essentially a metal throwing disk with a blade all the way around the edge. Most people didn’t use it because there was no safe way to handle and throw it without years of training and/or a chain gauntlet.

Or…a phantom hand that accelerates it faster than a sling bullet.

Wow. Loth has brutally good ideas.

Will could simply release it at full speed right next to someone’s neck and decapitate them in the blink of an eye.

Except maybe someone like Reggie. Or Mark Wyrd, for a completely different reason.

Speaking of…Will frowned, his gaze landing on Mark Wyrd sitting at an outdoor restaurant that served barbeque alligator.

The lordling glared back at them, but didn’t stand up.

Huh, I guess he’s still alive. To be fair, there wasn’t actually much in the Swamps that posed a threat to the young man.

“…Why is he not trying to kill us right now?” Will asked as Mark took a sip of his beer, gaze never leaving the two of them. Not even to blink.

“We’re in town. Too many witnesses The Tower can draw from.” Loth said.

“So…we can’t attack him either?” will asked.

“Not in public, anyway,” Loth said.

That right there is a liability that is going to come back and haunt my team. Even if Mark Wyrd failed to kill us, his father could probably wipe all of us out without too much effort. And he will, as soon as Mark tells him about what we did in Oilton.

Wait a moment…

A deviously paranoid realization struck Will between the eyes.

“Do you think he told his father what happened in Oilton?” Will asked, his mind racing.

Loth cocked her head. “I think it’s possible in his desire not to return home empty-handed, he has avoided telling his father the details of the debacle. The Lord probably knows Oilton was destroyed, but not who did it and how.”

“So he’s desperate for a scapegoat because if he goes back empty-handed, it’s the belt for him.” Will mused.

“Or whatever the equivalent for an adult Thorns-tank would be,” Loth pointed out.

Right…

“Loth, I have an idea. It’s either really good, or really bad.”

Will went back to the inn and grabbed some props for his gamble.

My job as the leader is to line up advantages in my Party’s favor. Throwing a few of our enemies off the scent is a good advantage.

Will hustled back to the outdoor restaurant and was pleased to discover the young lordling was still sitting there, watching Will as he approached.

“You’ve got some balls.” Mark said as Will slid into the bench seat across from him. Will could pick out a handful of the surviving members of the lordling’s Party tense up as he sat down.

“I thought we could talk about this situation we find ourselves in like adults and come to an agreement,” Will said.

“Your face…you couldn’t possibly be an adult, what are you, fourteen?”

“Not sure,” Will said with a shrug. At the orphanage they celebrated the day he was dropped off as his birthday, but it was anyone’s guess how old he had been at the time. Malnutrition can shave years off of someone’s development, and Will had been a skinny child. Hence the Will Special at the inn.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

You know, that’s weird, my parents should know my exact birthday and age, shouldn’t they? Shouldn’t they…?

Mark waved his hands in front of Will’s face.

“Eh?” Will asked, refocusing on the lordling who wanted him dead.

“Speak.” Mark said.

“Does the rest of your Party know why you’re hunting me?” Will asked.

“What does it matter to you?” Mark asked.

“Ask them to give us some privacy, and I’ll tell you.”

Mark glanced at his Party members. “Give us a minute.”

One by one, they stood up and shuffled off to the boardwalk to speak amongst each other and send Will mean looks.

Once they were far, far out of earshot, Will asked the question that had burning in his mind.

“How long is your father going to live? A hundred, hundred and sixty years? Maybe longer?” Will asked. “Body that high surely means a long life.”

“What are you getting at?” Mark asked.

“Do you like your dad?” Will asked.

“I’m not going to answer that.”

“Do you want to spend the next hundred and sixty years working for him?” Will asked bluntly.

Will saw that he’d penetrated Mark’ s mask of indifference as the lordling’s eye twitched.

“You haven’t told anyone about Oilton yet, have you? At least not exactly who did it. You wanted to show up triumphantly with our heads on a pike, having already dispensed punishment. Because if you came back empty-handed, you’d be the one severely punished. No one can physically harm you, so I have to assume he has hostages. Whipping boy? Girlfriend? Both?”

Mark’s eyes narrowed.

“I want you to understand that the real story of a handful of teenage level twelves sabotaging your entire Lordship and turning Oilton into a ball of fire isn’t going to avoid punishment, even if you have our heads on pikes. It’s just not the kind of story that your father wants to hear.

“He wants to hear that other powerful forces are jealous of his success and hatching schemes against him, and he would be delighted to know which one to be on guard against.” Will said.

“Other powerful forces are hatching schemes against him.” Mark said with a shrug.

“Why not us?” Will asked.

Mark’s eyes widened.

“No.”

“Do you really want to be under his thumb for the next…One. Hundred. And. Sixty. Years?

“I’ve got my own Lordship.”

