“What did she mean? What’s a ‘migraine’?” Runa asked.

  “It’s like a headache, but worse,” Cyrillus answered. “How is that possible though? The resurrection process should have fixed that.”

  “Indeed, it should have. She must be mistaken. The headache must be an aftereffect of the integration. We used to get that all time. She’ll be fine.”

  Cyrillus raised a doubtful eyebrow in her direction. “Like thirty years ago. We haven’t had residual pain effects since the fix wen in, and you know it.”

  He wasn’t wrong, but she didn’t want him to be right, either.

  “She has the largest stat imbalance I’ve ever seen— six whole points.”

  “Six on the plus side, I hope.”

  “Of course it’s a plus. All of our troublesome harvests this year have been a plus.” The system was supposed to balance bonuses in one stat by deducting from another. Rarely they would see a poor fool with a negative spread, and maybe once a Harvest Season they might see a stand-out soul with a plus two, maybe three, but six? Unheard of. And there had been a plus three and a four within this single cohort as well. Every single soul harvested today had been exceptional in some way and broken in others. In all her endless years of harvesting, Runa had never seen such a thing.

  “I told you something fishy was going on with those other ones,” Cyrillus said. “You just don’t want to admit it because you’ve got your eye on a future Eikosiad win.”

  Again, he wasn’t wrong. Only the very best competitors made it to the Eikosiad. This cohort would have an unfair advantage straight out the gate. Assuming they could work together long enough to make it to the next games, still nearly a decade away, and still probably too close for them to reach the levels needed to qualify, let alone win. Then again, a good cohort always seemed to come together when the time was right even if they’d gone their separate ways for years. She’d seen it happen again and again, as if their journey through the Well of Souls in close succession had connected them in some unexplainable way.

  “Maybe it’s Administration? Simon is about due to screw something up. He can’t stop poking around in our business, trying to ‘improve’ things.”

  Cyrillus gave her one of his looks. “Like when he last poked around and fixed the residual pain issue?”

  She found it very frustrating when Cyrillus defended the subject of her attacks with actual logic. “It’s probably why he’s waited so long. He wants us to forget about all the times he fixed nothing, or made it worse. Or maybe he’s just sabotaging us.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Runa gave Cyrillus one of her own looks.

  “I don’t know why you two are always going at each other, but in this case he’d only be sabotaging himself too.”

  “Because he’s rude and condescending, and he won’t stay out of our business! He’s not a Harvester!”

  “And we’re not System Administrators. Someone has to manage that side of things.”

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  Before Runa could dispute that statement, Cyrillus spoke again.

  “Her Patronage offers are in.”

  Runa gasped in delight. She couldn’t wait to see how many she had. The man with plus four imbalance had received an heard of fourteen offers— more than half the Pantheon. Runa hadn’t seen numbers like that since the earliest days of Novalis, when heroes were at a premium.

  “How many?” She asked, practically salivating.

  “One,” he said perplexed. “Only one... and it won’t open.”

  “That can’t be.” Cyrillus must be mistaken. She checked it herself. One single offer, and it refused to open for her as well. Highly irregular. Harvesters should have access to all of this information to ensure the integration process had not failed, or worse, that the harvested soul had been rejected by every single God. An embarrassment Runa had thankfully never suffered.

  Runa chewed on her lower lip and mulled over the situation. There were few legitimate scenarios she could dream up that fit all the issues, but she could think of one that explained the single Patronage Offer.

  “Cyril, I think we should keep all of this to ourselves.”

  “Runa, if this is about your reputation as a Harvester of Champions…”

  “Think about, Cyril. Who do you think has the clout to ensure that only their offer goes through. She should have at least as many as that plus four man. More.”

  It took a moment, but Cyril’s eyes eventually widened with realization. “Janus?”

  “It has to be.”

  “He hasn’t made an offer in over a century.”

  “No he hasn’t, and I’m not going to do anything that might end up with his chosen hero, stripped of her soul and made into a drudge.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that… do you think they’d really turn her and the others into drudges for having a few extra points?”

  “Maybe not, but six isn’t a few extra points. Plus, a physical defect that wasn’t corrected by resurrection, and a Patronage offer we can’t access? Let’s not even consider every other thing that has gone wrong today. It took both of us to get her connected to the System core. Since when have I ever not been able to do that on my own?”

  “Maybe you’re right.” He looked at the woman still hovering above the Well of Souls. She didn’t look like anything special. Pretty, tall, athletic, young, not much different than any other body resurrected during every Harvest Season since The Well of Souls came into being. Everyone got an upgrade when they came to Novalis. “And if this really is some kind of glitch? Shouldn’t we tell administration so they can fix it?

  Runa shrugged. “The season is over. It wouldn’t hurt anything to delay our reports just long enough to give them a chance to get out of the Temple— or maybe until next Season starts?”

  Cyrillus sighed with frustration at her. “And if it’s not Janus?”

  “Then she’ll be a problem for which ever God offered her patronage, not for us.” She paused for a moment. “If any of them are flawed to the point of being an issue, then…” She hated that she even considered suggesting this… “Well, then the Reapers are always an option.” An involuntary shiver ran down her spine at the thought of them.

  Cyrillus swallowed hard and nodded in agreement. “Ok, lets get her disconnected from the core and off to Orientation. The quicker she’s out of our hands, the more deniability we’ll have if something goes wrong.

  “Good thinking, I knew you were my favorite partner for a reason.”

  “I’m your favorite partner because you are an uncompromising pain in the ass, and nobody else will work with you. And if this ends up going badly, it’s your fault, not mine.”

  Once again, He wasn’t wrong. She set about the task of freeing Piper from the myriad of mana lines that had provided an umbilicus of life support to the body, and a mode of data transfer for the System. Once free, her soul and the System would be tied together until the end of time… or until the System collapsed.

  Until this Season, Runa would never have considered the latter an option, but she knew from the moment she sent her first strand of magic down into the Well on the first day of Harvest Season—the veil had changed. She decided then and there to not speak of it to any of the others. She would not be mocked again over seeing colors where others couldn’t—but there was no doubt. The Veil had begun to darken.

  With no other place to turn to but the Gods, she had prayed to Janus for guidance and help, but there had been no answer, as there hadn’t been for a very long time now. Where was he?