Conrad hummed to himself as he crossed the street, pulling a hat over his face. The mansion in the distance stood tall and a tad garish against the sky, a beacon of supposed cosmopolitan modern elegance. It was bigger than even his parents' home, with two pools, a sauna, a basement cinema, and tons of unnecessary space.

He was currently in a suburb in Falstone called Three Rivers, and it reminded him of where his parents used to live. Unlike his former home, though, this suburb was filled with the high rollers who weren't heroes or nobility. Residents were mostly influencers or other nouveau riche. Or maybe kids of [heroes] who weren't [heroes], rich kids with no responsibility. There was an HOA, but it gave the owners more freedom, which was why someone was playing loud music in a mansion nearby, and someone else was throwing a pool party.

Conrad personally wouldn't have chosen this place to live.

It was over the top, but maybe that was the point. Hakeem wanted it to be over the top.

"Hey, Pauly, how are things?"

The security man nodded silently, but Conrad still tipped him before he walked in through the sliding gates. He cut across the vast yard with perfectly manicured grass and a koi pond out in front, toward the twelve-foot-tall, tempered glass door.

He let himself in with the code.

Even in the classic foyer, which was bare of anything except a variety of tech boots and one feminine pair of slippers, Conrad could already hear the yelling. It was coming from the living room, and he took a deep breath to steel himself before he ventured in.

Hakeem's voice came first. "Isla, I swear to God if you throw one more snowglobe at me–"

"You'll what? Hit me? Go right ahead, and I'll brain you with this globe so hard, you'll think that troll was giving you love taps!"

"Damn it, don't throw it, Isla. You're gonna get that on my white sofa!"

"Too bad. I'm trying to get it through your big head."

"Hi hi!" Conrad said, being extra chipper as he interrupted the screaming match that was currently going on between Top Dog and Isla. About half a dozen mini snow globes littered the floor, and Isla held one in her hand over her head, her brown curly hair rioting around her head.

"I brought donuts." Conrad held up the box in his hand. "Who wants some?"

None of them even spared him a glance.

Conrad sighed.

"What's going on now?" he asked.

"What do you mean what's going on?" Isla turned to him, fire burning in her brown eyes. "It's always the same thing with this one!"

"What is it?"

"What is it not?" She throws her hand up. "He doesn't want to rest, doesn't want to take his medications–"

"They make me loopy," Hakeem said. "I can't train with that."

"You're not supposed to be training at all! Your pathways are messed up! The healer was very clear that you need a few months at least to heal completely."

"He didn't know what he was talking about. I feel fine."

She gaped. "Oh, I'm so sure that the A-Rank healer who has spent years treating this sort of thing doesn't know what they're talking about. I'm sure you know so much more than they do, dummy."

"Glad we're on the same page. So now I'm gonna head down to the gym, if that's alright with your highness."

"No, it's not alright. That's kind of what I've been saying this whole time."

"And I've been saying I don't give a damn what you're saying."

Isla's head fell back, eyes squeezed shut. "Oh my days, I'm so sick and tired of your attitude."

"Feel free to leave so you don't have to deal with it."

"You would like that, wouldn't you? So you can add me to the list of people who have wronged you as you throw the saddest freaking pity party in your giant freaking mansion."

Hakeem flipped her off and then headed to the corner where his gym bag was hanging. Before he could reach for it, Isla raised the globe even higher, threatening, "Hakeem, if you so much as touch that gym bag, so help me, I will hurt you."

"Okay." Conrad clapped. "I think our emotions are all very heightened right now. Let's all take a deep breath."

"Oh, spare me the therapy talk, Conrad," It was Top Dog's turn to snap. "I don't need you treating me with kid-fucking-gloves. I'm fine. I got attacked by a big troll and got a few broken limbs. Big whoop."

Conrad's eyebrow ticked, irritation rising. Not a lot of things pissed him off lately, but seeing someone yell at his girlfriend, who was only trying to help, and then yell at him too...yeah, that could do it.

But Conrad had to be careful not to lose his temper. That was exactly what Top Dog wanted, for both Conrad and Isla to lose their tempers and leave Top Dog here to self-destruct on his own. TD's mom had already gone over to the other house, claiming she would strangle her own son if she stayed any longer. She'd begged Isla to take her place and talk some sense into him, and they were playing a 'tag, you're it,' kind of situation.

