It took some convincing, but with enough coaxing Argus persuaded Mona, then Quinn, and finally Lucy to take a single drop of the magical water. Quinn stared at the approaching claw with dissatisfaction, mostly due to the lecherous smile on the smug lizard’s face as the small bead passed between Quinn’s pursed lips. After a moment of anticipation, he felt a torrent of roaring energy flood his body like he had been struck by lightning, and he was shocked to feel all of his resource pools be completely filled in less than a few seconds. His cuts and scrapes were completely gone, and he was more awake and alert than before they had started their journey. As he revelled in the sensation of being completely cleansed, he watched as Lucy shyly took the offered droplet from Argus. Lights danced across her skin as her hand completely reformed, her pale flesh unmarred and unblemished as though her burns had never been there. She smiled wide and began clapping her hands in excitement, before grabbing Argus and pulling him into a tight embrace, much to his surprise. The scalekin’s long neck curled over her shoulder to rest his head against her back as they held a silent moment, simply taking in one another.

  Quinn and Mona watched the display with matching smiles, but the shared awkwardness finally caught up with them as they pulled away from each other, before Mona artfully and subtly brought their focus back to the situation at hand.

  “Before you two start getting all ‘lovey dovey’, can we please EAT ALREADY! I am starving after having all of the sleepiness flushed out of me by Mr. Marble-balls over here.” she said with a huff, sitting back against the vine-laden wall and pulling open the duffel bag containing the food. Mona had been its guardian, as she was the one the least affected by its size and bulk. In moments, all of them were huddled around the dwarf with hunger in their eyes. All of them were feeling ravenous after their miraculous restoration, and were more than eager to reap the rewards of surviving, so far at least.

  Half an hour later, the gang of street rats were relaxing and eating in a circle on the floor, having grown accustomed to the shriveled corpses surrounding them. As they ate, they talked, with the primary topic being the many gods above, like the silent Kathiel that loomed over them. Usually Quinn tended to avoid such conversations, as he struggled to keep his bias and opinions from turning into angry tirades, but as long as he avoided speaking ill of the Stonemaiden (lest he receive a meaty slap from Mona) he knew he could speak semi-freely. Argus was actually a font of knowledge when it came to gods and their divine factions, which he admitted came mostly from his many hours of reading poetry from the scattered book repositories around the city. Mona was well versed in the dwarven gods and their many tales, especially when it came to their past crusades and conflicts against the cabal of serpents that was the scalekin pantheon.

  A legend that Mona and Argus debated rather strongly was the origin of the turmoil between their races, with Mona claiming the Divine Broodmother, patron god of scalekin and progenitor of all snakes, tried to steal the Stonemaiden’s mountain fortress to make it into her den. After slaughtering the first mountain dwarves that resided within and driving the furious Monthaine out of her home, the dwarven god created a race of hill dwarves as an army to reclaim the Ancestral Mountain. In the ensuing battle against the giant serpent, the Broodmother’s budding clutch of eggs was destroyed and she was banished to the Ophidian Wastes, a barren desert of black sand that became the birthplace of the first scalekin.

  To Argus, the story was more complex and nuanced than the “simple children’s tale” the dwarves believed. The Divine Broodmother and Stonemaiden Monthaine were neutral forces that both opposed the rising kingdoms of humans and elves, created by Tyranus the Baleful and Thandrel the Unbroken, respectively. When the Stonemaiden offered to ally with the Broodmother to combat their shared enemy, she readily agreed, and moved her den into the Stonemaiden’s first creation; the Ancestral Mountain. For a time they defended their borders against invading factions, but the alliance was broken when the Broodmother laid her first and only clutch of eggs, nestled in the heart of the mountain stronghold. The Stonemaiden was overcome with greed at the magical treasures and turned on her former friend, before being beaten back and ousted from her home after a climactic battle. It took more than a hundred years for the Stonemaiden to craft an army large enough to reclaim the mountain, and in doing so, destroyed the sacred eggs that had yet to fully mature, leaving the Broodmother to abandon the fortress for the Ophidian Wastes. She thought only of vengeance as she created the scalekin, and tasked them with a single mission: Reclaim the Ancestral Mountain, and avenge her fallen brood.

