After a few moments of watching me laughing, Kamli’s face started to screw up. I thought she was going to get upset, but to my surprise, she started laughing too. We both started cracking up until she started swatting the blanket under her, “I don’t know why we are laughing, but whatever it is, is so funny!” she gasped.


    I finally dragged myself under control, but then I noticed her trying not to crack up which set me off again. We traded back and forth for a few minutes, and she finally gasped, “Please tell me what’s so funny? And Wandi should be back soon, should I unlock the door?”


    I nodded, “Yes, go ahead. This is a great joke. She’ll probably totally get it.”


    We both started chuckling again. Kamli seemed to have a great sense of humor, it was a true shame she was married. We finally started gasping and catching our breath again as Wandi stepped into the doorway. “What’s… what’s so funny?”


    Kamli snorted loudly which almost set me off again. “I don’t know… I told Tony his favored occupation, because he got the trait, and he started laughing, and now I can’t stop!”


    I grinned and sort of sat there, looking at Kamli, and after a second she started hiccuping laughs again. “Stop it! Stop looking at me. You are making me laugh again!”


    I nodded and got to work calming myself down. I had lots of things I could think about that made me not want to laugh, but the joke was insane. “Think about it. I have been mostly dead for maybe thousands of years, and then miraculously I am revived, and then I sort of died and was restored. I am a rotten, soulless bastard that’s done things that as directly contradict the rules of this place as humanly possible.”


    “So I find out not only can I move into the place where I am NOTHING like any of the locals, I HATE my family, and yet I am suddenly the ultimate family man.”


    Kamli nodded, “Actually, that is pretty funny.”


    I smiled, “It’s funny because humans where I come from? We pretty much are one-for-one when it comes to baby boys and girls. Maybe that changed when I was restored here, maybe it didn’t, but I can adapt to almost any aspect, which means it’s likely my genetics are going to come through, at least on some level.”


    “Genetics?” Wandi asked.


    Kamli nodded, “His features. That means he might produce many more boys than usual, and his children might also.”


    Wandi smiled, “That’s wonderful! You might wind up under a mountain of women sooner than you think, especially if you mate and produce as many boys as girls!”


    I sighed at Kamli’s puzzled expression, “Harem joke again. Seriously though.”


    Wandi nodded, “That’s not funny, that’s amazing and awe-inspiring.”


    I snorted and looked at Kamli, “Well, that’s not the funny part. What exactly were we talking about as we were about to enter the gate?”


    Wandi shrugged, “You were asking me about family vengeance.”


    I shook my head, “No, I mean EXACTLY. When we looked up and saw the cages?”


    She looked at me carefully, “I was talking about what happened when the old lawkeeper went corrupt and lost…” She covered her mouth and muttered “No…” through her fingers.


    I shrugged, “Yes. So me, a killing machine from another world, who looks funny as hell, gets almost killed wandering around like an idiot, and it turns out I have the trait that suddenly makes me the ultimate local law. I have never even seen a lawkeeper, I have no idea how it works, and yet your sister insists it’s part of an affinity that I don’t understand, but which includes such gems as sneak attack and ambush.”


    Wandi looked surprisingly serious. “That makes perfect sense.”


    “Huh?”


    “Think about it. Regents and Lawkeepers ALWAYS come from far away locations. That’s so they don’t come in already connected to local interests. How easy would it be to be just and fair to a childhood companion you grew up with, maybe who gave you your first kiss, took your virginity, and cried when you went on your first delve and begged you to stay? Would you believe her capable of stabbing someone in the back to steal their payday? Even if you knew she trained to stab people in the back for her whole life?”


    “How about my complete ignorance of the law?”


    “But you aren’t ignorant of them. Can you remember all six?”


    I nodded, “The law of property, the law of family, The law of honor, the law of body, the law of mind, and the law of soul. But how they work, what they truly cover, examples and precedents, even the punishments for when they are violated, I have NO clue.”


    Kamli nodded, “That’s exactly the point.”


    “Huh?”


    “The laws are clear and simple, but people KNOW when they are violating them, and each time they do, it’s different. No precedent can effectively decide it because no situation is identical. No one punishment truly fits every crime. That’s why you have the trait, because it gives you the inspiration and understanding to know how to react.”


    “But that would make me judge, jury, and executioner.”


    Wandi shrugged. “That’s the point. You are the judge because you truly understand when the laws have been violated. You are the jury, because you need to go over the evidence and make the decision of guilt or innocence, and you are the executioner, because who else has the viewpoint to create the appropriate punishment? Who else can do what needs to be done if the punishment needs to be death?”


    Kamli sighed, “And you already showed me you can live with even the harshest punishments. And some will be harsh. You may even enjoy the feeling of a job well done when you do the best you possibly can, even if the actual actions you take may be brutal.”