Top Dog's injuries were more complex than they appeared, according to the healer. The superficial damage could be healed, but some microfractures affected the pathways in his legs, and that would take more time to heal. Potentially, they may never heal completely, which would forever affect his speed and dexterity. In that case, he would need to retire from the AFC completely.

That, of course, was the worst-case scenario. Currently, they were still hoping that adequate rest with no pathway aggravation at all would do the trick.

Of course, Top Dog didn't want to hear that and was ready to go back to the arena immediately.

Conrad knew some of that was an eagerness to get back to work, but a lot of it was the need to prove himself after his embarrassing near-defeat to Torin Firebringer. It would have been a full-blown defeat had they not been interrupted. The fight had shown how outclassed Top Dog was by Torin, who was much younger than him. TD was probably feeling like shit about it, but he shouldn't.

Torin was a double S-Rank and a Firebringer. Top Dog was simply no match for him stats-wise, and even though TD worked hard, Torin was a hardworking beast himself.

Douglas had no business putting them up against each other. Top Dog had a slim chance of winning that fight anyway, and there was no need to beat himself up over that loss.

Of course, Conrad couldn't tell his best friend that, not in those words. Top Dog could not understand or tolerate being anything other than number one. This situation was something Conrad had to approach delicately.

"Hakeem, there's nothing wrong with wanting to go back into the ring," he said. "And I think it's fine to start training in maybe like a couple months or so, but right now, if you don't recover, you're going to hurt yourself more, and then you're going to fail at a rematch with Torin."

Some life immediately jumped into TD's eyes, simmering like a fire. Conrad knew that was all Top Dog cared about right now. Regaining his number one status.

"Torin is a Double S-Rank," Conrad continued. "He's in top shape, and he trains every day. If you don't let yourself rest and get back to fighting form, he's gonna whoop your ass again, and worse than last time. You know that, right?"

Top Dog narrowed his eyes. "It's your fault, you know?"

Conrad raised an eyebrow. "My fault?"

"I'd gotten complacent because of you," Top Dog said. "I stopped pushing myself ever since you left the circuit because everyone they kept throwing at me was so damn inferior I couldn't stand nerfing myself all the time. And now that I get to fight someone who is on your caliber, I'm not up to the task."

"Whoa, Torin isn't on my caliber." Conrad held up his hands. "He's beyond anything I could ever do, and that's what you're not getting. It's completely alright for you to have lost to him. Heck, I would have lost to him, probably even if there were two of me and one of him. Given who he is, it will probably always be like that.

"No." TD shook his head. "I refuse to accept that. I'll beat him."

Conrad sighed. "You're not gonna do that with messed-up pathways."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"I'll go to someone who can fix it."

"Who?"

"I heard of a guy in Old Moulding who works with people with defective pathways. He can fix it."

"Like a healer?"

He frowned. "Not exactly."

"That's insane of you to say." Though Isla's voice was quiet, it was trembling with anger. "Knowing everything you know, and with everything our family has gone through, it is idiotic for you to even be talking about visiting some quack to fix your pathways when you know what that can do to you."

"Yeah," Conrad said. "That really doesn't seem like a good idea."

"The two of you don't understand." Hakeem ran his hand through his hair in a harried, frustrated movement. "The AFC is coming back in a few weeks. I can't afford to take time off. If I don't start fighting soon, I'll start losing sponsors."

"So?" Isla said. "Screw them."

"Screw them?" He gave her a bitter smile. "Are you forgetting, dear cousin, who it is that pays my bills?"

"No," she said. "But you're not gonna lose all of them, right? You'll probably still have enough to live on, and even if you do lose all of them, you have some savings, right?"

Hakeem was quiet for a second, his gaze dropping to the floor.

Ah shit. Conrad knew Hakeem had had a gambling problem a while ago, but he'd thought he'd stopped. Or rather, he'd hoped he'd stopped.

Isla closed her eyes, irritation and disappointment drawing lines on her face.

"Whatever," she said. "You can do something else. You have enough of a following to leverage that into an online career or something."

