Winnie awoke with a start before dawn broke, nearly startling Gene out of his seat in the Cosmic Caravan. Her normally vibrant silver eyes had gone the dull of dishwater grey, ringed by bags that refused to empty themselves of their stress-born contents. She slowly meandered to her feet and Gene found himself frozen in her presence, unsure of what move to make.

  She had grown more fragile over the weeks of their travel and after escaping the dungeon, her mind wandered just outside of his purview. He watched her take a seat and slide her hoarder’s handbag in front of her. She shuffled through it and produced the spoils of their conquest, all in silence.

  There was the red coat that Cirel Dredaw wore, said to be soaked in the blood of his enemies. She placed it down gently in one spot and then produced a small pocket watch with the symbol of a lion in a runic circle on it. She sat that down and then drew a stoppered erlenmeyer flask with a shimmery blue liquid inside of it. Finally, there was a fully assembled arm piece from a suit of armor, prompting Gene to chuckle at the clear reference to the anime character.

  Winnie looked up at him with a heavy gaze and finally spoke.

  “The coat’s a hoarder’s handbag with near infinite storage. I checked the contents and it's currently empty but it can hold an entire armory. The watch is most likely the symbol of authority that the alarm system was screaming about. It’s keyed to the location and acts as a locus to produce the doors of the dungeon anywhere when you click the button on the top. The flask is just a flask but the liquid inside is something the system calls the Archmage’s Stone. It’s not clear yet what that does exactly. Lastly, the arm seems to be similar to Eonis’s Everoak bracer and can produce any weaponry you can imagine. You can even enchant the arm itself to imbue the various weapon configurations with the same runic power.”

  When she concluded, she just stared at Gene. He stared back at her and when things started to get too awkward, he simply nodded.

  “Right, so what’s the next step here?” he asked.

  Winnie sighed and sat back, cupping her plump face in her hands as she said, “Next, I decide which one of these unique magic items I want to keep and argue with the rest of them on which two I can give to the Crystal Coffer to gain two ranks.”

  Gene smiled and said, “Two whole ranks? That’s amazing news.”

  She didn’t share his enthusiasm. She nodded along and said, “Yes, but I don’t know if it will be enough.”

  Winnie lost herself in thought for a while before looking up at Gene and saying, “I fear I haven’t been forthright about my sourness as of late. Liris didn’t just ask me to complete the failed pact in Balora. No, that impossible act alone wouldn’t be enough to make me so melancholic.”

  She paused, trying to steel her resolve before she said, “This little dungeon detour we took was planned. In addition to forging the pact, she wished me to progress my pact rank with the Crystal Coffer as well so that I have enough power to displace Ilfas and take his seat on the Council of the Epoch.”

  The words rushed out of her like the bursting of a dam and Gene took in a sharp breath. She looked at him apologetically and he felt a twinge of pain in his chest before he said, “She told you to use me to convince the others to go into the dungeon, didn’t she?”

  Winnie’s silence was enough for him to know he was right. He laughed to himself and shook his head before saying, “She really knows how to play people off of each other.”

  She scrambled across the floor to sit next to Gene in sympathetic silence. She could feel the rising of the sun outside of the Cosmic Caravan and she knew time was short before they needed to wake the others and begin divvying up the treasure. She wished she could stay in the comfortable silence with Gene for longer but once she had broken the dam, she couldn’t stop herself from speaking.

  “I’m afraid,” she said, staring up at the constellations that made up the caravan’s canopy. “Every Pact Witch knows the parable of Balora, the lesson to not push yourself beyond your means to make contact with beings far out of your control. Forging a pact is a delicate formulation of rites and rituals that overlap. As a Pact Witch increases in level, the process increases in complexity as we draw in more deals and add more clauses to our pacts, doubly so for extremely powerful entities that require extra layers of protection to avoid being annihilated on the spot.”

  Her mouth went dry and a haunted look took over her face before she said, “The failed pact forger is said to have been level 45. How do I stand a chance of completing what they failed to do? You saw me in the dungeon. I’d need 2 of me, or even 3 to come close to the amount of arcane skill and eldritch legalese it would take to contain the power of a cataclysm.”

  She slumped over in defeat and Gene watched her in silence as his mind began to race for a solution. Winnie was on the verge of tears when he spoke up.

  “Well, if we need more Winnies, then let’s just make some more.”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  She looked up at him suddenly to see a devilish grin on Gene’s face.

  ?

  Gene and Winnie sat alone in the tent on their newly setup campground. They had decided to postpone the loot distribution to continue the ideation cycle they had begun after inspiration struck Gene. The other members of Silvayn had departed once the camp was set up, wandering into the Felgrin Woods to snag more experience and levels for Amara. The wide eyed girl was a proper battle maiden in the making and she enjoyed the outings into the wider world she never dreamed of exploring.

