Chương 26: It Ends At The Beginning

Ten minutes and a quick rummage through the restaurant later, the prep station was covered in scavenged junk. A toolbox from the utility closet, a sewing kit Isabel found in the office, duct tape, a broom, a first aid kit, knives, a cast iron skillet, and a section of vinyl backing Isabel ripped from a torn booth seat in storage. Tre lorded over it all at the center of the prep station, stroking his chin while he surveyed the items.

Every so often, his hands hovered over the materials, and he nodded repeatedly, like some calculation in his head was suddenly making sense. Mickey watched, arms crossed, deeply baffled, as Tre tried to combine various objects.

"What is he doin'?" Wondering what, exactly, Mickey was seeing, I hesitated to answer. If he were like the other NPCs, he should see nothing or see the crafting and treat it as normal. Kind of like how everyone treated Tre's doll body. But something about his stories, and his mannerisms—even the way he spoke—felt like something more human than Maltheris could conjure. I settled on a neutral response to see how he took it.

"Magic." Tre pressed the sewing kit and the toolbox together with the duct tape. The materials shuddered, then collapsed into a new item that appeared to be a simple, black cube. NEW ITEM CRAFTED! REPAIR KIT (Toolbox + Duct Tape + Sewing Supplies) Effect: Restores 50% durability to damaged equipment.

"Why do you humans care so much about clothes?" Mickey was awestruck.

"How da fuck…"

"Crafting," Isabel said, like that explained anything.

"Here." Tre pressed the new item into my hand.

"Try this on your clothes." The Repair Kit was about the same size and weight as a Rubik's Cube. There were no seams, buttons, or slots. It was, as far as I could tell, a solid obsidian box.

"Do what now?" Tre took a closer look at the device in my hands.

"Maybe it's like the HUD menus. Try focusing on it with intent. It should do its thing automatically." Without knowing how it would work, I excused myself to the storeroom to have a moment of privacy in case all my clothes fell away and reformed or something. Once I was alone, I held the Repair Kit in my hands and closed my eyes. My thoughts focused on fixing my clothes, and as that happened, the box in my hands dissolved. I opened my eyes to see particles of light spread across my ruined clothes.

Burn holes in my jeans and shirt began to close. Not perfectly, the fabric didn't regenerate completely, but the gaps were sealed with what looked like dark patches of reinforced material. The frayed edges... unfrayed. The charred sections around my thighs knitted together, leaving the jeans functional if not pretty. A sigh of relief escaped me as the warped leather around the cuffs on Dad's jacket straightened out, and the burn holes shrunk until they were just small scorch marks. Even the hem repaired itself.

STATUS UPDATE: LEATHER JACKET (WORN) Armor Rating: +2 (Reduced from +3) I ran my hand over the patched leather, still warm from whatever the hell that was.

"That's pretty useful." A flood of thoughts cluttered my head, and I suddenly couldn't stop thinking about how it was a typical Wednesday afternoon when a semi jackknifed on the highway and killed my dad, and how no one saw it coming, and that was that. And then my mother disappeared piece by piece, day by terrible fucking day, until there's nothing left of her. And all I could do was stand by and watch it all happen. Dad's death was out of everyone's hands, but Mom's sickness was manageable at first.

And I showed up and did what I could. But it was all for nothing because she eventually died too. That was that. And now, a demon had just magically fixed my father's jacket; that's not even the real jacket; it's just a copy of a memory of the original jacket. That hit harder than anything else that had happened so far. I don't know what it says about me that after all the fucked up shit I've experienced, a piece of mended leather is what almost breaks me in half.

Because if a creature with the powers that Maltheris has exists, then the universe is bigger than I was ever allowed to believe. Which means there should be something on the other side of that coin. If this imposing, powerful evil exists, surely there's a being that's equally magical and actually gives a shit, right? But my still-dead parents answered that question.

"Did that box fix yer clothes?" Mickey asked as I returned to the kitchen. Nora, is Mickey awake? He saw me crafting. Tre's excitement over the Mindbleed translated to him silently bouncing on his heels while making direct eye contact with me. Can we get him to join the party? He's so weird! Mickey was already staring at me when I glanced over at him.