"Absolutely not," Top Dog said. "By far the worst part of my job was the weird, parasocial side, where I had to keep doing ads and interviews and prostituting myself online so people would feel like they know me. I can't do that for the rest of my life. I think I'd almost rather be poor again."

"Fine, then we'll do something else. Sell one of your houses or rent it out or something. Just retire already. At least you would go out a hero, a rarely defeated champion. But for you to even think of letting someone alter your pathways, to make you some kind of freak, is psychotic."

"I agree," a new voice joined.

Three heads pivoted and found a new person at the edge of the foyer, a tall, lithe, modelesque woman with beautiful pixie features that held a secret fierceness. They'd been too involved in their argument to even notice her walk in, but now that they'd noticed, they couldn't look away.

"Tiana?" Hakeem's face was slack, shocked at seeing his ex.

"Sorry," she said. "My flight was delayed, or I would have been here earlier."

"What the-" He immediately turned on Conrad, who winked.

"I pulled out the big guns." He faced Isla. "You asked for the big guns, didn't you, babe?"

Isla nodded. "Yup. I did. You did good."

Conrad smiled, pleased with the praise.

Top Dog looked at them in betrayal and then at Tiana.

"Why do you have so many snow globes?" she asked.

"It was some charity thing," Top Dog responded, awkwardly wooden.

"I see." She walked forward and glanced around, zeroing in on the box of donuts in Conrad's grasp. "Actually, Conrad, I will have a donut. I was supposed to be on a diet, but something tells me I'm going to need all the sugar I can get today."

***

Lexie's screen vibrated, mirroring the racket within her. Indignation warred with curiosity and also relief.

If Tate was calling her, then it meant he was probably alive and okay, but it also meant that he was kind of a dick for waiting this long and making her worry so much.

Lexie wanted to punish him by not picking up the call. It might be better if she hung up, just to teach him a lesson. She wanted to, but she had so much she wanted to get off her chest that she couldn't bear to hang up and hold onto any of that bullshit anymore.

She went and locked the door, then used a card she'd found online to further soundproof her immediate area. Then she answered the phone.

"Are you seriously calling me right now?" she demanded the second she picked up. "Where on earth have you been? You just disappeared off the face of the earth without telling anyone, left Conrad and company for dead after everything he's done for you, and all for what? Just so you wouldn't have to apologize? That's such a cowardly move, and you should be ashamed of yourself."

"Right, but Lexie listen-"

"Oh, I'm not done. Not only is it stupid and cowardly, but it is also hurtful. I thought we were friends, Tate. Maybe you didn't think we were friends, but I did. And so did Boris. We have one fight, and you go ghost on me and everyone? It's been months, and you couldn't pick up a damn phone to call us? Well, not a phone but you know what I mean–"

"Lexie-"

"And poor Boris is probably the most worried out of all of us, even after what you did to him, which still wasn't cool by the way. And you haven't apologized. Like, at all. What is your actual problem?"

"I'm dying!" He said it so loudly, his voice throbbed with urgency. "My problem is that I'm dying."

Lexie paused. She waited to hear him say more, but it wasn't forthcoming, and she realized that there was no punch line.

Her gut plunged. "You're not joking, are you? Because that's a very shitty thing to joke about."

"I'm not joking." He sighed. "It's a long story that I don't want to get into, but I'll take a truth potion right now if you have one and confess that I am very much dying. I'm on the clock and I need your help."

"With what?"

"I need you to come delving with me during your break. Just one more time."

"No."

"Lexie…"

"My Uncle just disappeared while delving. Do you know that?"

"Yeah, I know," He sighed. "I'm so sorry, but I still need you to come with me."

"That's all you can say after I told you my Uncle went missing? You're an insensitive butthead. Why do I even talk to you? And why do you need me to go delving with you?"

"The disease I have…I'm gonna need a lot of money for the cure. A lot. Either that, or I need to be able to wish it away."

"How much money do you need?" Lexie asked. "I can get some of it for you."

"No, you can't."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do."

Lexie paused.

"Why are you sick, Tate?"

"It's a long story."

"Tell me anyway."

He made a sound of frustration. "I can't."

"Okay, then. Goodbye, have a nice rest of your life."