  To Quinn, both sides seemed rather embellished and far-fetched, with each clearly portraying their respective god as the kind and just defender, and the other as the spiteful and untrustworthy attacker. He did believe the part that Argus told about humans and elves being invading forces, considering the long and storied history of their expansion across the continents. Their mutual pact of cooperation was one of the few such agreements that held even to that day, surpassing all petty disputes and skirmishes over territories. While neither side considered the other as equals, there was always an upper limit on the aggression and prejudice, lest the gods themselves step in and break up the conflict, even if it meant cleansing a royal bloodline or two to do so. This had happened only once in the last 10,000 years, and the fallout of both human and elven rulers and their lineages being crushed around 200 years ago left both sides hollow shells of their formerly conquerous factions, resigning them to adopt more… political approaches as they rebuilt their once feared reputations.

  Lucy seemed to be completely unbothered by the creator of her people being slandered, as she held no particular faith or hate for any deity. To her they were simply facts, ancient and unknowable things that could not be controlled or truly understood, like the weather or the weavings of fate itself. Quinn, on the other hand, held Thandrel the Unbroken in particular contempt, and the reason was obvious. His elven half-blood was shunned by nearly all followers of the First Pantheon, as they liked to call themselves, and many more that were not. They saw him as a half-breed, a failed elf, a mongrel runt. Purity of body and spirit was at the core of their doctrine, and even those of other faiths found him particularly insulting. Quinn was the outcast child of two eternal enemies; in their eyes, he was heresy made flesh.

  His gnomish “brethren” were often deemed a rather strange lot, and their creator god along with his subordinates were no exception. They cared little for the trivial squabbles that occurred above ground, only concerning themselves with advancing their grasp of all things magical and technological, all without leaving the deepest caverns that barely passed as habitable. They feigned interest or outright ignored conflicts, atrocities and disasters that did not in some way affect their operations; that is, unless elves were involved. As far as Quinn knew, all gnomes despised elves with every fiber of their being, a hatred born of generations of discrimination and injustice. He couldn’t exactly blame them; the elvish penchant for slavery and corporal punishment was widely known, but gnomes had by far gotten the worst of their cruel treatment.

  If you asked a gnome, they would tell you that in ages past, King Ghraeshik the Tinkerer, creator of gnomes and patron god of craftsmen, had been struck from the sky and bound by the First Pantheon, in an effort to use his talents to craft an automaton army to satisfy their eternal lust for war. Ghraeshik refused, and because he could not be killed due to his status as a divine being, they imprisoned him, leaving him to rot and listen to his follower’s prayers as they were captured, enslaved and butchered. Gnomes suffered 1000 years of subjugation and forced labour under the elvish banner, before Ghraeshik finally broke free of his captors, and vowed that the elvish gods and their people would one day die by gnomish hands. A bloody insurrection rose in every slave camp, dungeon, noble’s residence, and even the elven royal’s palace as the gnomes within either escaped or died fighting. Those that fled founded underground kingdoms protected by the very weapons the elves had forced them to create, and without their maker’s hands, the elven stockpiles of similar machines fell into disrepair and were ultimately abandoned as a lost cause.

  In modern times, gnomes were quite rare outside of their underground settlements, but Quinn had seen a few here and there, either in noble circles or working as merchants and crafters. Their presence was usually tolerated, even among elves and many others in high society, partly due to the violent backlash they may receive should they push back too hard. He had never had the “pleasure” of working or even talking with one for longer than a minute, however, as the one time he had attempted to trade with a gnome resulted in them trying to tear his misshapen ears off, screaming for Ghraeshik to burn him alive for being a “cursed child of the greatest sin”. So, Quinn tried to avoid them, if he could help it. At least the elves just looked at him with pity, rather than try to slit his throat or claw his eyes out. He had to take what he could get.

  Mona let out a rather unflattering noise as she finished her portion of the pandemain bread, her braided beard littered with crumbs and small pieces of diced meat from her gluttonous feast. Quinn had also practically dove into the bag the moment it opened, as he had only eaten some blueberries and a small bit of beef what felt like years ago, and before their journey he was running on just a few pilfered fruits. Argus was comparatively reserved, explaining that his high Vitality allowed him to last longer without food, water, air and even sleep. Something about how eating, drinking, and especially breathing and sleeping replenished vital energy, and the higher your Vitality the slower it drained away. He wasn’t sure on all of the details, but that was his basic understanding.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Quinn was quite intrigued by this information; if his Vitality was high enough could he never have to sleep? Never have to breathe? Could he just walk across the bottom of an ocean from one continent to another, all in one go? He had never even considered putting points into Vitality, as he wasn’t a fighter and didn’t want to be one. He did his best to avoid getting hit and taking injury, so he had always put his points into the stats that helped him do so, Dexterity, Endurance and Perception. But now… he was reconsidering this path. Perhaps he needed to readjust his plans for future levels; what kind of jobs could he pull if he didn’t have to sleep, and could stay hidden for weeks, or even months at a time? He had always been rather patient, unlike who many would assume would be due to their painting; Clay.