"Yeah," I said.

"Fixed'em right up."

"Huh." He chewed on that.

"How's it work?"

"I… don't totally know," I said, which was true enough.

"You just sort of… point at the problem with your mind."

"Like a remote control for da TV?"

"Sure." He folded his arms across his chest and slowly nodded. His eyes drifted to where Tre was already moving along the counter, sorting through the pile for the next items to experiment with.

"He do this a lot?" Mickey asked.

"The whole… combining things."

"Getting better at it all the time." Another slow nod.

"And dat box he gave you… It just appears?" Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"I guess." I tilted my head at him.

"Why?" He shrugged, easy and loose.

"I'ma curious guy." He was either the most unflappable NPC in Whisperwood or he knew more than he let on and was hiding something. I couldn't tell which because his face gave me nothing I could use. Tre grabbed a carving knife from the magnetic strip on the wall and placed it next to a broken broom handle on the stainless-steel table. Using duct tape to hold the items together, he pressed down on the components until they began to vibrate.

In a flash of white light, the items all smooshed together, accompanied by a high-pitched shing. NEW ITEM CRAFTED! MAKESHIFT SPEAR (Butcher knife + Duct tape + Broom handle) Effect: High Damage; +2 Reach"Ingenuity is just desperation with some direction." When the light faded, a wicked-looking spear made of dark, seamless metal lay on the table. It was about five feet long, straight as a rod, with a blade that tapered into a point sharp enough to make me nervous just being near it.

There wasn't a seam where the duct tape should have been, or a splinter on the wood. The system had smoothed the kitchen junk out, forging it into something built entirely for puncturing skin. Whatever the crafting system did, this was a hell of a lot more than a broom handle with a knife taped to the end. This was an actual weapon.

"Mother of Madonna," Mickey said softly, making the sign of the cross. I picked up the Makeshift Spear, testing its weight. Despite its 'makeshift' designation, it was a perfectly balanced, sturdy weapon. Much better than the Sharpened Bone, less disgusting, and it had a longer reach. It fit into my hand so naturally that it was practically begging me to find something to stick it into. Is this what having a dick is like?

"You good, kid?" Mickey asked with a nudge on my shoulder. The look on his face made me realize I'd been staring at the spear in my hand for a moment too long. I took it into my inventory.

"I'm golden." Tre snatched up the cast-iron skillet.

"And I need some leather. Belts, straps, anything." Mickey removed his apron and started cutting the straps free. Tre piled it all on top of the heavy skillet, slapped a strip of duct tape over it, and pressed down with both hands. The pile shuddered. The materials collapsed into a singularity so bright I had to look away. POP. NEW ITEM CRAFTED! MAKESHIFT SHIELD (Cast-iron skillet + Leather straps + Duct tape) Effect: Blocks frontal melee. Absorbs one ranged hit before breaking.

"Dinnerware as armor." The iron pan had widened and curved deeper, transforming from cookware into a heavy, dark concave shield. Ideal for bashing a monster's teeth in. The vinyl and apron straps had fused into the back, forming a thick, padded bracing that was riveted directly into the metal. I slid my arm through, and the weight distribution was perfect.

"My cousin Mario paid like three hundred bucks for dat skillet," Mickey noted to no one. Isabel had sat on the floor with her back against the walk-in while Tre was making the weapons. Her legs splayed out in front of her, she was fixated on Rowe's corpse, full attention imprisoned by the dish towel covering his face. She caught me watching her.

"I'm fine," she said before I asked.

"And?" I asked, taking a seat on the floor beside her. We looked at the dish towel together.

"And nothing," Isabel finally said.

"He may have been an NPC or whatever, but he was still someone. Like out in the real world. Someone's son or brother or father." She wasn't asking me to confirm anything, so I just listened.

"But does he know that? Or did he die thinking he was some small-town stereotype? And what if this is all just this weird simulation doing what it's supposed to do to continue extracting as much of our fear as it can?"