  However, within the tent, Gene and Winnie were attempting to explore a different world. Gene sat with his legs crossed and his eyes closed. Strewn on the ground around him were countless sheets of paper with scrawled descriptions of what they were trying to do. In the cart, he had been hit with the brilliant idea of trying to increase Winnie’s processing speed and power by duplicating her mind, but the actual process of making the power work proved far more difficult than he envisioned.

  He was focusing on testing out the new concept, going through the motions of constructing the power with his senses while Winnie scrawled on papers feverishly, producing the next concept. Every time he got close, he felt something in the back of his mind tell him to stop.

  “Nope,” he said as his eyes snapped open. “Another ego death if we try that one.”

  Winnie groaned exaggeratedly. Some of the light had returned to her eyes and the color to her cheeks. She was close to being herself again and though they kept failing, Gene was happy to be working with her.

  She threw the papers in the air in defeat and rolled on the ground before exclaiming, “This improbable action is impossible!”

  Gene laughed and then said, “Wait, maybe we’re going about this all wrong.”

  She rolled on her side and looked up at him before he said, “Every time I’ve used a power stunt, it’s been an unconscious action. The system takes care of all of the legwork for me. I don’t actually know how my powers are constructed. Maybe it’s better if we just ask it?”

  Winnie shot up in interest and said, “Ask it…You want us to ask the Hero System? You mean actually talk to it? Is that a thing we can do?”

  Gene grinned devilishly and said, “Winnie, there are still secrets to be had with my capabilities. Just give me a minute. I need to try something.”

  Gene fell into the margins after he finished speaking and then back out into the real world the next second. He focused again, falling back and forth, then forth and back as he tried to increase the speed between the actions. His essence flew between states of matter rapidly until he felt like he existed in two places at once. He felt like he was vibrating as he sat there and both Winnie and the Hero System stood on either side of him as he struggled to hold his consciousness together between the planes of existence. He projected illusions of them both to each other as he facilitated what had to be a conversation that broke the laws of reality.

  “Hello, Hero: Gene Grey,” said the Hero System.

  Winnie gasped in shock and then squealed in excitement. Her eyes were wide and she shuddered in its presence. There was something about it that was both familiar and foreign at the same time.

  She looked at Gene and asked, “Is this what it felt like when you heard our system speak for the first time? Like you were peering into a sliver in the world that no one was meant to see?”

  Gene gave a strained nod and said, “Yes but we need to focus here. I’m not sure how long I can keep up this breaking of cosmic laws.”

  “Oh right! Yes,” said Winnie before sitting down and telling the Hero System their problem.

  To its credit, the Hero System listened along intently, nodding when appropriate and humming in thought.

  “Well, there are several ways to do what you desire. We could create a power to summon a perfect duplicate of you, but I fear that may not mesh well with the rules of pacts if that duplicate isn’t there after the pact has been forged. We could create a power to cast your mind into the future so you can see when and where your pact fails, if it fails, but that may cause ego death if you can’t handle seeing repeated failures of your own death. Hmm..I must think some more and come up with what fits in your current budget.”

  “Hmm, yes, we’ve encountered the ego death thing as well in our testing,” said Winnie as she rubbed her chin in contemplation. A thought popped into her head and she asked, “Could you explain exactly how Gene’s powers work? That may help us break down how to make what we want.”

  The Hero System nodded and said, “Certainly, it’s quite simple, really. Powers are merely a set of descriptors, actions, modifiers, and effects. For example, if you want to throw a ball of fire, you’d assemble the descriptor of fire, the action of an attack, the modifier of range, and the effect of damage together to create the power. To take it one step further and make the ball of fire into a fireball that explodes in an area, you would simply add the extra modifier of area to it. The only true limits of me are your budget and your imagination. If you’re clever enough, you can even shave off some of the cost by adding limits to the ability.”

  Winnie looked at Gene with a mad look in her eyes before she jumped to a sheet of paper and began scribbling frantically.

  “What’s that face mean?” asked Gene as he tried to follow her runaway train of thought.

  “Spellwork! Magic is a set of effects and outcomes to affect reality that were passed down by the gods. What I’m doing now is something quite impossible and improbable,” she said before shooting up and looked at him with a grin to say, “I’m creating a spell from scratch.”

  Working backwards from their desired outcome, Winnie bounced ideas off of Gene and the Hero System. Gene struggled to maintain the connection on both worlds, shouting out reference characters for the Hero System to translate to actionable power components for Winnie’s comprehension. They finally came to a conclusion that wouldn’t drive Winnie insane or reduce her to a mindless drone and the Neural Boost power was born. Gene spent his last power point to add it to his Psi Bolt array. It would hamper his combat abilities when in use and concentrating on it but it would double or even triple Winnie’s casting speed, processing power, and complexity of her spells.

  Gene broke his connection with the margins and doubled over, vomiting from the cerebral overload. Winnie stepped back and he fell to his side, putting a thumb as he said, “Let’s never do that again.”