  Unlike most artists, Clay was erratic and unfocused, his creative efforts landing on whatever caught his eye in that moment. Stacks upon stacks of unfinished paintings littered more than a dozen of their frequent hideouts, and he couldn’t even count the unfinished collections of knick knacks and weirdly specific objects that must have littered his Personal Vault. He had to hand it to his brother, though; his fervent gathering was certainly a valid path forwards, at least for him. Each bauble or odd-shaped stick he collected was a small step forwards, and each finished painting was a slightly bigger step. If he wasn’t resigned to a life of hiding, fear, and struggle because of Quinn… maybe he’d even do quite well for himself. His creations were deep and poetic, and his eccentricities and mannerisms placed him shoulder to shoulder with the famous artist Quinn knew of. But Clay refused that life, all because doing so would leave Quinn behind.

  It frustrated Quinn to no end, Clay being trapped with a criminal for a brother. They couldn’t get jobs, they couldn’t buy a house, they couldn’t leave the city, they couldn’t even rent a room at a tavern that wasn’t infested with rats, traffickers or killers. Well, that wasn’t exactly true; Clay could do all of those things, he just wouldn’t. It didn’t matter how many reasonable arguments Quinn brought forth about how it would be best for his class, best for his advancement in society, best for his health and safety, best to leave him behind and do what Quinn couldn’t, Clay simply said no. He would say that Quinn would feel abandoned, that he would feel lost and alone, and that he would leave the moment Quinn could come with him. That was something they both knew probably wasn’t going to happen, not unless he could find a way to change his class, or at least find someone willing to pay a considerable fee for his services. That was how Quinn came to his current plan; become a good enough thief that it could truly be considered his job, stealing for people that couldn’t do it themselves. It was the only way out for both of them he could think of.

  Lucy followed Quinn and Mona’s example, the severity of her now healed injuries increasing her hunger at an exponential rate. After wiping her face on a napkin she produced from somewhere in her sleeve, she pulled out her sprawl of connected maps and pointed at their location. On the map it appeared as a circular chamber with a skull at the centre, but a few scrawled notes in an unknown handwriting explained that some that entered were healed, while many others were killed. Any more information was likely too expensive for her to front for the shady information brokers that she frequented to fill in the gaps in her research. She traced her finger through a few tunnels before reaching the upwards spiral to the auction house. They were closer than Quinn had thought, with the journey only being around an hour to the service hatch if they kept a good pace.

  As all of their resource pools had been fully restored from the blessing of the Sundrenched Apostle, they gathered up their things and prepared to set out. A quick rifle through the dried corpses' pockets revealed that they had already been looted, either by passers by or their former companions, much to Argus’s disappointment. Not a single coin or loose trinket was found, and further inspection by Quinn of the clothes they wore showed no obvious signs of enchantments, based on the values he saw. With a hint of curiosity, he turned his gaze towards the statue again, only hesitating for a moment before using his Eyes of Opportunity on it. If Kathiel decided to smite him for wondering how much his clearly expensive magical statue cost, then Quinn decided he probably wasn’t a very nice guy anyway, and therefore him dying with forbidden knowledge would be a final “fuck you” to the heavens above. As time slowed and the invisible screen appeared above the statue, Quin was utterly flabbergasted at what he saw.

  The screen was different, the usual neutral design that matched his status windows replaced by something more akin to a golden serving tray with emerald green vines wrapping the edges. It had a halo of yellow light that beamed in all directions, its illusory nature not allowing the brightness to affect his enhanced vision as the rays washed over him. What confused him the most wasn’t the design of the window, however, but what was written on it in an elegant, flowing script.

  “Uhhh… what does ‘N/A’ mean?” Quinn asked aloud, his eyes wide as he couldn’t tear them away from the strange sight. Mona looked as baffled as Quinn, but Argus and Lucy looked at each other with matching frowns, before Argus answered him.