"Isabel—" I tried to cut in.

"Because if any of that's true, then what even am I?" Another question I couldn't answer. There was a loud pop over where Tre was working on crafting, which pulled our attention to that side of the kitchen.

"Dammit." Tre scraped brown residue off his hands.

"That combo was a dud." Isabel stood and moved to a spot near the table to watch him, effectively ending our conversation. He moved on to the next batch of materials with a fluency I'd never seen from him before. The way he sorted everything, tested combinations in his head before touching anything, and discarded options without hesitation was remarkable. This was the Tre who'd built a museum from nothing for the price of a few cups of coffee and a donut.

Except now, he was a living toy, and his brilliance was reduced to mashing items together to make a new one. As he worked, I realized the energy radiating off of him was frantic. He hopped from task to task with the kind of focus that leaves no room for anything else, which was exactly the point. Tre had been transformed into a doll, nearly melted, and watched a man burn to death. He'd stabbed and helped kill multiple attackers.

And he repressed it all in the back of his brilliant, restless brain by becoming the RPG master. When Mom got sick, I threw myself into taking care of her. Weeks would go by, and I would be so busy managing everything that I would barely think about her deteriorating condition. What Tre was doing here was no different.

"Gotta make more healing salves and wraps," Tre said, grabbing ingredients from the pile. In moments, four more salves flashed into existence, their green, healing gel contained in squeezable pouches. ITEM CRAFTED! HEALING SALVE (x4) ITEM CRAFTED! STABILIZER WRAP (x3) A tiny general addressing his army, Tre paced before us with his hands behind his back.

"We need to rebalance the party. I'm thinking: Fighter, Rogue, Cleric." He pointed to me, himself, and Isabel. I raised an eyebrow.

"So we should swap stuff?"

"Dead ass," he said.

"You've got eight slots and offensive skills, which makes you the tank. I'm small and sneaky, you know, a rogue. And we can load Isabel's free slots with stacks of Salves and Wraps." He pointed at me with his paring knife.

"Nora should take the spear, shield, the flame bursts, and the Molotov." I checked my inventory on the LifeLine.

"I have a flashlight, the skateboard, a stabilizer wrap, and two salves." I paused, thinking.

"Oh, and I nabbed the killer's Bowie knife. So I need to drop something."

"Why are you keeping the skateboard again?"

"Sentimental reasons." Tre sighed through his nose.

"I don't want to be the medic," Isabel pouted.

"Too bad," Tre said.

"You've got the revolver, which gives us ranged support and means we can load you up with the heals. I can't use the gun because I'm too small. What I can do is be a go-between for you and Nora on the front lines. Make sense?"

"I can fight, though."

"I don't doubt that," Tre replied, softer.

"Okay, how about this: Nora gives you the Bowie knife.

""Yes."

"Great." Tre clapped his hands.

"I'll stack four salves, plus my knife, lockpicks, and scope for utility. You take the rest of the heals." Isabel gave him a silent thumbs-up.

"Boom. Balanced party." I handed off the Bowie knife to Isabel, and she dropped my old butcher knife. I felt a twinge of guilt at leaving it behind, but pushed it aside and added the new stuff to my inventory. We were as prepared as we could get with what we had. Isabel turned to Mickey as he walked us to the back door.

"Thanks for everything, Mick. The food, the story, all the stuff we took…" He waved her off.

"Bah. It's just stuff." She threw her arms around his waist, pulling him into a big hug. Tre nudged my leg. I didn't need him in my head to know what he wanted.

"You could come with us," I said to Mickey.

"Nah, I got a kitchen to clean," he replied, opening the back door.

"But we'll probably run into each other again." The cool night air hit us as we stepped into the alley.

"Da camp is about fifteen minutes north on Route 9," Mickey said as he lit a cigarette. I turned to the group.

"Everyone ready?" Isabel nodded.

"Can you ever truly be ready to attend a party with a couple of masked killers?"

"And potentially vengeful lake spirits," Tre added. We headed north toward the summer camp, and the end of either Zone One or us.