In an instant, he'd reshaped Chasma into a round buckler on his forearm, engaging absorption on its exterior.

  With the smaller portion of his mind, Caen channeled light from the Plane of the Speculant Eye through his being.

  He emitted two beams in quick succession into Binam's eyes. The man recoiled with a yelp, placing both hands on his eyes. The shielding medallion didn't deactivate, though.

  The greater portion of Caen's mind watched as Hez sprinted at him, helmet on, short sword brandished.

  Caen was already manipulating a couple of the vines he'd laid on the ground using a spell chain. Hez reached the very edge of Caen's ‘precaution’.

  The first three vines wrapped around her legs. She staggered to the ground, fighting to release herself. A fourth vine half as thick as her torso joined in, then a fifth, and a sixth.

  He wound them around her armor, tying her limbs in moments.

  She lay entwined, wriggling in vain. Then she tried using a Body-enhancement spell to force her way out of the tangle of ropes and vines, placing a great demand on Caen’s willpower and destabilizing his spell constructs.

  He flickered Soul-sense at her, disrupting her working for long enough to wrap ropes tightly around her neck, suffocating her.

  At the same time, Binam's flash blindness cleared enough for him to join the fray. Two beams of Planar light put him out of the fight again, but not before he'd hurled four arcs of lightning.

  The first missed Caen by tens of yards. The second struck Hez on the ground. The last two slammed into Chasma, who repelled and absorbed most of the attack.

  Still, some jolts ran down Caen's arm, pushing him a step backwards and making his limbs shudder. He grit his teeth, focused on maintaining his spell constructs.

  Affen was already halfway towards him, morphing into werewolf beastform.

  Caen wrapped the remaining vines, including some particularly thick and thorny ones, around Affen's body. The werewolf howled, but Caen kept wrapping him in thicker vines. The spell chain grew even more complex and—combined with Affen’s preternatural might—taxed Caen's will immensely.

  Flickering Soul-sense at Affen didn't slow him down much. The werewolf pried his way out of the sturdy bindings, even though Caen had magically reinforced them.

  Caen flickered Soul-sense at Binam, disrupted his new spell, and blinded him with Planar light once more. Two arrow bolts slammed into Binam’s back, driving him to his knees with a sharp cry. Mozzer, holding a crossbow, was retreating behind a tree.

  With the greater portion of his mind, Caen connected to Hez. He Mimicked her inactive Fire affinity thread cluster and abandoned his Flora spells.

  The next moment, three Impassioned fireballs stacked with modifiers hurtled towards Affen.

  The werewolf dodged one. The other two slammed into him with concussive force, and Passionfire clung to his body. His howl was ear-piercing.

  Caen conjured three more Impassioned fireballs and flung them at him. The coruscating colors of purple, pink, and red faded away as Caen withdrew his Impassioning of the flames, lest it drain his volition. Affen writhed on the ground, trying to put out the regular fire on his body. Some parts of the surrounding black grass had caught fire, but the flames were dying down.

  Caen was already conjuring more fireballs. Bigger this time, with more modifiers on them, and—Caen felt an approaching presence.

  “Stop!” a woman cried. “Drenlin city depute and Valiant Watcher! Do not move!”

  Caen halted his casting to see a woman in gray armor, standing near Hez’s entwined form. The insignia of the Valiants’ Association was emblazoned on the newcomer's breastplate.

  She held two spell rods in either hand. One was pointed at Caen, the other at Affen.

  The flames on Affen vanished in a puff of dense, black smoke. She was a Fire practician, this woman.

  Affen was hunched over in mixform, panting and wheezing. His body was a mess of burnt and blistered patches of fur. The look in his eyes was one of pure mania.

  “No sudden movements,” the depute said, wagging the spell rods in her hands. “These here are charged with mana bolts, and I won't hesitate to use them.”

  As soon as he heard this, Caen dismissed his Fire spells and cast a spell to suppress his spirit.

  Mana bolts were forceful discharges of a person’s attuned mana. They were rather difficult to cast, though spell rods were an easy workaround. Mana bolts could cause terrible spiritual injuries and made it all but impossible to cast spells after being hit by one. Spell rods like these were insidious because using them left no physical signs, and mana bolts were invisible.

  Spirit suppressed, Caen began precasting a Fire spell. This was so much harder now that he could barely sense his spirit. He would never have been able to do this without passive augmentations. Precasting in this state was like doing calligraphy with a numb hand.

  “These people attacked me,” Caen said, almost done precasting his spell. He watched Affen closely. “I was defending myself.”

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  “We can settle all that once we're calm and civil,” she replied with an authoritative voice. “Now, sit down. The both of—”

  Affen dashed at Caen, morphing into beastform. Caen released the spell he'd precast. An Impassioned fireball about the size of a melon slammed into Affen, engulfing his top half and tearing nigh-human howls out of him as he fell onto the ground again. The surrounding grass caught fire.

  At the same time, a sharp yet terribly muted spike of pain flashed through Caen's spirit, forcing a grunt out of him.

  He'd never been hit by a mana bolt before, but it reminded him a little of the spiritual injuries he sustained in his childhood.