  “It means non-applicable, as in there isn’t an answer to the question, or that the question simply doesn’t apply. If I don’t have a job and I have to write my occupation on a form, I would write N/A on it. Where are you seeing that? I’ve never heard of that appearing on a heavenly window before...” He said with growing confusion, glancing up at the statue and studying it.

  “Well, it’s about my appraising skill…” Quinn’s words trailed off after seeing the naked interest on all of his friend’s faces. He never talked much about his skills or class outside the broad strokes, even with Clay. It wasn’t due to a lack of trust, but rather him not wanting to be constrained by the shackles they place on him. He was more than his skills, and he liked people seeing him as something outside of what his class made him. The more they knew about what he could do, the more he fell into a role in their head that could be easily classified. It made him feel… smaller. Less of a person and more of a tool. Sometimes, though, sometimes you just had to share what was on your mind, even if you were scared to do so.

  “So… when I appraise something, everything slows down and I get a screen that counts up to the value of what I’m looking at, right? The mana cost goes up the higher the value of an object reaches, but with the statue I just get… nothing. It only took the amount of mana to activate the skill, nothing more, and all I see is a weird-looking window with ‘N/A’ written on it. It looks all fancy with light and vines around it…” he said with clear confusion in his voice, turning to the others that were now staring with open mouths at him.

  “You can just… see the touch of the gods?!?” Mona half-shouted, her hands trembling as she held her fingers together and bowed her head, before starting to speak an unintelligible prayer in the Dwarvish tongue. Quinn looked at her in annoyance, but it quickly turned to frustration as he looked over at the other two. They too were praying, with Argus prostrated on the ground with his head curved under him as a sign of submission, and Lucy with her hands over her heart and eyes closed tight. Quinn didn’t think his revelation warranted all this, so he chose to voice his exasperation.

  “Come on guys, it’s not that big a deal. So what if I can see if they touched it, look at what it is! It's a giant magic statue with his face on it, it would be weird if he didn’t bless it, right?” he said, throwing a scornful look up at the ceiling. “Besides, if they wanted to smite me down for ‘peering into the forbidden’ or whatever, I think I’d be dead by now.” His sarcastic tone faded as he looked at the genuine dread and fright that had overtaken his friends. They were utterly terrified, even more so than from the rat swarm. Even the usually brazen Argus was looking pale and shaken, so he took a moment to actually acknowledge their concerns, despite not being particularly concerned himself.

  The thing was, Quinn had never actually seen a blessed item before, so he wasn’t sure if he was in danger or not. He had seen holy weapons and tools through magically warded glass, roadside preachers claiming to have god-touched relics that you can see for yourself (for coin, of course), and actual sanctified grounds with statues of worshipped figures in church courtyards. Yet none of them had ever been blessed, not in the way that Kathiel had with this one at least. He wasn’t sure if glimpsing the actions of the divine was considered blasphemy, but if it was, that just made him want to do it more. A lot more. If Kathiel was petty enough to kill him for knowing the statue was his property, something that was already obvious to anyone that looked at it, then it just reaffirmed his feelings on the gods being petty, shallow creatures no better than the mortals they stepped on. He felt an odd sense of pride from being able to peer into the realm of divinity, even if it was only a shallow view. He didn’t respect them, or revere them, or worship them. If he was being honest? He wished he could spit on the screen. He wished he could break the fucking screen. If he had his way…

  he would kill them. He would kill them all.

  Lucy opened her eyes first, a rare glint of fear in them as she warily looked at the statue, and then the ceiling. She looked at Quinn and, for a brief moment, actually took a step back, which he didn’t seem to notice. His once joking face was now dark and moody, his pupils slitted as he stared above the Sundrenched Apostle, right where she assumed the invisible screen was. There was an air of unbridled wrath around him, not an ounce of fear at divine retribution, only a storm of pain and resentment that seemed eager and willing to consume whatever punishment they sent his way. His back was straight and his feet were planted, almost demanding they try to put him down for opposing them. Nothing came, only a soft, calming hand landing on Quinn’s shoulder. The brooding gnelf flinched before his wide eyes flicked down, some of the pent-up rage fading away as he looked into her calm, hazel eyes. He saw the others looking on with worry behind her, so he wiped his watering eyes and smiled his usual contented, hollow smile. He put back on the mask.