“What?” Keldryn blinked.

  “Schema Lock? I heard about that. That was the thing you have to do to get past Level 25, right?” Mikayla recalled.

  Anza chuckled. “You ain’t wrong, but it’s more complicated than that. Take it from the only person here who’s cleared not one, but two. Schema Locks are about improving your body and making sure it can handle the strength that you get from reaching those levels. You’d have to ask Asika for the technical details, though,”

  “I’ve got it all on file!” the faerie in question confirmed with a grin that Mikayla had realised was a near-permanent fixture on her face. “It’s partly about purging impurities, partly broadening and strengthening your channels of Mana and Stamina, and partly demonstrating to the System that you have the requisite fine control over your vital energies to manage the increased degree of amplification without spontaneously combusting. It’s actually really fascinating, you see, the natural biological channels -“

  “Asika, we ain’t got time for the full explanation. Summarise,” Anza instructed.

  “Okay, okay, got it,” Her chin bobbed up and down like a bobblehead. “The First Schema Lock has two parts. Firstly, you need to use your fine Mana control to manually expel impurities from your body, and secondly, you need to use your Stamina to harden your body against toxins so that new impurities won’t appear in the future,”

  “How much stronger will that make us, exactly?” Keldryn asked.

  “I dunno. I’m a faerie, I don’t get impurities in the first place,” Asika shrugged unhelpfully, and Mikayla raised an eyebrow. Did that mean faeries were born with the First Lock already cleared? She was envious of that.

  “Then I’ll field this one. It’s a huge difference. People go their whole lives without realising how much they’re weighed down by all the little bits of poison in their bodies. When I cleared my first Schema Lock, I felt so much stronger, so much faster, like I could bench-press the whole world,” Anza elaborated with a grin.

  “And you got yourself hurt because you overestimated yourself?” Keldryn guessed.

  “Nah. I’m not that dumb. Loads of people do though. But as long as y’all remember that clearing the First Lock ain’t gonna be enough to take on someone at the Second by yourself, you’ll be fine. Just stick to watching my back and get some hits in if you can,”

  Mikayla nodded, but Keldryn wasn’t finished. “By your own account, you already lost to Lahlee once, and we don’t even know if she’s got help. What makes you think you’ll win this time?”

  “She caught me off guard with a power I didn’t understand. I didn’t have time to use my trump cards. Next time, things’ll go differently,” Anza promised.

  “Alright, fine, say we do try this dung-sniffer’s scheme. I’m Level 23, so I’m just about due to start working on the First Lock, but Mikayla’s still seven levels below me. How exactly is she in particular supposed to do this?” Keldryn questioned.

  “Thing is,” Asika piped up, waving to draw their attention. “We moderators don’t really recommend this, because it encourages bad habits, but the First Schema Lock can be cheated a bit. Someone you trust can purge your impurities for you and guide your stamina in the right patterns to harden your vital channels. Doing it that way means you won’t develop the expertise with attribute control that is half the point of the Schema Lock, but under the circumstances I think it’s fine for us to boost you two up, and tell you to make it up with some remedial training when we’re not being held prisoner,” Asika nodded encouragingly.

  “Alright, sounds good. What about the Second Schema Lock? If clearing one early is good, two would be better, right?” Keldryn questioned.

  “Pfft. Yeah, that’d be nice,” Anza chuckled.

  “Not an option. The Second Lock is about overlaying and reinforcing your vital channels. Neither of you have enough Mana nor Stamina to even try it,” Asika shook her head. “Plus, it takes much longer. If you two work hard, we can get you past the First Lock in two days, but even if you could do it, the Second takes more than a month of regular training. We don’t have that long to wait,”

  Keldryn snapped his claws, and Mikayla nodded. “And you’re sure I can do this at my level? I’ve only had magic at all for two weeks. That feels really fast,”

  “Honestly, my instinct is to say no. But if Asika thinks it’s possible,” Anza deferred to the faerie.

  Asika’s eager, almost demented giggle almost made Mikayla call the whole plan off. “Oh, you couldn’t, no way. No one except a faerie could. But don’t worry, my super special magic can get it done no problem!”

  “Uh-huh . .” Her hesitation must have been obvious, because Asika tilted her head and pursed her lips.

  “It’ll be easier if I just show you,” she decided. “Here, gimme your hand!”

  “No, no, hang on. I want you to explain exactly what -“

  Keldryn’s ears suddenly pricked up. “Quiet!” he hissed, throwing himself down and pretending to be asleep.

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  Mikayla blinked at him in confusion, but a second later the door of the jail room swung open and a guard clad in an Amber Sentinel burst in. “What’s going on in here? I’m hearing a lot of chatter!” he growled.

  Asika thought fast. “I’m telling my new friend here all about faeries! She’s never met one before, y’know. I was just explaining how gastrointestinal distress works for us! Farts are wonderful things!”

  Mikayla blanched.

  “Please let me out of here,” Anza pleaded, picking up the ball and running with it.

  The guard looked just as off-put as the two women did. “You, um, have fun with that,” The door slammed shut.

  “So, as I was saying, faeries don’t fart, our metabolism’s too efficient,” Asika turned back to them with a shit-eating grin.

  “That was . . morbidly impressive,” Mikayla mustered, slumping down to let her spiking heart rate settle back down.

