Fintan tightened the corrugated leather around the glass lenses, attempting a better view. The strip of leather he manifested had grooves. He put the convex glass lenses in the grooves and pointed his attempt at a telescope toward a river. The image was blurry, but he thought he understood what was happening. A trolley was overturned. The electrified rail was bent or broken. The cloud of smoke had dissipated—one benefit of manifesting near water.

  “How is the glass working?” RuTing asked him. She had a mirror and attempted to imprint images of the village on the glass. So far, she had no more success than he.

  He understood the science of lenses, but general understanding didn’t mean he could produce a working telescope. His attempts were getting closer. He managed a blurry image.

  Yuxia was a large city, and most inhabitants were spread across the river. They spent all day manifesting products that went into the trollies. Fintan watched the electric motors hoist barrels using cranes and ingenious pulleys. The small motors had big gears to convert energy into motion. They weren’t very fast.

  According to Cherry, the Zeusopolans could shoot lightning bolts from their spears, but the technomancers of Yuxia were low voltage.

  Paris could manipulate technology with electric and magnetic fields, but his powers were unimpressive unless applied to technology. He demonstrated, and Fintan found that a simple touch on his shoulder could ground him out, dispersing the electricity into the earth.

  He wasn’t ashamed of his Skills, and as they approached the city proper, he became more animated. Cherry said he was a true believer, and his Skills were recognition by the Builder. All of Yuxia lived in awe of the Builder, much the same way Bannerburg worshipped Robert the Brute. They shared other things in common and Fintan’s opinion of the afterlife had gained a new perspective.

  Like the Zeusopolans, not all people of Yuxia were immediately Skilled after death. The poorest served on the river, and many of their products dissolved as soon as they were dumped into the bins. Wisps of mist followed the trolley, but no one seemed concerned about the tally—breakage was factored into the delivery.

  Both civilizations faced extreme wealth disparity, but Yuxia did hide the consequences.

  There were no guards around the river. Every day, Fintan watched tired manifesters throw themselves into the water, never to be seen again. The deaths didn’t affect the atmosphere of determination.

  “What you see doesn’t matter,” Cherry said. Her abundance of academic knowledge of the afterlife had changed her bubbly nature since they left Bannerburg. Fintan saw a new side of her, and he thought she was substituting her book learning for courage. He was afraid of what would happen when the two conflicted. He’d learned to take what is. Life would find a way and his view on what way it would find had darkened since Angus. After all, he took a life, and that was a fundamental dichotomy to everything the Union taught. It was better to sacrifice your life than take someone else’s, or the violence would never end.

  The Peace brought that realization to humankind, but he’d always thought he was better. In a moment of anger, what he was taught didn’t matter. Did that mean Peace was nothing more than biological manipulation?

  They’d left Bannerburg conflicted, and he needed to lean on RuTing’s decision-making even more.

  “What do you think we should do?” Fintan asked RuTing. His question angered Cherry. She turned away and returned to the palatial tent RuTing had manifested the night before. Fintan’s manifestations were no better after he absorbed Angus, but his strength was now on par with RuTing’s. It was another observation while traveling through a jungle that became increasingly tropical.

  “We could bury most of the gold and transform some of the metal into products to trade.”

  Cherry returned stone-faced. She didn’t like when other people talked about her ‘severance’ package, but the fact was she was too weak to lift her sewing bag, and she wouldn’t enhance her strength with the Adversary’s gilders.

  “How would we find them again?” Cherry asked. “You can’t manifest a decent telescope. Do you think you can build a metal detector?”

  She shot a glance at Paris in case he would speak. He shook his head subtly. He was a technomancer trained in the Greek school of engineering. His manifestations didn’t align with his Skill in the slightest. He’d died young, not even a decade old. Fintan was wrong about the afterlife. They were clones after all. Paris said he was an incarnate, grown in a pod with some of his memories restored.

  He thought when he committed suicide in the colonies, his memories would be restored. He firmly believed he was immortal, and this was a mixup. His soul had accidentally transmigrated during his resurrection because of his lack of faith. In his last life, he changed his name to Steve and worshipped the Builder.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  As far as Fintan could tell, there were millions of types of clones, and the colonies was a government of mad scientists that killed people at random. He and RuTing were some of the few people from the Union whose consciousness was captured in an elaborate matrix.

  The Union covered the face of the planet. All the nations joined in the Peace, working together in perfect harmony. The Union was billions of people, and even with all their good will tens of thousands of people died every day.

  That was a drop in the bucket to the colonies where clones lived and died short lives filled with misery worshiping strange gods. All the people in the afterlife were adults, with perfect teeth, perfect hair, and bodies so symmetrical Fintan thought they must be alien.

  The explanation was almost too insane to be true and too sad to be false. Any society that killed indiscriminately earned the karma it received in the afterlife, and Fintan was caught in it because, at the end of the day, everyone in the Union knew people were not separate. There is only one race, the human race. I am a killer.

