Days passed, and everything looked unchanged at the plaza, including human nature.

  I have seen people robbed of clothing, dignity, weapons, and ghoul bodies. Later it was the little pentacle coins Kenny was churning for everybody's use, popularizing the knowledge of Draining and Healing spells. Sometimes they even fought for no reason at all. Sometimes they died.

  People were always looking for an opportunity to be assholes to one another. And they were being assholes now if my Sight was to be believed.

  A robbery was taking place brazenly in front of everyone present.

  It was nothing new. But what made this occasion different was the target of the robbery. It was Kenny, or the Handyman, as he came to be known.

  In the days following our split, he set up something of a shop at the temple to the east of the Pillar. The same one we used to discover our first spell.

  Turns out, it was possible to Reshape a bunch of rotten wood into pristine handles and shafts. At the same time, stones were an acceptable material for ax heads, hammers, and blades. That gave rise to the creation of the various proudly displayed weapons in his shop.

  He even managed to transform the heavily rusted iron into premium products for those who wanted to evolve from the stone age. But that was not something that most people were ready to fork out for. Not when stone weapons were good enough for the job.

  The only guys sporting iron weapons were Victor's crew and, unsurprisingly, Claire's white robes that ventured into the city. Though their weapons didn't come from my friend.

  Both groups grew with more followers for the same reasons. Equipment and safety in numbers.

  "Don't fucking touch me!" A red-faced man yelled in Kenny's face, spittle flying from his mouth.

  He swiped at Kenny's hand, trying to go around him, but Kenny stood his ground and pushed him again, his considerable strength moving the man a few steps into the hands of his two cronies.

  A shove. That was the most violent behavior I had ever seen from my bulky pal. Directed at another person, at least.

  "You know it's Victor's shop," Kenny tried to reason. "He won't like it."

  "Don't you worry," The man spat with vitriol. "I'd like to see him try to find me."

  Ahh, so that was the reason for his bravery. He was one of the idiots that rarely set foot at the plaza.

  There were a few reasons to come back here. The company was one, as it was the most populated part of the city, or maybe for the services of the shop or the coven. But this man decided that putting his grubby hands on some free weapons would be worth the exchange of never coming back.

  The man kept shoving and even tried to punch Kenny a few times. It wasn't easy punching up like this. Good thing his two friends didn't take part in the assault.

  I looked around for Victor's people but couldn't see any of them. It was one of the rare occasions that the whole crew was out hunting. Bad organization on their part.

  The man was dim and weak in more than one way, so I decided to come out to play.

  I concentrated as much power as I could churn out into the mask I had been wearing for the last couple of days. The only thing I focused on was the simple command to hide. To output a wave of mana with the indescribable feeling of the need to avert one's eyes, to ignore something because it was too uncomfortable or scary to face head-on. And could there be a better way to hold the meaning of concealment than the bronze mask I fashioned to hide my face?

  I glided through the crowd, feeling the strain on the spell. Everything was working against me, there were too many people present that could see me, and I was moving, getting too close to them. There were better ways to use the spell. But it was enough to keep me hidden for a few seconds, and that was all I needed.

  As always, the spell wasn't accompanied by a feeling of playful hiding or accomplishment but an anxious or even scared feeling of fear of being found out. The mindset required of me was one of terrified prey, even now when I was more of a predator in my situation. I needed to feel it to make other people feel the same, even if only on some unconscious level, so they wouldn't notice the external influence.

  Nevertheless, I persevered and pulled through, acting however I wanted instead of succumbing to the unpleasant sensations. I appeared out of thin air right in front of the man, trapping his neck between the shaft of the spear and one of the large dull horns I added to it.

  My sudden assault and the weight behind it drove him to his ass.

  "AAArrrgggghh-" The man started the shout in a voice so high it could go above my hearing range, but the weight on his neck turned it into a strangled whisper.

  "Am I interrupting?" I asked, bringing the scary mask I wore to an inch of his face.

  I could see his wide eyes darting between the two pairs of empty eye sockets the mask depicted.

  "Am I?" I repeated, looking up at his friends.

  They took a few steps back in fright, and I could barely restrain myself from drawing in the delicious waves of fear they manifested, guiding them instead to the mask with the intent to scare others.

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  Pain was not the only thing that caused people to unintentionally spill the vital energy that was so important for their continued existence. Though it did come out changed, corrupted in some barely perceived way.

  "No...no..." The man under me mouthed, shaking his head frantically.

  His face was turning purple from the struggle.

  "Good," I relented, releasing him graciously, watching as they quickly scurried away.

  Kenny was the only one around that felt relieved after the initial scare.

  "Thank you," he said, relaxing.