  A blue hand slipped through the bars and wrapped around her wrist. “Whoa, hey, what -“ Mikayla started, but a turquoise aura was already emerging from Asika’s hand and soaking into her veins.

  The faerie beamed at her. “Watch and learn, it’s show and tell time! Ooh, we’ve already got one!”

  Mikayla wanted to wrestle her hand out of the faerie’s grip, but it was like Asika’s fingers had undergone rigor mortis; they simply wouldn’t loosen. In her mana channels, she could already feel the intrusive turquoise.

  It was different from when Keldryn had tried to use his mana to guide her. Contrary to Asika’s bubbly exterior, her Mana was cold, measured, almost mechanical. Mikayla and Keldryn’s Mana both ran like water, spreading and splashing to the point it took conscious effort to keep it reigned in and on task. By contrast, the sheer precision and self-control Asika was demonstrating gave her chills. “What is wrong with your mana?” she couldn’t help but hiss.

  “Nothing!” the faerie brightly replied. “Now pay attention!”

  Focusing more on what the Mana was doing, and less on how it felt itself, Mikayla could feel what it was focusing on.

  There was a stain inside her veins. It was subtle, she hadn’t even noticed it until Asika’s mana had highlighted it. Asika’s probing Mana was working at it, peeling it off like a sticker by attacking it from three sides at once. Slowly, a nanometer at a time, it came loose.

  Spurred on by her attention, her Mana came to probe at it, but Asika’s own vital energy rebuffed it. It was a profoundly uncomfortable experience to have access to part of her own veins denied, like part of her body was paralysed, and an involuntary shiver ran up her arm.

  All Mikayla could do was watch as Asika worked away at the stain. But then she noticed that the stain was just one of many.

  She couldn’t quite put to words the strange sort of internal sight that she’d developed to view her mana and stamina channels, but now that her eyes had been opened to the existence of these stains, she could suddenly see them everywhere. Up and down her arms, soaking into her bones, running up her neck and leaking from her brain. It was a kind of body horror that she’d never even considered before, like waking up one day and realising that you were covered in filth - no, that the filth had merged with your flesh, and it had always been there without you ever noticing before.

  Finally, the smear popped away. An itching sensation crawled through her wrist, and a small puff of steam that smelled of bile rose from her skin and dispersed. Despite the unpleasantness of the sensation, all Mikayla could feel was relief at being just the slightest bit cleaner.

  “There! That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Asika beamed at her.

  Mikayla wasn’t sure how to respond to that, because it was true that she felt slightly better for having that stain inside her removed, but the sheer quantity of dirt that the process had caused her to discover within her own body made her want to puke. As if that wasn’t enough, she was also profoundly off-put by the mechanical otherness of Asika’s Mana and the callousness with which it had invaded her body. The words caught in her throat, stifled by the enormity of this shift in how she viewed the world and herself, and she couldn’t bring herself to form a complete sentence to articulate her thoughts.

  Fortunately, she didn’t have to. “Asika. Apologise,” Anza demanded, anger in her voice.

  “Huh? Why? I helped!”

  “Doesn’t matter. You do not just force your Mana on someone else like that. Especially when they’re clearly not comfortable with it. Apologise,”

  “Oh . . um,” Asika looked back at Mikayla, and the human girl was struck again by how uncanny her appearance was. Those glassy, opalescent eyes, shiny enough to see herself reflected in them. This was an alien that she was talking to. She couldn’t tell at all whether Asika was genuinely remorseful, just confused, or merely humouring them. “I’m sorry?” There was a hesitant squeak in her voice.

  “Look. I’ve only known a couple of faeries, but from what I’ve heard most of them need to learn to get along better with regular people. Whatever culture y’all have in the Cosmic Isles, where facts and numbers are important and feelings ain’t, it don’t mesh well with the rest of the world. No one here cares if what y’all just did would have been okay back there. It’s not okay here. If we’re gonna get outta this, we all need to trust each other. Look at the girl, is that the face of someone who trusts you?”

  Asika looked back at Mikayla, and winced. For her part, Mikayla did her best to school her features, awkwardly looking away, but Anza’s point had been made.

  “Okay. Got it. Um. I’m sorry,” For the first time, Asika’s smile had faded. “Did I scare you?”

  “Well . . kinda, yeah,” Mikayla admitted.

  “I’m sorry. Can I do anything to make it up to you?” Asika’s cheer hadn’t quite slipped, but her eyes were large and contrite. Or so Mikayla hoped. She could barely pick out any emotion at all in those glassy blue orbs.

  She mulled the request over, even though she already knew what her answer was going to be. It was the tried and tested practice that she’d always used to confront her fears. “Tell me about faeries,”

  “Yeah?” Asika seemed surprised by the request.

  “Look, back in my world, I’m majoring in history. When I find something that scares me, I research it. I investigate the literature, compare accounts, develop an understanding. And when I understand it, it’s not so scary anymore. For example, it’s one thing to be afraid of the Boogeyman. But knowing that the Boogeyman is a bastardisation of English folklore about hobgoblins makes it not as scary,” Mikayla focused on the alien face and squashed her instinct that reviled the unknown and the uncanny. “So help me understand you,”

  “Okay. Sure,” Asika nodded firmly, her smile reasserting itself. “I can do that!”

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