Chapter Twenty-Nine: Color Me Unimpressed

  The tendrils were mana. They had to be. Nothing else made sense, especially the absolute lack of reaction from the men who had black mana tendrils embedded in their backs. If they knew they were tethered to Ezra Barrow, surely they’d be freaking out?

  Instead the four men with the tendrils looked out of it. Stoned, maybe, or high? The others were alert, glancing around, paying attention to what they saw, clocking Riley as a threat, me as a nonentity. Or maybe a prize.

  I hit [Analyze], thinking it might tell me what was wrong with them. The first guy, closest to me, was a Level 2 Fighter named Warren Ridley, and his condition was Mind Controlled.

  Holy fucking shit.

  I hoped my panic didn’t show on my face.

  “Gentlemen,” I drawled with every pretense of calm. “Are you a search party? I understand there’s a missing girl. Are you heading into the forest?”

  To my surprise (not visible, I hoped), Ezra didn’t take the lead in responding to me. Instead, one of the men standing beside him, one who resembled him, answered.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I know you’ve never met her, but we’re looking for our sister, Penelope. She’s seventeen years old, blonde hair, green eyes, about 5’6” or so…”

  As he described his sister, [Analyze] let me know he was Matthew Barrow, a Level 3 Fighter in Optimal condition. No Murder Hobo title, but affiliated with the Church of the Sacred Anointment. The other brother was Mark, Level 2 Crusader, and he was a Murder Hobo affiliated with the church. So was John, farther in the back. One of the other men also had the Murder Hobo title, while all four of the ones with mana tendrils in their backs were mind-controlled.

  Luke, standing in the far back, was the only one who was not a Murder Hobo, not mind-controlled, and not affiliated with the church. He had the second highest level in the group, at Level 5, and his class was almost the most interesting to me. He was a Survivor, the same class Emma got on her Level 5 evolution.

  The most interesting class was the one Ezra Barrow had.

  He was a Level 6 Cult Leader.

  Yes, I kid you not. Had I called it or what?

  No titles, though.

  I was flummoxed. What was the System thinking? If its goal was to give us tools to survive, how exactly did a Cult Leader serve the cause?

  But maybe I could see it. Maybe people banding together, working together, had better odds than people trying to go it completely alone. For the merest flicker of a moment, I thought about my empty house.

  But no. The price was way too high. I would never choose to survive at the cost of letting someone else control my brain. It was bad enough that I could barely control my brain.

  Beyond the information I was getting from [Analyze], [Uncanny Insight] was working overtime, granting me knowledge that felt solid, no matter how minor the tell.

  Luke didn’t want to be here. That was a big one. If I had a potential ally in the crowd, it was him. I think he’d come along for two reasons. The first, to find his sister. I could see the worry in his eyes. The second, to stop the mob from being a mob. I was pretty sure he was doomed to disappointment on both fronts, but maybe after I got Pen to a safe place—a long-term safe place—I’d let him know she was okay.

  Robbie also didn’t want to be here. The lingering sensation of fear was still with him, and his eyes were fixed on Zelda. He knew where that howl had come from.

  Mark, standing next to his dad, was an asshole. Murder Hobo, but also just… I don’t know. He radiated patronizing male superiority over a stew of lust and greed. He was attractive enough—all the Barrows were, honestly—but I bet his father’s religion and the fact that he still lived at home made him a fundamentalist incel. Not my favorite type of human being.

  John, the other Barrow brother, Murder Hobo, Level 2 Brawler, affiliated with the church, was not the sharpest tool in the shed. He was hoping for violence, but I don’t think it was directed at me personally. Maybe he just enjoyed beating people up?

  Matthew, still talking, was conflicted. His first goal was to find Pen, though. If he’d had his way, I bet they would have been out here hours ago, the moment they discovered she was missing. But he knew his father’s bigger plans and he wasn’t objecting.

  And speaking of those bigger plans: I’d considered three options for the Barrows. The polite questioning, the aggressive search, and the flat-out murder.

  I’d missed one.