    “So this trait that just appeared out of nowhere means I should just go move into the castle dungeon or something and put on the killer’s mask and declare myself the new sheriff?”


    Both Kamli and Wandi were shaking their heads rapidly. So different but yet so similar.


    “Not at all,” said Wandi. “You have some of the training… being able to kill a man or woman because they need killing and not out of rage or enjoyment is a hard lesson to teach, but you have already learned it. The prior Lawkeepers, the ones that were eliminated, were graduates of the old country’s finest academies, but when they got here they were rapidly struck down because they just didn’t understand the lessons you already learned the hard way. Crime pays. Violating the six laws can be very profitable, and anyone that regularly profits will immediately become your deadly enemy, and they are often very powerful.”


    Kamli nodded in agreement. “You can’t announce that you are planning to take the lawkeeper path until you are powerful enough to deal with all of the enemies you’ll gain. I saw your titles… I didn’t understand their names, but I knew they were for defeating enemies more powerful and numerous than you. You don’t need to exceed their tier, but you DO need to become strong enough to not be immediately squashed by anyone at a higher stage.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Wandi grinned, “That’s where I come in. To get more powerful quickly, there’s only one sure way.”


    Kamli sighed. “Rift delving.”


    Wandi nodded, “Rift delving.”


    After a moment’s thought, Wandi added, “And to do that, you need a lot better than a carving knife and a stick, or you won’t last a minute in even a tin delve. Do you know how to use a gun?”


    I smiled a little, “I learned how to shoot before I learned how to swim. Expert, Sharpshooter, Marksman, with a full set of clasps and re-qualifications, pistol and rifle. Yes, if it shoots, I know how to use it.”


    ***


    I glared at the weird weapon. “How the hell do I use it?”


    We were outside of the city. I had spent the night in Wandi’s ‘guest chamber’. It was a bit like a Japanese house, but with exterior doors instead of screens, but the inside was very similar, with screens and tatami mats. I thought the tatami mat would be a tough sell, I was an American, used to box springs and fluffy mattresses, or years spent in a hospital bed, but surprisingly enough I slept incredibly well.


    New body, new needs, I guessed… it was much more fun than sleeping on the ground under a screen of woven leaves and branches. The hardest part was going to sleep hoping Wandi would sneak in and let me pet her tail and anything else I could find that was pettable.


    No such luck, of course, but that’s a fantasy that a decade in a prison made of your own flesh tended to evoke. Kamli was more attractive, of course, but in a way, she was TOO attractive. As a governor’s son and rich trust fund baby, I had learned a long ago that the worst traps had the most beautiful bait. Was I spoiled? Of course, I was, the worst sort of spoiled, which only went away when I joined boot camp and had it beaten out of me by people who thought wealth was just a good reason to be harder on you than anyone else.


    Breakfast was sort of a whole wheat sandwich filled with what tasted like roasted pulled duck and sort of refried beans mixed with a sweet vinegar and strawberry sauce. Despite the way it sounded, it was delicious. I didn’t think that Wandi cooked it herself, she was more of a put it on a stick over a campfire sort of girl, but she knew how to put good quick food together.


    A shower consisted of three buckets filled with warm water that you filled once for soaping up and twice for rinsing off. I wasn’t a plumber, but I had a pretty good idea of how to create a field shower, and I intended to create one eventually. Although I sent warm feelings to the system for blessing me by sending me to an Earth that had regular access to coffee.


    It turned out that my lidded pot was a regular feature for adventurers, used to sterilize water for drinking, occasionally cook a personal or team soup, and most importantly, make coffee for breakfast. Just toss away the grounds when you finish drinking.


    A fresh set of her father’s clean but beaten hand-me-downs, The rest of my outfit including the armor pieces, and we headed out of the city to learn shooting.


    “The same way you use any key. You load it like this.” she demonstrated by unlocking the barrel of the sort-of revolver and carefully sliding a peg made of copper out, and then back into one of the cylinders, swiveled and locked it back into place behind the barrel. She then lifted the handle and sighted it on a tree. Unlike her blunderbuss-thing, this had a mostly-recognizable trigger. “Then you aim at your target, charge the works, and pop!” she pulled the trigger, and I could see the flash of copper before it impacted the tree, sending chunks of bark and wood out from the impact site without the normal bang of a firearm.


    She lowered her pistol and trotted over to the tree, using a pair of pliers to grab the bullet and yank it out of where it was buried in the wood about fifty feet away. “You want to try and recover the bullets. The copper is expensive, even though it has to be reworked. A lot of shooters prefer using a bolt gun instead, or a crossbow because you can re-use the ammo more easily and it’s a lot heavier, but I prefer guns because you can use expendable ammunition if you need to, and the shots are fast enough to go through most hard armor.”