  I acknowledged him and followed into the shop, away from prying eyes.

  "It's not Victor's shop, you know? It's yours," I chided him.

  "People know him," Kenny replied. "And we work together. He looks out for me."

  "And where was his protection just now?" I asked, genuinely curious. "That's the first time I see the whole crew missing."

  Kenny didn't look surprised at the question.

  "Yeah... Victor had to change the whole schedule. Everyone got reorganized." he replied. "They were followed around, attacked even. For now, they are going out in two large teams. That's more than anyone would risk picking a fight with."

  "Who's stupid enough to pick a fight with him?" I asked. "He has more people than almost anyone else. Better equipped too."

  Kenny shrugged, and we settled into a comfortable silence.

  It wasn't the first time I dropped by to talk to him in the last few days since we parted.

  I walked along the wall looking at his craft until something caught my eye.

  "Are those playing cards?" I asked, turning the slim slips in my hands.

  The design was simpler and less colorful, but the small cards were easily recognizable.

  "Yeah, and we have another deck for the crew," Kenny boasted. "You should come to play with us sometimes."

  "I thought you only made weapons," I said. "And the pentacles, of course."

  "People buy all kinds of stuff," he shook his head. "Music instruments, playing dice," he started to list off.

  "That's because your prices are too low," I guessed. "Kind of a waste, isn't it?"

  He looked indignant at my opinion.

  "We have to do more than survive," he argued. "The moment I opened doors, I got a crazy amount of commissions, things I didn't even think about making."

  I raised my hands in surrender. After all, everyone was entitled to waste their time however they wished.

  "Can you lose the mask?" Kenny asked. "It's giving me the creeps."

  "That's just the residual," I defended my creation. "You know it keeps at it after a spell. Lately, it's doing it more than expected, though," I explained, lifting it to rest on my head and opening my eyes for the first time.

  "No, it was creepy from the first time I saw it," he complained. "Why did you have to make it so scary?"

  "I didn't try to make it scary," I laughed. "It just came out wonky with the eyes and all," I moved my fingers through the double sockets. "I'm not a handyman like you, and I like it either way."

  "Of course you do," he snorted.

  I looked questioningly at him.

  "You know," he said. "With you appearing all over the place, scaring people," referring to my games over the last few days.

  "I was testing the limits of the spell," I explained. "It's different from everything else we tried."

  There were several peculiarities to the spell that I felt compelled to study. And if I'm being honest with myself, scaring the shit out of the unlucky people that broke it only to be greeted with my best performance of a jump scare was highly satisfying. I liked being the one to frighten others, for once, and not the one constantly fearing for his life.

  "But, did it have to be startling?" He asked.

  "It was more fun that way," I shrugged.

  He looked at me, slowly raising his eyebrows as if he had proved some point.

  "Anyway, bad news," I decided to share the reason I came back to the plaza. "The ghoul I was stalking was butchered."

  "What? Why?" Kenny asked.

  "For the usual reasons," I snorted. "Either way, it never moved, never met other ghouls, I got nothing."

  Kenny hummed thoughtfully.

  "There are very good chances that we're not getting any more of them," I hypothesized.

  "They had to have come from somewhere," Kenny argued halfheartedly.

  "Maybe they appeared here like we did," I guessed. "Maybe the next time a bunch of them appears is a month from now or a year. Who knows? Maybe never."

  I crouched down to a small stack of dice and rolled them around.

  "There was something strange about it," I added. "It was Douglas's man that found it."

  I looked up at Kenny to see his reaction.

  "And they took the body with them. To the same building on the other side of the Pillar they are using as a base."

  "What's so strange about it?" Kenny asked. "They have close to thirty people. They hunt ghouls all the time."

  "But nobody else is taking the bodies anymore," I reminded him. "Everyone knows how to Drain the ghouls themselves by now. Most even use your pentacles."

  "I don't know," Kenny looked unsure. "Maybe they are experimenting with them. I had a guy come in with a bone asking to make a flute out of it."

  I sighed. They were still taking the bodies because they probably kept eating ghoul meat. Sure, they started eating it because they were banned from Claire's Temple when she was the only one who knew how to render the ghouls' essence. But why keep at it when everybody knows how to do it now, thanks to Kenny?

  "Did you?" I asked.

  "Ahh, I got it to whistle," Kenny hedged. "I could probably pull it off, but I didn't want to put it in my mouth to test it all the time."

  I laughed at that.

  "That's the Handymans kind of problem," I said good-naturedly to Kenny's chagrin.

  I enjoyed those rare occasions when we could relax and talk about unimportant stuff. Pretend that some semblance of normalcy was still present in our lives.