  By my feet, Zelda began to rumble. A low growl, so low I could feel it more than hear it. If I looked down at her, I’d be able to see her baring her teeth, but I didn’t look down. I kept my gaze locked on the Reverend Barrow’s face.

  He wasn’t here to kill me. He was here to collect me. To add me to his cult.

  He was in for a surprise.

  I tapped [Invisible Armor]. It had a time limit, so I didn’t wear it constantly, but with my Will at 44, it would last well over three hours. Whatever was happening here would be long over before it ended. I might not need it, but unlike [Body In Balance], it protected from magical attacks, not just physical, so it wouldn’t hurt to have it on.

  Then I pulled [No Means No] to the forefront of my HUD. Once per day, it allowed me to break free of any attempt to influence me. I didn’t want to waste it by using it too soon, but I wanted to be ready.

  [Mind Over Matter] should also protect me automatically, and Barrow would have had to be Level 17 to get past it. He wasn't even close.

  I was truly as safe as I could be. No, as safe as any woman could possibly be in this situation. Maybe as safe as any human being could be in this situation. But I still felt the tingle of adrenaline, the buzz of fear running down my spine. I swallowed, my mouth uncomfortably dry, and my hand tightened on the handle of Warden’s Edge.

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  Matthew fell silent. I hadn’t been paying much attention to what he was saying, so I had no idea how I ought to respond, but it didn’t matter. The Reverend stepped forward and began to talk.

  I’d never spoken to any of the kids before today, but I had spoken to the Reverend. His voice had changed.

  Before, it was a voice. Normal, practiced, on the firm side. Just a voice.

  Now it was almost a melody. Warm, honeyed, magnetic.

  Not in the least compelling, but the dark mist of his mana came seeping out of his mouth with every word.

  I watched it approach me.

  His ability or spell or whatever it was obviously took some time to set up. Maybe like my own [Mana Absorption], it worked slowly, requiring focused attention to trigger. That raised the question: did I want to try to absorb this mana?

  Nope, not in the least. I didn’t think it was inherently evil just because it was dark, but nothing that came out of Ezra Barrow was entering my body if I had anything to do with it.

  I watched the tendrils approach me, then scanned the crowd of men, wondering if any of them saw it, too. Did they know what Ezra was doing? Matthew did; I could see it in his eyes. Mark, too. But not the others, and definitely none of the ones who weren’t Barrows. The mind-controlled victims still looked glazed, and the two men who were neither Barrows nor mind-controlled looked eager but not aware, if that makes sense. They knew the part about kidnapping me, but not how Ezra planned to do it.

  The tendril reached me. I wondered if I’d feel it, but nope, not even a touch. It sort of slithered around near my t-shirt for a few seconds and then hovered uselessly, inches away from my skin.

  And then, Ezra Barrow’s head exploded.

  WTF?

  When I say exploded, I mean… exploded. From the inside out. Bit of bone and brain scattered all around, and blood spurted from his neck. For a second, I was reminded of the goblin wizard in the scenario and the look in his eyes when I killed him, but then I shoved that memory back into the box it was buried in.

  Barrow’s decapitated body stood for a moment, then slowly fell. Backwards, if that mattered. A little part of me noted that with interest, because it seemed odd, but I guess maybe the force of the explosion had come from... me? Physics at work, an equal and opposite reaction. Something like that, anyway.

  I was hyperventilating, I noticed, with a sense of distance. That made me one of the calmest people present.

  Half the group, the ones who'd been attached to Barrow by those mana tendrils, had fallen to the ground, clutching their heads and screaming. The other half were screaming, too, mostly “Sniper, down, get back,” that kind of thing.

  Riley and Zelda were both barking furiously. Zelda was still by my side, but Riley had, without my noticing, positioned himself in front of me. Now he was doing this almost funny thing where he was trying to back me up by backing into me. I could tell that he was trying to get me to move, but was unwilling to turn his back on the crowd. It was sweet.

  One of the men on the ground made it to all fours, then lunged at Mark Barrow. He tackled him by the knees, brought him to the ground, then sat on him and began smashing his face in. Seriously smashing, one punch after another, almost fast enough to make his arm a blur of motion.