"Lexie–"

"No, I'm tired of your lies and half-assed explanations. If you're asking me to risk my life and go dungeon delving with you again, after you stabbed Boris in the back without so much as a sorry, then you need to have a good ass explanation for it, because I'm not letting you off the hook and giving you the benefit of the doubt again. I did the first time, and it bit me in the ass. I'm not going to be bitten twice, because that would make me a giant butthead, and no one has called me that since the eighth grade."

The silence vibrated, and then… "Did you just use a Legally Blonde reference?"

Lexie blinked. "You've watched Legally Blonde?"

"Of course."

She released her breath. "That only earns you half a brownie point, which is worth almost nothing in your case."

He sighed. "Fine, I'll tell you. Gimme a second, I gotta figure out where to start."

"Take your time."

But after minutes had passed, when nothing else followed that, Lexie said, "I'm waiting."

"Yeah, I know. Alright, I guess I can start with how I got my powers, the ones I used in the AFC." He sighed. "I went to this guy. He calls himself the Puppet Maker–"

"Creepy."

"Yeah, but he knows how to fix mundane pathways in order to help them use magic."

"How?"

"Potions, I guess..."

"Just potions? Impossible."

He sighed. "Lexie..."

"The truth, Tate. I'm serious, if I detect one hint of a lie or some other obfuscation, I'm hanging up and blocking you."

Tate could probably sense the seriousness in her voice, because he said. "I think...I mean, I know he uses alchemy."

"It's not the Alchemist, is it?" There weren't a ton of Alchemists in the world, and there was only one she knew of in District 9.

Still, Lexie was shocked when Tate didn't deny it.

"Wait," Lexie gaped. "Seriously?"

"Yeah," he said. "He goes by many names, but that's his true identity. And he uses alchemy to enable mundanes like me to use magic. I'm his first mundane test subject. Up until this point, he's only worked with rankers, strengthening their pathways and giving them more power."

"Wait, I thought that guy was in jail." Lexie shook her head. "How can he even do that? And why would you let him? You know he's a villain, right?"

"Technically, so am I. I steal things and supply my clients with dangerous, forbidden material."

"And how did you get into that career?"

He paused. "Do you want me to tell you that story now, or when I'm done?"

Lexie shook her head. "Later. Finish the story of how you got sick first."

"Okay. So, I knew from my prior knowledge of the game that Alchemist would eventually make a breakthrough, and he would be able to imbue people, mundanes, with magic. He makes a whole cult of them, and they become sort of like his minions in the future. Since we're still in the early days of his discovery, I figured I could get the benefits of gaining magic without having the minion-like compulsions, which he only perfected later in his experimentation."

"Minion-like compulsions? And you took the chance with him anyway?"

"Yes. He warned me about the side effects, but there was only a small possibility of death. Like really small." He shrugged. "I got unlucky, I guess."

Lexie got the feeling he wasn't telling her everything, but she couldn't call him out on what she didn't know.

"How did you know that the Alchemist would be able to do all these things?"

He shrugged. "I've told you, I played this game before."

"Yeah, but that's too convenient an excuse," Lexie started putting pieces together in her head. "Do you really have all this knowledge just because you played a game? First of all, most games stick to a main storyline, but you seem to know stuff that's all over the place. You know a lot of things that shouldn't matter, like how to read Eldritch. Another example, the thing you said about Torin being wooden. Have you met him? How did you know what his personality was like? Is he part of the main storyline?"

"Lexie..." Tate made a sound of frustration. "I can't–"

"You can't tell me? Okay then, tell me this. All the other players, the Chosen. Do they know about this game, too? Have they all played it?"

"No...or at least I don't know."

"So just you? What makes you special?"

"See, I was afraid you would ask me that." He sighed. "Lexie, I really can't tell you anything else. I've already said too much at this point and I might die anyway, but please, I really need your help."

Lexie thought about it for some time. On one hand, she still didn't trust Tate, but on the other hand, she would feel terrible if she just left him to his death.

"Okay then," she said. "Fine."

"So are you going to come with me?" Hope burgeoned in his tone.

"Nope," Lexie said. "You're coming with me. We're going to tell my dad everything you just told me. And he's going to help you."

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