“Morning Lyte,” Steven said as he entered the dining room.

  “Morning,” I called back, pausing in my pouring of batter into a row of Waffle’s Irons to gesture at the spread. “Go ahead and help yourself.”

  Last night, after swimming in circles for a while, I had passed by Steven in the gym on my way up to bed. He had been testing out his spearmanship- an impressive display of skill and fluidity, though he did look a bit stiff on certain movements- probably due to needing to unlearn the measures he’d taken to adapt to his injury. I’d checked he remembered where the guest rooms were then continued heading up.

  “Tear should be down shortly,” I said, adding the newly cooked waffles to a warm box, “she always wakes up late. If she’s too long I’ll go get her up- see if she’s tangled herself in her sheets again.”

  Steven paused in loading his plate, shoulders slumping almost imperceptibly, the motion causing a teetering piece of bacon to slide even closer to the edge of the rapidly growing pile.

  “I don’t think Tear likes me,” he sighed, “I’m not very good with kids.”

  “I think part of the problem is that you were treating her like a kid.”

  “But you treat her like a kid.”

  “Yeah, but I get a free pass.”

  Steven opened his mouth to reply, but cut it off as we both looked towards the stairs.

  “Mrrrning,” Tear mumbled as she descended into view with a yawn. The teenager’s bedhead was doing its best impression of an extra set of cat ears.

  “Morning,” Steven replied.

  I patted the back of a chair and she sat, surrendering herself resignedly to my daily hairbrush-based assault.

  Breakfast was quick and delicious in the Canadian style; waffles, bacon, and maple syrup.

  “Feel free to make yourself at home,” I told Steven, “have a swim, check out the library, take a walk- or not, it’s still raining.”

  “I think I’ll digest for a bit,” he joked while patting his belly, having put away more food than both Tear and I had combined.

  I chuckled, heading off with a book to one of my favourite reading locations.

  “Hey Lyte? You here? I asked Tear and she said you’d be-” Steven’s head stuck through the portal next to me. “-oh.” A moment later, an enormous grin split the astonishment on his face. He stepped through the portal, drifting over to the other side of the small glass box and slowly spinning head over heels.

  His hand shot out to press lightly against the glass, sending him floating back again but no longer flipping. A twist sent him into a slow spin- when facing forwards again he released a powerful breath of air and untwisted, cancelling both momentum and spin.

  “You’ve done this before,” I accused, peering over the top of my book at him.

  “This is like the weightless zones in the Floorshift Dungeon!” he exclaimed happily.

  The Floorshift Dungeon… went on my to-visit list.

  I closed my book and lightly tossed it through the portal to land perfectly flat on the floor, then surreptitiously flicked a wing slightly to float next to Steven, gazing down on Reyath.

  The two of us just watched in silence for a while as darkness encroached on the land below, invisible gemspark filling our bauble with a warm diffuse light even as we flew into Reyath’s shadow. The stars turned and we emerged into the light once more.

  I had recently swapped the glass for lead to protect against what little radiation could have made it through the thick glass, installed a thin layer of gemspark to seal the lead in, then echo coated the lot to make it invisible. A thin layer of glass went back overtop so that it didn’t look like we were just floating unprotected in open space. That would be disconcerting, at least for me.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Since the small orbital hadn’t fallen down yet, nor really dropped in altitude, Reyath had to be of a similar size and density to Earth. At some point I should go and build something at geostationary- I just had to work out where exactly that was… something else for the to-do list. But first…

  “Hey, I’ve been wondering,” I said, pointing down at the central continent as we flew overhead, “do you know what’s in the centre of the Beast Forest?”

  Clearly visible beneath my finger, the sprawling green of the Forest gave way to a vast area of pale blueish grey.

  Steven side eyed me. “No.”

  “Hmm…”

  The side eye narrowed. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s a bad idea. I’d rather you not kick the bucket and leave a kid alone in the middle of the Forest.”

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “It’s never worth it; none of the Forbidden Zones I’ve been to have been, and none are as bad as the Forest’s centre is predicted to be.” He paused. “Except maybe the deep oceans. I’ve only sailed over the shallow bits -reluctantly- and they were bad enough.”