  John leaped on the guy who was attacking Mark. Two of the men on the ground were curled up, still holding their heads. One was slowly getting to his feet, looking confused. Matthew Barrow was standing in the middle of the crowd, his father’s brains covering him, holding his hands out to his sides, his expression lost.

  The two non mind-controlled men had both ducked for cover. I think one of them had been the one shouting sniper. He’d apparently leapt for the shelter of the bougainvilleas, which had maybe not been the best idea he’d ever had. He was staggering in the middle of the dirt road now, face and arms scratched up and swelling. I’d lost track of the other guy.

  Murder Hobo Robbie broke and ran.

  Riley’s tail end was pushing against my legs, so I started backing away, moving cautiously.

  Luke Barrow stood still at the back of the crowd, his expression inscrutable.

  “I’ll just leave you to it, shall I?” I directed the words to the space between Matthew and Luke. “Just, ah, see yourselves out when you're done.”

  I didn’t grab Riley’s collar, but I bent enough to touch his fur, wordlessly telling him it was time to move. The dogs and I retreated up the driveway, never turning our backs on the men. We stopped on the front porch—a safe distance, but still close enough to see what was going on.

  The notifications dot was blinking in the corner of my eye, letting me know I had new notifications.

  I didn’t want to look.

  [Invisible Armor], that’s just armor. It protects me, but it doesn’t do anything to anyone else. [No Means No] would let me break free of mental influence, but I hadn’t used it. [Mind Over Matter] let me automatically resist attacks and shorten the duration of ones that I couldn’t resist. Warden’s Edge’s Rebound could reflect incoming damage, but I didn’t think Ezra Barrow had been trying to explode my brain. What the hell had happened?

  I knew the answer was in my notifications.

  For a minute, I tried to imagine an answer I would like. Sniper in the treeline, that was my favorite. Of course, guns apparently weren’t working, and the sniper would have had to be somewhere like the roof of my house to cause Ezra to fall the way he fell, but still, it was a reason for Ezra’s death that I could live with.

  I opened my notifications.

  Cult Leader Level 6 killed, 0 XP.

  Ezra Barrow had been more than ten levels below me, so I got no XP from killing him. Bleakly, I wondered what he would have gotten if he’d killed me. It probably would have been a huge score, the kind of XP gain that would make gamers party all night long. He might have leveled up four or five times from that single kill.

  Well, except for the fact that he’d never had any reasonable chance of killing me.

  Another message was still blinking.

  Same Species Kill Assessed: Justified

  It came with a warning.

  Caution: Killing members of your own species does not promote survival during System integration. Unjustified same-species kills may accrue penalties, including but not limited to title assignment.

  My eyes were stuck on the word Justified. The System had looked at Ezra’s death and decided it was warranted. That ought to make me feel better. I wasn’t sure it did.

  I was going to have to tell Pen that her father was dead. The man she called Daddy.

  Numbly, I opened my status sheet and started scrolling, trying to find it. It had to be there somewhere. Not [Pack Instinct], not [Wild Sanctuary], not [Body in Balance]… and there it was.

  [Try Me], the trait I’d dismissed not three hours ago.

  If an attacker attempts to manipulate your thoughts or emotions, you have a 50% chance of causing them to be hit with a physical backlash equal to the margin by which your Will exceeds theirs, multiplied by 4% of their maximum HP.

  It sounded so trivial. Four percent! How could that mean anything? But my Will was 44, and if Ezra had an average amount of Will that he hadn’t increased as he’d leveled up, the rebound would have hit him for about one and a half times his total number of hit points.

  I guess that added up to a head exploding.

  I looked back at the men at the end of my driveway. It was still chaos. Screaming and yelling, men on the ground, the guy who’d run into the bougainvilleas ripping at his face while on his knees.

  If I were a good person, I’d get them some healing potions.

  Apparently, I wasn’t that good a person.

  The dogs and I went inside, and I made myself another cup of tea.

  Thanks for reading!

  Next chapter: March 11, 2026