Maybe this wasn’t so crazy. At least, these two Outworlder women didn’t seem crazy. I wanted to believe them, but I couldn’t shake my own image of myself as a regular joe. If I was one of these mystical “Keepers,” how could I not have had any inkling up until now? Maybe they had the wrong intel?

I took a breath.

It seemed I had two choices; I could go along with this—wild as it sounded—and try to find out more, or I could turn around and walk away.

I thought of the men I’d killed, the battles at the blockade and in the forest. I felt the weight of the magitech MP5 in my hand and the stolen PentaTech mana pot on my belt. I was beginning to feel like my choice had been made already, whether I believed I was a Keeper or not.

”So, say I decide to believe this crazy idea,” I said quickly, ”what exactly do Keepers, you know, keep?”

”It can be many things,” Belinda said. ”Magical items, important persons, arcane knowledge, dungeons.”

”So they’re kind of like security guards?” I asked.

”They’re far more than that,” Belinda replied. ”Keepers can bond with almost any magical substance, and manipulate it to their wills. That’s why you, untrained and without guidance, were able to produce such well-crafted magical enhancement for your car. As you can imagine, Keepers can become the most powerful cultivators, and that can be incredibly dangerous if they go rogue.”

”Hence why they were hunted down and killed on Eosor, and probably Earth, too,” I said. ”I get that. I’ve seen what happened to powerful Outworlder races who could reach really high levels of cultivation here on Earth.”

”Exactly,” Astrid said. ”Belinda’s one of the last of her kind. Your government protected her people during the turmoil that followed the portal’s opening, but any who couldn’t make it here weren’t so lucky.”

I glanced at Belinda and saw a sadness in her violet eyes.

”Regardless,” Belinda said, shaking herself and replacing her previous gloom with a stone-like determination, ”we cannot allow you to be killed or used by anyone.”

”Anyone except your agency, right?” I asked, pointing out the clear contradiction in her statement.

”Our agency’s intentions are pure,” Belinda said.

”Right,” I said. “I’d like to know more about your agency.”

”Soon,” Belinda said.

I stared at her for a few moments. Should I simply go along with whatever was happening here?

As much as all my natural cynicism resisted the idea, I couldn’t help but think about many small things in my life which had set me apart from others, and not just the crafting of magical enhancements.