  Caen’s existence crashed into the depute’s, causing her arm to jerk to the side as he pulled out his revolver and leveled it at her. He immediately withdrew his Impassioning of the fire on Affen and the surrounding grass. He could already feel the strain of using it so liberally.

  The depute recovered quickly and had her spell rod pointed at him again. She eyed Caen’s gun curiously. “What's the range on that thing?”

  “There's a wrong way to find out,” he said.

  “You'll threaten a woman of the law?”

  He watched her coldly. He had no intentions of attacking a Watcher who happened to be a city depute as well, but she didn't know that.

  She spun the rod that wasn't pointed at Caen, then shoved it into a holster. After a second of hesitation, she holstered the one pointed at him as well.

  “Out of bolts, anyway,” she said. She looked over at Affen, her fingers spasmed, and the fire on and around him puffed away, leaving dark smoke once again.

  Caen holstered his own gun, never taking his eyes off the depute.

  Her eyes moved to the bound-up form of Hez. “Well, this one's probably dead.”

  Hez was still alive. He could tell by her soul structure. The vines and ropes had stopped tightening around her as soon as Caen had dropped his Flora spells. She seemed to have passed out and would likely have suffocated to death if the spell chain had gone on for longer.

  He undid most of the vines enwrapping her with some effort due to the fact that he had just sustained some spiritual injuries and his spirit was still suppressed.

  “Care to tell me what happened here?” the depute asked.

  “I can help with that!” someone declared, jumping out from behind a tree. It was Mozzer. She held the crossbow to her chest and was breathing heavily.

  The young man who had accompanied Mozzer knelt beside Binam's supine form, patting down his body and pocketing things very quickly.

  “Hey!” the depute shouted at the man. “What in damnation do you think you're doing?”

  “Emergency care,” the man called back. “He's bleeding badly.”

  “Depute, these people are criminals,” Mozzer said, gesturing at Binam and the others. “They were trying to rob us. I led them by the nose, hoping to stall them long enough to escape. But when they saw this man, they attacked. I couldn’t bear to see them harm an innocent bystander, like I myself was, so my companion and I dispatched two of our assailants while this man did his best to support us; however, he—”

  Caen tuned her out as he retrieved his ropes and vines.

  “Well, that's a nice and dandy story. Let's head down to the archway. We'll all need to file a report at the Watch post.” She looked at Caen. “That includes you. Nonnegotiable.”

  Caen suppressed a sigh and turned back to his belongings as the depute went about looking over the injured assailants.

  When he retrieved his bag from the base of the tree, he saw that something had been scratched onto it. It looked to be some sort of dark ink and bore a strange resemblance to glyphs; several of them in an untidy scrawl that seemed to have been written in a hurry.

  Not only that. The trunk of the tree, against which his bag had leaned, also bore the exact same inscriptions. They were harder to make out on the dark wood, but he could see it all the same.

  Caen frowned. Had someone done this while he was distracted? He turned to look at Mozzer and her companion.

  Unlikely, he thought. He'd had eyes on them all through the fight, and they hadn't come within a yard of this tree. Also, he hadn't felt any new person approach.

  “What’s taking you so long?” the depute called.

  *? *? *

  The depute found another party that helped them carry the limp bodies of Binam and Hez. Affen had been bound by ropes and forced to stagger along. The depute held his rope personally.

  Caen trailed the group.

  After copying the glyphs on his bag into his notebook, Caen put thoughts of the inscriptions out of his mind for now. He would inspect it properly later.

  Steeling himself, he released his hold on his spirit, as though unclenching a fist. The pain was… surprisingly not nearly as bad as he'd expected. He could still cast spells, just with great discomfort.

  Even as they walked, he examined his spirit cursorily. He found no tears, but there was a tenderness and that strong sense of discomfort. Particles of a foreign substance were in there, too. He slowly flooded his spirit with his own attuned mana, which eased the discomfort a great deal.

  He spent the rest of the walk back to the Aperture thinking about other ways he could have won the fight.

  I should look into defenses for mana bolts.

  It was past midnight outside the Plane. The Watcher post was just an unimpressive table under a canopy off to the side of the archway. They deposited the criminals there, bound them with proper restraints, and returned Caen's ropes to him.

  “There's a bounty for the capture of these louts,” a bald Watcher said, pulling out a piece of paper with the crudely drawn faces of Binam and his crew. Something illegible was written at the bottom. A code of some sort.

  “Oh?” said the depute, looking over her colleague’s shoulder. She held back a laugh after she read it. “Oh. It will have to go to you three then.”

  “How much?” asked Mozzer. Her companion seemed interested as well.

  The Watcher snorted. “Nine chits.”

  “... Surely you mean pomms?” Mozzer asked.

  “Not at all, my friend.”

  A beef wrap at the Beslin train stop cost two chits. Ten chits made one pomm. Out of curiosity, Caen asked, “Who put up the reward?”

  “Some person named Ellu.” He lifted the chits to them. “How do you folks wanna split this?”

  “Evenly,” Mozzer and her companion said in unison a second before Caen reached over and took the chits from the Watcher’s hands.

  Nobody complained.

  Caen went about giving his report as quickly as possible.

  “A Gatherer?” the bald Watcher asked. “You seriously need to get yourself reassessed, my friend.”