    “You try it,” she said, sliding a new copper peg into the six-cylinder weapon and then offering it to me by the handle.


    I took it carefully. It didn’t have any sort of safety, and behind the revolving cylinder itself was a second sealed cylinder of metal. The handle was solid, plated with bone, and the whole thing was a little heavier than most pistols, the barrel about ten inches long. “You barely know me, and you are just handing me a loaded firearm?”


    She laughed, “You are a lawkeeper, even if you haven’t taken the position yet. Kamli confirmed it. You’d no more casually shoot me than you would a child,” she shrugged, “besides, I saw you checking me out. I’m safer with a gun in your hands than almost anyone else.”


    I flushed a bit. I thought I’d been surreptitious, but then hunters were all about perception. She’d probably noticed it the first time. I lifted the pistol, which had very familiar-looking iron sights, lined up the hole she’d made in the tree, and then carefully squeezed the trigger.


    The trigger pressed just fine, but absolutely nothing happened.


    “No, you need to charge the works FIRST, before you try and fire. Be careful not to overload it, you should be able to feel it trip when it’s ready. Since you’ve never done it before, just charge it nice and slowly and wait for the works to trip. Once you get a feel for the drain, you can work on filling it while you draw, but for right now, slow and steady.”


    I lowered the pistol. “Umm… I literally have no clue what you just said. I mean, I understand the words, but the meaning totally escapes me.”


    She looked at me in slight confusion. “What part?”


    “All of it.”


    “You have to charge the works. You know, feed essence into it? There’s a conversion rune in the handle that converts it into kinetic essence and charges the works that fire the bullet. I don’t know the actual designs, I am a hunter, not a gunsmith, but I know that the works run the kinetic charge along the inside of the barrel, which pulls the bullet out. That’s why Pistols are a ton more expensive than rifles, much better works for holding more kinetic essence for the shorter barrel.”


    I nodded, “So it’s a kind of magic railgun. So how do I feed it essence?”


    “What?”


    I shook my head, “You keep saying I have to charge the works, so how do I feed essence energy into the… rune, so it charges the works?”


    She looked at me even more oddly. “The same way you charge any other works. Just pass the energy to your aspect.”


    I sighed, “What aspect?”


    Her eyes grew wide. “Oh no, I didn’t even think of that! Most of us are just born with it. I mean, we control energy through our aspects. It’s easy, like picking up an apple. You need to train your control as you get older and your power grows, but doing it is just natural. I thought… I thought you said you shot guns before?”


    I nodded and handed the pistol back to her. “I have, but not like this. This is more like a railgun… it passes a conductive force down the barrel to accelerate the bullet. Where I come from, each bullet has a charge behind it, a tiny explosive. The… works, sends a spark into the charge, and the charge explodes. The expanding gas from the explosion shoots the bullet, and the barrel is more to keep the bullet accurate and contain the gas rather than accelerate it.”


    “So wait… the gun holds a fire aspect that explodes and pushes a wind aspect to shoot the bullet? And it’s all self-contained like the energy is in the charge all the time? That sounds extraordinarily dangerous! And loud.”


    I laughed, “It is. Very loud. Very dangerous.”


    “So a child who can’t even push essence yet can just pick up a gun and…”


    I nodded, “Yes. That’s why we have precautions in place. It’s not perfect, but it happens. Children die every year because their parents don’t teach them gun safety, or leave a firearm out where they can get to it. Some people want to make guns illegal because of it, and I don’t agree with them, but even I admit that some safety is needed with dangerous weapons like that. You wouldn’t leave a butcher knife or a saw where a child could play with it, so why would you leave a gun?”


    She shivered. “I… I don’t know how to teach you how to push essence.”


    “Could the oracles?”


    She shook her head, “No, they are all about communicating with our aspects, and building their capabilities, or tracking and analyzing the way they interact with our essence. I think, maybe, a patternist might be able to help, they constantly have to convert essence and push it to fill their patterns in ways their aspects aren’t capable of.”


    “So we are off to see the wizard?”


    She shook her head, “No. high-rank patternists are very secretive. I only know two, and they would both demand prices we couldn’t afford. Jassker would probably demand thousands of crowns, or expect you to be his slave-apprentice for the next five years, and Sylvie?” She looked at me closely, “Would probably expect a lot more.”


    “A lot more?”


    She nodded, “Sylvie is known for having unusual and aggressive tastes. As a patternist, she’s one of the few females who is the head of her own family… three men. She’d probably expect you to become number four.”


    I sighed, “I hear you. Are there other options?”


    She thought about it for a few moments, “Yes, but you are not going to like it.”