Eric heaved a sigh. "What a woman!" he clearly couldn't forget the celestial apparition.

I just hoped that this was a temporary adolescent crush and not the ritual's side effect. I still felt obliged to warn him, just in case, "Eric, she and the Fallen One are an item. So you'd better keep your ideas to yourself before you get him on your case. You won't like that, I assure you."

"You think?" the freshly-baked priest glanced warily upwards. Shaking the heavenly snow off his shoulders, he went into reverse, "I said it from a purely esthetic point of view, you know. The Fallen One needs it more than... I mean... finding a broad... er, a goddess can't be easy in his situation."

Dan shook his head. "Eric, I think it's a good idea that I cast a silence spell on you a couple times a day or so. That'll do you a lot of good, trust me. If I don't do it, some unhappy god will one day. All right, Your Holiness, you may continue with your duties and dedicate us to the beautiful Macaria.

Eric zoned out for a bit as he tried to figure out his new skills. He must have found what he'd been looking for as he cast an unsure glance at Dan before activating the ability. A pillar of white light veined with black and green enveloped the secret agent, still shimmering when we heard him whisper as he, too, was studying the menus,

"There... I see... patron god... skills... that's the one... One point is worth a grand gold, so! Oh well, here's my donation..."

A string sang softly as another wave of light, pale green this time, poured over Dan. Faith level 1? It sure looked like he'd done it.

"Yes! We'll live!" he exclaimed.

I knew how he must have felt at that moment as the unbearable load had fallen from this immortal's shoulders: the fear of captivity, eternal and torturous.

The mother-of-pearl snow was melting under our feet. Curious, I peered at its stats:

Sparks of Divine Presence. An extremely rare crafting artifact that allows you to transfer any kind of magic to a scroll and seal it, creating a one-off spell scroll.

So! I scratched my head. I'd never heard of anything like it. Having said that, it didn't change anything: the very expression extremely rare pointed at the item's high value. It was worth taking.

Stepping closer, I scooped a handful of vials out of my bag and crouched, sweeping in the colored flakes.

Dan cast me a puzzled glance which then glazed over as he scanned the messages on his interface. Then a miracle happened. What else could you call it when Dan made an almighty leap across half the room while reaching into his pocket for a vial, then plopped down onto his stomach next to the shrinking pile of snow. Paying no attention to the damage sustained, he was stuffing the melting sparks into his vial.

Casting me a wild stare, he shouted, "Shut the fucking lid before it evaporates!"

True, the air over the vial hovered, misted. I hastily sealed the vial and checked the contents. The vial was nearly full. Eric and the General had already joined us, but still our combined trophies weren't that much: we'd barely filled five vials.

I surveyed our team sprawled on the floor amid iridescent pools of gaslike liquid. That made me smile. The informal meeting of the clan's religious leaders with its administration. I shared the thought with my friends and the office shattered with their guffawing.

The air over the conference table thickened, materializing the White Winnie. Casting a puzzled glare in our direction, he made the screwy gesture against his temple, grabbed a couple of meat pies and reached for an open folder. All documents in it were lying text down (that was Dan and his professional vigilance). Dan growled a warning as a throwing knife glistened in his hand. The weapon glowed crimson, dropping sizzling sparks onto the floor.

Winnie snatched his paw back, baring his teeth, then kicked the folder off the table right into the pool of water. The room echoed with a simultaneous popping of a teleport and the sound of cold steel piercing wood.

"How I hate him," the agent groaned, fishing out the waterproof pages. "I dream of the day when I retire to my rocking chair by the fireplace, sipping brandy and relishing my cigar, admiring two white ears nailed to the wall."

Eric added, apparently missing the two pies, "I just hope that by then it'll be the only unique pair of ears ever available. Let's pray this creature doesn't propagate. In that case, you can forget about a quiet retirement. These teleporting monsters will pop by every two minutes to borrow a cigar or to help themselves to a shot of brandy. Privacy will become problematic, even for matrimonial purposes."

"Touch wood," I whispered, knocking on a table leg. Everybody followed suit. Soldiers are superstitious by definition, and the above prospect justified a couple of rituals just to be on the safe side.

The General leaned forward, groaning and forcing himself back to his feet like the old man he in fact was, then jumped up effortlessly: the mental inertia of an octogenarian in a young healthy body. This is how inexperienced astronauts use their entire body weight from their back muscles to their ankles in order to get to the space station's dome instead of just sending their body there with one well-directed nudge.

"Now, Dan, you owe me an explanation," the General said. "What's this stuff we've been filling the vials with? You jumped at it like somebody dying of thirst seeing an oasis."

"Haven't you copied its stats, Sir?" Dan asked innocently. "My educated guess would be that this ingredient is AlterWorld's long-sought Holy Grail. It allows one to create spell scrolls. Any spells—Unique and High Ones included."

The General raised his eyebrows. He grabbed a vial and brought it up to his eyes. "Holy shit."

"What about it?" I asked. "Would you like to create a one-off teleport scroll so that magic-deprived players could use it in case of emergency?"

"You might," Dan answered. "You could use a gold shovel to clean the snow off your driveway, too, I suppose. You could also use it for more appropriate things. Teleport scrolls are already on the market—expensive, it's true, as they call for some unconventional ingredients, but it's simply a question of money. But locking a High Spell in a scroll..." Dan gave me a meaningful look as if estimating how many Astral Mana Dispersal scrolls he'd love to have in the Vets' arsenal. "Or a unique spell like the Inferno portal that has recently been auctioned by some painfully familiar auto buy..."

Oh. Apparently the Sparks, while solving a lot of problems, were at the same time generating a whole new bunch of the same. A Dome Shield Removal scroll, if auctioned, would win the People's Choice award and fatten up my wallet no end. But it'll also bring new headaches. First, someone would suss out the principle behind the dome removal and the scroll itself might later resurface in some truly unsavory place, raising a lot of dirt in the process.

Dan was watching my face, apparently pleased with seeing my furrowed brow and not the idiotic joy of a tramp who'd just found a suitcase full of heroin and was now celebrating his good fortune. In any case, the Sparks created new opportunities: a new tool for my workshop that I was sure I could use to solve a multitude of problems. I did get his message about the auto buy. It was time to ignore my inner greedy pig and hire a new one-time vendor for every risky transaction.

This was something I should have remembered a long time ago. There's no such thing as anonymity any more. Neither online nor in real life. It's only the question of how much the interested party is prepared to pay for the information. While you're small fry, you've nothing to worry about: you'll remain anonymous simply because you're not worth the trouble. Just remember that when the time comes, all your cyber trail will come to the surface. All your phone records, your entire web surfing history, all your bank card transactions, all the CCTV footage with your face on it and lots of other things.