  “We could hide the treasure underground and create a map based on the river like ancient sailors,” Paris said.

  A map could be taken, and Cherry was right. They might lose track of the gold once it was underground. The afterlife restored itself, seeking a balance programmed by forces they didn’t understand.

  “How long would it take you to turn the gold into gilders?” RuTing asked Fintan.

  It was a good question. With the life force he’d taken from Angus, he could manifest multiple gilders a day without strain, but changing something already forged required more effort. Whatever Cherry did to the gold and silver wire increased its durability beyond his expectations. No wonder it made good scrolls. It was almost easier for him to create a gilder from scratch.

  Fintan shook his head.

  “Too long,” he replied. They’d watched the technomancers for a week, confirming what Cherry already knew. Goods went into Yuxia, but they didn’t come out. She warned them that traders were welcome, but once inside, their products were consumed. After they were paid, they found it hard to leave. Fresh wagons left Yuxia for other cities, but they didn’t know what was on the approved list. Bannerburg didn’t know. Officially, they were in contention, although the distance kept them from outright war.

  “We could dissolve the gold into mist,” Paris replied. “Then we make something we know they want.”

  “Change gold into plushy bunnies?” Cherry exclaimed. Her soprano voice reached octaves none of the others could match when she was excited.

  The workers at the river drained all their strength into creating various baubles. The worst was the pink plushy bunny. Cherry had three she stole on a spy expedition into the village. Two fell apart the next day, and she practiced her manifestations to keep the last alive.

  Fintan knew she didn’t want to see her hard work turned into a disposable product. He also knew she hugged her plushy all night.

  Paris’s idea was not without merit. Yuxia was in the midst of a draught. The mists around the city were drained every morning by the cheap products as the villagers fled across the field, manifesting extra virgin plushies.

  They had a set of pipes and fans blowing mist into the city. When they got close, they followed a pipe to their present location. Manifestations this close to the city were challenging. If they wanted to build anything substantial, they would have to backtrack into the jungle and lose two days searching for mist.

  With some effort, they could all dissolve manifestations. When a manifestation dissolved, it puffed into a mist. This much gold was a treasure load in a drought if mined for mist.

  “What else can we do with it?” RuTing asked gently. Cherry didn’t appreciate Fintan looked to RuTing for leadership. She definitely didn’t like fact that Paris went along with whatever idea they decided on. Although she never left Bannerburg, she was the oldest by centuries. Her wealth of experience was all in a place they left. She said there were other cities with serum, but they were all far away.

  “We sell it as it is,” Cherry said. “They use metals. This is top quality gold and silver thread.”

  “We haven’t seen anything like it,” Paris said.

  “Of course we aren’t going to find anything like it in a manifesting village. Witchcraft can’t produce quality.

  “If they stop us at the gate and want to know where it came from?”

  “I made it. It’s mine.”

  They had arguments against the idea, but Cherry stood her ground. She’d settled on her book knowledge about the traders of Yuxia. Fintan said he would leave it, but Cherry threatened to go alone. She attempted to manifest a wagon to carry the gold, but the thin air created nothing but a hollow imitation.

  Finally, RuTing came up with a winning idea.

  “I think packaging will make a difference,” she said. “If we dissolve the sewing bag and create a cart, we can package the spools individually for sale. You will have to give up the bag.”

  Cherry’s sewing bag was made of the same silver thread. When it wasn’t laden with spools of gold wire she used it as a bag for books and various other small items. Since they fled Bannerburg, RuTing had carried it, occasionally sharing the load with Fintan.

  The agreement was the right balance. They wouldn’t lose two days, and with the silver, they manifested a sturdy cart Fintan hauled by the shafts. They spied Zeusopolans visiting the city, so they leaned into Paris’s false eimai. They manifested him leather armor and a copper-coated spear.

  Creating a solid copper spear would have required more mist and time, but Fintan made an almost imperceptible duplicate by coating a wood spear with bronze. The weight was off, but no one would notice unless they actually fought with the weapon. Paris said the bronze spears had a copper core for lighting, but it didn't matter anyway since he couldn’t throw a lightning bolt.

  Cherry created a custom logo for her spools, and they all worked on the unboxing process so that when opened, the gold thread appeared at the right angle for maximum presentation.

  They slipped from a side road onto the main gravel road following a procession of merchants. Unlike the Zeusopolis, their roads weren’t paved. They were crushed bedrock. The sharp and jagged points stuck into the unwary boot.

  The few travelers too weak to enhance their footgear trailed blood on the pristine white road.

  Between fading cries and blood-covered sighs, Fintan knew Yuxia was not for the weak. How would they fair? For all Cherry’s knowledge, she didn’t know a way to buy or compel the Adversary. He held the only portal to the real world and the only means of sending a message.

  Fintan hoped that they might find an answer within Yuxia's vaults.