“Technically.” Will interjected.

“I can surpass him now.” Mark said, his desperation to believe the words leaking through. “Start my own independent Stronghold.

“Is he the sort of person to allow that?” Will asked. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but your job in Oilton was just to funnel money back to your father, wasn’t it?”

“I’ve been groomed for leadership from birth,” Mark hissed quietly, glaring at Will.

“What is leadership?” Will asked. “The duty of a leader?”

“To guide lesser men with the strong hand of a father, teaching them their place to ensure your demesne runs smoothly.”

“hmm…” Will absorbed that. It was a wildly different leadership philosophy than Loth’s ‘line up every advantage’.” Will was fairly sure Loth’s was better.

“…If you go back and tell your father who is actually responsible for Oilton, he will kill my Party, and punish your hypothetical whipping boy.”

“Imagine, a hundred years from now, you’re still working for Fredrick Wyrd, the chain around your neck growing shorter and shorter the more minute the difference in strength between yourself and your father becomes.”

“Or imagine…thirty years from now, your father is dead, and you and I are bitter enemies, but Lords in our own right, each holding a rather large swath of The Tower…I know which one sounds better for both of us.”

“How in the name of all the gods, could me assigning blame somewhere else possibly lead to Father being killed?” Mark asked sourly.

“I’m glad you asked,” Will said, pulling out the bag with the mummified hand from under the restaurant’s rough-hewn table.

“This is the mummified hand of Saint Jerry of Ingleton,” Will said, pulling it out and reading the tag. “One of the Graneshian operatives who attacked you in Oilton had it on their person. They were going to hit level 30 soon, and were saving it to upgrade one of their Primaries.”

“It turns out, the church of Granesh has caught wind of your father’s experiments with Tangled, and has used the moral outrage to justify humbling him a bit. When you beat the church operatives back, they committed suicide and completed their mission by detonating the main oil pipeline running through the city. This pack and the hand within is all you managed to save from the fire.”

Mark Wyrd, sat there, tapping his finger on the rough-hewn table, the rest of his body completely still and expressionless.

I really hope my ‘hypothetical’ hostage was on the money. Mark hadn’t given much response one way or another.

“Before I agree to this…” Mark said. “I want to tell you about someone you killed named Bron.”

Over the next few minutes, Mark spun him the tale of Old Bron the retired Climber who had served the Wyrd family for two decades, teaching Mark how to read and write, how to fight, how to survive in The Tower, raising the young man to be a fine Climber in his own right, only to meet his end in a ball of fire at his proudest moment, burnt to death in an oil explosion the instant his ward had become a Lord.

“I’m going to go along with your plan to set my father and the church of Granesh against each other, because it truly does fit the narrative he would believe, as well as open the best opportunities for me…but I don’t want you to get the impression that I won’t kill you at the earliest opportunity. We are not, and never will be, allies.”

“Fair enough, although pursuing a vendetta against me after blaming oilton on someone else would be suspicious.” Will said, handing the mummified hand over along with one of the bags the operatives had been carrying. For authenticity.

“Granted.” Mark said through gritted teeth.

“Now allow me to describe the ‘operatives’ who attacked you in fine detail,” Will said before describing the deceased party of Granesh operatives that had attempted to kidnap him in The Ring.

It was a team that had actually existed, and was actually dead now…

Assuming the church didn’t revive them. They probably did.

In either case, since they actually existed, that lent credence to the lie. The church would deny any wrongdoing, because of course they would whether they had done it or not. They also wouldn’t have detailed records showing that their operatives had gone after a handful of teenagers and died in the process, and they certainly wouldn’t reveal such a humiliating defeat even if they did.

It would do more for their reputation if everyone thought that team died prying Frederick Wyrd’s talons off the third Floor.

They would then ally with the Zodiac Family to wipe out the Wyrd Family.

But would the Zodiac family side with the church and double cross Will, or side with Will and triple cross the church of Granesh?

In order to have the coin land on his side, he needed to simply line up the incentives to make siding with him more desireable.

Which was a tall order, given the money and influence the church had.

Still figuring that part out, Will thought, steepling his right-hand fingers together with those of his Phantom hand. The church would definitely have less money and power after a protracted scuffle with the Wyrd family.

“Excuse me, are you William Oh?” their matronly serving wench asked as she stopped by their table.

“I am.” Will said, tensing in case she was an assassin.

“Alligator skewers, on the house! My son is a huge fan,” she said, dropping a plate full of BBQ alligator on the table.

“Oh, fantastic! Bless you, miss!” Will said, inhaling the skewer’s aroma with gusto.

The woman pinched his cheek and moved on before Will stuffed six entire skewers in his mouth.

“Were you raised by wolves?” Mark Wyrd asked.

Will couldn’t respond, he was too busy trying to get the meat past his windpipe.