Borrowed Levels

Forty-one pounds of goblin hide is not a lot, until you've carried it down three hundred steps and back up again with a man named Tarn Ostler breathing on your neck.

"Faster, porter. You're costing me daylight."

There was no daylight. They were on the second floor of the Gullet, where the only light came from the lanterns on the party's belts and the green mold that grew in the cracks. Ren Calder didn't point that out. He shifted the pack higher on his shoulders and kept climbing.

Six copper a run. That was the rate for an Unrated porter. A rated one got ten, but a rated one had a level, and a level meant a loan, and Ren already owed the Guild Bank three thousand four hundred silver he had never borrowed.

His father had borrowed it. Level twelve, bought on credit, so he could haul ore for better pay. The Gullet had killed him in the first month. The Bank, being a reasonable institution, had transferred the balance to his family.

Ren was nineteen. He'd been paying for six years.

At sixteen, they had tested him like everyone else. You put your palm on the crystal in the Bank's front hall, and it glowed according to what you could hold. Merchants' kids lit it up blue and gold. Ren's had stayed gray as dishwater. The clerk had stamped a form without looking at him.

UNRATED. NOT ELIGIBLE FOR LEVELS.

Not even for the loans that would have ruined him anyway.

"Floor three," Tarn said, and the party stopped.

There were five of them. Tarn, with his borrowed level twenty-three and a sword that cost more than Ren's whole street. A mage who hummed when she was nervous. A big quiet man with a shield. Two others Ren hadn't learned the names of, because nobody had offered them. And three porters, Ren included, who stayed back by the wall with the packs.

At the end of the passage, a door of black stone stood open. Something behind it was breathing

"Stone Warden," the mage whispered. "Boss room. Level eighteen, maybe twenty."

"Easy money," said Tarn.

Ren wasn't a fighter, but he'd carried enough loot out of enough dungeons to know that nobody called a boss easy and walked back out the same.

They went in. He stayed by the wall with the packs and the other two porters, one of them a skinny kid who kept licking his lips.

The fight was louder than he expected. The Warden was a slab of animated rock, twice the height of the shield man, and it hit the ground with its fists so hard that dust sifted down from the ceiling. Tarn darted around it, slashing. The mage threw something that burst white and made Ren's eyes water. For a minute it looked like Tarn was right.

Then the ceiling cracked.

It was a small sound, like someone stepping on a dry branch. Ren looked up and saw a seam of dark running across the stone above the door.

"Get out!" the mage screamed. "It's coming down!"

The party ran. They didn't look back. Tarn went through the door first, then the mage, then the others, and the Warden collapsed with a final spell burning in its chest, and the whole room came apart at once.

Ren ran too. He got three strides. Something hit his back like a falling wall, which it was, and the world went white and then red.

When it came back, he was lying on his side with half a ton of rubble across his legs.

He couldn't feel them. That seemed bad.

The lanterns were gone. The only light was a dull orange glow from the Warden's body, where its core was still burning down. The skinny porter lay a few feet away, face down, very still. The other one was nowhere.

Ren tried to shout. What came out was mostly blood.

So he lay there and thought about Mira. She was fifteen, and she'd coughed all night again, and he'd told her he'd bring back something for the medicine. He'd promised her the whole f*e. Forty-two copper, if he carried two more runs.

He wondered who would pay the debt now. The Bank would find someone. The Bank always did.

Then something spoke inside his head.

[ LEDGER SYSTEM: INITIALIZING ]

He thought he was dying. That was a normal thing to think. People saw lights.

A window floated in front of his eyes. It was pale blue, rimmed in thin gold, and it did not move when he blinked.

[ HOLDER DETECTED: CALDER, REN ] [ STATUS: CRITICAL ] [ NO LEVEL RECORDED. ACCOUNT OPEN FOR LOAN. ]

"Loan," Ren croaked. Of course. Even in his own skull.

[ AVAILABLE COLLATERAL: STONE WARDEN (DEFEATED). LEVEL 18. ] [ THE LEDGER ALLOWS THE HOLDER TO BORROW POWER FROM THE FALLEN. ] [ ALL LOANS ACCRUE INTEREST. ]

A second window slid beside the first.

[ OFFER: LEVEL 6 (STONE WARDEN, PARTIAL) ] [ PRINCIPAL: 6 LEVELS ] [ INTEREST: 1 YEAR OF LIFESPAN ] [ ACCEPT? Y / N ]

Ren read it twice. Then he laughed, and it hurt.

A year of his life. For a level. For the first thing anyone had ever offered him that wasn't a debt slip.

Except it was, wasn't it? It was just honest about it.

He thought about the Bank clerk's stamp. About his father at the dinner table, laughing that the loan was nothing, that he'd be level twelve by spring. About Mira's cough.

One year was a bad deal. Dying here was worse.

Yes, he thought, as hard as he could.

[ LOAN APPROVED. ]

It felt like being filled with hot sand. Every muscle in his body clenched at once. His spine arched off the floor, and he heard the rubble on his legs groan and then slide, because he had pushed it. He had pushed half a ton of stone with his legs and he could feel his legs.

He sat up, gasping.

The pain was still there, but it was far away, like a noise from another room. His hands looked the same. His heart was going like a drum. A new line of text hung in the corner of his sight:

[ LEVEL 6 ] [ DEBT: 1 YEAR ]

He stared at the number. He had a level. Someone who could never have one.

Then he caught his reflection in a chip of polished stone, and went cold. A single streak of gray ran through his dark hair, right at the temple.

One year, and it had come out of him as a streak of hair.

"Okay," he whispered. "Okay. That's fair."

Behind him, something scraped.

Ren turned. The skinny porter hadn't moved. The scraping came from the far end of the ruined room, where the passage had split and a patch of shadow lay thicker than the rest.

Something stood in it.

Tall. Thin. Wrapped in a long coat the color of old ink. Where its face should have been, there was only a smooth pale surface, like a plate. It held a heavy book against its chest. As Ren watched, it opened the book, and a single line of silver light traced down a page.

[ NEW ACCOUNT RECORDED. ] [ COLLECTOR NOTIFIED. ]

The figure tilted its blank head, slowly, like a man hearing his name called from far away.

Then it began to walk toward him.

.