  “You’ve been to other Forbidden Zones?”

  Steven sighed. “Well I grew up close to the Arakish Heartstorm, and I’ve been to…”

  Discussing with Steven was fun- not only did he have some fascinating tales of places he’d been and monsters he’d fought, it was also rather enlightening for filling in the gaps in my knowledge. Since he was aware I was an otherworlder, and wasn’t a street rcat, I could ply him with all sorts of questions, including how he knew I was an otherworlder. Apparently I “ain’t the most obvious one I’ve met but it didn’t take long to figure out.”

  Time passed, the cycles of light and dark passing below us as we floated, bathed in the eternal soft glow of gemspark.

  “Well,” Steven said at length, “it’s probably about time for me to head back. “Who knows what sort of mess I’ve been left back at the Outpost.” He sighed and shook his head.

  “Hey, if you ever need to dodge someone else, feel free to come and crash here.”

  “Thank you,” he reached out and we clasped arms, “I may take you up on that offer!”

  Steven only took a short while to gather the few bits of his kit he didn’t immediately have on him; Tear and I met him back at the ground floor to see our guest off.

  I was taking a quick look outside to check the weather while we waited for him- it was just into night, the thick rain clouds blocking out all light from moon or stars. The utter darkness served to highlight the lights falling through the rain, each raindrop illuminated in a sphere of scintillating gold around the softly glowing balls.

  Blue light flared briefly as each Fallen Star struck the ground, rebounding upwards a short distance, as though seeking to return to the skies yet unable to, coming to rest on the luscious and non-bloodsucking grass.

  Overhead, Falling Stars which struck the Tower simply passed straight into its inky surface and vanishing into the distance, as though the obsidian was merely a continuation of the endlessly deep abyss from whence they came.

  “Star shower out here,” I remarked to Tear, enjoying the spectacle from the shelter of the roof for a moment longer before heading back through the obsidian mist, finding Steven had arrived by the main door and donned his cloak already.

  “Something nice to see on my way back then,” he said, taking his spear from the mannequin and giving it a twirl.

  I agreed- it was truly a breathtaking sight.

  Steven continued his warm up for another few seconds -movements completely fluid now- before bringing his spear butt down with a sharp clack!

  He then took a deep breath and I both felt and saw with Deceiver as his lifeforce surged, flowing through his body then through his spear. Now that the eye-catching dark stain of the curse was gone, what I saw could only be called a reminder to stop slacking on lifeforce training.

  A thin but constant stream of lifeforce flowed from his hand up to the leaf-like blade, splitting at its point to flow back around the edges and then back down the shaft to his hand, making a complete circuit, a wild contrast to my rough and leaky infusion. At an estimation, it would be at least twice the reinforcement for half the energy investment to do it that way, and he could increase the power using the pilot flow instantaneously!

  And it wasn’t just his spear. It was only now that he was actively empowering himself that I could tell- lifeforce flowed in a continuous loop through the entirety of his body, ready to be reinforced at a moment’s notice- I wondered at how I hadn’t noticed it before, its controlled nature clearly marking it as different from the natural and somewhat meandering flows everyone else had.

  Steven passed his spear to his other hand to clasp my arm again- the lifeforce flow in his spear not having a single hiccup in its smoothness despite changing hands- and said his goodbyes to Tear before Steven and I stepped out through the actuated obsidian.

  “Ack,” he said, pulling up his hood, “I forgot how muddy it is out there.” He sighed and stepped out into the rain. “Nothing for it. Thanks for the stay; see you in town!”

  All I could do was stare as he walked away- the man was an absolute masterclass in lifeforce manipulation. Tiny spikes anchored each footfall to the ground, retracting with each flex of his foot as he lifted it, not even the slightest loss into the ground. Despite his complaint about the mud he left footprints barely millimetres deep. He bore no candle or light- the gentle flow through his eyes meant that the night was undoubtably as penetrable as day to him.

  I might have raw power, but that was raw mastery.

  I realised with a start just how much I had been underestimating Steven.

  “Didn’t he say earlier that he’d killed Pumpkin Moon bosses?”